# What books are you currently reading?



## Edmond-Dantes

*What books are you currently reading.*

WELL! I'm surprised that a cultured and intelligent bunch of individuals like yourselves haven't already made a "What books are you Reading" thread.  Well, since we don't have one, I suppose I'll start it off. 

--Non Music Books--
Currently, I'm reading a compilation of stories written by Fyodor Dostoevsky; who, if is as good of a writer as the current story I'm reading, "The Double," suggest, might be my favorite author. "The Double" is REALLY something else, and I WHOLE HEARTEDLY suggest it to anybody with an appreciation for psychology and classic novels. Here is an excerpt from the third chapter of the story that I have picked out. The main character is on his way to a party and decided on a whim to stop off at the doctors office. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Though Mr. Golyadkin pronounced this with the utmost
distinctness and clearness, weighing his words with a
self-confident air and reckoning on their probable effect, yet
meanwhile he looked at Krestyan Ivanovitch with anxiety,
with great anxiety, with extreme anxiety. Now he was all
eyes: and timidly waited for the doctor's answer with irritable
and agonized impatience. But to the perplexity and complete
amazement of our hero, Krestyan Ivanovitch only muttered
something to himself; then he moved his armchair up to the
table, and rather drily though politely announced something
to the effect that his time was precious, and that he did not
quite understand; that he was ready, however, to attend to
him as far as he was able, but he wold not go into anything
further that did not concern him. At this point he took the
pen, drew a piece of paper towards him, cut out of it the
usual long strip, and announced that he would immediately
prescribe what was necessary.
"No, it's not necessary, Krestyan Ivanovitch! No, that's
not necessary at all!" said Mr. Golyadkin, getting up from his
seat, and clutching Krestyan Ivanovitch's right hand. "That
isn't what's wanted, Krestyan Ivanovitch."
And, while he said this, a queer change came over him. 
His grey eyes gleamed strangely, his lips began to quiver, all
the muscles, all the features of his face began moving and
working. He was trembling all over. After stopping the
doctor's hand, Mr. Golyadkin followed his first movement by
standing motionless, as though he had no confidence in
himself and were waiting for some inspiration for further
action.
Then followed a rather strange scene.
Somewhat perplexed, Krestyan Ivanovitch seemed for a
moment rooted to his chair and gazed open-eyed in
bewilderment at Mr. Golyadkin, who looked at him in
exactly the same way. At last Krestyan Ivanovitch stood up,
gently holding the lining of Mr. Golyadkin's coat. For some
seconds they both stood like that, motionless, with their eyes
fixed on each other. Then, however, in an extraordinarily
strange way came Mr. Golyadkin's second movement. His
lips trembled, his chin began twitching, and our hero quite
unexpectedly burst into tears. Sobbing, shaking his head and
striking himself on the chest with his right hand, while with
his left clutching the lining of the doctor's coat, he tried to
say something and to make some explanation but could not
utter a word.
At last Krestyan Ivanovitch recovered from his
amazement.
"Come, calm yourself!" he brought out at last, trying to
make Mr. Golyadkin sit down in an armchair.
"I have enemies, Krestyan Ivanovitch, I have enemies; I
have malignant enemies who have sworn to ruin me . . ." Mr
Golyadkin answered in a frightened whisper.
"Come, come, why enemies? you mustn't talk about
enemies! You really mustn't. Sit down, sit down," Krestyan
Ivanovitch went on, getting Mr. Golyadkin once and for all
into the armchair.
Mr. Golyadkin sat down at last, still keeping his eyes fixed
on the doctor. With an extremely displeased air, Krestyan
Ivanovitch strode from one end of the room to another. A
long silence followed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As this book is an old one and the copyright has since expired, you can read it here.
http://www.kiosek.com/dostoevsky/library/thedouble.txt

If you'd rather read it on paperback, you can buy the small compilation I'm reading at barns and noble for 5$. 
ISBN: 978-1-59308-037-2

--MUSIC RELATED BOOKS--
I have just perchased the wonderful recommendation from Jtech81 and am reading it.










PS: You all don't need to write a book on the books you're reading like I've done, I just HAD to share how great "The Double" is. ^-^;;;;


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## World Violist

I believe there is a "books" thread somewhere, it's just been dormant for several months. Anyway, good to see someone's noticed its absence.

I just now finished reading a biography of Elgar, by Michael Kennedy, published by Cambridge in 2004. It was a very quick, extraordinarily engaging read, I must say, particularly because I must confess I can relate to him as deeply as I can relate to few other composers. 

Maybe I'll eventually finish the Brothers Karamazov... it's amazing but LONG.

Right now for English class I'm reading William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying". It's really one of the best books I've ever read for that class.

~WV


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## Rondo

World Violist said:


> Right now for English class I'm reading William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying". It's really one of the best books I've ever read for that class.


You should read _Light in August_ and (better yet) _The Sound and the Fury_. I might actually consider a re-read of the latter.


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## Weston

I am wading through a translation of Nietzche's_ Thus Spake Zarathustr_a if only to understand the tone poem in more depth.

But don't let me fool you into thinking I'm all literary. I'm also reading a book by science fiction author Greg Benford, _The Sunborn_.


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## JTech82

Edmond-Dantes said:


> --MUSIC RELATED BOOKS--
> I have just perchased the wonderful recommendation from Jtech81 and am reading it.


Great book and I hope you get something out of it! It's got a lot of great information in it.

I've been overlooking this book:










It's written by jazz guitarist/Berklee professor Mick Goodrick. If no one here is familiar with him he is a master of chord voicings and just the overall harmonic aspect of music.


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## Elgarian

World Violist said:


> I just now finished reading a biography of Elgar, by Michael Kennedy, published by Cambridge in 2004. It was a very quick, extraordinarily engaging read, I must say, particularly because I must confess I can relate to him as deeply as I can relate to few other composers.


Books about Elgar are like chocolates aren't they? - decidedly more-ish. I haven't read that recent version of Kennedy's biography (there have been several incarnations of it I think): is he still advocating the 'real Elgar' as the dreamy child of the countryside, and downplaying the importance of his Imperialism? If so, I think that's an unbalanced account: wistful and appealing, but a rather misleading recreation of the man. A dip into Robert Anderson's _Elgar and Chivalry_balances the books; but even better (and quicker) is the chapter on 'Elgar's Empire' in Jeffrey Richards's book _Imperialism and Music_. A real understanding of Elgar's attitude to imperialism is at last starting to emerge, not as something jingoistic and nationalistic, but as a mystical, chivalric and noble ideal which, far from being something to sweep under the carpet, actually enhances the understanding of all his music.

I'm currently reading this:










I'm reading it partly because I found it in a book sale for next to nothing, but also because my very first introduction to Elgar was through Sargent's late 1950s HMV recording of _The Enigma Variations_. Despite all the showmanship for which he was renowned, there's no doubt he loved his Elgar, and worked enormously hard at promoting his music. He met Elgar in the late 1920s, and Elgar seemed to have a high regard for Sargent's interpretations of his work. I can't help wondering what I'd think about his recording of _Enigma_ if I heard it, now. The LP is long gone, and there doesn't seem to be a CD transfer available.


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## R-F

For English class we're reading _The Great Gatsby_ and _Romeo and Juliet_. I think _The Great Gatsby_ in particular is brilliant, and the only thing that lets _Romeo and Juliet_ down for me is Shakespeare's overkill with the Light and Dark imagery. That didn't stop me enjoying it though.

I hate the essays we have to write on the novel/play though. The markers are so picky.


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## World Violist

Elgarian said:


> Books about Elgar are like chocolates aren't they? - decidedly more-ish. I haven't read that recent version of Kennedy's biography (there have been several incarnations of it I think): is he still advocating the 'real Elgar' as the dreamy child of the countryside, and downplaying the importance of his Imperialism? If so, I think that's an unbalanced account: wistful and appealing, but a rather misleading recreation of the man. A dip into Robert Anderson's _Elgar and Chivalry_balances the books; but even better (and quicker) is the chapter on 'Elgar's Empire' in Jeffrey Richards's book _Imperialism and Music_. A real understanding of Elgar's attitude to imperialism is at last starting to emerge, not as something jingoistic and nationalistic, but as a mystical, chivalric and noble ideal which, far from being something to sweep under the carpet, actually enhances the understanding of all his music.


Yes, in the foreword he said his first Elgar biography was published in the 1940's or 50's.

It didn't seem to focus quite that much on his childhood, but yes, it is rather dreamy and such. I didn't see much straightforward _Imperialism_ in there, _per se_, but I can see how he could exhibit that without much straining of thought. I'll be sure to try finding Anderson's book (possibly over the summer if I have any time).


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## Elgarian

World Violist said:


> It didn't seem to focus quite that much on his childhood.


Sorry, I wasn't clear, there. What I was getting at is Kennedy's old overarching idea that the 'real' Elgar is the 'pastoral' Elgar; and that imperialism was a jacket that he wore with discomfort, that didn't reflect the 'real' Elgar. But I don't think that's right; I think the 'real' Elgar is a more complex being than Kennedy suggests (though he may have changed his mind over the years, and also I should say it's a while since I read it, so my memory may not be accurate). I think we find the 'real' Elgar in _Caractacus_, _The Spirit of England_, and the _Coronation Ode_ no less than in the _Intro & Allegro_ or the chamber music.


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## Aramis

Just finished Molière's _The Bourgeois Gentleman_. I usually read dramas, because these books are most cheap you can find, he-he-he <applause>.

Now attempting _Candide_ by Voltaire. Those are my first steps into french literature.


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## Elgarian

Aramis said:


> Just finished Molière's _The Bourgeois Gentleman_.


I presume this is the basis for Lully's opera of the same name, is it?


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## World Violist

Elgarian said:


> Sorry, I wasn't clear, there. What I was getting at is Kennedy's old overarching idea that the 'real' Elgar is the 'pastoral' Elgar; and that imperialism was a jacket that he wore with discomfort, that didn't reflect the 'real' Elgar. But I don't think that's right; I think the 'real' Elgar is a more complex being than Kennedy suggests (though he may have changed his mind over the years, and also I should say it's a while since I read it, so my memory may not be accurate). I think we find the 'real' Elgar in _Caractacus_, _The Spirit of England_, and the _Coronation Ode_ no less than in the _Intro & Allegro_ or the chamber music.


Oh, it's alright. I believe the introduction contained the admission that the author has changed his views a good amount since his last Elgar book, part of which I believe he attributed to his listening of the pre-Gerontius works more in depth than the last edition. Indeed, he presents Elgar in this latest book as a deeply troubled and complex character, and while the "pastoral" Elgar does remain somewhat, it doesn't seem quite so much as you would seem to suggest (for example, Severn House annoys him greatly in this book for all the "cityness" about it, but not much else so heavily suggests this). Regardless, it was an enlightening read to say the least.


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## Aramis

Elgarian said:


> I presume this is the basis for Lully's opera of the same name, is it?


This work includes ballet, and as far as I know the music was written by Lully. He was even an actor in premiere spectacle. But I have not heard about opera.


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## handlebar

An unpublished book by Jean Nandi, daughter of Hovhaness (she went on to become a professional harpsichordist and biologist) and a biography of William Wordsworth.

Jim


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## Lisztfreak

I've been reading the first volume of Proust's great epic for some eight months now - 'The Swann Way', if that's the English translation. It's not that the book is too boring, I just can't find the time. A few days ago I finished reading a biography of Benjamin Britten, by Michael Oliver. Quite detailed and in-depth, but highly captivating.

Otherwise I prefer reading poetry to going through thick volumes of prose, so I enjoy myself with Heine, Goethe, Pessoa, Lorca and some Croatian poets.


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## Elgarian

Aramis said:


> This work includes ballet, and as far as I know the music was written by Lully. He was even an actor in premiere spectacle. But I have not heard about opera.


I think the confusion is mine. From what you say, it sounds as if there is simply 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme', by Moliere, with music by Lully. That is, I think there's just the one work - not two as I supoosed.


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## Edmond-Dantes

> I believe there is a "books" thread somewhere, it's just been dormant for several months. Anyway, good to see someone's noticed its absence.


Oh really? I did several searches for the terms "book," "books" and "reading" and never could pull up anything. :-/


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## Elgarian

Edmond-Dantes said:


> Oh really? I did several searches for the terms "book," "books" and "reading" and never could pull up anything. :-/


I think WV was probably thinking of this thread about music books.


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## World Violist

Elgarian said:


> I think WV was probably thinking of this thread about music books.


Ah yes, that must have been it. My apologies!


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## Edmond-Dantes

OH! No problems.  I just didn't make this thread and permanently kill the original one.


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## Elgarian

Edmond-Dantes said:


> OH! No problems.  I just didn't make this thread and permanently kill the original one.


Nope. Both threads can sit happily side by side and enrich our lives in their own individual ways. There's harmony for you.


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## Edmond-Dantes

LOL. Well, thanks Elgarian.


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## Air

I'm reading Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest books ever written because of its psychological insight, thoroughly conducted research, and incredible use of language in puns, humor, and dialogue. Though the ending is sad, I've always been positive that Scarlett and Rhett get back together.

Note, these quotes don't state she wins him back, for that would reck the whole purpose of ending the story ambiguously. However, this is my interpretation.



> "She had gone back to Tara once in fear and defeat and she had emerged from its sheltering walls strong and armed for victory. What she had done once, somehow - please God, she could do again!"





> "There had never been a man that she could't get, once she set her mind upon him."


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## msegers

_Tintin: The Complete Companion_ - Michael Farr
_Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category _- Michael Allen Williams 
_Avatamsaka Sutra _- Thomas Cleary (translator)


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## JoeGreen

I am currently reading this, by my favorite author...










...it is a rexamination of Shakespeares _King Lear_( my favorite tragedy by the Grand Ol' Bard himself by the way) told from the perspective of the Fool and don't let the cartoonish cover fool you (no pun intended) it has substance were it counts. And while it does have a certain lightness to it for the most part; the powerful themes that are presented here are not treated anyless lightly than in the original source. Moore's writing style is superb in mixing heavy topics (death, sex, etc.) with a humour and poignancy I haven't seen in many other authors today. I higly recommend this and his other books.


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## Edmond-Dantes

Huh. I'm going to have to read that one JoeGreen...


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## JoeGreen

I hope you like it. Altough Christopher Moore's style might not be everyone's cup of tea.


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## xJuanx

and ..


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## Sid James

I'm a really slow reader. About a year ago I started reading *Albert Camus' *_The Plague _but I still haven't gotten through all of it. I'm also in the process of reading *Alain Corbin's *history of the perception of smells in France called _The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour and the social imagination_. I saw on the net that he also wrote a history of bellringing in France - that would also be an interesting one to get & more musically relevant!


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## Conor71

Currently reading The Rough Guide To Classical Music (on & off):








Also reading (nearly finished!) :


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## Margaret

I'm reading one on plumbing repair.


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## Lisztfreak

Elgarian said:


> I think WV was probably thinking of this thread about music books.


Wow, WV, it reminds me of RVW... So we have Waughan Villiams on the forum!


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## Edmond-Dantes

JoeGreen said:


> I hope you like it. Altough Christopher Moore's style might not be everyone's cup of tea.


Well, I'll take that into consideration, but I'll probably still like.  I've always loved odd and disturbing literature, so I'll probably love "Fool."


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## andruini

i'm re-reading both The Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.. dunno why, just felt like it..
finished The Divine Comedy the other day..


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## JoeGreen

Edmond-Dantes said:


> Well, I'll take that into consideration, but I'll probably still like.  I've always loved odd and disturbing literature, so I'll probably love "Fool."


Yes, his books (for the most part) definitely land in that category.


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## Enkhbat

As for me, i read a book which is called Bushido by Nitobe Inazo(whose icon is on the 5000 yen of Japanese currency). It's about samurai's ethics. (Unwritten laws-In Mongolian, it's called "Hew Huuli") . It's so cool. Honesty, Respect, Durability... I addicted it. 
I felt more deeper the nook than others and so impressed.


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## Bgroovy2

I am currently reading "The Free Voice: A Guide to Natural Singing" by Cornelius L. Reid 
This is #2 in a three book series. I have been studying Bel-Canto singing with a great instuctor that is no longer able to teach due to health reasons. It will be difficult to find another instrutor of his caliber so I am contenting myself with some self-study for awhile. My instructer was a Protégé of Cornelius Reid so I am hoping to gleen form these books all that I can!


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## Edmond-Dantes

Ah, I just finished reading "The Double" after taking a very long break from reading it. I got quite busy, and didn't find the time to start up again. ANYWAYS, it truly was a greate short story. After that, I read "White Nights" from Dostoesvky, which was also very very good, despite it being only 4 short chapters long. I again would recommend reading both of those stories, but keep in mind that "The Double" is a very phycological read, and, sometimes hard to pick apart. I was talking to a few friends that had read it at my suggestion that seemed completely overwhelmed by the last three chapters.

Now, white night was very very good, and provoked a great deal of emotion in me. Even now I feel a profound... well, I won't say exactly what feeling because I don't want to spoil anything. Anyways, it's extreemly short and I'd recommend reading it.

Here is a web page with a great deal of Dostoevsky's work.
(Note that "White Nights" is the first of the many stories on that page.)

http://www.archive.org/stream/whitenightsother00dostiala/whitenightsother00dostiala_djvu.txt


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## bassClef

"PopCo" by Scarlett Thomas, and "1001 Classical Recordings to Hear Before You Die" - which is better than it sounds.


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## Isola

Elgarian said:


> Nope. Both threads can sit happily side by side and enrich our lives in their own individual ways. There's harmony for you.


Agree. Perhaps this thread can be dedicated to general reading?



JoeGreen said:


> I hope you like it. Altough Christopher Moore's style might not be everyone's cup of tea.


It is mine alright. I've read a few his earlier books such as _Practical Demonkeeping_, _Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove,_ etc. I thoroughly enjoyed his witty, wacky(good natured) style.

When it comes to reading, I am an omnivore. Recently I re-read two little classics: _Wuthering Heights _and _Three Men in a Boat: to Say Nothing of the Dog _(what a timeless merriment).

I'm also a newly converted _Culture_ (a Si-Fi series by Iain M. Banks) fan. Devoured first two: _Consider Phlebas _and _The Player of Games_, now working my way through the 3rd - _Use of Weapons_. All masterfully written.



Edmond-Dantes said:


> I've always loved odd and disturbing literature, so I'll probably love "Fool."


I'd also recommend Iain Banks(the name Iain M. Banks uses for his mainstream novels)' utterly "odd and disturbing" fiction _The Wasp Factory_. IMHO it's a modern classic.


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## Edmond-Dantes

Ah, well thank you for the book suggestions, and I will definitly take a look at them.  Oh, and, Withering Heights was an amazing book by the way. I haven't read it for ages....


Yes, I DID kind of intend the thread to be used for general reading, but after thinking about it, the members of this forum are going to read what they want. If those books happen to be made up of 75% music books, then I can't really exclude those books from this thread because it would get rid of 75% of the posts. lol If you look back at the number of people that are reading books on technique and composition, it makes up about half the thread. :-/ Now, if this thread was a hopping place, then splitting it up would make much more sense to me, but I'm concerned that this thread would do the same thing that the other thread did and become completely dead..


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## World Violist

Lisztfreak said:


> Wow, WV, it reminds me of RVW... So we have Waughan Villiams on the forum!


Haha! Yes, of course. Waughan Villiams... has a certain ring to it, I daresay...

As for books I'm reading... nothing at the moment, I just felt like responding to my lovely new pseudonym.

Though I'm still aching to read The Brothers Karamazov...


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## Edmond-Dantes

AH! Another Dostoevsky book. XD I haven't read it yet, but I think I'm going to start reading it very soon. Another forum member said it was her favorite Dostoevsky book.


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## JoeGreen

Im about to begin reading the _Foundation_ Series by Isaac Asminov.


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## Isola

Edmond-Dantes said:


> Now, if this thread was a hopping place, then splitting it up would make much more sense to me, but I'm concerned that this thread would do the same thing that the other thread did and become completely dead..


Perhaps we should pomp this thread and the music reading thread up once in a while to prolong their life expectancy? 

About Dostoyevsky, I've read _The Idiot_, _Crime and Punishment _and _The Gambler_. _The Idiot _is my favourite. Another Russian classic writer I like very much is Chekhov. His short stories are brilliant.



Margaret said:


> I'm reading one on plumbing repair.


 Hope you had it fixed.

And I'm reading a book about dog liver disease.


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## Rasa

I'm reading the tales of thousand-and-one nights. Rather not what you'd read to the kids, as the stories usually are about some sultan who is angry because his wife is having an affair with a black slave when he's gone, orgies, bachannals and homosexuality.


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## handlebar

Just started to re-read Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle.

Seemed appropriate as the sun beams down on my porch garden!!

Jim


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## Edmond-Dantes

AH! It would be such a shame to let this thread vanish like so many threads do.

OK! I've read quite a bit since my last post. I've just finished all sorts of miscellaneous Sherlock Holmes stories(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and am just about finished with "The Golden Compass."


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## Air

Edmond-Dantes said:


> AH! It would be such a shame to let this thread vanish like so many threads do.
> 
> OK! I've read quite a bit since my last post. I've just finished all sorts of miscellaneous Sherlock Holmes stories(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and am just about finished with "The Golden Compass."


Oh I love Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie! I just finished the Murder on the Orient Express. The ending really was... surprising.


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## Edmond-Dantes

I LOVE Sherlock Holmes as well. ^^ I've read all of the sherlock holmes stories, and still re-read them here and there.  It's amazing how many there are. It really feels like you're reading them for the first time when you re-read.


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## bassClef

Just started on "THE REST IS NOISE" by Alex Ross - very good so far.


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## Wernmeister

I've recently finished Blair Tindall's book called Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music that gives you quite an insight into some of the circles classical musicians of the past few decades have moved in. I've recently started the biography of Rubenstein: My many years. So we will see how that goes.......


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## Taneyev

David Kohon's "The Codebreakers", the bible on this fascinanting (to me) subject.


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## R-F

I realised I've really read none of the 'great' books, so I've started reading Anna Karenina. It's very good so far.


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## Rachovsky

I attempted War and Peace, R-F, but it was such a monster I had to put it down. 
I'm currently trying to finish Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and then I'll hopefully move on to either Lolita or East of Eden.


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## handlebar

Today,starting a new book entitled "American Muse:A biography of William Schuman.

Jim


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## Faramondo

"A World of Love" by Elizabeth Bowen


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## R-F

I've not read War and Peace, Rachovsky. Man, I feel just like I did when I started to listen to Classical Music- so much to do, so little time! 
My Dad got one of those nifty E-readers recently, and I've been reading it on that. It's a huge novel, but the great thing is that with the E-reader it never looks like that, seeing as it's all in that screen!


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## Air

Edmond-Dantes said:


> I LOVE Sherlock Holmes as well. ^^ I've read all of the sherlock holmes stories, and still re-read them here and there.  It's amazing how many there are. It really feels like you're reading them for the first time when you re-read.


I'm quite a fanatic... all thanks to my piano teacher who decided to give me










as a present. Amazing. I like three of his novels the best: The Valley of Fear, the Hound of the Baskervilles, and A Study in Scarlet.


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## xJuanx

Brave New World - A.Huxley


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## R-F

xJuanx said:


> Brave New World - A.Huxley


That's a fantastic novel. I studied it this year for my English Personal Study. Kind of George Orwellian. (Yes, I did just make that a verb! )


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## Edmond-Dantes

I've just started the book "Piano Lessons." Truly, poetry to any pianists sole. ^^ Here is an Excerpt:

------
Play the first note right. The morning--sunrise, eleven degrees, wind dancing across overnight snow--waits for a perfectly struck single note.

"Traumerei," by Robert Schumann, begins with middle C (a year ago this was the only note I could find on the piano). The next note is an F in the right hand joined by an F in the bass; then a cautious chord in both hands and five ascending treble notes lift the song into the air. There's a quick, deep pulse in my throat and a fast breath, and I'm smiling, watching the page, trying to stay up with the melody.

I've come to a quiet place in southern New Hampshire to write about the past year and my involvement with the piano. Often in the early mornings I'll bring a thermos of coffee and my music here to the library, a small stone building at the edge of a field. I'll unlock the heavy front door, turn up the thermostat, take the cover off the piano--it's a Steinway B Model, made in Hamburg, West Germany, in 1962--and play for an hour or so. The ivory-topped keys are cold at first, and so are my hands. I start with exercises, playing in unison an octave apart, up and down the keyboard. Sometimes I notice a tremble, a shaking in the last two fingers of my left hand. In the morning light, though, my hands look young. (The backs of my hands have always seemed old, wrinkled; once at a grade-school Halloween party someone recognized me by my hands, not covered by my ghost costume.)

Then I'll practice "Traumerei." This piece--only two pages, three minutes long--is teaching me piano. There are technical knots to be worked loose, clues to mysteries hiding in the notation. I would be happy to play it several thousand times.

Vladimir Horowitz used to play "Traumerei" as an encore; he said it was a masterpiece. Robert Schumann was only twenty-seven when he wrote the music, and I have the feeling he finished it in a couple of hours, one afternoon. It seems a passionate time in his life; in a letter to a friend he said: "I feel I could almost burst with music--I simply have to compose." Schumann was in love with Clara Wieck, a young piano virtuoso. Her father disapproved and had taken Clara away on a recital tour. "Traumerei" is one of thirteen short pieces in a collection called Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood). As Schumann put it, the songs were "reminiscences of a grown-up for grown-ups." (Traumerei translates as "reverie.") And he said in a letter to Clara, "You will enjoy them--though you will have to forget that you are a virtuoso...they're all easy to carry off." Schumann told Clara these pieces were, "peaceful, tender and happy, like our future."

I can see him at his writing desk, and piano, in Leipzig. Excited, dreaming of Clara, his own career as a pianist doomed by a hand injury but by this time knowing that he could be a composer. Twenty-seven years old! Not ten years before, he was a college student, writing home to his mother asking for more money.

I am living like a dog. My hair is yards long and I want to get it cut, but I can't spare a penny. My piano is terribly out of tune but I can't afford to get a tuner. I haven't even got the money for a pistol to shoot myself with....

Your miserable son,

Robert Schumann

He loved drinking and cigars. It seems a historical rumor that he had syphilis. He was probably manicdepressive early as an adult, and later suicidal. He heard hallucinations. "He is in terrible agony," his wife, Clara, wrote in her diary. "Every sound he hears turns to music. Music played on glorious sounding instruments, he says, more beautiful than any music ever heard on earth. It utterly exhausts him."

Robert Schumann died in a mental asylum, at age forty-six. He starved himself to death. Clara did see him, once, as he was dying, but he was kept away from his family for two years. A visitor once peered through an opening in his door and saw him playing a piano, lost apparently in improvisation, but playing music that made no sense. As I sit at this piano in New Hampshire, I have outlived Schumann by six years.

I bought a piece of granite the other day, from a monument company across the road from the town cemetery. I gave the guy twenty dollars and put the "surveyor's post" in the back of my station wagon. Granite is heavy; I don't know why I was surprised. The post is two feet high and about four inches square, with two rough sides and two that have been trimmed smooth. I don't think I'll have to explain this to Neenah, my wife. That the permanence of the granite appeals to me, that the years going by so quickly need marking, with piano lessons and stone. "Oh, that's a good thing to bring back from New Hampshire," she'll say.

I noticed the posts when I was out running, before lunchtime, along the town streets and then out a bit into the country. You'd see them at the corner of a yard by the driveway. The older houses would have large granite posts out front, sometimes chiseled with a street number. And you'd see the odd stub of a post marking a boundary, the stone weathered and chipped by lawn mowers or snow blades. When Robert Schumann died, in 1856, granite buildings in this town had been standing for ten years.

There's not quite enough light on the piano and I have to squint to see the faint marking "a tempo" at the end of the first eight measures of "Traumerei," meaning a return to normal after the slowing of ritard. I've repeated these measures, with some parts a bit softer, taking a teacher's advice: If you don't have something different to say in the repeat, why bother playing it? The tricky middle section waits, a difficult passage in the bass clef, a climb to the treble for another. I remember to relax my shoulders and try to make my hands heavier and pretend these are my favorite parts. It's whistling past the graveyard--and it almost works. I play one chord that's not sounded clearly, I forget to hold an A in the left hand, my foot hits the sustain pedal to slur over a mistake in fingering, but the notes are correct, and there's still a singing quality to the melody.

It's a lovely-sounding piano. A seven-foot grand, shiny mahogany. I have the top all the way up, as you would for a concert. It is my dream, when I touch the keys, to release the notes. It is music waiting there, and for me it is as real as the blown snow against the windows, and the evening's quarter moon rising through a cold fog, or the stories told of wolves that lived on nearby Mount Monadnock, sheltering in the red oak trees. Robert Frost wrote about valleys and mountains like these and once of a farmer whose land was so high up that his neighbors could watch the light of his lantern as he went about his chores.

I can feel my shoulders tightening again as I get close to the end of"Traumerei." I try to sway a bit on the piano bench, and I sing out loud with the phrases. The opening theme returns, starting with middle C. Then up to a solid, proud seven-note chord and (ritardando) a stately, quiet finish. There is a fermata over the final chord: a black dot with a half circle on top. A "bird's eye" musicians call it. The symbol means, "Hold it as long as you want to, you've earned it." And there's a pedal marking at the bottom; the pedal goes down as you play the chord so all the other Fs and As on the keyboard sound in sympathetic resonance.

I gently release the pedal and the final, whispering tones are dampened and lost in the warming rush of air from the furnace. There's a small puddle of water from my boots on the flagstone floor. The sunlight has now reached the trees at the edge of the field.

On the shelves around the piano are bound volumes of sheet music, Strauss and Wagner, Mozart. Schumann's works are here, in several volumes. I can play one of his songs, imperfectly (I've surely played "Traumerei" more times than he did), and it's really the only piece of music that I've learned. But it was an unanticipated, almost reckless year. I was at first surprised and delighted by the piano, then daunted, then discouraged. By the fall I had almost given up. By October's end, though, I was learning. In November and December, as now, I wanted to spend all my time practicing.

I'll take the granite post back home to Washington and, when the weather warms, dig a hole for it at the edge of the garden, You could set your coffee cup on top of the post, or a trowel.

I'll play the piano for my wife, early in the morning, and tell her about my adventures.


----------



## Herzeleide

Music: just finished _Music and the Mind_ by Anthony Storr.

Non-music: just finished the fourth part (_Sodom and Gomorrah_) of _In Search of Lost Time_, by Proust.


----------



## Cyclops

Recently finished Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks(stunning) and now on The Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R Delany and Life in the Undergrowth by David Attenborough


----------



## YsayeOp.27#6

"A History of Economic Theory and Method", by Ekelund and Hebert.


----------



## JoeGreen

xJuanx said:


> Brave New World - A.Huxley


thats one book I've been looking forward to reading. Just as soon as I have the time.


----------



## Cyclops

JoeGreen said:


> thats one book I've been looking forward to reading. Just as soon as I have the time.


My other half read Brave New World and enjoyed it. The only Huxley I've read is Chrome Yellow which was ok


----------



## Rachovsky

YsayeOp.27#6 said:


> "A History of Economic Theory and Method", by Ekelund and Hebert.


I'm with the Austrian School; yourself? 
Ludwig von Mises = amazing.


----------



## xJuanx

JoeGreen said:


> thats one book I've been looking forward to reading. Just as soon as I have the time.


You should! It's a great book! I'm planning to read Doors of perception afterwards.


----------



## Edmond-Dantes

I've just finished "Golden Compass" and am starting on "Daughter of Fortune." So far, the book is amazing. ^^ I'm also reading "Piano Lessons" and will probably pick at "The Subtle Knife." (The second book of the Golden Compass books.)


----------



## danae

"A philosophy of boredom" by Lars Svendsen
"The appeal" by John Grisham
"Eco-capitalism: The enviroment as big bussiness" by Rita Madotto
"The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein


----------



## Edmond-Dantes

Oh, good books Danae. XD I've only read "The Appeal" and "A Philosophy of Boredom" though.


----------



## Conor71




----------



## danae

Edmond-Dantes said:


> Oh, good books Danae. XD I've only read "The Appeal" and "A Philosophy of Boredom" though.


Great! So when I finish them we can start a thread discussing specific books maybe? Of course I would especially like to talk about the Philosophy of boredom


----------



## symphonic-poet

I'm currently about 20 pages away from completing _The Reader_ by Bernard Schlink. I have not yet seen the movie, but, in an odd twist of events, the trailer for the movie sold me on the book. I don't really want the book to end - it is tormented, and twisted, and honest. I love the protagonist's character, and the bizarre and captivating relationship with the antagonist. I highly recommend this book.

I am also reading _The Last of the Crazy People_ by Timothy Findlay. He is a Canadian author, and likely one of my favourites. Some of his other novels, _The Wars_ and _Not Wanted on the Voyage_ have been incredible adventures with intense political and social undertones. I'm not too far into this one, so I am not sure where it is going in that regard, but the story is quite strong and I am enjoying it.

In Music, I am reading _What to Listen for in Music_ by Copland. I am really enjoying it thus far; his writing is actually quite decent. I look forward to completing the book though - I am only about half-way through.

I am also reading George Monbiot's _Bring on the Apocalypse_. He is a columnist in Britain who is very openly critical of human destruction and catastrophe. I am right now in the section he has written about the environment, and it has certainly caused me a great deal of frustration. I highly recommend this book - I think it is highly informative and has the potential to change people. I look forward to reading _Heat_, his other highly publicized book, soon after I finish this one.

Danae - The Shock Doctrine is an incredible read. Naomi Klein is a very impressive intellectual.


----------



## Edmond-Dantes

danae said:


> Great! So when I finish them we can start a thread discussing specific books maybe? Of course I would especially like to talk about the Philosophy of boredom


Ah, I'd love to. Unfortunately, I'm going to be shipping my laptop out for a few weeks while it gets repaired, so I won't be able to join the discussion for a little while. :-/ Really though, a very interesting book.

Have you read "A philosophy of Fear" by the same author? I haven't gotten to it, but I suppose it would be just as interesting.  Maybe we can read that one as well and make a Lars Svendsen thread.  I know he's written quite a few good books, though I've only read "A philosopy of Boredom."


----------



## Tapkaara

"The Winter War" by Antti Tuuri. It is a dramatization of the Winter War between Finland and Russia during the early stages of WWII, from the Finnish perspective.


----------



## danae

Edmond-Dantes said:


> Ah, I'd love to. Unfortunately, I'm going to be shipping my laptop out for a few weeks while it gets repaired, so I won't be able to join the discussion for a little while. :-/ Really though, a very interesting book.
> 
> Have you read "A philosophy of Fear" by the same author? I haven't gotten to it, but I suppose it would be just as interesting.  Maybe we can read that one as well and make a Lars Svendsen thread.  I know he's written quite a few good books, though I've only read "A philosopy of Boredom."


l

I don't know that one. I just saw the philosophy of boredom in a bookstore a few months ago and I bought it, without inquiring anything about the author. I just found the title interesting. And the book is indeed interesting. I just have to finish it so that we can discuss it.


----------



## kg4fxg

*Books I Am Reading....*

I am working through several at one time.

The Complete Book of Classical Music - David Ewen
Classical Music Without Fear - William Tobias
What to listen for in Music - Aaron Copland
Antonio Vivaldi The Red Priest of Venice - Karl Heller

I have a stack of another 15 or so I want to start after these. The first one I tend to read a composer or two a week. And check them off in the table of contents as it is quite large, however I have several of these all in one books.


----------



## Clancy

_The Fall of the British Empire_ by Colin Cross. It's an older book but it is very good. Some fascinating stuff.


----------



## xJuanx

The Sound and Fury - Faulkner


----------



## Rachovsky




----------



## Air

Rachovsky said:


>


I've been wondering about that book for a while now, Rachovsky. How is it?

Air

Currently Reading: And then there were none... Agatha Christie


----------



## Cyclops

Space Time and Nathaniel,a collection of themed SF stories by Brian Aldiss


----------



## JoeGreen

Currently musing over this book...

http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/files/articles/why-****-happens.gif


----------



## jhar26




----------



## Cyclops

HARM by Brian Aldiss


----------



## Lisztfreak

''The Misteries of Bucharest'' by Horia Gârbea. Part of my Romanian studies.


----------



## livemylife

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde


----------



## Conservationist

Tapkaara said:


> "The Winter War" by Antti Tuuri. It is a dramatization of the Winter War between Finland and Russia during the early stages of WWII, from the Finnish perspective.


Awesome. Added to wishlist.


----------



## andruini

Right now:
Igor Stravinsky in conversation with Robert Craft
Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot


----------



## BuddhaBandit

I'm working on three:
Frontier Medicine by David Dary. It's a very interesting chronicle of medical practices on the American frontier.

Waverley by Sir Walter Scott. This was the book that launched Scott's (author of the famous Ivanhoe) novelistic career.

Empire Falls by Richard Russo. One of Russo's best- populated by his typical stalled, mid-life good old boys and misfits, and a fully realized fictional town.


----------



## Nick Axmaker

I'm just finishing Hero of Ages, the last of the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

Then back to finish up the Dune series. Good stuff there, for sure.

I'm enjoying reading fantasy novels during the time when I'm not studying textbooks for school related materials.


----------



## Metalheadwholovesclasical

I have started to read "Lord of the Rings." Epic book so far.


----------



## World Violist

Death of a Salesman and the Bhagavad Gita. Amazing, both of them.


----------



## Metalheadwholovesclasical

World Violist said:


> Death of a Salesman and the Bhagavad Gita. Amazing, both of them.


Death of a Salesman is a good read.


----------



## BuddhaBandit

Metalheadwholovesclasical said:


> Death of a Salesman is a good read.


No, it's not. It's a *great* read. America is partly built on Willy Loman-ism- that yearning for a romanticized past. Philadelphia (my hometown) still celebrates its role in the Revolution, even though we've fallen significantly from our height as the capital of America. And that's why DOAS is perhaps Miller's best work: because, once you read/see it, you see Willys and Lindas everywhere you turn.

If you like Salesman, WV, check out John Updike's Rabbit novels (Rabbit Run, etc). They're kind of a '50s, '60s, and '70s version of Salesman.


----------



## JoeGreen

Metalheadwholovesclasical said:


> I have started to read "Lord of the Rings." Epic book so far.


Love it, there should be a proper piece of music dedicated it to it, not just a syphonic version of the music used in the films.


----------



## JoeGreen

BuddhaBandit said:


> check out John Updike's Rabbit novels (Rabbit Run, etc). They're kind of a '50s, '60s, and '70s version of Salesman.


Looking forward to reading those since one of my professors recommended them, once I have the time.


----------



## PartisanRanger

Just finished John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces" and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".


----------



## Methodistgirl

Has anyone read "The Shack" yet? It's a pretty good book.
judy tooley


----------



## World Violist

BuddhaBandit said:


> No, it's not. It's a *great* read. America is partly built on Willy Loman-ism- that yearning for a romanticized past. Philadelphia (my hometown) still celebrates its role in the Revolution, even though we've fallen significantly from our height as the capital of America. And that's why DOAS is perhaps Miller's best work: because, once you read/see it, you see Willys and Lindas everywhere you turn.
> 
> If you like Salesman, WV, check out John Updike's Rabbit novels (Rabbit Run, etc). They're kind of a '50s, '60s, and '70s version of Salesman.


That's really neat. I'll keep an eye out for those books.

Now I'm reading Eknath Easwaran's translation of the Dhammapada. It's really great. I love it. And the introduction! That introduction is one of the best ones I've ever read. Bar none.


----------



## mueske

JoeGreen said:


> Love it, there should be a proper piece of music dedicated it to it, not just a syphonic version of the music used in the films.


I think there is a Dutch composer, whose first symphony is based on the books. I can't recall his name, sadly.

I'm reading A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway, rather boring actually.


----------



## BuddhaBandit

I've been reading lots of John Cheever's stories recently- they're fantastic. "The Swimmer" is his most famous, but I've found gems in his oeuvre that outmatch even that work.

And WV/JoeGreen- Updike died this past January, so there's been a big buzz about his books.


----------



## eduffreitas

I've been reading John Milton's Lost Paradise. It's a pretty good classic but I'm not finding much time to read it.


----------



## Aramis

Puszkin's _Eugene Onegin_. I liked Tchaikovsky's music written for opera based on this... I miss the english word, so let's say: this book.


----------



## Methodistgirl

I have been reading The Shack by Wm. Paul Young. This is a story based on the
book of Job in the bible and it's good.
judy tooley


----------



## Conservationist

Re-Reading "Heart of Darkness" as of last night. Great book.


----------



## andruini

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
The Symphony Vol. 2: Elgar to the Present Day (one of those Pelican books)


----------



## BuddhaBandit

Conservationist said:


> Re-Reading "Heart of Darkness" as of last night. Great book.


That's a coincidence... I just finished reading Nostromo. Conrad's writing has grown on me considerably over the past few years.


----------



## Conservationist

BuddhaBandit said:


> That's a coincidence... I just finished reading Nostromo. Conrad's writing has grown on me considerably over the past few years.


I fawningly worship Conrad. Have you read Lord Jim? The first time, I didn't get it. Then I really got it. "The Secret Sharer" also rose in my estimation. I've even read his political/spy thriller, but have forgotten the name. Nostromo is also brilliant. Oddly, it reminds me of Jane Austen. I'm sure there is a logical connection.

I'm halfway through re-watching Apocalypse now, the Conrad/Elliot/Conan hybrid that it is (it's a more tedious process than you can imagine, since I don't own a TV, and must "borrow" one while visiting a friend, and most people find the movie disturbing). I thought it did a good job of explicating Conrad in a modern context.


----------



## kg4fxg

*Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action*

"In the wake of the Los Angeles looting there will be calls for more "affirmative action" in hiring. Sociologist Frederick Lynch reminds us that affirmative action creates losers as well as winners."-Forbes

"...Invisible Victims belongs in the library of everyone concerned about the impact of affirmative action on American society. It should be read by Federal bureaucrats, university administrators, and media moguls. Despite the left's belligerent denials, the suspicion is unavoidable that runaway preferential treatment is a major cause of racial unrest on college campuses and elsewhere. Young white males, after all, in general have committed no offenses against blacks and women, and realize instinctively that justice is not being served when they are routinely sacrificed in the name of ill-defined social goals instead of treated as individuals and judged on their own merits. Lynch's research suggests a growing body of 'underground' resentment against affirmative action, and I predict a real donnybrook somewhere down the road if the problems it has created are not faces."-The Freeman

"There is nothing quite like Frederick Lynch's book which describes how affirmative action works in real life, and points to some very disturbing effects. This is a subject that should be discussed not only in the Supreme Court and Lynch makes an important contribution to that discussion."-Nathan Glazer Professor of Education and Sociology Harvard University

"Lynch condemns the sloppy, fearful thinking that has converted affirmative action into quotas and that has kept social researchers shying away from this explosive topic."- Shulamit Reinharz Choice

"Anyone seriously interested in race relations and sex roles in the United States must read this book."- William Beer Social Forces

"This excellent book is about real rather than potential victims, those who have suffered directly because racial preferences have disrupted or ended their careers. It is quite right to term them invisible....They are ordinary citizens, done in by their betters, swept aside coolly yet self-righteously in the service of a regnant cliche of the moment."- Joseph Adelson Professor of Sociology University of Michigan

"A well-documented, ground-breaking, courageous book."- Warren Farrell, Ph.D. Author of Why Men Are the Way They Are

"In making highly visible the invisible victims, Lynch succeeds brilliantly in lighting up the Byzantine recesses of the federal bureaucracy. A good subtitle would be: How the old inequality has been replaced by the new inequality."- Robert Nisbet Albert Schweitzer Professor, Emeritus Columbia University

Product Description
"Lynch condemns the sloppy, fearful thinking that has converted affirmative action into quotas and that has kept social researchers shying away from this explosive topic." Shulamit Reinharz Choice "There is nothing quite like Frederick Lynch's book which describes how affirmative action works in real life, and points to some very disturbing effects. This is a subject that should be discussed not only in the Supreme Court and Lynch makes an important contribution to that discussion." Nathan Glazer, Harvard University


----------



## World Violist

I've been reading a good bit about Buddhist philosophy. Right now: Silent Eloquence. It's a collection of writings by one of the prominent Buddhist teachers of the early 20th century. Certainly very interesting.


----------



## andruini

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.


----------



## SenorTearduct

The Waste Land for like the 5th time now... My favorite poem of all time...

World Violist if your enjoying the Buddhist text, I highly suggest reading Tao Te Ching on Taoism... the most brilliant work Ive ever read.. you will see everything in a new way... skip the Confucius text though.. not quite so great... but Tao Te Ching, read it..

As far as anything else I'm reading Alice in Wonderland and notating the logic meticulously..
Other tan that Im editing and finishing a poem in similar style to the Waste Land covering a subject far more vast and going even further in depth... Didnt think such a thing was possible? well consider it done.


----------



## World Violist

SenorTearduct said:


> World Violist if your enjoying the Buddhist text, I highly suggest reading Tao Te Ching on Taoism... the most brilliant work Ive ever read.. you will see everything in a new way... skip the Confucius text though.. not quite so great... but Tao Te Ching, read it..


I've read Tao te Ching earlier. It really is brilliant.


----------



## SenorTearduct

Oh well good, very good... than I must ask you, are you Liberal? 

i kinda need to know for my next recommendation, Its quite controversial and I don't want to offend... If you considered yourself Conservative and super religious... its like a new concept based on the concepts formed within the text...


----------



## World Violist

SenorTearduct said:


> Oh well good, very good... than I must ask you, are you Liberal?
> 
> i kinda need to know for my next recommendation, Its quite controversial and I don't want to offend... If you considered yourself Conservative and super religious... its like a new concept based on the concepts formed within the text...


I'm not in the least conservative. Recommend away, I'd love to see it!


----------



## SenorTearduct

Ok, its a movie.. and you can watch it for free on-line.. Its called Zeitgeist...
Watch the first one ONLY if you can be accepting of hard facts fast!! Theres no time to question what they say when watching it, and Ill tell you now, I cross checked their facts and all of them are correct by two sources, except one fact and its toward the end about micro chipping... but other than that they got it pretty right.

If you can't handle the first one click on the one with the eye.. That one gives more solutions to today's socitey... It really is the most brilliant movie or even body of text in the past 30 odd years...


----------



## haydnguy

The Cambridge Companion to Berg.


----------



## andruini

Back to learning season...

Harmony and Voice Leading - Edward Aldwell and Carl Schachter
Counterpoint - Walter Piston
Elementary Training for Musicians - Paul Hindemith (which is insanely hard for being "elementary")
Treatise on Instrumentation - Hector Berlioz & Richard Strauss


----------



## Enkhbat

Vikas Swarup - Q&A










Original novel of Slumdog millionaire!


----------



## Aramis

I'm actually reading book about Berlioz written by some Robert Clarson-Leach.


----------



## afro viking

currently reading "Orchestration" by Cecil Forsyth. Picked this over other books on orchestration to learn from mainly because of the era it was written. I wanted a view balanced nearer to late-romantic orchestration than more modern stuff, but not being much of a Berlioz or Rimsky Korsakov fan I didnt fancy getting either of their books.


----------



## Cyclops

White Fang by Jack London. An e-book


----------



## kg4fxg

*Fraud in Accounts Payable*

I have to read and study to keep my CPA license which is why I am reading Fraud in Accounts Payable How to Prevent It by Mary S. Schaeffer.

It is hard to put down. An easy read like a detective novel and she writes with humor too. Not boring like something written by an accountant.

I always love to read about cases where people steal money and how they did it.

I am also reading through again Opera 101 by Fred Plotkin.


----------



## SenorTearduct

Have you seen the movie "catch me if you can"?


----------



## Enkhbat

SenorTearduct said:


> Have you seen the movie "catch me if you can"?


Starred as Di Caprio, Tom Hanks? Yes
Good movie. I like Abagnale, foxlike *******. lol


----------



## SenorTearduct

Brilliant movie, I agree.


----------



## chillowack

kg4fxg said:


> I always love to read about cases where people steal money and how they did it.


Interesting that it's not "how they got caught," but "how they did it." 

I'm currently reading _Mozart: A Biography_, by Piero Melograni.


----------



## SenorTearduct

Oh, that sounds like a good book, Have you seen Amadeus?


----------



## chillowack

Yes, I have. I've heard that movie takes some liberties with Mozart's life, and I'm hoping this book will identify and dispel any and all myths, so I can sift the fact from the fiction.

Already, though, the book has verified two things from the movie: that Mozart was a very fun-loving guy, and that he liked to reverse words.


----------



## SenorTearduct

Ya, both of those were true, I can go ahead and tell you there was no real proof that Mozart had anything to do with Salariri and that they really we not that involved, Mozart did however have other rivals. And also he had many kids, not just one.


----------



## Enkhbat

相部博子　－　ビジネスマナー

(Japanese)Business Manner - Aibe Hiroko


----------



## thezonebook

When I have the time (normally when travelling) I pick up "Conversations with the Dalai Lama". I'm reading it in Swedish, where the title is "Samtal med Dalai Lama" - some amazing discussions in that book!


----------



## ConcertVienna

James Clavell's "Tai - Pan" it is. It is a long read, but I don't mind, as I enjoy his style.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

_Forbidden Words_, the selected poems of the modern Portuguese poet, Eugenio De Andrade.


----------



## chillowack

_The Virtuosi, _by Harold Schonberg; _Fundamentals of Musical Composition _by Arnold Schoenberg; _Mozart: A Biography, _by Piero Melograni.


----------



## Cyclops

Just about to finish The Call of the Wild by Jack London


----------



## bplary

Moby Dick for my AP Literature class...loooooong book.


----------



## Cyclops

bplary said:


> Moby Dick for my AP Literature class...loooooong book.


I've tried twice to read this book. It is long and his endless descriptions of whales as fish gets annoying!
I'm now reading Dagon and other macabre tales by H. P. Lovecraft.


----------



## Zeniyama

I'm now officially reading James Joyce's _Ulysses_. It's a bit confusing, but I like it! It's a bit of a step up from _A Portrait of the Artist_, difficulty-wise, but it's also a much deeper book.


----------



## Lukecash12

Totlstoy's The Cossacks, and Tolstoy's What Is Art?. There is a huge amount of material in What Is Art? that I can't agree with. I certainly agree with aesthetics being a silly idea, but there is nothing wrong with abstract art, if it is moral, and most importantly, emotional.

But that's a heated subject, so I won't bring up a summary of all my opinions on the matter in here.


----------



## katei4

*hi*

Me...."Tell me your dreams"


----------



## bdelykleon

"The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman"


----------



## MrTortoise

thezonebook said:


> When I have the time (normally when travelling) I pick up "Conversations with the Dalai Lama". I'm reading it in Swedish, where the title is "Samtal med Dalai Lama" - some amazing discussions in that book!


Thanks for mentioning this book, I'm going to add it to my list. I can recommend "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama as well.


----------



## MrTortoise

I'm three-quarters through "The Company" by Robert Littel. Great spy novel that borrows generously from history.


----------



## Lukecash12

Currently, I'm enjoying _The Talmud_. It's the perfect Jewish mate for the Tora. It isn't really a set of scriptures, but a set of rhetorical and philosophical studies of the Tora (Old Testament), that has been a very popular Jewish must-read for one and a half thousand years. I'm not exactly Jewish, but the Christian religion is a direct child of the Jewish religion. However much Christianity was treated like the Black Sheep of the family, the Talmud is a wonderful resource for studying the Old Testament and it's plethora of prophecies, subtext, and implications that each of the early scriptures had in common.


----------



## likelake

I am currently reading a book which was about the letters written by Van Gogh, one of the most ill-fated painter.


----------



## SenorTearduct

Alice in wonderland!!!


----------



## World Violist

Humphrey Carpenter's Britten biography and John Adams' memoirs.

They're both pretty amazing!


----------



## jhar26

Biography of Alice Marble and Althea Gibson - two of the all time great female tennis players.


----------



## andruini

World Violist said:


> Humphrey Carpenter's Britten biography and John Adams' memoirs.
> 
> They're both pretty amazing!


Ooh, nice, I've been meaning to get my hands on Hallelujah Junction for quite some time now.. It's definitely on my list..

I just finished Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut, which I had curiously never read.. 
Now I'm going to re-read Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer because it's easy and enjoyable.


----------



## andruini

Reading this:










It's turning out to be quite good and informative. Recommended.


----------



## World Violist

andruini said:


> Reading this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's turning out to be quite good and informative. Recommended.


That crazy book is being recommended to me by Amazon every single time I look.


----------



## andruini

World Violist said:


> That crazy book is being recommended to me by Amazon every single time I look.


Well I'd say it's a good recommendation. It's a really fascinating read, full of great anecdotes of great 20th Century composers, from Mahler and Strauss, through Debussy and Schoenberg all the way to Glass, Adams.. I'm really ejoying it..


----------



## World Violist

I just finished reading Voltaire's Candide (what a surprise...), so now I'm contemplating what to read, now that I have some reading time that is neither domineered by homework nor by reading for English class. I would try to read through all of the Brothers Karamazov for once (my previous attempt remains unfinished), but I'm too intimidated by its length and complexity at the moment. I think that's more of a summer attempt, personally.

Maybe Letters to a Young Poet, even though I've read it already about two or three times and I could read it within the space of a single day (that was the last time). Or maybe still one of the multiple mystical-religious books I tend to revel in. 

I'll figure out something. And then I'll post it.


----------



## Air

World Violist said:


> I would try to read through all of the Brothers Karamazov for once (my previous attempt remains unfinished)


I love this book! I just read it a couple of months ago.

If it's too tedious, you might want to read Dostoevsky in a different order, such as _Notes from the Underground_ - _Crime and Punishment_ - _The Idiot_ - then _The Brothers Karamazov_.


----------



## rojo

andruini said:


> I just finished Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut, which I had curiously never read..


I've read everything written by Vonnegut; my favourite work of his is _Cat's Cradle._

I've read _This Is Your Brain on Music; The Science of a Human Obsession,_ by Daniel J. Levitin, but have yet to read the Alex Ross book. Sounds equally interesting. (pun not intended. ok, maybe a little intended )

Currently reading _The Art of Happiness,_ by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, M.D. Not my usual fare; the book was lent to me.


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

Dance dance dance - Haruki Murakami.


----------



## Mozartgirl92

Im reading the diary of Anne Frank.


----------



## Cat

At the moment I am reading 'In Focus - Developing a working relationship with your performance dog' Deborah Jones and Judy Keller

and

'Ashling' Isobelle Carmody (Oh the childhood memories!)

When I am done with the Carmody series, I will check back in here to see what takes my fancy.


----------



## Polednice

I'm on some poetry by Robert Henryson at the moment - things like _The Morall Fabillis_ and _The Tale of Orpheus and Erudices his Quene_. I might throw in a bit of William Dunbar if I get the time!


----------



## World Violist

Ayn Rand- Anthem


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Preparing for an in-depth discussion of these poems with my on-line literature site.


----------



## mueske

Haruki Murakami, I see his name quite a lot in my local bookstores... Never read anything. Is it good? 

I'm currently reading a biography on Beethoven that came out in December 2009. It's by Jan Caeyers.


----------



## tgtr0660

I just finished Aaron Copland's "What to listen for in music". Very good and informative for those with a lower degree of music theory knowledge. Now I'm into "Why classical music still matters" by L. Kramer and then I'll try "All you have to do is listen" by R. Kapilow. 

I've read "This is Your brain in music" and it is quite good but at the time my knowledge of the brain was zero. Now a know more so I'll re-read it as the subject is quite fascinating.


----------



## World Violist

Boulez's Orientations. I just read the first essay, and it's really great.


----------



## joen_cph

1) Arthur Rubinstein:"My Young Years" (1972). Somewhat too long, but a fascinating insight in his career (up to the early twenties and his break-through on a concert tour in Spain) and the circumstances surrounding it, including a lot of information about contemporary Poland, Russia, France, the US etc. His early recordings are extremely different from the later, more restrained ones, but less known, and I treasure them highly; on his best days, he was an equal of Horowitz, temperamentally speaking. The book is surprisingly frank as regards his private life and various aspects of, say, the intrigues of concert life and -arrangements, prostitution or multiple parallel relationships. He does not appear particularly likeable in certain aspects of his personality, a fact that has been emphasized in other web-articles, but his artistic capacities were incredible.
2) Eric Fenby:"Delius as I Knew Him". A relatively short book and in certain ways more of a trifle, though not of the most pleasant kind. Very frank in its description of the depressing effect, that the sickness, the egotism and the isolation of the Delius household at Grez sur Loing had on the young admirer, and the major role he played as regards the realisation of some of the later works. Fenby is almost medieval-sounding when it comes to his long sentences about his own Catholic beliefs, no doubt partly provoked by the brusque atheism and Nietzscheism of Delius. I would like to have seen more analysis of the works except from the purely technical descriptions, but the lack of such can partly be ascribed to Fenby´s claim of Delius´ isolation and lack of interest in or appreciation of other composers. However he maintains that he found Delius´ "pastoral" music much more associated to Grez sur Loing than to the experience of England, and that Delius´ literary sense was limited and mainly governed by his wife´s more well-educated taste as well as Nietzsche, who Fenby doesn´t like. 
3) Poe:"The Masque of the Red Death", known also from musical compositions by Caplet and Bent Sørensen.
4) Poe:"The Fall of the House Usher", known also from the work of Debussy.


----------



## Weston

Seth Shostak: Confessions of an Alien Hunter









This is about real science and critical thinking. It's not a bunch of fringe UFO silliness. Though I have not yet found Carl Sagan's successor, this will do in the meantime.


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

Hari Kunzru's debut: The Impressionist (first book I've decided to buy based on the cover and attached review excerpts).










By the way I was wondering whether anyone recommends books by Adam Zamoyski. For example this one:










I was planning to buy it after I read Planescape: Torment's script-to-novel (have to take a PDF file to bookbinder's).


----------



## Tapkaara

Dracula by Bram Stoker


----------



## Jules141

I'm steadily trudging my way throught the works of David Mitchell, superb writer: Ghostwritten, Number9dream and I'm just starting Cloud Atlas. I've read Ghost and Dream so far and absolutely loved them. Brilliantly engaging, weird, colourful and _different_. Apparently hes very similar in style to Haruki Murakami?


----------



## Air

_The Idiot_
Fyodor Dostoevsky


----------



## PoliteNewYorker

_The Name of the Rose_
Umberto Eco

Amazing book...you just feel smarter every page you read.


----------



## Sebastien Melmoth

Just for amusement, re-reading one of Yukio Mishima's novels I previously read 30 years ago: Runaway Horses.
Mishima was a brilliant man, but very conflicted in his love for the ancient native culture of Japan and the effects of Modernism on that ancient culture.

Also for fun always re-reading Somerset Maugham's short stories: exemplary manipulation of the English language in its purest form.

Read Chekhov's "Lady with a Dog" after seeing The Reader with Kate Winslet (who's always knocked me out!)--thankfully she's willing to show her beautiful body in the service of Art.
She was wonderful in Tod Fielding's Little Children though I didn't like the film as much as his earlier In the Bedroom with Tom Wilkinson (another favourite actor).

Cheers!


----------



## World Violist

Today just got through Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment... and I really didn't like it. It was really an effort for me to slog through and it was tremendously depressing, but I had to do it for school.


----------



## Air

World Violist said:


> Today just got through Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment... and I really didn't like it. It was really an effort for me to slog through and it was tremendously depressing, but I had to do it for school.


I don't know how this is possible, as this is one of my favorite books. I'd wonder what you think of _The Brothers Karamazov_ then, or better yet, one of Tolstoy's books. It would just drag and drag...

Maybe school wrecked the book for you.


----------



## Sebastien Melmoth

Found Notes from Underground most apt.
Prefer Tolstoi's novellas/short stories, but Anna Karanina and Resurrection are fantastic.


----------



## World Violist

Air said:


> I don't know how this is possible, as this is one of my favorite books. I'd wonder what you think of _The Brothers Karamazov_ then, or better yet, one of Tolstoy's books. It would just drag and drag...
> 
> Maybe school wrecked the book for you.


Maybe so, because I actually rather like The Brothers Karamazov...


----------



## Guest

Apart from classical music, my other non-work obsessions are old-fashioned wet shaving (old Gillette safety razor with double edge blade, shave creams/soaps, badger brush), and history. Atkinson's book, An Army at Dawn, about the Allied campaign in North Africa during World War II, was excellent. This second volume in the trilogy, concerning the campaign in Sicily and Italy, should prove just as interesting.


----------



## Guest

Tapkaara said:


> Dracula by Bram Stoker


Excellent book! I've read it 2 or 3 times myself.


----------



## cw4257

I'm currently reading Sleepy Hollow and other stories by Washington Irving. The olde style English is doing me in! Takes me much longer to read through just 1 page


----------



## SPR

Just finished Homers Odyssey.

Before that, David Copperfield, Huck Finn, and '6 easy pieces' by Richard Feynman.

Trying to figure out what I am in the mood for next. I have a full sets of Hawthorne and Dickens that I have only dabbled in. I suppose I should get down to business.


----------



## World Violist

I stumbled across a couple of books today at a used book store (in pristine condition, no less) for a couple bucks a piece, by Wei Wu Wei. Why Lazarus Laughed and Unworldly Wise. I'm reading the latter right now (going to read the other one right after), and it's really really... interesting. Very thought-provoking about what things are and what they aren't (including people (here known almost exclusively as "bipeds;" the story is told from the perspective of an owl and a rabbit, among other forest creatures)). I don't think I'll ever think about anything in quite the same way.


----------



## Sid James

Bill Bryson's *"Down Under"* about his travels throughout Australia. Of course, some interesting facts & historical details, but all told in a humorous way. Highly engaging & amusing, even for someone like me who knows just as much as the average Australian about this country. It's also good to have an "outsider's" perspective, particularly on sensitive political issues like Aboriginal land rights, etc. His observations make alot of sense to me, although maybe they wouldn't to some die-hard conservative Australians...


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Catch-22, for English class.

Hilarious so far.


----------



## World Violist

Reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh about the environment and our relationship with it, called The World We Have. It's a really amazing book, very eloquent and at times shocking.


----------



## TWhite

World Violist said:


> Maybe so, because I actually rather like The Brothers Karamazov...


Myself, I've always found Tolstoi to be an 'easier' read than Dostoyevski--perhaps it's the style (or even the translations). Tolstoy's short novella "The Death Of Ivan Illyich" is one of the most devastating pieces of Russian literature I've ever read. But much as I love "Anna Karenina", I've always oddly found "War and Peace" the better paced of his novels, despite its HUGE length.

Okay: 
Non-fiction: John Warry's WARFARE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. I'm a big Ancient History buff (especially Rome from Julius Caesar through the reign of Augustus), and this is a good one, covering everything from ancient Greece through the 5th Century barbarian invasions of Italy. Well researched and extremely well written.

Music: RACHMANINOV, HIS LIFE AND TIMES by Robert Walker. A fascinating look at both the composer and his era. Quite a good read. I wish that his compositions had been visited in more detail, but the total effect of the book is very satisfying. And interesting (but not actually surprising) to find out that Rachmaninov was a big fan of both Cole Porter and George Gershwin.

Tom


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

When I'm done with The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru I will probably read Paradise Lost by Milton (will first have to register at my university's library).


----------



## vickylee

Gone with the wind is the best all times!:d


----------



## vickylee

I also love the paris love story!


----------



## SatiesFaction

_The Insanity Defense_ by Woody Allen. Hilarious collection of short stories, full of little surprises.


----------



## World Violist

Samuel Beckett: Three Novels - Molloy Malone Dies, and The Unnameable

Really fascinating to me right now (and also the most epic book cover I've seen in a long time...).


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I'll probably finish it in another 12 months, I'm always so busy.


----------



## Wicked_one

I'll start it today and I bet it will be a great book


----------



## Argus

andruini said:


> Reading this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's turning out to be quite good and informative. Recommended.


That's a good book, Walter. He does go on about Britten and his Peter Grimes a bit too much but all in all it's an enjoyable read. I've got the version with the better cover.:tiphat:










I just got this last week:










And this is due anytime soon:










Am I the only person here who doesn't read fiction? I only read non-fictional books and most of them are either musical, scientific or historical. Occasionally a philosophical text will interest me, but I haven't read a novel since I was in school. This may explain my limited vocabulary.:trp:


----------



## World Violist

And right now I'm reading a book on Finnish music published by Otava; it has four contributing authors: Kalevi Aho, Pekka Jalkanen, Erkki Salmenhaara, and Keijo Virtamo. It's quite small but really informative.


----------



## Listener

Foundation by Isaac Asimov.


----------



## janealex

*Currently i am reading SEO books*

In these days i am learning about SEO so like to read these books in these days no other books are not in these days. But surely read other books after this project.


----------



## karenpat

...too many! I think I'll read myself to death and drown in a sea of words.:lol: Explanation - it's all in the curriculum. I take art history and psychology and there's a LOT to read and not enough time to understand all of it. However today, as I was at the university library looking for books for my art history paper, I also grabbed this one with me:










I'm very fascinated by Warhol, plus it's a very straight-forward but still inspiring style of writing.


----------



## anshuman

On the Road by Kerouac


----------



## Listener

Just started these.


----------



## World Violist

Started and finished my book on Enescu so quickly I didn't post about it here... (2 days it took)

Right now I'm reading... um... well I've got Wei Wu Wei and various Indian holy books translated by Easwaran lying around my dorm, so I suppose that counts. And yes, I am reading them.


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

I'm currently reading a book by Dukaj (Polish science/historical fiction writer) - unfortuneately his books are impossible to translate (certainly when one considers non-Slavic languages) as he is famous for his grammar and vocabulary manipulation.

Right now I'm reading "Flawless Imperfection":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfekcyjna_niedoskonałość










Yes, his book covers are that good.


----------



## Keikobad




----------



## Comus

As well as _On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music_
by Hermann von Helmholtz.


----------



## Argus

Comus said:


> As well as _On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music_
> by Hermann von Helmholtz.


That's such a seminal book, that even the added notes in the English translation by Alexander J Ellis are influential on their own. Although over 120 years old and some of his theories have been disproved or much built on, it is easily the best musical acoustics book I've read thus far. I wish I had a better grasp of mathematics so I could get more out of the appendices, but it's handy how Helmholtz excludes all that from the main text allowing you to get to grips with the core of ideas he puts forth.


----------



## Listener

Almost finished this


----------



## Listener

Bach Cello Suites book wasn't bad but a bit disappointing.
Gospel of Judas was a bit dull.


----------



## World Violist

Hopefully as of tomorrow I'll be reading Philip Pullman's *His Dark Materials* for the third time. About a week ago I suddenly became aware that I desperately wanted to read them again and also realized that I no longer had them in my possession for some stupid reason (I apparently thought several months ago that I wouldn't read them again, since my first two readings were separated by over a year), so I've ordered a new edition of the whole trilogy and hopefully that'll be arriving tomorrow... if it doesn't I'll be really quite sad (though the Amazon delivery date lists the first date I can expect it as being the day after tomorrow... damn).

Incidentally, John Eliot Gardiner said this trilogy was his spiritual companion in the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000 (the recordings of which I've been collecting)... coincidence!


----------



## Lipatti

Right now I'm starting on Paradise Lost by John Milton. I'm not really a sucker for poetry, but the theme of this work interests me very much.


----------



## Guest

The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris. Probably my favorite non-fiction author right now, along with Christopher Hitchens.


----------



## bachbabe

xJuanx said:


> and ..


I LOVE this book. Especially Lux. She is my favorite.


----------



## bachbabe

*Daunting*

Everyone's replies are so daunting. Doesn't anyone read Mad Magazine anymore? Just kidding.


----------



## Guidepost 42

"Men at Work", George Will's wonderful book about Baseball. and "god is not great" by Christopher Hitchens.


----------



## Listener




----------



## helen82

Currently I am reading InkDeath by Cornelia Funke. It is the 3rd book in the InkHeart series. The books are decent, but not fabulous. I was actually able to set InkDeath down, not pick it up for at least a week, and I wasn't dieing to pick it up again. However, for Christmas I received The Tower of Ravens and Witches of Eileanan by Kate Forsyth. She's a new author for me, but the books look awesome. So I'm trying to rush to the end of InkDeath just so I can get to my new books.

_________________
 Mobile App Development


----------



## Argus

Basically, a collection of essays, articles, lectures etc from a wide range of 20th century musicians and music theorists/philosophers, leaning towards the avant garde and radical side of the spectrum.


----------



## Meaghan

World Violist said:


> Hopefully as of tomorrow I'll be reading Philip Pullman's *His Dark Materials* for the third time.


Okay, I know this is an old post, but I used to read those books every summer!!

Now reading Sherlock Holmes (_A Study in Scarlet_), even though I have no time and am several chapters behind in my music history textbook.


----------



## World Violist

This has got some really fascinating stuff in here.


----------



## Listener




----------



## Guest




----------



## daviidwilson

Elgarian said:


> I presume this is the basis for Lully's opera of the same name, is it?


Oh, it's alright. I believe the introduction contained the admission that the author has changed his views a good amount since his last Elgar book, part of which I believe he attributed to his listening of the pre-Gerontius works more in depth than the last edition. Indeed, he presents Elgar in this latest book as a deeply troubled and complex character, and while the "pastoral" Elgar does remain somewhat, it doesn't seem quite so much as you would seem to suggest (for example, Severn House annoys him greatly in this book for all the "cityness" about it, but not much else so heavily suggests this). Regardless, it was an enlightening read to say the least.


----------



## Listener




----------



## Sid James

Arnold Whittall's _Music Since the First World War._ I can't understand his analysis of scores, but I do get something out of reading about the context and impact that the music of these composers had. It's on googlebooks, but excerpted, so it's good to have the whole thing in hard copy (the original 1977 edition was surprisingly at my local library)...


----------



## nimrod3142

I just finished reading "Eye of the Needle." It is an oldy but goody. Written by Follet.


----------



## kaptainslapaho

*Don Q
Atlas Shrugged*
and I re-read 
*Catch-22* all of the time
sometimes I'll just grab it and read a random chapter or 2


----------



## World Violist

'cuz John Cleese recommended it.


----------



## nimrod3142

What did you think about Atlas Shrugged? I got it and Fountainhead at the same time but after slogging through Fountainhead I decided not to delve into Atlas. Was I wrong to think it was "preachy" such that whatever her point was, she was beating it to death. Is that just me?


----------



## Guest

Just finished Sam Delany's *Nova*, and I'm now moving to his *Fall of the Towers*.

And if you're looking for a good dystopian novel, stick with Brave New World.


----------



## Listener




----------



## Sebastien Melmoth

Currently enjoying the second in Philip Magnus' great Victorian biography trilogy.

This one is *Kitchener*. Can't put it down!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchener-portrait-imperialist-Philip-Magnus/dp/B0029XDX46


----------



## Meaghan

Recreational reading has been shelved for a while, sadly. I'm supposed to be taking notes on this textbook (and various others) and I'm several chapters behind.










Blah.


----------



## CageFan

Finished reading River of Hidden Dreams by Connie M. Fowler 2 weeks ago. Now I am carrying the two heavy textbooks for physics and chemistry in my mind, rushing for the final exam next week. Maybe listen to some classical musics would help.


----------



## sospiro

Small Island, Great Riches which is a biography of Paul Asciak by Sue Brown & tells the story of Asciak who was born in Valletta, Malta, became an internationally successful tenor & then in his 30's gave it all up to return to his family.

He discovered Joseph Calleja and became his only teacher.

Sue Brown starts her biography with _"In the early summer of 2004 I was lucky enough to buy a small flat by the Grand Harbour in Valletta, Malta. This was the summer in which Joseph Calleja's first CD, Tenor Arias, was issued, a CD I played constantly. I was fascinated, too, by the mention in the sleeve notes of Calleja's teacher, Paul Asciak ..."
_
A great beginning to a fascinating story.


----------



## Saturnus

So sad, so beautiful *sigh*
For some reason I group the atmosphere of this book with Bartók's music


----------



## Aksel

CageFan said:


> Now I am carrying the two heavy textbooks for physics and chemistry in my mind, rushing for the final exam next week. Maybe listen to some classical musics would help.


I had a mile-long Facebook conversation about what music is appropriate for certain activities. I, at least, find that Wagner overtures, Chopin and some Mahler are very suitable for doing physics. And Vivaldi (esp. his contralto cantatas) and The Triumphes of Oriana and other English madrigals are all good chemistry music. Hmmm. Maybe this calls for a thread of its own, maybe?

Anyways, at the time I'm listening to the last Harry Potter book on audio book read by Stephen Fry. I've also just started reading Gengangere/Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen and I'm also starting Karius and Bactus and When the Robbers Came to Cardamom Town by Thorbjørn Egner.


