This is still my stuff.

This is a huge subject, and Alex Ross does a great job of covering it. Not everyone will be happy if their pet composer or movement has been tackled only briefly (if at all), but it would be impossible to fit the entire century into a single volume. As a result of reading this I have been moved to listen to Schoenberg and Strauss (esp. the Metamorphosen) for the first time; they are challenging works but rewarding and it has been great to have my musical horizons expanded by reading this book.
For me, the book was worth buying for the chapter on Sibelius alone; the passage describing the walk around Ainola and linking it to Sibelius' music is just superb - it sent me straight back to my CD collection to dig out and listen to the symphonies after years of not playing them.
Overall that is the most wonderful thing about this book - it inspires you to listen to more music.

This large aperture 30mm F1.4 EX DC HSM lens is designed to match the APS-C size image sensors of digital SLR cameras. Two SLD glass elements are especially effective in the compensation of magnification chromatic aberration. Glass mold aspherical lens at rear group of lens reduces color aberration and provides high-quality image results. From 40cm (15.7») minimum focusing distance to infinity, this lens creates very sharp images with high contrast. The HSM models provide quiet high-speed auto-focus shooting, as well as full-time manual focus. Large Maximum Aperture of F1.4 can perform superbly in a great range of applications, including snapshots, portraiture, indoor shooting and landscape photography.

Grant Morisson's 'The Filth' represents a daring vision of human insights and hidden characters. Through a dirty - and yet classic - story telling, the author is provocative and pleases fans of science fiction as well as pornographic plots. It's sexy, crazy, complex and surreal. Morrison is the Salvador Dalí of comic writing. Brilliant and unique!

One of my top three favourite books [with' Catch 22' and' Ulysses'], The Good Soldier Schweik is a treat every time. I wanted to point out the differences between the older translation by Paul Selver ['Schweik'], and the 1973 one [Svejk'] by Cecil Parrott. The Selver version is under 500 pages long and the Parrott over 700, and Parrott also has more of the wonderful Josef Lada illustrations [Penguin and Heinemann editions], but Selver lands the knockout blow by being funnier. His prose is fresh and lively where Parrott's is often stilted and cumbersome. Reading the two translations side-by-side is fascinating; how the small differences build to make one book good and the other one great. If you can be bothered, get both versions, but if you're only getting one, be sure it's the pre-1973 Selver!

Change your relationship with your computer from an adversarial one to a cooperative one. This book shows you how to relax and meditate on the machine and what you are doing with it. If you are calm and centered, your machine will react to these feelings by being calm and centered also. This book should be on every computer user's shelf - from programmer to end-user. You'll learn to be mindful of yourself and your work and you'll see the difference immediately. After all, it is all just ones and zeros.

I was surprised to discover that Richard Dawkins and myself have something in common. We both serve a triune god !!!

My God's name is God the FATHER, SON and HOLY GHOST !!!
His god's name is god the NATURAL SELECTION, TIME and HOCUS POCUS !!!

Fancy that.....

I don't know why this book is so disappointing. Perhaps it is because it is a bit late. Zizek's attempt to deal with the clash between the advance of bio-determinism in the genetics and pharmaceutics industries on the one hand, and the solidity of the post-Frankfurt social sciences on the other, does not do justice either to the latter or to
the dialectical epistemology which he claims to be trying to rehabilitate.

The real irony for Zizek is that what he is trying to say has already been handled in the established virtuality of literary fiction. First there was George Elliot's The Lifted Veil, the strangest of all her books and the only one that somehow doesn't quite work. Then came Houellebecq's lamentable Atomised reprising 1950s racism and sexism in response to the cracking of the genetic code. Finally there was Gdala's dialectical transcendence of Houellebecq's anthithesis in Pascal's Wager where all the double themes of Z's Parallax (from the centrality of the virtual, through the Lacanian transformation, to the historicism implicit in genetic and biochemical fatalism), all of these threads are carefully disentagled and rebraided in red gold and green.

I thought that it was from Zizek that I learned the idea that the clue to the contemporary default constellations is always to be found in a fictional narrative. I think it is time he deployed a different strategy if he is to engage with the real material challenges of the moment. It's too late for this kind of thing.

After the disorganised and often unlistenable Alan Douglas-produced reissues in the 1970s and '80s, MCA has been releasing the vast Hendrix archives in an intelligent and methodical manner. Blues is a perfect example, making the case that--on top of everything else--Jimi Hendrix was one fine blues guitarist. Combining the fluid lines of B.B. King with the spikiness of Hubert Sumlin and the crying tone of Elmore James with his usual synapse-frying intensity, Hendrix manages to both honour the music tradition while remaining uniquely himself. These studio outtakes and warm-ups (plus one previously released track, the magnificent "Hear My Train a Comin'") include a playful "Mannish Boy", the slow burn of "Once I Had A Woman" and a metallic "Bleeding Heart". --Steven Mirkin