Moments in time captured with various odd symbols referred to in the lingua franca as letters.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Trains again and books of course

Thinking about the issue with the funding for trains and public transport in the United States. Why can’t they just give the money to the states that really want it? There must be some governors and states that can come up with a plan for the future, where they want to invest in and diversify their various transportation networks. Its one thing to call a train system socialist and all that political jumbo designed to ignore the actual issues at hand, but its another to consider that these kind of things might be really useful to have in the future.


The notion that urban development in the US is to be entirely based on the Automobile in the future is pretty laughable to be honest: you can only fit so many cars in an area. Where are we going to keep parking all the cars? The list of problems with not diversifying the transport options keeps growing. Is there anyone who is listening? I hear crickets chirping.


I have finished reading Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim. For anyone who enjoyed Heart of Darkness I can honestly say that from everything else I have read from him, this was the closest in magnitude (and yet it still didn’t quite make it). Now I have moved on to the Widows of Eastwick by John Updike. After that it will time for Günter Grass in German for the first time.


The Reading List as it stands:


1. I Married a Communist by Phillip Roth (finished)

2. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (finished)

3. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (non-fiction)

4. Going After Cacciato by Tim O´Brien

5. The Green House by Mario Vargas Lhosa (hard to find in English)

6. Grimms Wörter by Günter Grass

7. Buddha’s Little Finger by Victor Pelevin (taken a break for now)

8. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (finished)

9. Invisible by Paul Auster (finished)

10. The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike (currently reading)

11. Peeling the Onion by Günter Grass


____________

No comments:

Followers