----------



## CageFan

"what music is appropriate for certain activities. I, at least, find that Wagner overtures, Chopin and some Mahler are very suitable for doing physics. And Vivaldi (esp. his contralto cantatas) and The Triumphes of Oriana and other English madrigals are all good chemistry music. Hmmm. Maybe this calls for a thread of its own, maybe?"

Aksel.....You should have brassed it out loud earlier!!!!! :trp::trp::trp::trp: Please do start a new thread like you said, certain musics for certain acttivities to enhance effeciency. Probably, say, the practical functions of Music! (should have written a book about it)

Love your post!


----------



## mcquicker

This is a very funny book with many insights on the world of opera. I am told that several of the main characters are based on real people. In fact, there is one character that it is obvious and the reader has only to change the order of the letters to find out the name of the person. 

By the way, the book has almost nothing to do with the mafia and it IS funny.  Look it up.

Peter

The cover to Cosa Nostra.


----------



## eduffreitas

I'm just read The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway) and I will start now A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway too).


----------



## Edward Elgar

I've just read 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho










It's inspirational, but very preachy. I don't know whether it's the translation from Portuguese to English, but it really does read like the bible at some points. Also, the characters (apart from the main protagonist) are unbelievable in what they say.

I'd recommend it, but only for the inspirational story which will find some resonance with anyone's life. I'm going to read 'The Devil and Ms Prym' next and then 'Veronika Decides to Die' by the same author in the hope that his talent for storytelling is not tainted by a preachy sermon.


----------



## Guest

Janet Burroway's _Writing Fiction_ is by the far the best how-to book I've read. If anyone here fancies themselves an author, I highly recommend it.


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

Edward Elgar said:


> I've just read 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's inspirational, but very preachy. I don't know whether it's the translation from Portuguese to English, but it really does read like the bible at some points. Also, the characters (apart from the main protagonist) are unbelievable in what they say.
> 
> I'd recommend it, but only for the inspirational story which will find some resonance with anyone's life. I'm going to read 'The Devil and Ms Prym' next and then 'Veronika Decides to Die' by the same author in the hope that his talent for storytelling is not tainted by a preachy sermon.


You came to the right place as I read both - 'The Devil and Ms Prym' and 'Veronika Decides to Die'. Unfortunately both left me with the same impression that 'The Alchemist' left you with. It felt preachy. I mean, the stories are fine, just everything that surrounds them at times feels a bit tacky.


----------



## eduffreitas

KaerbEmEvig said:


> You came to the right place as I read both - 'The Devil and Ms Prym' and 'Veronika Decides to Die'. Unfortunately both left me with the same impression that 'The Alchemist' left you with. It felt preachy. I mean, the stories are fine, just everything that surrounds them at times feels a bit tacky.


The problem isn't the translation because I read it in Portuguese. The thing is this author has a self help appeal in all his books. But the stories are catchy though.

But I think that 'The Devil and Ms Prym' and 'Veronika Decides to Die' are not good at all. I liked Brida, The Fifth Mountain, Diario de um Mago (I don't know if it was translated)


----------



## myaskovsky2002

I don't/didn't like Coelho's book. It made me think about a book I read when I was very youn...Khalil Gibram or something like that.

I'm reading now _the wise woman _by Philippa Gregory. I read 7 or 8 books by her in the past. This one is going slower.

Martin Pitchon


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

myaskovsky2002 said:


> I don't/didn't like Coelho's book. It made me think about a book I read when I was very youn...Khalil Gibram or something like that.
> 
> I'm reading now _the wise woman _by Philippa Gregory. I read 7 or 8 books by her in the past. This one is going slower.
> 
> Martin Pitchon


I prefer books by Murakami way more than books by Coelho (based on my limited experience of both writers).


----------



## emiellucifuge

Anyine here a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez?


----------



## Iveforgottenmyoldpassword

I'll probably finish cold mountain before going back to the lord of the rings again, but these are the ones that I'm in the process of reading at the moment.


----------



## Kopachris

Currently reading _Knife of Dreams_ by Robert Jordan, 11th book of the Wheel of Time series. This is my first time reading the (enormous) series, and it's really good so far.

I'm also reading _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ by Nietzsche, for the second time. Fantastic book, if you can understand what's being said. I don't agree with everything in it, but I do understand most of it.

This Christmas, however, I'll probably be getting _Principles of Orchestration_ by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and so I'll then be reading that.


----------



## graaf

hooked on Chomsky lately...


----------



## gobaith

I al currently juggling a few books, Shelley's Frankenstein in a simplified version for my pupils, Agatha Christie's "murder on the orient express" for another class, Dickens' "A christmas carol", an obscure breton language novel, and perhaps more importantly, am relearning how to read music!!


----------



## Kieran

Edward Elgar said:


> I've just read 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's inspirational, but very preachy. I don't know whether it's the translation from Portuguese to English, but it really does read like the bible at some points. Also, the characters (apart from the main protagonist) are unbelievable in what they say.
> 
> I'd recommend it, but only for the inspirational story which will find some resonance with anyone's life. I'm going to read 'The Devil and Ms Prym' next and then 'Veronika Decides to Die' by the same author in the hope that his talent for storytelling is not tainted by a preachy sermon.


I didn't finish The Alchemist when it was given to me, but actually I loved Veronika Decides to Die. I can understand the criticism, but I was surprised by this book when I read it. Normally, I'd toss it towards the bin, as I dislike anything that smacks of new age preachiness, but this had a curious story and a profound series of twists.

Lately, I'm poring over the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Mozart, and also reading The Imitation of Christ, which is giving me a lot to think about too...


----------



## Yoshi

'Musicophilia - Tales of Music and the Brain' by Oliver Sacks
A gift that I just got from my bestfriend


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

Jan said:


> 'Musicophilia - Tales of Music and the Brain' by Oliver Sacks
> A gift that I just got from my bestfriend


I have purchased it online, waiting for it to arrive at the shop. Will arrive with my Impressions on Chopin by Możdżer.


----------



## Yoshi

KaerbEmEvig said:


> I have purchased it online, waiting for it to arrive at the shop. Will arrive with my Impressions on Chopin by Możdżer.


I hope you enjoy it then.
So far I like it alot, especialy because it combines two areas that interest me (psychology and music).


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

Jan said:


> I hope you enjoy it then.
> So far I like it alot, especialy because it combines two areas that interest me (psychology and music).


Just arrived. Will have two wait a bit, though. Still have to read Dorian Grey and Hamlet and I don't have much time due to the upcomming session of exams.


----------



## Wicked_one

Hail Dorian Gray. Such a marvelous piece of work!!!

I'm reading "How the mind works" by Steven Pinker. A book on the "mechanisms" of the mind from a psychological and philosophical perspective.


----------



## Guest

I am very much enjoying this biography of Benjamin Franklin. So much I didn't know regarding this incredibly versatile and talented renaissance man.


----------



## Aramis

Faithful River by Stefan Żeromski, Faust (first time in German), novels by Anton Chekhov and Parallel Lives by Plutrach.


----------



## Aksel

I'm currently rereading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's such a wonderful book.


----------



## Manxfeeder

I just read _Anton Bruckner, Rustic Genius_. The book is an oldie but a goodie.


----------



## Guest

The Fall of the Towers, by Samuel Delany.


----------



## Manxfeeder

I just picked up Naxos' complete symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich, so I'm reading David Hurwitz's Shostakovich Symphonies and Concertos, An Owner's Manual.

I appreciated his Mahler book when I was a newbie to his works, and this continues in the same vein: he just tells you what is going on in the music as far as form and what to listen for. It also includes a recording of the 5th symphony with a minute-by-minute description.


----------



## Listener




----------



## Pierrot Lunaire

I'm flipping through Wallace Steven's Collected Poems while I wait for Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre to arrive in the mail.


----------



## CageFan

I was planning to pick up Being and Nothingness a while ago, guess this is the time....


----------



## Manxfeeder

I just finished Christopher Butler's examination of postmodernism. It may be a "brief insight," but he's still writing to academics, so you have to stay sharp. A typical sentence: "Many of those who come to the dialogue will have nonnegotiable, even if not ex hypothesi obviously indubitable traditional (Marxist, Christian, Islamic, nationalist) positions."


----------



## Manxfeeder

Voices in the Wilderness is a survey of six American Neo-Romantic composers: Ernest Bloch, Howard Hanson, Vittorio Giannini, Paul Creston, Samuel Barber, and Nicolas Flagello. It's good to see a book about a neglected genre of music which deserves more attention. I've just discovered Ernest Bloch's music because of this and am dusting off my Nicolas Flagello CDs.










Here's Classical Net's review.

http://www.classical.net/music/books/reviews/0810848848a.php


----------



## Aramis

> about a neglected genre of music which deserves more attention


What? Neo-romanticism?


----------



## Kieran

Pope Benedict, "Light of the World", very good book. He's a deep thinking man, and as a book I'm finding it very enriching....


----------



## Manxfeeder

Aramis said:


> What? Neo-romanticism?


Neglected may not be the best word; it has been under-appreciated. It's being remedied by companies like Delos and Naxos. Who heard of pieces like Flagello's first symphony until then?


----------



## Aramis

Manxfeeder said:


> Neglected may not be the best word; it has been under-appreciated. It's being remedied by companies like Delos and Naxos. Who heard of pieces like Flagello's first symphony until then?


My experience with neo-romanticism made me conclude that this movement is overrated even by taking it seriously. It's movement of epigones writing a lot of extremely unoriginal music because they belive that romanticism is style, not idea, so they keep making poor copies of romantic music that combines the most cheap and banal aspects of originals. Seriously, even the most ridiculous contemporary music doesn't annoy me as much as this kind of kitsch. There never was any truely great neo-romantic composer, unless we consider likes of Sibelius neo-romantics. But I guess it's diffrent generation that you had in mind.

Worst piece by Boulez > best piece by any neo-romantic. Uhm, this one was brutal. Sorry.


----------



## andrea

I'm reading Stephen Fry's second autobiography. I bought it ages ago and saved it up for when I was off work last week. Ended up spending all week working and listening to music instead!! So just getting into it now. Wow he likes Wagner! Who could spend a whole week watching Wagner operas?


----------



## Manxfeeder

Aramis said:


> My experience with neo-romanticism made me conclude that this movement is overrated even by taking it seriously.


I respectfully disagree.


----------



## Aksel

I'm reading a history of Norwegian opera and ballet. Thoroughly interesting stuff.


----------



## Jacob Singer

_The Sheltering Sky_ by Paul Bowles.


----------



## World Violist

Back to reading The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas. It got a bit boring reading about the Greeks last time I started, but I'm now plowing through the Greeks looking forward to later philosophers.


----------



## gurthbruins

andrea said:


> I'm reading Stephen Fry's second autobiography. I bought it ages ago and saved it up for when I was off work last week. Ended up spending all week working and listening to music instead!! So just getting into it now. Wow he likes Wagner! Who could spend a whole week watching Wagner operas?


I see Stephen Fry's _Hippopotamus_ on a shelf in my room. I remember that I have read several of his books and think he is a great read - in fact a great man.


----------



## gurthbruins

I read as part of my study of psychology. The most suitable material for this is novels. Currently the novels of Nevil Shute, which are as sublime as anything I know.

I am working my way through the lot of them, in order written, for the first time. Just finishing _The Chequer Board_ now. (I only manage about one book a week: the art of reading is to read slowly).


----------



## Manxfeeder

I just finished an old book from 1974 titled The Liberating Word: Art and the Mystery of the Gospel, where the author gives guidance on how Christian writers can best share their worldview, giving examples from the works of Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Graham Greene, and T.S. Eliot.


----------



## tdc

Im currently reading 'Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation'. By Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I find this book is farely dense, and reading it really makes me want to meditate, so Im only reading a couple pages or so a day, because its keeping me in the habit of daily meditation by doing so.


----------



## Pieck

Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy


----------



## myaskovsky2002

*reading*

The raining song by Alice Wisler.

Martin


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Pieck said:


> Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy


Yay!!! Are you a Russian fan???


----------



## Guest

About to finish Sam Delany's The Fall of the Towers, then moving on to Solaris.


----------



## delallan

I'm looking forward to reading that myself! His 'Jesus of Nazareth' was a beautiful read.


----------



## Sid James

I've just read *Colin Wilson's *_Chords & Discords: purely personal opinions on music_. It was a book from the 1960's which I bought from a second hand store. Wilson writes about a wide array of music, from the classical era to the present. He presents opinions on what music moves him and what doesn't. He doesn't paint a very friendly picture of Bartok. Although Wilson professes to liking Bartok's music, as a person he calls him a guy who never grew out of being a spoilt child. After reading through the book, I became a bit tired of Wilson's attempts at psychobiography. He seemed to be equally interested in whether a composer was a "great man" as a great composer. Beethoven was great in both categories, Bartok in one but not the other. All up, however, this was not a bad read. Wilson was an engaging writer, and he clearly had a good knowledge of the repertoire as much as anyone in the 1960's who was interested in classical music would have had.

Now I'm delving into a book of similar vintage called _Music, the Arts and Ideas: patterns and predictions in Twentieth-Century culture_ by *Leonard B. Meyer*. This is a scholarly book, as the author was a professor of Music at the University of Chicago. He is coming to approach music history and criticism with an approach based on semiotics. It will be interesting, but a bit more involved than the Wilson book...


----------



## gurthbruins

So next I started Nevil Shutes's _A Town like Alice_ - 'The Legacy' in USA?

Expecting it to be good on account of its greater fame, but somehow find the earlier part, the trek of the 32 women and children of whom half die - to be boring and difficult to read.

I drifted off to another book which I found more exciting, on account of the Freud-like intelligence of its author: _The Religion of Israel_ by Yehezkel Kaufmann. (This despite the fact that I consider the God of the Israel, Christianity and Islam to be quite untenable).


----------



## Pieck

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Yay!!! Are you a Russian fan???


I think I can say that Im a Russian fan


----------



## CTCarter

Daniel Heartz "From Garrick to Gluck - Essays on Opera in the Age of Enlightenment". From this source and others, Romanticism is firmly underway by 1760.


----------



## tahnak

I am cur.rently reading Deathly Hallows


----------



## Aramis

Story of Manon Lescaut and cavalier de Grieux as introduction before Puccini's Manon Lescaut. And book about Wagner. And Schiller's Rauber in another translation.


----------



## Meaghan




----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Meaghan said:


>


I want to read that, I've read some clips on Google Books on certain composers.


----------



## Andrew_MBB

In the middle of something that's long overdue.
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.


----------



## Edward Elgar

Best play ever written. I defy any remarks to the retrograde of my recommendation.

There's only one problem I have with it. How is it that Gertrude can't see the ghost, when it's clearly established at the beginning that the ghost is visible to anyone? Shakespeare you talentless hack!


----------



## Lipatti

Polishing my French with several short stories by Voltaire (currently reading Micromegas) and "working" my way through Smith's Wealth of Nations as part of my academic pursuit.

Also looking forward to get my Chopin-biography by Adam Zamoyski for something (hopefully) slightly more entertaining.


----------



## Pierrot Lunaire

The Divine Comedy.


----------



## Manxfeeder

_Existentialism_, by Thomas Flynn.


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

Lipatti said:


> Polishing my French with several short stories by Voltaire (currently reading Micromegas) and "working" my way through Smith's Wealth of Nations as part of my academic pursuit.
> 
> Also looking forward to get my Chopin-biography by Adam Zamoyski for something (hopefully) slightly more entertaining.


Have seen it at the book store, report when you're finished.=]


----------



## Kopachris

Currently reading _Les Misérables_ (unabridged), _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ (R. J. Hollingdale translation) (for the second time this year), and Robert Jordan's _Wheel of Time_ series (which is enormous).


----------



## Agatha

My son (17 years old) told me that we, as a family, are not spiritual people. Sometime ago I saw on this forum _Argus _ mentioned a book - Wassily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 1910. So I've got the book. Not easy reading, but very interesting, though not sure my son meant this sort of spirituality


----------



## Hazel

Winston Churchill's " A History of the English Speaking Peoples". I am seeing Sir Winston in an entirely different light than I'd "known" him before. I am not sure I like what I am seeing but it is interesting. So slanted and narrow. It is a good, fast rundown of basic facts of British history with his own opinions coloring the facts "muddy". But then, he does say it is not meant for the serious historian. So, I take it as written.


----------



## Niklav

Currently, studying piano Chopin Etudes, Bach Partitas, Beethoven Sonatas (Waldstein), and Chopin Ballade no.1 op.23 in G minor (which is quite hard)


----------



## World Violist

Humphrey Carpenter's bio of Ben Britten.


----------



## Guest

Just finished Solaris, moving on to The Left Hand of Darkness and then...Ulysses!


----------



## Chris

I don't read much popular fiction but somebody gave me The Last Juror by John Grisham. Quite entertaining but the author has an irritating habit of flagging up what is going to happen next. And at the end of the book is an Author's Note in which he admits he has taken liberties with the laws existing in 1970s Mississippi, so the story doesn't even give an authentic feel of the southern states in that period. I'm going back to classics.


----------



## science

I'm currently reading McMafia by Misha Glenny, whose wrote a book on the Balkan wars that I'd read about a decade ago. I am learning a lot about the world from it, and I strongly recommend to anyone interested in organized crime, drugs, human trafficking, prostitution, globalization, online scams, Russian oil or gas, Dubai, terrorism, Afghanistan, Colombia, the conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.... Just a crazy informative book.


----------



## Manxfeeder

Jeff N said:


> Just finished Solaris, moving on to The Left Hand of Darkness and then...Ulysses!


Wow, you're ambitious. I salute you with a quote from Joyce: "Clipclap. Clappyclap."


----------



## Guest

Manxfeeder said:


> Wow, you're ambitious. I salute you with a quote from Joyce: "Clipclap. Clappyclap."




If I were _really_ ambitious, I think I'd open up Finnegans Wake. But from what I've heard, it's unreadable. And that's coming from Joyce fans. I'm sure that one day, once I've exhausted the coffers of classical literature, I'll give it a shot...


----------



## Xaltotun

Finnegan is like a gigantic puzzle. You read a sentence, and then you stop, and start thinking, say the words aloud in your mind, freely associate with other languages and all the possible references that come to your mind, make notes of them... then, you read the next sentence 

I'm reading Eisenstein's "Film Form", myself.


----------



## Moraviac

I finished reading (for the 2nd time) Fathers And Sons from Ivan Turgenev last week. I really like it and for my birthday I asked the complete works of this man.


----------



## science




----------



## lokomotiv

It has roughly 200 pages of footnotes.

And its lots of fun !!

Im also reading "All the pretty horses" by Cormac McCarthy.


----------



## gurthbruins

Moraviac said:


> I finished reading (for the 2nd time) Fathers And Sons from Ivan Turgenev last week. I really like it and for my birthday I asked the complete works of this man.


You have tasted of the joys of Russian literature.
Suppose you rate Fathers and Sons 9 out of 10 (or would it be more?):
How would you rate:
1. Tolstoy's Family Happiness
2. Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata
3. Any story of Dostoevsky you care to name
4. Any one play by Chekhov you care to name.
- on a scale of 0 to 10. (you can use decimals up to n places)
?


----------



## Moraviac

gurthbruins said:


> You have tasted of the joys of Russian literature.
> Suppose you rate Fathers and Sons 9 out of 10 (or would it be more?):
> How would you rate:
> 1. Tolstoy's Family Happiness
> 2. Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata
> 3. Any story of Dostoevsky you care to name
> 4. Any one play by Chekhov you care to name.
> - on a scale of 0 to 10. (you can use decimals up to n places)
> ?


Hi, Gurthbruins,

Nice question. 
I'm not really a Russian literature veteran, not yet, that is. I only read some things.

1. I love Family Happiness, one of my favorite short Tolstoy stories! 9 out of 10, just as Fathers and Sons. I also love The Cossacks, do you know that? Also 9/10. And War And Peace and Anna Karenina are solid 10/10's.

2. I haven't read Kreutzer yet. I know that it is a classic Tolstoy story. It's on the reading list.

3. Dostoevsky: the Brothers Karamazov is my favourite. 10 out of 10. It is brilliant from start to end. Crime And Punishment is also good: 8 out of 10.

4. From Checkhov I only read some short stories.

I did read Gogol St. Petersburg Stories, which is amazing as well. 9/10.

What do you like in Russian literature yourself?


----------



## gurthbruins

Moraviac said:


> Hi, Gurthbruins,
> 
> Nice question.
> I'm not really a Russian literature veteran, not yet, that is. I only read some things.
> 
> 1. I love Family Happiness, one of my favorite short Tolstoy stories! 9 out of 10, just as Fathers and Sons. I also love The Cossacks, do you know that? Also 9/10. And War And Peace and Anna Karenina are solid 10/10's.
> 
> 2. I haven't read Kreutzer yet. I know that it is a classic Tolstoy story. It's on the reading list.
> 
> 3. Dostoevsky: the Brothers Karamazov is my favourite. 10 out of 10. It is brilliant from start to end. Crime And Punishment is also good: 8 out of 10.
> 
> 4. From Checkhov I only read some short stories.
> 
> I did read Gogol St. Petersburg Stories, which is amazing as well. 9/10.
> 
> What do you like in Russian literature yourself?


Moraviac, thanks for sharing with me! You are for sure well into this field already. I am glad, I agree with your ratings.

Funny thing about Chekhov, I always thought him lesser than the "big 3" for many years. (D,T,T).
Much later in life I revised my opinion completely, I now find him the greatest! his plays are my favourites, and after that, Turgenev's plays. (Plays in general, English and American too, I only came to like late in life).

The maturity thing is the strange thing about Chekhov. He would not use some of his ideas because he still felt himself too immature to deal with them. Perhaps anyone should leave him to discover in their old age. He is like Turgenev, I'd say, just as romantic and poetic, but a bit more subtle, and rather more objective.

But Dostoevsky, together with Beethoven, were my greatest teachers and influences as a young man. I absorbed D so much that I could hardly reread him. I did manage to reread A Raw Youth one or two years ago, with some enjoyment. The Insulted and Injured was one of my favourites.

I also loved D's The Gambler, which spoke to me very joyously as I was into making money at gambling, and loved gambling at poker and making huge winnings.

And to end, here's a quote from Nyetochka Nyezvanov:

*"All day long we did not know what to do for joy."*


----------



## Moraviac

gurthbruins said:


> Moraviac, thanks for sharing with me! You are for sure well into this field already. I am glad, I agree with your ratings.
> 
> Funny thing about Chekhov, I always thought him lesser than the "big 3" for many years. (D,T,T).
> Much later in life I revised my opinion completely, I now find him the greatest! his plays are my favourites, and after that, Turgenev's plays. (Plays in general, English and American too, I only came to like late in life).
> 
> The maturity thing is the strange thing about Chekhov. He would not use some of his ideas because he still felt himself too immature to deal with them. Perhaps anyone should leave him to discover in their old age. He is like Turgenev, I'd say, just as romantic and poetic, but a bit more subtle, and rather more objective.
> 
> But Dostoevsky, together with Beethoven, were my greatest teachers and influences as a young man. I absorbed D so much that I could hardly reread him. I did manage to reread A Raw Youth one or two years ago, with some enjoyment. The Insulted and Injured was one of my favourites.
> 
> I also loved D's The Gambler, which spoke to me very joyously as I was into making money at gambling, and loved gambling at poker and making huge winnings.
> 
> And to end, here's a quote from Nyetochka Nyezvanov:
> 
> *"All day long we did not know what to do for joy."*


Well, that is very interesting! Thank you for sharing as well. Your statements about Chekhov do fascinate me. I'll keep him in mind. Maturity - that's an interesting facet. I never thought about it that way.

I see you're from South-Africa. I went there last summer, not for the soccer, but for a youth camp in which I'm a leader. I visited Bloemfontein and Jo'burg. I had a very good time there.


----------



## Chris

I found a book a Chekhov short stories knocking about the house. The best of them was The Duel. A cracking story.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Moraviac said:


> 1. I love Family Happiness, one of my favorite short Tolstoy stories! 9 out of 10, just as Fathers and Sons. I also love The Cossacks, do you know that? Also 9/10. And War And Peace and Anna Karenina are solid 10/10's.


Family Happiness was so lovely to read! Being a girl, I can really get into the girl's character. 

The Death of Ivan Ilyich was also really good, quite powerful.


----------



## World Violist

Right now I'm reading "Priest of Music: The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos." It's a marvelous book, particularly for those people like myself who can't get enough of his recordings!


----------



## Listener




----------



## gurthbruins

Listener said:


>


- That was a great book, I thought. Must have read it about 40 years ago, when I was newly fruitarian and looking into Eastern thought. Only other book, of similar flavour if a lot more Western in philosophy, of equal stature, was Gandhi's *Experiment with Truth*

Ouspensky's _In Search of the Miraculous_ is another book I remember from those days, also Lobsang Rampa's _The Third Eye_ was a great read.


----------



## science

Dostoyevsky used to be my favorite novelist, and my favorite novels were _Crime and Punishment_ and _The Brothers Karamazov_. I've read both of them several times. To me, C&P is a more perfect work of art; TBK the more thought-provoking, ambitious work. I also like his other two major novels and the novella _Notes from the Underground_.

I haven't read either of Tolstoy's great novels, but I've read (I think) all of the short stories, and my favorites are _The Kreutzer Sonata_ and of course _The Death of Ivan Ilyich_.

Beyond that, I have not ventured far into Russian literature at all.

Since my disillusionment with Dostoyevky (I'd probably better not get into that), I've had what I like to call "a Dostoyevsky-shaped hole" in my heart (with reference to a Christian apologist's claim that we each have a God-shaped hole in our heart). I now suspect that Thomas Mann might be able to fill that hole.

So much literature, so little time!


----------



## gurthbruins

science said:


> Since my disillusionment with Dostoyevky (I'd probably better not get into that), I've had what I like to call "a Dostoyevsky-shaped hole" in my heart (with reference to a Christian apologist's claim that we each have a God-shaped hole in our heart). I now suspect that Thomas Mann might be able to fill that hole.
> 
> So much literature, so little time!


If I might comment on that? Surely there is obviously only one way to fill an X-shaped hole?
But nobody knows what the shape of X is, nor can they know until there is no longer any need to know. So perhaps the talk of a shaped hole is a useless analogy.

I hope Mann can do the trick for you; I fancy Bach and Beethoven as hole-fillers. Not to mention the divine Mozart.


----------



## science

gurthbruins said:


> If I might comment on that? Surely there is obviously only one way to fill an X-shaped hole?


Good comment.

If we take it seriously, then perhaps a liquid is the best way to precisely fill a hole.

Vodka would be an option.


----------



## Moraviac

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Family Happiness was so lovely to read! Being a girl, I can really get into the girl's character.
> 
> The Death of Ivan Ilyich was also really good, quite powerful.


Yes, The Death of Ivan Ilyich was _very _impressive.


----------



## superhorn

I've been reading books on Obama by Michael Savage and David Limbaugh which purpirt to be hard-hitting analyses of him but whicvh are pure character assasination.
These books are biased as hell and any one who takes them seriously is either 
extremely naive or just plain stupid.
John Canarina's history of the New York Philharmonic from Pierre Boulez to Lorin Maazel is 
chock full of juicy information about the prcvjestra's vicissitudes in the past 40 years,its 
scandals and triumphs.
"Listen To This" by Alex Ross,his second book and a collection of essays from the New Yorker,is every but as absorbing as "The Rest Is Noise",although I don't agree with all of his opinions. Ross covers,among other things,the music of Schubert,the late music of Brahms,
the operas of verdi, Bjork and her background in classical music.


----------



## karenpat

I'm reading several art books at the moment, one about canons and art institutions, one critique handbook (which is not part of the art history curriculum but I'm reading it because I think it will be useful anyway), Gombrich's Art & Illusion, plus - although it's not really a book - the curriculum text compilations on contemporary art. I'm not going to lie and say I understand all of it, especially in the case of the latter. So I try to supplement the reading with some fiction, right now it's Paul Auster Sunset Park.


----------



## Aksel

I'm reading The Great Gatsby for English class, something I'm enjoying rather a lot. Also, I'm trying to get into Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.


----------



## World Violist

Michael Kennedy's biography of John Barbirolli. It's a very fine book.


----------



## Manxfeeder

Finally got around to Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz, the musings of a postmodern Christian.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Manxfeeder said:


> Finally got around to Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz, the musings of a postmodern Christian.


Good book! I didn't read it but my mom and brother did, and they really liked it. 

Right now, I'm reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, in English Class. I've read it before for fun, now I have to do analysis of it. :/


----------



## Aksel

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Right now, I'm reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, in English Class. I've read it before for fun, now I have to do analysis of it. :/


But book analysis is fun! Oh, I'm the only one who thinks so? Oh well, nevermind.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Aksel said:


> But book analysis is fun! Oh, I'm the only one who thinks so? Oh well, nevermind.


LOL not with _my_ English teacher. The most disagreeable man I have ever met. He's the only teacher that ever wanted to argue with little old me.


----------



## starthrower

The Seven Mysteries Of Life by Guy Murchie

If you like reading science and philosophy, this is one for the ages.


----------



## Sebastien Melmoth

Just finished Thomas Pakenham's _The Boer War_; just began Robert Rhodes James's _Lord Randolph Churchill_ (Winston's father).

Re-reading the book of _Isaiah_ (chapter a day).


----------



## World Violist

Just started reading another incredible philosophy book called "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar..." and I'm already halfway through. It's not very big, but it's a hilarious and enlightening read about all sorts of philosophical mindsets. And it's got tons of brilliant jokes to outline each.


----------



## Air

I'm reading for the first time _The Stranger_ by Albert Camus. It's fascinating how similar his views are to Kafka. It reminds me how broad existentialist thought was in the 20th century, if Camus can even be defined as an existentialist. Both Kafka and Camus seem to stand in polar contrast to Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, though I have to say that the case of Camus is not at all depressing to me, just indifferent. And I can see how this indifference can lead to a sense of individual freedom.


----------



## Saul_Dzorelashvili

Recently completed two works by contemporary Rabbis and Scholars.

First one is called 'Worldmask', written by Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz of South Africa , one of the most astonishing books I have ever read in my entire life. Totally amazing and informative.

This was In English. 

The other Book is By Rabbi Israel Lurerboim, the book is called 'The Other Dimension', again gripping and informative , very hard to put the book down...this one was in Hebrew.


I'm also reading 'Ancient Civilizations' a history of the major civilizations from all around the world.

Cheers,

Saul


----------



## Guest

I'm coming to really love my new Kindle. Currently, I am reading the following:
The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers by Goethe


----------



## Manxfeeder

DrMike said:


> I'm coming to really love my new Kindle.


Those things sure can spoil you. I have a Nook, which is similar. But I'm amazed at all the books I can carry anywhere.


----------



## tdc

DrMike said:


> The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks


That title brings me back. That was the first fantasy series I ever read, I didnt go in the proper order though - Elfstones was the first one for me. Good to see you're enjoying a nice balance of some lighter stuff with your Goethe.


----------



## Aksel

DrMike said:


> I'm coming to really love my new Kindle.


The Kindle is awesome! It's so convenient to not have to drag three pounds of books every time you're going somewhere. Albeit I do it anyways. But I don't have to!


----------



## Guest

I resisted for so long - I thought I would hate this format. I like having the paper in my hand. But when I saw that most of the classics could be had for free (although I am reading a relatively modern book, I love the classics, especially Dickens), then I succumbed. I'm a sucker for technology.

I have read some Goethe in the past - Faust Part 1. I have been meaning to get to Werther. I'm trying to read them in the original German, although mine is a bit rusty, it having been 14 years since I last was able to use it.

I have always loved Tolkien, and have read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings at least 6 times each, but never ventured into other fantasy. I read the background for Shannara, and was intrigued at how it is actually set in the future on this world, it intrigued me - a different kind of fantasy. I'm enjoying it, and will probably at least read the other 2 books in the original trilogy.


----------



## Aksel

A friend of mine brought one to school, and I immediately fell in love with it. And then I got one. And besides, my bookshelf has too many books in it.


----------



## Guest

Aksel said:


> A friend of mine brought one to school, and I immediately fell in love with it. And then I got one. And besides, my bookshelf has too many books in it.


A man after my own heart - if you want something bad enough, there is never a dearth of "good reasons."


----------



## Manxfeeder

Aksel said:


> A friend of mine brought one to school, and I immediately fell in love with it. And then I got one. And besides, my bookshelf has too many books in it.


Have you or DrMike tried loading scores on it? I've put PDF files on my Nook, but usually the notes are too small to make out without a magnifying glass. It would be tremendous to have a library of scores to carry around with my iPod. But then I'd probably never have a need for human contact.


----------



## Aksel

Manxfeeder said:


> Have you or DrMike tried loading scores on it? I've put PDF files on my Nook, but usually the notes are too small to make out without a magnifying glass. It would be tremendous to have a library of scores to carry around with my iPod. But then I'd probably never have a need for human contact.


Yes, I have, actually. I have loaded quite a few of the vocal scores I have lying around onto it. Lying around on my computer, that is. It reads surprisingly well, although it it kind of small. But they sometimes take some time to load.


----------



## Hazel

> Manxfeeder said:
> 
> 
> 
> But then I'd probably never have a need for human contact.
Click to expand...

Is that bad? :devil:

Just teasing


----------



## Manxfeeder

Aksel said:


> Yes, I have, actually. I have loaded quite a few of the vocal scores I have lying around onto it. Lying around on my computer, that is. It reads surprisingly well, although it it kind of small. But they sometimes take some time to load.


Where did you get the scores?


----------



## Aksel

Here.

It's an amazing site.


----------



## Meaghan

Does this count as a book? I _am_ actually "reading" it away from the piano--analyzing _Das Lebewohl_. 
I'm not sure how long it's been since I read a regular book that wasn't for school.


----------



## Manxfeeder

Aksel said:


> Here.
> 
> It's an amazing site.


Great stuff. Thanks!


----------



## Manxfeeder

Meaghan said:


> Does this count as a book? I _am_ actually "reading" it away from the piano--analyzing _Das Lebewohl_.
> I'm not sure how long it's been since I read a regular book that wasn't for school.


It does to me. Music is a message, just nonlingual. My scores end up being filled with comments, highlights, circles and arrows, so they might as well be considered a form of literature.


----------



## Guest

I have basic music reading skills - I played the alto and then baritone saxophone for 4-5 years in school (elementary, middle, and high school). But I don't know enough to read scores.

I am always reading something. Normally my preference is history. I also enjoy some science fiction, fantasy, and political action thriller. I have always loved the classics, from when I first read Ivanhoe back in the 6th grade. I try to read some of the classics of western literature. I've read Plato's Republic, Machiavelli's The Prince, and some other things like that. I read parts of the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran for a history of civ class back in college. But ask my wife - I always have to have something to read. I hate it when I have read everything by a newly discovered author, because it is hard for me to try new authors, at least without thoroughly reading reviews.


----------



## Hazel

I notice that no one ever says they've read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Has anyone? And survived? I tried once. Only once.


----------



## Guest

Hazel said:


> I notice that no one ever says they've read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Has anyone? And survived? I tried once. Only once.


It's one of those things, I guess you could say was on my bucket list. I'd love to read it, but it is kind of like deciding to climb Mt. Everest - starting is the hard part. And continuing. And actually finishing.

I've read a few books like that. Atlas Shrugged was one of those I had to force myself to get through. At times it seemed like sheer torture. Les Miserables is another one. The various long, rambling tangents that Hugo takes you on just to set up a single character can get tedious (and that is putting it mildly). I understand that with a lot of these classics published originally in serial form, with longer meaning more income, that such things will happen, but this was absurd. War and Peace is another such book that one day I have every intention of reading - just not yet.


----------



## Hazel

DrMike said:


> It's one of those things, I guess you could say was on my bucket list. I'd love to read it, but it is kind of like deciding to climb Mt. Everest - starting is the hard part. And continuing. And actually finishing.
> 
> I've read a few books like that. Atlas Shrugged was one of those I had to force myself to get through. At times it seemed like sheer torture. Les Miserables is another one. The various long, rambling tangents that Hugo takes you on just to set up a single character can get tedious (and that is putting it mildly). I understand that with a lot of these classics published originally in serial form, with longer meaning more income, that such things will happen, but this was absurd. War and Peace is another such book that one day I have every intention of reading - just not yet.


One I gave up on isn't really hard to read at all. It just wasn't worth the time. Don Quixote. I think I was supposed to glean something from that book but I still do not know what.


----------



## Meaghan

Aksel said:


> Here.
> 
> It's an amazing site.


IMSLP is an immensely valuable resource.


----------



## Aksel

Meaghan said:


> IMSLP is an immensely valuable resource.


Yes. I'd be lost, or at least in serious debt if it hadn't been for it.


----------



## Manxfeeder

I just finished Love Wins by Rob Bell. He sure stirred up a hornet's nest with this one.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

The Feather (Charlotte Mary Matheson)

----------------------


----------



## starthrower

The 20th Century-Howard Zinn


----------



## Guest

"All Things Considered" by G. K. Chesterton
"The Road to Serfdom" by F. A. Hayek

Still loving the Kindle!


----------



## Chi_townPhilly

Not long ago, I finally got around to reading Jonathan Carr's _The Wagner Clan_.

It was an interesting treatment- but I don't think I can give it an unqualified recommendation, Sure, there's stuff there that you won't easily discover anywhere else- but portions of it are affected by an "advocacy-journalism" style.

If the topic is of interest to you, you'll benefit from the book (and likely know enough about the subject to recognize when the attempts to spoon-feed conclusions to you are made). If not predisposed to an interest in this subject, i don't believe there's much here that will ignite an interest.


----------



## science

Manxfeeder said:


> I just finished Love Wins by Rob Bell. He sure stirred up a hornet's nest with this one.


Looks very interesting. If you don't mind, pop up in the Christian spirituality thread and tell us what you think of it.


----------



## Manxfeeder

science said:


> Looks very interesting. If you don't mind, pop up in the Christian spirituality thread and tell us what you think of it.


As soon as a I get a chance, I'll head over there.


----------



## Sieglinde

Interesting Times (re-reading, still awesome)
The Last Continent (should finish it)
Dune (re-reading about the 3th/4th time)

Waiting in line: Temeraire book 3 (they're adorable)

It would be time for the annual Les Mis reread. I have lost count but must be over 25 times I read it. And it's less than two months till Barricade Day! It means two days (June5th/6th) in _red and black_ and one day (7th) in mourning - I have my ceremonies. I SO need a tricolore sash!


----------



## science

I took about a month-long break from _What Hath God Wrought_, but I'm back on it now and it is great. I've learned so much from the Oxford history of the United States. Next for me will be _The Battle Cry of Freedom_.


----------



## prettyhippo

Right now I'm reading "Lady of the Camellias" (English title) by Alexandre Dumas (the younger).


----------



## Almaviva

prettyhippo said:


> Right now I'm reading "Lady of the Camellias" (English title) by Alexandre Dumas (the younger).


I hope you'll be listening to La Traviata next.


----------



## prettyhippo

> I hope you'll be listening to La Traviata next.


Of course!


----------



## samurai

"The War Of The Dwarves" by Markus Heitz, as translated from the German by Sally-Ann Spencer.


----------



## graaf

13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of Our Time










OK, we all knew that scientists have their disagreements, but this books is all about that - it could actually be called 13 things that no one understands and many stopped trying.


----------



## Meaghan

My parents used to read to me every night before bed when I was little, and my dad read this to me when I was about eight. I remember enjoying it very much and decided I probably ought to read it myself now that I'm older and have a better knowledge of the historical context. I'm about halfway through and am enjoying it at least as much as I did as a child. Dickens' writing is thoroughly entertaining.


----------



## Xaltotun

I'm reading Francois Rabelais' "Le tiers livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel". It's outrageous, witty, philosophical and extremely funny, although probably not for everyone's tastes.


----------



## Chris

Meaghan said:


> My parents used to read to me every night before bed when I was little, and my dad read this to me when I was about eight. I remember enjoying it very much and decided I probably ought to read it myself now that I'm older and have a better knowledge of the historical context. I'm about halfway through and am enjoying it at least as much as I did as a child. Dickens' writing is thoroughly entertaining.


Good for your dad. We have never had TV in the house and I read innumerable books to the kids, finally stopping when the oldest was about 15. I remember reading them Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, all of which they loved. It's amazing how able young children are to follow complicated plots and remember characters.


----------



## Aksel

Xaltotun said:


> I'm reading Francois Rabelais' "Le tiers livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel". It's outrageous, witty, philosophical and extremely funny, although probably not for everyone's tastes.


I've read the first few chapters of Pantagruel. I was in guffaws.


----------



## haydnfan

A Tale of Two Cities is one of my favorite novels Xaltotun, and I've been thinking recently of rereading it.


----------



## FiNkLeS

I'm currently reading a true classic.


Don Quixote!


----------



## chillowack

_Wheelock's Latin_ (6th edition) by Frederick Wheelock
_Principles of Orchestration_ by Rimsky-Korsakov
_Confessions of an English Opium Eater_ by Thomas DeQuincey
_Treasure Island_ by R.L. Stevenson (just finished)
_Cephalais_ by H.P. Lovecraft
_The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ by Charles Dickens


----------



## Hazel

I am reading Margaret George's "Elizabeth I" and trying to find out if that is a true picture of Queen Elizabeth I. As far as history is concerned, it is a bit of an education but I'm not sure I care for the impression I am getting of Elizabeth's personality. Maybe someone else has read it? Someone who knows the history of England better than I do?


----------



## Guest

Meaghan said:


> My parents used to read to me every night before bed when I was little, and my dad read this to me when I was about eight. I remember enjoying it very much and decided I probably ought to read it myself now that I'm older and have a better knowledge of the historical context. I'm about halfway through and am enjoying it at least as much as I did as a child. Dickens' writing is thoroughly entertaining.


I love Dickens, and this is one of his best. The ending is incredible. Do try others of his works - Great Expectations, David Copperfield, etc.. I am trying to get into Bleak House, myself. I've had difficulty getting started, but understand that it pays off if you stick with it.


----------



## science

I'm surprised by the conservative enthusiasm for Dickens. He was rather subversive.


----------



## Pieck

Im reading now Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in english


----------



## Guest

science said:


> I'm surprised by the conservative enthusiasm for Dickens. He was rather subversive.


Abraham Lincoln was considered quite subversive as well - so much so that half the country tried to split away upon his election.

Also, while the ideas he had may have been subversive at the time, in the perspective we have today, not so much. Most American conservatives are quite fond of the founding fathers, and they were the ultimate subversives.


----------



## Guest

Still reading "The Road to Serfdom" by Hayek.

Also reading "A Clash of Kings" by George R. R. Martin


----------



## Manxfeeder

Robert Jourdain's Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy.


----------



## Ravellian

_Music Since 1945_ - Schwartz/Godfrey
_The Intersection of Money and Life_ - Tim Maurer (great book about important matters like insurance, investments, and retirement)


----------



## samurai

"The War After Armageddon" by Ralph Peters


----------



## Sid James

Just read these in the past week -

*"Stop-time" by Frank Conroy* - an autobiographical work written in the 1960's about the author's childhood during the '40's in '50's. It was pretty good, I enjoyed it. He had a tendency to lap into poetic descriptions of the most mundane things, I don't know whether this aspect appealed to me, it came across as a bit verbose. But apart from that, Conroy described things that happened to him - some of them ordinary, others not - in a very dry way, without a hint of sentimentality.

*"The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga* - This was a present from my sis ages ago, so I decided to finally read it (she's been nagging me to do that ever since!). This is an Indian rags to riches story with a twist. Some of the oppression and corruption outlined in the book makes me think that the author is kind of exaggerating things. Is it true that things are as bad as this in India? By the way he tells it, the country is still stuck in a Feudal mentality. Anyhow, it was quite a good read...

*"Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs* - I laughed out loud a lot while reading this book. The book was not so much funny, though, it was more cringeworthy. This is also an autobiography of the author's childhood and teenage years. It details his parents divorce, his mother's mental breakdowns (many of them, it was an annual event that came around Autumn) & his eventual "adoption" by the family of his mother's psychiatrist, Dr Field. The family is cooky to say the least. The doctor's house is a home for not only his family but also mental patients. By the age of 14, Augusten has been in a mental ward after a "staged" suicide to get him out of school so he can stay permanently with the doctor, he's having sex with a guy in his thirties who drifts in & out of the house, he's smoking (both tobacco & pot) & drinking, staying up late. This must have been one of the wierdest childhoods on record, & Burroughs tells the story with a lot of humour, as if that was the only thing that helped him get through all of this wierdness. I'm now going to borrow some of his other books from the library, I like his style a lot...


----------



## Vaneyes

Finishing up Michael Gross' "740 Park". On to his "Unreal Estate" next.

http://www.mgross.com/writing/books/740-park/


----------



## science

Just about to finish _Unweaving the Rainbow_ by Dawkins. All but the most hardcore Dawkins fans should skip this unless they've read the main works: _The Selfish Gene_, _The Extended Phenotype_, _Climbing Mt. Improbable_, _The Blind Watchmaker_, _River Out of Eden_.

But early on it does have a great chapter about rainbows.


----------



## DoctorZhivago

The Principle of Relativity by Einstein, Noble House by James Clavell, and THe Prize: The Epic Quest for Money and Power by Yergin. School just ended and I have a few weeks until work starts


----------



## clavichorder

"The Clavichord" by Bernard Brauchli http://www.amazon.com/Clavichord-Cambridge-Musical-Texts-Monographs/dp/0521630673 and "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers


----------



## MatejfromSlovenia

I broke up with my girlfriend 2 months ago...while I rearrange my apartment i found: Paul Verhaeghe - Love in a Time of Loneliness 
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Time-Loneliness-Paul-Verhaeghe/dp/189274631X
Interesting reading...


----------



## Schnowotski

To put aside books that I'm obliged to read - for my studies, you see -, I happened to find Gogol's Dead souls from a flea market for one euro - so that is what I'm reading at the moment. I've always liked Schnittke's incidental music for the play, Dead souls, so I've been planning to read to book for a while.

Also about a year ago I listened to the opera by Shchedrin but then I really didn't pay much attention to the libretto, I just listened to the music. I might listen to it for a second time when I'm finished with the book and pay little more attention to the story.


----------



## Guest

_The Devil's Trill_ by Gerald Elias. It's a mystery novel about the theft of a priceless violin. I've only read about 30 pages, but so far, so good! (The author is a violinist in the Boston Symphony, so he presumably knows what he's writing about!)


----------



## Manxfeeder

I saw a book titled "_Hell? Yes!_" by Robert Jeffress at a used bookstore and picked it up just because the title is so in-your-face. Actually, the book is not as offensive as the title is; it just gives the author's beliefs on several issues and the reasons for them. But it sure looks provocative on my bookshelf, especially next to Edward Fudge's _The Fire That Consumes_, which contends there is no burning hell.


----------



## science

(Speaking of hell...)

I've just started Keegan's _History of Warfare_. I'll say more about it sometime.


----------



## BalloinMaschera

Philippa Gregory, The Red Queen

about Margaret Beaufort,Matriarch of the House of Tudor


----------



## Hazel

BalloinMaschera said:


> Philippa Gregory, The Red Queen
> 
> about Margaret Beaufort,Matriarch of the House of Tudor


I have read several of her books but not that one. Shall I? A friend and I agree that some of her books are great and some a disappointment.

I have just finished C J Sansom's "Heartstone". Definitely one of his best.


----------



## Iforgotmypassword

Re-reading it now, I'm just now finishing the first of the three. Great trilogy.


----------



## science

science said:


> (Speaking of hell...)
> 
> I've just started Keegan's _History of Warfare_. I'll say more about it sometime.


Wonderful introduction to the subject. Learned a lot even though I'd read a bit on this already.

I would recommend it before McNeill's _Pursuit of Power_, but I think McNeill's book is one everyone who aspires to understand modern history should read.


----------



## kv466

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand (yet again)


----------



## Rasa

I was reading "A Fraction of the Whole" by Steve Tolz, but it's too damn depressing.


----------



## Meaghan

After reading _A Tale of Two Cities_ and loving it, I decided I should try some more of those books everybody is supposed to read. So now I'm in the middle of _Pride and Prejudice_, and I love it as well. I used to shy away from "classics" (with the exception of Shakespeare, whom I've always loved) because I foolishly expected them to be boring. But these two books have gained lasting popularity for excellent reason, imo.

It's hard to find time to read novels when I'm at school, so now that it's summer, I'm devouring them.


----------



## mamascarlatti

Meaghan said:


> After reading _A Tale of Two Cities_ and loving it, I decided I should try some more of those books everybody is supposed to read. So now I'm in the middle of _Pride and Prejudice_, and I love it as well. I used to shy away from "classics" (with the exception of Shakespeare, whom I've always loved) because I foolishly expected them to be boring. But these two books have gained lasting popularity for excellent reason, imo.
> 
> It's hard to find time to read novels when I'm at school, so now that it's summer, I'm devouring them.


How wonderful to be encountering Pride and Prejudice for the first time. I've read it countless times. I reckon Sense and Sensibility is a good follow up. The bit where the stepbrother talks himself out of providing his sisters with a share of his inheritance is priceless.

You might also like Jane Eyre (so romantic!), and Elisabeth Gaskell's "North and South" (pride and prejudice in the gritty Industrial Revolution).


----------



## mamascarlatti

Andre said:


> "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga - This was a present from my sis ages ago, so I decided to finally read it (she's been nagging me to do that ever since!). This is an Indian rags to riches story with a twist. Some of the oppression and corruption outlined in the book makes me think that the author is kind of exaggerating things.* Is it true that things are as bad as this in India? By the way he tells it, the country is still stuck in a Feudal mentality.* Anyhow, it was quite a good read......


Read this Andre.










It certainly confirms what you say and had my eyes out on stalks.



> "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs - I laughed out loud a lot while reading this book. The book was not so much funny, though, it was more cringeworthy. This is also an autobiography of the author's childhood and teenage years. It details his parents divorce, his mother's mental breakdowns (many of them, it was an annual event that came around Autumn) & his eventual "adoption" by the family of his mother's psychiatrist, Dr Field. The family is cooky to say the least. The doctor's house is a home for not only his family but also mental patients. By the age of 14, Augusten has been in a mental ward after a "staged" suicide to get him out of school so he can stay permanently with the doctor, he's having sex with a guy in his thirties who drifts in & out of the house, he's smoking (both tobacco & pot) & drinking, staying up late. This must have been one of the wierdest childhoods on record, & Burroughs tells the story with a lot of humour, as if that was the only thing that helped him get through all of this wierdness. I'm now going to borrow some of his other books from the library, I like his style a lot.


It's brilliant isn't it. Makes you laugh and throw your hands up in horror at the same time.


----------



## Stasou

Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The style of this book is really interesting, I like it. Dostoevsky writes in 1st person even though he's not in the story.


----------



## Sid James

@ Natalie - thanks for the recommendation of the book on India, I think I might try that. I did study the history of India in a subject at uni, but that was like 10 years ago, and I've forgotten a lot of it (& we probably only skimmed the surface). As for another aspect of "Running with Scissors" - I think the book hit me more hard than the movie - which I saw after I read it - but that's what I usually find when I see a film version of something I've read...


----------



## emiellucifuge

Africa: A Biography of the Continent

This book is brilliant. Covers all the geological, ecological and anthropological history of the content in one narrative. Even Museveni called it a masterpiece!


----------



## Aramis

I'm getting into Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot and Physiology of Marriage so far. Great, clever writing with much of unpretentious wit.

Btw, great photo:


----------



## KaerbEmEvig




----------



## Meaghan

mamascarlatti said:


> How wonderful to be encountering Pride and Prejudice for the first time. I've read it countless times. I reckon Sense and Sensibility is a good follow up. The bit where the stepbrother talks himself out of providing his sisters with a share of his inheritance is priceless.


Yes, I definitely want to read more Jane Austen! Though I think the next thing I'll be reading is Thad Carhart's _The Piano Shop on the Left Bank_, which I was just given as a gift. I don't know anything about it, but it's about pianos, so I'll probably like it.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Would you believe I'm still reading _War & Peace_? I hardly read even a page this past school year, so I'm still half way. Now that it's summer, I'll start reading again, I still remember what's happened.


----------



## Guest

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Would you believe I'm still reading War & Peace? I hardly read even a page this past school year, so I'm still half way. Now that it's summer, I'll start reading again, I still remember what's happened.


Don't worry, I started Ulysses in the fall and I'm barely halfway through that as well. Some books just aren't meant to be breezed through...


----------



## Meaghan




----------



## Kieran

Aramis said:


> I'm getting into Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot and Physiology of Marriage so far. Great, clever writing with much of unpretentious wit.
> 
> Btw, great photo:


I was given _Father Goriot_ by a friend and haven't had a chance to get at it. Arrggh! I joined a Book Club to help out a friend, encourage togetherness within a group that was falling away, and this month were reading _*The Slap*_.

It's okay, but not something I really wanna read. It's hard getting time to read - me being so lazy and all :lol: - and I'd rather be reading _Father Goriot_, which is part of a huge series of books by Balzac. I think it's his _Human Comedy_ series, which was an incredibly detailed and daring idea of his...


----------



## mmsbls

Joseph Stiglitz - FreeFall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.










Stiglitz is a macro-economist with great experience in global economic issues. He describes the causes of the recession, mistakes that were made since then, and what policies could best affect a recovery.


----------



## Wicked_one

A biography of Georg Fr. Händel by some Romanian author. Pretty nice, it is.


----------



## science

mmsbls said:


> Joseph Stiglitz - FreeFall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Stiglitz is a macro-economist with great experience in global economic issues. He describes the causes of the recession, mistakes that were made since then, and what policies could best affect a recovery.


Book is on my shelf. Haven't read it yet, but I love Stiglitz.


----------



## Guest

I'm taking a break from _Ulysses_ (which I'm only halfway through...) and switching to J.L. Mackie's _Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong_. Making me rethink morality.


----------



## GoneBaroque

World Violist said:


> Maybe I'll eventually finish the Brothers Karamazov... it's amazing but LONG.
> 
> ~WV


I am slowly working through it. It is amazing but needs to be taken slowly.

I am also reading Jussi by Anna-Lisa Bjoerling and alternating with Chaliapin, A Critical Biography by Victor Borovsky Both are fascinating.

Rob


----------



## Aksel

I just finished _My Favourite Intermissions_ by Victor Borge. I don't think I've read a funnier book about opera ever.

Right now I'm rereading _Cranford_ by Elizabeth Gaskell. It is such a lovely book.


----------



## Aramis

Goin on with my Balzac explorations now I'm at _Illusions Perdues_.

Except this I'm reading some music-related stuff.

Another book about Karłowicz:










And today starting with lenghty volume of letters by Scriabin:


----------



## Guest

Second Treatise of Government - John Locke

Just finished The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek


----------



## tdc

LOSE WEIGHT NOW - THE EASY WAY

by Allen Carr

I actually have no intention to lose any weight, I'm actually really skinny and I'd like to gain weight, but if I eat a lot of fatty foods, I don't actually gain weight, I end up just getting ill and getting a lot of acne. I've kind of made peace with the fact I'm trapped in a skinny acne prone body however I'd like to break my addiction to junk-food. Allen Carr's quit smoking book worked for me, so I'm hoping this book will hypnotize the desire out of me to eat junk-food, which I am addicted to.


----------



## PhillipPark

-The Craft of Composition: Theory -Hindemith
-The Craft of Composition: 2 part exercises -Hindemith
-20th Century Harmony -Persichetti
-The Form of Music -Cole
-The Study of Orchestration -Adler 

I think I'm making most of my summer break


----------



## Manxfeeder

The only good thing about a slow work week is, I finally have time to read something. I'm trying to crack Eliot's The Waste Land with the Norton Critical Edition.


----------



## Ukko

tdc said:


> LOSE WEIGHT NOW - THE EASY WAY
> 
> by Allen Carr
> 
> I actually have no intention to lose any weight, I'm actually really skinny and I'd like to gain weight, but if I eat a lot of fatty foods, I don't actually gain weight, I end up just getting ill and getting a lot of acne. I've kind of made peace with the fact I'm trapped in a skinny acne prone body however I'd like to break my addiction to junk-food. Allen Carr's quit smoking book worked for me, so I'm hoping this book will hypnotize the desire out of me to eat junk-food, which I am addicted to.


The standard acne should gradually diminish with age - you should be pretty clear by 30. That gives room for the acne rosecea to build in. No amount of reading will change your fate.


----------



## tdc

Hilltroll72 said:


> The standard acne should gradually diminish with age - you should be pretty clear by 30. That gives room for the acne rosecea to build in. No amount of reading will change your fate.


:lol:

Are you speaking from personal experience here?

(by the way I'm 32 - no rosecea yet luckily. Sorry for the rant folks - I'm just bitchy right now because I'm going through junk-food withdrawal. )


----------



## GoneBaroque

Manxfeeder said:


> The only good thing about a slow work week is, I finally have time to read something. I'm trying to crack Eliot's The Waste Land with the Norton Critical Edition.


"April is the cruelest month"! also try The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

I am currently reading The Magdeline Legacy by Laurence Gardner in which Gardener looks at the other Mary in the light of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts.

Rob


----------



## Ukko

tdc said:


> :lol:
> 
> Are you speaking from personal experience here?


Oh yes, re the 'standard' acne anyway. The rosecea didn't start 'til I was 60 or so. My (small town) medics haven't said, but I think it's an age-related chemical imbalance thing. I have mentioned my theory about such happenings to my relatives (nephews & nieces, etc.), that after one reaches the age of 50, one's biological usefulness has ended. I don't see much of those folks anymore.


----------



## Guest

_Rules of Prey_ by John Sanford. It's a serial killer novel--so far, so good!


----------



## Wicked_one

_The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious_ by Carl Jung. Definitely, not an easy read, but interesting


----------



## Couchie

I dislike fiction:









The adoption of Christianity in Rome was quite messy.


----------



## science

Couchie said:


> I dislike fiction:


I'm a cynical old SOB, but I'd be surprised if there's no fiction in there....


----------



## Ukko

A.C. Grayling's *Descartes*. A biography of the man in situ during the first years of the 17th Century and the crest of the Counter-Reformation wave in Europe.


----------



## mamascarlatti

tdc said:


> LOSE WEIGHT NOW - THE EASY WAY
> 
> by Allen Carr
> 
> I actually have no intention to lose any weight, I'm actually really skinny and I'd like to gain weight, but if I eat a lot of fatty foods, I don't actually gain weight, I end up just getting ill and getting a lot of acne. I've kind of made peace with the fact I'm trapped in a skinny acne prone body however I'd like to break my addiction to junk-food. Allen Carr's quit smoking book worked for me, so I'm hoping this book will hypnotize the desire out of me to eat junk-food, which I am addicted to.


I'm not sure about getting rid of the desire but some things that work for me:

Never have any junk food in the house
Never walk down the junk food aisle at the supermarket. Stick to the 4 walls, that's where real food is.
Avoid junk food check-outs
Do not allow yourself to set foot in fast-food outlets.

Say to yourself: "these are not for me".


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Oliver Strunk's Source Readings in Music History, vol.3 (Renaissance), W.W. Norton & Company










(Plus Don Carlos libretto in English ! )


----------



## Timotheus

_Shame and Necessity_ by Bernard Williams. Highly recommended to anyone who likes the ancient Greek stuff.

"In some ways, I shall claim, the basic ethical ideas possessed by the Greeks were different from ours, and also in better condition. In some other respects, it is rather that we rely on much the same conceptions as the Greeks, but we do not acknowledge the extent to which we do so"


----------



## samurai

Timotheus said:


> _Shame and Necessity_ by Bernard Williams. Highly recommended to anyone who likes the ancient Greek stuff.
> 
> "In some ways, I shall claim, the basic ethical ideas possessed by the Greeks were different from ours, and also in better condition. In some other respects, it is rather that we rely on much the same conceptions as the Greeks, but we do not acknowledge the extent to which we do so"


Isn't that a contradictory statement, or is it supposed to be, would you know? I'm confused, having just read it for the first time.


----------



## Timotheus

No, it just means that in some ways they were different and in other ways they were similar (but that we don't fully acknowledge it). He talks about their conception of shame and guilt vs our conception, for example, using examples from Homer, Sophocles etc.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Timotheus said:


> No, it just means that in some ways they were different and in other ways they were similar (but that we don't fully acknowledge it). He talks about their conception of shame and guilt vs our conception, for example, using examples from Homer, Sophocles etc.


Using quotes form Homer and Sophocles, is there any chapter on ancient greek art for example drama by any chance ?


----------



## Bix

Part 1 of the Biography of Anuerin Bevan by Michael Foot


----------



## Timotheus

Il_Penseroso said:


> Using quotes form Homer and Sophocles, is there any chapter on ancient greek art for example drama by any chance ?


He draws his examples primarily from tragedy, mostly Agamemnon, Ajax, and the Oedipus series iirc.


----------



## World Violist




----------



## Il_Penseroso

Timotheus said:


> He draws his examples primarily from tragedy, mostly Agamemnon, Ajax, and the Oedipus series iirc.


Ok, thanks ... intended to read this ...

P.S. like your Avatar !


----------



## Guest

Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Would you believe I'm still in War & Peace? It's getting to the climax though, few hundred pages more to go.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

DrMike said:


> Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky


One of the most important works in the history of literature ... Never get tired of reading it again and again !

Sonia is my absolute favorite woman personage ...


----------



## Wicked_one

_Paganini_, again by some Romanian author. Can't get enough of these biographies.


----------



## samurai

*The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story Of America In Its First Age Of Terror,* authored by Beverly Gage.


----------



## Guest

I finished Ethics and am resuming Ulysses, which I'm about halfway through. What a strenuous read...


----------



## Chris

DrMike said:


> Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky





Huilunsoittaja said:


> Would you believe I'm still in War & Peace? It's getting to the climax though, few hundred pages more to go.





Jeff N said:


> I finished Ethics and am resuming Ulysses, which I'm about halfway through. What a strenuous read...


Maybe this isn't the right time to say I've been reading the cartoons on dilbert.com


----------



## World Violist

Chris said:


> Maybe this isn't the right time to say I've been reading the cartoons on dilbert.com


Last night I read a stunningly philosophical Calvin and Hobbes strip, so I wouldn't be too ashamed of reading cartoons


----------



## Manxfeeder

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Would you believe I'm still in War & Peace? It's getting to the climax though, few hundred pages more to go.


Wow, you're my hero. I've read the cover.


----------



## science

I've just finished Moby Dick for the first time. I'll read it again in a few months, but it's one of those books that I can immediately see why it's "a classic." Melville has become one of my heroes. 

I need someone to replace Dostoyevsky, with whom I've become disenchanted (not to say that he's not a superlative writer, just that his worldview is repulsive to me). I think it might be Mann, but Melville will be up there.


----------



## Guest

I love the classics, but I also like reading less dense material. Crime and Punishment isn't as enjoyable, to me, as, say, Dickens. I am intrigued by the story, but the constant internal struggle for the protagonist is getting tedious already, and I am only a third of the way through. But I am trying to read some works that have always piqued my curiosity. I have read Plato's Republic, Macchiavelli's The Prince, Locke's Second Treatise on Government, and various other classics. I haven't tackled any of the Russians yet (Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy), but decided I finally needed to. I'm trying to fill in the gaps that my public school education neglected. 

As a side note, most of these works I have obtained for free for my Kindle, and I suspect that the translations are not the best available - some of the dialog seems very ludicrous, although I realize I do have to factor for a different era, as well as a different culture. But still, I suspect that some of the translation has been botched.

For lighter reading, I am also on the latest in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice saga, "A Dance With Dragons." Gritty, not your standard run-of-the-mill fantasy literature. Not for the squeamish, but it definitely draws you in more than the typical fare in this genre - more political intrigue and character development than sword and sorcery (although there are dragons and some magic!).


----------



## Guest

science said:


> I've just finished Moby Dick for the first time. I'll read it again in a few months, but it's one of those books that I can immediately see why it's "a classic." Melville has become one of my heroes.
> 
> I need someone to replace Dostoyevsky, with whom I've become disenchanted (not to say that he's not a superlative writer, just that his worldview is repulsive to me). I think it might be Mann, but Melville will be up there.


Melville is also on my list - one of these days I intend to read Moby Dick.

I am also going to dust off my German and attempt some German classics in their original language, to overcome the issue with bad translations - Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, and Goethe's Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers and Faust (I have already read Faust in English, so I am hoping that will help me with reading it in the original German).


----------



## Aramis

DrMike said:


> (I have already read Faust in English, so I am hoping that will help me with reading it in the original German).


There is no such thing as _Faust_ in English

If someone thinks that he knows work of literature written in verse because he did read it translated, he is like someone who heard Mozart's symphony in arrangement for ten bagpipes being heavily out of tune. Or like someone who thinks that he knows Mozart's Don Giovanni because he heard Chopin's variations on theme from it. That's the tragedy of poetry. You either know it's original language fluently or you can only try to get close to it by some unreliable translations.

Reading any poetry in original after reading the translated stuff is stunning eye-opener. Sometimes it's really shocking how far can "translated" poem get from the original and still pretend to be work of the same author. It's hard to keep any delusions after few comparisons.


----------



## Guest

Aramis said:


> There is no such thing as _Faust_ in English
> 
> If someone thinks that he knows work of literature written in verse because he did read it translated, he is like someone who heard Mozart's symphony in arrangement for ten bagpipes being heavily out of tune. Or like someone who thinks that he knows Mozart's Don Giovanni because he heard Chopin's variations on theme from it. That's the tragedy of poetry. You either know it's original language fluently or you can only try to get close to it by some unreliable translations.
> 
> Reading any poetry in original after reading the translated stuff is stunning eye-opener. Sometimes it's really shocking how far can "translated" poem get from the original and still pretend to be work of the same author. It's hard to keep any delusions after few comparisons.


Wow, then I guess I should disregard any literature that I cannot read in the original language in which it was written. No Plato if I can't read ancient Greek. No Bible if I can't read Hebrew and Aramaic. No Cicero if I am not fluent in Latin. No Beowulf if I can't read old English.

I agree that there will always be problems with translations, as there are various aspects of different languages that simply do not translate into others, but your analogy to music is somewhat flawed. Many works have been transcribed for other instruments, and still work quite well. I have a recording of Bach's Art of Fugue performed by saxophones that works very well, even though I'm fairly certain Bach did not write it with saxophones in mind. I've heard piano transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies that, while not preferred to symphonic renditions, can nevertheless be very enjoyable. Flaws will occur in translations, but I think it is entirely possible to enjoy translations of great literature. It would certainly be a shame to miss out on some of the greatest literature this world has produced simply because we are not all polyglots.


----------



## World Violist

Aramis said:


> There is no such thing as _Faust_ in English
> 
> If someone thinks that he knows work of literature written in verse because he did read it translated, he is like someone who heard Mozart's symphony in arrangement for ten bagpipes being heavily out of tune. Or like someone who thinks that he knows Mozart's Don Giovanni because he heard Chopin's variations on theme from it. That's the tragedy of poetry. You either know it's original language fluently or you can only try to get close to it by some unreliable translations.
> 
> Reading any poetry in original after reading the translated stuff is stunning eye-opener. Sometimes it's really shocking how far can "translated" poem get from the original and still pretend to be work of the same author. It's hard to keep any delusions after few comparisons.


Writing something down in itself is a translation. You can't get a perfect idea of anything by reading it, because language is by itself a limiting factor. What matters is the idea, and you can't get that just by reading something, original language or no.


----------



## Aramis

> Wow, then I guess I should disregard any literature that I cannot read in the original language in which it was written. No Plato if I can't read ancient Greek. No Bible if I can't read Hebrew and Aramaic. No Cicero if I am not fluent in Latin. No Beowulf if I can't read old English.


As horrible as it sounds, it's truth - nobody who did not master Dante's language will ever explore richness of Divine Comedy in full. The more given work is written according to rules of rhythm, the more dense rhymes are the less faithful is the translation. Asking "so what? can't I read X? one of most famous writers in history?" makes my claims seem a bit absurd but it doesn't deny it - it's just because the truth is difficult to accept for anyone who loves poetry.



> Writing something down in itself is a translation. You can't get a perfect idea of anything by reading it, because language is by itself a limiting factor. What matters is the idea, and you can't get that just by reading something, original language or no.


No, at least not in all cases. Most of poetry is craft of language as much as it's craft of thought and idea. Translation overweights to the first - translator, in order to keep rhythm and rhymes, often changes the idea and thought and that is how it happens that the work is no longer what it was in original version.


----------



## World Violist

Aramis said:


> No, at least not in all cases. Most of poetry is craft of language as much as it's craft of thought and idea. Translation overweights to the first - translator, in order to keep rhythm and rhymes, often changes the idea and thought and that is how it happens that the work is no longer what it was in original version.


If you look at it artistically, none of this matters. It's still a work of art, it's still an idea, and therefore it can't be fully discounted whether it's exactly as the writer intended or not.

Looking at music, obviously the Bach/Busoni Chaconne is very different from the original, yet still people like to listen to it on its own terms while still realizing it isn't exactly as Bach wrote it. If I read Goethe in English, I recognize the shortcomings of translation but still enjoy it as a work of art nonetheless.

Also following this line of logic, movie adaptations are worthless too, no matter how good they are. The Lord of the Rings movies are stunning movies, but they're different from the original books. Does this mean that they need be discounted? Not if they're taken on their own terms.


----------



## Aramis

World Violist said:


> If you look at it artistically, none of this matters. It's still a work of art, it's still an idea, and therefore it can't be fully discounted whether it's exactly as the writer intended or not.
> 
> Looking at music, obviously the Bach/Busoni Chaconne is very different from the original, yet still people like to listen to it on its own terms while still realizing it isn't exactly as Bach wrote it. If I read Goethe in English, I recognize the shortcomings of translation but still enjoy it as a work of art nonetheless.
> 
> Also following this line of logic, movie adaptations are worthless too, no matter how good they are. The Lord of the Rings movies are stunning movies, but they're different from the original books. Does this mean that they need be discounted? Not if they're taken on their own terms.


We are not talking about what is worthless or not - that is not the point. The point is the matter of authorship, the question: what exactly are we reading? If you would count number of lines with considerable differences from the original in Shakespeare's drama or Byron's poem you would have to ask yourself if you're still really reading Shakespeare/Byron or some fusion of thoughts between two men - author and translator. Many times I was delighted with some poetic phrase and later discovered that it doesn't exist in the original work.


----------



## Timotheus

You lose some things in poetry but others stay just fine. This is what makes translations worth reading.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends" may just not sound the same in translation...maybe the word order is mixed up and it becomes "Dear friends, to the breach once more" etc, and just doesn't sound as good. But the emotional impact of "for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother" is going to be just as powerful in translation.


----------



## GoneBaroque

I have in my piles o books an edition of Goethe's Faust with the German text and an English translation on facing pages.

Rob


----------



## science

I don't think it matters so much. Very few English readers appreciate Shakespeare.


----------



## Sieglinde

A Dance with Dragons. Got it the day it was released. Anyone else? Some fellow GRRM fan? 

It's good so far, THIS is what I was expecting after ASOS.


----------



## clavichorder

The History of Love-Nicole Krauss

My friend recommended it and so far I'm really enjoying it.


----------



## Manxfeeder

I just finished Physics, Everyday Science at the Speed of Light. Now I can rewatch my Big Bang Theory DVDs and chuckle at the in-jokes.


----------



## haydnfan

I recently reread A Tale of Two Cities. While the morality is too black and white for me now (last time I read it was high school), there is a powerful message here and memorable themes.


----------



## Guest

Sieglinde said:


> A Dance with Dragons. Got it the day it was released. Anyone else? Some fellow GRRM fan?
> 
> It's good so far, THIS is what I was expecting after ASOS.


I am reading it as well. It is a good series. I like that it isn't your standard sword and sorcery fantasy. Martin's pension to not hold anybody too sacred to spare them death is somewhat refreshing, but sometimes I think he takes it a little too far.


----------



## Vesteralen

Sophocles - Selected Poems (Odes and Fragments) Translated by Reginald Gibbons.

No, I can't read ancient Greek (though I am learning Modern Greek), but I'm not going to give up my favorite author just because I can't read him in the original language.


----------



## Ralfy

Yukio Mishima's _Temple of the Golden Pavilion_


----------



## Badinerie

Just finished JB Preistly's Lost Empires. Started Julian May's The Many Coloured Land.


----------



## mamascarlatti

science said:


> I don't think it matters so much. Very few English readers appreciate Shakespeare.


That's because they are READING it, and Shakepeare plays only reach their full potential when performed. (Sonnets are another matter).


----------



## Manxfeeder

The Story of Christian Music, Andrew Wilson-Dickson. The book must have been a daunting task, going from Jewish chant to the 1990s in 252 pages. But he does highlight how Christian music adaped to every era, including African, Greek, and Russian traditions.

