Book Club

Personally I've been finally back making some progress on my pile after not reading much for a few months.

First I finished Kathy Acker's "Blood and Guts in High School" - it would be hard and dishonest to try to describe it, it seems to elude any easy definition that wouldn't reduce what it is. In a way it's a mad world, an ethereal descent and ascent into a broken mind, or the ur-broken mind, an epic of the object of society. In less pretentious terms: it's for the neurotic girls out there. Heavy TWs for basically everything though:

I just finished "Amérique" by Baudrillard - I guess it is easy to describe it as just an application of his concept of hypperreality to the most hyperreal place - America, taking the loose form of a travel diary. And it is! But it is really as thought-provoking as "Simulacres et Simulation" was - his vision of space and the desert itself as a signifier and "precursor" to the self-proclaimed city on a hill being really the strong-point of this short essay.

And I am finally starting "The Dangers of Smoking in Bed"! I'll try and talk about it here when I finish it.