I finished reading Crimethinc‘s Off the Map. It’s the story of two girls from Olympia who travel to Europe with no money, squatting in different buildings and the like.

I highly recommend it. It’s one of my favorite books.

From the site:

A punk rock vision quest told in the tradition of the anarchist travel story, Off the Map is narrated by two young women as they discard their maps, fears, and anything resembling a plan, and set off on the winds of the world. Without the smug cynicism that seems to permeate most modern radical tales, this story is told with genuine hope, and a voice that never loses its connection with the mysteries of life, even in the midst of everyday tragedies. Wandering across Europe, the dozens of vignettes are the details of the whole—a squatted castle surrounded by tourists on the Spanish coast, a philosophizing businessman on the highways of France, a plaza full of los crustos in Barcelona, a diseased foot in a Belgian train squat, a glow bug on the dew-covered grass of anywhere—a magical, novel-like folktale for the end of the world.

I finished reading Junky: The Definitive Text of “Junk” by William S. Burroughs today. It’s a good book.

I enjoyed it more than Naked Lunch. The writing is easier to follow, there is a discernible plot, and less homosexual orgies.

If you don’t feel like reading the book, I’ll sum it up for you: don’t do opium or derivatives thereof.

I finished reading Siva Vaidhyanathan‘s Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. It’s an interesting book, if you’re into copyright. Me, well, I was bored at parts, and it’s not very high on my recommendation list. I suggest you go to your local bookstore and read the Afterword. If you’re not getting evil glares from the management when you finish that, skim the last chapter (“The Digital Moment”). Those are the only good parts.

I finished reading A Clockwork Orange. It’s an excellent book, definitely one of my favorites. If you’ve seen the movie, you must read the book, which is much better (or worse, depending on how you look at it). If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, then first watch the movie and then read the book. Over half the words were completely made up by Anthony Burgess, so watching the movie first helps to give you an idea of how he talks.

If you’ve never heard of it, the story is somewhat of a 1984 meets Peter Pan. A horrorshow book.

The edition of the book that I linked to includes the last chapter, which was previously unavailable in the US version and also cut out from Stanley Kubrick’s movie. This really should be a sin, as the last chapter completely makes the book.

Also, a warning: the movie, and the book even more so, are definitely deserving of the R rating.

I just realized that when I said I had finished reading Ecstasy Club, I never said what it was about. Well, on a literal level it documents the rise and fall of a cult-ish rave club in San Francisco. At it’s worst it’s a drug-induced psychological journey through the collective mind of a bunch of ravers trying to take the human raise to the next evolutionary level through drugs and electronica. At it’s best it’s a paranoid vision of corporate brainwashing and mind control.

“A darkly comic contemporary fable: a brave, very funny, very knowing trip through the neo-psychedelic substrate of the wired world.” - William Gibson

Read it. And don’t do E.

I just realized that I never posted a few days ago when I finished Reading Simulacra: Fatal Theories for Postmodernity. So, yeah, I did. It was interesting, but seemed to dragged on at certain parts. You can tell it heavily influenced The Matrix.

Jason Scott is on the last episode of Radio FreeK America, 99.

I finished reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas last night. That’s a damn good book, in an LSD-induced sort of way. I Think the New York Times Book Review quote on the back does a good job of summing it up

The best book on the dope decade.

Speaking of the back, here’s the excerpt they put on it:

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls... But the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge...

I can’t wait to see what traffic Google is going to send my way because of that quote.

But, yeah, good book. And short. So read it.

I finished Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick last night. It’s a very good, highly recommended book. My favorite story is the Electric Ant. Go read it.