James O'Malley... Living Legend » Books

Reading Woe

James — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:55:10 +0000

I like to think of myself intellectually as a sort of ancient-greek scholarly type – learned and wise and interested in all facets of knowledge. What this basically means is that I think I know a little about a lot, am easily distracted from what I should be studying and spend my days lying around in my pyjamas pontificating on the internet.

The ancients had it easy, really. Sure, they didn’t have modern conveniences like BBC Four and Wikipedia, but they could get away with knowing pretty much fuck all and still call themselves educated, because the collective body of human thought was much smaller than it is now.

These days though, we have much more knowledge than any one man can handle – there’s some sort of statistic that says something like there being more books published now every year than the number of books published ever before something like 1900 (though the value of modern books isn’t considered – it’s fairly probably that Thomas Paine’s Booky-wook is more important than Russell Brand’s). This statistic in itself is another piece of knowledge – and evidently something else that I don’t actually know.

What’s got me started on this is that I’ve stumbled upon the conclusion that there’s simply too much information for me to consume and I can’t cope with it. And I don’t like this feeling at all, because it gives me a massive sense of intellectual jealousy and hatred towards people who are better than me. Though I’m very much a fan of the pursuit of knowledge, nothing annoys me more than smart kids – the sort who took their exams a year early and later turn up as contestants on University Challenge. Watching University Challenge, before the private-school educated, received-pronunciation using, prefect-used-to-being wanker has even explained what they’re reading at Oxbridge, I will irrationally hate them. How can anyone retain such huge quantities of knowledge and consume it at such an unbelievable rate?

Angry tangents aside though, the point I intended to make in the first paragraph is that I simply don’t know how to go about consuming all of the media I’d like to – I’m not sure whether or not it’s a time management issue or a trying to learn too much stuff issue, but in an ideal world, I’d like to read simultaneously:

All unread items in Google Reader
The Economist every week
The Guardian at least a few times a week
A non-fiction book
Some sort of great work of literature
Oh, and all of that academic reading I should be doing

Unfortunately in the annoyingly tangible real world, in actual fact I tend to manage:

Some of my Google Reader items

…and that’s about it. So I guess this post is something of a cry for help – albeit a mostly unimportant cry based on a fabricated dilemma. I’m pretty much complaining that kicking myself in the face is not only difficult for a non-Russian gymnast like myself, but it really hurts too.

C’mon readers, throw me a bone. Tell me how to manage my reading.

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Buy My Book!

James — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:35:52 +0000

I’ve reached another milestone. Now, not only can I refer to myself as a “newspaper columnist”, but I also technically qualify as a “published author”. Obviously, this is because I’ve written a book:

So you know what I’m going to ask you to do now: Buy my book! It contains my best newspaper columns from the past 18 months, as well as previously unseen material and directors commentary. Buy it now by clicking the link below:

Oh, go on. It’ll help me pay my ridiculous tuition fees for my Masters.

It’ll also be available on Amazon and the like in a few weeks time with any luck. But I think if you buy it from Lulu I get more money. At least, I hope I do.

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Post tags: book, Columns, plug, promotion, selling

More fan mail

James — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:11:56 +0000

I think I must be on some sort of UKIP watch-list. I think as an unpopular, easily dislikeable, politically insignificant party, they must be going after the unpopular, easily dislikeable, politically insignificant pundits. In this case: myself.

As you probably know, considering the amount of times that I’ve mentioned it, I write a column in the Herald & Post newspaper – and last week, someone wrote in to the paper to complain about a column I wrote a few weeks back praising the European Union and the Lisbon Treaty… I think they might like me.

Well, at least it’s a bit politer than my previous piece of a fan-mail.

My first reaction is that it’s not exactly… dispelling any myths about the UKIP mindset. World War II is still ongoing, and we can’t trust the foreigns – especially the treacherous French. His authority on this matter seems to stem from the fact that he’s vaguely related to a lot of events that occured in the war. Bizarre.

My favourite bit though is the number of pull-out quotes talking about me. That’s right, even on issues as important as Europe, or, er, World War II, I’m still making myself more important:

“Mr O’Malley is an undemocratic ignoramus”

I’m also a “gaping cunt“.

“Still wet behind his ears”

“Perhaps [I] should try [being a WWII firefighter] or better still, but his brain in gear before he opens his mouth”

Because all of the best political commentators trained as World War II firefighters?

“Perhaps you should buy [me] a dictionary?”

I’m not sure what warranted this.

UKIP: Our calendars stop in 1943.

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Post tags: hate mail, herald & post, ukip

Top Books

James — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:49:34 +0000

Warning: If you thought James O’Malley wasn’t an elitist twat, and want to retain this delusion, you might want to skip this one. May I recommend watching this video (again?) instead?

