Reading Books

I am still sort of enjoying "Steppenwolf" , but one of te things about books is I prefer a font that I can read regardless of whether I have contact lenses in or not , ie a dark high contracts font that is not to tiny. Some fonts are very faint so unless you have a decent light they become difficult to read. This is where an e-reader scores because you can change the font and even get it to read the book for you. The print in "Steppenwolf" is excellent and I can read it with or without contact lenses in almost any light.

"Steppenwolf" itself despite hitting on suicide and murder pacts , being anti right wing jingoism in a society that is pro right wing jingoism , is very hopeful seeing Harry Haller reluctantly buying a gramophone , learning to dance despite his abhorrence of jazz and eventually realising that socialising and fun is actually enjoyable and something he wants to do. I have actually read over 150 pages in a week so that is quite fast for me and I am not sure whether I will go for another reread next or hit an unread classic.

Books are a wonderful way of exploring whatever you want to explore and it does amaze me the number of people who say they don't have time or can't read books. I am looking at some of my sets of books that I want to revisit including "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings" and the F Paul Wilson "Adversary" series while I am still working through "Imajica" on my Kindle. I also feel I need to revisit some Dean Koontz although my problem with him is that he seemed to publish books quicker than I could read them, but he did publish one of the few novels "Dark Rivers of the Heart" that I read in one sitting, and I may be wrong , but I think that was around seven hundred pages. Another was Matt Haig's "Reason's To Stay Alive" which I gave away on a World Book Night , gave to my friend Paul Campbell the writer for his 50th birthday, but I also read on the train journey to London.

So we need a song to go with this., and what about one of my favourite Beatles songs "Paperback Writer". The B side is "Rain" another of my favourites and it makes up a perfect single. Macca's bass on "Rain" supposedly was so heavy that it made the needle jump the groove and while it is impressive my copy plays OK so I don't know if the bass has been calmed or what, and "Strawberry Fields" has just started playing and for the first time ever I've noticed the morse code snippet near the start.

Steppenwolfery

I am over half way through "Steppenwolf" and in some ways wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but the fact I am half way through it after a week still wondering what's going on means that it must have something going for it. Obviously Hermann Hesse is German and this feels set in roughly the same universe as "Cabaret" , pre WW2 Germany in the background of some Brechtian libretto.

The font in the book is readable and  Hesse's style certainly doesn't stop you from reading, and I will finish the book. I do like chapters or breaks where you can leave the book at a defined point and also have a point to aim for . Because I don't think that there are any breaks until the end. I thought that "Tarantula" by Bob Dylan was the same , but it's not and it's only just over a hundred pages, and that might be a next re read after "Steppenwolf". I am sure I have read other single passage books, but now I can't think of which ones.

So while I wouldn't recommend "Steppenwolf" I would not discourage you from reading it, though it does feel like walking down a long straight road through unchanging architecture or countryside. There are few signs that you are progressing apart from the knowledge that you have read and the page numbers. Imagine a big single passage book with no page numbers, I think I would find that a major challenge.

So music wise I was listening to my David Bowie "Platinum Collection" and one of the songs was "Alabama Song" from Brecht's "Threepenny Opera", I was going to share Bowie's version (it was also covered by The Doors) but I found a performance by Lotte Lenya which I think would be most in keeping with "Steppenwolf".

Good Morning

The other day was one of those hideous morning when I got woken up my my alarm clock. I know that is the point of the alarm clock , but I have never figured out how to snooze it , so when the alarm goes off I know I have to get up. Although I have also observed that the alarm actually stops after a while then restarts after five minutes. I like waking up and knowing i hamaybe forty minutes before the alarm allowing me a gradual waking , but the other morning it wasn't to be.

The good thing about being woken by my alarm is that I must have had a good night's sleep, undisturbed by anything and though I had to drag myself up , I knew that I had benefitted from the rest. I would hate to be awake throughout the night and when the alarm went off having to drag a tired ad reluctant body towards the shower despite the physical protests and desire to just stay in bed.

Todays' music has been mostly Jefferson Airplane's first five albums, Edward II's "Dancing Tunes" and some Continental Quilts . Follow the links to the artist's Bandcamp areas. All worthy listens , and was particularly impressed with "Surrealistic Pillow" which contains "White Rabbit" , "You're My Best Friend" . "Somebody To Love" and I will share the wonderful acoustic "Embryonic Journey" , which I loved when I first heard it many moons ago.