When he gets into the late 20th Century, he tends to be centered on developments in England (there is no mention of the Jesus Movement/Calvary Chapel/charismatic movement in America after the Vietnam War ended, which I thought deserved attention; Andre Crouch even sang his gospel music on the Johnny Carson show, and he calls black gospel songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey Tommy Dorsey for some reason), but most comprehensive histories break down the closer they get to current times.

Overall, I found it interesting and informative, maybe a little too detailed at times.


----------



## samurai

*Colonel Roosevelt*, written by Edmund Morris.


----------



## Manxfeeder

Sorry for the duplicate post - I pushed a wrong key. See the entry below.


----------



## Manxfeeder

I'm starting into Karlheinz Stockhausen's music - wow, that's a daunting task - but I've just read Stockhausen On Music, Lectures and Interviews complied by Robin Maconie. He explains the basics behind different works and takes out the intimidation factor.


----------



## Klavierspieler

I just finished reading Winnie-the-Pooh, now I'm re-reading The Hobbit for the Nth time.


----------



## Operafocus

*Catcher in the rye* - because I've been curious about it for years, as many people committing horrid acts have said they've been "inspired by" this book. I'm curious as to why the hell that is. Just like I'm, sick as it may sound, curious about *Mein Kampf*, as a historical piece.


----------



## Vesteralen

Also Jean Leymarie's "Corot" from SKIRA


----------



## clavichorder

Just finished "about a boy" by Nick Hornby. Now on to "Everything is Illuminated".


----------



## Guest

Taking yet another break from the always enigmatic and cerebral Ulysses to read Albert Camus' The Plague. My parents got me 4 of his novels as a birthday gift yesterday, and I just couldn't help but jump right into them.


----------



## beethovenian

Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day (Got interested in it after i watched the film adaptation of his novel 'Never let me go')
Spinoza - Ethics (Very tough read!)


----------



## schigolch

Interesting reading on the last hundred years or so, of Comanche independence and the wars fought with Texas Rangers and American soldiers.


----------



## science

Just started "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." I don't know if I'm just oversensitive because I just read "To Kill a Mockingbird," but at this point it seems a bit romantic for my taste. On the other hand, I'd read either of those books five hundred times before I'd read "The Power of One" again. What utter horrible lousy crap. Makes me want to punch the author.


----------



## clavichorder

science said:


> Just started "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." I don't know if I'm just oversensitive because I just read "To Kill a Mockingbird," but at this point it seems a bit romantic for my taste. On the other hand, I'd read either of those books five hundred times before I'd read "The Power of One" again. What utter horrible lousy crap. Makes me want to punch the author.


I'm halfway through "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", I like it because it has substance and its an easy read in terms of writing style. Can you define what you mean by romantic, it doesn't seem unrealistically sentimental to me, but I do hear that the ending will be very sad/depressing.


----------



## Timotheus

Just finished *The Anglo-Saxon world: an anthology*. Very interesting collection of primary source documents translated from old english. Didn't realize how little I actually new about that time period. Contains some short poems, some laws, some letters, some riddles, some historical recordings, some legal documents, and Beowulf to top it off which was by far my favorite part of the book.

I've moved on to reading about another period but if anyone has any book recommendations from that area let me know.


----------



## Meaghan

Operafocus said:


> *Catcher in the rye* - because I've been curious about it for years, as many people committing horrid acts have said they've been "inspired by" this book. I'm curious as to why the hell that is.


:lol:

I did not care for that book. Books about angsty teenagers being angsty are usually not my cup of tea.


----------



## science

clavichorder said:


> I'm halfway through "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", I like it because it has substance and its an easy read in terms of writing style. Can you define what you mean by romantic, it doesn't seem unrealistically sentimental to me, but I do hear that the ending will be very sad/depressing.


Something like "unrealistically sentimental" is what I meant. I'm especially thinking of the characters, who seem to me to be something like made for Hollywood. Now I'm only about 1/4 of the way through (it's going to take me more than a week to finish), so maybe the characters will "flesh out" in some surprising ways.


----------



## clavichorder

Well, science, let me tell you, you can do far worse than that book, you aren't totally wasting your time if you consider novel reading not a waste of time. I suppose to me it was a refreshment from victorian literature, it wasn't as real as Anthony Trollope(then again, its hard to beat him in that aspect), but it is easy to read! 

With that one I initially had the reaction of the title being silly to me, but I read the first chapter and enjoyed it, it was flowing for me and I overlooked its sentimentality. As for characters fleshing out, I'm not certain either, but do let me know what it does for you eventually, good or bad.


----------



## starthrower

The Guns Of August by Barbara Tuchman


----------



## Guest

starthrower said:


> The Guns Of August by Barbara Tuchman


Not a bad book, at all. It does a really good job of giving you the back story leading up to the war. WWI is so frustrating to read about. Military leaders and political leaders failing to recognize that the methods of waging war were changing right in front of their eyes, and choosing rather to throw wave after wave of men into the meat grinder. Just reading about Gallipoli alone can drive you mad. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, but it just shocks you how insane it really was.


----------



## Operafocus

Meaghan said:


> :lol:
> 
> I did not care for that book. Books about angsty teenagers being angsty are usually not my cup of tea.


I didn't really care for it either, so now I'm attempting "The winner stands alone" by Paulo Coelho. I enjoyed his "The witch of Portobello" but this one is quite a yawn-fest so far. Maybe because it's the adult version of "Catcher in the rye" - older, angrier and richer.


----------



## kg4fxg

*Philosophy & Classical Music Books*

Philosophy
Basic Readings edited by Nigel Warburton

The History of Philosophy - Frederick Copleston, S.J. (Series of about 10 books)

How to Read a Book - Mortimer J. Adler
Some 426 pages - very good.

Who's Afraid of Classical Music - Michael Walsh
Just for fun - easy read.

Karl Marx said that Religion is the opium of the people. Well, my opium is Fine Literature. I like this thread, what the world needs is more great books.


----------



## World Violist

I've got several books on my reading list right now, and I'm not sure which of them I'll get through by the end of summer.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. 4th time reading this, I think, within the past 3 or 4 years.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. 2nd time since spring '10, when I was on the road college shopping during break.
E.E. Cummings' Complete Poetry edited by George J Firmage. I've heard some great things about this guy's work.
Wisdom of Our Fathers by Tim Russert. My mom read this and recommended it to me; I've read a bit of it already and I like it quite a lot. It's not the crappy brainwashing "go to college or die in the gutter" bull either, it's actually worth reading.
In the Shadow of the Ark by Anne Provoost. I saw her discussing this book with Bill Moyers on his series "On Faith and Reason" and just had to read it. It's about the people who are left behind in the Noah's Ark story, apparently.

And, um, yah, I think that's it. Something close to 3,000 pages to get through by the 20th or so (at least the three of these that aren't mine but the library's). I don't think I'll be posting here as much as usual then, except the 30-day opera challenge and occasionally the Current Listening.


----------



## starthrower

DrMike said:


> Not a bad book, at all. It does a really good job of giving you the back story leading up to the war. WWI is so frustrating to read about. Military leaders and political leaders failing to recognize that the methods of waging war were changing right in front of their eyes, and choosing rather to throw wave after wave of men into the meat grinder. Just reading about Gallipoli alone can drive you mad. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, but it just shocks you how insane it really was.


It takes a lot of patience to slog through this book, but it is interesting. I have a hard time keeping all of these generals and statesman straight. As Mrs. Tuchman stated, this was truly the moment in history when the world entered the 20th century and left the old guard behind. Same human folly, much graver consequences.


----------



## Aramis

_Marion de Lorme_, a play by Victor Hugo. Surprisingly romantic for author of _Les Miserables_. Hugo was (or attempted to be at least) reformator of the genre. I enjoy this work so far and perhaps will dive into _Ruy Blas_ (another of his plays) after.

Also a volume of poetry by Heinrich Heine. All his poems are equally beautiful. Perhaps because they are all the same. HO HO HO.


----------



## Guest

starthrower said:


> It takes a lot of patience to slog through this book, but it is interesting. I have a hard time keeping all of these generals and statesman straight. As Mrs. Tuchman stated, this was truly the moment in history when the world entered the 20th century and left the old guard behind. Same human folly, much graver consequences.


I think it started before then. Many people would point to the American Civil War as the first modern war - Grant understood it better than Lee.

But it didn't end with WWI - each new war requires adapting. Some of the lessons were learned - but just read about the Allied operations in North Africa, and you will see why it was a good idea that the U.S. started off the war there instead of jumping into Europe immediately. Each war begins the way the previous war ended - then a bunch of people die before militaries learn to adapt.


----------



## Fuga42

I finished to read "The Master and Margarita" by Mikail Bulgakov and now i'm thinking to start to read "Histoire d'O" by Dominque Aury ou maybe "Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio....hmmmm....i will think about. Someone want to help me in the choice?


----------



## Meaghan

World Violist said:


> His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. 4th time reading this, I think, within the past 3 or 4 years.
> ...
> E.E. Cummings' Complete Poetry edited by George J Firmage. I've heard some great things about this guy's work.


I used to read the His Dark Materials trilogy every summer. I think I've read it five times. Also, I love e. e. cummings.
For what it's worth, coming from a stranger, you are officially totally cool.


----------



## Klavierspieler

Aramis said:


> Also a volume of poetry by Heinrich Heine....


I love Heine's poetry, I've thought of turning a couple of them into _Lieder_.


----------



## Jupiter

I am reading this:










It's quite a "saucy" read, not dry at all.


----------



## Meaghan

The 13 Clocks, by James Thurber. For the umpteenth time. It is one of my very favorite books. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteen_Clocks) says it is "noted for Thurber's constant, complex wordplay, and his use of an almost continuous internal meter, with occasional hidden rhymes," but that doesn't quite cover it. Besides employing "occasional hidden rhymes," Thurber slips fluidly in and out of iambic pentameter and manages to write long stretches of alliteration that, far from sounding awkward or contrived, are often _beautiful._ I have never encountered a writer of prose who has more fun with language than James Thurber. I highly recommend this lovely, playful book to everyone in the world, but especially those who love words. And it's a very quick read.


----------



## Argus

Morton Feldman - Give My Regards To Eighth Street










Fairly interesting read because he talks a lot about his music and how it relates to paintings, specifically the New York School of the 50's, but he doesn't half spew out some pseud ******** for most of it. His anecdotes are entertaining though.


----------



## samurai

Philip K. Dick--Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s:
*Martian Time Slip*
*Dr.Bloodmoney*
*Now Wait for Last Year*
*Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said*
*A Scanner Darkly*


----------



## sospiro

Die With Me by Elena Forbes










Got it from the library thinking it would be your typical crime thriller/'who done it' and not very taxing for the brain. It *is* your typical crime thriller/'who done it' and not very taxing for the brain but the main character is a detective called Mark (real name Marco) Tartaglia. Ms Forbes must be an opera fan as Detective Tartaglia likes Verdi and Rossini and apparently looks like Ildebrando D'Arcangelo.


----------



## Jupiter

samurai said:


> Philip K. Dick--Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s:
> *Martian Time Slip*
> *Dr.Bloodmoney*
> *Now Wait for Last Year*
> *Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said*
> *A Scanner Darkly*


Dick really is a genre genius. One of those rare sf writers who is more concerned with the nature of reality rather than speculating on technology or forcasting the future. Those novels you mention only scratch the surface of a deeply significant body of work.


----------



## TxllxT

My wife likes to read aloud to me. So after all the stories of Guy de Maupassant, the best short stories of Leo.N. Tolstoy (not so interesting) we have now started with Davita's Harp by Chaim Potok. Nice oldies


----------



## beethovenian

Kafka's The Castle

I am prepared for nightmares


----------



## Polednice

At the moment, I'm engrossed in _The Gun Seller_ by Hugh Laurie, which is a hilarious spoof on the spy genre. It has wonderful linguistic tricks and jokes on every page, and yet doesn't manage to get bogged down, still ploughing forward with a gripping plot. If you like Laurie from his Fry & Laurie days, then this is a good way to get some more of his signature humour.


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> Philip K. Dick--Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s:
> *Martian Time Slip*
> *Dr.Bloodmoney*
> *Now Wait for Last Year*
> *Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said*
> *A Scanner Darkly*


I've read The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Great alternative to your run of the mill sci-fi.


----------



## Guest

Currently reading:
The Darkness that Comes Before (Book One of The Prince of Nothing) by R. Scott Bakker.

I finished the latest George R. R. Martin book (Dance With Dragons), and needed something to tide me over for the next 50 years or so before the next half of a book comes out, and saw this series recommended.


----------



## samurai

@ DrMike, I really agree with you about this author. Were you able to make any sense out of *The Man In The High Castle,* though? I read it a couple of times and still never quite "got it". I am finding these other stories of his far more accessible--at least to me--albeit they are all--to one degree or another--depictions of "alternate realities". I also intend to read and see his *Minority Report*, along with *A Scanner Darkly.* I really enjoyed *Blade Runner *{not least because of Harrison Ford} as well, although I had never read the story which was its basis *{Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?}. *However, I now intend to read that shortly.


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> @ DrMike, I really agree with you about this author. Were you able to make any sense out of *The Man In The High Castle,* though? I read it a couple of times and still never quite "got it". I am finding these other stories of his far more accessible--at least to me--albeit they are all--to one degree or another--depictions of "alternate realities". I also intend to read and see his *Minority Report*, along with *A Scanner Darkly.* I really enjoyed *Blade Runner *{not least because of Harrison Ford} as well, although I had never read the story which was its basis *{Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?}. *However, I now intend to read that shortly.


It has been a while since I read High Castle - I kind of got it as I read it, but it took some thinking afterwards. But I don't remember that much now.

D.A.D.O.E.S. was good - not quite the same as Bladerunner (not a big surprise, they rarely do). Both are good.

I haven't read Minority Report, but I really like the movie. I didn't care for the movie Paycheck, but the storyline seemed like a good one (I think it is one of his short stories).

I need to read some more Phillip K. Dick books, but right now I am more into the fantasy genre.


----------



## samurai

I know what you mean, DrMike; sometimes I get into a Terry Brooks kind of "groove" and will read only his various works for about a month or so. Then I'll revert back to my usual mix of sci-fi and history. Speaking of the fantasy genre, I recently have "discovered" R.A. Salvatore and his *Forgotten* *Realms *series. I read the *Dark Elf Trilogy *and really liked it. Are you at all familiar with this author?


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> I know what you mean, DrMike; sometimes I get into a Terry Brooks kind of "groove" and will read only his various works for about a month or so. Then I'll revert back to my usual mix of sci-fi and history. Speaking of the fantasy genre, I recently have "discovered" R.A. Salvatore and his *Forgotten* *Realms *series. I read the *Dark Elf Trilogy *and really liked it. Are you at all familiar with this author?


Not so much - I tried reading some of the more conventional sword-and-sorcery. I read a couple books of the Shannara series. They just kind of turned me off. I love Tolkien, but these weren't doing it for me.

Then I heard things about George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, decided to try it, and am in love with it. More intelligent fantasy, not as much magic or bizarre creatures, but still enough to make it unmistakably fantasy. Great character development. I fly through them. I just bought the newest in the series immediately after it came out, and now have a lag until the next one comes out. I read recommendations for fantasy similar to Martin, and heard good things about Bakker's Prince of Nothing series. More cerebral fantasy. I'm still on the first in the series, to see if it is for me.


----------



## samurai

DrMike, Thanks. I think I'll try the George R. R. Martin series since you so highly recommend it. I also really like Tolkien, so if he's anything along the same lines, I should like him also. Thanks Again for the recommendation.


----------



## dmg

Currently reading:



Covers a variety of evolutionary topics, such as the formation and conservation of core mechanics and the 'Baldwin Effect'.


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> DrMike, Thanks. I think I'll try the George R. R. Martin series since you so highly recommend it. I also really like Tolkien, so if he's anything along the same lines, I should like him also. Thanks Again for the recommendation.


Martin is not exactly like Tolkien. It is more epic fantasy, though. There is a huge backstory with Martin that you don't get spoonfed right off the bat - you are given glimpses of it as the total story progresses. I will say that it is more gritty - a lot more gritty - than Tolkien. Violence is high - and graphic - and so is the sex, although not blatantly so. Think Tolkien meets the Sopranos, with a Medieval Europe feel.


----------



## samurai

DrMike, Great description. Now my appetite is really whetted!


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> DrMike, Great description. Now my appetite is really whetted!


It is a great series - nobody is held sacred, anybody can get killed off, so don't get too attached to any characters. Also, you may find that characters you initially hate can later become your favorites. The latter books have gotten a little muddled - I suppose that is to be expected - but still good reads. But the first couple will definitely get you hooked.


----------



## samurai

@ DrMike, I was just wondering: how many books comprise this series? I was planning on taking them out from my local library within a month or so. Perhaps, though, I would be better served by purchasing them from Amazon or Barnes and Noble if there are really many of them and they are very long?


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Oh guess what! I finished War & Peace a few weeks ago! Finally it's over! It was a good ending too. What's deceptive about it is that the end really isn't the end: you have to read a long epilogue and that's finally the end. You can't skip the epilogue.

And I just finished this: Three Tips for Campus Survival:









Now, I have nothing major to read. Have to find something else.


----------



## Polednice

DrMike said:


> It is a great series - nobody is held sacred, anybody can get killed off, so don't get too attached to any characters. Also, you may find that characters you initially hate can later become your favorites. The latter books have gotten a little muddled - I suppose that is to be expected - but still good reads. But the first couple will definitely get you hooked.


I haven't read the series myself. I considered it, but I've noticed a lot of reviews since the latest book not only condemning its lack of momentum, but also for an apparent layer of needless racism and sexism. What do you think of those views of his books>


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> @ DrMike, I was just wondering: how many books comprise this series? I was planning on taking them out from my local library within a month or so. Perhaps, though, I would be better served by purchasing them from Amazon or Barnes and Noble if there are really many of them and they are very long?


There are currently 5, with 2 more planned for the entire series. I don't know how quickly you read, but they are quite lengthy. I don't know the exact page count, as I purchase them for my Kindle. But they are quite hefty books. I like checking out from the library, so I would suggest that for at least the first book until you know if you will like them.


----------



## Guest

Polednice said:


> I haven't read the series myself. I considered it, but I've noticed a lot of reviews since the latest book not only condemning its lack of momentum, but also for an apparent layer of needless racism and sexism. What do you think of those views of his books>


The previous book, A Feast For Crows, did seem to lose a bit of the momentum - but still, I quite enjoyed it.

As to the racism and sexism - I don't know about the racism. It doesn't really enter into it that much, at least as I recall. Honestly, it seems like everybody pretty much hates everybody; they don't take the time to hate based on race. And I'm not even sure there are significantly different races that enter into it. There is mention of dark-skinned people from time to time, but they don't play much of a role - about as foreign as black Africans would have been to your average British person back over 1000 years ago.

As for sexism - well, it is set in a different world, but there are a lot of parallels to medieval Europe. The sexism is, I suppose, what would have been realistic to that type of a setting - women were often given the short end of the stick, then, and rape following conquest was not unheard of. Whores are fairly prevalent as well, often as followers on to armies. Women were also not given the rights that men had. Still, several of the key figures in the story are very strong women. One of the central characters, in fact, is a woman who is very much in charge. I think more of the criticism has been heaped on the HBO adaptation of the books, which adds a bit more sex/nudity because, well, it is HBO. I haven't watched it - I don't have HBO.

Like I said - it is gritty. It is not happy, family-friendly sword-and-sorcery fantasy. But it is a lot more fascinating, and engaging, and the morally grey universe it creates is really intriguing. You will start off with those that you think are good, and those that you think are bad. And then things will change. And you will find even those you really like doing horrible things, because of the circumstances. There are negative reviews, but, by and large, I think you will see that these books come highly recommended.


----------



## beethovenian

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Now, I have nothing major to read. Have to find something else.


How about The Karamazov?


----------



## dafnis

Light reading: "The Ninth: Beethoven and the world in 1824" by Harvey Sachs. Just got it yesterday so do not have an opinion as yet.

Re-reading for 3rd time: "Bach: The learned musician" by Christoph Wolff. Can't get enough!

Non-music: "Coinage and the Julio-Claudians - 31 BC to 69 AD", by CHV Sutherland. For ancient coin nuts


----------



## Noak

Currently (books I've started reading at different points in time and still hasn't finished): The Trial (Franz Kafka), The Code Book (Simon Singh). Big Bang (Simon Singh), Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial (Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst), Role Models (John Waters), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). I'm an unorganized reader, I start but rarely finish books.


----------



## science

dmg said:


> Currently reading:
> 
> 
> 
> Covers a variety of evolutionary topics, such as the formation and conservation of core mechanics and the 'Baldwin Effect'.


I don't know how that book escaped my attention until now. I will certainly read it. I _love_ pop-bio books. Read all of Zimmer, Dawkins, Ridley, most of Quammen, and so on. One author I've neglected, only reading one of his books so far, is Heinrich.


----------



## beethovenian

Half way through reading this book. 
Some people liken this to a modern day kafka's the castle. But this is way more crazy and surreal.

Just arrived in the mail!


----------



## samurai

Phiilip K. Dick--*Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?*
Peter Hart--*The* *Somme: The Darkest Hour On The Western Front *


----------



## Klavierspieler

C. S. Lewis - The Great Divorce

Actually, I'm already finished (pretty short book). Good read.


----------



## larifari

Having gone through this thread, and seen what people read, I will probably be called a slob, when I say that I am reading another novel by Lee Child.


----------



## samurai

Philip K. Dick--*The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch*


----------



## Klavierspieler

George MacDonald - _Phantastes_


----------



## myaskovsky2002

Aramis said:


> Just finished Molière's _The Bourgeois Gentleman_. I usually read dramas, because these books are most cheap you can find, he-he-he <applause>.
> 
> Now attempting _Candide_ by Voltaire. Those are my first steps into french literature.


i love your choices...I read them in French.

Martin


----------



## myaskovsky2002

I'm reading two books:

Finishing "Raising Jake" in English










GREAT BOOK!!!!!

Just started: Agatha Christie's : Elephants can remember in Spanish (no picture for this)

I read at least 2 hours a day.

Martin


----------



## myaskovsky2002

beethovenian said:


> How about The Karamazov?


I love Dostoyevsky.

Martin


----------



## Klavierspieler

C. S. Lewis - _Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast_


----------



## Shamit

Im Currently reading ''The Grand Design'', by Stephen Hawking and also a book ''Physics of Music''


----------



## samurai

Philip K. Dick--*Ubik*


----------



## starthrower

The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross


----------



## lou

starthrower said:


> The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross


I recently purchased a used copy of this myself, but haven't got around to reading it yet.

Are you enjoying it?


----------



## Vesteralen

Insight Guide - Iceland
Maud Powell - Pioneer American Violinist
Spirit of England (short life of Elgar)
The Black Goatee - Constance and Gwenyth Little
Four other books on Elgar
Red Helmet - Homer Hickham (just starting)
oh yeah, I almost forgot:
The Complete Peanuts (1961-1962) You guessed it, I'm reading all these volumes in order  But, this one has some of Schulz's very best material. Truly the Golden Age of Peanuts.


----------



## starthrower

lou said:


> I recently purchased a used copy of this myself, but haven't got around to reading it yet.
> 
> Are you enjoying it?


Some of the musician/theory stuff is beyond my musical education, but the historical content and anecdotal ditties are interesting. It starts off with a great scene featuring immortals Richard Strauss, Mahler, and Schoenberg in Vienna for the premier of Strauss's risque opera Salome, inspired by Oscar Wilde's play.


----------



## Couchie

I'm reading a book on how to read faster.


----------



## myaskovsky2002

Klavierspieler said:


> C. S. Lewis - The Great Divorce
> 
> Actually, I'm already finished (pretty short book). Good read.


Could you explain a little more about this book?

Martin


----------



## sospiro

The Narrows by Michael Connelly

I love this guy's writing, especially the Harry Bosch series.


----------



## Aksel

I just finished Of Mice and Men. I was completely and utterly floored when I'd read the final sentence. What a fantastic, fantastic book.

And currently, I'm reading the Norwegian translation of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.


----------



## myaskovsky2002

I started reading the Queen's dollmaker...recommended by my wife. It's a chapter in Marie Antoinette's life...I have just started, it is in English. It seems to be well written...Until now it is nice.

Martin


----------



## myaskovsky2002

I have finished reading "the elephants have good memory". I had it in Spanish for my students. It was nice...for a change. It's by Agatha Christie...with Hercule Poirot. No surprises. The crime was solved.

Martin


----------



## HerlockSholmes

Just finished _The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution_ by Richard Dawkins.
Currently reading _Voltaire: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom_ by Roger Pearson.
Next up is _Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations_ by Craig Nelson.


----------



## Ravellian

Lots of wonderful textbooks:

_A History of Keyboard Literature_ by Stewart Gordon
_A History of Western Music_ by Burkholder/Grout/Palisca
_Classical Music: The Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven_ by Philip Downs
_Ethical Theory and Business_ by Tom Beauchamp
_Business Strategy and Policy_ by Douglas Ross
_Cost Management: A Strategic Emphasis_ by Blocher/Stout/Cokins

and, the real big bad boy...
_Federal Taxation_ by Smith/Harmelink/Hasselback


----------



## myaskovsky2002

Ravellian said:


> Lots of wonderful textbooks:
> 
> _A History of Keyboard Literature_ by Stewart Gordon
> _A History of Western Music_ by Burkholder/Grout/Palisca
> _Classical Music: The Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven_ by Philip Downs
> _Ethical Theory and Business_ by Tom Beauchamp
> _Business Strategy and Policy_ by Douglas Ross
> _Cost Management: A Strategic Emphasis_ by Blocher/Stout/Cokins
> 
> and, the real big bad boy...
> _Federal Taxation_ by Smith/Harmelink/Hasselback


Wow! Kind of different stuff...a bit complicated for me! LOL

Martin


----------



## Lukecash12

I'm currently reading some of Thomas Holby's books, as well as Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics, and Hobbes' Leviathan.


----------



## Klavierspieler

myaskovsky2002 said:


> Could you explain a little more about this book?
> 
> Martin


It's about the choices that people make. It takes place in Hell and (largely) Heaven (though it makes no claim to tell anything about what they are really like) and mainly discusses why people reject Heaven.


----------



## samurai

These are ongoing reading materials for me, which serve as reference materials to which I often find myself going:

Miles Hoffman--*The NPR Classical Music Companion*
Ted Libbey--*The NPR Listener's Encylopedia Of Classical Music*
Jan Swafford--*The Vintage Guide To Classical Music* {still awaiting its delivery from Amazon}.


----------



## violadude

I started listening to Alex Ross's bestseller, "The Rest is Noise" today. So far it's a very vivid picture of the cultural, social and political climate that created the music of the 20th century.


----------



## clavichorder

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, by Alexander McCall Smith. Incredibly funny book.


----------



## Meaghan

Ravellian said:


> _A History of Western Music_ by Burkholder/Grout/Palisca


I'm so sorry. My music history professor last year made us outline chapters of that thing.



violadude said:


> I started listening to Alex Ross's bestseller, "The Rest is Noise" today. So far it's a very vivid picture of the cultural, social and political climate that created the music of the 20th century.


That is a _really_ fun book. I enjoyed it very much.


----------



## violadude

violadude said:


> I started listening to Alex Ross's bestseller, "The Rest is Noise" today. So far it's a very vivid picture of the cultural, social and political climate that created the music of the 20th century.


Oh god, did I really say listening to instead of reading??? I'm so used to posting in the music sections of the forum...


----------



## Ravellian

Meaghan said:


> I'm so sorry. My music history professor last year made us outline chapters of that thing.


Oh no, I think it's an excellent introductory music history textbook. It's perfect for providing the most important facts pertinent to any era, in a manner that's not overly technical or laborious to read. It also provides a great list of resources for further reading for every chapter. I'm a bit puzzled as to why your teacher made you do outlines... there's an outline of every chapter in the beginning of the book


----------



## Meaghan

It was sort of a particularly structured form of note-taking--very detailed outlines. Yes, it's a useful resource, I just got sick of it, and I guess all the stuff I had to do with it has biased me against it.


----------



## lou

Just finished this one 









Enjoyed parts of it, found myself skipping through to those eras and composers that interested me. A little to academic for my knowledge/taste.


----------



## Klavierspieler

_Up From Slavery_ by Booker T. Washington.

I'm also reading the _Voluspo_, a Norse poem. I used to wonder how Tolkien came up with such splendid names for his characters; no longer.


----------



## Guest

Lord Foul's Bane (Book One of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever) - Stephen R. Donaldson


----------



## jalex

Just started Berlioz's _Memoires_, should be an interesting read.

Saramago's _The Double_ is next up. I love this guy's writing style.


----------



## lou

lou said:


> Just finished this one
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Enjoyed parts of it, found myself skipping through to those eras and composers that interested me. A little to academic for my knowledge/taste.


My grammatical error (to instead of too) only serves to enhance my statement.


----------



## Sid James

_Music and Imagination_ by *Aaron Copland*.

HERE it is on Google Books.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Where They Ain't by Burt Solomon. It's about the original 1890's Baltimore Orioles club and the Irish nucleus that was at the centre of their hardscrabble achievements - Hanlon, McGraw, Keeler, Jennings etc. A fine, sepia-tinted read.


----------



## lou

As an opera novice, I'm quite enjoying this one.

Clear and concise information, with wonderful photos and illustrations.


----------



## science

Little Women.

Very sweet and funny. I highly recommend it.


----------



## Guest

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson. It's creepy and highly entertaining!


----------



## Igneous01

Finished reading "The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order" by Samuel Huntington. I like the thesis and theory presented in this book, of course there has been a lot of criticism about it, I very much enjoyed the book.

Currently reading "Varieties of history: from Voltaire to the present" and "A world full of gods" with the former being more on the boring side. Which makes me think of the weird paradox - a historian writing about the history of another historian who in turn wrote about the history of some other guy etc..


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Recently, I've been reading a slim collection of poetry by the Slovenian, Ales Debeljak:


----------



## Meaghan

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Recently, I've been reading a slim collection of poetry by the Slovenian, Ales Debeljak:


What's it like? I am always on the lookout for good poets I've never read.


----------



## HerlockSholmes

Herlock Sholmes is currently reading Sherlock Holmes. And he very much loves _The Man With the Twisted Lip_ and _A Scandal in Bohemia_.


----------



## BalloinMaschera

Mary Tudor: England's First Queen by Anna Whitelock


----------



## lou

HerlockSholmes said:


> Herlock Sholmes is currently reading Sherlock Holmes. And he very much loves _The Man With the Twisted Lip_ and _A Scandal in Bohemia_.


I recently downloaded a free app to my iPhone from a company called Book Tracks. It's the Sherlock Holmes story The Speckled Band and it features music and sound effects that play while you read the text. The program even adjusts to your reading speed, so the audio plays at the appropriate times in the story. More of a novelty to me really, but I love how these great stories still inspire people to find new ways of presenting them.


----------



## graaf

Sentimental History of British Empire by Borislav Pekic.


----------



## samurai

Marcel Proust--*Swann's Way*


----------



## Vaneyes

Winged Foot Story: The golf, the people, the friendly trees by Douglas LaRue Smith (1984)


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Well... I haven't started anything new, but Thursday I completed a new translation of Euripides' _Medea_. Quite good.


----------



## samurai

Felix J.Palma--*The* *Map* *of* *Time*


----------



## Vesteralen

A book of poetry by Leonora Speyer
Four books on Elgar
Maud Powell (American violinist) biography
Insight Guides - Iceland
Peter Breughel
Latest Gramophone & BBC Music Magazine
and








The wonderful Little sisters. I'm gonna be sad when I've finished the whole series.


----------



## kv466

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (again)


----------



## Dodecaplex

I'm currently in love with my physics textbook.


----------



## Aramis

Book about Maria Callas by Galatopoulos.

Books about Donizetti, Puccini and Rossini by Wiarosław Sandelewski.

_Rene_ by de Chateabubriand.

_Red and Black_ by Stendhal.


----------



## Polednice

Now that I'm back at university, I'm attempting to read all kinds of Old English stuffz.

Throughout the term I'll be translating the OE _Exodus_ and Wulfstan's _Sermo Lupi ad Anglos_, as well as looking at _Beowulf_, as well as some random poetry of my choosing from the Exeter and Vercelli books (anthologies of OE verse). I'll probably throw in a few eschatological homilies too.

Well, that's what I'm _supposed_ to be doing. I'm much less capable than I thought I'd be with this feckin' illness!


----------



## sYnapse

_The Man Who Was Thursday_ by G.K. Chesterton


----------



## Guest

Re-reading _A Game of Thrones_ by George R. R. Martin. I keep trying to find something else in the Fantasy genre as good, but just haven't found anything yet (with the exception of Tolkien, which I love!). It's nice re-reading this after having read them all - now that I am more familiar with all the characters, and don't have to fret trying to keep track of all of them!


----------



## Taneyev

Richard Evan's The Third Reich in Power.(1933/39)


----------



## science

Gordon Wood's _The American Revolution_.

It's very short, and for such a short book I'm surprised by how much I learn from it. I was dissatisfied with Middlekauf's _The Glorious Cause_. Not enough of anything in that book. Of course Wood has even less, but not that much less, and more of a lot of stuff (like art and religion and society and Native Americans) and his book is about 1/5 as long!


----------



## Guest

Re-reading A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin, after having re-read A Game of Thrones. While not as enjoyable as the first time, knowing all the plot twists, it is nice to be more familiar with the plethora of names, and now I can focus on trying to decipher some of the mysteries and look more for foreshadowing for the later books.

One interesting theory I have developed is the parentage of Jon Snow . . .


----------



## samurai

Fyodor Dostoevsky--*Crime And Punishment*


----------



## Chrythes

I am with Fyodor here as well - The Brothers Karamazov.


----------



## Tapkaara

The Revolution - A Manifesto by Ron Paul.


----------



## Dster

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol II


----------



## chrislowski

sYnapse said:


> _The Man Who Was Thursday_ by G.K. Chesterton


Chesterton! Much too ignored in my opinion. I recently purchased this:










1500 pages, about 11 novels including the complete Father Brown. This massive tome has kept me occupied for a long time!


----------



## Taneyev

Arthur Conan Doyle's complete short stories (not S.H.) I've read it many times before, but I love them. "The missing special" one of my favorites.


----------



## TrazomGangflow

Sherlock Holmes-The Sign of the Four


----------



## Kayla

The Currents of Space by an American writer Isaac Asimov.
I have finished two of his Science Fiction.


----------



## Klavierspieler

chrislowski said:


> Chesterton! Much too ignored in my opinion. I recently purchased this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 1500 pages, about 11 novels including the complete Father Brown. This massive tome has kept me occupied for a long time!


I love Father Brown! I've just been rereading them.


----------



## Shostakovichiana

Gogol: Dead Souls... highly recommended!


----------



## Kopachris

Finally getting around to reading _Classical Form_ by William Caplin. Why I never got around to it before, who knows... I AM LEARNING SO MUCH RIGHT NOW.


----------



## FrankieP

Adorno: Mahler, A Musical Physiognomy. It's brilliant. Also the Cambridge Companions to Sibelius and Janacek, Grout's History of Western Music, and Les Justes by Camus.


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> Fyodor Dostoevsky--*Crime And Punishment*


I'm teaching that novel to my high seniors in AP English--an amazing piece of literature.


----------



## Polyphemus

Christopher Tyerman 'God's War' superb newish history of the Crusades.


----------



## Guest

_The Planet of the Apes_ by Pierre Boulle (Yes, it was a novel first!) Next up, _The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo_ by Stieg Larsson


----------



## elgar's ghost

'The Instruments of Torture' by Michael Kerrigan. Not exactly the most edifying of bedside reading, I admit, but still a morbidly good read that discusses the psychological effects as well as the different kinds of physical application.


----------



## clavichorder

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. I've stayed away from this type of novel for two long, its time to have some fun.


----------



## graaf




----------



## Guest

Re-reading A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin. I am enjoying being able to look deeper for the clues to the past. This really is a great series (A Song of Fire and Ice). Highly recommended to lovers of fantasy.


----------



## Klavierspieler

The Pilgrims Progress - John Bunyan


----------



## ProudSquire

Currently reading *Poirot Investigates* by, Dame Agatha Christie.


----------



## Dodecaplex

TheProudSquire said:


> Currently reading *Poirot Investigates* by, Dame Agatha Christie.


Nice. Have you read _The Unexpected Guest_? It's my favorite work by Christie.


----------



## clavichorder

The Secret Agent-Joseph Conrad.


----------



## ProudSquire

Dodecaplex said:


> Nice. Have you read _The Unexpected Guest_? It's my favorite work by Christie.


I Can say that I have, but then I'd be lying, however, I will be acquiring a copy of it in the following week or so. It's reasonably priced on amazon, and plus, I'm all jittery with excitement now, which I think is partially due to your high enthusiasm for the book. Thanks for the unexpected recommendation.


----------



## Dodecaplex

TheProudSquire said:


> I Can say that I have, but then I'd be lying, however, I will be acquiring a copy of it in the following week or so. It's reasonably priced on amazon, and plus, I'm all jittery with excitement now, which I think is partially due to your high enthusiasm for the book. Thanks for the unexpected recommendation.


You're welcome.


----------



## DABTSAR

good to see some Dostoyevsky up here, Notes from Underground is probably my favorite of his.
Working on the Unnamable, just finished Molloy
and I just got this book
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Conductors-Harold-C-Schonberg/dp/0671207350


----------



## NightHawk

Starting Nikos Kazantzakis novel/autobiographic/philosophic voyage REPORT TO GRECO - here is a short overview - this is the guy who wrote ZORBA THE GREEK, and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Wish me luck.

_"This is Nikos Kazantzakis's intellectual autobiography. Not a log of places visited, nor a log with specific dates, places and people, nor a log when special events occurred. Not even an autobiography where he purports to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Rather it is the story of his metaphysical and moral journey through life: the story of his ascent from Jesus to Buddha, a side trip to Lenin, culminating in his own voyage of Odysseus - the body of his written work and thought.

Kazantzakis avoids the problem of a recent "confession of life" in which an author was caught out embellishing the truth to the level of fiction. Rather, he tells us straight out that he has mixed truth with fiction for better effect. I would make the case that this fictionalized autobiography is more accurate to his life precisely BECAUSE of the fiction. He is much less concerned to give us facts of the this and that of his everyday life than he is to give us a picture of his intellectual and moral growth, his vision of the meaning and meaninglessness of human existence. Curiously the richness of many of the "fictional" scenes is that they bring greater power, clarity and conviction to his fundamental message.

The central driving force he wishes his life had had is THE ASCENT. Ascent to where? He really doesn't know. It is the ascent, the hard uphill battle toward some endpoint that is the point of his life, the driving force of his existence. The freedom of mixing fact and fiction allows him the license to make this a rather pure ascent and admittedly aggrandize his person a good deal. But once one accepts this and reads the book as more an historical philosophical journey, the more valuable and believable the book is. The more, too, it is that his fictional account, in an odd and ironic sense, is more real than a non-fictionalized account of his life would be.

His main set of guides or influences are the life of Jesus, the way of Buddha, Lenin's driving force to build his utopian world and the concept of Odysseus as wanderer, on his way "home."

But never in any of these four is it the doctrine that moves Kazantzakis. Not the Jesus of Christian religion, not the Buddha of most accounts, neither the doctrine of Lenin nor his murderous ways and certainly not the mundanity of Odysseus' return home. Rather, what moves Kazantzakis is the fanatical commitment of each man to his respective goal, not the goal itself.

Yet in the long-run it is Frederich Nietzsche who claims the primary role of mentor to Kazantzakis. He frequently mentions the other four as being operative at various stages of his life but he doesn't tie these four as closely to Nietzsche as I would have liked him to. Somehow Nietzsche seems to be the string which binds the quintet together.

In a long, brilliant, if idiosyncratic, chapter on Nietzsche (a chapter much more about Kazantzakis than Nietzsche) he pulls together his realization of meaninglessness, (most would call it his pessimism) and celebrates Nietzsche's superman (whom he clearly aspires to be more than the other four) for his courage in accepting the flawed world as it is, Kazantzakis struggles to embrace this struggle toward creating meaning and does so with courage and Cretan passion, and struggles mightily to build a new world that is neither flawed nor meaningless. This is a world of process not achievement. It is the GOING not the ARRIVING that matters, the way one lives one's life, not the universe in which one lives which really counts.

He repeatedly denounces the hope and fear which he sees dominating the people of Earth and which drives them to the fanaticism which cripples them into looking for an ideal heaven or equally despicable, being saved from hell rather than embracing the world as it is." _


----------



## Moscow-Mahler

I am reading a biography of my favorite Russian poet - *Osip Mandelstam.* There is an English edition of it, btw:
http://www.amazon.com/Mandelstam-Studies-Russian-Literatures-Cultures/dp/1934843288/

I am strongly recommend it for those interested in Russian history and poetry.


----------



## TzarIvan

Biography of Martin Luther, The Rebell and Reformer (English version), I bought during my trip to Lutherstadt Wittenberg last summer.


----------



## Guest

Just finished Camus' _The Stranger_. Absolutely wonderful! I don't know if it was the first-person narrative or just the fantastic storytelling, but I've almost never become so attached and absorbed to a character; I really felt like I was in Mersault's shoes, and his last monologue to the priest was magnificent. Really a summary of the absurdity of human existence. I liked this book more so than The Plague.


----------



## samurai

E.L. Doctorow--*The Book of Daniel*


----------



## Jeremy Marchant

Well, I could be pretentious and say that I am reading Proust's _In search of lost time_ - because I am - I'm two thirds of the way through - but I have, shall we say, set it aside to read, at my business partner's insistence, _The E myth revisited_ which is about why most small businesses don't work.


----------



## Guest

Forgot to mention that I started another Camus novel: _The Fall_. This guy is really up my alley, in terms of writing style and philosophical outlook.


----------



## Manxfeeder

Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. This was the follow-up to On The Road, and it continues in his confessional style of writing about his following after an ideal character, this time the Buddhist poet Gary Snyder. It must have been strange in the '50s, but the Zen outlook, backpacking, drinking green tea, eating bulghur wheat, yogurt, and trail mix are pretty common now.


----------



## samurai

Thomas Mann--*Death in Venice and Other Stories*


----------



## Kevin Pearson

Currently reading Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan Lord of the Apes. I don't know why I have never gotten around to reading this before now but I am really enjoying it and it has piqued my interest to maybe read some of his other Tarzan novels. I've read and enjoyed the Pellucidar series and his Mars series. Fun stuff!

Kevin


----------



## prettyhippo

I usually start a few books at a time. Right now I'm reading:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through The Looking-Glass by Lewis Carrol
Celestina by Fernando de Rojas


----------



## lou

Kevin Pearson said:


> Currently reading Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan Lord of the Apes. I don't know why I have never gotten around to reading this before now but I am really enjoying it and it has piqued my interest to maybe read some of his other Tarzan novels. I've read and enjoyed the Pellucidar series and his Mars series. Fun stuff!
> 
> Kevin


I'm also reading the first Tarzan novel. Recently purchased an Edgar Rice Burroughs collection for my Kindle reader. Fantastic value for around $5, offering plenty of reading pleasure.


----------



## Kevin Pearson

lou said:


> I'm also reading the first Tarzan novel. Recently purchased an Edgar Rice Burroughs collection for my Kindle reader. Fantastic value for around $5, offering plenty of reading pleasure.


Cool! I bought the Burroughs collection on my Nook Tablet. As you said a fantastic value. Have you read any of the other Burroughs books? or is this your first?

Kevin


----------



## Polednice

As a little side pleasure to my studies, I'm reading Bram Stoker's _Dracula's Guest_ - a 'short story' (/deleted scene) from the main novel that was removed due to the length of the book at publication and was published posthumously.


----------



## lou

Kevin Pearson said:


> Cool! I bought the Burroughs collection on my Nook Tablet. As you said a fantastic value. Have you read any of the other Burroughs books? or is this your first?
> 
> Kevin


I think I read At The Earth's Core when I was a teenager, but it's lost to me now. Looking forward to reading more. It's great that he created such a wider variety of characters. I also purchased Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle collections. Needless to say, I have plenty of reading material, if I'm ever lost on a "Mysterious Island"!


----------



## lou

Polednice said:


> As a little side pleasure to my studies, I'm reading Bram Stoker's _Dracula's Guest_ - a 'short story' (/deleted scene) from the main novel that was removed due to the length of the book at publication and was published posthumously.


That's actually on my Kindle as well! I recently finished Dracula and have never read Dracula's Guest. There are so many wonderful authors whose work is available in the public domain, that I rarely ever purchase new books. The advantage to the collections available inexpensively on Amazon and the like, is that they provide everything in a nice neat package and with a clickable table of contents. One of the reasons I fell in love with my e-reader.


----------



## Guest

lou said:


> That's actually on my Kindle as well! I recently finished Dracula and have never read Dracula's Guest. There are so many wonderful authors whose work is available in the public domain, that I rarely ever purchase new books. The advantage to the collections available inexpensively on Amazon and the like, is that they provide everything in a nice neat package and with a clickable table of contents. One of the reasons I fell in love with my e-reader.


Agreed - Kindles are great. I have had one for more than half a year now, and it is the best thing for people with reading addictions (like myself).

Anyways, I am currently re-reading George R. R. Martin's _A Feast for Crows_. I have to admit that this is my least favorite of his Song of Fire and Ice series - I hate how he split up the characters, and you have to wait until the next book to hear from them. And he leaves out some of my favorites, while adding a few that are really quite tedious. Oh well - not every book in the series can be great!

And on a side note - Stoker's Dracula is one of my favorite works of fiction. I picked it up on a whim back when I was in 8th grade and absolutely loved it. I wasn't aware of Dracula's Guest, though. I'll have to look that one up.


----------



## KaerbEmEvig

How can you stand the e-paper thing? I HAVE to print anything longer than a few pages. Reading anything on screen is tiresome.


----------



## lou

KaerbEmEvig said:


> How can you stand the e-paper thing? I HAVE to print anything longer than a few pages. Reading anything on screen is tiresome.


I was completely against getting an e-reader a couple years ago. Then my girlfriend bought me a Kindle and I became a convert. I now find it tiresome to read an actual book! Especially in bed, it's much easier to hold the Kindle and not have to deal with keeping a book open and turning pages. I see very little difference between the e-ink screen and actual paper. There is no eye strain, as is associated with a backlit computer, or tablet screen. If you haven't tried it, you may find you like it too.


----------



## Dster

I tried the ebook once. Its not the same thing reading from a computer screen than from the real thing. I had to have the actual book in front of me to enjoy reading.


----------



## lou

Dster said:


> I tried the ebook once. Its not the same thing reading from a computer screen than from the real thing. I had to have the actual book in front of me to enjoy reading.


Was it an e-ink screen, or a tablet type ereader? The e-ink is pretty much like paper, in my opinion. It is especially nice reading outside in the bright sunlight. Nothing like a "computer screen".


----------



## Dster

What is the e-ink screen? I am not up to the latest technology I am afraid . I downloaded 'The Decline and Fall of the Róman Empire' which I am reading from Gutenberg website and tried to read it, but gave up after a few attempts. Its just don't feel right for me. But there are features in the ebook readers which are very nice. The one that I like best is to be able to make notes as one go along. 
I am an old man with fixed ideas, I am afraid


----------



## lou

Dster said:


> I am an old man with fixed ideas, I am afraid


:lol:

E-ink is a recent technology used in e-readers that mimics paper. To put it simply (the only way my limited knowledge can) it is a type of film and it forms the letters electronically on the page. When you use one, you'll see how different it is. The screen is not backlit. Therefore there is no glare, or eyestrain like with a computer screen. The only drawback, is you need to have light to read by (just like a real book). My favorite feature, is being able to touch a word and have the definition pop-up on the screen.


----------



## lou

I've been immersing myself in classic literature lately. Read my first Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych and thoroughly enjoyed it.


----------



## Dster

lou said:


> :lol:
> 
> E-ink is a recent technology used in e-readers that mimics paper. To put it simply (the only way my limited knowledge can) it is a type of film and it forms the letters electronically on the page. When you use one, you'll see how different it is. The screen is not backlit. Therefore there is no glare, or eyestrain like with a computer screen. The only drawback, is you need to have light to read by (just like a real book). My favorite feature, is being able to touch a word and have the definition pop-up on the screen.


Just found what you were talking about from Wikipedia but I have just given myself a X'mas present in the form of a tablet computer. A e-Reader will have to wait for its turn on my wish list


----------



## larifari

Having read the previous posts, I feel like I am an unwashed hillbilly punk because I read novels by Lee Child and C.J. Box.


----------



## Vaneyes

"Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller: Oil And The End Of Globalization"

Author: Jeff Rubin
Publisher: Random House, 2009


----------



## Guest

The e-ink is incredible. It literally is like reading a book. You don't get the eye strain like you do with backlit monitors or tablet computers. The kindle is nice in that you can hold it in one hand to read. You can sit it down and read, which you usually can't do with paperbacks, unless you really break the spine. You can add notes, put in a bookmark, it has the dictionary function. And you can fit a ton of books on it. One downside is that I have noticed the price of Kindle books creep up, as the Kindles have come down in price. I just got my wife the Kindle Fire, and she loves it, but it doesn't use the e-ink - it is more like a tablet computer, although more geared at media than other applications.


----------



## Klavierspieler

In the spirit of the season:

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol


----------



## clavichorder

I've been reading from a volume of the complete Ambrose Bierce short stories. I love his writing style and his typically grim endings. Any other readers of Ambrose Bierce here?


----------



## Taneyev

Keith Jeffery's "Secret History of MI6, 1909-1949". 800 pages of information.


----------



## lou

clavichorder said:


> I've been reading from a volume of the complete Ambrose Bierce short stories. I love his writing style and his typically grim endings. Any other readers of Ambrose Bierce here?


No, but I'm going to be reading him, now that you've pointed me towards his work. Looks like it's right up my alley. Thanks!


----------



## kv466

Stephen King - 12/22/63


----------



## lou

kv466 said:


> Stephen King - 12/22/63


That looks intriguing. They have an e-book version that includes video and audio material, but it's around $15.


----------



## kv466

I've always been a King fan, Lou, but he's kinda going into really cool and fresh territory here; for him, that is. I got the hardcover which was more than that but it is a good read (so far). Even if you wait til it's cheaper or on paperback, if you already think you might like it...you just might. 

Good to see around, señor. Must have some nice weather up there.


----------



## lou

kv466 said:


> I've always been a King fan, Lou, but he's kinda going into really cool and fresh territory here; for him, that is. I got the hardcover which was more than that but it is a good read (so far). Even if you wait til it's cheaper or on paperback, if you already think you might like it...you just might.
> 
> Good to see around, señor. Must have some nice weather up there.


Thanks KV, I'm certainly a King fan, but haven't read any of his latest novels. With the praise this one is getting, I'll have to pick it up.

Beautiful (although un-Christmaslike) weather here today, around 75F. Probably even warmer in your area? Happy Holidays to you!


----------



## Taneyev

kv466 said:


> I've always been a King fan, Lou, but he's kinda going into really cool and fresh territory here; for him, that is. I got the hardcover which was more than that but it is a good read (so far). Even if you wait til it's cheaper or on paperback, if you already think you might like it...you just might.
> 
> Good to see around, señor. Must have some nice weather up there.


I'm a freking too. Have 37 titles. Last one didn't show in Buenos Aires yet. I read him in english, of course (spaniard traductions are pure crap), but is very difficult to me. I think that the monster manage a vocabulary of several thousend words. I gess I understand between 60 and 70%, but it's enough for to follow the story. Love that man!!


----------



## clavichorder

Rachel Ray by the highly prolific and fun to read Victorian author, Anthony Trollope. This is my fourth book by Trollope. I just read the first chapter and I was sucked in! Love it when that happens.


----------



## samurai

Jonathan Franzen--*The Corrections*


----------



## DABTSAR

how do you like the corrections so far? i heard about it on npr i think and wanted to check it out. also how was the book of daniel?


----------



## DABTSAR

trying sound and the fury, so far not digging it as much as as i lay dying.


----------



## Guest

In the interest of being fair in my criticisms of the book, and not merely relying on the reviews of others, I am reading this book. I have read the first 4 1/2 chapters thus far, and been thoroughly underwhelmed. That this was a New York Times Bestseller I think says as much about the willingness of atheists to believe anything a prominent atheist says as they repeatedly claim about people of faith. Hitchens has a wonderful literary legacy that he has left behind for us, whether we agree with him or not - this should not be counted among those other works, though.


----------



## Guest

DABTSAR said:


> trying sound and the fury, so far not digging it as much as as i lay dying.


I totally misread this - thought it read, "trying sound and the fury, so far not digging it as much as i lay dying" - and was about to offer my profound sorrow for your impending death. Glad I took a moment and re-read it!


----------



## Polednice

DrMike said:


> In the interest of being fair in my criticisms of the book, and not merely relying on the reviews of others, I am reading this book. I have read the first 4 1/2 chapters thus far, and been thoroughly underwhelmed. That this was a New York Times Bestseller I think says as much about the willingness of atheists to believe anything a prominent atheist says as they repeatedly claim about people of faith. Hitchens has a wonderful literary legacy that he has left behind for us, whether we agree with him or not - this should not be counted among those other works, though.


The best-selling nature of the Bible says nothing about whether its readers believe what it says. I have a Bible on my shelf; doesn't mean I think any of it is credible. You often have interesting things to say, DrMike, but I think it would be fair for you to stop referring to "atheists" as an amorphous mass of people with the same views as much as it is important for us to stop characterising all religious people or all Christians as being the same.


----------



## Guest

Polednice said:


> The best-selling nature of the Bible says nothing about whether its readers believe what it says. I have a Bible on my shelf; doesn't mean I think any of it is credible. You often have interesting things to say, DrMike, but I think it would be fair for you to stop referring to "atheists" as an amorphous mass of people with the same views as much as it is important for us to stop characterising all religious people or all Christians as being the same.


If you will go to the Hitchens thread, you will see why I am lumping all atheists together - because that is what Hitchens does with religious people. Not only does he lump all Christians together in his criticism, but he doesn't differentiate between Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or pagans. He takes obscure practices by one sect of one religion and uses it to chastise all religions. Thus Christians are criticized as much for the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan as the Taliban are - after all, they are all just different sides of the same coin!

I understand that there is no homogeneous group that we can call atheists. It would be nice if Hitchens could have done the same with people of faith.


----------



## Polednice

OK, I've read that post, but so what? How does highlighting something Hitchens does wrong validate you deliberately doing the same thing?


----------



## Guest

Polednice said:


> OK, I've read that post, but so what? How does highlighting something Hitchens does wrong validate you deliberately doing the same thing?


To highlight just how wrong Hitchens was. Now, that certainly doesn't mean that the position of atheists is wrong, but this book certainly does not do anything, from what I have read thus far (about 1/4 of the way through it) to advance the cause of the atheist.


----------



## Polednice

DrMike said:


> To highlight just how wrong Hitchens was. Now, that certainly doesn't mean that the position of atheists is wrong, but this book certainly does not do anything, from what I have read thus far (about 1/4 of the way through it) to advance the cause of the atheist.


In fairness, I did not see how your unfair, flippant remark about "atheists" was anything more than an unfair, flippant remark in context. In that post, you certainly didn't say you were making the statement for effect, and now you're just saying "well Hitchens does it." Seeing as we all agree it's an unfair characterization, maybe we can all just stay away from using it.


----------



## Guest

Polednice said:


> In fairness, I did not see how your unfair, flippant remark about "atheists" was anything more than an unfair, flippant remark in context. In that post, you certainly didn't say you were making the statement for effect, and now you're just saying "well Hitchens does it." Seeing as we all agree it's an unfair characterization, maybe we can all just stay away from using it.


Fair enough.


----------



## TrazomGangflow

I just purchased an interesting book today on physics. It gives a brief explanation of a few hundred of the most important laws of physics throughout history. It's quite interesting.


----------



## samurai

DABTSAR said:


> how do you like the corrections so far? i heard about it on npr i think and wanted to check it out. also how was the book of daniel?


DABSTAR, I liked *The* *Book* *of* *Daniel *very much, as I believe Doctorow captured the essence of the Rosenberg case and all the mass hysteria and general paranoia rampant in America during this period about both the whole issue of our relationship with the Russians {our recent ally} and other burning--literally--issues such as Civil Rights. I've always liked Doctorow, and this book has done nothing to change my mind regarding his great writing abilities.
*The Corrections *has so far proven to be an interesting read as well {I'm about a fifth of the way through}, with its all too real of a dysfunctional American family literally coming apart at its seams. For me, it's both very readable and believeable.


----------



## Guest

_The Hypnotist_ by Lars Kepler ("A pseudonym for a Swedish couple"). So far it's very gripping and gruesome--a detective is investigating a particularly gory murder in which a teenage boy saw his family butchered and somehow survived over 100 stab wounds--good times! Some have compared it to Stieg Larson's _The Girl_ series mixed with _The Silence of the Lambs_.


----------



## BradPiano

I am currently reading Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

I recommend it to all Americans who consider themselves real patriots. And to those who don't...


----------



## jalex

Now reading John Houghton's *Global Warming: The Complete Briefing* cover to cover, having only dipped in and out of it so far. It's about time I gave myself a reasonable grounding in the subject.


----------



## samurai

Thomas Mann--*Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family*


----------



## EarthBoundRules

I've recently become very interested in physics and cosmology, so I've began to read *The Shadows of Creation* by Michael Riordan and David N. Schramm and *The Fabric of the Cosmos* by Brain Green. Very interesting stuff, although it sometimes takes me a minute for my primative brain to catch up with the science


----------



## clavichorder

Put down the Trollope for a short while to re read "The Caves of Steel" by Isaac Asimov.


----------



## Guest

Finished Camus's The Fall; loved it even more than The Stranger! His books keep getting better and better, not just for their content but for his unique way of writing, very distant and unattached but absorbing as well. I have one more Camus book to read on my shelf, but after 3 in a row I'm going to take a break and try to tackle Sam Delany's Dhalgren. Anyone read it?


----------



## Lenfer

*
ISBN-10:* 1859735703
*ISBN-13:* 978-1859735701​
Non-fiction for a change.


----------



## Lenfer

Jeff N said:


> Finished Camus's The Fall; loved it even more than The Stranger! His books keep getting better and better, not just for their content but for his unique way of writing, very distant and unattached but absorbing as well. I have one more Camus book to read on my shelf, but after 3 in a row I'm going to take a break and try to tackle Sam Delany's Dhalgren. Anyone read it?


Vis-à-vis *Camus* I agree. I haven't read *Dhalgren* although I'm interested now, let me know what you think please.


----------



## Blue Hour




----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I plan to start reading this very soon, some good Philosophy on Aesthetics:


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Started this a few days ago. Quite a funny book.


----------



## samurai

Thomas Mann--*The Magic Mountain*


----------



## Manxfeeder

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I plan to start reading this very soon, some good Philosophy on Aesthetics:


That has some interesting observations. I'll have to dig out my copy also.

You'll also discover that his favorite piece is Handel's Dettingen Te Deum. (What, not The Messiah? Good for him for thinking out of the box!)


----------



## Taneyev

Conan Doyle's complete Brigadier Gerard stories. Extraordinary.


----------



## science

Mists of Avalon. 

Worst book I've ever read. I usually do not finish books this awful.


----------



## Meaghan

science said:


> Mists of Avalon.
> 
> Worst book I've ever read. I usually do not finish books this awful.


That's okay - I finished Twilight. *But I did not read the sequels!
*
I usually do not finish books that awful, either. I swear.


----------



## Meaghan

Please don't disown me, Talk Classical. I couldn't help it; it was like looking at a car wreck...


----------



## science

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I plan to start reading this very soon, some good Philosophy on Aesthetics:


I read that in high school, and I got quite a few good ideas from it.

If you're interested in Evangelical Christian philosophies of aesthetics, let me recommend Wolterstorff's _Art in Action_. Rarely can one do better than Wolterstorff. If you're open to non-Evangelical but still Christian perspectives, Pelikan's _Imago Dei_ could be interesting as well.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time (love Pushkin and Lermontov works)


----------



## samurai

Scott Westerfield--*Leviathan*


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

^That book has been recommended to me. Do you like it?


----------



## samurai

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> ^That book has been recommended to me. Do you like it?


So far, so good, as I have only read about 50 pages or so thus far. It seems to be approaching WW 1 with an alternate history type of approach, both subjects of which I am very interested in.


----------



## Guest

Dostoevsky's _Notes from Underground_, for my existentialism class.


----------



## clavichorder

Started up again on Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope.


----------



## samurai

Bernard Malamud--*The Assistant*


----------



## Guest

_Deviant Ways_ by Chris Mooney. A serial killer novel that is not for faint of heart.


----------



## elgar's ghost

The Grand Entertainment by Steven Parissien. A biography of George IV written in a refreshingly pithy and anecdotal style and, although most of the contents are predictably unflattering, the author refrains from trashing his subject with cheap shots despite the plethora of ammunition at his disposal. Especially gigglesome are the little pen portraits of most of The Great Babe's largely unattractive and/or mediocre brothers.


----------



## Klavierspieler

Dickens - Martin Chuzzlewit


----------



## Lukecash12

Goethe- Faust. Dunno if Goethe's Faust counts in this thread, though, because it's not a book, per se.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Lukecash12 said:


> Goethe- Faust. Dunno if Goethe's Faust counts in this thread, though, because it's not a book, per se.


Is the play presented in a book form?


----------



## jalex

Jose Saramago's _The Double_. I love this guy.


----------



## samurai

George Gissing--*New Grub Street*


----------



## lou

Gee, you folks must be much faster readers than myself!


----------



## Lukecash12

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Is the play presented in a book form?


Yes, I would say that it is: http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Fausthome.htm


----------



## samurai

Fyodor Dostoyevsky--*Notes From Underground*


----------



## Klavierspieler

Charles Dickens - Dombey and Son


----------



## Taneyev

Stephen King's Bag of Bones. Great novel! (I love King!!!) But is difficult for a non-English speacking. That monster has a vocabulary of several thousends words. I understand an average the 65/75%, but it's enough to follow the weft. Anyway, King should always be readed in English. Spanish translations are pure crap.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I'm finally reading this!!!









It's pretty sad, actually downright tragic, but it's really really good so far. It makes me look at Russia in a different light. After all, Tolstoy writes about mostly about the Aristocracy, but Dostoevsky writes about the poorest of the poor.


----------



## kmhrm

(My Life in Art) Constantine Stanislavski's translated autobiography; a decisive figure in Russian theater. Great book! well written and very well structured. I can't but recommend to anyone interested in Russian 19th/early 20th century theater, culture, and life.

There is a treat in the book: a chapter on Anton Rubinstein!


----------



## Dodecaplex

5.5423
5.633
6.1
6.44
6.5
6.54
7

Very nice.


----------



## samurai

John Steinbeck--*The Grapes Of Wrath*


----------



## lou

samurai said:


> John Steinbeck--*The Grapes Of Wrath*


You must be a very fast reader my good sir! :tiphat:


----------



## samurai

@ Lou, It's not that I'm such a fast reader, but rather since my retirement, I have a lot more time during the day which I can devote to reading and listening to music, etc., etc. Thanks for the compliment, though!


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations


----------



## Manok

Imager's Challenge. L Modesitt Jr.


----------



## Klavierspieler

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I'm finally reading this!!!
> 
> View attachment 2953
> 
> 
> It's pretty sad, actually downright tragic, but it's really really good so far. It makes me look at Russia in a different light. After all, Tolstoy writes about mostly about the Aristocracy, but Dostoevsky writes about the poorest of the poor.


Good read!  It stays depressing pretty much the whole book, but the end is rather uplifting!


----------



## lou

samurai said:


> @ Lou, It's not that I'm such a fast reader, but rather since my retirement, I have a lot more time during the day which I can devote to reading and listening to music, etc., etc. Thanks for the compliment, though!


I used to only be able to read one book at a time, and would have to finish it before I started another.

Now that I have a Kindle, I find myself reading several books and jumping between them.

It all depends on the mood I'm in when I sit down to read.

How about you, are you a one book at a time person?


----------



## Comet

I am reading '11/22/63' for the second time. This is Stephen King's latest novel that came out last year, and I must say it is quite possibly in my top five of his works.

The premise is about a teacher who, through a dying friend, discovers a portal that takes you back in time to the same date in late-1958. The ill man's goal was to stay back in time long enough to prevent the assassination of Kennedy. He asks his friend to complete his wish.

Even if you are not a King fan, I highly recommend this novel. It is powerful and intriguing, easily drawing you in and not letting go until the final page is read.


----------



## Juan

"Kafka on the shore" - Haruki Murakami


----------



## science

_Ruling America_.

A dozen or so essays toward a history of the ruling classes of the USA. I recommend this to history buffs. It won't have a lot of new info for you, but it is an interesting perspective on things.


----------



## ksargent

The Brothers Karamazov. Should have read it decades ago, but didn't.

Also The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein - great overview of the havoc wreaked by Friedman and his Chicago School Economics since the 1970's.


----------



## science

science said:


> _Ruling America_.
> 
> A dozen or so essays toward a history of the ruling classes of the USA. I recommend this to history buffs. It won't have a lot of new info for you, but it is an interesting perspective on things.


Finished this and it was great. Now I'm reading Gordon Wood's _Empire of Liberty_.


----------



## samurai

lou said:


> I used to only be able to read one book at a time, and would have to finish it before I started another.
> 
> Now that I have a Kindle, I find myself reading several books and jumping between them.
> 
> It all depends on the mood I'm in when I sit down to read.
> 
> How about you, are you a one book at a time person?


@ Lou, I'm sorry I didn't answer you sooner, but I'm just coming across your post tonight. I am basically a "one book at a time" type of reader, but lately--since borrowing more from the library--I have tried to read a couple of books at the same time. One usually has to be "easier" than the other so I can accomplish this without having an overdue book or having to renew it. When I was a kid, the lending time was 4 weeks; now, however--at least in NY--it's down to 3 weeks.


----------



## Agatha

jalex said:


> Jose Saramago's _The Double_. I love this guy.


found this book in the library, at first I tried his "Journey to Portugal", never been to Portugal, not as much fun to read about places i've never been before, though I like his style ... "fishes devouring each other out of hanger and not out of patriotism" 
now reading "The Double" ...


----------



## janealex

I am reading book on SEO specially on-page.


----------



## samurai

John Steinbeck--*Of Mice And Men*


----------



## Miaou

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The Penguin Book of Myths & Legends of Ancient Egypt by Joyce Tydesley
and Bakuman, a manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata


----------



## jalex

Klavierspieler said:


> Good read!  It stays depressing pretty much the whole book, but the end is rather uplifting!


I found the epilogue unconvincing. On my second read I stopped at the end of part 6 and preferred it that way.


----------



## samurai

James Carroll--*House of War*


----------



## beethovenian

The Karamazov Brothers

I like Notes from underground but not so much of crime and punishment.


----------



## starthrower

samurai said:


> James Carroll--*House of War*


Very interesting history of the Pentagon and US militarism. Carroll tends to be a bit long winded and emotional, but he is very passionate about his subjects.

Now reading: The Fabric Of The Cosmos by Brian Greene.


----------



## Guest

restarting Ulysses after stopping about halfway through a number of months ago. i figure with a book like this it doesn't matter where you stop or start...


----------



## SiegendesLicht

The Conan Anthology by Robert Howard.

The next one on the list is either Tom Clancy's "Dead or Alive" or Andy Orchard's "A Critical Companyon to Beowulf".


----------



## science

I teach _To Kill a Mockingbird_ three or four times a year, and I usually don't re-read it when I teach it (I've read it at least ten times), but this time I am, and I am struck all over again by what a fine book it is.

Not perfect. But very, very, very, very good.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

science said:


> I teach _To Kill a Mockingbird_ three or four times a year, and I usually don't re-read it when I teach it (I've read it at least ten times), but this time I am, and I am struck all over again by what a fine book it is.
> 
> Not perfect. But very, very, very, very good.


Such a great book. I read it a few years ago.

I'm thinking of reading Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ next.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov


----------



## EarthBoundRules

_Q & A_ by Vikas Swarup. I'm about 100 pages in and so far it's very interesting.


----------



## Lenfer

*Émile Zola* - *Germinal*​


----------



## starthrower

Currently re-reading Crazy Wisdom by Wes Nisker. A great little book!


----------



## samurai

H.G.Wells: *Complete Short Story Omnibus*


----------



## starthrower

Selected Papers Of Bertrand Russell


----------



## Polednice

A selection of Arthur C. Clarke's short stories.


----------



## Iforgotmypassword

This book.


----------



## Oliver

The Selfish Gene - almost finished
The greatest show on earth


----------



## gurthbruins

Jeff N said:


> restarting Ulysses after stopping about halfway through a number of months ago. i figure with a book like this it doesn't matter where you stop or start...


imo the most overrated book (novel??) of all time. The only thing worse is Saul Bellow.

What happened to Mozart? Usurped in the pantheon?


----------



## gurthbruins

starthrower said:


> Selected Papers Of Bertrand Russell


Love him. 1


----------



## gurthbruins

samurai said:


> H.G.Wells: *Complete Short Story Omnibus*


One of my favourite Virgo writers. JB Priestley can be a bit too quirky-simple. Tolstoy the greatest of Virgo writers.


----------



## samurai

gurthbruins said:


> One of my favourite Virgo writers. JB Priestley can be a bit too quirky-simple. Tolstoy the greatest of Virgo writers.


Are you referring to his astrological sign? I wasn't aware that Mr. Wells was a Virgo.


----------



## gurthbruins

samurai said:


> Are you referring to his astrological sign? I wasn't aware that Mr. Wells was a Virgo.


Yes. Wells had natal Sun and Mercury in Virgo. Good for writers: great intelligence. Check Arthur Koestler.

Not so good for musicians, though - except for Dvorak and the brilliant Itzhak Perlman.


----------



## Guest

Mark Levin - Liberty and Tyranny
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Princess of Mars
George Orwell - Animal Farm and 1984


----------



## gurthbruins

Arnold Bennett - The Regent

Never could get into AB before this month.
Now I'm lapping up my second book of his and will want to read every one.


----------



## jalex

I've read a prose translation before but I hear this is _the_ one to have.


----------



## bassClef

Faulks - Birdsong


----------



## Dodecaplex

June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012! June 19, 2012!








But, for now:







And:


----------



## starthrower

gurthbruins said:


> Love him. 1


If only the world had more reasonable men of integrity like Bertrand, we might be
much farther along in the betterment of the human condition?


----------



## Dodecaplex

starthrower said:


> If only the world had more reasonable men of integrity like Bertrand [...]


Absolutely agree. The guy was still protesting against war even as he became a fragile geezer. In fact, he was _89_ when he was sent to jail for his anti-nuclear campaigns. Can you imagine a person who is 89 years old, and who is from one of the richest and most prominent aristocratic families in his country, going out onto the streets and protesting against war?


----------



## starthrower

That's very courageous! Howard Zinn was doing the same thing right up until his death. But Russell's essays on education tell the story. It's politically motivated, and children are brainwashed to believe in competition, nationalism, and war from the get go.

Even summer camps for kids are like this. The counselor is like a drill sergeant, and by the end of the week they have the kids out in the woods playing war games.


----------



## lou

I'm currently reading this on my Kindle and loving it!

Must get the complete essays next.


----------



## Lenfer

*À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs by Marcel Proust*​


----------



## science

I'm reading "Battle Cry of Freedom," a book I've waited a long time to read, and I'm loving it.


----------



## samurai

Bernard Malamud--*The Fixer*


----------



## starthrower

Bill Moyers Journal


----------



## Badinerie

Raymond Chandler Farewell my Lovely - for the umpteenth time...Dontcha just love Moose Malloy?


----------



## samurai

Michael D. Gordin--*Red Cloud At Dawn:** Truman, Stalin And The End Of The Atomic Monopoly*


----------



## Miaou




----------



## Crudblud

Finally finishing up Stephen King's _The Stand_, after that I will turn my attention to three long neglected books in my collection:

Aldous Huxley - _Island_ and _Brave New World_
Alan Watts - _The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are_


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

A book studied by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. JS Bach held it in high esteem.


----------



## Guest

Just got Camus's _The Myth of Sisyphus_, which I am anxious to begin.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

DrMike said:


> Mark Levin - Liberty and Tyranny
> Edgar Rice Burroughs - Princess of Mars
> George Orwell - Animal Farm and 1984


I've read all of them and loved them!


----------



## Mesa

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> A book studied by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. JS Bach held it in high esteem.


The three times i've had a pop at reading it i've resorted to crying and zipping up and down blues scales instead.

Reading this:









Which i couldn't recommend more highly to anyone remotely interested in anything at all, even moreso as i picked it up for 3 quid in the Works.

And a badly scanned ebook of Rimsky Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration.


----------



## starthrower

Bertrand Russell-Why I Am Not A Christian & Other Essays
Edmund Burke-Reflections On The Revolution In France


----------



## Cnote11

As seen in the Asian thread










Haruki Murakami's 1Q84


----------



## Taneyev

Reading again Stephen King's "Misery". Great book. I'm fan of King.


