Monday, February 04, 2008

5 Down, 47 to Go

So I have run out of books. I now don't have any in reserve so I need to finish either Acid House or Cowgirls to have material for next week.

Book: Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents
Album: J Dilla - Donuts

This is a sort of cheating. Graffiti World is almost entirely composed of pictures but man oh man what amazing pictures. Clearly they highlighted the best artists at large today. Showcasing crews and styles that I had never seen before. I did not see some of the big names that I would expect for instance Sasquatch, Neckface, and Obey, but they are more than made up for by the plethora of talent I have learned about. Admitatedly I have also only flipped through the book, never sitting down and reading or looking page by page. I greatly enjoyed that the book was broken down by contitents. It made it easy to see how different styles changed and influenced each other.

The audiable companion to this book is Donuts or Beat Konducta or really anything off the Stones Throw label. Personally I like Donuts the best. It was produced on J Dilla's death bed in the hospital. Each song is only a minute or minute and half long. They are merely sketches of beats. Much like graffiti is only a sketch of great art work. If a great graf artist were to sit down and truly paint or design one piece it could surely go in a prestigous museum. Just as if J Dilla sat down and fleshed out many of these beats and sold them off, there would have been a lot of hits. But when you have this much talent why waste time perfecting the already amazing and not share the wealth with everyone.

Book: Death By Black Hole - Neil deGrasse Tyson

This is an admission of defeat. I did not finish this book. I read about 125 pages of it or so and stopped. Which means I got about half way through and stopped. The book while interesting was nothing but a collection of articles Tyson had written for various Science and Academic magazines. And while I liked it, it was a little to technical, too science-y. Once I put it down I frequently did not really desire to pick it back up. I was hoping it would be more about planets and stars and what is out there and less about how it happened and theory. While the theroy is important, it does not always make for a great read.

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