Steppenwolfing

I am a third of the way through the book (you know I am a very slow reader) and am on the third part / chapter . whatever the "Treatise on the Steppenwolf" and have seen the first references to the main subject Harry Haller as a were-wolf, though this is philosophy as a novel, with the man wolf situation almost like the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of Robert Louis Stevenson.

The book drifts between mundane normality and dark areas where the reality becomes more than  a bit blurred and maybe it's this that is keeping my interest. I am not sure that I will pick up another Hermann Hesse book but even though I bought this it nearly never got read. 

I suppose it's like "The Catcher In The Rye" by JD Salinger , "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac and "Tarantula" by Bob Dylan, books that grace your shelf but maybe you have never read. I still haven't done "On The Road" ,, yet but I am sure I will do.

So musically we will keep the wolf theme going with "Will The Wolf Survive" by Los Lobos which I thought sounds almost like a Stevie Winwood song, it is rather excellent.

Steppenwolf

On the back cover this is described as "the hip bible of 60's counter culture". I remember seeing people with bookcases at home thinking "they've never read any of those books" and to some extent that is true of me. I bought several  sets of classic books , in their own boxes and yesterday decided to extract some , and in two of them the books were actually stuck together, only slightly but nonetheless , theses were books I have bought and never read.

I finally decided to read at least one of these, and the one I chose is "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse , the English translation from the original German because like most entitled English people I am effectively monolinguistic. The book is potentially very dark although the author does describe it as hopeful in the preface.

When I started it , I thought it was going to all be the preface after the foreword, because there is not chapter listing , but then I found a break at page 50 and hit another at page 30.

Although the book's preface seems very boring , a lodger staying in a guy's aunt's guesthose the style of writing has me captivated, just wondering how this is going to pan out. As yet it is not the most dynamic or uplifting tome, but I am enjoying , though possibly not the best choice after finishing the excellent but worrying "Fake Law" by The Secret Barrister,

No doubt I will keep you updated as I progress through "Steppenwolf" and my musical accompaniment was going to be something by the band Steppenwolf (I wonder where they got the name from) but then remembered a Hawkwind song from the "Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music" album called "Steppenwolf" though it refers more to a werewolf rather than the nan in the book , our Mr Haller.

The Wind

Although temperatures are rising when I am out walking there is a wind that almost takes your face off it is so cold. This makes walking out not very pleasant, although I still try and get out and to hit an avaerage of 11K steps a day.

This week I tried Noom but found it too regimented but was willing to give it a try as it seems to working for certain friends, but after continually filling it information about what I'm eating (the blurb does not indicate this) and the final straw was to get you walking and then work up to a decent amount. It gave me three starting points , 2K , 5K and 10K . I chose 10K because I walk an average of 11K steps a day, but Noom said I had to start at 2K then increase my steps by 300 a day. There was no way I was doing that as it would ruin my normal routine.

So while Noom is fine for a lot of people , it is not for me , like gyms (which I find boring. I am going to go out for a walk after this and hopefully the weather will be a little milder but knowing my luck maybe it wont be.

So music wise we will go with "The Wind" from "Teaser and the Firecat" by Cat Stevens.

Charity Albums

There have been a lot of albums that raised money for charity and the Warchild "Help!" album was a major flagship, produced in next to no time and almost every song on it being an absolute gem , but like Band Aid , some artists saw it as a way of promoting themselves or not putting on much effort because people would buy it and it's for charity.

The bad has included Ronan Keating murdering "In The Ghetto" and a completely soulless "Knockin On Heaven's Door" by Avril Lavigne but gems include "House of The Rising Sun" by Muse , "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by The Kaiser Chiefs "Ghost Town" by The Prodigy, "Vietnam" by New Order and a lot more.

These albums serve a purpose and are worth exploring because you end up with some unusual and exciting covers, and some interesting original music and remixes.

Most of these albums don't seem to be available for download so you will have to grab yourself a copy , but I will leave you with  "The Magnificent" by The One World Orchestra (which was really The KLF) from the "Help" album which is definitely worth buying.