----------



## jurianbai

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/05/five-hundred-fairytales-discovered-germany


----------



## Taneyev

Just start King's 11-22-63 (in english, of course). 849 pages on small letters. Probably it'll takes me 15 days. But as the heavy monster isn't to take with me, when I go out home I take G.M.Gilbert's Nurember Diary. Gilbert was a psychiatric doctor who talk and made studies for a long time with all and every one of the big nazi brass jailed on Nuremberg. A fascinating (and OOP) book.


----------



## Dodecaplex




----------



## Taneyev

Eric Ambler's "A Coffin for Dimitrios". An extraordinary novel about espionage, treason and murder. And later a great picture with Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Zachary Scott.


----------



## TheBamf




----------



## TxllxT

France Travel Guide (tomorrow we're off)


----------



## Jeremy Marchant

Lisztfreak said:


> I've been reading the first volume of Proust's great epic for some eight months now - 'The Swann Way', if that's the English translation. It's not that the book is too boring, I just can't find the time.


I hope you're enjoying it. I'm two thirds of the way through the whole _In search of lost time_ - and I started 35 years ago! I just don't have the time to sit down with a book.

My mother died recently and I've inherited some of my parents' books. I haven't read my own books yet and now I have 10 metres more books (as measured in length of extra shelving needed). And my father was interested in music and had many books, all of which I will get - so, adding in the ones I already own, I'll have at least 7 metres of books on serious music (excluding scores and the _New Grove_). Where do I start?!

As it is, I am currently reading _The E myth revisited_ because it is about small businesses. This is one of the primary areas I work in and I really need to have read this very popular book. Unfortunately, it is rather simplistic and condescending - ironically, the author's attempts to make the message comprehensible get in the way of my comprehending the message. The point is continually being lost in a flood of folksy anecdotes.


----------



## Lenfer

*Marcel Proust* - *In Search of Lost Time* ​


----------



## TheBamf

Lenfer said:


> *Marcel Proust* - *In Search of Lost Time* ​


How far are you in?


----------



## Lenfer

TheBamf said:


> How far are you in?


I just started last night Vol. 1 but I've read it before it's one of my favourites.


----------



## starthrower

The Ancient Historians by Michael Grant


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (translated to English by Paulette Møller.)


----------



## samurai

Tim Flannery--*The Weather Makers: *How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth


----------



## cwarchc

Christopher Hitchens Arguably


----------



## Elune

_"The Thorn Birds" by Colleen McCullough - I'm on the final chapter and I'm so fascinated by that book. I've watched the movie, but the book is better, of course, fantastic. _


----------



## WolfAlphaX

Well unlike all of you grown ups, (I hope) I've been reading a great book called Fear, which is a series from the first book Gone. It's awesome. Kind of freaky but you get used to it.


----------



## Badinerie

Grown ups! You _havn't_ been here long have you?

Im reading Doris Piserchia A Billion Days of Earth. Its set in the future when Rats rule the earth....sort of!


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

WolfAlphaX said:


> Well unlike all of you grown ups, (I hope) I've been reading a great book called Fear, which is a series from the first book Gone. It's awesome. Kind of freaky but you get used to it.


I think the majority of the TC population are between the ages of 16 and 22


----------



## emiellucifuge

Still War and Peace im afraid, quite near the end though and it get better every day.

I think when im done Ill start reading the other translations.

My holy trinity at the moment:


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

I will then read The Sign of Four by the same author. 

Another book I've been reading on and off: The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.


----------



## Chrythes

_Totem and Taboo_ by Freud and _The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art_ by James Clifford.


----------



## Guest

I am just starting a book called, "Peace, They Say," by Jay Nordlinger, a history of the Nobel Peace prize and the famous and controversial recipients of it. Kind of hard to believe that the same prize has been given to such worthy recipients as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Lech Walesa, and Elie Wiesel, but then also to such unworthy, or unproven individuals as Barack Obama, Yasser Arafat.


----------



## cwarchc

The Marx and Engels is hard work, but it's worth it.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
> 
> I will then read The Sign of Four by the same author.
> 
> Another book I've been reading on and off: The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.


----------



## Guest

_Wire in the Blood_ by Val McDermid.


----------



## samurai

Franz Kafka--*The Trial*


----------



## aleazk

samurai said:


> Franz Kafka--*The Trial*


wonderful!, one of my favorites, so surreal at moments!


----------



## Klavierspieler

_The Ring and the Book_
_Men and Women_
Robert Browning


----------



## MaestroViolinist

Bl**min', why didn't I think of one??? 

Last book I finished was the *Gene of Isis* by _*Traci Harding*_. Awesome book, I might add!!! Especially if you like* Sci-Fi* and *Fantasy*. But I still didn't like it as much as her *Ancient Future* books.

Currently re-Reading: *A Matter of Magic - by Patricia C. Wrede* It's sooooo good this is the *third* time that I'm re-reading it! But I think it's mainly me who likes it that much, no one else seems too, and it's really sad you know.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I think the majority of the TC population are between the ages of 16 and 22


Really? I thought you were all ancient? :lol: Well, you probably don't want to know my age then. Here's a clue: it's under 16 but over 13. You get one guess.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> Really? I thought you were all ancient? :lol: Well, you probably don't want to know my age then. Here's a clue: it's under 16 but over 13. You get one guess.


Are you 14 years old?


----------



## TheBamf

Reading Moby-Dick for the third time, this time it is for my english exam in 2 days. I am listening to it on audio, so I am not really reading it, but close enough for me.


----------



## Vesteralen

Currently: The Complete Peanuts 1975-1976; American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century Vol 1; Esther (by Henry Adams); The Martian Chronicles; The Beautiful Cigar Girl; Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes; A History of Western Music; Royal Blood (Rhys Bowen)


----------



## Klavierspieler

Vesteralen said:


> Currently: *The Complete Peanuts 1975-1976*; American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century Vol 1; Esther (by Henry Adams); The Martian Chronicles; The Beautiful Cigar Girl; Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes; A History of Western Music; Royal Blood (Rhys Bowen)




filler text


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Hey all! I got back to reading Crime and Punishment again!

:clap::clap::clap:

Man, it's just amazing. The language is so casual and sincere, and brilliant characterization of people. I feel inspired to write a short story again, because I've discovered I have been writing in its style all along.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Are you 14 years old?


How did you guess? Here's your prize: :clap:


----------



## Guest

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Hey all! I got back to reading Crime and Punishment again!
> 
> :clap::clap::clap:
> 
> Man, it's just amazing. The language is so casual and sincere, and brilliant characterization of people. I feel inspired to write a short story again, because I've discovered I have been writing in its style all along.


Which translation are you reading? (If it's the original Russian, then I bow to you!) It's one of my favorite novels.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> How did you guess? Here's your prize: :clap:


Same age as me. By the way, where exactly is "the middle of nowhere" that you make your residence?


----------



## Taneyev

The Godfather...again. 3th,time. Never tired of this great novel.


----------



## Lenfer

*William S. Burroughs* - *Naked Lunch* (1959)​


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

The Monkey's Mask by Dorothy Porter.


----------



## Xaltotun

This summer, I've already read these:

PLATO: "Five dialogues"
NIETZSCHE: "The Birth of Tragedy"
MARCUS AURELIUS: "Meditations"
MICHELANGELO: "Poems"
ARISTOTLE: "Poetica"
IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA: "Spiritual Exercises"
MARX & ENGELS: "The Communist Manifesto"
HENRIK SCHÜCK: "History of Literature vol. 2: Medieval Literature"

Right now I'm reading "De Rerum Natura" by LUCRETIUS, as well as SCHÜCK's "History of Literature vol. 3: Renaissance", as well as some boring textbooks for exams.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Kontrapunctus said:


> Which translation are you reading? (If it's the original Russian, then I bow to you!) It's one of my favorite novels.


Oh no, I wish I knew Russian. Then I could read that mysterious and super old Russian biography about Glazunov in my school's Music Library...

But the translation is Constance Garnett.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

I can read Russian but not understand a single word.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Xaltotun said:


> This summer, I've already read these:
> 
> PLATO: "Five dialogues"
> NIETZSCHE: "The Birth of Tragedy"
> MARCUS AURELIUS: "Meditations"
> MICHELANGELO: "Poems"
> ARISTOTLE: "Poetica"
> IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA: "Spiritual Exercises"
> MARX & ENGELS: "The Communist Manifesto"
> HENRIK SCHÜCK: "History of Literature vol. 2: Medieval Literature"
> 
> Right now I'm reading "De Rerum Natura" by LUCRETIUS, as well as SCHÜCK's "History of Literature vol. 3: Renaissance", as well as some boring textbooks for exams.


Aurelius' "Meditations" is one of my favourite books.


----------



## Ukko

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Aurelius' "Meditations" is one of my favourite books.


One of my favorite books is "The Evolution of the English Language" by George H. McKnight.


----------



## Klavierspieler

One of my favorite books is "The House at Pooh Corner" by A. A. Milne.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Klavierspieler said:


> One of my favorite books is "The House at Pooh Corner" by A. A. Milne.


Is that about Winnie the Pooh?


----------



## Klavierspieler

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Is that about Winnie the Pooh?


Indeed it is.


----------



## Roberto

Reading The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky - what surprises me about this, after reading Crime and Punishment, is how humorous it is at times: he has a real gift for the absurd, particularly in the portrayal of the buffoon of a father.


----------



## Xaltotun

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Aurelius' "Meditations" is one of my favourite books.


They should replace the "Self-Help" sections in bookstores with nothing but copies of the "Meditations". It's awesome and powerful and puts things in perspective!


----------



## cwarchc

I have an interest in east European history especially Poland, it's where my dad came from.
I'm onto this one now. I've read a few of his other books, and he doesn't get as bogged down as others tend too.


----------



## Chrythes

Xaltotun said:


> They should replace the "Self-Help" sections in bookstores with nothing but copies of the "Meditations". It's awesome and powerful and puts things in perspective!


I haven't read Meditations, but I had similar thoughts while reading Seneca's Letters to Lucilius.


----------



## samurai

Elizabeth Gaffney--*Metropolis*


----------



## Xaltotun

Hilltroll72 said:


> One of my favorite books is "The Evolution of the English Language" by George H. McKnight.


LET THE WAR COMMENCE. As a non-native English speaker, I should have no stake in this, but I'll stand firmly by the UK, my favourite in this contest; I'll be wearing the colours of the Queen over my armour.


----------



## Vaneyes

Mason & Dixon (1997), playing catch-up with a novel by Thomas Pynchon. His early Americana imaginings.

I've grown weary. Sad to say, this author has not evolved. Now at age 75, I think we can safely say...That's all there was.

V (1963) and Gravity's Rainbow (1973) clicked with the wisecracking humor and satire. Since then, readings of Vineland (1990), Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice (2009) have only produced reading drudgery, sometimes in epic portions (ATD - 1085 pages, M&D - 773 pages). Different venues, but tired humor.

I've saved the Americana tales for last. I'm not optimistic.


----------



## Arabella

I am re-reading, Oscar Wilde's - The Picture of Dorian Gray


----------



## samurai

Arabella said:


> I am re-reading, Oscar Wilde's - The Picture of Dorian Gray



Great movie made from the novel as well.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

I am currently reading *The Keeper of the Door.* It is not what I expected, I have not finished it yet, but I have a slight feeling I don't really like this book anyway, whether it has a bad ending or not. It is very old, written in the early 1900s, maybe that's why I don't like it, the opinions around then are very different to those around now. It is quite sexist I think, even though it was written by a woman, you would think she would support her own.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> I am currently reading *The Keeper of the Door.* It is not what I expected, I have not finished it yet, but I have a slight feeling I don't really like this book anyway, whether it has a bad ending or not. It is very old, written in the early 1900s, maybe that's why I don't like it, the opinions around then are very different to those around now. It is quite sexist I think, even though it was written by a woman, you would think she would support her own.


If you want a book that was written in the 19th century and is quite fast paced and easy to read, try "A Study in Scarlet" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


----------



## Arabella

samurai said:


> Great movie made from the novel as well.


I've not seen the film yet, though have wanted to.


----------



## Guest

Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing, by Josef Lhevinne. Very enlightening and at times humorously blunt.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Just finished this:


----------



## graaf

Once again I come back to Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. This is his interview about the subject:





and this is cartoon based on his introduction to the book:


----------



## Jeremy Marchant

I am currently reading _The spirited business_ by Georgeanne Lamont, a very interesting set of case studies about businesses that are really successful because everyone in them treats each other well.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

*Third Girl Agatha Christie* Haven't finished it yet, it's a bit slow.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> *Third Girl Agatha Christie* Haven't finished it yet, it's a bit slow.


You still read easy-to-read books then?


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> You still read easy-to-read books then?


Hmph, what do you mean, Agatha Christie is easy to read?


----------



## Guest

_Origins_ by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> Hmph, what do you mean, Agatha Christie is easy to read?


Agatha Christe is no Geoffrey Chaucer! :lol:


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Agatha Christe is no Geoffrey Chaucer! :lol:


I'm sure.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> I'm sure.


Read _Canterbury Tales _and then go back to Agatha Christe. You'll feel like you're reading books written for babies.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Read _Canterbury Tales _and then go back to Agatha Christe. You'll feel like you're reading books written for babies.


I'd have to go and look in the library for it. Phpphhhbbb, books for babies. ut:


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> I'd have to go and look in the library for it. Phpphhhbbb, books for babies. ut:


When you read a book written in thirteen hundred and somehting you'll find Shakespeare ease to read. ut:


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> When you read a book written in thirteen hundred and somehting you'll find Shakespeare ease to read. ut:


THIRTEEN HUNDRED AND SOMETHING??? I have to read that? How long is it?

(You're right about me reading easy-to-read-things...  ut:ut


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> THIRTEEN HUNDRED AND SOMETHING??? I have to read that? How long is it?
> 
> (You're right about me reading easy-to-read-things...  ut:ut


'Tis quite long. Not too long, but quite long. A lot of it is in verse and is incomprehensible to the average Australian teenager, but I think you are intelligent enough to handle great literature. You just choose not to.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> 'Tis quite long. Not too long, but quite long. A lot of it is in verse and is incomprehensible to the average Australian teenager, but I think you are intelligent enough to handle great literature. You just choose not to.


Gee thanks, that's quite a compliment.


----------



## Guest

Books I've bought while on vacation: Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, Nabakov's Pale Fire, Gass' Omensetter's Luck, and Ian Fleming's Goldfinger. Of course, I'm reading Goldfinger first


----------



## eorrific

Just bought Doestoevsky's The House of the Dead and Tha Gambler in one book. Reading ought to commence as soon as I finish reading Candide by Voltaire (LOL).

Edit : "Tha Gambler", so gangsta!


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Well, I finished Crime and Punishment some weeks ago, I really enjoyed it.

Now, I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov! I think I'm gonna like this one more than Crime and Punishment.


----------



## Klavierspieler

MaestroViolinist said:


> I'd have to go and look in the library for it. Phpphhhbbb, books for babies. ut:


http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2383/pg2383.txt

Have fun.


----------



## NightHawk

American musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon's - _Haydn - Chronicle and Works_ in Five Volumes - Landon (1926-2009) started research on Haydn in 1947 in Vienna and wherever Haydn had traveled in his brilliant career, and the work was finished in the late 1970's. He also found time in those years to publish extensively on Mozart and Beethoven. Even though I am a slow reader I like epic reads and I also like musical analysis so I have hope that in a couple of years I will have finished the entire work (approx. 35,000 pages). Biographies of this quality that are also deeply competent in discussing style with full score illustrations actually make the music even better for me. I want to own it, but the only complete set I have found is on Ebay for $600  Guess I'll just have to make do with the library's set.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

Klavierspieler said:


> http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2383/pg2383.txt
> 
> Have fun.


Thank you, I shall start after I've finished Romeo and Juliet.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> Thank you, I shall start after I've finished Romeo and Juliet.


Shakespeare is easier. :lol:


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Shakespeare is easier. :lol:


Yeah well, after I've finished Chaucer I'll easily be able to read Shakespeare then won't I? Which is a plus if you ask me, 'cos at the moment it is hard to read!


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> Yeah well, after I've finished Chaucer I'll easily be able to read Shakespeare then won't I? Which is a plus if you ask me, 'cos at the moment it is hard to read!


You should get those editions with a modern English translation one one page and the original on the other. That's how I started, but of course I don't need modern English now. I can understand Shakespeare's poetic language well enough.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> You should get those editions with a modern English translation one one page and the original on the other. That's how I started, but of course I don't need modern English now. I can understand Shakespeare's poetic language well enough.


ut: Good for you.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> ut: Good for you.


Yeah well it didn't take me long to understand Shakespeare after that. I reckon it's because I'm smarterer than you. ut:


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Yeah well it didn't take me long to understand Shakespeare after that. I reckon it's because I'm smarterer than you. ut:


"Smarterer" is not a word. ut: And no, you are not.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> "Smarterer" is not a word. ut: And no, you are not.


But I am! You are dumberer than me! ut:


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> But I am! You are dumberer than me! ut:


If I was dumberer than that means you would already be dumber. You see, if I'm dumb, you are dumber, then you say that I'm dumberer. Then I would say you are Dumbererer. Two can play at that game. ut: (I know that because my grandfather and I used to do basically the same thing! :lol.

We've just made a thread go off topic again.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> If I was dumberer than that means you would already be dumber. You see, if I'm dumb, you are dumber, then you say that I'm dumberer. Then I would say you are Dumbererer. Two can play at that game. ut: (I know that because my grandfather and I used to do basically the same thing! :lol.
> 
> We've just made a thread go off topic again.


 You are a smart one. :lol:


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> You are a smart one. :lol:


Told you so! :lol: ut:


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

MaestroViolinist said:


> Told you so! :lol: ut:


But I am still smarterer!


----------



## samurai

Stephen King--*The Shining*


----------



## samurai

David McCullough--*The Path Between The Seas: The Creation Of The Panama Canal: 1870-1914*


----------



## Lenfer

*The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921* by *Isaac Deutscher* 

*IBSN*: 1859844413​


----------



## cwarchc

Just started this one.


----------



## TheBamf

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> You should get those editions with a modern English translation one one page and the original on the other. That's how I started, but of course I don't need modern English now. I can understand Shakespeare's poetic language well enough.


You are saying this in jest, or so I hope.

Literature and language, Shakespeare's works especially, are not about unlocking some ability to "read it". It is much more vivid than that. There should be no sense of pride or "achievement" in reading something that is considered hard. But to read something which you connect with, something truly beautiful, a lot like music, that is important.

I remember reading Moby-Dick, and for all my tribulations reading the book I still loved it. Not because it was hard, or because there was a sense of achievement in it. But because the product of all those finely woven threads of words formed beautiful prose, which was portrayed in a meaningful way.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

TheBamf said:


> You are saying this in jest, or so I hope.


I was just making fun of the fact that the books she reads seem so _easy._



TheBamf said:


> Literature and language, Shakespeare's works especially, are not about unlocking some ability to "read it". It is much more vivid than that. There should be no sense of pride or "achievement" in reading something that is considered hard. But to read something which you connect with, something truly beautiful, a lot like music, that is important.
> 
> I remember reading Moby-Dick, and for all my tribulations reading the book I still loved it. Not because it was hard, or because there was a sense of achievement in it. But because the product of all those finely woven threads of words formed beautiful prose, which was portrayed in a meaningful way.


I agree. That's what I love about good authors.


----------



## Guest

Finished _Goldfinger_ (it was aight) and now reading _All the Pretty Horses_ by Cormac McCarthy who is my favorite author. So far it's fantastic, as he always is.


----------



## kiliand

Just finished Franz Kafka's _The Process_ (it was great, but also haunting). Currently reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's _The Gambler_, at this point quite a tough read, but fun nonetheless.


----------



## samurai

William Philpott--*Three Armies On The Somme: The First Battle Of The Twentieth Century*


----------



## MaestroViolinist

Re-reading my favourite series: *Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan*. It has been my favourite series since I was 10 or 11, so it's rather a kids series but anyway. Though the later books would be classified as YA.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

^ Whatever happened to reading Shakespeare?


----------



## MaestroViolinist

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> ^ Whatever happened to reading Shakespeare?


I got bored. I'll start again now because I finished that book and I haven't got the next in the series with me.


----------



## Guest

*The Breach* by Patrick Lee. It's quite an intense/gruesome thriller with sci-fi elements.


----------



## Ramako

Beowulf - translation of course.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Ramako said:


> Beowulf - translation of course.


Why not original?


----------



## Ramako

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Why not original?


I don't speak Anglo-Saxon lol. The translation's ancient though, probably not much better, I really don't know why I got it...

Oh now I remember, it was free.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Ramako said:


> I don't speak Anglo-Saxon lol. The translation's ancient though, probably not much better, I really don't know why I got it...
> 
> Oh now I remember, it was free.


That's right. If it's free GET IT. If it's cheap, don't, it'll probably be cheap in quality too.


----------



## Guest

About to finish _All the Pretty Horses_. Absolutely brilliant, like all of McCarthy's novels. After I finish it today I'm going to start a Faure bio I just got through inter-library loan.


----------



## Krisena

Finished Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima earlier today. Sensually written, intricate social rules and with descriptions like paintings. Absolutely beautiful.

_"Just as sea and sky blurred together at the horizon, so, too, dream and reality could certainly become confused when viewed from a distance."
- Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses_

I'm pondering wether I should continue with The Temple of Dawn or take a break from the Sea of Fertility quadrology and read something else. I have David Foster Wallace's Oblivion and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again on my to-read list.


----------



## starthrower

I think my next book will be The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes.


----------



## samurai

William L. Shirer--*The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich*


----------



## samurai

Harry Harrison--*Deathworld*


----------



## Morgante

_The Cossaks_ a short novel written by Lev Tolstoj.


----------



## Kopachris

Reading Deryck Cooke - _The Language of Music_. Extremely insightful regarding the expressiveness of music. Not perfect, but highly recommended for anyone who wishes to make program music without stumbling around in the dark. Walter Piston always stated in the introduction to his books that he would avoid speaking of emotion; this book is the exact opposite in that regard.


----------



## Crudblud

William Faulkner's _The Sound and the Fury_


----------



## ProudSquire

It's been a quite some time since I last visited this section, but I've found my way here once more! :}

Currently enjoying another Miss Marple Mystery by my beloved author, Agatha Christie: The Body in the Library

It's taking me a lot longer than I anticipated to read through this book, almost a month now, and I'm only past the half point of the book. lol


----------



## emiellucifuge

Ive just finished Steinbeck's East of Eden. It was great.


----------



## Lenfer

*Mademoiselle de Maupin* ~ *Théophile Gautier*​


----------



## Krisena

I've started Karl Ove Knausgård's "Min Kamp", or "My Struggle" as it's called in English (literally: Mein Kampf), a six book autobiography. The guy can write, so it doesn't matter, though he can become dry when he's not reflecting.

*"For the heart, life is simple..."*

Awesome opening.


----------



## TheBamf

Finished A Farewell to Arms yesterday. I am going to start reading Love in the Time of the Cholera tonight.


----------



## cwarchc

Just started, my son's copy, of this









It's a challenging read, and I'm only 20 pages in??
It's a concept book, not linear in how you read it.
It's early days, so I won't pass judgement yet.
I'm intrigued with the thought process of the author (not sure if he's being a bit too clever)
I'll post a summary after, if anybodies interested?


----------



## Krisena

cwarchc said:


> Just started, my son's copy, of this
> 
> It's a challenging read, and I'm only 20 pages in??
> It's a concept book, not linear in how you read it.
> It's early days, so I won't pass judgement yet.
> I'm intrigued with the thought process of the author (not sure if he's being a bit too clever)
> I'll post a summary after, if anybodies interested?


My best friend read that book some years ago and showed me some sample pages. I was impressed. I'd like to hear your thoughts about it!


----------



## SAKO

ENDLESS NIGHT by Agatha Christie. Wife reading Fifty Shades of Grey, surprise surprise.


----------



## Lenfer

Krisena said:


> My best friend read that book some years ago and showed me some sample pages. I was impressed. I'd like to hear your thoughts about it!


Although I'm a "classics" person it looks interesting.


----------



## SAKO

emiellucifuge said:


> Ive just finished Steinbeck's East of Eden. It was great.


Was given an American copy of East of Eden as a gift about 20 years ago by the ex-inlaws who'd been over to the States for a holiday.

Exceptional book.


----------



## Nadia

I'm currently reading the Capital of Karl Marx, vol.1. I'm actually surprised how understandable it is!


----------



## elgar's ghost

Orlando Figes' 'A People's Tragedy - the Russian Revolution 1891-1924'. The section on the Red/White civil war is totally absorbing and even more gruesome than the events leading up to it.


----------



## Lenfer

*The City and the Pillar* ~ *Gore Vidal*​
I have borrowed this from my other half, first edition that he had signed in person. Hope I don't get it covered in mousse. 
:devil:​


----------



## Krisena

Lenfer said:


> Although I'm a "classics" person it looks interesting.


It thought it was a classic! A modern one maybe.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Well, as a consequence for me procrastinating with reading Brothers Karamazov (isn't this a lot like it was for Crime and Punishment?) I will have to turn the book in unfinished back to the library tomorrow.  I will have to buy it to finish it, but that's alright.


----------



## Klavierspieler

Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age"
by John Daverio


----------



## Ramako

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Well, as a consequence for me procrastinating with reading Brothers Karamazov (isn't this a lot like it was for Crime and Punishment?) I will have to turn the book in unfinished back to the library tomorrow.  I will have to buy it to finish it, but that's alright.


 My favourite two books!


----------



## Lenfer

The complete poems of *Tristan Tzara*​


----------



## Vesteralen

The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982
Library of America - 19th century American Poetry - Vol 1 (just finished Whittier - on to Poe)
A History of the World Through 100 Objects
Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
The St Martin's Guide to Writing
A History of Western Music
Louder and Funnier (PG Wodehouse)
Swan for the Money (Andrews)
Thunder on the Right (Mary Stewart) - second time
The Tempest (Shakespeare)
Modern Greek 
The Strand Magazine


----------



## cwarchc

cwarchc said:


> Just started, my son's copy, of this
> 
> View attachment 6560
> 
> 
> It's a challenging read, and I'm only 20 pages in??
> It's a concept book, not linear in how you read it.
> It's early days, so I won't pass judgement yet.
> I'm intrigued with the thought process of the author (not sure if he's being a bit too clever)
> I'll post a summary after, if anybodies interested?


I'm 400 pages in now,, 300 to go
A very challenging read
I have to say I like it (with reservations)
It's a story in 2 parts
Very intrigeing (spelling doesn't look right?)
I think the author is trying to be a bit too clever (but that's only my opinion)
It's very well written and keeps you enthralled
I'll give a summary when I finish it later on, as there does seem some interest
Chris


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

"Intriguing"


----------



## cwarchc

Right I've finished the "House of Leaves", as there appears to be a bit of interest I'll write a brief summay of my thoughts on it:
First of all, it's a challenge to read.
Non-linear in format. There are 2 seperate but interconnected stories, sometiimes on the same page sometimes pages apart. You also need to cross reference the appendix at the end, and keep track of the footnotes (with me so far?)
There's also the different type settings and formats, which can jump across the page.
If you are intigued and can handle the unusual format, it's a good read.
Is it a horror story or is it a psychological thriller? perhaps a bit of both.
You follow the story of .......well I'm not going to tell.
If you are interested, I'd advise you to go and read it.
I enjoyed it.


----------



## Ravndal




----------



## clavichorder

I just finished "Coyote" by Alan Steele. Its a rich novel of political intrigue, good characters, wilderness survival, and generally plausible science set under the premises of interstellar travel. I highly recommend it, the best thing I've read in a long time. I love science fiction, but I recommend this one even to the non sci-fi reader. Sort of Heinlein like, as the reviewers say, but I like it more somehow.


----------



## belfastboy

Just finished the Kenneth Williams diaries.....beginning Crime and Punishment (dostoevsky)......with 'The History of Child Abuse'...for Uni!


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Well, as a consequence for me procrastinating with reading Brothers Karamazov (isn't this a lot like it was for Crime and Punishment?) I will have to turn the book in unfinished back to the library tomorrow.  I will have to buy it to finish it, but that's alright.


Guess what I got the book back from the library under different library account card, and I'm back to reading it again!


----------



## ProudSquire

Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

A great friend of mine bought me this book a while back, 2 months ago to be precise, and she said it was a great read. So, here we are. :{


----------



## Guest

Lewis Lockwood's _Beethoven: The Music and the Life
_Nick Davies' _Flat Earth News

_That'll keep me going until the New Year, possibly beyond!


----------



## Bas

I'm reading a book about the Vatican History (Vaticanie, by Stijn Fens, in Dutch). It is very interesting.


----------



## Jeremy Marchant

I managed to skipread John Bowlby's ground breaking trilogy, _Attachment and loss_, over the weekend - all 1200 pages.

It's amazing that, even given that the first volume was published as long ago as 1969, Bowlby had to take so much time convincing his sceptics that, if you want to understand what is going on for children, you work with _them_, not talk to middle aged men who can afford expensive sessions in Viennese consulting rooms who tell you what they think you would like to hear about what went on a long time ago.


----------



## belfastboy

Just started Classics of Moral and Political Theory......*finger on chin* interesting!


----------



## belfastboy

Jeremy Marchant said:


> I managed to skipread John Bowlby's ground breaking trilogy, _Attachment and loss_, over the weekend - all 1200 pages.
> 
> It's amazing that, even given that the first volume was published as long ago as 1969, Bowlby had to take so much time convincing his sceptics that, if you want to understand what is going on for children, you work with _them_, not talk to middle aged men who can afford expensive sessions in Viennese consulting rooms who tell you what they think you would like to hear about what went on a long time ago.


Here's to Bowlby!! Have studied him and his theories. Thumbs-up to you man!


----------



## Philip

_La fin des certitudes_, Ilya Prigogine


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Still reading Brother Karamazov, I got my own copy of it now.


----------



## Ondine

'The Social Self'


----------



## Meaghan

I just finished reading Joseph Von Eichendorff's _Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing_, a very enjoyable bit of German romanticism - like a song cycle in novella form.

And I am almost done with Jonathan Safran Foer's _Everything Is Illuminated._ One of the stranger novels I've read, but I'm completely engrossed.

But I've just gotten back to school and am very nearly out of time for unassigned reading. Pretty soon everything will be for my classes.


----------



## GGluek

At the beach last month I re-read XYLOPHONE FRAGMENTS by Mark Woodward, a music-based mystery that Mrs. G got and passed on to me. A good read, sort of literary, and fun for classical music people. Last I looked, only available as an e-book.


----------



## Krisena

Just finished *Karl Ove Knausgård's "My Struggle"* vol. 1. Taking a little break from him for a moment and starting *Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil"* and *Johan Harstads "Buzz Aldrin - hvor ble det av deg i alt mylderet?"* (lit. Buzz Aldrin - Where did you go in all the confusion?)

I'm reading two books at the time, because they're both at an extreme end of the spectrum of involvement from the author. Hamsun is pretty detached while Harstad is as involved as he can get. Balance achieved.


----------



## Wandering

I'd just finished Millenium Trilogy by Larsson about a week ago. It was pretty good but had things I also didn't care for aside from his very dry writing style. 

A couple days ago I read 'The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum' by Heinrich Böll. Really enjoyed the read. Went back to other works I'd read way back by him, starting with 'The Clown'.

Starting Arnold Schoenberg's Journey by Allen Shawn also.


----------



## clavichorder

I am reading the next book in the Coyote series by Alan Steele, 'Coyote Rising.' Good bye talkclassical.

P.S.,

TCer's should read the books Meaghan mentioned, they are very good books.


----------



## cwarchc

The Selfish Gene


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I've started reading a famous biography of Marcel Moyse, French Flutist Extraordinaire of the 20th century. Written by Ann McCutchan. I have to do a book report for it... as well as for 4 other flutist biographies this semester.


----------



## Sonata

I just started "Sophie's Choice" today. I've been meaning to read this one for years.


----------



## samurai

Great movie as well; have you seen it?


----------



## Lenfer

*Zazie in the Metro* ~ *Raymond Queneau*​


----------



## samurai

Orlando Figes--*A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution* *1891-1924*


----------



## Klavierspieler

Herman Melville - Moby Dick


----------



## samurai

Ray Bradbury--*A Pleasure To Burn:** Fahrenheit 451 Stories*


----------



## mamascarlatti

Lenfer said:


> *Zazie in the Metro* ~ *Raymond Queneau*​


That one is fun and rather anarchic.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Bryan Magee's The History of Philosophy 

Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy 

Both translated into persian. 

+ divân of Hâfez


----------



## Sonata

samurai said:


> Great movie as well; have you seen it?


Not yet, but I will be doing so within the next month for sure.
It was a very good book. Not flawless, but Styron is one hell of a writer!


----------



## Wandering

samurai said:


> Great movie as well; have you seen it?


Kevin Kline was great also.


----------



## Sonata

One thing that was really neat about the book was the way music was written in to the fabric of the characters and events. Sophie's passion for music was almost spiritual. For someone like myself who's just gotten really serious into listening to classical like me so recently, it was very powerful. And the VALUE of the music to the characters....I race along trying to listen to as much music as I can, sometimes I've forgotten to just immerse myself in the moment of the music.

This was interesting: Sophie's friend Stingo, the narrator of the book, the cost of a single Beethoven symphony record was half a week's pay. I purchased a complete digital download CYCLE of his symphonies for five bucks. That's less than half an HOUR of work for me. The cost of that cycle, were I Stingo, would be over four thousand dollars for me. Seriously, over FOUR THOUSAND dollars. Think about how much he would savor that single symphony he had let alone eventually having the whole collection.

So, what I'm saying in so many words, reading that book really made me appreciate how fortunate I am to have this ridiculously large collection of music (classical and otherwise) and reminds me that I need to savor that music! 

As a side note, any other books where music is written of in such a manner? Or should I take this topic to the main board?


----------



## Wandering

The three first novels in the Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson. I'm hooked!


----------



## Agatha

An Autobiography - Igor Stravinsky
and I am listening to TTC lectures - Robert Greenberg - Igor Stravinsky
Stravinsky was much better in writing music than in writing books


----------



## MaestroViolinist

More YA Fantasy for me  : _*History Keepers - The Storm Begins* by Damian Dibben_


----------



## Lenfer

Re-reading 
*Mademoiselle de Maupin* ~ *Theophile Gautier*​


----------



## Sonata

I read the first section of the "Guitar Handbook" which was mixed in with the piano books from the gentleman who loaned us his keyboard. Not interested in guitar theory or playing, but it has brief bios of influential guitarists which is intersting. ie. Clapton, Chuck Berry, BB King, etc.


----------



## drpraetorus

A book on politics. I'll withhold the name so as not to cause needless blood/inkshed.


----------



## Lunasong

I just finished reading _Heart of a Soldier_ by James B. Stewart. The true story of Rick Rescorla, a decorated Vietnam war veteran who was head of security at Morgan Stanley in the World Trade Center on 9-11. Rescorla previously predicted the 1993 terrorist attack on the buildings and also predicted the 2001 attack. He had drilled his employees on how to escape the towers in case of emergency. Because of his preparedness, 3700 employees survived the attack and only six died, one of them Rescorla. He had returned up the stairwell to ensure that every employee had evacuated.

An opera has been made of Rescorla's story, based on this book and premiered in 2011 by San Francisco Opera.

Book reviews

This is an amazing book, not only for its insight into 9-11, but the war stories from Vietnam. I recommend it.


----------



## Praeludium

Michel Tournier - Le Roi des Aulnes

It has been a while since I've read non-fantasy/sci-fi litterature.


----------



## Sonata

I just picked up "World War Z" yesterday at the bookstore. My sister and brother had been discussing it last Christmas and ever since I've really wanted to read it. I hope to start it tonight or tomorrow


----------



## RobertAshby

I've just finished "Mendelssohn and his friends in Kensington" -- a collection of letters by two daughters of a middle-class and very musical household in London in the 1830s. An absolutely brilliant book, for the light it throws on musical life at that time, the extraordinary domestic accomplishments of music and language, and the way public concerts were perceived and valued. Out of print, but was Oxford University Press. Mendelssohn visited the family, who were friends of Moscheles and others. A direct way of understanding what people made of -- say -- a late Beethoven quartet or sonata, uncluttered by historians.


----------



## Wandering

Hadn't made great headway in my Schoenberg bio, not from lack of interest, but because I'm reading a bunch of fiction along with it. The mystery series I'd mentioned, also half way done with A hero of our time, been a while with that also. Also have a reread of Group Portrait with Lady in mind.

A person as bad at recollecting somethings, does a good job with others, such as the jumble above, don't know why? Selective memory maybe?


----------



## Wandering

Sonata said:


> One thing that was really neat about the book was the way music was written in to the fabric of the characters and events. Sophie's passion for music was almost spiritual. For someone like myself who's just gotten really serious into listening to classical like me so recently, it was very powerful. And the VALUE of the music to the characters....I race along trying to listen to as much music as I can, sometimes I've forgotten to just immerse myself in the moment of the music.
> 
> This was interesting: Sophie's friend Stingo, the narrator of the book, the cost of a single Beethoven symphony record was half a week's pay. I purchased a complete digital download CYCLE of his symphonies for five bucks. That's less than half an HOUR of work for me. The cost of that cycle, were I Stingo, would be over four thousand dollars for me. Seriously, over FOUR THOUSAND dollars. Think about how much he would savor that single symphony he had let alone eventually having the whole collection.
> 
> So, what I'm saying in so many words, reading that book really made me appreciate how fortunate I am to have this ridiculously large collection of music (classical and otherwise) and reminds me that I need to savor that music!
> 
> As a side note, any other books where music is written of in such a manner? Or should I take this topic to the main board?


^Good question!

This is a great novel for those interested in the history and playing of the piano and/or old euro yearnings and nostalgia, from a historical fiction writer.









http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Shop-Left-Bank-Discovering/dp/0375758623/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349443995&sr=1-1&keywords=little+piano+shop


----------



## cwarchc

I've just bought:
Partners in Power
Nixon & Kissenger

It was £1 in our local "Pound Store"

I haven't started reading it yet, but I can remember some of the things mentioned happening.
Hhhmmm, note to self, getting older:devil:


----------



## pierrot

Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

pierrot said:


> Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.


I love that one!

I am currently reading "The Narnia Chronicles" in German translation.


----------



## pierrot

SiegendesLicht said:


> I love that one!
> 
> I am currently reading "The Narnia Chronicles" in German translation.


This is his first book I'm reading, so far so good.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

The "Screwtape Letters" is very good too.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

SiegendesLicht said:


> The "Screwtape Letters" is very good too.


If you're curious about other great C.S. Lewis fiction, try the Space Trilogy, and Til We Have Faces.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

I have already read most of C.S. Lewis, both fiction and philosophy/theology.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

*The Circle - The Witch Hunt Begins Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg* It's a Swedish best seller, it was translated by someone or other.


----------



## starthrower

Billions and Billions-Carl Sagan


----------



## pierrot

Rereading the most insightful book I read in a long time: *Fear and Trembling.*


----------



## cwarchc

An interesting read. 
Would he have been as well know if he had survived?
Just a side point, you may not be aware of. Britten's War Requiem uses some of his poetry.


----------



## Lunasong

_Street Player - My Chicago Story_ by Danny Seraphine.

Drummer Seraphine, a founding member of Chicago, claims the band "always let the music do the talking." But now it's Seraphine's turn to blab. In his brutally honest memoir (the first by any Chicago member), Seraphine gives a lively insider's account of the music and history of a band that has sold more than 122 million albums. His stories--from the controversial departure of Peter Cetera; the band's multiple comebacks; and the hairpiece that saved his life one night in Nebraska, to the 1978 Russian roulette death of founding guitarist Terry Kath and Seraphine's own sacking by the band in 1990-will satisfy longtime fans of the band, whose famous logo often revealed more personality than its members. Despite an over-reliance on cliché, Seraphine is a natural storyteller: recalling the early support Chicago received from Jimi Hendrix, how he almost came to blows with Janis Joplin, and the serious cocaine problem that gripped the band ("I considered coke a ninth member of our group"). He also covers his tumultuous childhood in a street gang and a tenuous connection to the Chicago Mafia, often naming names, and it's obvious that the wounds inflicted by his former band mates have yet to completely heal.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

This book is due in 7 days, and I just started it. It's been recalled for some reason, and I can't renew.  Better get to speed reading! 4-5 page book report!


----------



## graaf




----------



## buafafa

WELL! I'm surprised that a cultured and intelligent bunch of individuals like yourselves haven't already made a "What books are you Reading" thread.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Huilunsoittaja said:


> View attachment 8958
> 
> 
> This book is due in 7 days, and I just started it. It's been recalled for some reason, and I can't renew.  Better get to speed reading! 4-5 page book report!


Oh my gosh, this was one of the coolest biographies I've ever read. Georges Barrere promoted _Glazunov _in France and the US! Besides for being an awesome flutist, he's a man worth honoring, eh?


----------



## starthrower

The Origin Of Consciousness-Julian Jaynes


----------



## Lukecash12

Frank Herbert's _Dune: God Emperor_
Martin Buber's _Ich und du_ (I and thou)
Kant- An assortment of stuff
Plato's _Symposium_
And a bunch of scholar's articles on oral tradition.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

Ok, so I just finished "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and it is one of the best books I've ever read! This is a review I wrote on it:

_This book is something everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, should read at least once in their life time. Although I suggest having a few Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters before hand.

It tells the story of Arthur Dent, how his house is to be knocked down, and how - in 12 minutes - the Earth is to be destroyed. Also, it takes bits and pieces out of the book "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which over took the Encyclopaedia Galactica (as you read, you shall find out why).

This book takes off many things in day to day life; Councils, humans, computers, Philosophers, and... Mice. It even tells you the answer, 42. But that's not very helpful because there doesn't seem to be a question.

The only bad thing about this book, is that you never find out who got the bruised upper arm.

My suggestion is, READ IT._


----------



## cwarchc

MaestroViolinist said:


> Ok, so I just finished "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and it is one of the best books I've ever read! This is a review I wrote on it:
> 
> _This book is something everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, should read at least once in their life time. Although I suggest having a few Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters before hand.
> 
> It tells the story of Arthur Dent, how his house is to be knocked down, and how - in 12 minutes - the Earth is to be destroyed. Also, it takes bits and pieces out of the book "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which over took the Encyclopaedia Galactica (as you read, you shall find out why).
> 
> This book takes off many things in day to day life; Councils, humans, computers, Philosophers, and... Mice. It even tells you the answer, 42. But that's not very helpful because there doesn't seem to be a question.
> 
> The only bad thing about this book, is that you never find out who got the bruised upper arm.
> 
> My suggestion is, READ IT._


Great book, you now need to read the whole series.
Make sure you read them before you watch the film.
There's also an old (1981) tv series that was made by the BBC


----------



## samurai

Edward J. Erickson--*Gallipoli and The Middle East*, *1914-1918: From The Dardanelles to Mesopotamia*


----------



## Wandering

I purchased two turn of the century semi-historical novels, a Fruedian mystery 'The Fig-Eater' and the Alma Mahler life-glam 'Alma'. The 'Alma' fiction is almost a complete unknown, not many Mahler fans give a hoot about his wife either. I think I saw both of these reviewed somewhere or other, maybe even on this site? Could be a minute before I get around to reading these works, as also the Schoenberg bio I've been neglecting. I'm currently on an Alan Banks Inspector mystery binge, over halfway through the entire series now.


----------



## Lukecash12

MaestroViolinist said:


> Ok, so I just finished "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and it is one of the best books I've ever read! This is a review I wrote on it:
> 
> _This book is something everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, should read at least once in their life time. Although I suggest having a few Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters before hand.
> 
> It tells the story of Arthur Dent, how his house is to be knocked down, and how - in 12 minutes - the Earth is to be destroyed. Also, it takes bits and pieces out of the book "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which over took the Encyclopaedia Galactica (as you read, you shall find out why).
> 
> This book takes off many things in day to day life; Councils, humans, computers, Philosophers, and... Mice. It even tells you the answer, 42. But that's not very helpful because there doesn't seem to be a question.
> 
> The only bad thing about this book, is that you never find out who got the bruised upper arm.
> 
> My suggestion is, READ IT._


Darn, you gave away too much in the review.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

cwarchc said:


> Great book, you now need to read the whole series.
> Make sure you read them before you watch the film.
> There's also an old (1981) tv series that was made by the BBC


 I have now read the second book, sadly I don't have the next 3(?) with me at the moment. Films generally aren't as good as the books, so I doubt I'll be watching it at all, unless you recommend it...?


----------



## MaestroViolinist

Lukecash12 said:


> Darn, you gave away too much in the review.


ut:

....


----------



## cwarchc

MaestroViolinist said:


> I have now read the second book, sadly I don't have the next 3(?) with me at the moment. Films generally aren't as good as the books, so I doubt I'll be watching it at all, unless you recommend it...?


The film's watchable, but I can't say it's anymore than that.
The series is worth watching, in an odd sort of way.
The books are "superb" IMHO
Check out his others, if you like these? Dirk Gently is quite good


----------



## Sonata

> Ok, so I just finished "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and it is one of the best books I've ever read!


Yes, it is quite wonderful! I have the five books of the series in one hardbound black leather book. Great stuff. I read Dirk Gently and did not care for it nearly as much. I also have Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, but I have not read it yet.


----------



## samurai

Barbara Tuchman--*The Guns of August*


----------



## Schubussy

Just starting this


----------



## Wandering

^ I liked everything in it but the short mod chapter. I had a mind's eye back then, _vividly fantasatic_* and screwed up*!

This is what I'm on now, almost finished:


----------



## drpraetorus

The Ascent of George Wachington by John Ferling. I'll post a review when I finished with it.


----------



## jurianbai

I read Arnold Schwarzenneger, Total Recall. 








http://amzn.to/Qyk0ok

Good reading and fun, rising my desire for the American Dream.


----------



## Alie

John Templeton "Discovering Laws of Life"


----------



## Kopachris

Because Schoenberg's _Harmonielehre_ is so heavy (figuratively), I've found reading into the first bits of _Structural Functions of Harmony_ to help summarize and clarify things.


----------



## drpraetorus

Sonata said:


> Yes, it is quite wonderful! I have the five books of the series in one hardbound black leather book. Great stuff. I read Dirk Gently and did not care for it nearly as much. I also have Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, but I have not read it yet.


How could the movie have been so bad with Mr Adams in on the screenplay? I never understood that. I wish they had made it at least 10 years earlier. Hugh Laurie would have been the perfect Arthur Dent. No one boggles like Hugh Laurie. Aside from the unfortunate screenplay, the most disappointing part was the actors playing ford Prefect and Zaphod. Neitherwas as good as they could have been.

I have read the Dirk Gently books and enjoyed them, but probably would not have picked them up without the Doug Adams name on them.


----------



## Kevin Pearson

I joined a Classic Science Fiction reading group and this month we are reading Frederik Pohl's classic novel "Gateway". It's the first in a series of the Heechee saga but as far as I know each story is self-contained. The story switches back and forth every other chapter of the main character and his computer psychoanalyst and his narration of his off world trip to the Gateway as a prospector in hopes of becoming rich. So far I do not really like the main character but the Gateway part of the story is interesting. I hope it gets better. It could use a little less sex and a little more adventure for my taste as well. I hope next months book is better!


----------



## Praeludium

I just finished Michel Tournier's _Le Roi des Aulnes_.

It made me understand that in every arts a masterpiece can be life changing. 
That was an amazing book - I feel kind of exhausted and at the same time revived. Despite being quite accessible in its writing style (even for me), it's easy to feel how deep it is. Everything gravitates around the idea of "phorie", as it is written in the text. It's from the Greek so it must roughly be the same world in english. Anyway, it's the act of carrying - in particular, carrying a child, like in the myth of Saint Christopher.

The sheer power and solidity of the structure of this work really impressed me as a musician - it's like a big orchestral piece. The same theme can be seen many times in different fashion, and it's done in a very subtle way. There's a main idea which leads the whole work and gives a great coherence to it but at the same time is in perpetual evolution. Really impressive.

Tournier has written books which have had huge popular success with children, but this one is really rough, it deals directly, without gloves, with sex, violence, nazism, madness - he never outdoes it, but the main character isn't what you'd call a normal man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Erl-King_(novel)


----------



## Renaissance

The Nonexistent Knight - Italo Calvino. I love this guy's style. One of the most complete writer in the last century.


----------



## samurai

Barbara Tuchman--*The Proud Tower*


----------



## samurai

Renaissance said:


> The Nonexistent Knight - Italo Calvino. I love this guy's style. One of the most complete writer in the last century.



@ Renaissance, That really looks like an interesting book. What's it about?


----------



## Renaissance

Italo Calvino is a post-modern writer who was interested in modern people's condition. His books explores human identity, integration with society, virtue, existentialist themes like absurd, loneliness, etc. In this book the main character is a medieval knight who doesn't not exist. He is only an empty armour, yet he exemplify piety, faithfulness, chivalry, but he simply doesn't not exist. He fight for noble causes, serves a Christian king because he believes in these causes, but he is only an empty armour. And nobody likes him because nobody understands him. He is only protocols and rules. And what's more interesting is that when everything around him seem to be confusing, to escape rules, he concentrate on doing weird things like counting stones and arrange them in geometric pattern. These things gives him impression that he exists when rules around them are broken. He lives for those rules, and he constantly need to find order around him. Everything Calvino wrote is a complex mixture of allegory, fantasy, philosophy presented in a comic view about the condition of modern people.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Romain Rolland's Life of Michelangelo.


----------



## Sonata

I just started "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb


----------



## millionrainbows

*I only read liner notes. Does that count?*


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I'm going to begin skimming over the autobiographies of Jean-Pierre Rampal and Jame Galway in the next few weeks, to make short 1-page book reports for. I don't have to read them in depth, and I guess I'll save that for another time.


----------



## clavichorder

A fantasy novel that I am too self conscious about reading to immediately reveal on talkclassical without allowing you to speculate if you choose, or not.


----------



## Sonata

Oh, tell me clavichorder! I like the fantasy genre. It was my primary genre from the ages of 15-21 or so. Harry Potter? LOTR? Game of Thrones books? Terry Goodkind?

My sister just loaned me the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Not my usual fare, but it's a light easy read, and that works for me at the moment. If I have time I'll start it today.


----------



## clavichorder

Sonata;387153Harry Potter? LOTR? Game of Thrones books? Terry Goodkind?
[/QUOTE said:


> HP and LOTR are of easily higher literary and imaginative caliber than what I am reading. But don't think too low, it isn't Twilight, though some might say it is the teenage/adolescent male version of it, wouldn't know since I haven't read Twilight, only based on what I've heard. When I was in about 6th grade, I read the book Eragon and really liked it. So just now am I finishing off the series with Inheritance. I think its a great achievement for such a young author, and it is very enjoyable and keeps you reading, but from a very young age, I have been one to be insecure about my enjoyment of things that adults or mature minded people view as stupid or childish. At age 7, I concealed my obsession with Pokemon from most adults, and yet it continued on and off till I was near 13.
> 
> I don't know about Game of Thrones or Terry Goodkind; do you recommend them? I have been ogling "Game of Thrones" when I see it on display or in some stranger's hands, for a while.


----------



## Kevin Pearson

Started another classic Science Fiction read called "Immortality, Inc." by Robert Sheckley. So far a very fun and interesting read. It's about a guy who dies by impalement in a car crash in 1958 and then wakes up in a hospital alive, but alive in 2110. An international corporation has figured out a way to travel back in time and reincarnate people or rebirth them (scientifically speaking). The main character wakes up to discover he didn't die but he is now alive in a host body quite different from the one he left and now he's in a world he knows nothing about. A world where life is cheap and people sell their bodies to science to provide for their families and a society that allows suicide booths where you can take your own life for free. Corporate greed still hasn't changed though nor man's quest for immortality. As a side note the book was adapted into the movie Freejack but Freejack is "loosely based.










Kevin


----------



## samurai

@ KP, That sounds like a really interesting theme to explore, Kevin. Good find!


----------



## Kevin Pearson

samurai said:


> @ KP, That sounds like a really interesting theme to explore, Kevin. Good find!


I have been a huge sci-fi fan since about five years old but only recently started delving back into "classic" science fiction pretty heavily. I joined a Yahoo group for Classic Science Fiction and am discovering some real gems there. They have a classic and a modern book to read and discuss each month. This was one I had nominated for the group but it lost out and I decided to read it anyway. When I was a teenager I bought a collection of about 2000 sci-fi books and magazines at a garage sale for only $100.00. I sure wish I had kept all those but I am working on rebuilding a classic sci-fi library. I have gotten some really good deals on Ebay but I am also finding many of the old titles available free online. If you have an ereader and would like to read this book I will PM the link where I found it to you. My wife bought me the new Nook HD+ (9 inch screen) and I'm enjoying it. I have had several versions of the Nook. I own a classic Nook eink reader, I had a Nook Color but sold it and upgraded to the Nook Tablet when it came out and I also own a Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight for nighttime reading. You could say I love technology but in reality I love to read and the technology is a great tool. There is so much free stuff out there you actually could read the rest of your life and not ever spend a penny on another book. The only reason I am collecting books at all is because I just love the artwork on those old vintage science fiction books and it's a pretty inexpensive hobby. Cheaper than drugs or alcohol and that makes my wife very happy!

Kevin


----------



## SiegendesLicht

clavichorder said:


> A fantasy novel that I am too self conscious about reading to immediately reveal on talkclassical without allowing you to speculate if you choose, or not.


One of the "Conan the Barbarian" series?


----------



## Kevin Pearson

SiegendesLicht said:


> One of the "Conan the Barbarian" series?


My guess would be one of the Rick Riordan series. This could make a fun game! What is clavichorder reading? :lol:

Kevin


----------



## millionrainbows

------------------------------:








This is not the kind of book you read in one sitting.


----------



## Wandering

clavichorder said:


> HP and LOTR are of easily higher literary and imaginative caliber than what I am reading. But don't think too low, it isn't Twilight, though some might say it is the teenage/adolescent male version of it, wouldn't know since I haven't read Twilight, only based on what I've heard. When I was in about 6th grade, I read the book Eragon and really liked it. So just now am I finishing off the series with Inheritance. I think its a great achievement for such a young author, and it is very enjoyable and keeps you reading, but from a very young age, I have been one to be insecure about my enjoyment of things that adults or mature minded people view as stupid or childish. At age 7, I concealed my obsession with Pokemon from most adults, and yet it continued on and off till I was near 13.
> 
> I don't know about Game of Thrones or Terry Goodkind; do you recommend them? I have been ogling "Game of Thrones" when I see it on display or in some stranger's hands, for a while.


^Don't feel bad, cheese is good, even processed cheese, cheese whiz for that matter.

Have you or anyone else read any Clive Barker? 'Cabal' or 'Weaveworld', they have fantasy themes, same with 'Imagica'. I really enjoyed 'The Thieves of Always' as a kiddo. I far prefered his horror story collections, 'The Inhuman Condition' and 'In the Flesh', not a fantasy guy, but Barker is part fantasy regardless, mysticals and unknowns often the allure.


----------



## Kopachris

_A Beautiful Mind_
A lengthy guide to/criticism of Strauss's _Zarathustra_
Schenker's _Harmony_
Still finishing Schoenberg's _Harmony_


----------



## Kopachris

clavichorder said:


> HP and LOTR are of easily higher literary and imaginative caliber than what I am reading. But don't think too low, it isn't Twilight, though some might say it is the teenage/adolescent male version of it, wouldn't know since I haven't read Twilight, only based on what I've heard. When I was in about 6th grade, I read the book Eragon and really liked it. So just now am I finishing off the series with Inheritance. I think its a great achievement for such a young author, and it is very enjoyable and keeps you reading, but from a very young age, I have been one to be insecure about my enjoyment of things that adults or mature minded people view as stupid or childish. At age 7, I concealed my obsession with Pokemon from most adults, and yet it continued on and off till I was near 13.
> 
> I don't know about Game of Thrones or Terry Goodkind; do you recommend them? I have been ogling "Game of Thrones" when I see it on display or in some stranger's hands, for a while.


Inheritance cycle childish? 

And 13 isn't that old to quit Pokemon. There are a lot of people who grew up with Pokemon and never grew out of it.

Then again, maybe you should take my opinion with a grain of salt--I watch My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop. :/


----------



## Ramako

I have suddenly got a powerful desire to re-read _Crime and Punishment._ I think I may do so. It was about this time 4 years ago that I read it first (and last).

At the moment I am reading:
_Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style_
Along with dipping in and out of a few other things.


----------



## Sonata

clavichorder said:


> HP and LOTR are of easily higher literary and imaginative caliber than what I am reading. But don't think too low, it isn't Twilight, though some might say it is the teenage/adolescent male version of it, wouldn't know since I haven't read Twilight, only based on what I've heard. When I was in about 6th grade, I read the book Eragon and really liked it. So just now am I finishing off the series with Inheritance. I think its a great achievement for such a young author, and it is very enjoyable and keeps you reading, but from a very young age, I have been one to be insecure about my enjoyment of things that adults or mature minded people view as stupid or childish. At age 7, I concealed my obsession with Pokemon from most adults, and yet it continued on and off till I was near 13.
> 
> I don't know about Game of Thrones or Terry Goodkind; do you recommend them? I have been ogling "Game of Thrones" when I see it on display or in some stranger's hands, for a while.


I have not yet read Game of Thrones, though my sister and mother recommend them highly and I'll get to them at some point.
Terry Goodkind: I am very divided on this author. He has a very interesting style of writing, very fast paced plotting. He has 700-900 page novels that feel more like 300 pages, they move that fast reading. That said, he has definite drawbacks. He uses some similar phrasing INCESSENTLY. He's probably used the phrase "You're a rare person, Richard Cypher" about 30 or 40 times through the first three books. And they aren't for the squeamish. They are violent books in places, and they are fairly descriptive. I have found myself skipping sections because I dont' have the stomach for them. I am at the point where I am a little undecided if I'll read another book of his......a very polarizing author.


----------



## clavichorder

That might **** me off, repetitive phrases. I try to look past that kind of stuff, and sometimes can if I am so attached to the initial content and storyline of a book. And intensity of violence does not help unless it is leveled by a sort of a realistic element(not a "too real" element). I can only handle so much of that before I need and peaceful or intriguing section, but the only way for violence to be really combated in my mind is with good humor(and not dark humor, lol, though I can enjoy it when I have not read a very violent section in a book).

I am more at heart a science fiction fan. I have so many that I have waiting to read, and yet it may be that I get sick of this kind of material and need to freshen up with something less esoteric or epic.


----------



## Kevin Pearson

clavichorder said:


> I am more at heart a science fiction fan. I have so many that I have waiting to read, and yet it may be that I get sick of this kind of material and need to freshen up with something less esoteric or epic.


Me too Clavicorder! Although I will read the occasional fantasy book I prefer sci-fi. Recently I have been reading a lot of "classic" sci-fi because I won some huge sci-fi lots on Ebay. Really enjoying a collection of short stories by Murray Leinster called "Monsters and Such". The monsters in these stories are not of the Frankenstein/Dracula variety but aliens. Most of the stories were originally published in Sci-fi pulp magazines of the 1950s.










Kevin


----------



## clavichorder

The oldies from the '50s and '60s, except for Asimov(all of it), and little Heinlein, I haven't looked into yet. Dune too of course, but that's the beginning of the new, large scale stuff. H.G. Wells though, his famous early ones, especially Time Machine, are fantastic. The Asimov's I recommend the most are The End of Eternity, The Gods Themselves, Nemesis, and all the Foundation stuff. Also, the Robot Trilogy is pretty intriguing. Its all good to me, Empire stuff too, except maybe the prequels to Foundation.

I think I have gone the opposite direction of you in recent times Kevin. I wanted to see the crazy stuff that was being written today. These days, the ideas are either really outlandish, or else almost cliched but expanded into massive proportions in some surprisingly compelling stories. The trilogy I'm still working on, but am taking a brief break from, is Alan Steele's Coyote. Its more tame, interstellar travel, and is praised for being in the spirit of Heinlein with all of its political and American type stuff. I love it, especially the first section to the first book, that was just classic. It was written in the last decade. 

My dad likes this author Peter F. Hamilton. I have started on his books at different times, but did not get far because I was busy at the time. They are massive, and I am eagerly awaiting my chance to unravel them, hopefully this winter break.


----------



## ZombieBeethoven

"Immortality, Inc"! I remember reading that 20 or 30 years ago. I devoured everything by Sheckley. There was a short story with a title something like "Peas and Carrots" that I especially enjoyed. It would be fun to read some Sheckley again. 
More recently, I have been listening to some Verdi and realized that I did not know the story of Othello, so I read the play. Next, I will watch the opera. 
Also recently finished, "Constantinople: Istanbul's Historical Heritage," some translated Russian short stories and "The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera." Next up is "December's Child A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives."


----------



## Crudblud

James Joyce's _Dubliners_


----------



## violadude

"The Origins of Family, Private Property, and the State" by Frederich Engels.


----------



## starthrower

The Glenn Gould Reader


----------



## cwarchc

Asimov Foundation


----------



## clavichorder

cwarchc said:


> Asimov Foundation


Alright, I love everything Asimov.

I am reading Kethani, a book about from what I can tell, benevolent and enlightened aliens, by Eric Brown. It focuses on characters and more human stories much more than other science fiction I've read. I am finding it an easy read, and enjoyable.


----------



## samurai

Justus D. Doenecke--*Nothing Less Than War: A New History Of America's Entry Into World War One*


----------



## Ondine

T.S. Eliot -- The Waste Land


----------



## Sonata

Just received my copy of "What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Human Body" in the mail today. I'll be starting in on it tomorrow....ironically enough, while I take my doctor-recommended five day break from the piano itself. *sigh*


----------



## Guest

_Gone Girl_ by Gillian Flynn


----------



## Ravndal

"Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing" By Josef Lhevinne.

Good read.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

"The Hobbit". I am going to see the film tomorrow, so I want to have all details fresh in my head, to compare them.


----------



## Kevin Pearson

SiegendesLicht said:


> "The Hobbit". I am going to see the film tomorrow, so I want to have all details fresh in my head, to compare them.


Probably a bad idea since the film takes a lot of liberties. It would have been better to see the film without any preconceived ideas. I think that fans of the book will be bothered by all that has been added to the story. Movie goers who know nothing about the book will likely enjoy it the most.

Kevin


----------



## Mesa

Such a question is usually foolish and unnecessary, but there's a special case: has anyone here actually read In Search of Lost Times? Is it worthy of the enormous toil and investment? I imagine the people that have read it are two distinct categories: those with a passion for great literature and those that want to say they've read the longest novel ever.

On second thoughts, best leave it thirty years before having a crack lest i fall reluctantly in to the latter.

Swooping back on topic:









Contender for the best three quid ever spent (The less scientifically acquainted UK folks may do well to visit the'The Works' for it). I read the entry on quantum entanglement before bed the other day, stayed awake for about four hours thinking about it. I say "thinking about", i probably meant "recovering from".


----------



## clavichorder

Fnished Kethani by Eric Brown, and it is a very good book, much recommended.

Now I am reading "The Hobbit" for the first time. Movie is out and there may be no avoiding seeing it, so I don't want it to ruin the book for me at all.


----------



## clavichorder

Mesa said:


> Such a question is usually foolish and unnecessary, but there's a special case: has anyone here actually read In Search of Lost Times? Is it worthy of the enormous toil and investment? I imagine the people that have read it are two distinct categories: those with a passion for great literature and those that want to say they've read the longest novel ever.


You refer to the Proust more commonly known as "Remembrance of things Past"(supposedly not an totally accurate translation, the one you gave being the accepted one now). I have not read it but I have a few thoughts that might encourage you:

I know a guy who has read many of the classics and thinks very highly of it. I respect his opinion on it, but I also realize that he has the capacity to read just about anything, a problem with being that disciplined and adept at reading is that he'll consider things worth it or interesting that are perhaps considered boring for a reason, but I am reassured in that even he has things that he finds boring; he says he doesn't think Thackeray's difficulty is worth the content, and finds it dry and boring. He loves the Proust for some reason, saying "it all fits together." He also is one of the few people who has actually read Clarissa by Samuel Richardson(a book that literary people supposedly joke about as an "you actually read it?" and is considered hugely key to the development of the novel but is never required reading) and he actually liked it a lot but admitted it was no easy task.

Think of it this way: its probably like a Mahler symphony no. 2 of literature; some folks will just hate it because its so long, the phrases are not normal and its not concise or clean, its almost hysterical in its emotions, but many of us who don't like it initially come around as we see the parts that are interesting with greater success than some other difficult and lengthy pieces(there is a reason why Mahler 2 is much better known and liked that Havergal Brian's "Gothic Symphony") and eventually fall for it.


----------



## cwarchc

catch 22,,,


----------



## Cnote11

Mesa, do pick up Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. It is split into volumes, so you will be okay.


----------



## Flamme

AND







Both were good...


----------



## cwarchc

Just finished this, a great read







Starting this one next


----------



## DavidA

John Suchet's book on Beethoven. Definitely not the ultimate in musical scholarship but he seems to get inside the man's character.

Also 'A Romance on three legs' by Katie Hufner about Glenn Gould's obsessive search for the perfect piano.


----------



## Vaneyes

Zero. That's not a title. It means no books.

Maybe I can get back into book reading in 2013. I just find it so tedious. Fiction or Non-fiction.

Some years ago, I geared down from novels...Pynchon, mostly. Maybe it was him that got me bored with books--thick babies, with nothing really original to say, since "Gravity's Rainbow". 

I fear I've morphed into what I used to be critical of. Being a catcher's mitt for short-burst material. No matter how inane.

The short-burst good stuff I do appreciate. Gives me thought for creating my own stuff. Perhaps I should continue to forget reading, and write ****, and make money off it. Hmmmm. I think I may have solved my situation, issue, problem. We'll see.


----------



## Ramako

clavichorder said:


> Now I am reading "The Hobbit" for the first time. Movie is out and there may be no avoiding seeing it, so I don't want it to ruin the book for me at all.


I am sure you don't need me to tell you that the book is much better


----------



## Crudblud

Finished _Dubliners_, which I recommend to you all if you haven't read it yet. It's by James Joyce, just to be certain.

Next I think I might tackle _The Trial_ by Franz Kafka.


----------



## Ramako

I finished my re-read of _Crime and Punishment_. It is a pity that re-reading books is not like listening to a piece of music repeated times - i.e. it gets better every time! Still, at least I enjoyed it a lot this time round again, and perhaps noticed details I didn't before (that's what you're supposed to do when going back to something, right?)

Now I am reading _The Black Prism: Lightbringer_, which seems like a good fantasy book (I like fantasy).


----------



## SiegendesLicht

To all who have read or watched "_The Hobbit"_ lately: today is Professor Tolkien's 121st birthday!


----------



## Guest

I have been reading The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, written by J. R. R. Tolkien, but compiled by his son, Christopher Tolkien. Fascinating to see how the history of Tolkien's Middle Earth evolved.


----------



## Flamme

There is something in *Tol*kien which reminds me on *Tol*stoy beside first letters of their names...They have an habit of boring ppl with details and thus drawing ther attention from the backbone of the story...


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Of course, it is only my own subjective opinion, but I would not want a single word out of all Tolkien's books to be omitted (exactly as I would not want Wagner's music dramas to be cut by a single note). Tolkien was creating a whole world after all, not merely telling a story. So each one of those details adds something to this world. "War and Peace", on the contrary, could very well be cut by a quarter.

By the way, if you think Tolkien's books are long, there is Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. It consists of 14 books by now, and each one is at least 400 pages.


----------



## Flamme

That Storm of swords is also a long one if im correct...There is proliferation of authors who write ''heroic'' literature in last couple of decades....


----------



## Head_case

Mesa said:


> Such a question is usually foolish and unnecessary, but there's a special case: has anyone here actually read In Search of Lost Times? Is it worthy of the enormous toil and investment? I imagine the people that have read it are two distinct categories: those with a passion for great literature and those that want to say they've read the longest novel ever.
> 
> On second thoughts, best leave it thirty years before having a crack lest i fall reluctantly in to the latter.
> .


I guess you're referring to 'A la recherche du temps perdu' by Marcel Proust.

I haven't read 'Remembrance of Times past' - I looked at a few chapters and was stultified by the horrible translation. I read the original French tomes - quite rightly as you say - since people fall into two categories - those with a passion for literature, and the others, who take the 5 page Readers Digest version. I fell into the former, partly due to the study modules (philosophy of psychology, and French 20th century literature) so I guess I'm one of those weirdo closet bookworms 

It isn't reading for the uninitiated, any more than bouillabaisse is country soup for everyday. Proust's idiomatically narcissistically flowery writing style requires some concentration to penetrate. If you enjoy reading Kierkegaard, then Proust will be like elementary school. Whereas Proust's intertextuality is weaker than other authors (like Voltaire, Rousseau, Montaigne), what he does bring into French literature, is a psychological and philosophical merger, of two dominant concepts, along with his own homosexuality.

Freudian sexual drive theory had just started rippling across Europe after Freud's analysis of Breuer's patient, Anna O; the repression and stripping away of the ego, to see what was behind it, using Proust's prosaic method. The autobiographical strand - is tied into Henri Bergson's concept of time and duration. As the professor of the Sorbonne, his ideas of time and duration rippled across France (famously, he was shunned in anglo-american circles as a failure in debates against Einstein at the Societe Francaise .. as well as having rather unorthodox views on evolution). Why was he important?

Because he married into Proust' family via his cousin.

The experience of time; autobiographical time....live out...and de-repressed from Proust's own experience of his life in dandy society life.....this makes his work 'A la recherche du temps perdu' very unique. Nothing in France was ever written like it (with the exception of Maine de Biran's psychological works which came 100 years before Proust, elevating inner life, over social life.

Maybe I'm boring you lol. Yes, I like Proust


----------



## Ramako

Flamme said:


> There is something in *Tol*kien which reminds me on *Tol*stoy beside first letters of their names...They have an habit of boring ppl with details and thus drawing ther attention from the backbone of the story...


Hobbit and LOTR, Anna Karenina... I have to disagree with you.

War and Peace has some dreadfully long and seemingly unnecessary sections on some strange philosophy as far as I can tell. The Silmarillion is of course not really written properly, but rather an account of what happens... There are some good things in some of the more fully written ones though. And of course I love the stories anyway


----------



## Flamme

Well i always was a fan of different kind of fantasy horror one or close to horror not so much heroic...


----------



## Guest

Ramako said:


> Hobbit and LOTR, Anna Karenina... I have to disagree with you.
> 
> War and Peace has some dreadfully long and seemingly unnecessary sections on some strange philosophy as far as I can tell. The Silmarillion is of course not really written properly, but rather an account of what happens... There are some good things in some of the more fully written ones though. And of course I love the stories anyway


The Silmarillion was really more a work in progress. It is more a collection of tale fragments, and some of the main ones Tolkien intended to finish. In their earliest inception, Tolkien had tried to tie them all together in some unifying storyline, originally with a man travelling to the Lonely Isle, which is populated by elves, where he learns their lore. That did not survive to its final form.


----------



## emiellucifuge

Ramako said:


> War and Peace has some dreadfully long and seemingly unnecessary sections on some strange philosophy as far as I can tell. The


But those are the best bits! And they form the real backbone of the book


----------



## Ramako

emiellucifuge said:


> But those are the best bits! And they form the real backbone of the book




Like the 2nd part of the epilogue?


----------



## cwarchc

DrMike said:


> The Silmarillion was really more a work in progress. It is more a collection of tale fragments, and some of the main ones Tolkien intended to finish. In their earliest inception, Tolkien had tried to tie them all together in some unifying storyline, originally with a man travelling to the Lonely Isle, which is populated by elves, where he learns their lore. That did not survive to its final form.


I'm a prolific reader, my wife says I'll read the cornflake box if there's nothing else?
But I have to say the Silmarillion is one of,just a handful of, books that I have never finished ( I have read thousands of books)
Please don't stone me as an unbeliever, but I don't like any of Tolkiens books


----------



## emiellucifuge

Ramako said:


> Like the 2nd part of the epilogue?


Yes!

I mean, in some ways the fictional part of the book only serves to illustrate and illuminate the philosophy he expounds. The epilogue draws together all you've 'witnessed'.


----------



## Guest

cwarchc said:


> I'm a prolific reader, my wife says I'll read the cornflake box if there's nothing else?
> But I have to say the Silmarillion is one of,just a handful of, books that I have never finished ( I have read thousands of books)
> Please don't stone me as an unbeliever, but I don't like any of Tolkiens books


No skin off my back. For me, Tolkien is one of my absolute favorites. I have read the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion all at least 3 times. I am now working my way through the History of Middle Earth books, learning about how Tolkien developed the world of his stories.

