Signs - incredible rendition

Abandon

We enter the club. It’s explosively hot. Sweaty bodies are pressed against each other, slick and sinuous. The pulsing beat of the music is intoxicating. Instant euphoria. He takes me by the hand and leads me to the dance floor - a writhing, squirming mass of hearts on fire. It’s too hot. My hair is plastered to my neck in perspiring tangles. The music moves through me. Abandon is all around us. Something in me is clawing, reaching, yearning.

Middlesex

This is the story of Calliope Stephanides who becomes Cal Stephanides in her early teens. Callie is a hermaphrodite. Due to untold centuries of inbreeding, Callie is the physical outcome of this traditional Greek-American family's...shall we say, unusual inclinations. Eugenides begins the story in Greece, and traces the family's legacy to Detroit where Callie is born...and born again.

I read this book about 5 years ago and fell in love. This is my second time through and I am just as moved. Eugenides writes with a grace that I find lacking in many contemporary authors. He embodies a touch of Dickens and Thackeray, while maintaining the entirely modern essence of his story. One can hardly ever imagine the life of a hermaphrodite but JE manages to convey the painful truths that Cal/Callie must face. Some may call this story depressing but I have never felt more satisfied when coming to the conclusion of this book. In my opinion, this is a genuinely well-written book and I can't think of a thing I'd change.

Well okay, except for one thing. What is Chapter Eleven's real name..??

Mixtapes

For some time now, I've been trading music back and forth with a number of musically like-minded chums. One day, we discovered the awesomeness that is sendspace (and other like filesharing sites) that allows us to send each other mass amounts of files. Thus, the mixtape club was (informally) spawned. I've now sent several around (as have others) and below is the list for my next aural feast:

(not in this order...or maybe in this order..haven't figured it out yet)

You Me and the Bourgoisie - The Submarines
The Black Keys Work (original) - Erlend Oye
Drink to Moving On - Grand National
Lights Out - Santogold
Loud Pipes - Ratatat
Pachuca Sunrise - Minus the Bear
Little Bit - Lykke Li
Body Language/Interpretation - Booka Shade
Click, Click, Click, Click - Bishop Allen
Connjur - School of Seven Bells
The Dance - Charlotte Martin
If You Want Blood - Matt Pond PA
We Are Not a Football Team - Minus the Bear
Fall Bicycle - Lymbyc Systym
I'm a Lady - Santogold
Hello Benjamin - Melpo Mene
Recurring - Bonobo
You Haven't Told me Anything - Keane
You Don't Need this Song (To Fix Your Broken Heart) - Fields
Feel the Love - Cut Copy


addendum: i use too many parentheses...

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

This was my first taste of Vladimir Nabokov, and really, by page 4, I was mesmerized. VN is a true master of storytelling...the way he spins the delicate web of his story, interspersing the tale with enthralling jewels of pure thought and wisdom. There were 67 short stories in total and when reading his "liner notes" at the end, every story stood out poignantly in my memory. There were love stories, horror stories, mysteries...they ran the whole gamut. Below are some of my most favorite lines:

All silence is the recognition of a mystery -- "Sounds"

I want to run all my life, screaming at the top of my lungs. Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. -- "Gods"

I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed on us and unappreciated. -- "Beneficence"

Going home today

"Thanks for the inspiring picture, it's life - a single pole with multiple choices."
-- dad

Quinoa

Did anyone else know that it's pronounced (keen-wah)??

One day

"Every separate day in the year is a gift presented to only one man - the happiest one; all other people use his day, to enjoy the sunshine or berate the rain, never knowing, however, to whom that day really belongs; and its fortunate owner is pleased and amused by their ignorance. A person cannot foreknow which day exactly will fall to his lot, what trifle he will remember forever: the ripple of reflected sunlight on a wall bordering water or the revolving fall of a maple leaf; and it often happens that he recognizes his day only in retrospection, long after he has plucked, and crumpled, and chucked under his desk the calendar leaf with the forgotten figure."

-- Vladimir Nabokov

Play, little asian boy, play!

jawdropping.