May 2009
Crown Casino: ‘A snarling, digitised mutilation’
Wed, 05/27/2009 - 03:13 — Anonymousby SIMON SELLARS & STEVEN from MELB PSY
Soundwalk by MELANIE CHILIANIS; photography by Simon Sellars.
“The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism can satisfy. If anything, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness.”
J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006).
We took a recent jaunt to Melbourne’s Crown Casino, prime Ballardian space, in order to map the coordinates of this micronational zone, this city state — consumer-driven control space. We took photos on a Nokia 6288 — photography disguised as furtive texting — while Mel Chil performed a secret sound walk. Her head bowed and her eyes averted (for soundwalkers must not allow the other senses to interfere with the keen ...
Crown Casino: ‘A snarling, digitised mutilation’
Wed, 05/27/2009 - 03:13 — Anonymousby SIMON SELLARS & STEVEN from MELB PSY
Soundwalk by MELANIE CHILIANIS; photography by Simon Sellars.
“The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism can satisfy. If anything, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness.”
J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006).
We took a recent jaunt to Melbourne’s Crown Casino, prime Ballardian space, in order to map the coordinates of this micronational zone, this city state — consumer-driven control space. We took photos on a Nokia 6288 — photography disguised as furtive texting — while Mel Chil performed a secret sound walk. Her head bowed and her eyes averted (for soundwalkers must not allow the other senses to interfere with the keen a...
Ben Stevens – From Lee to Li: An A-Z Guide of Martial Arts
Thu, 05/21/2009 - 12:13 — AnonymousIan Hocking
Some books change your life and From Lee to Li: An A-Z Guide of Martial Arts will not be one of them. But it is fun and straightforward. I won't add that it's unlikely to trouble the Trade Descriptions people because Lee and Li both begin with L - but Adams to Yuksa lacks the oomph of alliteration, I guess. You'd buy this book for the scruffy younger brother or the dad who habitually rents Steven Seagal DVDs. It's not a book with a scholarly bent, so serious martial artists might turn up their noses, but there's plenty of interest for anyone who has picked up nanchaku and spun it around pointlessly or tensed in sympathy as Jackie Chan crashed through a skylight.
From Lee to Li is written by Ben Stevens, a lifelong martial artist (according to HarperCollins) and author of The Gaijin's Guide to Japan, gaijin being the somewhat pejorative term used in Japanese to describe foreigners. It's published by The Friday Project.
As an A-Z, how comprehensive is this book? Well, one problem is the that Stevens combines two groups: great warriors in the history of martial arts and famous movie stars. For another, Stevens is somewhat elastic in his definition of martial arts. He writes, on several occasions, that any learned fighti...
Andrzej Stasiuk – Tales of Galicia
Thu, 05/21/2009 - 12:11 — AnonymousJason Weaver
Tales of Galicia is set in the south-east corner of Poland a few years after the fall of Communism. A time of upheaval certainly but, as the name of the volume implies, this part of the world is no stranger to social change. A mountainous region, once called Galicia, it rolled down into modern Ukraine before being annexed by the Polish. The image of a ghost territory haunting the contemporary map is an apt illustration of Stasiuk’s exploration of boundaries and demarcation. Around here, cultural identity is a history of flux and capitalism is just the sequel to earlier religions, armies and political ideologies.
The book opens on the very cusp of change, with Józek "driving the last tractor". Soon there will be "red Zetors: soundproof cabs, built-in radios, twenty-first century" but, for now, the narrator describes a kind of captive present – "motionless time" – which gives no space for imagination or, consequently, the very concept of the future. "People who have been disinherited live in the present. If they possess any kind of past, then it is a memory just as uncertain as the future." This generation of 40-somethings finds itself, then, in a present which is simultaneously constrictive, apparently eternal yet about to come to an end. Re...
Alain Mabanckou – Broken Glass
Thu, 05/21/2009 - 12:10 — AnonymousJason Weaver
Broken Glass is a derelict who drinks at a bar called Credit Gone West in the Trois-Cents district of the DR Congo. As a disgraced school teacher and unrepentant drunk, he is an unconventional narrator, the kind we might find in Camus novels. The words you are reading, he explains, are jottings made in a notebook given to him by the bar's proprietor, Stubborn Snail, intended to leave some kind of legacy for Credit Gone West. For Stubborn Snail, all talk about Africa's oral heritage is worn out and reality too motley for neat phrases: "this is the age of the written word, that's all that's left now, the spoken word's just black smoke". Mabanckou's novel explores the space between. In describing the events of this dive and through confessions of its resident barflies, Broken Glass' notebook becomes a suitably messy dissertation on two themes: how scoundrels justify themselves through the stories they tell and the wider interplay of African literature within its alleged oral purity and colonization by the French.
Early on, Broken Glass recounts a preposterous anecdote about how the opening of Credit Gone West provoked a governmental crisis, the crux of which is a battle for the pithiest slogan to win over the people. As the President's advis...
Review 80 : More Kindergarten Sudoku
Tue, 05/19/2009 - 06:35 — AnonymousLLBR has moved – to read this great review, go to our new site – Review 80 : More Kindergarten Sudoku
...WE’VE MOVED!
Sat, 05/16/2009 - 03:00 — AnonymousThe Lulu Book Review has moved to a new domain and is now called The LL Book Review.
For those of you who have visited and enjoyed LLBR here for the past year, we thank you. Now it’s time to come check out the new and improved LLBR, now offering reviews for Lulu, Createspace, and Wordclay authors.
So, come and see the new look, the new site, the new reviews, The LL Book Review.
Review 79: Tales of a Texas Boy
Thu, 05/14/2009 - 07:58 — AnonymousLLBR has moved – to read this great review, go to our new site – Review 79: Tales of a Texas Boy
...E-Publishing for the E-Generation
Wed, 05/13/2009 - 05:50 — AnonymousLLBR has moved – to read this great article, go to our new site – E-Publishing for the E-Generation
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