No rule says everybody should like any given book. I am also a huge sci-fi fan, and there are some true classics of that genre that get rave reviews, which bored me to tears. To each their own.


----------



## Flamme

I have read Hobbit but LORT put me to sleep in looong journey to the Gates of Mordor...


----------



## SiegendesLicht

I like more realistic sci-fi such as Michael Crichton's books, whose plots unfold in our time and our reality. The kind of sci-fi about galactic empires, faster-than-light travel and alien civilizations holds no attraction for me somehow.


----------



## Crudblud

SiegendesLicht said:


> I like more realistic sci-fi such as Michael Crichton's books, whose plots unfold in our time and our reality. The kind of sci-fi about galactic empires, faster-than-light travel and alien civilizations holds no attraction for me somehow.


Interesting choice of avatar.

Also, do we have any mythology buffs who could recommend a translation of the Prose Edda? I've been looking and seen that there are several, and all of them seem to be hotly debated as to which one is most accurate, most complete etc. so I'd greatly appreciate it if someone could help me with this.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Just started "The Rest is Noise" by Alex Ross.


----------



## Faell

At the moment I'm reading as recommended literature for the course "History and analysis V: 20th century" Allen Forte's _The Structure of Atonal Music_. This book explains Allen Forte's _Pitch Class Set Analysis_ very well. If you love music theory, read this book!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Crudblud said:


> Also, do we have any mythology buffs who could recommend a translation of the Prose Edda? I've been looking and seen that there are several, and all of them seem to be hotly debated as to which one is most accurate, most complete etc. so I'd greatly appreciate it if someone could help me with this.


I've read the one by Arthur Brodeur, it's the only free one I could find online. Otherwise, the one by Anthony Faulkes from Everyman Press seems to be the most recommended. Sorry if that was not very helpful.

As for the avatar, it has more to do with my tastes in music, rather than in fiction anyway.


----------



## Ramako

SiegendesLicht said:


> As for the avatar, it has more to do with my tastes in music, rather than in fiction anyway.


May I ask what's in the background? The scenery looks like a castle or something...


----------



## SiegendesLicht

In all sincerity I have no idea. Here is the same picture in bigger size:

http://http://operachic.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c83e69e201156ede32e4970c-450wi


----------



## HoraeObscura

Enlightening read


----------



## Crudblud

SiegendesLicht said:


> I've read the one by Arthur Brodeur, it's the only free one I could find online. Otherwise, the one by Anthony Faulkes from Everyman Press seems to be the most recommended. Sorry if that was not very helpful.


Yes, I'm looking for one that's in print rather than online. Thanks your your help.


----------



## Kevin Pearson

Reading another sic-fi classic. This time it's The Time Traders by Andre Norton. Norton is one of the most respected authors in science fiction. Most people think she was male but back in the day it was hard to get published let alone read if you were a female writer. That said though she has written some of the best books in science fiction and fantasy genres. This particular book kind of blends sci-fi and fantasy into one story. The basic premise is that the Russians have discovered a way to time travel to bring back technology. It's kind of a cold war story in a way where the British government is time traveling as well to try and get technology before the Russians do. In the book they call the Russians the Reds. The twist of the story is that instead of going into the future the technology lies in the past. It's also partly like a spy novel in that the main characters train and go undercover learning to blend into the time periods they are going back to. Kind of a fun romp.










Kevin


----------



## cwarchc

Onto this now. Just started it, seems promising


----------



## Ravndal

Pd james - death comes to pemberley


----------



## Flamme

Kevin Pearson said:


> Reading another sic-fi classic. This time it's The Time Traders by Andre Norton. Norton is one of the most respected authors in science fiction. Most people think she was male but back in the day it was hard to get published let alone read if you were a female writer. That said though she has written some of the best books in science fiction and fantasy genres. This particular book kind of blends sci-fi and fantasy into one story. The basic premise is that the Russians have discovered a way to time travel to bring back technology. It's kind of a cold war story in a way where the British government is time traveling as well to try and get technology before the Russians do. In the book they call the Russians the Reds. The twist of the story is that instead of going into the future the technology lies in the past. It's also partly like a spy novel in that the main characters train and go undercover learning to blend into the time periods they are going back to. Kind of a fun romp.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin


Sounds like fun...Conan Barbarian style


----------



## clavichorder

Still reading "The Hobbit" and though I have not yet watched the movie, I know that I am well past where the movie ends. I am liking it a lot.


----------



## clavichorder

SiegendesLicht said:


> I like more realistic sci-fi such as Michael Crichton's books, whose plots unfold in our time and our reality. The kind of sci-fi about galactic empires, faster-than-light travel and alien civilizations holds no attraction for me somehow.


I don't agree with the disliking "Space Opera" part of your post. I purchased so many of those over the summer, and I find in them a depth of escapism that satisfies you like nothing else, not even an MMORPG video game can quite compare sometimes. Of course, you have to like the space stuff.

But I totally agree that nearer to the present or historical information of our times Science fiction has so much potential and can be extremely interesting. Crichton sounds good, I have "Eaters of the Dead" and "The Great Train Robbery" and I know of his "Jurassic Park." I like that instead of getting entrenched in one universe, he has so many different stories to tell. But to be fair, I like writers that both have one nice and absorbing universe, and also some really good "Stand alones." *Isaac Asimov* anyone?


----------



## Head_case

cwarchc said:


> Onto this now. Just started it, seems promising
> 
> View attachment 11620


Epic!!

Vassily Grossman's classic is just utterly human. That is no mere task in the face of the war context!

My cover looks better than yours 










But the translation is the same inside. Never judge a book by its cover, but always pick the nicer looking one


----------



## violadude

HoraeObscura said:


> View attachment 11565
> 
> 
> Enlightening read


Is this intended to be ironic? I can't tell.


----------



## Tristan

Just started "A Storm of Swords". Looking forward to it


----------



## Chrythes

clavichorder said:


> I don't agree with the disliking "Space Opera" part of your post. I purchased so many of those over the summer, and I find in them a depth of escapism that satisfies you like nothing else, not even an MMORPG video game can quite compare sometimes. Of course, you have to like the space stuff.
> 
> But I totally agree that nearer to the present or historical information of our times Science fiction has so much potential and can be extremely interesting. Crichton sounds good, I have "Eaters of the Dead" and "The Great Train Robbery" and I know of his "Jurassic Park." I like that instead of getting entrenched in one universe, he has so many different stories to tell. But to be fair, I like writers that both have one nice and absorbing universe, and also some really good "Stand alones." *Isaac Asimov* anyone?


What about Solaris by Stanislaw Lem?
I haven't read much sci-fi but this one is probably the best of the genre I've ever read, along with Space Odyssey.


----------



## clavichorder

Chrythes said:


> What about Solaris by Stanislaw Lem?
> I haven't read much sci-fi but this one is probably the best of the genre I've ever read, along with Space Odyssey.


I haven't read Solaris. Its a Russian or Soviet Russian era book right?

2001 Space Odyssey is really good. Maybe one day I will read the follow up books to it, but 2001 is just so good that, though much could be explained about it, expanding the story might dampen its impact.


----------



## Chrythes

Yes, written in 1961 by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. It's in similar spirit as Space Odyssey - unlike the usual sci-i book it rather focuses on the human psychology and "space philosophy" than on adventures and such. If you liked Space Odyssey I am certain you will enjoy Solaris.


----------



## clavichorder

Chrythes said:


> Yes, written in 1961 by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. It's in similar spirit as Space Odyssey - unlike the usual sci-i book it rather focuses on the *human psychology and "space philosophy"* than on adventures and such. If you liked Space Odyssey I am certain you will enjoy Solaris.


Thanks! That sounds excellent, I will look into it.

In return, I recommend to you a more recently written one, *Kethani*. I don't know if its destined to be a classic, and that's pretty hard even for the best of books in this day and age because there are so many books, but I really enjoyed it. The part of your post I bolded is why you might be interested. Its about an alien race called the Kethani that come to earth and offer humans an implant technology that allows them to be resurrected when they die so they are immortal, and also to teach humans compassion. The story of it all is told through the perceptions of a bunch of friends who regularly meet at a pub in small town England, with their various individual stories. Things like whether the aliens are good or bad is explored and as the story wears on, you realize that a huge point of the book really is just to explore the impact of more than rapid cultural progress and change on every day people. But it is written in a way that makes you feel the mysterious mood of the concept throughout, which does get repetitive if you are picky about it, but is a cool mood overall.


----------



## samurai

Kevin Pearson said:


> Reading another sic-fi classic. This time it's The Time Traders by Andre Norton. Norton is one of the most respected authors in science fiction. Most people think she was male but back in the day it was hard to get published let alone read if you were a female writer. That said though she has written some of the best books in science fiction and fantasy genres. This particular book kind of blends sci-fi and fantasy into one story. The basic premise is that the Russians have discovered a way to time travel to bring back technology. It's kind of a cold war story in a way where the British government is time traveling as well to try and get technology before the Russians do. In the book they call the Russians the Reds. The twist of the story is that instead of going into the future the technology lies in the past. It's also partly like a spy novel in that the main characters train and go undercover learning to blend into the time periods they are going back to. Kind of a fun romp.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kevin


@ KP, I just put this in my Amazon cart, as I'm a sucker for time travel stories, and have never read anything by Miss Norton. Thanks for the heads up on this!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

clavichorder said:


> 2001 Space Odyssey is really good. Maybe one day I will read the follow up books to it, but 2001 is just so good that, though much could be explained about it, expanding the story might dampen its impact.


I've read all four "Space Odyssey" books, and the first one was quite interesting, actually, but the other three become progressively worse. It looked like the author had run out of inspiration on that particular storyline, but the publisher kept pushing him to write more. *SPOILER ALERT:* he even brings Frank Poole back to life in the fourth one.


----------



## HoraeObscura

violadude said:


> Is this intended to be ironic? I can't tell.


No... Good guide for reading or better studying non-fiction!


----------



## eorrific

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. CAN'T WAIT TO FINISH IT! It's so good!


----------



## Wandering




----------



## Crudblud

Finished Kafka's _The Trial_, now reading _Pedro Páramo_ by Juan Rulfo.


----------



## clavichorder

School started so I haven't finished the Hobbit yet and started something new. Still working on it. But I could certainly see that movie anytime. Maybe this weekend I'll both finish the book and see the movie. Except I have things to do...


----------



## EricABQ

_The Looming Tower_


----------



## Turangalîla

This is absolutely fabulous. I highly recommend it for both Christians and non-Christians who want to understand who the God of the Bible really is.


----------



## eorrific

Finished Dostoevsky's Crime & Punishment and The Gambler.
A bit disappointed with C&P's epilogue (like tying the loose ends of the story, and in my opinion the book is as effective as if there was no epilogue).
The Gambler was just okay. Learned a thing or two about roulette, though.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Reading Rod Stewarts wankathon - god how did he get all those girls - I'm jealous
must say thou I like Ronny Woods book more


----------



## Crudblud

I've finished reading _Pedro Páramo_, which I don't feel I can recommend highly enough.

Now I can't decide between _The Atrocity Exhibition_ by J.G. Ballard or _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ by James Joyce.


----------



## lorelei

I recently read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. One of my next projects will be Camus' L'Etranger (but in French... should be interesting).


----------



## KenOC

Yesterday I finished Gore Vidal's "Burr." What a great book! It snipes at Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and of course Hamilton -- while Burr himself, it seems, can do no wrong. Of course he's narrating it! A real treat for those interested in US history from about 1775 to 1835. Just remember it's not history (no matter how well researched) but a novel written from one protagonist's point of view.


----------



## Crudblud

Contrary to the direction I was going in, I simply asked my friend to pick a book out of my stack for me, and today I will start reading _Nausea_ by Jean-Paul Sartre.


----------



## Flamme

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Reading Rod Stewarts wankathon - god how did he get all those girls - I'm jealous
> must say thou I like Ronny Woods book more


Power and money give you wings lol
He also had looks at least for some time...


----------



## Count

I've been reading Steven King's the Dark Tower saga. Four books into it and I'm really enjoying it, I'd go so far as to say it's the best fiction I've ever read. I find with a lot of books I'm left wanting to know more about the characters and their pasts, and obviously it's never touched upon because it isn't relevant to the book's story. In these books it's all relevant and you get to know everything about the characters past, present and future.

That's not even talking about the story either, which I won't get into because I absolutely hate it when I happen to hear something about a book or a film that I was looking forward to reading/watching.

I highly recommend them.


----------



## Flamme

I didnt like that series...I find his old works better...He has a rusted a bit..


----------



## Count

A lot of people didn't like it, I'm not sure. I suppose it's all down to what you enjoy reading the most. I liked it merely for escapism, a reason I enjoy a lot of books. But then I enjoy his short stories, especially those under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. Blaze and The Long Walk were my favorites.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

My favorites of Stephen King's are "Needful Things" and "The Stand".


----------



## Crudblud

I like _The Dark Tower_ series, it does enter the realm of silliness pretty often, but it's a highly entertaining read and I like the idea of epic fantasy crossed with the western and science fiction genres. I also like _The Stand_, which also veers in to silliness quite often, but it's another good fantasy western from King.


----------



## Flamme

I like his older boox and short stories like Salems Lot One for The Road Sometimes they come back,...


----------



## Sonata

Pet Semetary was such a great/creepy book. I'm torn....so well written I'd love to read it again, but now that I'm a mom I don't think I could handle it!

I also liked Carrie and Misery. Needful Things was interesting, though there were some things about it I didn't like.


----------



## Weston

I am reading Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I am." It's amazing. It seems to go into a bit too much detail at times, yet I want to know more.


----------



## Sonata

The Serpent Mage by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. A very solid co-author duo. They wrote several core novels in the Dragon Lance series of fantasy novels, and others besides. This book in particular is from a 7 book series, the "Death Gate Cycle". I am picking the series back up after probably a 6-7 year absence. After reading a synopsis of the previous books since it's been so long of course! This is book #4 of the series. I am enjoying it so far.


----------



## Crudblud

Crudblud said:


> Contrary to the direction I was going in, I simply asked my friend to pick a book out of my stack for me, and today I will start reading _Nausea_ by Jean-Paul Sartre.


Okay, _Nausea_ didn't work out too well, I will read it at some point but I just wasn't in the mood for it, it seems. I also got some new books yesterday and decided instead to start reading J.G. Ballard's _Crash_ from that haul.


----------



## EricABQ

Well, I finished _The Looming Tower_.

An excellent modern history. Depressing and infuriating.


----------



## samurai

Adam Hochschild--*To End All Wars:* *A Story Of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918*.


----------



## EricABQ

I'm currently reading Cobra II: The Inside Story Of The Invasion and Occupation Of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon 

Another frustrating modern history.


----------



## Sonata

Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing.


----------



## Schubussy

Michio Kaku - Physics Of The Future


----------



## OboeKnight

I am doing a re-read of Wuthering Heights...words cannot describe my feelings for that book =)


----------



## drpraetorus

"The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People" By John Kelly Wonderfuly written book. Not as exhaustive as "The Great Hunger" but a bit more readable. Althought my Irish ancestors came to the U.S. way before the Famine, actually before there was a U.S. and forty years after the famine, The subject has always been of interest. But then I find the Black Death fascinating as well.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

"Imprisoned in Germany" - the story of a girl who fell in love with a Turkish man and experienced on her own skin (sometimes literally) all the joys of living in an Islamic society: the beatings, the burqa, the inability to leave the house without the man's permission and the death threats in case of leaving.


----------



## Crudblud

John Kingdom - _No Such Thing As Society?: Individualism and Community_


----------



## cwarchc

Just starting this one


----------



## Guest

_The Intercept_ by Dick Wolf--the man behind _Law and Order_. It's about a NYPD detective squad assigned to stop a terrorist. So far it's excellent.


----------



## Ramako

Hepokoski and Darcey's _Elements of Sonata Theory_


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Dot and The Kangaroo (1899) by Ethel C. Pedley


----------



## cwarchc

Onto this now, never read it before.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

*The Lost Scales*, written by the composer Morteza Hannaneh (1923 -1989), a difficult approach to make a kind of musical unity through all the various persian traditional modes so called 'Dastgah', and later, trying to establish a harmony method based on the perfect fourth interval instead of the western classical major and minor thirds.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Anne Brontë's *Agnes Grey*.


----------



## starthrower

I'll be starting the Christopher Hitchens book Mortality, today. After reading a review on the Slate website, I'm looking forward to this one.


----------



## cwarchc

Just starting this one
The sad thing is I can remember some of these things happening


----------



## Kieran

I just finished John McGahern's That They May face the Rising Sun, a gorgeously written novel about life in rural Ireland, the way they live, the companionship, gossiping and hardships. It's a really beautifully written book.

Also, I finished Rubicon, Tom Holland's narrative history about the last days of the Roman Republic. It's the second book by Tom Holland I've read, the other being Persian Fire, and if you like your history told in a seat of the pants way, Tom Holland is the man.

Next up, I'm looking for a Hemingway recommendation. Never read anything by Papa, and I'm in a Book Club, with my choice coming next month. I can't recommend this again, or this either (it didn't go down well, though I thoroughly enjoyed it), so I'm thinking of Hemingway...:tiphat:


----------



## cwarchc

I've just recently finished "A Farewell to Arms" and have previously read "The Old Man and the Sea" as well as "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
I've got to say he's not one of my favourite authors.
I would say, try "For Whom the Bell Tolls" based on his own experiences of the Spanish civil war.
I find his style a bit "simplistic"



Kieran said:


> I just finished John McGahern's That They May face the Rising Sun, a gorgeously written novel about life in rural Ireland, the way they live, the companionship, gossiping and hardships. It's a really beautifully written book.
> 
> Also, I finished Rubicon, Tom Holland's narrative history about the last days of the Roman Republic. It's the second book by Tom Holland I've read, the other being Persian Fire, and if you like your history told in a seat of the pants way, Tom Holland is the man.
> 
> Next up, I'm looking for a Hemingway recommendation. Never read anything by Papa, and I'm in a Book Club, with my choice coming next month. I can't recommend this again, or this either (it didn't go down well, though I thoroughly enjoyed it), so I'm thinking of Hemingway...:tiphat:


----------



## MaestroViolinist

I just finished "Crow On A Barbed Wire Fence" by Harold Lewis. Apparently all that happened in the book is true, that's what the author experienced. Anyway, it's a great story about life in outback Australia in the early 20th century.


----------



## starthrower

Bought this one yesterday. Now all I have to do is read and comprehend it!


----------



## OboeKnight

Reading The Scarlet Letter for the second time to prepare for the AP exam. I really love that book.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Double post.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

starthrower said:


> Bought this one yesterday. Now all I have to do is read and comprehend it!


When you start building your own Thousand-Year Empire, don't forget to let us know


----------



## graaf

SiegendesLicht said:


> When you start building your own Thousand-Year Empire, don't forget to let us know


Funny thing is, Nietzsche despised Germans with a passion... He even "invented" his Polish origins: "I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood" and "Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins [...] I am proud of my Polish descent." And yet, he is seen as German nationalist and even as early Nazi. But if you repeat it a thousand times...

Also, currently reading:


----------



## starthrower

SiegendesLicht said:


> When you start building your own Thousand-Year Empire, don't forget to let us know


My will is not empowered for such a task! It's interesting how Nietzsche and Einstein had a foreshadowing of the coming catastrophe. Einstein disowned his country as a teenager.

As far as the Nazis drawing inspiration from great thinkers for their horrible deeds, I will quote Einstein.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."


----------



## ptr

I'm rereading *Shostakovich Reconsidered* by Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov.










Very interesting if You are interested in Shostakovich! But as always, one side of the story...

/ptr


----------



## SiegendesLicht

graaf said:


> Funny thing is, Nietzsche despised Germans with a passion...


This surely isn't something to respect him for. 
And my current reading: Mark Levin, "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto".









I've read only a few pages yet, but so far I find myself agreeing with everything he writes.


----------



## MaestroViolinist

Just finished *The Spell of Rosette* by Kim Falconer. Now I'm reading *Gulliver's Travels* by Jonathan Swift. (I was reminded of this book because I'm studying something else by the same author for school. A Modest Proposal to be exact, gotta write an essay on it).


----------



## EricABQ

SiegendesLicht said:


> This surely isn't something to respect him for.
> And my current reading: Mark Levin, "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto".
> 
> View attachment 13863
> 
> 
> I've read only a few pages yet, but so far I find myself agreeing with everything he writes.


Mark Levin is an utter and complete douche bag. An example of everything that is wrong with American political discourse today.


----------



## ptr

I'm still on my Shostakovich reread journe:

Elizabeth Wilson - Shostakovich, a life remembered.. (review)










I'm ambivalent about this biography, it is very dry and somewhat condescending..

/ptr


----------



## Bone

This is okay. Probably going to read an Eisenhower biography next.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

EricABQ said:


> Mark Levin is an utter and complete douche bag. An example of everything that is wrong with American political discourse today.


That is a very broad statement. May I ask what exactly is wrong with him?


----------



## Bone

EricABQ said:


> Mark Levin is an utter and complete douche bag. An example of everything that is wrong with American political discourse today.


You mean Mark Levin spouts hyperbole and ad hominem attacks instead of discussing issues in a civil, intelligent manner? Pot, meet kettle.....


----------



## EricABQ

Bone said:


> You mean Mark Levin spouts hyperbole and ad hominem attacks instead of discussing issues in a civil, intelligent manner? Pot, meet kettle.....


Upon further refelection, my post was a bit out of line.

While I don't retract what I said about Mr. Levin, I should not have been so negative about a book another poster mentioned since that goes against the overall mood of the thread.


----------



## OboeKnight

MaestroViolinist said:


> Just finished *The Spell of Rosette* by Kim Falconer. Now I'm reading *Gulliver's Travels* by Jonathan Swift. (I was reminded of this book because I'm studying something else by the same author for school. A Modest Proposal to be exact, gotta write an essay on it).


Lol A Modest Proposal is great. I had to write my own modest proposal using Swift's style. My teacher got offended with the subject matter and deemed it "too preposterous." I then pointed out that eating children is rather preposterous and wasn't that really the point? She had to admit that she just didn't like the subject. Love English teachers =P


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> This surely isn't something to respect him for.
> And my current reading: Mark Levin, "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto".
> 
> View attachment 13863
> 
> 
> I've read only a few pages yet, but so far I find myself agreeing with everything he writes.


I am a big fan of Mark Levin - although at times he goes a bit farther than I would. Still, his legal ideas are solid and thoughtful.


----------



## deggial

OboeKnight said:


> I am doing a re-read of Wuthering Heights...words cannot describe my feelings for that book =)


but are they _good_ feelings?


----------



## OboeKnight

deggial said:


> but are they _good_ feelings?


Yes, very good feelings....I like dark, depressing literature haha


----------



## MaestroViolinist

OboeKnight said:


> Lol A Modest Proposal is great. I had to write my own modest proposal using Swift's style. My teacher got offended with the subject matter and deemed it "too preposterous." I then pointed out that eating children is rather preposterous and wasn't that really the point? She had to admit that she just didn't like the subject. Love English teachers =P


:lol: HAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!! A zillion likes for that post. I completely agree about English teachers.


----------



## aleazk

MaestroViolinist said:


> Now I'm reading *Gulliver's Travels* by Jonathan Swift


What a great book, I enjoyed so much reading it. It is funny how a book so full with such a sharp irony has been transformed in a book for kids!. Swift was a very active politician and, in fact, most of his writings were political pamphlets, loaded with inflammatory attacks to his opponents.


----------



## ptr

Henry-Louis de La Grange - Gustav Mahler, a biography in Four volumes! (Gollancz & OUP)

Will take some time!

/ptr


----------



## deggial

OboeKnight said:


> Yes, very good feelings....I like dark, depressing literature haha


ever read any Kafka? Dark, depressing *and* funny! not much romance, though.


----------



## OboeKnight

deggial said:


> ever read any Kafka? Dark, depressing *and* funny! not much romance, though.


No, I have not! I'll have to look into it. Any suggestions? I'm fine with the absence of romance, it isn't crucial to my reading experience, but it adds a lot of depth to certain novels.


----------



## Crudblud

OboeKnight said:


> No, I have not! I'll have to look into it. Any suggestions? I'm fine with the absence of romance, it isn't crucial to my reading experience, but it adds a lot of depth to certain novels.


_The Trial_ is a good starting place for Kafka, I think.

Currently reading _Ulysses_ by James Joyce.


----------



## aleazk

Crudblud said:


> _The Trial_ is a good starting place for Kafka, I think.
> 
> Currently reading _Ulysses_ by James Joyce.


_The Trial_ is my favorite novel by Kafka.


----------



## EricABQ

I'm re-reading _And The Band Played On_ by Randy Shilts.

I read it several years ago but picked it up again and am finding it just as engrossing this time around. A harrowing, fascinating modern history. In the first couple of chapters he does a great job of building the sense of dread about what is about to happen. It's getting up there in age but it is still well worth reading.


----------



## Crudblud

@any modern literature/Joyce experts: Looking for advice regarding editions of _Finnegans Wake_. I've been looking at this edition on Faber and Faber which features all of Joyce's alterations and corrections and isn't too ridiculously overpriced, but there's also this new version on Penguin which has supposedly been corrected further and costs a whole lot more. Should I get one of these (and if so, which?) or are there other editions worth getting instead?


----------



## cwarchc

My youngest son bought me this for my birthday, recently







Really looking forward to reading it, as I really enjoyed the last one "Life and Fate"
If you are interested in Soviet life from the Stalin era, I can heartily recommend Vasily Grosman.
His own life story could make an interesting read


----------



## Flamme

Mmm Arthur was a kind of genius one of the writers i was dreaming to meet in flash, RIP man...Very actual in the time of ''bombing from the skies'' lately...Seductive and simple style yet very scientific accurate hich is not the case in many sf authors i dont like...


----------



## jani

It's rare for me to read books, but i read newspapers and Internet news articles daily, this is my first post to this thread!

I am reading








Why? Well i want to learn to understand better what others are feeling&thinking and are they telling the truth.
Also i often feel that people misunderstand me a lot, so i want to learn how to communicate better to others etc...


----------



## millionrainbows

"Sound and Light," a collection of essays about the art of composer La Monte Young and his wife Marian Zazeela, who uses light to create her art installations. I'd love to see some of this art.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

*Charlotte Brontë*'s last work *Villette*. I think she's gone higher in this novel rather than the more famous Jane Eyre.


----------



## msegers

I have been reading, re-reading, trying to read _Finnegans Wake_ since I was sixteen -- some decades ago. Unless you are doing serious Ph.D. level analysis, you probably won't notice any difference in such variations. In fact, I suggest you download a text (in a choice of formats) at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/joyce/james/j8f/index.html... and start playing. Have fun with what is really a very funny text - not just a list of titles of possible Ph.D. dissertations.

By the way, about the time I started my love affair with _Finnegans Wake_, someone made a film, realistically titled _Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake_, since it would be impossible to capture the whole book in a 90 minute film. It was never released on videotape or DVD; I thought it had been lost, but a few years ago, it turned up on the great UBU site at http://www.ubu.com/film/joyce_wake.html. All the dialogue is from the book, and the dialogue all has subtitles, so that you can appreciate, as Joyce said, the pounds and pence, the sounds and sense.

Good luck on a great adventure.


----------



## msegers

Please check #1174. I haven't been here in a while, and I apparently didn't get my reply to your question to hook up to it.


----------



## Crudblud

msegers said:


> I have been reading, re-reading, trying to read _Finnegans Wake_ since I was sixteen -- some decades ago. Unless you are doing serious Ph.D. level analysis, you probably won't notice any difference in such variations. In fact, I suggest you download a text (in a choice of formats) at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/joyce/james/j8f/index.html... and start playing. Have fun with what is really a very funny text - not just a list of titles of possible Ph.D. dissertations.
> 
> By the way, about the time I started my love affair with _Finnegans Wake_, someone made a film, realistically titled _Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake_, since it would be impossible to capture the whole book in a 90 minute film. It was never released on videotape or DVD; I thought it had been lost, but a few years ago, it turned up on the great UBU site at http://www.ubu.com/film/joyce_wake.html. All the dialogue is from the book, and the dialogue all has subtitles, so that you can appreciate, as Joyce said, the pounds and pence, the sounds and sense.
> 
> Good luck on a great adventure.


Ah, thank you very much!

Due to my aversion to ebooks (they give me headaches after a while) I'll still be looking for a paperback copy, but you've at least put my mind at ease regarding all these different corrected versions. The film looks very interesting, I've always been interested to see how filmmakers approach "unfilmable" novels. And I must doubly thank you for introducing me to ubuweb, it seems like something I should have found years ago with my interests, but I'm only seeing it for the first time today.


----------



## Sonata

Third Angel: Alice Hoffman. 

Not particularly enjoying it so far I am afraid.


----------



## Xaltotun

I'm always, always wanting to respond to this thread, but since I'm a student of comparative literature, I have to read a lot to my studies, so it might not be fair to boast about all the books I have to read anyway. Then a thought came to me - I might list what I'm reading outside of my studies, books that I read on my (very little) free time.

I just finished a critical edition of Heinrich Heine's _Romantische Schule_ - what a great review of German romantic literature, by someone who used to belong to the "romantic school" but turned against it. Very snarky, poisonous and funny.

I'm also reading the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine, a great window to the culture of the late antiquity, and a portrait of a very special mind.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Xaltotun said:


> I just finished a critical edition of Heinrich Heine's _Romantische Schule_ - what a great review of German romantic literature, by someone who used to belong to the "romantic school" but turned against it. Very snarky, poisonous and funny.


As far as I remember, Wagner included Heine in his list of incompetent artists, together with Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. Now I wonder if his turning away from he romantic ideal might be part of the reason.


----------



## Xaltotun

SiegendesLicht said:


> As far as I remember, Wagner included Heine in his list of incompetent artists, together with Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. Now I wonder if his turning away from he romantic ideal might be part of the reason.


This is very interesting, thanks for the information! Heine also seems to take a stand against German nationalism, and yes, he was also a jew, so the picture grows more complete...


----------



## Kieran

I never read any Japanese literature and I was in a London gallery on Friday and saw this, The Diary of a Mad Old Man by Tanizaki. It's a great sad tale about a 77-year old man recovering from a stroke who develops an infatuation for his daughter-in-law, who so far seems to be gaining very nicely from this crush.

I'm about a quarter of the way through, but this is really a beautiful book, and not too difficult to follow. I might get another by him when I'm done...


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Friedrich Nietzsche's "Antichrist". This is a book I knew I would not enjoy and so far I don't, but I want to see for myself what exactly is in there and whether everything I have heard about this book is true.


----------



## Crudblud

Samuel Beckett - _Molloy_

I put _Ulysses_ on hold for a few days when I happened upon this one in the library.


----------



## cwarchc

Just finished this one.
Excellent read, highly recommended.


----------



## Moscow-Mahler

"Der Feind ist überall. Stalinismus im Kaukasus" ("The Enemy is everywhere") by Jörg Baberowski. In Russian translation.

A very interesting book about sovetisation of Azerbaijan.

I've never been interested in Muslim culture and this country in particular, but the book has some interesting moments.


----------



## cwarchc

It's great having my son home from Uni for a year.
I get to read all his books.
Halfway through this one.
I can see that the "Matrix" films were taken from it, even to the point of using the same names
A recommended read for all sci-fi fans


----------



## jani

Still reading Joe Navarros what's every BODY saying.

I have learned so much! I am gonna dive deeper to body language after i have fnished the book.
Here is something what i have learned so far;
- Since body lanuage lives mostly in our limbic brain (subconscious mind, its the most trust worthy source of the persons true feelings and thoughts.
- Believe it or not the most honest part of our body are our LEGS!
For example, our limbic brain doesn't allow us to lean towards a person/ thing which we see as a bad thing, so if the person who you are talking to is leaning little bit towards you, it means that he/she feels comfortable around you.
If a person has his/her legs crossed it means that he/she feels comfortable were she is standing, because its very hard to react to a potential threath from that kinda position so our brain doesn't allow us to stand on that kinda way on a place were we feel threatend....


----------



## samurai

George R.R. Martin--*A Game Of Thrones*


----------



## EricABQ

samurai said:


> George R.R. Martin--*A Game Of Thrones*


Nice.

I got sucked into that series after watching the first season of the HBO series.

Now I've finished them all and am waiting patiently for his next installment. Which, if history is any guide it could be a long wait.


----------



## cwarchc

samurai said:


> George R.R. Martin--*A Game Of Thrones*


Bought the set for my eldest, he hasn't read them neither have I yet.
Are they any good?


----------



## EricABQ

cwarchc said:


> Bought the set for my eldest, he hasn't read them neither have I yet.
> Are they any good?


You directed this question at samurai, but I'll take a stab.

If you like an epic story with sprawling plot lines, you may like this.

It is categorized as "fantasy" but there is relatively little magic.

There is a huge number of important characters that grow as the series progresses. Characters that aren't even mentioned in the first couple of novels become major characters in the later books.

In fact, there end up being so many characters that the 2 most recent installments cover the same time period in the story but had to be broken up into two books just to make it manageable.

To answer if "are they any good" really depends on the reader. Give them a shot and see if they are for you.


----------



## samurai

@ EricABQ and cwarchc, Yeah, guys, I just started on this book today, so I really can't answer yet whether it is any good or not.


----------



## EricABQ

samurai said:


> @ EricABQ and cwarchc, Yeah, guys, I just started on this book today, so I really can't answer yet whether it is any good or not.


The good news for you is, if you like the book, you have many hundreds of pages in five books before you catch up to the author.

The bad news is, if you do catch up, you have to wait for the next book, and he likes to take his time.


----------



## Guest

_The Monster of Florence_ by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. A true-crime novel about the search for a vicious serial killer in Italy who was the inspiration for Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter.


----------



## GreenMamba

Nate Silver's _The Signal and the Noise_.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Stephen King, _Needful Things_, definitely my favorite book of his. It is all about ordinary people of an ordinary small town with their passions and grudges, but it is weird and creepy in a way no story of monsters and psychopathic murderers can match.


----------



## Crudblud

Gore Vidal - _Myra Breckinridge_


----------



## ptr

Just started reading a classic; *Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov* - Principles of Orchestration

/ptr


----------



## Chrythes

Herman Hesse - A collection of short Essays.


----------



## Ingélou

Leo Rosten: The (New) Joys of Yiddish - brilliant!


----------



## Crudblud

Jorge Luis Borges - _A Universal History of Infamy_

Which I have just now finished.

Next: Dashiell Hammett - _The Thin Man_


----------



## Sonata

*Philippa Gregory: The Red Queen
*
It's historical fiction. I was going to write up a bit of a synopsis but I am frankly too tired to go through the effort at the moment. Suffice to say it's concerning the "Cousins" wars of Tudor England. The main character is Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother. I have really liked most of it, though I'm coming up to a part of the book where it's too much telling and not enough showing, and it's getting confusing, one usurper for the throne of England after another. Still I enjoy it enough to check out more of Gregory's books in the future, and and in fact may need to delve deeper into historical fiction as a genre.

Any recommendations for good historical fiction authors?


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Sonata said:


> *Philippa Gregory: The Red Queen
> *
> Any recommendations for good historical fiction authors?


In my language (Persian) there are so many fictional books written about Cyrus the great, Darius the great or even Zoroaster. Some worth reading, but I don't know any in English.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

ptr said:


> Just started reading a classic; *Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov* - Principles of Orchestration
> 
> /ptr


Finished it when I was 14. Looks like a hundred years ago. Oh my...!


----------



## ptr

Il_Penseroso said:


> Finished it when I was 14. Looks like a hundred years ago. Oh my...!


Then it's time to read it again it You haven't!  ... I try to reread it or one of the big textbooks on composition each a year to make me remember how skilled many of those who wrote music during our history were! It really helps me appreciate the craft a lot more!

You being from Persia, if You don't mind me asking, are there any "good" on books on Persian Classical music? (Preferable in English), I had a Professor of Persian Origin at University who had studied the Qānūn at the conservatory in Teheran in his Youth (1950's), I was invited to some private concerts He and his friends held, and it was an very beautiful and mystically intimate experience of a sound world quite afar form what us jaded westerners are used to!

/ptr

/ptr


----------



## Il_Penseroso

ptr said:


> Then it's time to read it again it You haven't!  ... I try to reread it or one of the big textbooks on composition each a year to make me remember how skilled many of those who wrote music during our history were! It really helps me appreciate the craft a lot more!


You're right. What made me reply to your post was just a nostalgic sense memorizing my childhood! When I was 14, I thought so innocent about life, world, human ... I was just listening to music, reading books, playing piano and writing orchestral scores. It ruined forever when I faced the reality and all the cruel facts surrounded me!



> You being from Persia, if You don't mind me asking, are there any "good" on books on Persian Classical music? (Preferable in English), I had a Professor of Persian Origin at University who had studied the Qānūn at the conservatory in Teheran in his Youth (1950's), I was invited to some private concerts He and his friends held, and it was an very beautiful and mystically intimate experience of a sound world quite afar form what us jaded westerners are used to!
> 
> /ptr


Zonis, Ella: Classical Persian Music, An Introduction. Harvard University Press. 1973

Farhat, Hormoz: Dastgah concept in Persian Music. Cambridge University Press. 1990

Like the western early music, i.e. medieval and early Renaissance, there isn't still a unique and standard theorical concept for the Persian traditional music. So you may find both of the books above such a contradictory in various cases. If you're interseted in the history of Persian music you'll find a lot in Henry George Farmer's writings. The only thing you need to care about is that most of the western musicologists discussed the Persian music theorical origins in a relationship with the Arabic music which has in it's basical fundamental principles nothing to do with the Persian music as far as I know. Part of it possibly because of the fact that the Persian language as well as many other things like reliogion, names, costoms, etc... changed from the old style into a kind of imposed Arabic format since the Muslims invasion in the medieval ages (8th-10th century).


----------



## Crudblud

J.G. Ballard - _The Atrocity Exhibition_


----------



## jani

Just bought this.


----------



## Ryan

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I'm on page 4, it's a fascinating read, highly recommended.


----------



## Kevin Pearson

cwarchc said:


> Bought the set for my eldest, he hasn't read them neither have I yet.
> Are they any good?


Personally I don't see the attraction of his books. I thought Game of Thrones rather bloody and boring. Too many other great things to read so I won't read the sequels.

Kevin


----------



## Kevin Pearson

I'm currently reading a biography about actress Claudette Colbert. She is one of my favorites from Hollywood's Golden Age and this is a pretty well written and well researched book.










Kevin


----------



## Lunasong

The Complete _Calvin and Hobbes_


----------



## Crudblud

Oscar Wilde - _The Picture of Dorian Gray_


----------



## cwarchc

Schrodinger's Caterpillar by Zane Stumpo
can't comment at the moment, only just started it


----------



## Tristan

I just started "New Comparative Latin and Greek Grammar".

So can't wait to major in Linguistics


----------



## Guest




----------



## Klavierspieler

James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man


----------



## Crudblud

Aeschylus - _The Oresteia_

Translated by Philip Vellacott.


----------



## Ritter

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.


----------



## BaronAlstromer

A history book about 18th century Sweden.


----------



## Tristan

Klavierspieler said:


> James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man


Makes me want to read "Dubliners" again...


----------



## Crudblud

Alan Watts - _The Book_


----------



## science

Ted Gioia, _The History of Jazz_

Jack Rakove, _Original Meanings_

Huh. Ought to be reading some fiction too. Maybe I'll start _Beloved_. Had it staring down at me for a long time.


----------



## cwarchc

I'm about halfway through this one
I have to admit I'm a sucker for all the "Smiley" novels. I think they are very well written and require concentration


----------



## Crudblud

William S. Burroughs - _Naked Lunch_


----------



## aleazk

Michael Crichton - "Next".


----------



## GreenMamba

Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire (historical novel about Thermopylae)


----------



## SiegendesLicht

William Shakespeare, _The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet_.


----------



## Ingélou

Judi Dench, 'And Furthermore' - autobiographical, 2010

So funny - for British readers, especially. Here's an anecdote for them.

The 50s pop idol Tommy Steele had been cast as Tony Lumpkin in 'She Stoops to Conquer'. 
'I think the pop star was... scared ... of sharing a stage with classical actors, but his fans in the audience were quite restless until he came on. I still have the letter which one of them wrote to Tommy Steele during the run, which said, "Dear Mr Steele, My wife and I are coming to see She Stoops to Conquer on Friday, and as it's my wife's birthday would you mind singing 'Little White Bull'?"'


----------



## DavidA

Biography of CS Lewis.


----------



## Kieran

GreenMamba said:


> Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire (historical novel about Thermopylae)


How are you enjoying that? I've often been tempted by it. I've read quite a few books on this period of history and wouldn't mind to read a good novel of the period...


----------



## Kieran

The Road, Cormac McCarthy...


----------



## GreenMamba

Kieran said:


> How are you enjoying that? I've often been tempted by it. I've read quite a few books on this period of history and wouldn't mind to read a good novel of the period...


I like it a good bit. It's well-written (not always the case with historical fiction), although still more popular than "literary" fiction. I had thought it would pretty much just be about the battle, but it's broader than that.


----------



## Kieran

GreenMamba said:


> I like it a good bit. It's well-written (not always the case with historical fiction), although still more popular than "literary" fiction. I had thought it would pretty much just be about the battle, but it's broader than that.


Good stuff.

You ever read Persian Fire, by Tom Holland? It's a narrative-history book, refers to the same period, but rattles along with the nerve-wracking gusto of great fiction...


----------



## GreenMamba

Kieran said:


> Good stuff.
> 
> You ever read Persian Fire, by Tom Holland? It's a narrative-history book, refers to the same period, but rattles along with the nerve-wracking gusto of great fiction...


No, I'll make note of it. thanks


----------



## samurai

O. Henry--*The Best Short Stories of O. Henry, *selected by Bennet Cerf.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

DavidA said:


> Biography of CS Lewis.


An ardent Wagnerian, as you may have already noticed


----------



## Tristan

Just started "The Rasputin File". Been fascinated with Rasputin lately and this seemed like one the most accurate and comprehensive books on him. It's been good so far


----------



## ProudSquire

*Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind*
Roger Walsh

Picked this up in the hopes of restoring my inner-self. So far it's been a good read.


----------



## Crudblud

James Joyce - _Finnegans Wake_


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> James Joyce - _Finnegans Wake_


I love the song! 

But seriously, that's heavy duty stuff. As an Irishman, I felt honour bound to tackle Joyce at some stage. I preferred Dubliners for just plain, powerful storytelling, but consider FW and Ulysses to be almost like poetry I can dip in and out of. I never quite got them in any other way...


----------



## ptr

Found a box with books in the attic a few day's ago, stuff I read during high school, and picked a few of them to reread for fun. And seeing that Mr Crud is reading "_Finnegans Wake_", made me smile, the first two books I decided to read was written by *Flann O'Brien* and are quite inspired by Joyce's absurdities: *At Swim-Two-Birds* and *The Third Policeman*.

I remember both as hilarious, and just the memory put the widest Paddy Smile over my face!








/ptr


----------



## Crudblud

Kieran said:


> I love the song!
> 
> But seriously, that's heavy duty stuff. As an Irishman, I felt honour bound to tackle Joyce at some stage. I preferred Dubliners for just plain, powerful storytelling, but consider FW and Ulysses to be almost like poetry I can dip in and out of. I never quite got them in any other way...


I'm a fan of _Dubliners_ too (have got _Portrait of the Artist_ but haven't read that one yet). _Ulysses_ I had to stop reading after I found Beckett's _Molloy_ in the library, I'd been looking for a Beckett novel for a long time so I put everything aside to read that instead, when I came back to _Ulysses_ I just couldn't get back in to the flow, so that's shelved for now. I'm actually finding the Wake a lot easier to read so far!


----------



## Kieran

What's the Beckett novel like? Similar tone to his plays?


----------



## Crudblud

Kieran said:


> What's the Beckett novel like? Similar tone to his plays?


In that everyone in it is in some way either wretched or miserable or both (and that this is effortlessly played for laughs), yes, but it's a bit less static than most of the plays I've seen. I liked it a lot, but it's very difficult to describe in any meaningful way. The sort of thing you need to try for yourself, I suppose.


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> In that everyone in it is in some way either wretched or miserable or both (and that this is effortlessly played for laughs), yes, but it's a bit less static than most of the plays I've seen. I liked it a lot, but it's very difficult to describe in any meaningful way. The sort of thing you need to try for yourself, I suppose.


Will root it out. I'd heard of Murphy and it's coming in the post, but I'm more familiar with Beckett through those marvelously morbid and funny plays...


----------



## schuberkovich

Kafka on the Shore by Haruko Murakami.
It's very weird but the world is very captivating


----------



## TxllxT

My wife is reading stories of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́нев) to me in the late evening. We get the overall impression, that he was writing for the salon & backclap: sentimental kitsch.


----------



## SottoVoce

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The people around me kept telling me it is a child's book, and for the longest time I didn't read it because of this. This is not a child's book. Huck's world is captivating, mystical, and absolutely beautiful. There are some scenes that stick out as I walk throughout the day, unable to get them out of my head. Wonderful, wonderful, book; for anyone who hasn't read it, don't get stuck in the same situation I did!


----------



## cwarchc

Just starting this one.


----------



## samurai

George R.R. Martin--*A Clash Of Kings*


----------



## Ritter

*Last Night* by James Salter.

A collection of ten brilliant short stories.


----------



## Kopachris

Trying to brush up on my physics, I found I needed to brush up on my maths as well. This book happens to go over both, starting with vector maths and the basics of motion. Susskind even mentioned in the preface that his target audience is people who have a rusty but not dead knowledge of high school calculus, which describes where I'm at exactly.


----------



## elgar's ghost

The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 by Halil Inalcik. A learned account of the inner workings of an empire from its formative years up to its apogee. Beginning with an introductory section on the empire's expansion, it then focusses primarily on its trade system, society, culture and administration, which, although very informative, is perhaps better suited to a scholar with a vested interest in the nuts and bolts aspect of the subject rather than the more casual reader of history such as me.


----------



## aleazk

Kopachris said:


> Trying to brush up on my physics, I found I needed to brush up on my maths as well. This book happens to go over both, starting with vector maths and the basics of motion. Susskind even mentioned in the preface that his target audience is people who have a rusty but not dead knowledge of high school calculus, which describes where I'm at exactly.


Throw that away and start with the following two:

-"Physics" by Marcelo Alonso and Edward J. Finn. (http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Prof-Marcelo-Alonso/dp/0201565188)

-"Calculus" by Michael Spivak. (http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-4th-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918)


----------



## EricABQ

I think today I will begin re-reading Tom Robbins' _Jitterbug Perfume_.

When I was on a Navy deployment back in 93 my buddy had pretty much ever Robbins book published at that time and I read them all one after the other. I remember enjoying them quite a bit but haven't re-read any of them, so I'm curious to see if I still enjoy them.


----------



## EricABQ

EricABQ said:


> I think today I will begin re-reading Tom Robbins' _Jitterbug Perfume_.


I changed my mind and went with Still Life With Woodpecker instead.


----------



## Kieran

Just today got a book of an interview with Seamus Heaney, called Stepping Stones...


----------



## Ingélou

Kieran said:


> Just today got a book of an interview with Seamus Heaney, called Stepping Stones...


I love Seamus Famous. I had a great time teaching his poetry* to an A-level class once, and he seems a nice person too. 

* especially the time a boy writing an essay kept making the typo 'Death of a Naturist'!


----------



## Kieran

Ingenue said:


> * especially the time a boy writing an essay kept making the typo 'Death of a Naturist'!


Yeah, that was a naked act of aggression!


----------



## samurai

Christopher Tyerman--*God's War: A New History Of The Crusades*


----------



## Badinerie

Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt. Its about as deep as I get literature wise!


----------



## Kleinzeit

Kieran said:


> Just today got a book of an interview with Seamus Heaney, called Stepping Stones...


Got to see him when he gave a reading in Halifax Nova Scotia in 1989. Not an everyday thing. He would have been 50 or so.


----------



## Kieran

Kleinzeit said:


> Got to see him when he gave a reading in Halifax Nova Scotia in 1989. Not an everyday thing. He would have been 50 or so.


That's interesting. I'm struggling with this book, I just find his style to be so dry and parochial. Rural reminiscences aren't really my thing. He's very interesting on certain aspects of his life and writing, and his reputation is well-deserved, I'm sure, but I find it hard to get excited about his poetry or writing...


----------



## cwarchc

Started this one yesterday, a truly inspirational person


----------



## GreenMamba

Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief


----------



## handlebar

Jon Kabat Zinn's "Coming to our senses" .


----------



## Blue

SottoVoce said:


> Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The people around me kept telling me it is a child's book, and for the longest time I didn't read it because of this. This is not a child's book. Huck's world is captivating, mystical, and absolutely beautiful. There are some scenes that stick out as I walk throughout the day, unable to get them out of my head. Wonderful, wonderful, book; for anyone who hasn't read it, don't get stuck in the same situation I did!


Completely agree, SottoVoce! I think the stigma of being the sequel to the simpler Adventures of Tom Sawyer puts people off, but I've always loved Mark Twain's style and it comes out beautifully in Huckleberry Finn.

What I'm reading doesn't compare to most posters' erudite selections, but I'm going to college in a few months and am putting off the heavy literature until then.  I'm reading Brandon Sanderson's _The Way of Kings_, a wonderful fantasy by an author with one of the best technical styles I've ever come across. Usually I read a (non-"classic") book and say, "Oh, this could have been great if the plot was tighter/they followed the show-don't-tell principle/etc," but there's nothing I would change about this.

Also reading Watership Down, the Iliad, and various & sundry fanfiction. (I know, I know...but I'm telling you, even though 90% is absolute garbage, there's a small percentage worth dying for. )


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Romain Rolland Mémoires et fragments du journal, Albin Michel, 1956 (Persian Translation)


----------



## aleazk

I'm reading again a short novel called "Ravel" by Jean Echenoz.
It is some kind of biography but written as a novel. It centers on Ravel's last ten years, from 1927 to 1937, covering his trip to USA and his illness and death.
The book starts with Ravel's trip to USA, the luxury of the travel, the warm welcome he had, etc. But, slowly, as his illness progresses, the book becomes more and more sad. It finishes with his death.
The process of his slow death is addressed in a very sincere and simple way, like if you were there watching all his symptoms.
Probably it was the intention of the autor, you close the book with a feeling of bitterness and frustration, like Ravel himself in his last years.


----------



## julianoq

I am reading now The Gospel According to Spiritism by Allan Kardek. I was an atheist for 13 years (15 to 28) and recently got interested in spiritism after reading a Kardek book (The Spirits Book). Very interesting read, even if you have another religion or is an atheist. It mixes religion with philosophy and some science and makes a lot of sense to me.


----------



## Kleinzeit

Kieran said:


> That's interesting. I'm struggling with this book, I just find his style to be so dry and parochial. Rural reminiscences aren't really my thing. He's very interesting on certain aspects of his life and writing, and his reputation is well-deserved, I'm sure, but I find it hard to get excited about his poetry or writing...


Don't get me wrong: I didn't understand a word he was saying.

I likes poetry in general though. Robert Lowell wrote a *lot* so... but when he was spot-on, he did what poetry can do: in 100 words or so, he can establish a detail, in a place, in a world, that resonates 'all of life' in its art echo chamber. Or cosmic telescope.

Emily Dickinson did that too. Here's what I bellow every summer, floating in the sea:


----------



## Kleinzeit

aleazk said:


> I'm reading again a short novel called "Ravel" by Jean Echenoz.
> It is some kind of biography but written as a novel. It centers on Ravel's last ten years, from 1927 to 1937, covering his trip to USA and his illness and death.
> The book starts with Ravel's trip to USA, the luxury of the travel, the warm welcome he had, etc. But, slowly, as his illness progresses, the book becomes more and more sad. It finishes with his death.
> The process of his slow death is addressed in a very sincere and simple way, like if you were there watching all his symptoms.
> Probably it was the intention of the autor, you close the book with a feeling of bitterness and frustration, like Ravel himself in his last years.


Huh. I'd like to read this. You might then like 'Dvorak in Love' by Josef Skvorecky. Don't ask me though. Got it but haven't read it. If I had three of me one would be used for just reading.


----------



## Guest

If you really want to know (in response to a thread here on TC) : *Owen Swindale*, _Polyphonic Composition_, OUP 1962.
Not exactly bedtime reading.


----------



## Kieran

Kleinzeit said:


> Don't get me wrong: I didn't understand a word he was saying.
> 
> I likes poetry in general though. Robert Lowell wrote a *lot* so... but when he was spot-on, he did what poetry can do: in 100 words or so, he can establish a detail, in a place, in a world, that resonates 'all of life' in its art echo chamber. Or cosmic telescope.
> 
> Emily Dickinson did that too. Here's what I bellow every summer, floating in the sea:


I really liked that. Beautifully read, too. See, that's lyrical and musical and colourful, and involved me in it, somehow. It dragged me along. With Seamus, it's like I have to to half the work, you know? And I'm a lazy so and so, so that doesn't suit me at all!

I suppose, though, Heaney's poems are equally philosophical and descriptive, it's just that slow rural and academic style I struggle with...


----------



## Kleinzeit

This made me think of a lovely thing Richard Taruskin said about Vagn Holmboe. ".....Such music (sym 7) not only demands but also actively induces keen awareness in the listener. ... the analogy that comes to mind is academic discourse of a thrillingly high order. If you have never experienced or cannot imagine an academic thrill, this music may not be for you. But if you have ever left a lecture hall haunted and altered, this disc may offer a comparable cognitive adventure."


----------



## Weston

SottoVoce said:


> Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The people around me kept telling me it is a child's book, and for the longest time I didn't read it because of this. This is not a child's book. Huck's world is captivating, mystical, and absolutely beautiful. There are some scenes that stick out as I walk throughout the day, unable to get them out of my head. Wonderful, wonderful, book; for anyone who hasn't read it, don't get stuck in the same situation I did!


I too have finally got around to reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I'm in the very last pages of it now. I have mixed feelings about it. Some call this the great American novel. Some think it is controversial. I found it neither. It is a series of mostly amusing, but not all that connected episodes, so it's not tightly plotted. I find the ending a bit hard to believe, and Tom Sawyer is increibly out of character in this, but maybe that's becasue it's told from Huck's point of view.

The alleged controversy is a non-issue, knee jerk reaction from people who can't dig even an onion skin depth beneath the surface. It's clearly a very liberal book for its time. I'm glad I've read it. For me it a nice flawed gem.


----------



## Schubussy

Just started
Haruki Murakami - 1Q84








The very first sentences remind me why I love Haruki Murakami so much:
"The taxi's radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janáček's _Sinfonietta_ - probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic."
....
"How many people could recognise Janáček's _Sinfonietta_ after hearing just the first few bars? Probably somewhere between 'very few' and 'almost none.' But for some reason, Aonome was one of the few who could."

I can Mr Murakami!


----------



## Kleinzeit

Schubussy said:


> Just started
> Haruki Murakami - 1Q84
> View attachment 18335
> 
> 
> The very first sentences remind me why I love Haruki Murakami so much:
> "The taxi's radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janáček's _Sinfonietta_ - probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic."
> ....
> "How many people could recognise Janáček's _Sinfonietta_ after hearing just the first few bars? Probably somewhere between 'very few' and 'almost none.' But for some reason, Aonome was one of the few who could."
> 
> I can Mr Murakami!











Read this when I was 13. In one scene the heroine is listening to her favourite on the radio: the Miraculous Mandarin. She describes the sex & violence in the plot. It sounded otherworldly (well, it is). Took another 2 years before I tracked it down and heard it. "?!?" I said.


----------



## drpraetorus

I have just finished "The Graves are Walking" by John Kelly. It is a very good overview of the Irish potato famine of the 1840's. Mr. Kelly goes out of his way to be a fair a possible to the British government of the time. He does not accuse them of overt genocide, but he says even if the policies were not intended as genocide, the effect was. It's difficult to see it any other way. Through a combination of racism, greed, unflinching dogmatism and complete (in some cases intentional)misunderstanding of the situation the Robert Peel government allowed starvation, disease and emigration to remove half the population of Ireland in five years. And they congratulated themselves, thinking they had done the Irish a favor. Modernization, you know.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

In the past week I have completed:
"The Trial," by Franz Kafka
"The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole," by Sue Townsend (recommended to me by MaestroViolinist)
"Wild Magic," first book from "The Immortals," by Tamora Pierce (also recommended to me by MaestroViolinist)
"Surrender," by Sonya Hartnett
And I've just started "The Fellowship of the Ring," by J.R.R. Tolkien


----------



## Potiphera

Plots & Parallel Powers.

I have just read an unusual and good novel on the Gunpowder Plot. by Robert Neville.
I think the thing I noticed about it was how well written it is and I guess you would call it a literary kind of novel. 
There are some actual and fictional characters in it. I liked an old wizard that he invents called Vasco. What I would say is that as a novel it does look at the plot from a deeper an even an inside way, which I found very unusual. A rare and interesting read.

http://www.amazon.com/Plots-Parallel.../dp/B00CS3BMQ8

..


----------



## Novelette

Goethe's Faust -- Translated by Walter Arndt.

This is among my favorite works in all of literature, and it most richly deserves its wide and near-universal acclaim. It's only the third time I'm reading through the whole of it, as it requires a great deal of attention. I like to begin by reading Marlowe's Faust.

Thoroughly enjoying myself!


----------



## graaf

Forum posting manual:


----------



## Mahlerian

The Agony of Modern Music by Henry Pleasants.

It's an absolutely hilarious screed on a number of levels, but primarily the fact that almost no one here or anywhere else agrees with him any more, despite his protestations, and the cutoff date for "when music all started going downhill" keeps being moved up. For Pleasants, Beethoven was the peak, and then everything went south starting with Wagner, "the last really modern serious composer, modern in the sense that he spoke with the full authority of the cultural forces of his time". Everyone afterwards he thinks "may be described as Strauss once described himself, as triflers 'who had something to say in the last chapter.'"

He says that no music written after 1920 (the book was first published in '55) has become repertoire, which may have been true then, but it is less true now. Now people might want to place the cutoff date in the 70s (approximately when Shostakovich died), which is _a very similar time frame_.

His protestations that no modernist (and this includes neoclassical) music has caught on and none ever will have been proven conclusively false, and his views on history are curiously distorted despite his avowed goal of clearing up the big myths of music history (especially as regards progress and acceptance).

Great for a laugh.


----------



## Rola

Last week I've finished the duology _Doktor Murek zredukowany_ and _Drugie życie doktora Murka_ by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz, from 1936.
It tells the story of a quiet, honest clerk who was made redundant, as a result of retaliation plot (he didn't want to favor a bidder for municipal contract). Unable to find a job (over-educated as a lawyer), dumped by his fiance (from the gentry) he sinks down... finally breaks and turns to crime etc.
If you liked the film Falling Down...
Not recommended if you're already depressed or unemployed...


----------



## aleazk

Mahlerian said:


> The Agony of Modern Music by Henry Pleasants.
> 
> It's an absolutely hilarious screed on a number of levels, but primarily the fact that almost no one here or anywhere else agrees with him any more, despite his protestations, and the cutoff date for "when music all started going downhill" keeps being moved up. For Pleasants, Beethoven was the peak, and then everything went south starting with Wagner, "the last really modern serious composer, modern in the sense that he spoke with the full authority of the cultural forces of his time". Everyone afterwards he thinks "may be described as Strauss once described himself, as triflers 'who had something to say in the last chapter.'"
> 
> He says that no music written after 1920 (the book was first published in '55) has become repertoire, which may have been true then, but it is less true now. Now people might want to place the cutoff date in the 70s (approximately when Shostakovich died), which is _a very similar time frame_.
> 
> His protestations that no modernist (and this includes neoclassical) music has caught on and none ever will have been proven conclusively false, and his views on history are curiously distorted despite his avowed goal of clearing up the big myths of music history (especially as regards progress and acceptance).
> 
> Great for a laugh.


Conservative people are fun, particularly in their hilarious writings. Not so much when they have access to guns and political power, though...


----------



## Ryan

50 shades of Grey, it's a good way to see how women tick.


----------



## Kieran

I had a Beckett novel starting with _M_ delivered recently (_Malone? Murphy? Molloy?_) but I can't find it! So today I was in a bookshop in town gawking at old Sam's place on the shelf. I saw his short story book, _More Pricks than Kicks_. It strikes me as miraculous that this genius of the stage also wrote novels and stories, and though they might require setting aside some time (preferably not on a beach for these books), they carry his usual themes relating to the alienations and absurdities of life.

Anyhow, I bought it today and I'm just finishing reading about Famous Seamus Heaney, so I must be on an Oirishmans nostalgic journey round the neighbourhood. I don't know. I don't really like nostalgia...


----------



## Guest

Extremely compelling so far, if a tad gruesome.


----------



## Mahlerian

aleazk said:


> Conservative people are fun, particularly in their hilarious writings. Not so much when they have access to guns and political power, though...


Well, conservative screeds on politics are more sad and maddening than amusing...


----------



## Crudblud

Ambrose/Brinkley - _Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, 8th ed._

It's about 10 years out of date, ending with Clinton, but provides a very interesting analysis of the pre-Dubya United States' foreign policy.


----------



## Kleinzeit

Mahlerian said:


> The Agony of Modern Music by Henry Pleasants.
> 
> It's an absolutely hilarious screed on a number of levels, but primarily the fact that almost no one here or anywhere else agrees with him any more, despite his protestations, and the cutoff date for "when music all started going downhill" keeps being moved up. For Pleasants, Beethoven was the peak, and then everything went south starting with Wagner, "the last really modern serious composer, modern in the sense that he spoke with the full authority of the cultural forces of his time". Everyone afterwards he thinks "may be described as Strauss once described himself, as triflers 'who had something to say in the last chapter.'"
> 
> He says that no music written after 1920 (the book was first published in '55) has become repertoire, which may have been true then, but it is less true now. Now people might want to place the cutoff date in the 70s (approximately when Shostakovich died), which is _a very similar time frame_.
> 
> His protestations that no modernist (and this includes neoclassical) music has caught on and none ever will have been proven conclusively false, and his views on history are curiously distorted despite his avowed goal of clearing up the big myths of music history (especially as regards progress and acceptance).
> 
> Great for a laugh.


Music Ho! by Constant Lambert, subtitled A Study of Music in Decline (1934) is a good & fun read, but not in the same way as this Pleasants sounds. Lambert was keen, and you could transpose many of his arguments to now with only minor adjustments. Bonus points (only for me) that he thought of Sibelius as the future of music.

One(!) passing reference to Mahler. Here it is:

"Without wishing in amy way to denigrate the magnificent achievement of the German romantic school from Weber to Mahler, we can without exaggeration say that it is remarkably deficient in purely rhythmic interest. Wagner himself was conscious of this failing and admitted it with a deprecatory 'Well, you can't have everything' air."

Throughout the book 'Finnegan's Wake' is referred to as 'Work in Progress'.


----------



## Mahlerian

Kleinzeit said:


> Music Ho! by Constant Lambert, subtitled A Study of Music in Decline (1934) is a good & fun read, but not in the same way as this Pleasants sounds. Lambert was keen, and you could transpose many of his arguments to now with only minor adjustments. Bonus points (only for me) that he thought of Sibelius as the future of music.
> 
> One(!) passing reference to Mahler. Here it is:
> 
> "Without wishing in amy way to denigrate the magnificent achievement of the German romantic school from Weber to Mahler, we can without exaggeration say that it is remarkably deficient in purely rhythmic interest. Wagner himself was conscious of this failing and admitted it with a deprecatory 'Well, you can't have everything' air."
> 
> Throughout the book 'Finnegan's Wake' is referred to as 'Work in Progress'.


Haven't read that one. Maybe I will...

Anyway, there's a wonderful bit in Pleasants' book where, after detailing why he thinks the canard that "composers are never appreciated in their time" is wrong, because the audience matters more than the critics, he turns around and says in other circumstances something like "and of course, the critics were right, as they usually are".


----------



## Kleinzeit

Looking at Pleasants' Wiki entry here... CIA station chief in WWII Bern and Cold War spy...

"his most famous and controversial book was his 1955 publication The Agony of Modern Music, a polemical attack on the direction taken by much of 20th-century music, and an argument in favor of jazz as the "true" master music of the time. The book stated "Serious music is a dead art. The vein which for 300 years offered a seemingly inexhaustible yield of beautiful music has run out. What we know as modern music is the noise made by deluded speculators picking through its slag pile." He developed this theme in other books, Death of a Music?: The Decline of the European Tradition and the Rise of Jazz (1961) and Serious Music — and All That Jazz! (1969).

Music Ho! is available for free on the Gutenberg Project. (don't know how the bots feel about linking here)


----------



## Mahlerian

Kleinzeit said:


> Music Ho! is available for free on the Gutenberg Project. (don't know how the bots feel about linking here)


Thanks. I can find it on my own.

I remembered the name from the reference to the book in this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/06/arts/classical-view-and-so-we-bid-farewell-to-atonality.html


----------



## ptr

*Bliss on Music*: Selected Writings of Arthur Bliss, 1920-1975. Gregory Roscow, ed. (1991). Oxford: Oxford University Press

Quite entertaining!

/ptr


----------



## OboeKnight

Finished Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ last week. I really loved it. I am glad I am no longer ignorant to the fact that the monster's name isn't actually Frankenstein lol.

Started Oscar Wilde's _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ a few days ago. I love his writing style. So funny!! I read _The Importance of Being Ernest_ last year and really enjoyed it. Liking Dorian Gray so far.


----------



## Skilmarilion

It had been a while since I'd read any Dan Brown, but I've just begun _Inferno_ ...


----------



## Guest

I'm reading a couple.

Witness by Whitaker Chambers
The Book of Lost Tales, Part II, written by J.R.R. Tolkien, compiled by Christopher Tolkien
Tyranny of Cliches by Jonah Goldberg


----------



## handlebar

Still reading a Jon Kabat-Zinn book on Mindfulness and about to start one by Peter Fenner on Radiant Minds.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

This publication of Tolstoy's very first written works:









This publication included a timeline of his life, in context to his works. He was about my age when he wrote Childhood, so I feel encouraged. I love his writing style so far, and I would write that maturely myself if I could. Takes practice!


----------



## Cheyenne

Moby Dick - going steady at this point, but people tell me that somewhere in the middle I'm going to have a very difficult time.


----------



## science

Cheyenne said:


> Moby Dick - going steady at this point, but people tell me that somewhere in the middle I'm going to have a very difficult time.


Don't believe them. It's a fun book start to finish.


----------



## Cheyenne

science said:


> Don't believe them. It's a fun book start to finish.


Yeah, it is the wrong mindset, isn't it? Never mind that!


----------



## drpraetorus

"1775" by Kevin Philips. An examination of the beginnings of the American Revolution before the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Quite interesting.


----------



## GreenMamba

Stephen Ambrose's Crazy Horse and Custer.


----------



## deinoslogos

Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran- Michael Axworthy 
The Quran- Fazlollah Nikayin's poetic translation 
Spetmbers of Shiraz- Dalia Sofer 

Also rereading parts of Gilles Deleuze's What is Philosophy when the mood strikes.


----------



## Ingélou

I've decided to reread 'Dick Turpin - The Myth of the English Highwayman' by James Sharpe, a Professor of History at York University. Turpin was a thug, as Sharpe shows, but a familiar thug, as in my youth we often went to see his condemned cell in York Castle Museum. It's a brilliant book that we first found in the library, then, against all the odds, bought for fifty pence in a charity book clearance at the back of our local supermarket. Meant for us, clearly!


----------



## HumphreyAppleby

_Saving the Appearences_ and _Worlds Apart_ by Owen Barfield.


----------



## Valkhafar

Just finished Faust by Goethe.


----------



## ptr

Had a hard time falling asleep last night so I started rereading one of my favourite American Classics; Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow", six o'clock this morning I started to nod off... Not good when You have a dentist Appointment at eight... 

/ptr


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Just started: _Julius Evola - Ride the Tiger_.


----------



## Kieran

WB Yeats poetry, Wordsworth Classics. Absolutely beautiful and lyrical, a real master of verse and song...


----------



## Kleinzeit

Kieran said:


> WB Yeats poetry, Wordsworth Classics. Absolutely beautiful and lyrical, a real master of verse and song...


This is a form of fun: a site devoted to Yeats' reworking of his wife's automatic trance writing worldview.

http://www.yeatsvision.com/Yeats.html


----------



## Kieran

Kleinzeit said:


> This is a form of fun: a site devoted to Yeats' reworking of his wife's automatic trance writing worldview.
> 
> http://www.yeatsvision.com/Yeats.html




I'll have a gander at this, thanks! There's a whole Yeats the mystic thing in some poems, old fashioned pagan and faery dreaminess that's easy to skip over or under through, but he kept that til the end, I think. If the site's about that, it'll be a curio. On a bus now, so not great for reading!

Cheers! :tiphat:


----------



## MagneticGhost

Just read Alain de Botton's Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. Now on his 'Status Anxiety'


----------



## Weston

I'm taking a stab at Shaw's _The Perfect Wagnerite_, though it's been a while since I watched the Ring Cycle. It may take me a while . . .


----------



## Amleth

Now reading Edgar Allan Poe's complete works (Fall River Classics). Maybe the best North-American author - great sort of old school storytelling, with very beautiful poetic language.

Because my limited English I have very often problems understand what's going on in the current story, mainly because of high-flown language, although I have read translation of all Edgar's stories.


----------



## Crudblud

Peter Calvocoressi - _World Politics Since 1945_ (7th ed.) Part Three: The Middle East

Partly in preparation for going to see _The Gatekeepers_ on Friday.


----------



## Kieran

Kleinzeit said:


> This is a form of fun: a site devoted to Yeats' reworking of his wife's automatic trance writing worldview.
> 
> http://www.yeatsvision.com/Yeats.html


I had a gander - they went to a lot of trouble, didn't they? Alchemy, the occult, and Yeats. He asked for it. He had a lot of pagan/occult beliefs.

I'm still sifting his marvelous poems, so many of them are really song lyrics. The Pilgrim is a great example of that lyrical quality in Yeats.

Also, still reading Beckett's short story book _More Pricks than Kicks_. He uses a lot of words in this book. What I mean is, he wrote it when he was mid-20's, and there's a clear agenda to establish himself, his style, be literary, etc. It's quite rivetting, actually, without ever feeling like a finished product. He swings off into long-winded tangents, so I go with him because he's good company. His main character who connects the stories, Belacqua, is a contrivance and a type. He's anti-social, belligerent, careless, frustrated. He doesn't read like an actual person, but more an attempt at creating a character.

This is young Beckett, and I'm looking forward to reading later stuff, like Murphy, or Malone Dies, because by then the vision was complete (as the saying goes)...


----------



## Kleinzeit

Kieran--
Like Blake said, 'I must create my own system or be enslaved by another's'. 

First ran into Yeats' system many years back when I was some sort of proto-goth teen, and mad about yr alternate realities & What Not. It was in an ambitious astrology book called 'Phases of the Moon', which was all about Yeats' ultimately metaphorical system, but put into harness for pro horoscope writing purposes. It was Jungian archetypes in well-tailored Freudian formalwear, and it was a sturdy thinking tool for considering the range of human types + how an individual changes over time, evolves even. 

Like a T Rex teenage moon!

I suspect Yeats was too grounded to be a big-b believer in this stuff. It was art food.
But fin de siecle occult circles must have been the funnest places to be, what with the sex, & the drugs, & the Scriabin.


----------



## Kieran

Kleinzeit said:


> Kieran--
> Like Blake said, 'I must create my own system or be enslaved by another's'.
> 
> First ran into Yeats' system many years back when I was some sort of proto-goth teen, and mad about yr alternate realities & What Not. It was in an ambitious astrology book called 'Phases of the Moon', which was all about Yeats' ultimately metaphorical system, but put into harness for pro horoscope writing purposes. It was Jungian archetypes in well-tailored Freudian formalwear, and it was a sturdy thinking tool for considering the range of human types + how an individual changes over time, evolves even.
> 
> Like a T Rex teenage moon!
> 
> I suspect Yeats was too grounded to be a big-b believer in this stuff. It was art food.
> But fin de siecle occult circles must have been the funnest places to be, what with the sex, & the drugs, & the Scriabin.


I know a lot of people go into the neo-pagan occultist stuff, usually without discerning where it's from or what they're doing. They just don't want the status quo, and this makes them feel good, it has mystery and spirits in the room and a flower out the back is more than just a flower. The occult is sensuous and dreamy. I can see the attraction for poets. I think Yeats might have been more a believer than we'd expect: his old fella was into it too.