I’ve been having a look around Facebook again. One of the best features is that it splits users into different university networks, so you can see other people at your university and so on. What makes this interesting is that it makes it possible to generate statistics about the most popular TV shows/activities/etc at each university based on what people have put into their profiles. What makes this interesting is that I’ve figured out that it is possible to compare these statistics with those from other universities.

So I’ve decided to compare the Top 10 books from my university, a former polytechnic, with those from the university where I’m going to apply to do an MA next year, a “proper university” in London (whether I’ll get in there is a question for another blog entry). See if you can guess which list goes with which university.

List #1

1984
Lord Of The Rings
Pride And Prejudice
Memoirs Of A Geisha
Wuthering Heights
Lolita
Harry Potter
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Picture Of Dorian Gray
Rebecca

There’s loads of “classics” listed there. Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and so on- the sort of thing I wouldn’t read but would like to create the impression that I would tolerate, as it’s a high culture thing. It has 1984 at number one. People at this university must be excellent.

List #2

Harry Potter
Da Vinci Code
Angels And Demons
The Bible
Lord Of The Rings
1984
Pride And Prejudice
Dan Brown Books
Cosmopolitan

A children’s book, three trashy Dan Brown novels, the most evil book ever written, and a magazine.

Have you guessed yet? The first list in the uni in London, and the second is my university. The disparity in… high culture… really is that clear.

What makes this more depressing is that I have not made a mistake on the second list above – there really is only nine entries in my university’s top ten books.

I’m not trying to slag off my university here, as it’s alright really. I just think its an interesting comparison – almost as if there is still a class divide between universities and polytechnics. If I were a better elite hacker, I’d write something that compares every university. But alas, I’m not.

In summary: Statistics are fun!

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Post tags: Books, comparison, dmu, facebook, kcl, statistics

What the book?

James — Wed, 23 May 2007 00:15:24 +0000

I wish I had more will power – I don’t have any. If I argue with people, I’ll probably concede defeat if they nag enough – sometimes this happens even before they’ve finished constructing their first sentence, just because of my sheer apathy and unwillingness to take a stand. Even when they finally come for me, after getting the trade unionists, communists and social democrats, I’d probably go along with it anyway.

Whilst this trait is pretty bad if you want to get results, it’s worse when you consider that I’m probably just as easily taken in by marketing.

Case in point: I was wandering aimlessly around town today, before work, and ended up heading into Waterstones. It turned out that they’ve currently got a 3-for-the-price-of-2 offer on some books. Not any of the books you’d specifically go out of your way to buy, mind, just the ones they’re having trouble shifting.

And this is a situation which preys on those with little willpower. Once I saw that I could get three for two, it became like a game, and I found myself rushing around the store determined to find three books that I want to read, just so I could get them for the price of two.

I ended up coming away with four books and a wallet that was thirty pounds lighter. I don’t think this special offer was quite as special as I had expected. Not only had I bought two books and got another free, but I’d gone and bought a fourth book that wouldn’t even help me win at a special offer, on a whim.

It was at this point that I also realised that not only am I taken in by a sticker on the cover, but the covers themselves are horrible tools of marketing. Looking at my bookshelf, almost every book I own has the same front cover:

A snappy, slightly punning title, a tag line that draws you in, and an abstract cover illustration that makes the book look like something I’d want to look at – despite the insides being full of nothing but words.

For example, today I bought Tescopoly (Andrew Simms), which is presumably about how Tesco are bastards. Clever title? Check. Intriguing tagline: Check (“How one shop came out on top and why it matters”), clever cover: a parody of the Tesco logo with devil horns.

I also bought Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Title: Check. Tagline: “Religion, Terrorism and the future of reason”, the picture being a bloodied hand print with symbols of the major religions as the fingerprints.

The other two are near identical too. As are the rest of the books in my room.

I’m pretty sure I could be sold a book advocating holocaust denial if it was called something dreadfully pun-tastic like “Hollow-caust: Why proof for the Nazi death camps is thin on the ground”. I’d like to think that on actually opening the hypothetical book I’d return it though.

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Top 3: Name-droppable Authors

James — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 23:59:11 +0000

Being the educated type, I’m not adverse to reading the odd book. I do enjoy reading, and I’d like to do more of it.

Right now, I’ve picked up John Keay’s Sowing the Wind again, and I’m trying to force myself through it, as I know it’s good for me. It’s about the history of the Middle East and why it’s all fucked up, basically. It’s an irritating read, because it’s full of flowery poetic descriptions over the sort that can never be verified scientifically. Talking about Lawrence of Arabia, Keay describes what was going on inside his head and exactly what he was thinking at that time – he doesn’t even say “Lawrence wrote in his diary…” or anything, so it just comes across as baseless assertions. It’s the same sort of irritation that William Shakespeare felt on July 8th 1610 at around 3pm, when one of the lesser playwrights told him that he thought he should cut some of the “chick crap” from Romeo and Juliet.

