Booksbooksbooks

Finally:

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

Unfortunately, Fountainhead is the first book I've read this year that I didn't like. There are some interesting things said, but as a book I found it pretty cruddy; a little too obvious, a little too didactic. It's all just a front for Rand to peddle her little philosophy, Objectivism, which is pretty close to Nietzschean thought, in my mind. The characters are laughably transparent, the dialogue is terrible and it's generally an irritating book.

Like I said, however, there are some interesting passages, mostly from the monologues (sometimes duelling monologues) that pretty much comprise the last 50 pages or so of the book. For example:

"I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn't matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself."

Perhaps these lines speak to me as an artist, as a performer, as someone whose work is presented specifically for the consumption and enjoyment of others (the protagonist is an architect). And yet you cannot approach acting as pandering to or pleasing your audience, or looking for that golden statue, or getting rich, for a multitude of reasons; the motivation must come from within. As many before me have said, if there is anything else you can possibly do in your life and be happy, you should go and do it - because even if you have that inner fire, the acting industry will use you, ride you, and then abandon you for the next fresh face. It is the work, and the desire to do good work that must fuel you, that will get you through 2 am tech rehearsals and 5 am call times and cattle calls. Because, really, what is there that an audience can give you that should not actually come from yourself? This is another point Rand makes that is quite true: there is no valuation that others can give you which is meaningful on a personal level. To be sure, it is helpful if others enjoy your work and are willing to pay to enjoy it; but you cannot (should not, perhaps) work with that in mind as your goal, for it is an empty one:

"In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness - in other people's eyes. Fame, admiration, victions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn't want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn't want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others."

Not quite sure if I'll be picking up anything new for a bit; I'm trying to be a little careful with my fundage, since it's spring and, well...I want some new clothes.