I never read Irish writers when I was younger, avoiding them like the plague, maybe because they're contagious. Well, I used to read Oscar Wilde, but the poets steered clear of me and I stayed away from them. Lately, however, I'm curious: Joyce, Heaney, Yeats, Beckett. It's good. Yeats, in particular, has a populists tongue. He can rabble-rouse while causing the highbrows to twitch with pleasure. Beckett's novels will probably be the extent of it, since Joyce can be read in spurts and non-chronologically...


----------



## Ingélou

Interesting posts, K & K!

There's no doubt that Yeats was a believer. He hung out with guys like Alister Crowley. It put me off when I studied him at university but during the last years of my teaching, when we'd do poems like 'Byzantium', I was able to appreciate much more the power of the imagery his belief system provided. I was mature, I suppose, less inclined to see everything in earnest either/or terms.

I taught a Seamus Heaney collection at our sixth-form college & I loved his early/middle period stuff, particularly the bog body poems & the sonnets about his family and neighbourhood. Also Brian Friel's 'Translations', a fantastic play. I once met someone who'd been in the same year as Friel & Heaney at university - she said Friel was clearly talented but Heaney seemed like nobody at all. 

What about Joyce's 'The Dubliners', Kieran? I love those, though I've never even bothered to tackle Ulysses. I 'did' Beckett in the sixth form and was duly impressed, but with maturity also comes the ability to confess when you're bored.


----------



## Kieran

Ingenue said:


> I taught a Seamus Heaney collection at our sixth-form college & I loved his early/middle period stuff, particularly the bog body poems & the sonnets about his family and neighbourhood. Also Brian Friel's 'Translations', a fantastic play. I once met someone who'd been in the same year as Friel & Heaney at university - she said Friel was clearly talented but Heaney seemed like nobody at all.


That's interesting about Heaney and Friel. I find Heaney's bogman remembrances a little torturous. I'm not a rural animal at all, and he has little _music of the street_ in his poems. They're quite dry for my taste, though The Haw Lantern is a fabulous poem. I'd never think of him as anything but a genius, however.



> What about Joyce's 'The Dubliners', Kieran? I love those, though I've never even bothered to tackle Ulysses. I 'did' Beckett in the sixth form and was duly impressed, but with maturity also comes the ability to confess when you're bored.


I loved "The Dubliners", and saw that they used a lot of slang back then that's still common. It could actually have been written last year, in a lot of ways, because unlike a lot of popular modern Dublin writers, Joyce actually captured the character of Dublin people in those tales, the fear, the envy, the way people sometimes take great suffering on themselves rather than open their mouth and complain - or say they love someone. It's isn't glib, or common.

His modernist novels actually seem to me to be poetry, I can read them that way, since the narrative is splintered, the language becomes the most persuasive part of them. That's how I get them, if I get them at all...


----------



## Kleinzeit

Kieran said:


> I know a lot of people go into the neo-pagan occultist stuff, usually without discerning where it's from or what they're doing. They just don't want the status quo, and this makes them feel good, it has mystery and spirits in the room and a flower out the back is more than just a flower. The occult is sensuous and dreamy. I can see the attraction for poets. I think Yeats might have been more a believer than we'd expect: his old fella was into it too.
> 
> I never read Irish writers when I was younger, avoiding them like the plague, maybe because they're contagious. Well, I used to read Oscar Wilde, but the poets steered clear of me and I stayed away from them. Lately, however, I'm curious: Joyce, Heaney, Yeats, Beckett. It's good. Yeats, in particular, has a populists tongue. He can rabble-rouse while causing the highbrows to twitch with pleasure. Beckett's novels will probably be the extent of it, since Joyce can be read in spurts and non-chronologically..


When new age sorts get together it's like a bottle party. Everything expands into an enormous Yes! and all of a sudden everybody's genius. When you get a few belts of e-z metaphysics in you, you can sincerely believe you know jack about It All. It's the paved road to the La Brea Dream Pits, filled with the bones of self-adoring artsy mastodons.


----------



## Kieran

Kleinzeit said:


> When new age sorts get together it's like a bottle party. Everything expands into an enormous Yes! and all of a sudden everybody's genius. When you get a few belts of e-z metaphysics in you, you can sincerely believe you know jack about It All. It's the paved road to the La Brea Dream Pits, filled with the bones of self-adoring artsy mastodons.


You know what I always say (when I'm not saying something else)?

Heaven preserve us from Idealists! Any dealings I've had with the universe-worshippers hasn't been too friendly. The spite is never well-concealed in them. But you're correct about the Big Yes! Molly Bloom would love 'em...


----------



## Mahlerian

Kieran said:


> His modernist novels actually seem to me to be poetry, I can read them that way, since the narrative is splintered, the language becomes the most persuasive part of them. That's how I get them, if I get them at all...


Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu loved Joyce, and Finnegan's Wake (Riverrun and Far Calls Coming, Far! are two of his pieces). I haven't (confession time) tried to tackle it myself yet, but from what I know, I can only imagine how untranslatable it is, and I don't think he knew English anywhere near the level that Joyce would require....

Recently re-read Camus' _The Fall_, which is one of the few books I've encountered entirely written in the second person.


----------



## Kieran

Mahlerian said:


> Recently re-read Camus' _The Fall_, which is one of the few books I've encountered entirely written in the second person.


As in, "you did this, you did that?"


----------



## Mahlerian

Kieran said:


> As in, "you did this, you did that?"


Right, but it's all one person talking to another, no narration.


----------



## Kieran

Mahlerian said:


> Right, but it's all one person talking to another, no narration.


Just reading about it: it's present tense too. It has a lot going on in it, hasn't it? Just from what it refers to, Camus went deep...


----------



## Weston

Weston said:


> I'm taking a stab at Shaw's _The Perfect Wagnerite_, though it's been a while since I watched the Ring Cycle. It may take me a while . . .


Well, this is considerably easier going than I might have thought. Clever too. But, my goodness! It certainly is a socialist vehicle. I'm likely on some shadow government watch list now for having mentioned it.


----------



## TrevBus

Just stared one I meant to read a few years back; 'THE CONVERSATIONS AT CURLOW CREEK' by David Malouf, an australian writer. It deals w/2 men, one a soldier and the other a convict about to be hung in the morning. The location is the Australian Outback in the early 1800's(1827 to be exact). As you have probably guessed, THE conversation is between these 2 men. Have read about 60 pages and so far so good. If you like books that is mainly dialogue and discriptive at that, then this could be the book for you.


----------



## TrevBus

SiegendesLicht said:


> My favorites of Stephen King's are "Needful Things" and "The Stand".


 "It", "Salem's Lot' and "The Stand', I rank among his best. However, one I like better than "The Stand" is Robert McCammon's "Swan's Song". Both similar but treatment of "The End Of the World" theme was more compelling for me as were the Characters. More vibrant and Colorful.


----------



## msegers

I've been indulging in a couple of great Argentine novels. First, the short, intense little novel, The Tunnel, by Ernesto Sabato. Then, the sprawling, wild Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar. I would recommend both of them.


----------



## Mahlerian

Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze by Thomas Allen Nelson

Borrowed this one from a friend. Perhaps it's a little overladen with academic verbiage, and is too intent on collapsing the interpretation of Kubrick's films into specific details with a single interpretation, but far from bad overall. It's also making me want to read Lolita again.


----------



## belfastboy

Diary of Samuel Pepys - on a different genre, I want "Tuesdays with Morrie" Albom...sounds good - read it?


----------



## Mahlerian

Just like I said...
The Annotated Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Alfred Appel

If I only knew the dictionary half as well as Nabokov...
The annotations seem a bit obsessive at times, although my French is lousy enough that I need him to translate anything longer than two or three words. Some of the references I would get, some would go right over my head (a specific advertisement that hangs over the title character's bed). Of course, I'm going to see the Kubrick movie again, if for no other reason than to cleanse my mind of the absolutely terrible Adrian Lynne version....


----------



## Praeludium

Salammbô, by Gustave Flaubert !

And after that, the first novel of the Rougon-Macquart "saga" by Zola.


----------



## Weston

I'm considering a Richard Matheson book. He left the world today I just heard, though to be honest, I didn't know he was still living. I may watch one of his movies instead as he was probably more widely known as a screenplay writer, one of the best.


----------



## PetrB

Rereading ~ Joseph Heller; _Picture This._ 
uh, a non-story essay, I suppose. A book of ideas, shifting between Rembrandt and the Golden age in Amsterdam, Greece of Aristotle and Socrates, and the more contemporary 20th century, keeping several plates spinning re what is known, thought to be known of history, what and how we value art, culture, ideas and ideologies.

Yes, it does all that, and more. Tremendous romp.


----------



## GreenMamba

David Von Drehle's Triangle, about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.


----------



## Mahlerian

James Joyce: Dubliners
I've only ever read some of the stories (incuding The Dead, of course), and I'm enjoying going through them now being somewhat older (if not much wiser).


----------



## Bix

Adam Zamoyski - Chopin, Prince of the Romantics
ISBN 978-0-00-734185-6


----------



## DrKilroy

Today I finished reading Tolkien's Silmarillion! It was my second time reading it and I started to get what is going on there...  The amount of names and places is just overwhelming. 

Best regards, Dr


----------



## Kieran

I got Beckett's Company Etc and I'm going to start it this weekend. I'm working my towards his novels...


----------



## aszkid

Stuart Russell, Peter Norvig, _et al._, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.


----------



## Maqroll

I assume you've already read his more famous plays (Endgame, Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, etc) and on your way toward the Trilogy. I advise you to also read some of his shorter works, especially Texts for Nothing and his Dante and the Lobster. You'll be fully prepared to tackle Molloy, Malone Dies and the Unnameable after that.


----------



## Kieran

Maqroll said:


> I assume you've already read his more famous plays (Endgame, Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, etc) and on your way toward the Trilogy. I advise you to also read some of his shorter works, especially Texts for Nothing and his Dante and the Lobster. You'll be fully prepared to tackle Molloy, Malone Dies and the Unnameable after that.


He Maqroll,

Welcome! 

No, I haven't read the plays, but I've seen the ones you mentioned, plus Krapp's Last tape and some short one man play stuff, in the Dublin Theatre Festival. I read More Pricks than Kicks. What should I expect from Molloy, Malone Dies and the Unnameable, and also Watt, which I hope to read eventually?

Cheers! :tiphat:


----------



## cwarchc

Just finished this whist up in the Highlands, visited some of the places
Certainly has a psychological effect knowing what happened there


----------



## Ravndal

A book about Brahms life and his contemporary's. Fascinating stuff. Brahms is not the bore everyone thinks he was.


----------



## EricABQ

I just finished Wool, which is a collection of Kindle singles publish for Kindle as one volume. The story is set inside an underground silo where generations of humans have been living after some apocalyptic event. They've been there about 300 years.

It is one of the most successful digital only releases.

As for the story itself, it is a very good premise but the author can be a bit tedious at times. I found myself just reading the first and last sentences of quite a few paragraphs just to make quicker progress. But, all in all, I enjoyed it as a light pop-novel type of read.


----------



## Ryan

The Jaguar 2014 XK drivers manual. If anybody knows how to open the petrol cap it would be greatly appreciated.


----------



## Ravndal

Ryan said:


> The Jaguar 2014 XK drivers manual. If anybody knows how to open the petrol cap it would be greatly appreciated.


haha. nice.

151515


----------



## Maqroll

Well, to be brutally honest, Molloy is a slog, a drag through the mud in more ways than one. It is structurally impressive, and it becomes more and more interesting as you make your way through Part 2, but after having read it twice, I still find it my least favourite of the Trilogy. Second favourite is Malone Dies, about as much a story about a failed artist as it is a survey in acute psychological trauma. A fantastic theme of artistic creation and recovered memory runs throughout that will keep you entertained as you piece the story together. Finally, the Unnameable, which is indescribable. The best way I can put it is: it is one long incandescent prose poem where language and logic are eradicated and you're left with a consciousness trying to come to terms with itself.
Unfortunately, I haven't read Watt, though I have read Murphy. The only thing I can tell you is, it's a lot of fun and to watch out for the bicycles.


----------



## Novelette

Ryan said:


> The Jaguar 2014 XK drivers manual. If anybody knows how to open the petrol cap it would be greatly appreciated.


Ah, I see you are a fan of _classic_ literature!


----------



## TrevBus

Right now I am soaking myself in John Connolly's 4th book w/"Charlie Bird" as the main character; 'The White Road'. Wonderful detective fiction. At my age(81)need escapism more than full on reality.


----------



## Kieran

Maqroll said:


> Well, to be brutally honest, Molloy is a slog, a drag through the mud in more ways than one. It is structurally impressive, and it becomes more and more interesting as you make your way through Part 2, but after having read it twice, I still find it my least favourite of the Trilogy. Second favourite is Malone Dies, about as much a story about a failed artist as it is a survey in acute psychological trauma. A fantastic theme of artistic creation and recovered memory runs throughout that will keep you entertained as you piece the story together. Finally, the Unnameable, which is indescribable. The best way I can put it is: it is one long incandescent prose poem where language and logic are eradicated and you're left with a consciousness trying to come to terms with itself.
> Unfortunately, I haven't read Watt, though I have read Murphy. The only thing I can tell you is, it's a lot of fun and to watch out for the bicycles.


Great stuff, Maqroll, thanks for that!

More Pricks than Kicks read like a young guy trying to find his writing voice. I found it confusing at times, but once I let go and abandoned myself to his ways, I enjoyed it for what it was: a very flawed attempt. When I've read Company etc, I'll post here my brief impressions. Then I'm ready for the hard stuff. 

By the way, do you think there'll come a time when his novels are as feted as his plays?

Cheers! :tiphat:


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Re-reading all the Sherlock Holmes books
And also re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird


----------



## Kieran

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Re-reading all the Sherlock Holmes books
> And also re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird


The Holmes stories are excellent. There's a visual quality to them, but also the observations he makes don't seem too outlandish. A retired army vet, recently returned from Afghanistan, wounded on previous duty in India, loves Mozart and has a season ticket to the opera at Covent Garden.

Can tell it all from the way his collar is turned.

But Doyle's genius was in making these things work. I never once read one and thought, ah here, gimme some credit...


----------



## Ingélou

I agree. I love the atmosphere, the character play, the humour, the stories themselves.

One a bit less credit-worthy? There is one. The Speckled Band - now who in their right mind, when dying of a poisonous snake, is going to call it *that*?


----------



## Guest

_The Retribution_ by Val MacDermid, a gritty novel about the search for two serial killers.


----------



## Ingélou

The UK journalist Lynn Barber's memoir, 'An Education', about how she was seduced by a con man at age 16, and its effect on her time at Oxford University.  Brilliant - so witty & thoughtful. Here's a paragraph about the posh school she won a scholarship to:

'...it was surrounded by miles of playing fields & you had to play games. Worst of all you had to play lax - lacrosse - which relied on the daft notion that it was possible to run while holding a ball in a sort of primitive snowshoe above your head while other girls hit you with their snowshoes and tried to trip you up. Obviously it was dangerous folly even to attempt it.... Eventually I got my parents to write a note saying I had weak ankles & should not play games - which would have been fine except that I then had to go to remedial podiatry sessions & learn to pick up pencils with my toes. Then the podiatrist said I should take up ice skating to strengthen my weak ankles and actually got me a free pass to Saturday sessions at Richmond Ice Rink. God - I'd thought lacrosse was scary, ice skating was terrifying. In theory there was a quiet place in the middle of the rink where you could practise your figures but you had to get to it through this stampeding pack of speed skaters. I once saw someone's finger sliced off when he fell over in the pack and a ring of blood went right round the rink before the stewards could get the speed skaters to stop.'


----------



## Kieran

Ingenue said:


> The UK journalist Lynn Barber's memoir


You know, I went off her when I read this interview with Rafa Nadal, a nasty, gossipy, spiteful article, just because he didn't want to snitch about his private life with his girlfriend. Worse than the lads in the canteen, with her "is Rafa gay?" insinuations. It was a very poor hatchet job, journalism from beneath the gutter. No wonder people like him are wary of the press.

Mind you, that's not to say the book is not a good one. The paragraph quoted is fairly gruesome, isn't it?


----------



## Ingélou

No, I think she made her reputation as a journalist by being 'bitchy', so might not be a terribly nice person - you're right. 

I remember reading Jill Tweedie's biography - another left-wing journalist (who died young of motor neurone disease) and again I might not have liked her if I'd met her, but she was very funny & my classes appreciated extracts. Oddly enough she was taken in by a similar older man but in her case she married him, with tragic consequences. 

If a book is funny and readable and told in the first person, it's hard not to warm to the narrator; and I suppose we all have a 'point of view'. Sorry about the gory extract; the Barber book as a whole isn't gory, so mea culpa.


----------



## OboeKnight

Finished The Picture of Dorian Gray a while ago and loved it. Then read The Sable Quean by Brian Jacques. It is a book from the Redwall series...it's a very adventurous series and all of the characters are animals haha. I love them! Now I'm reading The Hobbit for the first time after much nagging from a friend.


----------



## julianoq

I just finished reading a 'heavy' philosophical book and decided to find something lighter. Just started to read *Real Men Don't Rehearse: Adventures in the Secret World of Professional Orchestras*. Finished the first chapter and it was very funny _and _involves 1812 Overture :lol: looks promising.


----------



## cwarchc

Just re-read " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" then had a listen to it on YT being performed by Richard Burton
Very good


----------



## Cheyenne

Started _A Dance to the Music of Time_, by Anthony Powell; I felt like something long.


----------



## Ondine

For this summer vacations:

Mystery of Misteries: Is evolution a social construction? by Michael Ruse.

Let's see if the author hooks me.


----------



## GreenMamba

WW2 History: Lloyd Clark's _Anzio_


----------



## cwarchc

Rolling Thunder, about the Americans in Vietnam


----------



## Kieran

I have a few on the spin at the moment. I'm away to the beach on Tuesday, so I have bought _The Forever War_, a sci-fi by Joe Haldeman, and borrowed a couple of Finnish detective novels from the library: _Lucifer's Tears_, by James Thompson, and _Nights of Awe_, by Harri Nykanen, both authors recommended by an esteemed member of our community...

:tiphat:


----------



## Klavierspieler

Just finished Dostoevsky's "Devils" (also known as "The Possessed)." 

Cheery, very cheery.


----------



## Celloman

This is my first time reading Jane Austen's _Emma_. It's hilarious!


----------



## Operafocus

I'm in between "Great Singers On Great Singing" (Jerome Hines) and "Enrico Caruso" (charming book written by his widow). When you read the letters Caruso sent his wife, you kind of feel like you have to put on an Italian accent. Also, when you do, the way he writes makes more sense. It really is an insight into the man that you wouldn't otherwise get.

*An excerpt:*


----------



## Vesteralen

Just finished Stacy Schiff's *Cleopatra*. Considering all the misinformation about the woman in contemporary and near-contemporary sources, it's interesting to have a book that maintains some reserve and let's the reader draw a few conclusions of his own.

Of the twenty or so books I'm currently reading, the most interesting is *As I Knew Him *by *Ann Serling*. It's led me to rent a bunch of Rod Serling's old TV dramas (like those on Studio One and Kraft Theater). Amazing - TV actually started out intelligent before the sixties came along.


----------



## musicphotogAnimal

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of Western North America to determine the sex of said bird that I photographed on Thursday.










I have come to the conclusion that it is a rather emaciated male.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Michel Malherbe: Les Religions de l'humanité, Edition de seuile, 1990


----------



## EricABQ

Just downloaded Radley Balko's _Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces_.

I've followed this author's blog for a couple of years and have been anxious to read this book, even though I'm pretty sure it's just going to infuriate me.

The book will examine how police departments used "anti terror" grants to purchase military equipment, and since there aren't really all that many terrorists to use this equipment against, it all ends up being used against run of the mill criminals (and plenty of non-criminals) to sometimes disasterous effect. Sort of a "hey let's buy this police department an armored assault vehice, what could possibly go wrong?" kind of story.


----------



## Guest

"The Age of Global Warming" by Rupert Darwall

An interesting survey of the environmentalist movement, from its origins with the depletionists, including Malthus and Jevons, through the marriage of environmentalism to German and British fascists in the early 20th century, to the 1960's, with the publication of "Silent Spring" by Carson and the birth of the modern environmentalist movement, to finally the current movement, beginning in the late 1980's. It explores both sides of the debate, and the different problems involved - most recently, the clash between the environmentalist movement of more affluent countries versus the desire for industrialization of poorer Third World countries.


----------



## Ondine

Ondine said:


> For this summer vacations:
> 
> Mystery of Misteries: Is evolution a social construction? by Michael Ruse.
> 
> Let's see if the author hooks me.


No, it didn't hooked me 

The one that did: 'Can We Live Together?: Equality and Difference.' by Alain Touraine. Looks like a brilliant essay


----------



## Crudblud

Aldous Huxley - _Island_

Aldous Huxley - _Island_

I'm reading it twice because it isn't long enough for TC.


----------



## aleazk

Crudblud said:


> Aldous Huxley - _Island_
> 
> Aldous Huxley - _Island_
> 
> I'm reading it twice because it isn't long enough for TC.


I read that book some years ago. I'm a big fan of Huxley. If I remember well, it was about some kind of utopian society, but in the context of an indigenous culture, or something like that.


----------



## Crudblud

aleazk said:


> I read that book some years ago. I'm a big fan of Huxley. If I remember well, it was about some kind of utopian society, but in the context of an indigenous culture, or something like that.


Yes, it seems almost like an alternate universe version of John's society in _Brave New World_, in a sense. I read Alan Watts' _The Book_ earlier this year, he and Huxley were good friends, and his influence shows in the general manner and philosophy of the natives on the island, no wonder my friend recommended both of them in the same sentence.


----------



## aleazk

Although a little technical, so I wouldn't recommend it to very neophyte people.


----------



## Sonata

White Princess: Philipa Gregory. 

It's historical fiction, one of several novels she's written examining various players in the War of the Roses. It's my second book that I've read of Gregory's, the other being the Red Queen


----------



## GGluek

After avoiding it for years, and thinking I "knew" it from TV mini-series and the musical, I'm finally reading Les Miserables which, not unsurprisingly, is a really good book -- despite being really long, and Hugo's inclination to spend scores of pages on periodic digressions.


----------



## Crudblud

Albert Camus - _The Outsider_


----------



## Ingélou

Oh great - haven't read that since my sixth form French lessons! I'd like to reread it - also Jean-Paul Sartre's 'Road to Freedom' trilogy.


----------



## rrudolph

Charles Bukowski-Post Office. First work of fiction I've read in a couple years (I spent the first part of the summer with Emerson and Thoreau, thanks to the influence of Charles Ives' music). I'm really enjoying it and will probably read more Bukowski when I've finished it.


----------



## Klavierspieler

Just finished several of Robert Louis Stevenson's works: _Kidnapped_, _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, and some other short stories.

Just beginning Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_.


----------



## Guest

_Medusa's Child_ (1997) by John J. Nance. Quite a good nuclear bomb/Medusa Effect thriller.


----------



## TrevBus

Just finished 'Cloud Atlas'. Very good book. Difficult to keep up at times but worth it. I also liked the film.


----------



## Guest

Klavierspieler said:


> Just finished several of Robert Louis Stevenson's works: _Kidnapped_, _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, and some other short stories.
> 
> Just beginning Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_.


I love _Gulliver's Travels_--the social criticism is devastating and devastatingly funny!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

_Wolfgang Hohlbein, "Hagen von Tronje"_ - a modern German fantasy author's take on the story of Siegfried, Brünnhilde, Hagen and other characters, familiar to each Wagnerian. I am through about a third of it, and it is very enjoyable, and yet something about it bothers me. At least for now, it is Hagen and Gunther, both plotting to kill Siegfried, who are presented as the good guys in the story, while Siegfried himself is rather someone who is too strong, too brave and therefore dangerous and should be swept away: a conspiracy of the weak against the strong, of the effeminate king and his one-eyed adviser against the resplendent hero who had helped to save their kingdom. The evil made to appear the good.


----------



## Crudblud

Patrick Chamoiseau - _Solibo Magnificent_

My first excursion into the _Créolité_ movement, which, prior to finding this book by chance on a dusty shelf, I had no idea existed.


----------



## Wicked_one

David McRaney - You are no so smart


----------



## aleazk

I tried to read Asimov's _I, Robot_ last night, but it bored me to death I must say (at least the first chapters, I couldn't pass beyond that).
And I think I'm being quite unfair with Asimov, because I'm well conscious that this book is the precedent of all the robot-related fiction (movies and books) that came after the book in question. But that's precisely the problem. The ideas presented in the book don't surprise me because I have encountered them in movies before reading the book. Also I didn't like its somewhat archaic descriptions of the robots with emphasis in prism-shaped metalic chassis (of course, that seems somewhat naive to our modern standards, since we now have seen for example the mind blowing androids of the movies Terminator and others; we can't blame Asimov of that of course, it's just that any science fiction novel will have anachronistic elements when it's being readed in the actual future the novel is talking about!; though, I must say, Kubrick's masterpiece 2001 seems to me today as fresh as ever, some of the footages and design of the equipments seem quite convincing even today).
I will try to finish the book anyway.


----------



## Rehydration

I'd like to be reading the translated light novels of the series _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_, but I can't get them from my local library, so I'll have to import them from another library. Oh, well.
Right now I'm not really reading anything except for some Jack London at random intervals.


----------



## LindnerianSea

Kierkegaard's 'Either/Or' ~ finished the first two chapters. overwhelmed by its ambition and overall complexity. This is the kind of book that makes 'The Man Without Qualities' (the latest thick book I read) look like a fairy tale. It is a work that I will most definitely come back to one day, especially since the book deals with Mozart a lot, a composer unfortunately and regrettably up to date takes no part in my main playlist.


----------



## Blancrocher

LindnerianSea said:


> Kierkegaard's 'Either/Or' ~ finished the first two chapters. overwhelmed by its ambition and overall complexity. This is the kind of book that makes 'The Man Without Qualities' (the latest thick book I read) look like a fairy tale.


Actually, I'm not sure that Either/Or doesn't have more of a plot!


----------



## LindnerianSea

Blancrocher said:


> Actually, I'm not sure that Either/Or doesn't have more of a plot!


Yes indeed. But to what I understand, Kierkegaard never considered Either/Or a 'philosophical' text either (he really didn't like the Hegelian 'dryness' of philosophical texts) - for the result of him creating a fictitious context... which slightly complicates the picture. Yes, it is not plot driven and in the most traditional sense a novel, yet it is intrinsically and intentionally not non-fiction. For me, it's a novel of ideas, similar to 'The Man Without Qualities', 'The Magic Mountain', or even 'The Brothers Karamazov'

Best, 
Lindneriansea


----------



## Mahlerian

Blancrocher said:


> Actually, I'm not sure that Either/Or doesn't have more of a plot!


Well, there is the whole plot of Kierkegaard's life and his bizarre courtship/unrequited love, which lies behind the whole beautiful mess of his philosophy.


----------



## Blancrocher

I agree--my point was that Musil's novel is less fairy-tale like than Either/Or. I admire The Man Without Qualities, though it's a tough slog (whereas Kierkegaard is always a page-turner, even if he's a subtle writer). 

By the way, I'd recommend Musil's very entertaining, shorter, and less ambitious Young Torless.


----------



## Crudblud

Crudblud said:


> Patrick Chamoiseau - _Solibo Magnificent_
> 
> My first excursion into the _Créolité_ movement, which, prior to finding this book by chance on a dusty shelf, I had no idea existed.


So, I finished reading it and I have to say this is a fantastic book. I highly recommend it.

Now reading: Paul Auster - _The New York Trilogy_


----------



## aleazk

Crudblud said:


> So, I finished reading it and I have to say this is a fantastic book. I highly recommend it.
> 
> Now reading: Paul Auster - _The New York Trilogy_


You are a Créolitéist then.


----------



## GreenMamba

Mary Roach - Gulp: Adventures in the Alimentary Canal


----------



## Cheyenne

Some of George Bernard Shaw's Non-fiction.


----------



## samurai

Christopher Clark--* The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914*


----------



## Crudblud

aleazk said:


> You are a Créolitéist then.


Gadzooks! I have been outed!


----------



## cwarchc

Dipping my toe back into "The poems of Wilfred Owen"
It's one to read in small doses, then re-visit, again & again


----------



## Jaredpi

Reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" for English class. Very well written.


----------



## schuberkovich

I am on a project to read all the Penguin/Vintage whatever Modern Classics lying around in our house after being disappointed by a series of recent bestsellers. 

I finished John Updike's "The Witches of Eastwick", with a vague recollection of the film from when I was really young. It was the first Updike I'd read and the writing style was initially difficult - 5 line sentences, 2 page paragraphs, loose strands interrupted by clauses and then rejoining, and heavy description of every single place or occurrence. Despite being sometimes tough to get into, the level of detail made it very immersive. However the book overall felt like a series of really good scenes and ideas not really fitting together - the ending was distinctly underwhelming, like Updike was in a rush to wrap things up. In addition, the 3 main witch characters grew more and more unlikeable. Darry Van Horne (played in the film by Jack Nicholson) is however one of the most vibrant and interesting characters I've come across.

I'll watch the film, which I can now tell is completely different in plot and tone to the book, just to seen Nicholson's portrayal of the "devil".

Now I'm onto Lolita. After reading an article about its various front covers over the years I'm really interested in the book itself.


----------



## julianoq

Finishing 'Paul and Stephen', a book about the life of Paul of Tarsus, probably the best book wrote by brazilian medium Chico Xavier. Very recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Stephen-Francisco-Cândido-Xavier/dp/8598161470/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t


----------



## Guest

Just started Dan Brown's *Inferno*. So far, so good.


----------



## schuberkovich

Well, I finished Lolita (school holidays) and found it amazing - the way it is written, the repulsive yet somehow beautifully tragic and romantic narrator, the setting, and the heart-breaking story. The way it like a cyclic symphony links multiple ideas across different parts of the book made me often flip back to re-read parts and find in online notes little things I had missed in my first read. I also had to keep looking up all these rich words I had never encountered before!

I immediately wanted to re-immerse myself in the book's atmosphere. I'll definitely read it again in the near future, and pay more attention to certain details.

For those who've read it, to me the most powerful sections were the two USA road trip parts. For those who haven't, I strongly recommend it.


----------



## Ukko

I'm 100 pages into _"Carrying the Heart" _- 'Exploring the Worlds Within Us', a historically based account of human understanding of our internal organs. The author, F. González-Crussí, is elegant, eloquent, a very good story teller - and has a helluva non-jargon vocabulary. I have so far resisted the temptation to 'pause-and-look-it-up', and context has worked well enough.

The ancients - and the not so ancient - had some entertaining (though sometimes deadly) ideas about those organs, and the author manages to treat them kindly, with restrained humor. Not being so restrained, I have to laugh now and then.

Kaplan Publishing, ©2009 by Frank González-Crussí.


----------



## Crudblud

J.G. Ballard - _Super-Cannes_


----------



## Cheyenne

schuberkovich said:


> Well, I finished Lolita (school holidays) and found it amazing - the way it is written, the repulsive yet somehow beautifully tragic and romantic narrator, the setting, and the heart-breaking story.


I wanted to continue reading badly, but at the same time reflect longer on all the beautiful phrases and sentences and paragraphs. _Speak, Memory_, _Pnin_ and _Pale Fire_ are also great.

Currently reading Alex Ross' book on 20th century music. A little late, but still great.


----------



## Blancrocher

Cheyenne said:


> Currently reading Alex Ross' book on 20th century music. A little late, but still great.


I've just started that one myself, long after everyone I know has read it. It's an entertaining read, and has some great listening recommendations in the back. In particular Ross has renewed my excitement about Benjamin Britten: it had been too long since I listened to Peter Grimes!

By the way, in a literature thread it's worth pointing out that Britten is just about the most literary composer who ever lived. What an ambitious collection of subjects for operas.


----------



## Mahlerian

_Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II_, by John W. Dower.

Recommended to me by a trusted friend who knows the culture better than I.


----------



## schuberkovich

Finished _Brave New World_ by Aldous Huxley. Very interesting and thought provoking - sacrificing things like passion and Beethoven for a stable and content society..? However - I know it's not the same kind of book, but after reading Lolita I was left wanting more character development and beautiful language etc.

I was also disappointed with Vintage Classics' inability to print on nice pages and also to correct mistakes - words like "discertidable" and "multiudinous" cropped up.


----------



## Ondine

A needed reading because of my field of research: Non Formal learning systems in cultural use and adaptations in Tropical Forest Ecosystems.

Mathias Ruth, 'Integrating Economics, Ecology & Thermodynamics'.


----------



## Cheyenne

schuberkovich said:


> Finished _Brave New World_ by Aldous Huxley. Very interesting and thought provoking - sacrificing things like passion and Beethoven for a stable and content society..? However - I know it's not the same kind of book, but after reading Lolita I was left wanting more character development and beautiful language etc.


I always thought it a rather mediocre novel, in which the characters were nothing but puppets conveniently used to elaborate on the concept (Huxley himself admitted this) -- the only thing that keeps the whole thing going. His writing is also stale and dull to me; and his attacks on George Bernard Shaw don't exactly pull me in either. I didn't want the characters to be more developed, because they weren't at all interesting. I once preferred it over 1984, but now I see that Orwell's is the more complete novel; helped too by Orwell's humane touches, that aren't present in Brave New World. Somehow I wasn't surprised when I read that Huxley was known for snobbery...


----------



## Ondine

Mahlerian said:


> _Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II_, by John W. Dower.
> 
> Recommended to me by a trusted friend who knows the culture better than I.


WWII is a very interesting issue. It gives tools to understand the development of the modern world and, actually, its deconstruction, sometimes loosely identified as 'post modernism' whatever this means.


----------



## Ryan

Harry Styles: The Unauthorized Biography. I like to read the back of every cd in my collection at least once a week.


----------



## DavidA

The virtuosi by Harold Schoenberg


----------



## Crudblud

Hunter S. Thompson - _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_


----------



## Vesteralen

I'm reading a really entertaining book by Rosemary Taylor called *Harem Scare'm*. The book was written in 1951 and is supposedly about her accepting a dare from a newspaperman she met on a train to Madrid in the late 1920s to journey to Morocco as a correspondent (he is on his way there as a war correspondent). For some unexplained reason (maybe because the only paper she had ever been published in before was the one from her hometown in Tucson, Arizona) he keeps calling her "Wild Bill" or "Guillaume Sauvage" to the French.

Anyway, she gets into a harem to interview one man's wives. She also travels to some less savory places (like the red-light district) for more interviews. It's all totally unexpected stuff and very funny.


----------



## Guest

The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century - Paul Collins
Very interesting analysis of the politics and life in 10th century Europe, with the main thesis being that in the 10th century, following the chaos that resulted from the collapse of the Carolingian dynasty almost immediately after the death of Charlemagne, the seeds for modern day Europe were planted as the Saxons were able to once again form a stable Holy Roman Empire, and regional interests were beginning to be supplanted by the initial notions of nations. It is an interesting read, delving a lot into this not fully understood period. Even the pope and the Catholic church at this point was struggling to exert its influence beyond more than local levels - at this point, the pope was still selected by the local Roman bishops and the Roman citizens, and was very much a local creature, worried more about Roman politics than the international church. All these things began to change in the 10th century.


----------



## Cheyenne

I read _Shaw on Music_ in one go the other day: Shaw's somewhat vulgar and always cheery and humorous writing is always 'easy' to get through.


----------



## mstar

Some Charles Dickens, then perhaps some WW2 novels....


----------



## cwarchc

Dickens is an author I just can't grasp
Not sure if it's an overreaction to being forced to read "Great Expectations" at school?


----------



## Crudblud

cwarchc said:


> Dickens is an author I just can't grasp
> Not sure if it's an overreaction to being forced to read "Great Expectations" at school?


I know being forced to study _Romeo and Juliet_ put me off Shakespeare for many years, I'm only now beginning to dip my toe in the water again with _Othello_. Dickens I've never really attempted, I think I was put off by the legion of dreadfully boring feature films and BBC miniseries that have been made out of his work, hopefully when I do give it an honest try it will surprise me.


----------



## Kieran

The Sunday Times last week had an interview with a chap I never heard of, Sergio de la Pava. The American Dostoyevski, was the gist of it, and his book _A Naked Singularity_ was trumpeted as a modern classic on a par with Crime And Punishment. I was in my local library on Tuesday and took the book out. Read about a quarter of it, but can already tell that whoever compared him to Dostoyevski hasn't actually read Dostoyevski.

It's a good book, however, and since de la Pava is a public defender in the Brooklyn courts, he makes each scene fairly vivid. The hero of the book is a public defender. At times it's noirish in its style. Other times, can see how he's trying to replicate Tarantino-esque patter among the makeweight characters. Often he switches the way he writes dialogue, so for instance, he often uses "quotation marks" and at other times he just uses blank verse and you have to assume they're talking and then you have to pay attention to who's saying what to who.

Sometimes he eschews capital letters, other times he doesn't. It's a mish-mash of urban styles, and I don't mind that, but of course this play-acting has to come at the expense of some substance. Often the dialogue and scenes seem written for a movie. He's trying too hard, I often think. Or, "i often think."

But it's his first book and it's a rattling read. Still waiting to get to the meat of it and though it's definitely flabby, I don't want to skim the seemingly meaningless repartee in case it comes back to bite me...


----------



## Blancrocher

I picked up Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native at a used bookstore and started it last night. This is how it begins:



> A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.
> 
> The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his ****** and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.


If that's not good writing, I don't know what is.


----------



## Ukko

Blancrocher said:


> I picked up Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native at a used bookstore and started it last night. This is how it begins:
> 
> [...]
> 
> If that's not good writing, I don't know what is.


Wow. That is an excellent way to evoke: Chacun à son goût.


----------



## Ukko

Have been reading (finished a few days back) a _novel _by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: 36 Arguments For The Existence Of God. Had some minor difficulty getting involved with the story, but gradually fell into it all over. The current is subtle but strong.

The author obviously possesses a genius-grade intellect, a doctorate in philosophy not withstanding. The characters of the principle protagonists are developed with grace and sympathy, the references to 'higher' math and philosophy are easily glided over (or allowed to penetrate if you can handle them).

Here are two of the blurbs from the dust cover:

"Compelling, heady... laced with a deliciously dark wit, it is also deeply touching."

"A book of astonishing scope and beauty."

About those "36 arguments": They are presented in an appendix, along with their refutations. My personal concept of God isn't involved, so I can't estimate the importance of the appendix as a stand-alone document. I doubt that enjoyment of the _novel_ will be difficult for believers in either position.


----------



## EricABQ

All this Nazi talk has put me in the mood for some WWII history so I've picked up Rise and Fall of the Third Reich again.


----------



## Rehydration

_On Writing_, Stephen King.
I like this book because it's not TOTALLY FREAKING TERRIFYING IMA HAVE NIGHTMARES like most of his other books.


----------



## GreenMamba

cwarchc said:


> Dickens is an author I just can't grasp
> Not sure if it's an overreaction to being forced to read "Great Expectations" at school?


Being told something is a Classic is a good way to turn people off. That being said, I like Great Expectations. A Tale of Two Cities is the one that is wrongly foisted upon the young, IMO.


----------



## Valkhafar

Just started The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.


----------



## Crudblud

Fyodor Dostoevsky - _The Brothers Karamazov_ (trans. Constance Garnett)


----------



## GreenMamba

Richard Russo The *****'s Child and other Stories (_oh, come on, that's not such a bad word_)


----------



## PetrB

Zeus: A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God ~ Tom Stone

For those who only got their bits of Greek Mythology via the older and highly bowdlerized Edith Hamilton book, or other similar (there are / were a lot of that sort) this one might just blow your socks off -- or be revelatory and rather exciting.

I'm enjoying it immensely.


----------



## Cosmos

For school:
Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_; Pretty neat so far
Hesoid's _Theogony_; Love the lore, but the prose is dull

For fun:
David Mitchell, _Cloud Atlas_


----------



## Tristan

_The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence_ by *Martin Meredith*

Picked it up at a thrift store; I'm about a quarter-way through it now. Very interesting stuff.


----------



## peeyaj

Just finished The Wish Giver by Bill Britain. What an odd book.. It's very Dahl-like.


----------



## starthrower

The Autobiography Of Bertrand Russell 1872-1914


----------



## Vesteralen

Continuing with my daily read - today's bird is







the burrowing owl.

Cute little guy


----------



## Vesteralen

Just reached the climax of this book today and Caterina bluffs the killers of her husband who threaten her children and holds the fortress till the arrival of allies. Well-written biography.


----------



## Ingélou

starthrower said:


> The Autobiography Of Bertrand Russell 1872-1914


Just remember he was a terrible fibber, though!


----------



## Vesteralen

One of the better non-Jeeves, non-Blandings novels. As usual, the plot is minimalist in its repetition of romantic upsets, but the joy is in the words.


----------



## Vesteralen

From time to time, I discover a new writer in these volumes - as this week with Constance Fenimore Woolson (yes, related to Fenimore Cooper). Gutenberged her novel ANNE on my Kindle, as a result.


----------



## Blancrocher

Ingenue said:


> Just remember he was a terrible fibber, though!


I take that as a recommendation! I'm currently reading the memoirs of Lorenzo da Ponte.


----------



## Klavierspieler

GreenMamba said:


> Being told something is a Classic is a good way to turn people off. That being said, I like Great Expectations. A Tale of Two Cities is the one that is wrongly foisted upon the young, IMO.


Funny. I like _A Tale of Two Cities_ better than most of his other books...


----------



## Ingélou

*Great Expectations *has a fabulous opening, the scary convict in the mist, and an excellent ending, the pathetic convict being chased down the river; but the middle is very soggy, full of the comic Pocket family. It didn't seem to go down well when I taught it to an O-level stream in a coed comprehensive school.

*A Tale of Two Cities*, though - the plot is absolutely compelling, and who can read the last page without a handy box of Kleenex? That did go down well, though I admit, with a class of extremely bright girls in an independent grammar school.

Horses for courses. But I'm with Klavierspieler!


----------



## niv

I left Great Expectations unfinished, I guess the middle was very soggy indeed.


----------



## Ondine

Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann

Not a book from my field of work, which I enjoy very much. Starting it today; first pages and it has hooked me. Very seldom a book out from my field of work hooks me so soon.


----------



## cwarchc

Just finished Ender's Game & Speaker for the Dead
Now started this one









IMHO the writing is a step up


----------



## Blancrocher

Ingenue said:


> *Great Expectations *has a fabulous opening, the scary convict in the mist, and an excellent ending, the pathetic convict being chased down the river; but the middle is very soggy, full of the comic Pocket family. It didn't seem to go down well when I taught it to an O-level stream in a coed comprehensive school.


Did you know there are alternate endings for this novel? http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/dickens/ending.html

I'm not sure I don't prefer the cheesy happy one!


----------



## Guest

Miscellaneous essays by *Adorno*. Today, a weird one : _The Form of the Phonograph Record_.


----------



## Cheyenne

Essays on Music by Adorno.. And essays by Orwell. Their prose styles sure contrast :lol:


----------



## Blancrocher

TalkingHead said:


> Miscellaneous essays by *Adorno*. Today, a weird one : _The Form of the Phonograph Record_.


Interesting essay--I just gave it a read, since it's available free online. It's been years since I read any Adorno. This one was really worth it for me; since I was a kid, I've been astounded that a needle in a groove could produce the sound of a symphony. I liked the technical style of the opening and the quasi-apocalyptic conclusion, with the letter-kills-the-spirit rhetoric of Paul! I can even sympathize with his annoyance about the commodification of art, though I don't share the romantic idea that it was ever any different. One thing in particular worries me, though: I shudder to think what he'd have written after seeing our OCD-Itunes-Organization thread!


----------



## Revenant

Vesteralen said:


> View attachment 24378
> 
> 
> Just reached the climax of this book today and Caterina bluffs the killers of her husband who threaten her children and holds the fortress till the arrival of allies. Well-written biography.


Vesteralen, I remember that when the besiegers threatened to kill her children, she raised her skirt and shouted that she had there the wherewithal to mint more children! She was known as The Virago, iirc. I can't recall if she managed to retake power at Forli after Cesare Borgia took her prisoner some years later. An incredible woman, particularly for her time.


----------



## schuberkovich

Over the weekend I finished _The Sound and the Fury_ by William Faulkner and despite being severely confusing at first, the novel as a whole blew me away with its prose and atmosphere. For those that have read it, Caddy Compson is one of my favourite characters of all time - so elusive yet wonderful. I will definitely reread it as it is the sort of book that begs for it.

I now feel like reading something a bit more easy and popular style and also have a weird craving for something post-apocalyptical and sprawling, so I took The Stand by Stephen King out of my school library. I am curious as to why he is so popular. It is a monster of a book though - about 1,300 pages!


----------



## Vesteralen

Revenant said:


> Vesteralen, I remember that when the besiegers threatened to kill her children, she raised her skirt and shouted that she had there the wherewithal to mint more children!.


Possibly, though the author claims this story may just be a fifteenth century urban legend. Only one of several eyewitness accounts mention it. Machiavelli repeated it, though, so it later gained currency. At any rate, she was a strong minded woman who took a calculated risk that paid off.


----------



## Ingélou

I have just begun *The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton *by *Diane Atkinson* (London, 2012), a biography of *Caroline Norton* who, despite having been found innocent of adultery with *Lord Melbourne*, the Prime Minister in 1836, was cast off & never allowed to see her children again. Her husband even laid claims to the money she earned from her writing. The first chapter, on the trial, is riveting, & I love the last paragraph:

_Following the trial, Caroline consulted lawyers to see if she could divorce George Norton. She learned to her dismay that he could not sue her for adultery as she had been proved innocent, and that the only way she could divorce George would be to sue him for adultery, which would be difficult to prove.... They were stuck with each other until one of them died. Estranged and living apart from her husband, Caroline had no automatic right to see her children, and he was immovable on the point. Caroline would not be able to change his mind, so she set about changing the law._


----------



## Wicked_one

For 2 years I hunted this book and now is in my hands.

This dude wrote several biographies and even though the Communist propaganda can be seen in these books (they are from the 1960s), the way he writes is just beautiful.

I'll read this one slowly to enjoy every moment


----------



## starthrower

I picked up Plutarch's Lives, and Gibbon's Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire while on vacation this past week. I'm starting with Gibbon, which means I probably won't get to Plutarch for a year!


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Just finished Bruno Walter's book on Mahler, an enjoyable read. Am now launching into a volume of four plays by Euripides.


----------



## Vesteralen

The first in a mystery series starring real-life writer/playwright Josephine Tey.

I read all of Tey's books about twenty-five or thirty years ago, but all this is making me want to revisit them.


----------



## Ingélou

Vesteralen said:


> View attachment 24974
> 
> 
> The first in a mystery series starring real-life writer/playwright Josephine Tey.
> 
> I read all of Tey's books about twenty-five or thirty years ago, but all this is making me want to revisit them.
> 
> View attachment 24973


Yes, my brother was given a history prize of her book about Richard III, 'Daughter of Time', so I've read it a few times. It makes out that Richard didn't have his nephews in the tower murdered, and that he 'had to' take the throne because his brother Edward IV's marriage was proved illegitimate. At the risk of being set on by Ricardophiles, I have to say that I wasn't convinced.
A great read, though!


----------



## Ingélou

I am still enjoying the biog of Caroline Norton, but in the sort-out of my mother's books yesterday, I came away with one to pass on to my fiddle teacher, who is 'into' meditation and Buddhist retreats. I shall *definitely* reread it & revisit my *idealistic youth* before handing it over.

Mum used to get it out of York library all the time, so in 1970 I bought her it as a Mother's Day present.

It's called *The Monastery of Jade Mountain* by *Peter Goullart* (1961) & it's about how his family was uprooted from Russia by the Revolution, how he spent the next thirty years in China, and became a practising Taoist. Deliciously mystical, oriental and also (often) very funny; I read it myself many times, especially when I was at uni, sharing a room in college with a Chinese girl. I quite fancied going *mystical & oriental *then, and would burn joss sticks, drink subtle leathery Chinese teas, say 'hello' to strangers in Cantonese, & stir-fry winter greens *before* that became fashionable.

Being then (as now) a large, lumpy, freckly ginger-haired personage, I wasn't terribly convincing...


----------



## niv

Rereading A Song Of Ice And Fire. Yes, the novels from which the HBO series "A Game of Thrones" is based. 

They're incredible. I don't think I've ever read anything that worked in so many levels.


----------



## brotagonist

Alex Ross _The Rest is Noise_ (audio book version, unabridged)


----------



## Blancrocher

_Memories and Commentaries: Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft_

From Craft's introduction:

"In retrospect, I regard the _Conversations_ as a monument to a million missed opportunities. But at the time the books were compiled, Stravinsky resisted attempts to explore his past, which was my main interest in them. He wanted to air his critical views, and to castigate the bosses--conductors, composers, critics--of the current musical scene."

Gentlemen, you have my attention!


----------



## GreenMamba

Just started Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire. I read the first book in the series about 3-4 years ago and liked it, but never picked up the next one. I don't read stuff like this often, but am going out of town and will read it on the plane and in my hotel.


----------



## Ondine

I was into Conversations with Goethe by Eckermann but I needed to review again maybe one of the best essay about Mead's & Buber's philosophy aside with the Complexity field of research approached by Swarm design tools:


----------



## Vesteralen

Just started new vintage mystery/spy story. Excellent condition Cardinal paperback.


----------



## Ryan

How to stay positive when you're an electron - by T. R. Olling


----------



## Blancrocher

I've been reading Eric Walter White's "Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works," which was recommended by Mahlerian on another thread. It's been an enjoyable excuse to re-immerse myself in Stavinsky's music.


----------



## techniquest

I just finished reading _Wonder_ by R J Palacio. It is a really superb, uplifting but at the same time very sad read.


----------



## mstar

I dislike when books are made into movies.... There are so many hidden themes and symbols in books that simply cannot be portrayed in a movie.... 

Anyone feel the same? Anyone differ? Anyone want to make a poll on it?


----------



## Rehydration

mstar said:


> I dislike when books are made into movies.... There are so many hidden themes and symbols in books that simply cannot be portrayed in a movie....
> 
> Anyone feel the same? Anyone differ? Anyone want to make a poll on it?


My thoughts exactly. 
Although not completely opposed to movies made out of books, my sister enjoys yelling such things as, "That's not what happens in the book!" at the TV screen. Movies as a whole are less enjoyable for me than for others.


----------



## Blancrocher

mstar said:


> I dislike when books are made into movies.... There are so many hidden themes and symbols in books that simply cannot be portrayed in a movie....
> 
> Anyone feel the same? Anyone differ? Anyone want to make a poll on it?


I used to feel the same way, but I've come around to the idea that movies should be treated on their own terms--the best ones, at least, have their own themes and symbols that work on their own terms. It's like how Verdi's Shakespearean operas have differently interesting themes and dramatic virtues from Shakespeare's plays.


----------



## Ingélou

Sometimes the film improves on the book - one that does, in my opinion, is *The French Lieutenant's Woman*. In the film you miss, as usual, the author's voice - but then I find Fowles' authorial voice ponderous & self-congratulatory. 

PS For those who like to compare books & the films made out of them, I started a thread on June 26th called 'Favourite Film of the Book.'


----------



## techniquest

> I dislike when books are made into movies.... There are so many hidden themes and symbols in books that simply cannot be portrayed in a movie....
> 
> Anyone feel the same? Anyone differ? Anyone want to make a poll on it?


Except the youtube clip for 'Wonder' is not a trailer for a movie, but a trailer for the book itself. I think it's a great way to sell a book, provided everyone keeps with the ad' to the end!


----------



## samurai

George R.R. Martin--
*A Feast For Crows {Book 4 in the Game of Thrones Cycle}

*Peter Hart--*The Great War *


----------



## MaestroViolinist

*The Scarlet Pimpernel* - Baroness Orczy


----------



## niv

mstar said:


> I dislike when books are made into movies.... There are so many hidden themes and symbols in books that simply cannot be portrayed in a movie....
> 
> Anyone feel the same? Anyone differ? Anyone want to make a poll on it?


I agree, but it might be an opportunity to make some people that wouldn't have even heard about the book to access the story.

IMHO, a good adaptation reinterprets the text and gives it its own visual symbology. I've seen a lot of awesome films that were based on books, though I haven't read them, I think they're great on their own. A few examples:

It, Carrie, Misery, The Mist, Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption (This guy Stephen King knows his thing), The Godfather, Fight Club, Schindler's List, Slumdog Millionaire, Talented Mr Ripley, Silence of the lambs, One flew over the cuckoo's nest, Fried Green Tomatoes

(etc)


----------



## Celloman

I just started to read _A Farewell to Arms_ by Ernest Hemingway. That clean prose cuts like a knife, just love it!


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> George R.R. Martin--
> *A Feast For Crows {Book 4 in the Game of Thrones Cycle}
> 
> *Peter Hart--*The Great War *


I am re-reading the Song of Fire and Ice series (Martin) for the 3rd time. I am now on A Storm of Swords. I am enjoying now being able to look for subtle hints and clues behind the meanings of things and trying to resolve some of the mysteries Martin has woven in - who is Jon Snow, what are the Others, who is truly fighting on the side of "Good," who is the prince who was promised, or Azor Ashai? I have some of my own pet theories, but Martin is playing a lot of his cards close to the chest. I have we don't have to wait too long for the final 2 books (and that Martin's health is such that he CAN finish them before he shuffles off this mortal coil.


----------



## niv

If GRRM dies before he finishes the books I swear I will KILL HIM.


----------



## Ingélou

I expect he'll do his best not to; otherwise, his work will be finished by someone else, & he won't get the final approval of it.


----------



## Guest

niv said:


> If GRRM dies before he finishes the books I swear I will KILL HIM.


That which is dead can never die.


----------



## Guest

Ingenue said:


> I expect he'll do his best not to; otherwise, his work will be finished by someone else, & he won't get the final approval of it.


It is known .


----------



## Rehydration

Reading the whole +Anima manga series online!


----------



## Andreas

Michel Houellebecq: Whatever


----------



## Guest

niv said:


> If GRRM dies before he finishes the books I swear I will KILL HIM.


If he has come back from the dead and needs killing again, remember to use fire. And don't forget to cut off his manhood and feed it to the goats . . . preferably with an ax.


----------



## chrisco97

I have been reading a lot of "science fiction" as of late: _War of the Worlds_ by _H.G. Wells_, _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ by _Jules Verne_, among others...trying to decide if I want to read _The Time Machine_ or another Verne novel next...

Something funny I discovered when reading _20,000 Leagues_ is that the most accepted translation (Verne was French) cuts out over 20% of the original and mistranslates most of the rest. I first noticed this when I bought an e-book containing lots of Verne's works and it was written in a different style from the leatherbound I have, which contains the most accepted translation. When I got done reading the chapter when Counseil and Ned Land had the conversation about the fish they were seeing and Counseil was categorizing them all, I decided to read the same chapter from the most accepted translation to see how different they were. Turns out the most accepted translation does not even have the conversation! I wondered if the newer translation just made up the conversation, so I looked it up online. Turns out the most accepted translation just cut it out. Sad to think most people who read the story are missing out on over 20% of the book.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Just finished "Crescendo- 75 Years of the CBSO" by Beresford King-Smith.
I'm now about to wade in to "Murderer's Make Mistakes" by Freeman Wills Crofts, my favourite author from the golden age of detective fiction- favourite British author I should say. Mustn't upset Mr. Chandler, must we??


----------



## Gilberto

Manson - The Life And Times Of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn


----------



## Musician

http://www.amazon.com/The-Home-Build-Together-Recreating/dp/0826423493


----------



## Guest

Re-reading George R. R. Martin's "A Feast for Crows." This is my least favorite of the series, and I am just going to muscle through it. Some important stuff, but just not as well done as the two best (IMHO) - A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords.


----------



## EricABQ

Just downloaded for Kindle The First World War by John Keegan. 

I know very little about WWI so I thought a single volume history would be a good start.


----------



## EricABQ

DrMike said:


> Re-reading George R. R. Martin's "A Feast for Crows." This is my least favorite of the series, and I am just going to muscle through it.


I wasn't as frustrated with that book as many of the online reviewers seemed to be.

Just out of curiosity, did you read SoS when it first came out, and then had to wait the several years for FfC? I ask because I have a theory that the people who started the series when the HBO show started and were able to read all the books straight through (like me) didn't have to deal with the disappointment in the book after a long wait. I think perhaps that people who avoided that wait weren't as critical of the book.


----------



## Pantheon

Nowadays I am reading a 600 page book on cellular biology which is quite sad...
But in my spare time I enjoy reading French books, especially a new one I have discovered called K.622 by Christian Gailly.
No need for me to specify what it's about


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I'm reading Dostoevsky's _the Idiot_ for my class dedicated to him:










Quite a striking title for a book, no? It's entirely ironic though. Really, it should be called _the Idiots_ because the main guy who keeps being called an idiot in the story is actually the only character who _isn't_ one. That's the point of it, and as I continue reading, I will discover more...


----------



## Aramis

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I'm reading Dostoevsky's _the Idiot_ for my class dedicated to him:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Quite a striking title for a book, no? It's entirely ironic though. Really, it should be called _the Idiots_ because the main guy who keeps being called an idiot in the story is actually the only character who _isn't_ one. That's the point of it, and as I continue reading, I will discover more...


So you keep talking about your being russophile of the century AND NOW IT TURNS OUT YOU ARE JUST READING THE MAJOR OF MAJOR RUSSIAN WORKS FOR THE FIRST TIME... we're very disappointed and by the way, prince isn't "the only character who isn't idiot", there are more positive characters and even more, he actually is a little bit of an idiot (his rant after which he collapses in presence of guests at Yepanchin's cottage) - just a good kind of idiot. What spoiled the ending for me was political throw-in Dostoyevsky made when he described Aglaya's doings after the end of main plot.


----------



## Mahlerian

Ravel: Man and Musician, by Arbie Orenstein. It's amusing to hear Jeux de eau labelled "cacophony" by critics of the day...


----------



## Musician

This one is In Hebrew printed and published in Israel. I purchased the book last week. Very difficult to put down literally jaw dropping. It explains the biblical and Kabbalistic roots to the current Arab Uprising, and the general confusion in the world with how to deal with it. Why they are doing what they are doing, the future of the world, and what are we supposed to do to protect ourselves. Particularly interesting is the illumination of the visions of Daniel. The book explains that all these current events are not a matter of chance, but are all guided from above to a pre planned good destiny, it also brings suggestions what can we do as humans to deserve the hastening of that long awaited human harmony of peace and love. One of the most incredible books I have ever read. The book is currently only available in Hebrew.

http://mekorjudaica.com/Achishena.aspx#description


----------



## Guest

EricABQ said:


> Just downloaded for Kindle The First World War by John Keegan.
> 
> I know very little about WWI so I thought a single volume history would be a good start.


I would also recommend World War I by S.L.A. Marshall. Also a great one volume history of the Great War, albeit more from a military perspective. For a good book on the events leading up to the war, and the earliest stages, read Barbara Tuchmann's The Guns of August.


----------



## Guest

EricABQ said:


> I wasn't as frustrated with that book as many of the online reviewers seemed to be.
> 
> Just out of curiosity, did you read SoS when it first came out, and then had to wait the several years for FfC? I ask because I have a theory that the people who started the series when the HBO show started and were able to read all the books straight through (like me) didn't have to deal with the disappointment in the book after a long wait. I think perhaps that people who avoided that wait weren't as critical of the book.


I started reading them before the series (I don't have HBO and have not seen the series) but before a Dance of Dragons came out. My biggest issue with FfC is that I find many of the characters tedious. Cersei is one of his least enjoyable characters, and the Victarion chapters are also tedious. I do enjoy the greater insight into Jaime, but my favorite Lannister is sadly absent (Tyrion).


----------



## EricABQ

DrMike said:


> I started reading them before the series (I don't have HBO and have not seen the series) but before a Dance of Dragons came out. My biggest issue with FfC is that I find many of the characters tedious. Cersei is one of his least enjoyable characters, and the Victarion chapters are also tedious. I do enjoy the greater insight into Jaime, but my favorite Lannister is sadly absent (Tyrion).


I actually enjoyed the Cersei plot in that book. I thought the story of the new radical head of the church moving in a more fundamental direction and challenging the monarchy was a good twist and rang fairly realistic to me.

I agree with you on the Victarion angle, however.


----------



## Guest

EricABQ said:


> I actually enjoyed the Cersei plot in that book. I thought the story of the new radical head of the church moving in a more fundamental direction and challenging the monarchy was a good twist and rang fairly realistic to me.
> 
> I agree with you on the Victarion angle, however.


The shifting of the Faith of the Seven is interesting, but I meant more her slipping into insanity and paranoia, and the whole prophecy - seemingly about Tyrion - from her childhood. One more prophecy to keep track of. I thought it would be enough that she was obsessed with being seen as the true successor to Tywin Lannister, and her hatred of Tyrion was merely acting as she saw her father.

My only question is when Martin is finally going to explain why Jon Snow does not have silver hair, unless it is simply that the wolf's blood is stronger than the dragon's.


----------



## Blancrocher

"What If?" (Ed. Robert Cowley). I read about a third of the essays in here this past weekend. It has pieces by historians imagining what would have happened if some important incident had turned out differently--if the Spanish Armada had succeeded in 1588, Hitler had won WW2, etc. They varied in quality and persuasiveness, but it was an amusing way to pass the time. I'll continue on with it in spare hours as I have them.


----------



## HaydnBearstheClock

Reading Joseph Conrad's _Nostromo_.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

I have started rediscovering poetry for myself. It started with listening to Britten's War Requiem and discovering Wilfred Owen. Although I did literature at school, Wilfred OWen was not a poet I was exposed to.

Consequently, I have started reading this compilation of poetry, focussing upon the poetry of the Great World War.

View attachment 26200


To refresh myself and explore poetry further, I am going to be reading this book by Stephen Fry:
View attachment 26201


----------



## Musician

Beyond Awesome

To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility









http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805242414/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


----------



## samurai

DrMike said:


> I started reading them before the series (I don't have HBO and have not seen the series) but before a Dance of Dragons came out. My biggest issue with FfC is that I find many of the characters tedious. Cersei is one of his least enjoyable characters, and the Victarion chapters are also tedious. I do enjoy the greater insight into Jaime, but my favorite Lannister is sadly absent (Tyrion).


 Hi, Dr.Mike. As one who owes you an enormous debt for starting me on reading *Game Of Thrones,* I would strongly urge you to also check into the movie version of same. I also don't get HBO {can't afford it anymore}, but I have been able to see this marvelous series literally come to life thanks to* Netflix.* I do not think you would be disappointed in either the production qualities or the actors portraying the characters. As well, the whole thing hews very closely to the original story lines depicted in the books.
Once again, many thanks go to you for sharing your insights and knowledge with your fellow members on this great cycle!


----------



## Guest

^^^^^
My pleasure. I have read the whole series twice, and am almost done reading it all a third time. I am now on the last book, A Dance with Dragons. I find I am picking up on a lot more things this time around, and am coming up with more and more theories. Martin actually leaves a lot of clues around. If you haven't, I suggest you seek out his associated short stories revolving around the characters Dunk and Egg. Dunk is a hedge knight, and Egg is Aegon Targaryen, later to become King Aegon V. The stories are set roughly 100 years before the events of A Game of Thrones. Dunk is a hedge knight who will go on eventually to become Duncan the Tall, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Aegon poses as a commoner and serves as Dunk's squire. He is also brother to Maester Aemon of the Night's Watch. Dunk and Egg are actually important historical figures in the continuum - they both died, along with Aegon's son Duncan, at the tragedy at Summerhall on the night that Prince Rhaegar was born. There are 3 short stories so far, and Martin is planning on writing more. There is speculation that the final of these short stories will relate what happened at Summerhall, an event that looms large in Targaryen family history. We don't know much about it, other than the fact that Aegon, Duncan the Tall, and Prince Duncan died, and it had something to do with trying to hatch dragon eggs. Mad King Aerys believed that the event was linked to the birth of his son, Rhaegar.

I don't have Netflix. I don't know, maybe at some point I will watch. I have watched a lot of clips on YouTube. Right now I like just letting my imagination work wonders. The thing I like about this, as with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, is that Martin clearly put the effort in to create a wonderful history that unfolds to you as you read. It has a definite feeling of depth, and you have just stumbled onto it at a certain point. Too many fantasy novels seem rather to have been created in a vacuum, and spend a couple of chapters in development of the story and background, and no more. This is really good storytelling by Martin. I just hope we don't have to wait forever for the final 2 books.


----------



## Gilberto

Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury ...read that Sat/Sun
Horowitz - His Life And Music by Schonberg ...just finishing now, wonderful tidbits of stories in this one


----------



## Sonata

Gilberto said:


> *Fahrenheit 451 *by Bradbury ...read that Sat/Sun
> Horowitz - His Life And Music by Schonberg ...just finishing now, wonderful tidbits of stories in this one


Good book! Bradbury is awesome. I'm going to a play based on that book next weekend.

I am currently up to my neck in books right now! Actively reading four books, which is kind of crazy especially given my limited reading time. However I am enjoying them all and rotating for a purpose:

*#1) The Book of Awakening*: one of those daily inspirational-type books. A page or two vignette per day for the whole year. With mini-meditative exercises at the end. Wouldn't normally be the kind of book I'd get into, but the cover really caught my attention and my doctor mentioned that she really liked that particular book. But obviously I'm only reading a page per day

*#2) Ishi in Two Worlds*: biography of Ishi, the last individual of the Yahi Native American tribe. Chronicles the history of how his people came to their unfortunate end, his years living completely alone, then discovery of/by the modern world. He spent his last five years of life living in a museum and essentially recreating his culture for the museum. It's a fascinating work, especially with my growing interest in non-fiction in general and cultural anthropology in particular. That said, it IS also very dry, so I'm reading a chapter at a time then taking a break to read my fiction book....

which leads me to 
*#3 Fool Moon*: Book 2 of the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. This is urban fantasy, a genre which I think is starting to play itself out, but I really do enjoy the character in this book. Harry Dresden, a modern day wizard in present day Chicago. He is a consultant for a Special investigation branch of law enforcement. The crimes/whodunit aspect is not particularly impressive, but again the character is fun and intruiging. I'm told that after the third book in the series, the rest of the writing improves quite a bit too, so I'm going to hang on for the ride awhil*e

#4) An Unquiet Mind*: This also was a recommendation, by a patient of mine. Her husband this year has very suddenly developed serious mental health problems after really no history or warning of such. This has been very difficult for her, but she's stood by him. She read this book as a way of trying to get insight into what's going on for him. The book itself is autobiographical, essentially a memoir. Written by a clinical psychologist who herself had severe bipolar disorder; she details her family background/upbringing, development of her symptoms, treatment, etc. The aspect of her being both a practitioner treating OTHER people and a patient being treated herself makes for interesting insight. I was compelled to start this as soon as I bought it, and read the first 70 pages in just a couple of days. I am taking a breather from it just for a week or so thought. She reached the point in her illness where she describes her first true psychotic episode......and it's just very intense. Wonderful read though.


----------



## Sonata

Musician said:


> Beyond Awesome
> 
> To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility
> 
> View attachment 26389
> 
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805242414/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


This is going onto my to-read list very soon, I am intruiged


----------



## Ingélou

I too have read 'An Unquiet Mind' and found it a very good way of learning to understand bipolar disorder. 

Another very interesting book on mental phenomena is 'The Man who mistook his wife for a hat' by Oliver Sacks, which I only got round to last year, though it was published in 1985. The title put me off, I think, but it is sensible and intriguing.


----------



## Sonata

Oh, I have heard of that one Ingenue, but I forgot about it. I'll put that on my to-read list. Another one that caught my eye at the bookstore "Permanent Present Tense" about a man who had a brain injury and couldn't process new experiences into memory. So he was always living in the here and now. The book was written by his neurologist or neuropsychiatrist or something. They had a longstanding working relationship after the injury, she was studying his brain and the interplay and divergence of memory and intellegence. And he did not remember her from one day to the next.


----------



## Kieran

Kieran said:


> The Sunday Times last week had an interview with a chap I never heard of, Sergio de la Pava. The American Dostoyevski, was the gist of it, and his book _A Naked Singularity_ was trumpeted as a modern classic on a par with Crime And Punishment. I was in my local library on Tuesday and took the book out. Read about a quarter of it, but can already tell that whoever compared him to Dostoyevski hasn't actually read Dostoyevski.
> 
> It's a good book, however, and since de la Pava is a public defender in the Brooklyn courts, he makes each scene fairly vivid. The hero of the book is a public defender. At times it's noirish in its style. Other times, can see how he's trying to replicate Tarantino-esque patter among the makeweight characters. Often he switches the way he writes dialogue, so for instance, he often uses "quotation marks" and at other times he just uses blank verse and you have to assume they're talking and then you have to pay attention to who's saying what to who.
> 
> Sometimes he eschews capital letters, other times he doesn't. It's a mish-mash of urban styles, and I don't mind that, but of course this play-acting has to come at the expense of some substance. Often the dialogue and scenes seem written for a movie. He's trying too hard, I often think. Or, "i often think."
> 
> But it's his first book and it's a rattling read. Still waiting to get to the meat of it and though it's definitely flabby, I don't want to skim the seemingly meaningless repartee in case it comes back to bite me...


Okay, so I'm still stuck with this and I hate it. Seriously, it's over 600 pages and of the 347 I've struggled manfully through so far, maybe ten are plot and the rest is sub-Tarantinoesque waffle. It's like listening in on a bunch of smart **** students. I'm battling my base desire to chuck it in the fire, but it's a library book and they don't like when you do that. A seriously vexing and thwarting experience. The guy who described the author as the American Dostoyevsky ought to be hung...


----------



## Ingélou

Why don't you call it a day, Kieran? Life's too short to waste on it, by the sound of things? And you've already more than done your cultural duty. 
I was always a 'finisher', but in my Third Age I've discovered the joys of dropping out. Rebel, rebel!


----------



## Kieran

Ingenue said:


> Why don't you call it a day, Kieran? Life's too short to waste on it, by the sound of things? And you've already more than done your cultural duty.
> I was always a 'finisher', but in my Third Age I've discovered the joys of dropping out. Rebel, rebel!


I'm tempted but they promised a heist. I love heists! But even in the last 10 minutes the main character decides to make a list. Number 1 on his list? Make a list.

How surprising, then he adds stuff to the list which is all about the positive effect making a list has. Then somebody comes in and they discuss lists. All-time this, greatest that. And a theory about lists. This went on for two pages. But believe me I'm *that* close to jettisoning it, because my fear is that it won't tighten up and become thrilling/interesting when the heist happens, they'll all just keep yapping through it!


----------



## Blancrocher

Kieran said:


> I'm tempted but they promised a heist. I love heists! But even in the last 10 minutes the main character decides to make a list. Number 1 on his list? Make a list.
> 
> How surprising, then he adds stuff to the list which is all about the positive effect making a list has. Then somebody comes in and they discuss lists. All-time this, greatest that. And a theory about lists. This went on for two pages. But believe me I'm *that* close to jettisoning it, because my fear is that it won't tighten up and become thrilling/interesting when the heist happens, they'll all just keep yapping through it!


It's hard for me to tell if you're complaining or making a recommendation here, Kieran. You realize you're on Talk Classical, right?

In fact, this author sounds like a member!


----------



## Kieran

Blancrocher said:


> It's hard for me to tell if you're complaining or making a recommendation here, Kieran. You realize you're on Talk Classical, right?
> 
> In fact, this author sounds like a member!


I recommend it to my enemies! :lol:


----------



## Guest

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> Reading Joseph Conrad's _Nostromo_.


Is it as densely/abstractly written as _Heart of Darkness_?

I'm reading _Hanging Hill_ by Mo Hader. It's a rather grim police procedural (and much more) involving the brutal rape and murder of a teenage girl.


----------



## Blancrocher

Kontrapunctus said:


> I'm reading _Hanging Hill_ by Mo Hader. It's a rather grim police procedural (and much more) involving the brutal rape and murder of a teenage girl.


Sounds like the kind of thing that will be made into yet another reason I don't have cable.


----------



## Guest

Blancrocher said:


> Sounds like the kind of thing that will be made into yet another reason I don't have cable.


I certainly hope so.


----------



## schuberkovich

Last week I finished Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. It has to be the most difficult book I've ever read, and at certain times I was completely confused, but even so, the winding sentences and heady southern atmosphere immersed me. When I finished I realised just how incredible the book is, with its insane structure and characters layered by different perspectives. A definite re-read.

I'm about halfway through Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, which is a completely different sort of beast. The idea is so original and the protagonist's (if there is one) commentary is completely absurd. And on top of all that, the poem which the book is based on I found really interesting and full of breathtaking images (even if it was written as a sort of parody), especially Canto 1.