But anyway, one of the best things about reading is that it makes you feel self-satisfied and entitles you to act like a smug knowledgeable twat for a couple of weeks after you’ve read the book. This feeling lasts longer if the author is well known and is invariably described as an “academic”, or if the book is described as a “classic” or “seminal” work. So I present to you, my top 3 name-droppable authors (who’s work I’ve read).

James O’Malley’s Top 3 Name-Droppable Authors!3) Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is quite popular at the moment. Or at least that’s the impression I get from the observable evidence (hoho!). The God Delusion is an excellent book, and despite what you may think is merely a man ranting about religion, it’s actually a sort of operators manual for atheists, which arms you with a rebuttal for every pro-religion argument. Idiots may say things like “Dawkins is just a fundamentalist atheist” whilst stroking their beard in a self-congratulatory way about how wry they can be, but Dawkins argued his own way out of this: he’s not a fundamentalist because his beliefs are willing to change if evidence proves that he was wrong before, which is something a religious fundie would never do. Drop Dawkins into your conversation and you’ll immediate add loads of rational scientific weight to whatever you’re saying.

2) George Orwell

This is largely assumed reading, but if you’ve read Orwell, you’re allowed to make knowing references to aspects of his work without actually naming the book. It sort of separates you from the proles – if you can casually drop “everyone is equal but some are more equal than others” into a conversation about say, receiving preferential treatment when acquiring a good or service, your peers will immediately respect you and laugh at your clever reference.

1) Noam Chomsky

Said to be the world’s most important academic, Noam loves saying vaguely controversial things about America in his books. It’s almost a trump card in a political argument to say that “Chomsky proposes that democracy isn’t about letting people run their own affairs, it’s about keeping power from the people and running their lives for them”, or whatever. And you can’t really go wrong if you make a comparison between the war on terror and the Nazis, just like Noam has done. Chomsky loses points, however, because he’s somewhat polemic. He’s a big liberal, so can be undermined by an idiot saying “Yeah, but he’s bias” because of his left-of-centre opinions, whilst unwittingly implying that everyone else is somehow not bias. But still, name drop Chomsky and you’re guarenteed to sound educated.

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Ban Religion Now

James — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 00:31:10 +0000

I’ve recently finished reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and as a result, I’ve unquestionably accepted everything that it has said and become a militant atheist.

The God Delusion was something of a revelation to me. It’s provided me with a framework for belief and morals- if there were a Richard Dawkins fan club that I could attend, say, every Sunday, and celebrate his creation with other Dawkins fans, it would be most excellent.

After reading the book, I think it’s made me slightly more hostile towards people with different beliefs to my own- I have nothing but contempt for people who don’t believe the word of Richard Dawkins, or the unbelievers, as you could call them.

One of Dawkins’ main criticisms of religion (aside from “religion is rubbish and wrong”) is that kids are raised into being religious zealots, giving them no choice in what to belief- and Dicky Dawkins moans that he thinks labelling a child “a Christian child” or “a Muslim child” is as absurd as labelling them “a Conservative Child” or “a Labour child”. I quite agree, and this is why I think they should ban religion for under 18s.

Think about it – a child raised free from corrupting influences, and then they can make an informed decision about whether to believe fairy tales or rational thought as a responsible adult.

As well as the positive societal implications, the amusing side effect to this would be religion bizarrely becoming something that is cool in the eyes of young people. Everyone knows that smoking makes you look really cool and wins you loads of friends- this is especially true if you’re not old enough to buy cigarettes. Presumably if religion were also outlawed for kids, there’d be choirboys at the back of the school field catching a quick prayer before the teachers see, and on their way home they’d be getting the tallest member of their gang to put on a deep voice and try and buy a Bible from behind the counter in Waterstones.

Thinking about it, why don’t they just ban religion entirely? Sure, this might be a little bit draconian, but it would be for the greater good – think about all of the old churches that could be converted into trendy apartments or redeveloped by ageing middle class couples with too much disposable income and a desire to appear on Grand Designs. Any churches that did want to carry on would have to go underground, and it’d be a bit like prohibition in America in the early 20th century, with churches living in the basements of buildings, with a secret knock, passwords in order to gain entry, and singing gangster children.

And isn’t massive societal upheaval worth it if it means we can spread the word of Dawkins?

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Book Review 3

James — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 14:44:25 +0000

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Another Book Review

James — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 23:48:43 +0000

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A quick book review

James — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 22:41:26 +0000

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