More on Books...and stuff.

I realized why my "accounting of books" was coming to mind the other day--I subconsciusly realize that I am about to lose my box set of The Police. It's the only group that I have the box set of, and, as it turns out, I guess I didn't need to hear everything they possibly ever recorded. I think they had a version of "Roxanne" recorded in the shower and "Message in a Bottle" on a banjo. I guess those are long lost recordings which I will never hear again, but I did like some of the raw tones of their early music.

I was working in the office for a couple of days (I usually work from a home office or on the road), and I overheard one of the new guys (actually, a temp) listening to some older recordings of The Police and we started talking about music. I told him that I own the box set and that I would be happy to loan it to him so he could check it out. It's on a shelf and I haven't listened to it a while, so I would be happy to let him get some use out of it. He mentioned that he may upload the songs to his Ipod or something.

I brought it in the next day and just asked him to be finished with them an a week or so.

That was a month ago.

Now, I found out that it's just, ahem, possible that his temp contract is about to run out and that he will not be invited back--so the clock is ticking on getting my CD's back. This is how I lost a bunch of my books before--a young woman I worked with asked me to compile a recommended reading list for her, which I did, and then she asked me if she could borrow a few of them from me--I brought up a selection for her to choose from and she begged to take them all with her. She got fired within about two days, and never came back. If she read all those books, I hereby formally forgive her.

I'm glad I didn't loan her Winesburg, Ohio--if you haven't read this, please do. It reminds me of blog from a 1900 American small town. I love the way the stories interconnect and show motivations of characters from different points of view. Then again, I haven't read it in 10 years, so maybe it isn't as good as I thought--hate it when that happens.

I didn't include this note about how I didn't learn and still loaned stuff out, to a Temp, no less, before because my entry was already too long...Now I realize that it was the climax of the whole thing. Oh, well.

Fran and I have a running joke about my reading. Sometimes I will challenge myself with a book (for example Dostoevsky), whereas she subscribes to the school of thought that there is enough to read in the world where you shouldn't have to endure something that isn't entirely enjoyable. I think her subliminal point is that I've gotten about as smart as I'm going to get, so give up trying to force the issue any further... Whenever she sees that I'm reading a book that isn't fun, she shakes her head sadly and offers me a Spider Man comic.

I read in Time magazine about this book called Godel, Escher Bach. Now I have to be careful about how I characterize this book, because the author writes about 10 pages about how people always try to describe his masterpiece and how everyone who tries to describe it gets it wrong and how no one should ever try to summarize this book because his book is a magic work that defies summary. Charming. Reminds me of one of those fussy, effeminate intellectuals who look like they suck lemons. So, I beg your pardon in advance. The Time magazine writer says that this book significantly affected his family's intellectual development--his sister became some kind of genius chemist or something. When I described it to Fran, she asked me "Why don't you just get yourself a Cat o' Nine Tails?"

Here's what the book is about: Strange Loops. The mathematical similarities in logical thought of different forms of art, music, and philosophy, and how, in some cases, one idea can be compounded upon to a higher complexity by expanding a basic idea. It's full of anecdotes--one of them is about how Bach wrote one of his fugues after given a basic line by Frederick the Great. I guess, if you turn the notes into a calculus equation and take the derivative of it, it turns out that mathematically it is a really, really good song. I had Fran punch it up on the computer and we listened to it together--not bad. I don't know, though, I prefer the guitar part on Where the Streets have no Name...

I can't remember who it was, but some older woman recommended that, if you are in doubt of whether or not you like a book, there's a formula for how much of it you should read before putting it down--her idea is 100 minus your age. If, by that time, you aren't into it, you can put it down with good conscience. Not me. I gave Anna Karenina about 150 pages and felt like I hadn't made a dent yet. Sometimes, when I've had too much pizza, that book still haunts me. Some day I'll read it. I only have about 1,300 more pages to go.

One of the reasons why Godel, Escher, Bach appealed to me is that I have a similar theory about art, music, and literature. Here's a summary of it: Monet and Hemingway seem very similar in their artistic approach toward art and writing, respectively. See? Pretty easy to summarize. I can expand and explain, but that was the climax. I remembered to include it in the post this time...