----------



## schuberkovich

Sonata said:


> Oh, I have heard of that one Ingenue, but I forgot about it. I'll put that on my to-read list. Another one that caught my eye at the bookstore "Permanent Present Tense" about a man who had a brain injury and couldn't process new experiences into memory. So he was always living in the here and now. The book was written by his neurologist or neuropsychiatrist or something. They had a longstanding working relationship after the injury, she was studying his brain and the interplay and divergence of memory and intellegence. And he did not remember her from one day to the next.


If that interests you I would suggest the fairly short novel "The Housekeeper and the Professor" translated from the Japanese. It's about the relationship of a genius maths professor whose memory only lasts 80 minutes and the relationship he has with his housekeeper and her son. I read it a few years ago to prepare for an English exam which required you to be able to talk about books concerning a variety of topics, and it helped me a lot!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Housekeeper-Professor-Yoko-Ogawa/dp/0099521342


----------



## Guest

Alfred Brendel's new book. It's quite short (128 pages) and contains pithy observations about pianos, piano playing, and piano music in alphabetical order. I was hoping the "X" chapter dealt with Xenakis, but it's Conlon Nancarrow's "Canon X."


----------



## Wandering

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I'm reading Dostoevsky's _the Idiot_ for my class dedicated to him:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Quite a striking title for a book, no? It's entirely ironic though. Really, it should be called _the Idiots_ because the main guy who keeps being called an idiot in the story is actually the only character who _isn't_ one. That's the point of it, and as I continue reading, I will discover more...


I thought the idiocy was in revealing too much senstive and personal information to a shallow group who only narrowly viewed him there after, not that they were capable of more. It's the humor I remember most, the long winded Napoleon righthand man tale, and of course the train toy dog cigar story. I definitely busted some stitches.


----------



## Sonata

I just ordered the Anxiety and Worry Workbook: A Cognitive Behavioral Solution online. Very interested in looking into this one.


----------



## Kieran

To help bust me over the hump with the long-winded heist story - which in fairness, contained an utterly unnecessary but interesting sideroad into the life of the pugilist Wilfredo Benitez - I got Woody Allen's short story set, _Mere Anarchy_ from the library. So light as to be mere sugary froth on a cappuccino, it still has enough Woody silliness to divert and of course, it contains the welcome art of brevity...


----------



## peeyaj

I have so many backlog of books that I wanna read, but I don't have enough time!! Grr..

As of now, I'm double reading novels:

1. *The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton* - Winner of Booker Prize 2013

2. *The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
*
Just read:

1. A Separate Peace

Will read:

1. The Line of Beauty


----------



## Winterreisender

I am reading "The Secret History" by the Byzantine historian Procopius. This book is great fun; it is mostly a series of scandalous anecdotes about how the emperor Justinian was a jealous, bloodthirsty monster and his wife Theodora a prostitute. It certainly causes one to reconsider the traditional view ofJustinian as a wise and enlightened ruler.


----------



## julianoq

I just bought Beethoven - His Spiritual Development by J.W.N. Sullivan. I am diving deeply into Beethoven Piano Sonatas recently and found exciting reviews about this book, will start to read it today.


----------



## Blancrocher

I've been reading The Kalevala in the evenings--at long last, given how many years I've been enjoying music inspired by it. I'm using a nineteenth-century edition available free on Project Gutenburg; there may be a better version out there, but it's fine by me for the present.

Incidentally, I was interested to learn how the epic was preserved by an obsessive, bed-ridden scholar:



> The Kalevala proper was collected by two great Finnish scholars, Zacharias Topelius and Elias Lonnrot. Both were practicing physicians, and in this capacity came into frequent contact with the people of Finland. Topelius, who collected eighty epical fragments of the Kalevala, spent the last eleven years of his life in bed, afflicted with a fatal disease. But this sad and trying circumstance did not dampen his enthusiasm. His manner of collecting these songs was as follows: Knowing that the Finns of Russia preserved most of the national poetry, and that they came annually to Finland proper, which at that time did not belong to Russia, he invited these itinerant Finnish merchants to his bedside, and induced them to sing their heroic poems, which he copied as they were uttered. And, when he heard of a renowned Finnish singer, or minstrel, he did all in his power to bring the song-man to his house, in order that he might gather new fragments of the national epic. Thus the first glory of collecting the fragments of the Kalevala and of rescuing it from literary oblivion, belongs to Topelius. In 1822 he published his first collections, and in 1837 his last.


http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5184/pg5184.html

Thank God for people like that!


----------



## mstar

NEVER MIND! Thanks, accidental post.


----------



## Turangalîla

I got this as a gift a long time ago-it's good, but a bit simplistic. It has some excellent anecdotes though, and it would be very informative for new Classical listeners. http://stuartisacoff.net/books/natural-history-of-piano-reviews.html


----------



## Guest

julianoq said:


> I just bought Beethoven - His Spiritual Development by J.W.N. Sullivan. I am diving deeply into Beethoven Piano Sonatas recently and found exciting reviews about this book, will start to read it today.


Thanks for mentioning that book--sounds interesting and I just ordered a copy.


----------



## Wandering

Algernon Blackwoods - The Wendigo

A recommend to any horror fan, particularly if you enjoy H.P. Lovecraft and Poe.


----------



## cwarchc

I'm a fan of Ben Elton's writing, I enjoy his left leaning (sometimes caustic) wit
This is a little different
It does highlight some of the horrors of the "Great War" (great doesn't fit any war)


----------



## samurai

Maria Tatar {ed.}--* The Annotated Brothers Grimm*


----------



## Cheyenne

_The Life of John Milton_ by Barbara Lewalski.


----------



## Blancrocher

I'm whiling away a little time reading some of Bergman's memoirs. The writing is pretty good, but I'm mostly just enjoying learning some anecdotes--like this one, about his filmed version of The Magic Flute:



> The camera moves over everyone's face. The rhythm of the text is a code: Pa-mi-na means Love. Does Love still live? Pamina lebet noch; Love still lives. The camera on Liv [Ullman]: a double declaration of love. At that time Liv was carrying our daughter, Linn. Linn was born the very day we filmed Tamino's entrance into the palace court.


----------



## Kieran

Kieran said:


> Okay, so I'm still stuck with this and I hate it. Seriously, it's over 600 pages and of the 347 I've struggled manfully through so far, maybe ten are plot and the rest is sub-Tarantinoesque waffle. It's like listening in on a bunch of smart **** students. I'm battling my base desire to chuck it in the fire, but it's a library book and they don't like when you do that. A seriously vexing and thwarting experience. The guy who described the author as the American Dostoyevsky ought to be hung...


Right so, I feel I should retract a little of this because the last 150 pages of A Naked Singularity were tight and wonderful. It's a 670 page book. A lot of soap opera level confabs between characters just draw this one way beyond what's necessary. A good editor could have given us a book of 300 great pages, but the thing bloats and flabs when it should be on the floor doing push-ups and sit-ups and getting _lean!_

The heist was well-written, some nasty villains abound and the aftermath is tense and kept that way. Not too many excursions into George Costanza-land. I'd still hesitate to recommend it, unless wordy and longwinded philosophical pap is your thing. It's a small book, really, that stretches to epic lengths, but not always to epic effects...


----------



## cwarchc

My youngest son bought me this for my birthday


----------



## Sonata

I dusted off my treasured but neglected anthologies of Edgar Allen Poe and Ray Bradbury this evening. I very much look forward to getting reacquainted with these authors again, especially Bradbury who is one of my favorite authors


----------



## Guest

Sonata said:


> I dusted off my treasured but neglected anthologies of Edgar Allen Poe and Ray Bradbury this evening. I very much look forward to getting reacquainted with these authors again, especially Bradbury who is one of my favorite authors


You must read Bradbury's "The Exiles"--Poe is a character in it! (Along with several other authors.)


----------



## GreenMamba

Anne Applebaum: Iron Curtain


----------



## Crudblud

Jonathan Swift - _Gulliver's Travels_


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> Jonathan Swift - _Gulliver's Travels_


Read it last year, excellent book, totally different to the _Disney_-fied movies. There's also a sense of just how mysterious and undiscovered the world was when he wrote it...


----------



## realdealblues

View attachment 27067


The Murder On The Links: A Hercule Poirot Mystery
Author: Agatha Christie


----------



## Mahlerian

Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work
by Martin Geck


----------



## Guest

Crudblud said:


> Jonathan Swift - _Gulliver's Travels_


I'm teaching this to my AP English class--they (and I) love it! We're in the middle of Book III with all the weird science experiments. We discussed rhetorical devices then read Swift's "A Modest Proposal" today--quite a howler!


----------



## Sonata

The Essential Neruda: poems from the poet Pablo Neruda.
Original spanish poems side by side with the english translations. Neruda is one of my favorite poets (along with Sylvia Plath and Li-Young Lee) and I've been enjoying getting back into his work lately. I don't know Spanish, but I am trying to get a feel for how the Spanish version flows as much as I can, a paragraph at a time.


----------



## TheBamf

Sonata said:


> The Essential Neruda: poems from the poet Pablo Neruda.
> Original spanish poems side by side with the english translations. Neruda is one of my favorite poets (along with Sylvia Plath and Li-Young Lee) and I've been enjoying getting back into his work lately. I don't know Spanish, but I am trying to get a feel for how the Spanish version flows as much as I can, a paragraph at a time.


My favorite poet. Do you have any previous experience with spanish, if not: how do you find learning spanish this way?

Edit:

Currently reading Lolita myself. His expert skill with the language is a joy to read in itself but I find myself getting almost drenched in its immorality(?). It gets me depressed, but it is too good to lay down.


----------



## Sonata

I don't have any previous experience with spanish really, aside from the minimal basics in elementary school. Hello, goodbye, counting to ten. I don't feel evaluating the poems this way is going to give me any real working grasp on Spanish as a language. It's more an exercise in appreciating the poetry in it's original form....and a slow exercise at that! Not opposed to actually digging in and really learning spanish down the line if it so moved me, but not at the present moment.

So glad to hear from another Neruda fan by the way! Do you enjoy any other poets?


----------



## Guest

Dangerous Ground - Larry Bond


----------



## Kieran

Selected poems by Yeats...


----------



## brotagonist

I just finished Michael Moran's _Beyond the Coral Sea_. It is a travel account of his visit to Papua New Guinea. I found it interesting, but far too long. I was expecting more excitement, I suppose, instead of lengthy recounting of historical events and mundane occurrences. Still, the mixture of past and present did portray a vivid image (it should, after nearly 400 large pages) of modern day PNG in the wake of its recent colonial and Stone Age past.

I need some excitement, so I am reading Zane Grey's _Robbers' Roost_, which is, after only one chapter, just the kind of excitement I need. I hope this one doesn't turn into a romance, like so many other of Grey's novels do


----------



## Cheyenne

Shifting between Emerson's essays and lectures, Orwell's essays, Milton's prose works and Coleridge's complete poems. For once I really can't decide :lol:


----------



## Sonata

Yes, Cheyenne I understand. I am hopping between about half a dozen books right now myself


----------



## Winterreisender

Just got my hands on this beast:










"The Sagas of the Icelanders." I have a particular enthusiasm for the myths and legends of the Nordic and Icelandic people, so it is about time I give this one a go.

It might also encourage me to make further progress with my very slow Icelandic learning.


----------



## Vesteralen

Winterreisender said:


> Just got my hands on this beast:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "The Sagas of the Icelanders." I have a particular enthusiasm for the myths and legends of the Nordic and Icelandic people, so it is about time I give this one a go.
> 
> It might also encourage me to make further progress with my very slow Icelandic learning.


On my shelf for at least four years. Never opened it yet. Backlog.


----------



## Vesteralen

The Folio Society edition of *"The Poems of W B Yeats"*.

After trying to slog my way through "The Wanderings of Oisin", I think I've decided I don't like Yeats as much as I thought I did. 

(It's books like this that keep me from getting to "The Sagas of the Icelanders" - four more bookshelves to go...)


----------



## Vesteralen

In the meantime, though, I Kindled:















So impressed with her bio and poems in the Library of America poetry volume I've been reading, I had to find out more.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Clovis said:


> Algernon Blackwoods - The Wendigo
> 
> A recommend to any horror fan, particularly if you enjoy H.P. Lovecraft and Poe.


I love Blackwood's stories. Read "Secret Worship" when I was 12, it was in a compilation of horror stories that dad had. Having read it, I was too frightened to go upstairs to bed! I remember being a dithering mass of nerves for days afterwards! He was a fascinating character too, and there's an excellent biography of him, "Starlight Man- The Extraordinary Life of Algernon Blackwood" by Mike Ashley published by Constable in 2001, that is well worth seeking out.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

The Houses in Between by Howard Spring.

A pleasant story, well-written, I read "Fame is the Spur" years ago, and this is proving just as enjoyable.


----------



## Blancrocher

Vesteralen said:


> I think I've decided I don't like Yeats as much as I thought I did.


Perhaps you would prefer The Gift of Harun al Rashid?



> Were she to lose her love, because she had lost
> Her confidence in mine, or even lose
> Its first simplicity, love, voice and all,
> All my fine feathers would be plucked away
> And I left shivering. The voice has drawn
> A quality of wisdom from her love's
> Particular quality. The signs and shapes;
> All those abstractions that you fancied were
> From the great Treatise of parmenides;
> All, all those gyres and cubes and midnight things
> Are but a new expression of her body
> Drunk with the bitter sweetness of her youth.
> And now my utmost mystery is out.
> A woman's beauty is a storm-tossed banner;
> Under it wisdom stands, and I alone -
> Of all Arabia's lovers I alone -
> Nor dazzled by the embroidery, nor lost
> In the confusion of its night-dark folds,
> Can hear the armed man speak.


http://www.southerncrossreview.org/26/yeats.htm

Gives me the shivers it's so good!

*ps* And check out this video of "Yeats" reading his "Long Legged Fly":






A bit creepy, but I like the poem.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

I am alternating between this:









and a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories.


----------



## Ingélou

Vesteralen said:


> The Folio Society edition of *"The Poems of W B Yeats"*.
> 
> After trying to slog my way through "The Wanderings of Oisin", I think I've decided I don't like Yeats as much as I thought I did.
> 
> (It's books like this that keep me from getting to "The Sagas of the Icelanders" - four more bookshelves to go...)


I like his later poems - the political ones, and the ones that use his odd ideas from the Order of the Golden Dawn; I hate the ideas as philosophy, but find them quite potent as imagery. I once had a student who enjoyed his earlier romantic celtic stuff: maybe when you're young and idealistic...


----------



## tdc

Ingenue said:


> I like his later poems - the political ones, and the ones that use his odd ideas from the Order of the Golden Dawn;* I hate the ideas as philosophy*, but find them quite potent as imagery. I once had a student who enjoyed his earlier romantic celtic stuff: maybe when you're young and idealistic...


Just out of curiosity, what types of reading/ideas do you like in terms of philosophy?


----------



## Ingélou

I like reading *about* the history of philosophy, the 'bigger systems' - people like Plato, Boethius, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Bishop Berkeley - especially him! Also the oriental philosophers like Confucius, Lao Tze, Chuang Tze. I say 'about' because I don't have the sort of brain that goes back to first principles. But I don't like the Order of the Golden Dawn because people like Aleister Crowley have the whiff of charlatanism about them - for *me*, I hasten to add; nonetheless, poems like Byzantium have poetic truth and poetic power too.

My favourite 'philosophic' quotation comes from *Julian of Norwich*:

"In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, and it 
was round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and 
thought "What may this be?" And it was generally answered thus: "It is all that is 
made." I marvelled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have 
sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my 
understanding: "It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it."

I believe that mind and body together are a gestalt and exist because God creates/imagines/loves us. That is why it does not matter if our physical body dies.









Hope that answers your question. But I do like the later Yeats poems!


----------



## realdealblues

Finished: Agatha Christie's The Murder On The Links now on to the this one.

View attachment 27448


Poirot Investigates: A Hercule Poirot Collection
Author: Agatha Christie


----------



## Celloman

I'm holding Charles Dickens' _Bleak House_ but haven't taken the plunge just yet...

Has anybody read this one? Apparently, the critics say it's his best work. This will be my third Dickens novel (after _A Tale of Two Cities_ and _Great Expectations_), and I'm excited about delving into it at last.


----------



## Kieran

Just home from the library, scant pickings there really, but I picked up Christopher Hitchens _Letters to a Young Contrarian_. There's a lot about Hitchens to disagree with, but never how he writes. I watched him on YouTube once debating with 4 Protestant ministers in America and I thought, how unfair.

There should have been *8* of them, to even things up... :tiphat:


----------



## Guest

Celloman said:


> I'm holding Charles Dickens' _Bleak House_ but haven't taken the plunge just yet...
> 
> Has anybody read this one? Apparently, the critics say it's his best work. This will be my third Dickens novel (after _A Tale of Two Cities_ and _Great Expectations_), and I'm excited about delving into it at last.


I have read those two and David Copperfield, which is very good. I am also attempting to start Bleak House (made one failed attempt a few years back, keep meaning to read it).


----------



## Blancrocher

For what it's worth, I'm not much of a Dickens fan but I think Bleak House is great. There's a weird love triangle and a tense conclusion. Enjoy!


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Just home from the library, scant pickings there really, but I picked up Christopher Hitchens _Letters to a Young Contrarian_. There's a lot about Hitchens to disagree with, but never how he writes. I watched him on YouTube once debating with 4 Protestant ministers in America and I thought, how unfair.
> 
> There should have been *8* of them, to even things up... :tiphat:


He is enjoyable to listen to, I'll admit, but after reading his book "god is not Great," I found that his writing had serious flaws. He was not above leaving out information, or flat out giving incorrect information and flat out falsehoods that were easily falsifiable if it furthered his argument. That diminished the man, a lot, in my eyes.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

The Sons of Caesar- Imperial Rome's First Dynasty by Philip Matyszak


----------



## Guest

After having re-read the Game of Thrones series for the third time, I am now re-reading the Dunk and Egg novellas, set in the same world as Game of Thrones, but about 100 years prior to the events in Game of Thrones. They are nice stand alone stories, but also give critical clues as to things in the books. For example, if you have read all of the books, and are curious as to who the 3-eyed crow is, there is an interesting character in one of the novellas, called Bloodraven, who is a Targaryen ******* who was Hand of the King, then took the black, and became Lord Commander. He is missing an eye and has a curious red birthmark on his neck and cheek. Also - wonder who Jon Snow's mother is? My pet theory is he is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark, but he does not have the Targaryen silver hair. And yet in one of the novellas, we learn that Balor Breakspear, son of King Daeron, had dark hair, favoring his Martell mother.

Anyways, they are good stories to read as well. Dunk is Ser Duncan the Tall, a hedge knight who goes on to become Ser Duncan the Tall of the Kingsguard serving under King Aegon IV, brother to Maester Aemon. Egg is that same Aegon IV, although in the stories just a young boy who runs away, disguises himself, and volunteers to be squire to Dunk - he was known as Aegon the Unlikely because he was the 4th son of a 4th son, and nobody anticipated he would become king, but due to others dying, and nobles worrying about less than stellar offspring of theirs (and Maester Aemon refusing the crown), he goes on to become king, dies in the tragedy of Summerhall (as does Duncan the Tall), and is tied up in the whole Song of Ice and Fire.


----------



## julianoq

DrMike said:


> After having re-read the Game of Thrones series for the third time, I am now re-reading the Dunk and Egg novellas, set in the same world as Game of Thrones, but about 100 years prior to the events in Game of Thrones. They are nice stand alone stories, but also give critical clues as to things in the books. For example, if you have read all of the books, and are curious as to who the 3-eyed crow is, there is an interesting character in one of the novellas, called Bloodraven, who is a Targaryen ******* who was Hand of the King, then took the black, and became Lord Commander. He is missing an eye and has a curious red birthmark on his neck and cheek. Also - wonder who Jon Snow's mother is? My pet theory is he is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark, but he does not have the Targaryen silver hair. And yet in one of the novellas, we learn that Balor Breakspear, son of King Daeron, had dark hair, favoring his Martell mother.
> 
> Anyways, they are good stories to read as well. Dunk is Ser Duncan the Tall, a hedge knight who goes on to become Ser Duncan the Tall of the Kingsguard serving under King Aegon IV, brother to Maester Aemon. Egg is that same Aegon IV, although in the stories just a young boy who runs away, disguises himself, and volunteers to be squire to Dunk - he was known as Aegon the Unlikely because he was the 4th son of a 4th son, and nobody anticipated he would become king, but due to others dying, and nobles worrying about less than stellar offspring of theirs (and Maester Aemon refusing the crown), he goes on to become king, dies in the tragedy of Summerhall (as does Duncan the Tall), and is tied up in the whole Song of Ice and Fire.


That's interesting, I am a fan of the ASoIaF books but didn't know about these novellas, will look for it, thanks.


----------



## Guest

julianoq said:


> That's interesting, I am a fan of the ASoIaF books but didn't know about these novellas, will look for it, thanks.


They are published in different compilations. He is writing some more. The first takes place at a tournament at Ashford. The others take place at another tournament (can't remember where) and at a castle down near Highgarden, I think. There is at least one more that should take place in the North, somewhere around Winterfell. Martin has said that when he has written them all, he will have them all published together in a stand-alone book. For now, though, you can find PDF files of the three. They are about 50 pages each, so you get a decent amount of reading, and some nice clues, as well as more history (remember that this takes place in Maester Aemon's youth, and one of them gives you some more information about the Blackfyre rebellion that gets mentioned occasionally).


----------



## Crudblud

Anaïs Nin - _A Spy in the House of Love_


----------



## Crudblud

William Faulkner - _Sanctuary_ / _Requiem for a Nun_


----------



## Guest

Nelson DeMille's _The Panther_.


----------



## Blancrocher

> Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion - Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser and brawler, and the moody, hypochondriac genius Kreisler. In his exuberant and bizarre novel, Hoffmann brilliantly evokes the fantastic, the ridiculous and the sublime within the humdrum bustle of daily life, making "The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr" (1820-22) one of the funniest and strangest novels of the nineteenth century.


http://www.amazon.com/Life-Opinions-Tomcat-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140446311

I have little to add to the description--remarkable novel! I can't put it down!


----------



## Rhombic

Charlotte Bronte: "Jane Eyre"


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I finished the Idiot!  What a horrid ending! Not to say it was qualitatively bad, no! I mean what _happens _was horrid! It wasn't exactly what I imagined would happen to Myshkin, but it was pretty surprising how he reacted to the last event of the novel. Anyhow, I gotta write a little response to it today and email it to my professor, the one with the very classy Russian accent.

What I'm probably gonna read next is this:








I have to do a book report on this for my flute professor, it's a standard Studio requirement (I also have to do 2 CD reports each semester).


----------



## Aramis

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I finished the Idiot!


No, I'm still alive... or did you mean somebody else? Better get a good lawyer.


----------



## schuberkovich

Recently:
Le Grande Meaulnes (the inspiration for the Great Gatsby)
Huckleberry Finn (again)

Now: 
On the Road


----------



## Celloman

Well, I've finally started Dickens' _Bleak House_...and I love it! Here's a quote:

"As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill."

That made me laugh. Keep up the good work, Dickens!


----------



## AClockworkOrange

Presently I am reading "The Complete Acid Drops" by Kenneth Williams. This is very quickly becoming one of my favourite books. I adore sarcastic, dry humour and Kenneth delivers this and much, much more.

View attachment 27841


----------



## chrisco97

Finished reading Julius Caesar by Shakespeare the other day. I was enjoying it so much I finished all but the first act (read it beforehand and had to end up going somewhere) in one go and did not even realize I had been up all night reading and studying the play. Awesome experience. I am really looking forward to reading more of his plays soon.

Last night I started reading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Only two chapters in at the moment but am enjoying it so far. I also made sure I am not reading an abridged version because I want the whole thing.


----------



## EricABQ

Just downloaded _Double Down: Game Change 2012_ by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

A book about the 2012 presidential eleciton.


----------



## Aramis

chrisco97 said:


> Finished reading Julius Caesar by Shakespeare the other day. I was enjoying it so much I finished all but the first act (read it beforehand and had to end up going somewhere) in one go and did not even realize I had been up all night reading and studying the play. Awesome experience. I am really looking forward to reading more of his plays soon.


Make sure to watch the old classic movie adaptation with Marlon Brando as Marc Anthony.

But only as long as it doesn't disturb your reading of _Count Monste Christo_.


----------



## PetrB

The Piano Shop on the Left Bank ~ Discovering Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier. Thad Carhart.

Lovely little book for anyone who loves music, and especially if they studied when young, wherein they might find great pleasure -- and perhaps a little inspiration -- in the reading thereof.


----------



## Crudblud

Out shopping today, picked up the following:

Laurence Sterne - _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_
John Kennedy Toole - _A Confederacy of Dunces_
William Faulkner - _Intruder in the Dust_

Also, I only just noticed the thread title says "reasing" instead of "reading."


----------



## GreenMamba

Yeah I just noticed "reasing" recently and wondered whether someone changed it (I mean, how could I not notice before?  )


----------



## Aramis

I'm pretty sure the title was without typo before as well. WHAT A MYSTERY...............................


----------



## GreenMamba

Hmmm, Google shows this. Does it prove it was once correct?


----------



## Ukko

"reasing"? For 4 1/2 years it's been *reasing?*


----------



## clavichorder

This book called "Sailing to Sarantium." Its sort of a fantasy world based on Byzantine times.


----------



## Blancrocher

Ukko said:


> "reasing"? For 4 1/2 years it's been *reasing?*


I'm starting to think that many of us may be guilty of skimming the books we claim to read. :lol:


----------



## Kieran

_Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy_ by John le Carre. Love it, it's old archival stories. Cold War spy stuff. Will watch the movie with Gary Oldman when I'm done...


----------



## Vesteralen

I've been *reasing* "Works and Days" by Hesiod, "Zadig" by Voltaire, The Complete Peanuts Volume 3 (again), "The Stray Lamb" by Thorne Smith and "Siren in the Night" by Leslie Ford (among others). Not that anyone cares.


----------



## Blancrocher

Kieran said:


> _Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy_ by John le Carre. Love it, it's old archival stories. Cold War spy stuff. Will watch the movie with Gary Oldman when I'm done...


Coincidentally, I just started Le Carre's "The Game" last night. I tend to prefer his Smiley books (like TTSS), but this one seems good so far.


----------



## GreenMamba

Kieran said:


> _Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy_ by John le Carre. Love it, it's old archival stories. Cold War spy stuff. Will watch the movie with Gary Oldman when I'm done...


I liked the movie a lot, although it is one of those where I found myself re-watching parts of the DVD to piece it together. Maybe if you've read the book, following the story will vs easier.

Great cast.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

"All Passion Spent" by Vita Sackville-West.

Read her book "The Edwardians" last year and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I'm looking forward to this one immensely. I imagine that many of us have enjoyed, over the years, her brother Edward's "Record Guide" written in conjunction with Desmond Shawe-Taylor?


----------



## Mahlerian

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Read it several years ago and found myself annoyed by its digressions and pseudo-Shakespeareanisms, but now I find all of it quite interesting aesthetically. It's going quickly, too. Then again, anything goes quickly after plowing through War and Peace...


----------



## Blancrocher

Mahlerian said:


> Moby Dick by Herman Melville
> 
> Read it several years ago and found myself annoyed by its digressions and pseudo-Shakespeareanisms, but now I find all of it quite interesting aesthetically. It's going quickly, too. Then again, anything goes quickly after plowing through War and Peace...


You should have done what Woody Allen did:



> I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.


:lol:


----------



## Winterreisender

In contrast to the above mentioned epics, I'm currently reading a slightly shorter book by E.T.A. Hoffman called _The Golden Pot_. On the one hand it is a fairytale, but at the same time, it is sort of psychedelic.


----------



## GreenMamba

Alice Munro, Runaway. Short story collection.

BTW, looks like we're back to "reading."


----------



## Celloman

I have been reading this book off and on for about two years now. It's the kind of book that is better eaten in smaller pieces. It can seem a bit overwhelming at times, like London itself.


----------



## Crudblud

Thomas Pynchon - _Mason & Dixon_


----------



## Blancrocher

Crudblud said:


> Thomas Pynchon - _Mason & Dixon_


Interesting--you're reading about a talking dog, and I just read a book about a talking cat (Hoffman's wonderful, but unfortunately unfinished, Tomcat Murr).

In the evenings, I've been dipping into Paul Klee's diaries. He's one of my favorite artists--and, it turns out, a good and thoughtful writer.


----------



## Wood

Coral Gardens by Riefenstahl, Leni


----------



## Blancrocher

Wood said:


> Coral Gardens by Riefenstahl, Leni


With everything I knew about Leni Riefenstahl, I did not know she learned to scuba dive at 72 years old. Thanks for the link.


----------



## Lunasong

I have been slogging my way through Neil Powell's biography: Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music. 
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/boo...neil-powell/bvLeDc7bAmN5TAAT2sWm0O/story.html
I say "slogging" only because I can only read it when I'm on lunch for 10-15 minutes and I've had it out of the library since August. It is terrifically good and I have learned a lot about Mr. Britten.


----------



## clavichorder

Working on The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, yet again, but this time I'm' gonna complete it. The last book, Sailing to Sarantium was very enjoyable, but now I'm taking on this more serious and antiquated challenge. Very pleased to be reading smoothly again.


----------



## Guest

Mr. Lincoln's Army by Bruce Catton, Book 1 in the Army of the Potomac Trilogy. Great American Civil War reading, focusing in on the Army of the Potomac and its fighting in Northern Virginia, from just after First Bull Run, up until the surrender at Appomattox. The final book in the trilogy, A Stillness at Appomattox, won the Pullitzer back in its day.


----------



## shangoyal

Hoping to re-read Wuthering Heights very soon. An author once told me that you can read this book every 6-7 years and it keeps giving you new things each time.


----------



## Guest

shangoyal said:


> Hoping to re-read Wuthering Heights very soon. An author once told me that you can read this book every 6-7 years and it keeps giving you new things each time.


I have seen the movie (with Olivier) and recognize that the story is great, but the characters are so damn frustrating! In the end, they really do deserve each other - that is the best you can say for either of them.


----------



## Tristan

Just started _The Crying of Lot 49_ by Thomas Pynchon. Should be interesting


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars tr. Robert Graves

Enjoying this very much, good breezy translation, and yet more proof- if proof were needed- that, fundamentally, people don't change.


----------



## Flamme

Dad recommended it to me...Very nice book, great humour...


----------



## Crudblud

Today I bought:

Hermann Hesse - _The Glass Bead Game_
Hector Berlioz - _Memoirs_
Don DeLillo - _Underworld_


----------



## Wood

*Aristophanes * Achanians


----------



## Wandering

^ My favorite part of The Glass Bead Game was the three stories at the end.

*Spoiler Alert!!!* Everything else in the book seems like superman meets and falls in love with the catholic church and their love child dies the death of an old perv on a Venice beach.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

I am reading Wuthering Heights, the characters are tedious.


----------



## samurai

Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston--* Earth Unaware: The First Formic War*


----------



## schuberkovich

I started off liking On the Road. By the end I hated it - Dean Moriarty has to be the most irritating selfish pretentious idiot in all of literature.

Now reading 11.22.63 by Stephen King. Really _really _enjoying it.


----------



## senza sordino

schuberkovich said:


> I started off liking On the Road. By the end I hated it - Dean Moriarty has to be the most irritating selfish pretentious idiot in all of literature.
> 
> Now reading 11.22.63 by Stephen King. Really _really _enjoying it.


I read On the Road while traveling through America three yrs ago, I agree. it's hard to like a book when the main character is so odious.

I finished David Copperfield recently, I really enjoyed that. it was sad to put down these characters after having spent so much time with them. Now I'm reading some nonfiction, The Rest is Noise, Listening to the 20th Century by Alex Ross. All about music and composers. I'm looking forward to this.


----------



## Blancrocher

Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians. This guy's almost as vicious as some of the satirists on this site, which is high praise. Laugh-out-loud funny. 

:lol:


----------



## Guest

_The Angel of Darkness_ by Caleb Carr.


----------



## Flamme

Looks ominous...


----------



## Guest

Flamme said:


> Looks ominous...


Since it's about a child murderer, a sunny, upbeat cover might be out of place!


----------



## Kieran

schuberkovich said:


> I started off liking On the Road. By the end I hated it - Dean Moriarty has to be the most irritating selfish pretentious idiot in all of literature.
> 
> Now reading 11.22.63 by Stephen King. Really really enjoying it.


Bingo! I read _On The Road_ in my calf days and was swept away, but most likely it was hype. Years later I took it up again and felt irritated by these moochy parasitical wasters. Bored too.

What's the Stephen King like? he's another who I read years ago. Loved _Pet Sematry_, a good old spooky tale.

Been re-reading Tom Holland's _Persian Fire_, the narrative history of the invasion of Europe by the Persians, and the victory of the Greeks, which saved civilisation and democracy as we know it. Great writer, Tom Holland. His book _Rubicon_ is worth a read too...


----------



## Flamme

Kontrapunctus said:


> Since it's about a child murderer, a sunny, upbeat cover might be out of place!


Whole ambient reminds me of Albert Fish a monster cannibal, but shockingly an existing child murderer... Among other things...It was really bizarre to me such a person exited in a time when people were much more menthaly healthy than today...


----------



## Guest

Flamme said:


> Whole ambient reminds me of Albert Fish a monster cannibal, but shockingly an existing child murderer... Among other things...It was really bizarre to me such a person exited in a time when people were much more menthaly healthy than today...


I'm not sure how you can claim people were more mentally healthy then. If you control for new mental health problems that have only been recognized, or diagnosed, since then, you might find that the relative numbers are not dissimilar. They had asylums back then as well. Mental illness has been recognized for quite some time. And other than the obvious idea that it takes some kind of defect to do such horrendous things, I think it is rash to simply dismiss such individuals as crazy. Some, through various actions, have numbed their conscience so much that they have disabled the normal instincts that prevent the majority of humanity from committing such atrocities.


----------



## schuberkovich

Kieran said:


> Bingo! I read _On The Road_ in my calf days and was swept away, but most likely it was hype. Years later I took it up again and felt irritated by these moochy parasitical wasters. Bored too.
> 
> What's the Stephen King like? he's another who I read years ago. Loved _Pet Sematry_, a good old spooky tale.
> 
> Been re-reading Tom Holland's _Persian Fire_, the narrative history of the invasion of Europe by the Persians, and the victory of the Greeks, which saved civilisation and democracy as we know it. Great writer, Tom Holland. His book _Rubicon_ is worth a read too...


The Stephen King book is much much better than I thought it would be. The premise - an English teacher travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination - initially seems clichéd and unpromising, but I keep getting surprised by how complex the story is, and the strength of the characters and atmosphere. The writing is at times quite clunky - lots of sentences start with: "Also, ..." - but it doesn't get in the way of the enjoyment.

I feel like I don't have any time at the moment, but I'm still racing through the 800 page book so I ordered another King book, _IT_, for when I finish.


----------



## Winterreisender

I'm reading the _Odes_ by Horace. Particularly interesting are the six "Roman Odes" which commence the 3rd Book. Not quite sure if I'm reading a shameless panegyric of the imperial regime or a very subtle satire thereof. Included is the famous line _Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_, "how sweet and glorious it is to die for the fatherland." I can't help but think there is something very sinister about this attempt at flattery.


----------



## Guest

schuberkovich said:


> The Stephen King book is much much better than I thought it would be. The premise - an English teacher travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination - initially seems clichéd and unpromising, but I keep getting surprised by how complex the story is, and the strength of the characters and atmosphere. The writing is at times quite clunky - lots of sentences start with: "Also, ..." - but it doesn't get in the way of the enjoyment.
> 
> I feel like I don't have any time at the moment, but I'm still racing through the 800 page book so I ordered another King book, _IT_, for when I finish.


_IT_ disappointed me greatly - specifically, the ending. It came off as very lame. I have read several of King's books, and they all work well, until then ending. He, in my opinion, has a hard time ending the story, and falls back on some pretty lame plot devices - e.g. he relies far too often on aliens. The Stand was a notable exception - very well written, and the one I recommend the most.


----------



## tdc

_The Master Key System_ - Charles F. Haanel
_The Poetic Edda_ - Translation by C. Larrington
_The Growth of Music_ - H.C. Colles


----------



## Flamme

schuberkovich said:


> The Stephen King book is much much better than I thought it would be. The premise - an English teacher travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination - initially seems clichéd and unpromising, but I keep getting surprised by how complex the story is, and the strength of the characters and atmosphere. The writing is at times quite clunky - lots of sentences start with: "Also, ..." - but it doesn't get in the way of the enjoyment.
> 
> I feel like I don't have any time at the moment, but I'm still racing through the 800 page book so I ordered another King book, _IT_, for when I finish.


Yes i think he should not write any more...He started to get boring and repeating...


----------



## Kieran

I hadn't read a Stephen King book for about twenty years when someone bought me _Cell _for my birthday a couple of years ago. Families, eh? They stick you in a time trap and there you stay. Big surprise that nobody else bought me Enid Blyton. One thing I noticed about _Cell _was how the main characters more or less remain the same character for each book, juts different names.

I enjoyed _The Stand_ when I was younger and kept up with him until I hit about twenty, then moved on. He's prolific, right? The guy was hit by a car and wrote two books while in a coma. I think. Sometimes the film adaptations are special. I mean, some great movies made from Stephen King books.

I finished _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ last week. le Carre knows his spy stuff. It wasn't always written as clearly as I'd like but it gave me a taste for finding out what happens next. So I bought the DVD's of the Alec Guinness TV series to find out...


----------



## Flamme

DrMike said:


> I'm not sure how you can claim people were more mentally healthy then. If you control for new mental health problems that have only been recognized, or diagnosed, since then, you might find that the relative numbers are not dissimilar. They had asylums back then as well. Mental illness has been recognized for quite some time. And other than the obvious idea that it takes some kind of defect to do such horrendous things, I think it is rash to simply dismiss such individuals as crazy. Some, through various actions, have numbed their conscience so much that they have disabled the normal instincts that prevent the majority of humanity from committing such atrocities.


I dunno, maybe the sickness and ''unruhe'' in human soul were always present but now we have only more chance to see it cause of the widespread media and internet...But i tend to believe many menthal ilnesses today are a product of cold, detached and furious modern way of living...


----------



## Mahlerian

Schoenberg's Journey, by Allen Shawn

One of the few books on Schoenberg in English aimed at a layman. Promising so far. The author speaks out of love for his subject.


----------



## Blancrocher

The Sight of Death, by T.J. Clark. It's an interesting "experiment in art writing": a critical meditation on a single painting by Poussin, viewed and written about daily over the course of months. Clark is a gifted writer, and makes his inauspicious project into a joy to read.


----------



## Weston

Not currently reading, but on my want list:









Can anyone recommend it? (It just came out though.)


----------



## Flamme

DrMike said:


> _IT_ disappointed me greatly - specifically, the ending. It came off as very lame. I have read several of King's books, and they all work well, until then ending. He, in my opinion, has a hard time ending the story, and falls back on some pretty lame plot devices - e.g. he relies far too often on aliens. The Stand was a notable exception - very well written, and the one I recommend the most.


He is EXCELLENT in short stories though, like in ''One for the road''...That one especially when red in cold winter nights, when everything outside cracks and blows sends shivers down my spine even today.


----------



## cwarchc

Re-discovering this enigmatic author


----------



## samurai

Kieran said:


> I hadn't read a Stephen King book for about twenty years when someone bought me _Cell _for my birthday a couple of years ago. Families, eh? They stick you in a time trap and there you stay. Big surprise that nobody else bought me Enid Blyton. One thing I noticed about _Cell _was how the main characters more or less remain the same character for each book, juts different names.
> 
> I enjoyed _The Stand_ when I was younger and kept up with him until I hit about twenty, then moved on. He's prolific, right? The guy was hit by a car and wrote two books while in a coma. I think. Sometimes the film adaptations are special. I mean, some great movies made from Stephen King books.
> 
> I finished _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ last week. le Carre knows his spy stuff. It wasn't always written as clearly as I'd like but it gave me a taste for finding out what happens next. So I bought the DVD's of the Alec Guinness TV series to find out...


You won't be sorry! :cheers:


----------



## Kieran

samurai said:


> You won't be sorry! :cheers:


You watched these DVD's? I'm really looking forward to setting aside a spare day or two over Christmas and munching into them.


----------



## samurai

Kieran said:


> You watched these DVD's? I'm really looking forward to setting aside a spare day or two over Christmas and munching into them.


Yes, and they are tremendous, especially Alec Guinness as Smiley.


----------



## Kieran

samurai said:


> Yes, and they are tremendous, especially Alec Guinness as Smiley.


Good! Can't wait to watch them. I have a feeling the film might be on over Christmas too, but i prefer the long-drawn out stuff of mini-series.

Did you read any of the books?


----------



## samurai

Yes, I had read them a long time ago in hard book editions. Due to price, I have recently acquired them in paperback.


----------



## Weston

Kontrapunctus said:


> Since it's about a child murderer, a sunny, upbeat cover might be out of place!


Is this the one with Teddy Roosevelt as one of the main characters? If so I enjoyed that one quite a bit in spite of the dark subject matter.


----------



## Blancrocher

Peter Brown's "Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD." It's a bit on the long side and doesn't seem to be as well written as Brown's earlier masterpieces, but it's a fascinating read.


----------



## Cheyenne

And, for when that's finished, I ordered:









And:


----------



## Ingélou

You know _Tristram Shandy_ was rather an experimental book for its day, with a quirky rambling stream-of-consciousness style, blanked out pages etc. A friend of mine, also an English teacher, was a real fan & persuaded me to read it. I bought a paperback penguin edition. The novel had some inspired passages and was often funny, but was not really my cup of tea; however, I finished it - and it was only then that I realised that the paperback was a badly made article, with several duplications and at least twenty pages missing. LOL!

The name of the book was familiar to me from childhood, though, because we used to visit the village where Laurence Sterne was clergyman, Coxwold near York, and look at the outside of his house.


----------



## Cheyenne

My own English teacher has never read his works, unfortunately. I myself have always been interested in experimental works, in music as in film as in literature, so the novel has intrigued me for a long time. I've been planning to read Tristram Shandy since I read Nietzsche's praise of Sterne about a year or two ago:

"In a book for free spirits one cannot avoid mention of Laurence Sterne, the man whom Goethe honoured as the freest spirit of his century. May he be satisfied with the honour of being called the freest writer of all times, in comparison with whom all others appear stiff, square-toed, intolerant, and downright boorish! In his case we should not speak of the clear and rounded but of “the endless melody”—if by this phrase we arrive at a name for an artistic style in which the definite form is continually broken, thrust aside and transferred to the realm of the indefinite, so that it signifies one and the other at the same time."

Nietzsche also got me interested in the French moralists, and even Goethe himself. I bought the Everyman's Library edition; what a great publisher! When I purchase new books, I tend to purchase hardcovers, since I have many small paperbacks lying around from second-hand bookstores that aren't very pleasant to read. The Library of America and Everyman's Library are my greatest friends in publishing in that regard.


----------



## Gilberto

Who Owns The Future? by Jaron Lanier

I read his You Are Not A Gadget last year. Oh Lord, I hope it is not too late to become a Luddite.


----------



## Sonata

*Energy Medicine: Balancing your body's energies for optimal health joy and vitality*

I borrowed this from a physician colleague who performs energy medicine on the side, in addition to western medicine. Since western medicine doesn't seem to have all the answers for me at the moment. I did a couple sessions w him, best I can describe it would be a physically guided hands-on meditation. Long term hard to say if there will be benefit, but it was temporarily therapeutic anyway. So I'm interested in reading what it's all about


----------



## Mahlerian

Cheyenne said:


> Essays of Mark Twain


_Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses_ is one of my favorite works of criticism of all time.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

I have just started John Betjeman's 'The Collected Poems'. 

I feel a little dirty (and not in the good way :devil::lol reading it on my Kindle given the Betjeman's passions and traditionalism but alas, thanks to my music collection bursting at the seams I have no more room for physical books at present.

Joking aside, I am very conflicted on ebooks. On the one hand I can appreciate the benefits of them very much - portable, take up little to no space and of course it should be the content that matters sand not the medium.

Yet on the other hand, just as I favour my music on a physical medium so too do I favour printed books. With ebooks, I miss that feeling of something tangible. Also, I associate the lesser quality of mp3s with ebooks even though I know it is an irrelevant comparison which does not apply in this instance. 

I cannot decide where I sit on the ebook format. I want to love it, I appreciate the benefits and yet my reflex is to be resistant to it. 

Sorry for the tangent  but as I said at the beginning, I have just started John Betjeman's 'The Collected Poems'.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Fables for Our Time by James Thurber

Very funny and Thurber's wonderful illustrations only add to the joy.:lol:


----------



## GreenMamba

James Buchan's Days of God: The Revolution in Iran and its Consequences


----------



## aakermit

I'm always reading multiple books and it has only gotten worse with Kindle. I'm on a break from my usual reading, which is history, with an emphasis on the Civil War. Reading "Life on the Mississippi" by Mark Twain. Just finished "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum.


----------



## Guest

For teaching purposes, _Crime and Punishment _(12th graders) and _The Illustrated Man _(10 graders). Outside of the classroom I'm still working on _Angel of Darkness _by Caleb Carr.


----------



## Blancrocher

Luis Bunuel's autobiography.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

Don Quixote of la Mancha.


----------



## clavichorder

Reading "Pandora's Star" by Peter F. Hamilton. Complex and lengthy science fiction space opera, pretty fun reading.


----------



## Sonata

Gifted Hands: memoir of Ben Carson, a man who grew up in the rough part of Detroit who went on to become chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins at the age of 33. It's a remarkable story. Quick but fascinating read!


----------



## Blancrocher

Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands." I'd been delaying in reading this for a long time since the subject is so distressing, but Snyder provides a powerful analysis of WW2 from the perspective of the victims of war rather than its architects.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Theme and Variations- An Autobiography by Bruno Walter

I'm coming towards the end of my most enjoyable ramble through the magnificent 39 CD set of Walter's recordings on Sony, this has been waiting on my shelves for a couple of years, very much looking forward to it.


----------



## samurai

david j. kowalski--*the company of the dead. * This is an alternate history of what events might have happened--or not, as the case may be--had the Titanic arrived safely in New York in 1912. So far, the writing is tight and the plot interesting {I'm about 1/5 of the way through}, so we'll see.


----------



## Guest




----------



## MagneticGhost

Just finished 
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Just starting
Underworld - Don Delillo


----------



## BillT

Kontrapunctus said:


>


Bought. Thanks!

- Bill


----------



## samurai

William Turner and John Christian--* The Assassination Of Robert F. Kennedy: The Conspiracy And Coverup*


----------



## Flamme

Awesome read, i like his subtle christian way of telling stories and morals...


----------



## schuberkovich

After finishing _IT_ and _The __Shining_ by Stephen King, I feel like I can honestly say that his writing was very weak. I'm not saying that in a snobby way - I really wanted to like him - but something about the books just fell flat. They felt like those quick meals you munch down without really enjoying.

I found _The Great Gatsby_ disappointing as well - despite Fitzgerald's prose, the characters and the novel itself felt somehow dead, or forced. I know that it's supposed to be a depiction of a shallow lifestyle - but it somehow managed to be both irritating and bland at the same time. It seems like it's almost blasphemy to say that, especially in the US, but...

However, I'm halfway through _The Grapes of Wrath_ and I think it's truly fantastic. Everything about it is so _strong _and _real _and _honest _- I'm savouring every page.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

View attachment 31050


Colin Mochrie: Not Quite The Classics

I have just picked this up on Kindle, as it does not appear to be coming out anytime soon in physical print sadly. This is my Christmas reading sorted out.


----------



## RedRum

Space Chronicles By Neil deGrasse Tyson


----------



## EricABQ

_Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour De France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever _by Reed Albergotti adn Vanessa O'connell.

I was one of the people who never bought in to the Lance Armstrong myth. I always found it hard to believe that that he could be clean yet somehow dominate what was arguably the dirtiest sport in the world. His eventual downfall was not surprising.


----------



## clavichorder

Still reading Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, the thing is thick. I may be reading his books for a while longer since the next book is a direct continuation of the story line.


----------



## Gilberto

The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware

Vinyl Countdown - The Album From LP To iPod And Back Again by Travis Elborough


----------



## Katie

ShropshireMoose said:


> Theme and Variations- An Autobiography by Bruno Walter
> 
> I'm coming towards the end of my most enjoyable ramble through the magnificent 39 CD set of Walter's recordings on Sony, this has been waiting on my shelves for a couple of years, very much looking forward to it.


Oh, I am so glad I found your post Moose! I'm just beginning my journey through The Edition (the first pass is going to be sequential), but so far I've stalled due to incessant replay of just the 1st two discs! (I'm cycling through disc 2 for the 3rd time in 2.5 days - LVB's #s 3 and 8 (amazing)). SOOOOO, I very much look forward to reading Bruno on Bruno!/K


----------



## Cheyenne

Matthew Arnold, _Mixed Essays_
Hjalmar Hjorth, _Essays on German Literature_
Thomas Carlyle, _Essays on Goethe_

Some mixed literary criticism and several essays on Goethe.


----------



## Vesteralen

*Marian Anderson - A Singer's Journey *by Allan Keiler


----------



## GreenMamba

John Costello's The Pacific War.

So far, I like that it has a nice long buildup to set the stage. We start back around the Opium Wars.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Tacitus on Britain and Germany (tr. H. Mattingley)
Further Fables for Our Time- James Thurber

This has been my holiday reading. Tacitus goes into enormous detail on German character and customs, which makes interesting reading, especially when his comments on the purity of the German race were picked out and twisted for their own purposes by a certain bunch of brigands in the mid-twentieth century. As Mattingley notes: "Tacitus can never have dreamed of the terrible abuses which would grow out of his simple statement." The part on England, is in fact his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola. Not much changed re. the weather it seems, but his comments on where Britain lies in relation to the rest of Europe are amusing for their inaccuracy! Nonetheless, a fascinating read, and it's always a pleasure to spend time in his company. Likewise Mr. Thurber, who never fails to draw forth a smile, and quite frequently loud laughter.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Katie said:


> Oh, I am so glad I found your post Moose! I'm just beginning my journey through The Edition (the first pass is going to be sequential), but so far I've stalled due to incessant replay of just the 1st two discs! (I'm cycling through disc 2 for the 3rd time in 2.5 days - LVB's #s 3 and 8 (amazing)). SOOOOO, I very much look forward to reading Bruno on Bruno!/K


This is a Moose that is glad to have been of some use! It's a smashing book and I feel sure you will enjoy it, his book on Mahler is good too!


----------



## EricABQ

GreenMamba said:


> John Costello's The Pacific War.
> 
> So far, I like that it has a nice long buildup to set the stage. We start back around the Opium Wars.
> 
> View attachment 31265


I've read that a couple of times. A very good one volume history. He spends a lot of time on the battle of Guadlacanal. Goes in to a lot of detail on that battle.


----------



## Flamme

schuberkovich said:


> *After finishing IT and The Shining by Stephen King, I feel like I can honestly say that his writing was very weak. I'm not saying that in a snobby way - I really wanted to like him - but something about the books just fell flat. They felt like those quick meals you munch down without really enjoying.*
> 
> I found _The Great Gatsby_ disappointing as well - despite Fitzgerald's prose, the characters and the novel itself felt somehow dead, or forced. I know that it's supposed to be a depiction of a shallow lifestyle - but it somehow managed to be both irritating and bland at the same time. It seems like it's almost blasphemy to say that, especially in the US, but...
> 
> However, I'm halfway through _The Grapes of Wrath_ and I think it's truly fantastic. Everything about it is so _strong _and _real _and _honest _- I'm savouring every page.


He is the best in his short stories like ''One for the road'', ''Jeruasalem's lot'' etc...In his l onger works he fades away in meaningless details almost like Tolstoy or Balsac...And i respect him deeply and his influence on returning of horror into world mainstream literature and for writing the cult novels like Carrie, ''Pet sematary''...


----------



## Winterreisender

ShropshireMoose said:


> Tacitus on Britain and Germany (tr. H. Mattingley)
> Further Fables for Our Time- James Thurber
> 
> This has been my holiday reading. Tacitus goes into enormous detail on German character and customs, which makes interesting reading, especially when his comments on the purity of the German race were picked out and twisted for their own purposes by a certain bunch of brigands in the mid-twentieth century. As Mattingly notes: "Tacitus can never have dreamed of the terrible abuses which would grow out of his simple statement." The part on England, is in fact his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola. Not much changed re. the weather it seems, but his comments on where Britain lies in relation to the rest of Europe are amusing for their inaccuracy! Nonetheless, a fascinating read, and it's always a pleasure to spend time in his company. Likewise Mr. Thurber, who never fails to draw forth a smile, and quite frequently loud laughter.


I also enjoy Tacitus' ethnographic writings. Although he sees the tribes as a threat to the empire, I can't help but feel Tacitus sympathises enormously with their simple way of life, especially in comparison with the increasingly corrupt and morally degenerate Rome, towards which he is often so scathing. An early exploration of the "noble savage" perhaps?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Concerning Tacitus: _Germania_ has been on my to-read list for a long time, but it's one of those things I seem never to get either the time or the mood for. Shame on me...


----------



## Guest

The Guns at Last Light by Rick Atkinson. This is his 3rd volume in his Liberation Trilogy, dealing with the European theater of war during WWII, starting with the American intervention. The first volume dealt with the war in North Africa, and the second with the war in Sicily and Italy. This last volume begins with D-Day and follows the remainder of the war in Europe. I have really enjoyed these books thus far, and look forward to this final volume.


----------



## OboeKnight

The Secret Garden. I listened to some of the musical so I was interested to read the book. It is a nice change from the things I usually read. Enjoying it.


----------



## Flamme




----------



## cwarchc

My youngest bought me:
Iron Curtain - The Crushing of Eastern Europe
by Anne Applebaum
for Christmas, he knows me too well - we share books?
I have just started it. It's quite heavy going, but very interesting.
I have family history here, an area that fascinates me


----------



## Sonata

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. Fascinating read, I'm really enjoying it.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Denis Diderot: Jacques le fataliste et son maître


----------



## clavichorder

Finished Pandora's Star, now onto Judas Unchained. In for another 900 pages of space opera.


----------



## Crudblud

Finished _Mason & Dixon_, finally, and what an amazing experience it was. So amazing, in fact, that today I went out and bought two Pynchon novels at full retail price, something I would normally never do with books as I find them terribly overpriced in general.

I decided to move on to Terry Pratchett's _The Colour of Magic_. I wanted to contrast my previous book with something short, simple and reasonably entertaining that I could just steamroll through in a short amount of time. It has proven to be all these things so I'm enjoying it for what it is, despite now being more than a little spoiled by the mad genius of Pynchon.


----------



## Rachmanijohn

Just started on Jan Swafford's biography of Johannes Brahms. It has come highly recommended to me; I'm enjoying it greatly so far.


----------



## Weston

I started Stephen King's _On Writing_. It doesn't seem to be much about writing so far, but is an enjoyable visit with a creative person, whatever you may think of him.


----------



## Weston

clavichorder said:


> Finished Pandora's Star, now onto Judas Unchained. In for another 900 pages of space opera.


I'm afraid I had to give up on this diplodocus near the end of its first half. I simply couldn't go on.


----------



## Cheyenne

I remembered I should be reading more novels.. So here's the first one:


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Elgar: Letters of a Lifetime ed. J. Northrop Moore

This was my Christmas present from mum, and I've read it a good deal more quickly than was my intent! It's good that it has now been reprinted, so that for £40 you can get it new and with corrections to the first edition. Previously it's been £95+! Elgar's letters are quite compelling- hence my devouring this in three days! I love his answer to Walford Davies who'd asked if there was a programme to the 1st Symphony: 
"There is no programme beyond a wide experience of human life with a great charity (love) & a massive hope in the future."

And on his Christmas card for 1929, Elgar quoted Whitman, and I can't resist doing likewise:

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd;
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied- not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth."

Amongst those Elgar sent this to was Frank Bridge, who responded: "My dear Sir Edward, Your card has only just reached me and I feel I must thank you for it. The quotation is so well chosen that I envy you your thought of it. But, how many animals could live with us? With all good wishes for the New Year, "

This is a great read, which I highly recommend.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays 1st and 2nd Series

This is stretching me a bit, mentally, which, I suspect, is a good thing after Christmas! Thus far I have particularly enjoyed his essays on "self-reliance" and "friendship". The latter finishes with this: "The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both."
I rather like that.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Crudblud

_The Colour of Magic _was amusing and easy, which was just what I needed. Next up: Flann O'Brien's _The Third Policeman_.


----------



## ptr

Crudblud said:


> Next up: Flann O'Brien's _The Third Policeman_.


Brian O'Nolan is one of my favourite Irish Authors! The Third Policeman is bend over double funny! :lol: You my good man should use it as a base for an Opera libretto!

/ptr


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Michael Crichton: Timeline. A fascinating story, just like everything else he wrote.


----------



## Crudblud

ptr said:


> Brian O'Nolan is one of my favourite Irish Authors! The Third Policeman is bend over double funny! :lol: You my good man should use it as a base for an Opera libretto!
> 
> /ptr


I think opera, and indeed vocal music in general, falls some way outside my purview. I have considered writing works for the stage, but they would probably involve speech rather than singing.


----------



## aox

I just finished Cloud Atlas. It's a nice book, fascinating in its structure. Six intertwined stories, which open up gradually to the reader, like Russian dolls. At the peak, there is an almost magical, mystical moment, where the entire book is weaved together; it is where the "atlas of clouds" metaphor is used by one of the characters. Then, the 6 stories are reversed, and you slowly return to where you started. You don't even notice it, but after you finish the book, you realise you've grown attached to the characters, and you bid farewell to several good friends; it is as if, your own story is now inextricably connected with theirs  The book seems to lean towards entertaining more than intellectually stimulating, so at times it can feel shallow. But nevertheless, it is very good entertainment, and the emotions it elicits can be very powerful. In particular, as you become acquainted with its scale and structure, you feel overwhelmed, which is definitely a memorable and unique feeling. 

Now I am starting to read Stella Tillyard's Aristocrats, after having watched the BBC series (which I thoroughly enjoyed, particularly the classical soundtrack! Seriously recommended!). My hypothesis is that in understanding classical music, one needs to understand the people for which the music was written, back in the days. Tillyard's book is a panoramic view of the aristocracy in the 18th century's England, so I'm looking forward to it.


----------



## ptr

Crudblud said:


> I think opera, and indeed vocal music in general, falls some way outside my purview. I have considered writing works for the stage, but they would probably involve speech rather than singing.


That would be fine with me, love "sprech gesang", love pierrot lunaire and Walton's Façade! Of what I've heard of Your music so far I think You could handle that really well! :angel:

/ptr


----------



## Sonata

Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Not sure on my feelings yet. It's written in a stream of conscious style which I tend to have difficulty with. However Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize years ago, so I sure there is value in his works.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

And I have finally got to read Tacitus' _Germania_ (for some reason I thought it would be much longer than it is). One of the passages that really stood out to me was this:

"Their marriage code, however, is strict, and indeed no part of their manners is more praiseworthy. Almost alone among barbarians they are content with one wife, except a very few among them, and these not from sensuality, but because their noble birth procures for them many offers of alliance. The wife does not bring a dower to the husband but the husband to the wife. The parents and relatives are present, and pass judgment on the marriage-gifts, gifts not meant to suit a woman's taste, nor such as a bride would deck herself with, but oxen, a caparisoned steed, a shield, a lance, and a sword. With these presents the wife is espoused, and she herself in her turn brings her husband a gift of arms. This they count their strongest bond of union, these their sacred mysteries, these their gods of marriage. _Lest the woman should think herself to stand apart from aspirations after noble deeds and from the perils of war, she is reminded by the ceremony which inaugurates marriage that she is her husband's partner in toil and danger, destined to suffer and to dare with him alike both in peace and in war._ The yoked oxen, the harnessed steed, the gift of arms, proclaim this fact. She must live and die with the feeling that she is receiving what she must hand down to her children neither tarnished nor depreciated, what future daughters-in-law may receive, and may be so passed on to her grand-children."


----------



## ahammel

Now reading Charles Rosen's _The Classical Style_. Perhaps a little bit above my pay grade in terms of music theory, but a very interesting read.

We'll see if this does anything to get rid of my Beethoven aversion.


----------



## Blancrocher

ShropshireMoose said:


> Tacitus on Britain and Germany (tr. H. Mattingley)
> Further Fables for Our Time- James Thurber
> 
> This has been my holiday reading. Tacitus goes into enormous detail on German character and customs, which makes interesting reading, especially when his comments on the purity of the German race were picked out and twisted for their own purposes by a certain bunch of brigands in the mid-twentieth century. As Mattingley notes: "Tacitus can never have dreamed of the terrible abuses which would grow out of his simple statement."


Those interested in more along these lines may want to check out "A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich," by Christopher Krebs.

http://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous-Book-Tacituss-Germania/dp/0393342921

I haven't read it myself, but it has gotten good reviews.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Blancrocher said:


> Those interested in more along these lines may want to check out "A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich," by Christopher Krebs.
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous-Book-Tacituss-Germania/dp/0393342921
> 
> I haven't read it myself, but it has gotten good reviews.


Nice title... I guess _Germania_, just like Wagner's operas or the Vienna Philarmonic is another part of our cultural heritage that the modern man is not supposed to simply appreciate, without being made aware of its inherently dangerous nature...

I have this waiting for me, after I am done with Michael Crichton:


----------



## AClockworkOrange

*Hitlers Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields* by Wendy Luwer on Kindle








£18.99 on Hardback in the local WH Smiths, £12.99 on Amazon or 99p on Kindle.

When I did history at school, the role of Women wan't really touched upon so this book immediately piqued my interest.

*The Cormorant by Chuck Wendig*








Book three in the fantastic Miriam Black series. I have just started this and so far, I am very, very happy indeed :devil:


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> Finished _Mason & Dixon_, finally, and what an amazing experience it was. So amazing, in fact, that today I went out and bought two Pynchon novels at full retail price, something I would normally never do with books as I find them terribly overpriced in general.


See, this has haunted me ever since. Do you know that not a single bookshop in central Dublin has this book? Not Easons, Reads, Hodge and Figgis, Dubray Books. There's a few more I can try. Small shops. Discount book stores. I went to a few but they don't have it. Play.com only has 2nd hand but if I have to fork out, I want it new. The blimming _*PUBLIC LIBRARY*_ doesn't have it! I'm gonna have to fork out on Amazon if it doesn't surface soon. Tomorrow I drive to the north side of the city to trawl the shops for it. I'll be ringing the suburban shopping centres. I'm gonna have this book by the weekend. I read obsessively about it since reading your post. The brief paragraph on Wiki has further incited my desire. I'm ailing without it...


----------



## Crudblud

Kieran said:


> See, this has haunted me ever since. Do you know that not a single bookshop in central Dublin has this book? Not Easons, Reads, Hodge and Figgis, Dubray Books. There's a few more I can try. Small shops. Discount book stores. I went to a few but they don't have it. Play.com only has 2nd hand but if I have to fork out, I want it new. The blimming _*PUBLIC LIBRARY*_ doesn't have it! I'm gonna have to fork out on Amazon if it doesn't surface soon. Tomorrow I drive to the north side of the city to trawl the shops for it. I'll be ringing the suburban shopping centres. I'm gonna have this book by the weekend. I read obsessively about it since reading your post. The brief paragraph on Wiki has further incited my desire. I'm ailing without it...


As it happens, I only found a copy by chancing upon a bric-a-brac stall at an outdoor market that occasionally convenes in the Sheffield city centre. In good condition, it was a steal at 50p! But I do not seek to further compound your misery, and wish you good luck in finding it very soon.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Just finished this one (English National Opera Guide):








Currently reading this one (Cambridge Opera Handbooks):








This one just came in the mail subtitled, "from the Eroica to the Appassionata" with a chapter on Leonora:


----------



## Gilberto

Buddha's Brain - The Practical Neuroscience Of Happiness, Love & Wisdom - Siegel & Kornfield


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> As it happens, I only found a copy by chancing upon a bric-a-brac stall at an outdoor market that occasionally convenes in the Sheffield city centre. In good condition, it was a steal at 50p! But I do not seek to further compound your misery, and wish you good luck in finding it very soon.


I got it! Ordered a used one on Play.com. Couldn't get it anywhere in Dublin, continued my bookshop pilgrimage yesterday. Got home dog-tired and disjointed. Browsed a few booksellers and thought, take the plunge. I hope to have to by the middle of next week...


----------



## Sonata

Sonata said:


> Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.
> 
> Not sure on my feelings yet. It's written in a stream of conscious style which I tend to have difficulty with. However Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize years ago, so I sure there is value in his works.


Just wanted to update. This book is getting better and really has some helpful, thoughtful ideas


----------



## Sonata

Gilberto said:


> Buddha's Brain - The Practical Neuroscience Of Happiness, Love & Wisdom - Siegel & Kornfield


Sounds interesting, I may have to look into it


----------



## samurai

Hi, Kieran; so glad you were finally able to get your book. Enjoy!


----------



## Kieran

samurai said:


> Hi, Kieran; so glad you were finally able to get your book. Enjoy!


Cheers! Got it for a song, or for an aria, as we say round here. I'm reading an Icelandic cop potboiler right now, and it's boring me to death, actually. I wonder if the cop in this one - Erlendur Thingummy - ever solved _The Case of the Bored Stiff Reader_. If he did, he'd have himself in prison...


----------



## Crudblud

I feel somewhat bad about this, but yesterday I shelved _The Third Policeman _to start Pynchon's _Vineland_, by his standards a slim volume at a mere 400 pages.


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> I feel somewhat bad about this, but yesterday I shelved _The Third Policeman _to start Pynchon's _Vineland_, by his standards a slim volume at a mere 400 pages.


Flann O'Brien would forgive you - he's not going anywhere soon, it'll still be there when you finish!


----------



## MozartEarlySymphonies

I'm currently reading....


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Dominion by C. J. Sansom

This has been lent to me by a friend, it's a bit of welcome easy reading after Emerson's essays. Set in Britain in 1952, with the premise that Halifax had succeeded Chamberlain in 1940 and then sued for peace after Dunkirk, resulting in Britain being in alliance with Hitler's Germany. He has Beaverbrook as PM, it's all very fascinating as he uses many real people and has gone into their characters quite thoroughly to try and work out just who would have worked with such a regime and who wouldn't, it's very well done and a real page turner.


----------



## Blancrocher

Hallelujah Junction, by John Adams.


----------



## OboeKnight

Starting Milton's Paradise Lost.


----------



## Sonata

Reading a Dean Koonzt book right now; I don't even recall the title but it's apparently about an alien invasion. It's not great literature by any means, but I needed a "lighter" book to read in between my self-improvement, mindfullness, spiritual exercises every now and again!

And on THAT note, the other book which I've just started, is the Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook for Depression. Some interesting stuff....mindfulness is something I've been doing for a few months, albeit not perfectly but I have noticed subtle but real changes in my life. Onward and upward!


----------



## Blancrocher

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. A historical novel concerning the reign of Henry VIII and the rise of Thomas Cromwell. I was prejudiced against it because it won a ton of awards, but it's actually pretty good. I know what I'll be doing tonight!


----------



## AClockworkOrange

It is time to bite the bullet and enter the world of Sherlock Holmes for the first time.

I have chosen this book, _Favourite Sherlock Holmes Stories_ _selected by the author_ as my introduction.

View attachment 32998


----------



## samurai

The game's afoot! Enjoy your adventures.


----------



## Kieran

So they tell me that _The Book_ - *Mason & Dixon*, by Crudblud - should arrive by some day last week and then I get an email this evening saying that "during the packing process your item was damaged and had to be discarded."

Cheers, fellers! I put my life on hold waiting! Okay, so they don't know that the Australian Open tennis is happening, but still - why didn't they email me earlier? No matter! Must. Not.

Grumble!

I re-ordered it elsewhere and this will be a new copy.

Meantime, I've been reading potboilers, the latest one being *Moriarty*, by John Gardner. Apparently, the old cove survived his Reichenbach mishap. This is actually quite a fun read, by the way, though Sherlock Holmes isn't in it, which is a pity...


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Tales of Terror and Mystery by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Having thoroughly enjoyed "Dominion" by C.J. Sansom (which I heartily recommend to everybody) I now indulge in reading an old favourite. Conan Doyle wrote a good deal more than Sherlock Holmes, and it's all equally enjoyable. This was a book that dad had, I must have first read it in my early teens, and I've returned to it at intervals, with equal pleasure ever since.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Fabian by Erich Kästner. The first of 6 german books I need to read before May


----------



## Vesteralen

I'm re-reading one of my all time favorites, Dodie Smith's *I Capture the Castle*, in the Folio Society edition I bought a year or so ago.


----------



## Vesteralen

I'm also more than halfway through *Persian Adventure*(1953) by Anne Sinclair Mehdevi. Her experiences as the wife of a Persian man who returns to Iran for a "visit" contain vague forecasts of *Not Without My Daughter* in the midst of what seems in hindsight as a kind of naivete peculiar to the mid-twentieth century. I keep thinking as I read along that I was glad she left her two children at home when she made this journey.


----------



## samurai

Robert Blair Kaiser--"*R.F.K. Must Die!": Chasing the Mystery of the Robert Kennedy Assassination*


----------



## clavichorder

Almost finished with Judas Unchained. Almost... I've actually been enjoying it, Weston.


----------



## Vesteralen

From Dodie Smith's *The New Moon With the Old*:

"The lot of a young composer's so hard," said Drew. "If his music is understandable it's probably old-fashioned; and if it isn't, one needs so much faith."


----------



## Guest

_Cross My Heart _by James Patterson.


----------



## Blancrocher

Geoffrey Household's "Rogue Justice." It's the sequel to Household's "Rogue Male," his classic novel along the lines of "The Fugitive" or "Rambo: First Blood." I just can't help it--I love it so.

Here's the first paragraph:



> My first thought was that in a world where there was any mercy I should have been killed cleanly then and there, for I had no doubt that a more protracted death after days and nights of agony awaited me. Yet I seemed to be the only living thing among the rubble apart from two rats. One of them was squealing; the other was eating its own bowels with apparent appetite. I saw no point in remaining alive with freedom of choice limited to these two alternatives.


----------



## Katie

Well, as a late-comer to HBO's Game of Thrones (I just free-based the first 2 seasons over the last 5 days), I picked up the current box of Martin's novels today and am about ready to embrace a highly challenging work-read-sleep-repeat cycle. Sometimes pop culture gets it just exactly right!/K


----------



## ahammel

ahammel said:


> Now reading Charles Rosen's _The Classical Style_. Perhaps a little bit above my pay grade in terms of music theory, but a very interesting read.
> 
> We'll see if this does anything to get rid of my Beethoven aversion.


Nope, as it turns out, Beethoven just sucks doesn't appeal to me. Good book, though.

Currently reading a slight but charming novel called _Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore_. Next on the stack is _The Design of Everyday Things_ (I'm trying to read more non-fiction this year).


----------



## violadude

I'm reading Pioneer Go Home by Richard Powell, my girlfriend recommended it.

Eh, I think I like it okay but the horrible English and the general stupidity of the characters is kind of grating on my nerves. I know some people find that sort of simple bumpkin naivety charming.

I don't.


----------



## Vesteralen

*A Red Herring Without Mustard* by Alan Bradley. Shaping up to be my favorite Flavia DeLuce novel of them all.


----------



## Fortinbras Armstrong

I have just set aside a copy of Roger Penrose's _The Emperor's New Mind _in which he is attempting to prove that true artificial intelligence is unattainable. I was about three quarters of the way through it, at the point where I lost the train of his extremely mathematical argument.

The real problem I had with this book was that one of Arthur Clarke's three laws kept going through my mind while I was reading it, the one which says "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

I am currently reading Thomas Merton's _Zen and the Birds of Appetite._


----------



## ahammel

Fortinbras Armstrong said:


> I have just set aside a copy of Roger Penrose's _The Emperor's New Mind _in which he is attempting to prove that true artificial intelligence is unattainable. I was about three quarters of the way through it, at the point where I lost the train of his extremely mathematical argument.
> 
> The real problem I had with this book was that one of Arthur Clarke's three laws kept going through my mind while I was reading it, the one which says "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."


He is wrong. Brains aren't quantum computers. They're too warm.

Makes for good science fiction, though. _Anathem_ is excellent.


----------



## clara s

Edmond-Dantes said:


> WELL! I'm surprised that a cultured and intelligent bunch of individuals like yourselves haven't already made a "What books are you Reading" thread.  Well, since we don't have one, I suppose I'll start it off.
> --Non Music Books--
> Currently, I'm reading a compilation of stories written by Fyodor Dostoevsky; who, if is as good of a writer as the current story I'm reading, "The Double," suggest, might be my favorite author. "The Double" is REALLY something else, and I WHOLE HEARTEDLY suggest it to anybody with an appreciation for psychology and classic novels. Here is an excerpt from the third chapter of the story that I have picked out. The main character is on his way to a party and decided on a whim to stop off at the doctors office.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> PS: You all don't need to write a book on the books you're reading like I've done, I just HAD to share how great "The Double" is. ^-^;;;;


you started your thread with a giant of literature, Dostoevsky

he is one of the greatest authors of all times

to continue with the same author, I would say "the possessed" is a masterpiece.

r


----------



## lupinix

Rowling a casual Vacancy, Im not very convinced about it yet though


----------



## violadude

lupinix said:


> Rowling a casual Vacancy, Im not very convinced about it yet though


I imagine it's hard to get into writing another story when you've been writing the same story for 7 years or so.


----------



## Gilberto

Catch A Fire - The Life Of Bob Marley by Timothy White


----------



## hpowders

The Holocaust, A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War by Martin Gilbert. 828 pages.

Need some cheering up this weekend. Tchaikovsky won't do it alone.


----------



## Blancrocher

All the King's Horses, by Michele Bernstein. A cool, cynical, but strangely affecting novel about a bunch of 20-something hipsters in 50s Paris. I'm enjoying it.


----------



## clavichorder

Officially finished Judas Unchained. I enjoyed it though it was not a breeze of a read. Now I need to figure out what's next.


----------



## cwarchc

Just finished "Secret Samurai, Tangled Lives" by Jill Rutherford.
Only got it as it was a "freebie" for the Kindle
Very pleasantly surprised, an interesting concept, quite well written


----------



## Vinyl

Jared Diamond: The world until yesterday.


----------



## prdonasco

I'm currently reading THE KILL ORDER by James Dashner, a prequel of THE MAZE RUNNER trilogy


----------



## ShropshireMoose

A recent acquisition by one of my favourite crime writers. Revelling in it am I!!


----------



## Vesteralen

Another great music quote from Dodie Smith, this time from *I Capture the Castle *- Simon tells Cassandra, "You're the kind of child who might develop a passion for Bach." She writes: "I told him I hadn't at school. The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon."


----------



## Marschallin Blair

. . . well, yes.

-- AND The Brothers Karamazov.

Dostoevsky's greater does not breathe upon this earth when it comes to novelists who clinically dissect the irrational side of man.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Total frame, samurai.

Right on. . .

And, relatedly, you owe it to yourself to check out DiEugenio's excellent autopsy of Bugliosi's farrago of lies:

http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Pa...1390941442&sr=8-1&keywords=dieugenio+parkland


----------



## Marschallin Blair

With Penrose, my own view is more Popperian, hypothetico-deductive: let's wait and see.

DARPA certainly thinks transhumanism is in the cards; Ray Kurzweil too.



ahammel said:


> He is wrong. Brains aren't quantum computers. They're too warm.
> 
> Makes for good science fiction, though. _Anathem_ is excellent.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Crudblud said:


> I feel somewhat bad about this, but yesterday I shelved _The Third Policeman _to start Pynchon's _Vineland_, by his standards a slim volume at a mere 400 pages.


What's that great quote from Gravity's Rainbow: "If you get them asking the wrong questions, we don't have to worry about the answers."

Great quote. Art imitating life. Fiction aping fact. Harvard catching up with Bilderberg and the Council on Foreign Relations.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

cwarchc said:


> My youngest bought me:
> Iron Curtain - The Crushing of Eastern Europe
> by Anne Applebaum
> for Christmas, he knows me too well - we share books?
> I have just started it. It's quite heavy going, but very interesting.
> I have family history here, an area that fascinates me


I found her Gulag uniformly excellent; much in the same way I find any of Robert Conquest's Soviet studies.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Blancrocher said:


> View attachment 29885
> 
> 
> Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands." I'd been delaying in reading this for a long time since the subject is so distressing, but Snyder provides a powerful analysis of WW2 from the perspective of the victims of war rather than its architects.


"Fight war, not wars; destroy power, not people." -- Crass (God I loved that when I was a young teenager-- and in Catholic school. Ha. Ha. Ha.)


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Blancrocher said:


> Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians. This guy's almost as vicious as some of the satirists on this site, which is high praise. Laugh-out-loud funny.
> 
> :lol:


Yeah. It IS hilarious; but I do enjoy his literary finesse. Bertrand Russell was reading Eminent Victorians while in prison in W.W. I and was laughing out so loud that the guards had to tell him to quiet down; I know how Russell feels.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

DrMike said:


> Mr. Lincoln's Army by Bruce Catton, Book 1 in the Army of the Potomac Trilogy. Great American Civil War reading, focusing in on the Army of the Potomac and its fighting in Northern Virginia, from just after First Bull Run, up until the surrender at Appomattox. The final book in the trilogy, A Stillness at Appomattox, won the Pullitzer back in its day.


Some complimentarity perhaps: http://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-...=1390942588&sr=8-1&keywords=dilorenzo+lincoln


----------



## Blancrocher

Marschallin Blair said:


> Yeah. It IS hilarious; but I do enjoy his literary finesse. Bertrand Russell was reading Eminent Victorians while in prison in W.W. I and was laughing out so loud that the guards had to tell him to quiet down; I know how Russell feels.


I'd like to read a Strachey portrait of Bertrand Russell, now that you mention it--he's got it coming to him as far as I'm concerned!


----------



## hpowders

The Resurrection of Jesus, A New Historiographical Approach, Michael R. Licona.

Hope to get a real rise out of this one.


----------



## Sonata

Working on two at once right now.....seems to be typical for me as of late.

*Mother Theresa: Authorized Biography*
I've been fascinated by this woman for years without knowing much about her. time to change that!
*
Walking on Water When you Feel Like You're Drowning*
A book written by two pastors who went through anxiety and depression


----------



## Vesteralen

You folks all like to read current stuff. Well, I guess that's good for living writers. 

Me, I like to read mid-20th century stuff. I've just discovered the essay-writer-love-of-my-life, Hildegarde Dolson. Her 1955 book, *Sorry To Be So Cheerful*, with illustrations by Paul Galdone, is the stuff of which my literary dreams are made.


----------



## schuberkovich

I finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Very disturbing and masterfully crafted.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Oh, but of course he does. . . but we know this; he's pretty candid in his Autobiography.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Following Vesteralen:

Hildegarde Dolson's Sorry to Be So Cheerful, yes: it looks hilarious. I have to check this out. Thanks.

http://bybeebooks.blogspot.com/2008/05/flashback-friday-we-shook-family-tree.html


----------



## ahammel

_Maskerade_. Terry Pratchett vs. opera. Be still my heart.


----------



## PetrB

hpowders said:


> The Resurrection of Jesus, A New Historiographical Approach, Michael R. Licona.
> 
> Hope to get a real rise out of this one.


Naw, you need The resurrection of Jesus, A New Hyteriographical Approach, by another author. Its a common confusion, the two books having been released within days of each other.


----------



## clavichorder

Now I'm working on another Peter F. Hamilton. _The Dreaming Void._ Just had to keep reading about that universe.


----------



## HaydnBearstheClock

Honoré de Balzac, Le Père Goriot.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Das leiden des jungen Werhters by Goethe


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Virtuoso by Harvey Sachs

Bought this 2ndhand recently. It's very good, I've already read Sachs' various Toscanini book, this one deals with: Paganini, Liszt, Rubinstein (Anton), Kreisler, Casals, Landowska, Horowitz and Gould. And jolly good it is too.


----------



## Guest

_The Least of My Scars_ by Stephen Graham Jones--whoa--easily the most gruesome and disturbing book I've read--and that's saying a lot since I like the serial killer genre and have read many! Here's a telling quote from Hellnotes.com:

"It's categorized as dark crime fiction, which may technically be the case. Whatever the label, with _The Least of My Scars_, Stephen Graham Jones cuts through the flesh of the surface and reaches straight into the pulsing heart of horror. If you can handle it (and yes, this is an open challenge), it comes highly recommended."


----------



## hpowders

"God's Problem. How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer". Bart D Ehrman, James A Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies,University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.


----------



## Gilberto

Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir by Amanda Knox

Just when you thought you could escape to some place romantic.... (and not be bothered by people who think they "suffer")


----------



## mirepoix

I've just about finished reading 'In Praise of Older Women' by Stephen Vizinczey. Next up will probably be 'The Bark Tree' by Raymond Queneau. But I'm waiting for a copy of the Brian Hooker translation of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' to be delivered and look forward to then hamming it up Jose Ferrer style whenever opportunity presents itself.


----------



## Blancrocher

Liszt's Life of Chopin. Well written and enthusiastic--though I'm hoping there will be some personal anecdotes as it goes along, even if they're false. However, all reservations aside it's a book by Liszt about Chopin.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4386/4386-h/4386-h.htm


----------



## clara s

I read once more

the name of the rose by Umberto Eco

"il nome della rosa"


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Christine by Stephen King

Something nice and easy to relax with!! I've not read many of his books, but he is a great yarn spinner and I am enjoying this very much.


----------



## Kieran

I finally received *Mason & Dixon*, by Thomas Pynchon. Looks like a bloody wild ride!


----------



## ShropshireMoose

The Letters of Beethoven Volume One collected and translated by Emily Anderson

Having thoroughly enjoyed "Christine" by Stephen King, I now launch into Beethoven's letters. Picked up this three volume edition in the Oxfam shop in Shrewsbury just before Christmas, so my pleasure at finding it has also helped someone, verily, a double blessing.


----------



## Guest

I've just ordered a bunch of books by Christopher Hitchins (RIP) that should be arriving soon-ish. Then I will be currently reading them.


----------



## Mahlerian

Rashomon and other stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. It's a paperback edition in the original Japanese, and since the texts are public domain, it was probably very inexpensive to produce. The company added furigana, characters that elucidate the pronunciation of the kanji, and that's it. But even that, they managed to screw up! Often the rarer characters and compounds have their pronunciation written directly after them in the text, and sometimes, this is in conflict with the pronunciation written above the character, because they used an automated program or something that didn't really know Japanese all that well to add them...

If I were trying to use this to help me learn Japanese, it would be confusing and incomprehensible. As it is, it's just extremely irritating.


----------



## Guest

I've also just started re-reading this: _Serial Composition_, Reginald Smith Brindle (Oxford University Press). I have to confess that I started this quite some years back when I was studying at Uni, but gave up after a few pages. Maybe it'll go better this time round!


----------



## Ingélou

It might. But I remember being told what a classic 'The Allegory of Love' by C. S. Lewis was when I was at university studying literature. I found it indigestible. I tried it again seven years later when I was doing my M.A. & after a few pages, was mixing up the Alka Seltzer.


----------



## Andreas

Günter Grass, Crabwalk - inspired by a recent post by KenOC in the "On this day ..." thread. Thanks for that!


----------



## Kieran

Andreas said:


> Günter Grass, Crabwalk - inspired by a recent post by KenOC in the "On this day ..." thread. Thanks for that!


It's a very good book, and if you're starting out in Grass, he has several major works, the ones I enjoyed most being Meeting at Telgte, The Flounder, Crabwalk, and of course, The Tin Drum, which is European literature writ large...


----------



## Crudblud

J.D. Salinger - _The Catcher in the Rye_

I never read it when I was a teenager, so I'm catching up with it now.


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> J.D. Salinger - _The Catcher in the Rye_
> 
> I never read it when I was a teenager, so I'm catching up with it now.


I read that one recently. Have started *Mason & Dixon* and already I'm bothering my pals with it. It's the beauty of a site like this, you get recommendations which couldn't happen anywhere else (unless you're one of the chums I'm bugging to read _*M&D*_ right now).

While waiting for *M&D*, I read an _*Everyman Pocketbook of Roman Odes, Elegies and Epigrams*_. Men like Ovid, Horace, Virgil, plying their trade, translated in Ye Olde Tongue by the likes of Samuel Johnson and Lord Byron. These Roman chappies didn't mince their words, and the topics range from girls who transform into trees to escape a rapist, bethrothed lasses who squeeze the blood from still-beating pigeon hearts to fool their husbands on their wedding night, Narcissus by his pool, and the usual mix of bawdy and beautiful things they thought about. Actually, their preoccupations weren't any different to our own.

A book which recently disappointed me was Kazuo Ishiguro's _*When We Were Orphans*_. Maybe somebody can explain this to me: was he delusional? The plot just gets to unbearably incredible to be mere "plot", but if he's mad, then his madness isn't made overly apparent.

Not to me, anyhow, but maybe I'm fishing in the wrong pool...


----------



## Cheyenne

Crudblud said:


> J.D. Salinger - _The Catcher in the Rye_
> 
> I never read it when I was a teenager, so I'm catching up with it now.


Perfect book when I was 14, truly. _Nine Stories_ is very nice too.


----------



## Whistler Fred

I'm alternating between two books. One is _The Time Travelers Guide to Elizabethan England_ by Ian Mortimer. The other is a collection of all of Manly Wade Wellman's John Thunstone stories.


----------



## schuberkovich

I've just started _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ by Ken Kesey.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Ingélou said:


> It might. But I remember being told what a classic 'The Allegory of Love' by C. S. Lewis was when I was at university studying literature. I found it indigestible. I tried it again seven years later when I was doing my M.A. & after a few pages, was mixing up the Alka Seltzer.


Ever try C.S. Lewis' _That Hideous Strength_?-- prescient novel, that; given the times we now live in.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Marschallin Blair said:


> Ever try C.S. Lewis' _That Hideous Strength_?-- prescient novel, that; given the times we now live in.


The Space Trilogy is rather disturbing, isn't it? Not at all friendly like the Chronicles of Narnia. _That Hideous Strength_ especially disturbed me with the bloody ending. I actually imagine some talkclassical members to have characteristics similar to a lot of those N.I.C.E. people...


----------



## Berlioznestpasmort

Julian Barnes' memoir on mortality: _Nothing to Be Afraid Of_. His candor may be a stretch for some readers, but may as well be ready, or as ready as one can be, I say. Couple of wonderful Sibelius quotes therein, one of which is good advice to musicians and other creatives: "Always remember that there is no city in Europe which contains a statue to a critic." "Misunderstand me correctly," is t'other. One of Mozart's doesn't improve his status with me; from Paris he wrote to his father: "You prob. know that that godless arch-rogue Voltaire has died like a dog, like a beast - that's his reward!" Voltaire was, of course, hardly godless.


----------



## Ingélou

Marschallin Blair said:


> Ever try C.S. Lewis' _That Hideous Strength_?-- prescient novel, that; given the times we now live in.


You're right. Yes, I like C. S. Lewis's science-fiction trilogy, and I like his children's books and theological books too. Just not 'The Allegory of Love'. Well, there's always a clot among the cream!


----------



## Berlioznestpasmort

hpowders said:


> "God's Problem. How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer". Bart D Ehrman, James A Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies,University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.


Wonder if he might have been inspired by the Simpsons' movie 








In church, Grandpa' Simpson goes into what appears to be an epileptic fit (or a religious trance) shouting "EPA, EPA!" Homer looks feverishly through the Bible for help: "There's no answers in here!" he cries out to the congegration.


----------



## arpeggio

*Henry Pleasants THE AGONY OF MODERN MUSIC*

I have just completed reading Henry Pleasants' _The Agony of Modern Music_.

Although he makes some interesting observations, I agree with William Schuman's assessment of the book: "Frankly, I found this angry little volume filled with superficial data to support a previously arrived at conclusion."

This book was published in 1955. Whenever I read the rhetoric of anti-modernists, they employ the exact same arguments that Pleasant espoused a generation ago.


----------



## Masada

*"Van Gogh: The Life"*

After seeing a significant retrospective a while back, I'm thoroughly enjoying the very slow reading of _Van Gogh: The Life_:






​


----------



## Masada

...though, it is winter and I've still not read Tolstoy's _War and Peace_. Being a fan of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translations of Russian masterpieces (most specifically their _Brother's Karamazov_, by Doestoevsky), it might be time to add this to the list once I've finished the above work:






​
This is a great looking collection of their translations on the shelf, bravo to whoever's this is!






​


----------



## Sonata

Adult Children of Alcoholics

A big eye-opener, very good read so far.


----------



## PrimoUomo

Hyperion by Dan Simmons


----------



## Levanda

Masada said:


> ...though, it is winter and I've still not read Tolstoy's _War and Peace_. Being a fan of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translations of Russian masterpieces (most specifically their _Brother's Karamazov_, by Doestoevsky), it might be time to add this to the list once I've finished the above work:
> 
> View attachment 34754​
> This is a great looking collection of their translations on the shelf, bravo to whoever's this is!
> 
> View attachment 34755​


I fan of Tolstoy but I could never understand why so world obsessed with Dostojevsky, his is miserable, reading his books nothing to please only guiltiness, depress, social unrealistic.


----------



## Aramis

Levanda said:


> social unrealistic.


Because Tolstoy is SOOO realistic in his War & Peace philosophical ramblings, isn't he.


----------



## Blancrocher

Aramis said:


> Because Tolstoy is SOOO realistic in his War & Peace philosophical ramblings, isn't he.


You shouldn't spoil the ending of the book like this in case anyone hasn't read it, Aramis.


----------



## Kieran

Masada said:


> ...though, it is winter and I've still not read Tolstoy's _War and Peace_. Being a fan of Pevear and Volokhonsky's translations of Russian masterpieces (most specifically their _Brother's Karamazov_, by Doestoevsky), it might be time to add this to the list once I've finished the above work:
> 
> View attachment 34754​
> This is a great looking collection of their translations on the shelf, bravo to whoever's this is!
> 
> View attachment 34755​


They're the translators I look for too. I have them for a couple Bulgakov books as well as Dostoyevsky, whose work is remarkable. I haven't yet read _Demons_ and would like to read _White_ _Nights_, but Dostoyevsky is a guy with an immense heart evident in his work, as well as great depth and brilliant descriptiveness...


----------



## Ingélou

Levanda said:


> I fan of Tolstoy but I could never understand why so world obsessed with Dostojevsky, his is miserable, reading his books nothing to please only guiltiness, depress, social unrealistic.


Oh, beg to differ - I had a huge 'Dostoevsky phase' between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two. I started with 'Crime & Punishment' after our English teacher had read us an extract, and I was so gripped by the story of the murder that when we visited my elder sister and her new baby, I left Mum & my younger sister with them downstairs while I skulked upstairs in a spare bedroom devouring the book.

Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' got to me later the same year. I was obsessed with death and the after-life & doing divination experiments, just like Pierre, and Tolstoy himself.

In the sixth form, I got on to that wonderful oddity, Gogol's 'Dead Souls'.

At university I read 'The Brothers Karamazov' and brooded over Alyosha's goodness, Russian Orthodox mysticism, and Ivan's vision of the Grand Inquisitor.

The world *enjoys* literature about misery, guilt, depression - look at 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear'. 
What's not to like?


----------



## Levanda

Ingelou Is good to hear world loving Russian Literature, yes Russia gave good powerful stories. Sorry for my criticism on Dostoevsky, we have study hard on his writings and I was bored to death. That why I am not fan on him. I would strongly advice to read Tostoy's Resurrection, this book break me to tears when I read it.

Levanda


----------



## Kieran

I read Tolstoy's _Confessions_ and found it very interesting. Beautifully written, too...


----------



## Cheyenne

A collection of essays on Ozu's _Tokyo Story_, which was recommended once by Mr. Rosenbaum on his blog.


----------



## aleazk

Ingélou said:


> The world *enjoys* literature about misery, guilt, depression - look at 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear'.
> What's not to like?


I like this "dark side" of the always positive and optimistic Ingélou.


----------



## Blancrocher

Ingélou said:


> The world *enjoys* literature about misery, guilt, depression - look at 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear'.
> What's not to like?


This wasn't always the case, however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_King_Lear


----------



## Tristan

Just started "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf. Only a few pages in, but already loving it  I picked up a few other of her novels at a bookstore the other day, so I'll probably end up reading them all, but figured I should start with this one


----------



## Piwikiwi

Tristan said:


> Just started "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf. Only a few pages in, but already loving it  I picked up a few other of her novels at a bookstore the other day, so I'll probably end up reading them all, but figured I should start with this one


Ah *beep* I also have to read that one. I've still got a pile of books to read before the first of may


----------



## samurai

Mark Twain--*Huckleberry Finn*


----------



## Vesteralen

I just finished Hildegarde Dolson's *We Shook the Family Tree*. Imagine moving to New York City in 1929 on the very day the stock market crashed hoping to get a job as a writer. This memoir of her childhood to young adulthood includes some amazing (and amazingly funny) stuff about that period of her life, and a whole lot more.

I also just finished Anne Sinclair Mehdevi's* From Pillar to Post*. This book is both a preguel and a sequel to her first book, *Persian Adventure*. In this one she and her Iranian husband and their very young children find themselves living in a variety of exotic locales like Mexico, Vienna and Majorca as he follows his various UN appointments.

I love these authors - they've opened up whole new worlds to me from the times surrounding my own early childhood and that of my parents'.


----------



## Blancrocher

I read "Concrete Island," which isn't quite, as the cover has it, "a stunning novel of savagery, strange sex--and survival..."--though it is fairly stunning. Sort of an update on Robinson Crusoe.

Unexpectedly well written--I intend to read more J.G. Ballard.


----------



## mirepoix

Just about ready to start 'The Proverb and Other Stories' by Marcel Ayme.


----------



## Berlioznestpasmort

Have again taken-up Alain-Fournier's_ Le Grand Meaulnes _ - this will be the sixth time I will have read (just love that future perfect, don't get to use it much) the work entire and _en français_. Filmed twice, and badly, it's a work that to my mind is unfilmable. Avowedly romantic, it captures perfectly and intimately that delicate transition between adolescence and adulthood where fantasy and reality commingle and instead of being at odds, appear to gain strength from each other. A beautiful and moving work made all the more precious and poignant by the death of the author in WWI at the age of 27. What a waste! There is a symphony by Michel Bosc (his 4th) named after the novel, but I have never heard it and need to.


----------



## Guest

Berlioznestpasmort said:


> Have again taken-up Alain-Fournier's_ Le Grand Meaulnes _ - this will be the sixth time I will have read (just love that future perfect, don't get to use it much) the work entire and _en français_. [...]


Vous en êtes sûr, mon cher? The Frenchies love the future perfect, but I ain't sure the double use of 'will' in the same clause (in GB grammar) is correct. I would have said: "This will be the 6th time I've read it". Perhaps it is an Americanism. For example, USA acquaintances of mine say "If I would have known I would have told you." 
Perhaps I should post this on Ken's "Pedantry" thread.


----------



## Berlioznestpasmort

TalkingHead said:


> Vous en êtes sûr, mon cher? The Frenchies love the future perfect, but I ain't sure the double use of 'will' in the same clause (in GB grammar) is correct. I would have said: "This will be the 6th time I've read it". Perhaps it is an Americanism. For example, USA acquaintances of mine say "If I would have known I would have told you."
> Perhaps I should post this on Ken's "Pedantry" thread.


You are _correct_ - my tea beeper was calling to me and I lost track of where I was in that most foolish of sentences. No, please, anything but posting on the Pedantry thread - that is a fate worse than death - I will never ever have been taken seriously there again in future sometime presently


----------



## Guest

Berlioznestpasmort said:


> You are _correct_ - my tea beeper was calling to me and I lost track of where I was in that most foolish of sentences. No, please, anything but posting on the Pedantry thread - that is a fate worse than death - I will never ever have been taken seriously there again in future sometime presently


A quite magisterial response. Chapeau, monsieur Berlioz-n'est-pas-mort !


----------



## Berlioznestpasmort

TalkingHead said:


> A quite magisterial response. Chapeau, monsieur Berlioz-n'est-pas-mort !


Merci de toutes vos bontés, M. Tête-qui-parle. :tiphat: Ces pédants, ils sont tous sujet à des colères violentes! Moi, je frémis à la pensée de ce qui m'aurait pu arriver…


----------



## Count

More than half way through Game of Thrones by George R.R Martin, great read. Much better than the T.V series, although I love that aswell.


----------



## Crudblud

Ernest Hemingway - _For Whom the Bell Tolls_

Pretty early on to be making judgements, I know, but Ernie's prose is bit bloody clunky, isn't it?


----------



## Masada

*1q84*

...finally...finished...Murakami's...1Q84...






​
...so...good...


----------



## Masada

Sonata said:


> Adult Children of Alcoholics
> 
> A big eye-opener, very good read so far.


The very same work blew my mind in so many beautiful, humbling, and helpful ways. Bravo!


----------



## Masada

Levanda said:


> I fan of Tolstoy but I could never understand why so world obsessed with Dostojevsky, his is miserable, reading his books nothing to please only guiltiness, depress, social unrealistic.


For me, Doestevsky was an important friend, let alone author, at a certain point in my life. I consider _The Brothers Karamazov_ to be a high-water mark of any artistic field. Same with _Crime and Punishment_. _Notes from Underground_ is a master study of the short work, right along with Gogol's _Nose_. It seems to me we live in a much more psychologically Doestoevskian world than Tolstoyian, though when one reviews the respective journals, letters, and secondary scholastic review, they are paired quite nicely.

I look forward to reading _War and Peace_ and continuing our shared observations, my friend, Levanda! Cheers!


----------



## Masada

Cheyenne said:


> View attachment 34918
> 
> 
> A collection of essays on Ozu's _Tokyo Story_, which was recommended once by Mr. Rosenbaum on his blog.


Incredible! I had no idea this existed. Ozu is the master and I've been deeply influenced by one of his understudy's in Teshigahara's filmic translation of _Woman in the Dunes_.


----------



## Count

Masada said:


> ...finally...finished...Murakami's...1Q84...
> 
> View attachment 35165​
> ...so...good...


I got that for Christmas, haven't got around to reading it yet. Looks really good though.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Levanda said:


> I fan of Tolstoy but I could never understand why so world obsessed with Dostojevsky, his is miserable, reading his books nothing to please only guiltiness, depress, social unrealistic.


Let me guess: you are Russian and were force-fed him in literature class?

I tried to read Crime and Punishment once, it gave me a headache after 30 or 40 pages, and I never touched it since. It was like walking through a world painted entirely in grey. My mom loves him though, so maybe it is an age and maturity thing.

Concerning Tolstoy, there is a joke that when teenagers get to read War and Peace in literature class, the guys only read the parts about war and the gals about love. I read both and quite enjoyed it.


----------



## Gilberto

Cool School - Writing From America's Hip Underground edited by Glenn O'Brien


----------



## mirepoix

Crudblud said:


> Ernest Hemingway - _For Whom the Bell Tolls_
> 
> Pretty early on to be making judgements, I know, but Ernie's prose is bit bloody clunky, isn't it?


I find that too, however I feel it's part of the charm and works well towards what he imparts.


----------



## Crudblud

mirepoix said:


> I find that too, however I feel it's part of the charm and works well towards what he imparts.


I'm getting used to it pretty quickly. I suppose it was especially jarring coming right off of _Catcher in the Rye_, which has a very loose colloquial style of prose.


----------



## Blancrocher

Crudblud said:


> Ernest Hemingway - _For Whom the Bell Tolls_
> 
> Pretty early on to be making judgements, I know, but Ernie's prose is bit bloody clunky, isn't it?


"But did thee feel the earth move?" I recall it was spoken at an astronomy convention, but still.

Highly recommend "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," though.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/heming.html


----------



## Haydn man

Recently finished Martin Luther King's autobiography
A good insight into the man and his philosophy including the text of all his important speeches and how practised and prepared them.
Doesn't go into who were the political movers and shakers in the freedom movement and of course does not deal with his death.
Never the less a book I would recommend


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Levanda said:


> I would strongly advice to read Tostoy's Resurrection, this book break me to tears when I read it.
> 
> Levanda


I read "Resurrection" when I was 14, it was in my grandfather's bookcase- I still have the bookcase, though sadly not that particular book- I loved it, and was moved to tears too, thank you Levanda for reminding me of it, I shall certainly get another copy and read it again.


----------



## SteveSherman

I'm right in the middle of Douglas Brinkley's biography of Walter Cronkite (American TV journalist and news reader). I'm just past the Kennedy assassination and into the early years of the Johnson administration. It was Cronkite who narrated this period of American history to me in my youth and early adulthood. Brinkley has captured it very well indeed.

And I'm rereading Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy for the Nth time. This is my favorite 20th century fantasy, just ahead of Pullman's His Dark Materials, and I never tire of it.


----------



## Guest

I've just received three books penned by Christopher ("Don't call me Chris") Hitchens:
a) God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything;
b) Hitch-22;
c) Mortality.
I've been looking forward to these for a good while after having being 'converted to the cause' via YouTube debates and other appearances of this thinker and writer. I would like to talk about these at a later time. Zealots (of all stripes) beware.


----------



## hpowders

TalkingHead said:


> I've just received three books penned by Christopher ("Don't call me Chris") Hitchens:
> a) God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything;
> b) Hitch-22;
> c) Mortality.
> I've been looking forward to these for a good while after having being 'converted to the cause' via YouTube debates and other appearances of this thinker and writer. I would like to talk about these at a later time. Zealots (of all stripes) beware.


See you in Church.


----------



## Guest

See you there on the Sabbath!


----------



## hpowders

TalkingHead said:


> See you there on the Sabbath!


Witches' Sabbath?


----------



## Kieran

I read Hitch-22 and loved the guy, through this book. he's witty and very sharp, plus he had a full-on contact with fighting for justice as he sees it. A remarkable guy. I scrolled through _God is Not Great_ and found the arguments to be banal, which is typical of the atheist evangelists, but unlike Dawkins, Hitch writes with wit and great passion.

I'm still reading _Mason & Dixon _by Thomas Pynchon. Not a book to be skimmed through. But I'm loving every comma and utterance of this book. It's the strangest book I've read in a while, but it sucks me into its own remarkably written world, so much so that I can hear the voices and see the faces of everyone in it. It has some hilariously odd episodes, but it's the detail that grips me. He's an incredible writer, I look forward to more by him, when this one is done and dusted. Maybe _V._ next...


----------



## hpowders

Hitler's Willing Executioners. (Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust) Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.


----------



## Sonata

Oh I'm rather embarassed because I'm currently reading a VC Andrews book, which have crazy over the top soap-opery plots. And not even the ORIGINAL VC Andrews books, which while formulaic and crazy had fairly decent quality writing. These ghost-written ones are fairly bad. Almost laughably so, sometimes there's enjoyment in that. The thing is though I grew up on VC Andrews books, so there's some nostalgia. It was in a set of old giveaway library books.

I've been reading a lot of very serious books lately....medicine, psychology, spirituality, biographies....and I'm loving it. But right now I need to pad my brain with a little cheap fluff. lol.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Piwikiwi said:


> Das leiden des jungen Werhters by Goethe


I think I hate Werther more than I hate Holden Caulfield.


----------



## GreenMamba

Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery. I was looking for a quick read between more "serious" books so I borrowed a copy from someone.


----------



## SixFootScowl

The One Year Chronological Bible NKJV







This is wonderful Bible because everything is in chronological order and you really get a much better feel for all the writings of the various prophets when it is intertwined with the historical books. I am starting in the New Testament so I can get a better picture of the events of the early church. Also nice is that the Gospels are not harmonized but are interwoven so that same events in more than one Gospel account follow each other, making for better comparison. Or course there are judgement calls on chronology, such as the time of the book of Job, which in this Bible comes in the middle of the book of Genesis, and the placement of many of the Psalms which are not directly associated with particular events in the histories. All in all, it is a wonderful and refreshing way to read the Bible. This is also available in NIV, but I strongly prefer the NKJV for what I believe to be the better underlying Greek texts and that the NKJV (unlike the NIV) does not make judgement calls in footnotes, but merely presents the alternate translations.

Let me add, for those considering this Bible, there is a list at the back of all the Books in standard order so you can look up a verse and find it's location.


----------



## clavichorder

Finished the Dreaming Void, now moving on to the Temporal Void. Very addicting.


----------



## Gilberto

Florestan said:


> The One Year Chronological Bible NKJV
> View attachment 35343
> 
> This is wonderful Bible because everything is in chronological order and you really get a much better feel for all the writings of the various prophets when it is intertwined with the historical books. I am starting in the New Testament so I can get a better picture of the events of the early church. Also nice is that the Gospels are not harmonized but are interwoven so that same events in more than one Gospel account follow each other, making for better comparison. Or course there are judgement calls on chronology, such as the time of the book of Job, which in this Bible comes in the middle of the book of Genesis, and the placement of many of the Psalms which are not directly associated with particular events in the histories. All in all, it is a wonderful and refreshing way to read the Bible. This is also available in NIV, but I strongly prefer the NKJV for what I believe to be the better underlying Greek texts and that the NKJV (unlike the NIV) does not make judgement calls in footnotes, but merely presents the alternate translations.
> 
> Let me add, for those considering this Bible, there is a list at the back of all the Books in standard order so you can look up a verse and find it's location.


I "get it" but not my way to go. I have read through some that way but I prefer the books "proper". Over the years it just doesn't resonant with me. And I prefer the original KJV for a number of reasons.

Latest I'm reading









Let's play "catch up"


----------



## Guest

I just picked up several to read:
Robert Jordan - The Eye of the World
Orson Scott Card - Speaker for the Dead
Isaac Asimov - Nemesis


----------



## SiegendesLicht

I tried to start the whole huge Robert Jordan cycle several times, but something always kept me from getting further than the first book. I'll try again one of these days. It's so atmospheric you almost move out into the world of this story when you read it.


----------



## Ukko

I am 138 pages into _*Matterhorn* - A Novel Of the Vietnam War_. By Karl Marlantes.

Time Magazine calls it "A powerhouse, tense, brutal, honest." It is also emphatically not a glorification of war. The youngsters hooked on computer war games should read it - for a reality check. The author was a bush Marine. It took him 30 years to get the story written; it's fairly amazing that he was able to write it at all. Damn!


----------



## samurai

Ukko said:


> I am 138 pages into _*Matterhorn* - A Novel Of the Vietnam War_. By Karl Marlantes.
> 
> Time Magazine calls it "A powerhouse, tense, brutal, honest." It is also emphatically not a glorification of war. The youngsters hooked on computer war games should read it - for a reality check. The author was a bush Marine. It took him 30 years to get the story written; it's fairly amazing that he was able to write it at all. Damn!


And these youngsters better hope and pray that we never have a draft again.
Great post, Ukko! :cheers:


----------



## Piwikiwi

I just finished woyzeck today


----------



## mirepoix

Starting a book I'd always meant to read - 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' by Joseph Campbell. It was either that or an abridged edition of 'The Golden Bough'.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

Currently, I am re-reading an old favourite in John Wyndham's *Day of the Triffids*.

Next book, my first introduction to Jane Austen in *Emma*.


----------



## lupinix

Margot Adler Drawing Down the Moon


----------



## GreenMamba

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It


----------



## Tristan

I'm re-reading *Ender's Game* by Orson Scott Card. I saw the movie recently (which was decent) and it rekindled my interest in the book. First read it when I was 12 and loved it, so I wanted to re-visit. It is making me want to read the other "Ender" series books.


----------



## brotagonist

_İstanbul_ by Pamuk Orhan


----------



## samurai

Tristan said:


> I'm re-reading *Ender's Game* by Orson Scott Card. I saw the movie recently (which was decent) and it rekindled my interest in the book. First read it when I was 12 and loved it, so I wanted to re-visit. It is making me want to read the other "Ender" series books.


I just got the paperback editions from *Amazon* {it's a quartet, relatively cheap}, as well as reading the prequels *The First Formic War {Earth Unaware and Earth Afire}*; have read the first, awaiting delivery of the second from Science Fiction Book Club. Harrison Ford's in the movie version, is he not? I'm glad to see that you liked it, as from what I've been able to read, the movie got panned pretty severely. I'll pot it in my Netflix hopper then, based on your recommendation. Thanks!


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

This book is basically substantiating everything that I've felt in my heart to be true about exactly how _ruined _this world is, and how much I want to live a different life from the people around me.


----------



## Cheyenne

Huilunsoittaja said:


> This book is basically substantiating everything that I've felt in my heart to be true about exactly how _ruined _this world is, and how much I want to live a different life from the people around me.


Ah, sex! Such an overrated activity! Give me some music instead! Mr. Glazunov should be ample replacement :tiphat:

I'm currently reading James Huneker's _Old Fogy_ - a series of burlesques supposedly written by an old musician but of course actually written by Huneker. It is quite hilarious, yet poignant in regards to old age at the same time. The old man's eloquent laments about his aging and the disillusionment that comes with it feel almost like they come from Huneker himself: "the sap of generous enthusiasm no longer flows through my veins." Ah, enthusiasm; the one thing that made dear Huneker so very charming! His later years were dark indeed:

I have never known a man whose falling years were more melancholy. The work of his life was behind him and he knew it: what he did of an evening for The World was only a laborious boiling of the pot. On all sides loomed wrack and wreck, rust and ruin. The old battles were over and half forgotten; the old delights were under the Methodist interdict; of the old friends, more were dead than alive; all the ancient and charming haunts were dark.​
Mencken wrote that in the introduction of "Essays by James Huneker" - an excellent volume, incidentally. I have started to leave Mr. Huneker's works more than I probably should. As he himself stated, "my temperament has always inclined to the excessive, the full-blown, the flamboyant." Very true! Read through _Mezzotints in Modern Music_ once if you want some thoroughly enjoyable music criticism.


----------



## Guest

_*Dexter's Final Cut.*_


----------



## brotagonist

Huilunsoittaja said:


> This book is basically substantiating everything that I've felt in my heart to be true about exactly how _ruined _this world is, and how much I want to live a different life from the people around me.


Sounds wise Huilunsoittaja.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Cheyenne said:


> Ah, sex! Such an overrated activity! Give me some music instead! Mr. Glazunov should be ample replacement :tiphat:


:lol: That's not exactly what it's about but sure!  Being about chastity, it doesn't downplay the importance of sex at all, but in fact makes it even more precious than ever.

@brotagonist those are definitely good reasons for being careful, but the book goes farther than that (this book comes from a Christian perspective that doesn't just go through the practical reasons for chastity).


----------



## Sonata

Huilunsoittaja said:


> :lol: That's not exactly what it's about but sure!  Being about chastity, it doesn't downplay the importance of sex at all, but in fact makes it even more precious than ever.
> 
> @brotagonist those are definitely good reasons for being careful, but the book goes farther than that (this book comes from a Christian perspective that doesn't just go through the practical reasons for chastity).


Well, I'm not chaste and have no desire to be (I'm happily married and mother of two after all!) but it sounds like an interesting book. I've been reading a lot of spiritually-related books lately, maybe I'll check it out.

I'm currently reading *"Full Catastrophe Living"* by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This is a fairly intensive stress-reduction program in book form. I've been contemplating taking a stress reduction course in town lately, but I have a hard time bringing myself to invest the time....with doctor's appointments, work, exercise, piano lessons, and some upcoming community service work, I feel I'm away from my family enough as it is. So this is a good alternative (I hope!)


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Sonata said:


> Well, I'm not chaste and have no desire to be (I'm happily married and mother of two after all!) but it sounds like an interesting book. I've been reading a lot of spiritually-related books lately, maybe I'll check it out.


It's interesting you put it that way, that marriage no longer needs chastity! In fact, married couple _still _need to practice chastity within their marriage, this author goes into this just as much as for single people! Chastity never is simply abstinence, it's about the respect that each gives the other in the relationship.


----------



## mirepoix

Hemingway - The First 49 Stories.
There are still a few in this collection I haven't read. When I find something I enjoy I'm always aware there's only a finite amount, so I firstly pace and then eventually indulge myself.


----------



## lupinix

Drawing Down the Moon


----------



## Gilberto

Just finished Simple Dreams, A Musical Memoir by Linda Ronstadt. After reading Carole King and Carly Simon's autobiographies, I'm glad Linda kept it to a musical memoir. But she just insisted on injecting her political views every little whip stitch.

Just beginning Eight Miles High - Folk-Rock's Flight From Haight-Ashbury To Woodstock by Richie Unterberger. So far this is making a good case that psychedelic music was the baby of folk music rather than rock and roll.


----------



## clavichorder

Finally am on the final section of "The Void Trilogy," "The evolutionary void." I really enjoyed "The Temporal Void."


----------



## Guest

I received my "Chris" Hitchens books recently. They were "God is not Great", "Hitch-22" and "Mortality". I'm pretty happy reading those at the moment. Maybe we can talk about these at some juncture?


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

TalkingHead said:


> I received my "Chris" Hitchens books recently. They were "God is not Great", "Hitch-22" and "Mortality". I'm pretty happy reading those at the moment. Maybe we can talk about these at some juncture?


Read Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky.


----------



## Guest

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Read Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky.


I thank you for your imperative, Huilunsoittaja. May I ask in advance why I should do so?


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

TalkingHead said:


> I thank you for your imperative, Huilunsoittaja. May I ask in advance why I should do so?


Because there were those who grappled with the questions Hitchens grappled with a century before, which would have been some help if he happened not to have read that book. But I wouldn't be surprised at all of he did, it's one of the number one most revolutionary books of all time.


----------



## Guest

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Because there were those who grappled with the questions Hitchens grappled with a century before, which would have been some help if he happened not to have read that book. But I wouldn't be surprised at all of he did, it's one of the number one most revolutionary books of all time.


Hitchens, as far as I can tell, was an extremely well-read man. I will have to check in the index/bibliography, but I feel sure he read Dostoevsky when he was 15.


----------



## GreenMamba

TalkingHead said:


> Hitchens, as far as I can tell, was an extremely well-read man. I will have to check in the index/bibliography, but I feel sure he read Dostoevsky when he was 15.


Yeah, I would be gob-smacked if he didn't read Notes from the Underground.


----------



## Guest

TalkingHead said:


> I received my "Chris" Hitchens books recently. They were "God is not Great", "Hitch-22" and "Mortality". I'm pretty happy reading those at the moment. Maybe we can talk about these at some juncture?


I read "god is not Great," and it truly soured my opinion of Hitch. That book was filled with so many inaccuracies and downright wrong statements and assertions, it did his argument no good. I'm not talking about debatable points of opinion, or even unprovable religious statements - I'm talking about simple historical facts that one can check in less than a minute on the internet. And he got so many wrong. There was a discussion somewhere on here - I'll try to find the thread - where I listed the various problems I found with the book. Truly disappointing - I disagreed with him vehemently on many points, but loved how he argued. Until I read this book and got the impression that he was not above simply fudging the facts to argue his case. Made me have to question his "facts" in other arguments.

I have heard that Hitch-22 is a good read, though.

Edit: The thread is here. It was on the death of Hitchens. My comments on the book begin around post 93 - that is, my direct comments from reading it myself. I believe I posted some things from reviews prior to that.


----------



## Guest

Thank you DrMike for the heads up on that "Christopher Hitchens has Died" thread; I will be reading that with great interest soon. Before I enter into any debate, I will just say in passing that I devoured "god is Great" and "Mortality" with relish, and am currently reading "Hitch-22", which is indeed a great read. I purchased these three books on the basis of various YouTube debates that I saw with Hitchens giving his perorations during debates with Christians and other assorted religious folk. I'll get back to you as and when I can. If I don't reply in the short term it won't be an attempt at evasion, rather other pressing tasks involving earning one's living. If I am too tardy, you can always send me a PM as a reminder.


----------



## samurai

John Dos Passos--*
Mr. Wilson's War 
*Jack Beatty--* The Lost History Of 1914: Reconsidering The Year The Great War Began *


----------



## Freischutz

I seem to go through phases of musical hermitism and musical exploration - sometimes I listen to the same handful of pieces over and over for months and then I explode and listen to new things without end.

I'm exploding at the moment, so I recently bought Alex Ross's _The Rest Is Noise_ and am digging around Spotify for recordings of all the pieces he talks about that I haven't heard before. That dissonance at the end of Strauss's _Salome_ is incredible!


----------



## danielsshao

Just finished reading Peter H. Wilson's book on the Thirty Years' War. I must admit that I didn't wholly enjoy it: the book was very good at convincing me that Mr. Wilson knew very much about the war, and in presenting very persuasive arguments against outdated historical views, but in helping me to understand and sympathize with the people and national and religious interests so central to the war, it was far less successful. I rated it a three stars out of five with a heavy deal of regret: because it was obviously very good on the level of scholarship and research, but at the same time I didn't enjoy it a ton.

The section on the operations of the war itself were most guilty of this, which might be unforgivable for a book about THE WAR. I felt as if Wilson took the same template for each battle and modified it slightly with names. "x prepared on y terrain for the battle. This helped him greatly in an ambush by the musketeers. Oh, but x made a critical mistake! X's lines were soon under the severe pressure of the enemy! Even though X drove the enemy off, x's forces were demoralized! They withdrew from the field, turning a possible victory into defeat!" 

However, the analysis sections were much better. I found it particularly interesting how unreliable payment to the soldiers really was: most of the states in the war were heavily in debt even at the start and slipped into bankruptcy over the course of it, and often the combatants were rarely or never paid, particularly the Spanish Army of Flanders. Another interesting point Wilson made well was that tactics and organization usually portrayed as anachronistic or inefficient weren't necessarily so: like the mass hiring of mercenaries (who, owing to their nature as professional soldiers, could often be highly useful) or the usefulness of the Spanish Tercio against the Dutch formations (Tercio, despite being more reliant on cold steel, was more useful and flexible than one might think).


----------



## cwarchc

The Field Marshal's Revenge : The Breakdown of a Special Relationship
An interesting read about the UK & USA relationship during WW2


----------



## Blancrocher

"Voltaire in Love." Nancy Mitford's brilliant, gossipy account of Voltaire's long relationship with the Marquise du Châtelet.


----------



## Cheyenne

I am reading some lovely poems by John Donne:

Cursed may he be, that so our love hath slain,
And wander on the earth, wretched as Cain,
Wretched as he, and not deserve least pity.
In plaguing him, let misery be witty;
Let all eyes shun him, and he shun each eye,
Till he be noisome as his infamy;
May he without remorse deny God thrice,
And not be trusted more on his soul's price;
And, after all self-torment, when he dies,
May wolves tear out his heart, vultures his eyes,
Swine eat his bowels, and his falser tongue
That utter'd all, be to some raven flung;
And let his carrion corse be a longer feast
To the king's dogs, than any other beast.​


----------



## mirepoix

My new/old cookery book.

















"Sixty-five classic and traditional French and English sauces that any man can make at home."

_Any man_.


----------



## Morimur

_"Kolyma Tales" by Varlam Shalamov_

Highly recommended, especially if you like Winter.


----------



## HaydnBearstheClock

William Shakespeare - King Lear


----------



## ShropshireMoose

"The Poor Mouth" by Flann O'Brien

Having read, and enjoyed the first volume of Beethoven's collected letters, I am now starting on another book by the incomparable Mr. O'Brien (I've already read "The Third Policeman" and "The Dalkey Archive") to which I am looking forward to immensely.


----------



## Guest

Zen and the art of running, by Larry Shapiro.

Chapter one...obstacles


----------



## Cosmos

I'm in the middle of two:

Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell. It's told from the viewpoint of several characters from around the world, that are more or less connected by coincidences. It's interesting so far, I've only read five stories so far, and had different reactions to each. Overall, it's written beautifully; I love Mitchell's voice

The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross. A non-fiction book about the classical music world in the 20th century. It talks about different pieces of music, lives of some composers, and the political and social events that influenced them. I highly recommend.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

Cosmos said:


> The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross. A non-fiction book about the classical music world in the 20th century. It talks about different pieces of music, lives of some composers, and the political and social events that influenced them. I highly recommend.


I just picked this up today after looking at a friends copy. Looks most promising indeed.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

I'm on a reading break but my reading list for the next five books is set out, though the order may vary. With the exception of the first book on this list (a very recent purchase), I am chipping away at my backlog.

*The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross*
View attachment 36642


*The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde*
View attachment 36646


*Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
View attachment 36647


*Brave New World - Aldous Huxley*
View attachment 36648


*Otto Klemperer: On Music - Shavings from a Musicians Workbench*
View attachment 36649


----------



## mirepoix

AClockworkOrange said:


> I'm on a reading break but my reading list for the next five books is set out, though the order may vary. With the exception of the first book on this list (a very recent purchase), I am chipping away at my backlog.
> 
> *The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross*
> View attachment 36642
> 
> 
> *The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde*
> View attachment 36646
> 
> 
> *Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
> View attachment 36647
> 
> 
> *Brave New World - Aldous Huxley*
> View attachment 36648
> 
> 
> *Otto Klemperer: On Music - Shavings from a Musicians Workbench*
> View attachment 36649


Good stuff.
If I might be so bold (and you haven't read it yet) I'd suggest adding 'Against the Grain (A Rebours)' by J.-K. Huysmans to that list - it could sit comfortably in there.


----------



## Mahlerian

I just finished _The Classical Style_ by Charles Rosen.










Loaded with musical score examples, but still accessible to the modestly educated layperson, I believe, especially one with access to recordings of the pieces Rosen talks about in detail, which is everyone with an internet connection!


----------



## AClockworkOrange

mirepoix said:


> Good stuff.
> If I might be so bold (and you haven't read it yet) I'd suggest adding 'Against the Grain (A Rebours)' by J.-K. Huysmans to that list - it could sit comfortably in there.


I have not heard of either the author or the work I'm afraid. I will look into this however, thanks.


----------



## Ingélou

In between library books et al, I am still dipping into Michael Steen's 'Lives & Times of the Great Composers', and was tickled by this passage, which - with apologies to Siegendeslicht - I am going to share:

'Not surprisingly, love was the emotion on which the Romantics thrived. Often that love was not sexual love, but something purer, like the "total dedication of one soul to another", or the dreamy, melancholy longing, the yearning for the unattainable. *Wagner's characters frequently yearn for something; to the ordinary listener, it is not always immediately obvious for what they yearn so passionately; but no doubt, it was important to yearn.*'


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Ingelou, why would you apologize to me? 

There is plenty of yearning in Wagner. It resounds not only in the words of the characters, but in the music itself, even in the purely instrumental parts, and when I first encountered Wagner's music, I recognized this yearning as something that I had been always looking for in music, but could not quite put a finger on - and fell in love with it.


----------



## mirepoix

AClockworkOrange said:


> I have not heard of either the author or the work I'm afraid. I will look into this however, thanks.


You're welcome.
Huysmans is considered an author of decadent literature and À rebours a work that had huge influence on such as Wilde (it's thought that the "poisonous French novel" featured in Dorian Gray is À rebours) and Paul Valery.

In any case, enjoy working through your reading list.


----------



## samurai

Seamus Heaney {translator}--* Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition*


----------



## Ukko

I'm still reading _*Matterhorn*_. 370 pages in (of 600, plus an afterword). It's too intense for this geezer to absorb in big chunks.

*[Teaser]* The afterword details an interview a 'war reporter' (who had just left Iraq) had with the author. In it, the author laughs, and says "The whole book is Parzifal". Note that the Parzifal story was the basis for Wagner's opera with almost the same name.

*[Alert]* That interview is from 2010. A re-staging of _Parsifal_ as _Matterhorn_ must be due soon.


----------



## GreenMamba

The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo, by Glover S. Johns. 

The author was a US Army battalion commander during the breakout after Normandy. So far, so good. He makes the interesting decision to refer to write it in the third person ("Major Johns, nervous with his first battlefield command..."). He says he was a different person during the war.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Rereading some of Wagner's prose writings in the English translation of William Ashton Ellis: "On German Music", "A Pligrimage to Beethoven", "A Communication to My Friends" and "Opera and Drama". Some of his prose is admittedly difficult to follow, but some passages I reread over and over again in the course of time, particularly those where the Meister tells of his Parisian experience, of his great loneliness and homesickness, of how it led him to study first the history and then the myths and folk-legends of his homeland and of how out of those studies were born first Tannhäuser, and then the Ring and all the other operas that we know and love.


----------



## DrKilroy

Shakespeare - Midsummer Night's Dream. 


Best regards, Dr


----------



## Cheyenne

I'm currently reading Jorge Luis Borges' selected non-fictions, published by Penguin in their excellent modern classics series. It was recommended to me some time ago by StLukesguildohio in a thread about non-fiction, I believe. A great read! Soon think I will reread the dazzling _Chopin: The Man and his Music_ by the estimable James Gibbons Huneker. I've neglected Chopin for far too long!


----------



## ShropshireMoose

My Lunches With Orson- conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles edited by Peter Biskind.

These took place 1983-5 when HJ would dine with OW and, with his permission, tape recorded their conversation, wide ranging, controversial..... and absolutely fascinating!


----------



## Ingélou

I am reading Vincent Cronin's biography of Louis XVI, The Sun King. It is amazingly readable, which I remember from having read it as an undergraduate over 40 years ago. But I just looked him up, and discovered that he was A. J. Cronin's son, so nae wonder!


----------



## Andreas

Just finished: Christian Kracht, Faserland
Starting: Werner Herzog, Of Walking in Ice


----------



## mirepoix

I'm a few pages into this -









- 'Last Nights of Paris' by Philippe Soupault.


----------



## drpraetorus

"Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution" A fascinating recounting of the early stages of the American Revolution in the Boston and New England areas.


----------



## Gilberto

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai ....very brilliant Pakistani girl. The Taliban shot her for standing up to them and fighting for females to have the right to an education. And equal rights for that matter. She survived a point blank shot to the head and survived...every once in awhile the good guys win one.


----------



## aleazk

Cheyenne said:


> I'm currently reading Jorge Luis Borges' selected non-fictions, published by Penguin in their excellent modern classics series. It was recommended to me some time ago by StLukesguildohio in a thread about non-fiction, I believe. A great read! Soon think I will reread the dazzling _Chopin: The Man and his Music_ by the estimable James Gibbons Huneker. I've neglected Chopin for far too long!


Borges' erudition in curious topics is funny. I remember reading a complete and detailed historical account of the famous Zeno's paradoxes, with particular emphasis in the most hilarious solutions that were proposed through history.

But definitely it's his fiction what is unsurpassable.


----------



## Crudblud

George Orwell - _Coming Up for Air_

Welcome change of pace after the seemingly interminable _For Whom the Bell Tolls_. It has a refreshing petty Englishness to it, which makes quite a comforting return home after being stranded in the war-torn wilderness of Spain for so long.


----------



## samurai

Howard Blum--*Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and The Hunt For The First Terrorist Cell in America*


----------



## GreenMamba

John Powell's How a Music Works. I'm slightly concerned that I'm not going to learn a whole lot from it, but we'll see.


----------



## julianoq

Cosmos said:


> The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross. A non-fiction book about the classical music world in the 20th century. It talks about different pieces of music, lives of some composers, and the political and social events that influenced them. I highly recommend.


Thanks for recommending this, I bought it yesterday on kindle and I am loving it. Very interesting read.


----------



## Gilberto

Louis Armstrong - Master Of Modernism by Thomas Brothers

Wow...not even 100 pages yet into this 600 page tome. I never realized how little I knew about early 1900s jazz origins.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Simenon passes the time very pleasantly I find.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Ernst F. Jung - Die Germanen, a book on the early history of the Germanic nations.









So far I find it to be one of the most gripping history books I have ever come across (of course the subject matter itself is fascinating). Facts, dates and archaeological finds are interwoven with beautiful, poetic descriptions of life in the ancient Germanic world, of feasts and battles and rituals and faith, complete with the mythological, Wagnerian imagery. Here is just one short quote:

"... In Wotan's multifaceted, ever-changing image the Teutons themselves are reflected: complexity, restlessness, inconstancy, quckly rising anger, a penchant for brooding and contemplation, a desire for the dark wisdom of the runes, for a look into the future, even to the end of all things. In any case, through the times Wotan's mythical image undergoes significant changes, and with him, those who worship him, also change" (translation mine, so it may be a bit off).

It's when I read books like this one that I identify particularly strongly with another, a far greater man who also studied this history almost 200 years ago and was so fascinated by the culture and faith of his ancestors that he spent twenty-five years giving it a new life. I am an admirer of Wagner when I listen to his music, I am a kindred soul to Wagner when I read a book like this.

I think "The Ring Without Words" will be the most fitting sountrack to my reading.


----------



## science

samurai said:


> Seamus Heaney {translator}--* Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition*


I love that translation of _Beowulf_, but hearing Heaney read it was very disappointing. It needs to be read by someone like Sean Connery.


----------



## Cheyenne

I am reading _The Great Composers: Reviews and Bombardments_, the greatest selection of Shaw's musical reviews on the market, edited by Louis Crompton. (The others being _How to Become a Musical Critic_, edited by Dan H. Laurence, and _Shaw on Music_, edited by Eric Bentley.) Eric Bentley's selection has recently been reprinted, but the typography is horrible, and the selections are worse; I'd rather recommend searching out a used edition of _The Great Composers_. Shaw's writings on Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner are especially valuable, as are his humorous take-downs of Mendelssohn, with his "Sunday-school profundities". His negative views on Brahms (which he retracted, to a certain extent) may also please the anti-Brahmsians.

Secondly, I am reading _The Waste Books_: the notebooks of Lichtenberg, translated by the estimable R.J. Hollingdale, known for his translations of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The selections are great. I understand why Nietzsche, in _Menschliches, Allzumenschliches_, deemed Lichtenberg's aphorisms one of the "treasures of German prose"*. Illuminating, witty, and indicative of a great character!

Last but not least, I am perusing yet another volume of Goethe's works. This time it is _The Goethe Treasury_, a 2006 reprint of the 1948 collection _The Permament Goethe_, but with the selections from _Faust_ removed. It was edited by Thomas Mann, who also wrote an excellent introduction for it. I bought it largely for the translations and selections of the poetry. Mann made the selection, and was helped in his selection of the translations. Those translations which he considered inadequate where supplemented with new translations by Stephen Spender(!), among others. It's great to see the Walter Scott translations of the poems (more for Scott's character than for the poems themselves). If you have have a mild control over German, like me, you'll likely benefit more from Stanley Appelbaum's precise prose translations, printed in the Dover Dual-Language series. There is also a dual-language edition with verse translations available in the Penguin classics series. Carlyle, Spender, Scott and the other translators in this version are obviously less precise; but though the results may not be pure Goethe, they are highly enjoyable.

*: If anybody is curious, the other works Nietzsche deemed true treasures of German prose, worthy of being read again and again, were the prose works of Goethe (presumably meaning his autobiography _Truth and Fiction relating to my Life_, and his novels - _Die Leiden des Junen Werthers_, _Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship_, _Elective Affinities_ and _Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years_), Eckermann's _Conversations with Goethe_ ("that greatest of German books"), the first book of Heinrich Stilling's (Johann Heinrich Jung's) _Story of My Life_, Adalbert Stifter's _St. Martin's Summer_ and Gottfried Keller's _People of Seldwyla_.


----------



## Crudblud

James Joyce - _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_

More tentative toe-dipping than reading, really. At only 13 pages in I could well turn my back on it without feeling *too *guilty...

Edit: And my back has indeed been turned, for it has been too long since my last encounter with...

Thomas Pynchon! (ta-daaaaaa!) This time it's the famous _Gravity's Rainbow_.


----------



## starthrower

Goliath:Life And Loathing In Greater Israel by Max Blumenthal
I don't think I'm going to make it through this one. The carnage and cruelty is too depressing.

Shell Shocked by Howard Kaylan 
Read through the Turtles and Zappa years. That was enough.

Theological Political Treatise- Benedict de Spinoza
This is interesting, but I suppose he's preaching to my choir. And he did it in the 17th century!


----------



## Guest

_The Devil's Star_ by Jo Nesbø


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Crazy Love: Dealing with your partner's problem personality by W. Brad Johnsona and Kelly Murray.

Having had a stupid affair with a girl who was showing some symptoms of Personality Disorder, i came across this book and found it very clarifying.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Moving from Simenon to Plato! Looking forward to getting my brain (such as it is) wrapped around this one.


----------



## Ukko

Have rung in Ross' The Rest Is Noise as my kitchen table book, and Eco's The Prague Cemetery as my easy-chair book. Ross is, so far anyway, somewhat on the verbose side - well, actually it's excess adjectives that are the problem, but adjectivose is apparently not a word. Eco and his translator are doing fine.


----------



## Gilberto

The United States Of Paranoia by Jesse Walker 

I'm finding comfort in the fact that my ancestors were weirdos too.


----------



## musicrom

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's _One Hundred Years of Solitude_. Liking it so far


----------



## Katie

ShropshireMoose said:


> Moving from Simenon to Plato! Looking forward to getting my brain (such as it is) wrapped around this one.


Not to be a spoilsport or anything, but it's Euthyphro, Sr., in the conservatory, with the candlestick. I'm reading volume IV of the Bloom County diaries, wherein our protagonist, Opus (note the TC tie-in), undertakes profound, Odysseusian (?!), life-affirming journeys while variously encountering the "the skinny-dippin' wolf women of planet Heineken", Zygorthian Raiders from the Black Nebula, Rosebud the basselope, and a Giant Purple Snorklewhacker. The wonder of it all./k


----------



## Cheyenne

I'm reading Goethe's _Iphigenia in Tauris_ right now - I merely needed a pause to process its magnificence. The praise with which Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Hjalmar Hjorth, Bayard Taylor, Thomas Mann, Nietzsche and others awarded it was not exaggerated!


----------



## Marschallin Blair

*Albert Jay Nock: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man*









A supreme arbiter of taste; and an elegantly civilized man.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> Ingélou: I am reading Vincent Cronin's biography of Louis XIV, The Sun King. It is amazingly readable, which I remember from having read it as an undergraduate over 40 years ago. But I just looked him up, and discovered that he was A. J. Cronin's son, so nae wonder!


Even more interesting dish on the Court of Versailles, from someone who was there, the Duc de Saint-Simon:


----------



## GreenMamba

A short story (albeit a long one) I picked up with part of my Amazon refund. I don't read e-books often, but I can endure one for 50 pages.

I thought Ames' Wake Up, Sir was a clever spin on Wooster and Jeeves. This one is more hard-boiled (about an ex-Marine who is hired to free a young girl from sexual slavery), but well worth the 99 cents.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

*Thomas Beecham: An Obsession With Music*
John Lucas
View attachment 38546


I am in more of a biographical mood than a fictional mood so this has jumped up the queue. I'll be starting this one tonight.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I'm reading excerpts of this to do with Scheherazade and Antar (for a paper I'm writing about both of them in comparison), but of course... I couldn't help diverting myself with other sections of the book... where Glazunov is concerned. 

Update: According to R-K, Glazunov's weirdness of conducting was only because he was extremely constrained/introverted (like myself), but experience really helped him out. Since he wasn't a performing musician like myself (for which conducting is pretty easy for me now), I'm sure it was tough to handle for someone sensitive like him. I would have loved to see what he was like...


----------



## Cheyenne

_James Gibbons Huneker: Critic of the Seven Arts_, the only biography available about the estimable James Huneker. My copy was signed by the author, Arnold T. Schwab, thought it was only 10 bucks - I guess nobody really cares! It makes me appreciate him even more as a critic. Also, I should add, as a wit. He called the pianist Pachmann, with whom he had many public feuds before becoming friends, "the Chopinzee"; and once, after a performance of _Aida_ in which the lead actress was stilted and cold, he started his review with the sentence: "There was skating on the Nile last night." The records of his speaking are astounding. "Skeptical acquaintances could scarcely believe that any human being -- let alone a pianist _manqué_ -- could be such a virtuoso of language and have so much curious lore at his fingertips." His friend Rosebault depicted the young Huneker:

Imagine the _Encyclopeadia Britannica_ suddenly becoming vocal and giving tongue with all its potential eloquence; skipping from A to L and thence to G and on to Z, selecting topics helter-skelter, so that the pattern on the whole, if reduced to design and color, would be very like a crazy quilt of many hues. Have the speed of speech equal to that of the motor of a twin-six at an exhibition tryout. Lend to it the fire and enthusiasm of a young Sicilian at the climax of his first love avowal.​


----------



## Fortinbras Armstrong

I am currently re-reading Barry Hughart's Master Li novels. He intended to write seven novels in the series, but quit after only three (he was majorly screwed by his publisher, and could not change publishers because of contractual obligations).

The three are _Bridge of Birds_, _The Story of the Stone_ and _Eight Skilled Gentlemen_. My favorite bit in all three is in the last, where Master Li and Number Ten Ox (Master Li's former client and current assistant, who narrates the stories) have to dispose of a corpse. They go to a friend for advice, and he reminds them that the Grand Warden of Goose Gate is giving a banquet in two days. The way the three of them deliver a sumptuous banquet from the corpse is a masterpiece of comic writing. It is saved from being gruesome by Ox's expressions of disgust at what they are doing.


----------



## DrKilroy

I went to library and what I got:

Shakespeare - complete comedies, Othello, Troilus and Cressida;
Moliere - Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Misanthrope, The Miser;
Nałkowska - Granica (The Frontier);
Wyspiański - Wesele (The Wedding).

You probably do not know the latter two, but they are among the leading Polish authors. Wyspiański is quite well known as a painter, though, I believe. Nałkowska was not so fortunate, I do not think there are even any translations of her writings. The Wedding has been translated by Noel Clark, so if you ever come across it, by all means read it, albeit it is not an easy lecture.  


Best regards, Dr


----------



## GreenMamba

DrKilroy said:


> I went to library and what I got:
> 
> Shakespeare - complete comedies, Othello, Troilus and Cressida;
> Moliere - Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Misanthrope, The Miser;
> Nałkowska - Granica (The Frontier);
> Wyspiański - Wesele (The Wedding).
> 
> You probably do not know the latter two, but they are among the leading Polish authors. Wyspiański is quite well known as a painter, though, I believe. Nałkowska was not so fortunate, I do not think there are even any translations of her writings. The Wedding has been translated by Noel Clark, so if you ever come across it, by all means read it, albeit it is not an easy lecture.
> 
> Best regards, Dr


How long do you have them on loan? I get three weeks from my library, but that seems like a lot of reading.


----------



## mirepoix

'Doting' by Henry Green. Usually I shoot and post a photo of what I'm reading, but we're in the early hours here so meh.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15704908-doting


----------



## Vaneyes

GreenMamba said:


> How long do you have them on loan? I get three weeks from my library, but that seems like a lot of reading.


What would it cost to keep them a month longer?


----------



## GreenMamba

Vaneyes said:


> What would it cost to keep them a month longer?


Probably about 40 cents. The fines aren't much. Still, I'm impressed by Dr. Kilroy's apparent reading prowess.


----------



## DrKilroy

GreenMamba said:


> How long do you have them on loan? I get three weeks from my library, but that seems like a lot of reading.


In my library it is one month. However, not really many people use the library, so I can just postpone the return term and keep the books for another month, and it does not cost me anything. (The Shakespeare comedies are almost one and a half thousand pages, so it will take me at least a week to read them, and I have also other things to do  ). Still, the librarians have to acknowledge it, otherwise I have to pay the fine.

Best regards, Dr


----------



## Gilberto

Putin's Wars - The Rise Of Russia's New Imperialism by Marcel H. Van Herpen ....taken with a grain of salt due to the author's Brzezinski-worship.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

Homer's Odyssey.


----------



## Cheyenne

I'm reading David Luke's translations of selected poetry by Goethe, in the original metre and rhyme. A considerable accomplishment! Far from precise, but a worthwhile addition to my selection of Goethe's poetry, in the original and in translation. Soon John Whaley's translations should arrive too.


----------



## hpowders

OldFashionedGirl said:


> Homer's Odyssey.


Enjoy the trip!!!


----------



## Ondine

Paul and Mary: Two Case Histories from _'Truants from Life'_ by Bruno Bettelheim.


----------



## samurai

Lynne Olson--*Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh and America's Fight Over World War 2, 1939-1941. 
*C.J. Sansom--*Dominion*


----------



## science

OldFashionedGirl said:


> Homer's Odyssey.


I teach this twice a year, and I believe it is one of the most misunderstood classic texts. As much as possible, I encourage you to forget everything you think you know about it and strictly read the text itself. It is the great work of literary art in human history.


----------



## science

samurai said:


> Lynne Olson--*Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh and America's Fight Over World War 2, 1939-1941.
> *


That looks like a great book.


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Elgar by Robert Anderson

This is the 1993 volume in the Master Musicians series, I've read the two previous volumes that Dent published, by W.H. Reed and Ian Parrott respectively. This is a much more substantial affair, and I'm looking forward to it very much.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Model A: the Gem from the River Rouge. by Murray Fahnestock. Formerly titledKnow Your Model A Ford. 

I think it would be fun to own a Model A ford.


----------



## mirepoix

Tonight I'll be on my lonesome and reading this:









'The Aesthetic Adventure' by William Gaunt.


----------



## Flamme

An excellent read recommended by my father, how cool is that having a father who reads such stuff...








For a long time i was unable to connect with books in a proper way, like when i was younger, something was missing...But in this case my imagination is finally unclogged and it flows pure and free...Very deep but in the same time light way of writing is drawning me into...How the ancient past and distant future are entwined...Very complex and skillful book...


----------



## Guest

Well, I'm reading rather too many things, which dissipates the whole venture. One thing though that I am re-reading at the moment that is taking up a bit too much of my time is the Samale-Phillips-Cohrs-Mazzuca reconstructive performing score (2008 version) of the finale of Bruckner's 9th, comparing that to the Simon Rattle/Berlin Phil CD released in 2013 [_Check date. Ed._].
I'm a bit overwhelmed, to be honest. I definitely need a holiday.


----------



## Kieran

Am on a Hemingway binge: read A Moveable Feast and The Old Man and the Sea over the last couple of days. Tomorrow I get The Sun Also Rises and Steinbecks' The Moon is Now from the library.

Also reading Tom Holland's In the Shadow of a Sword. He's a fantastic narrator of history, he has four books and this is the last of them that I'm reading. Bedside, The Spartans by Paul Cartledge, and poetry books by Yeats, Emily Dickinson and Leonard Cohen...


----------



## Kieran

Flamme said:


> An excellent read recommended by my father, how cool is that having a father who reads such stuff...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> For a long time i was unable to connect with books in a proper way, like when i was younger, something was missing...But in this case my imagination is finally unclogged and it flows pure and free...Very deep but in the same time light way of writing is drawning me into...How the ancient past and distant future are entwined...Very complex and skillful book...


Which book is it?


----------



## Flamme

Dunno whats happening thought i left an image.


----------



## Gilberto

The Mansion On The Hill - Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen & The Head-On Collision Of Rock And Commerce by Fred Goodman

All of those endless streams of cash in the 80s and 90s has slowed down and now the big execs are learning the meaning of da blues


----------



## Kieran

Flamme said:


> *Dunno whats happening thought i left an image.*


Is that the name of the book? :lol:


----------



## Cheyenne

I have just finished reading _William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man_, an excellent biography of Hazlitt written by Duncan Wu, who has also edited _Romanticism: An Anthology_ -- a volume as praiseworthy as this one. The biography has merely two faults: first, it occasionally praises its protagonist a little too much, bordering on idolatry; it is rather unbelievable, for example, that, as Wu asserts, _Liber Amoris; Or, The New Pygmalion_ will once be ranked with _Moby Dick_ and _Heart of Darkness_: and second, it features a few 'fictionalized conversations', that are supposed to make the whole tale more lively and accessible. My view of these conversations, which some would label pedantic, is that this is condescending, corny and unscholarly. Worse, Wu only tells us what these conversations are based on in the note section at the back of the book. Many are based on recollections by its participants, but some are essentially wholly fictional: one note says: "This exchange is largely inferred" - one understand what this means. Wu is no borne writer of natural dialogue, in any case; many of the remarks the participants make feel out of character, odd or simply cheesy. Beyond that, however, the biography is remarkable. Hazlitt never fails to inspire. His prose style is beyond great:

yet we will never cease, nor be prevented from returning on the wings of imagination to that bright dream of our youth; that glad dawn of the day-star of liberty; that spring-time of the world, in which the hopes and expectations of the human race seemed opening in the same gay career with our own; when France called her children to partake her equal blessings beneath her laughing skies; when the stranger was met in all her villages with dance and festive songs, in celebration of a new and golden era; and when, to the retired and contemplative student, the prospects of human happiness and glory were seen ascending like the steps of Jacob's ladder, in bright and never-ending succession. The dawn of that day was suddenly overcast; that season of hope is past; it is fled with the other dreams of our youth, which we cannot recall, but has left behind it traces, which are not to be effaced by Birth-day and Thanksgiving odes, or the chaunting of _Te Deums_ in all the churches of Christendom. To those hopes eternal regrets are due; to those who maliciously and wilfully blasted them, in the fear that they might be accomplished, we feel no less what we owe-hatred and scorn as lasting!​
It is so good, in fact, that it somewhat undermines the biography: it made me itch to read Hazlitt all the time! But that is, I suppose no crime, and partly Wu's intention! :tiphat:


----------



## Cheyenne

I'm current reading poems by Matthew Arnold. The melancholy tone which pervades nearly all of them is surprising, considering the gentle voice he has in his prose writings. It arrests, though -- I almost, with him, sigh

that one thing only has been lent
To youth and age in common-discontent.​


----------



## aszkid

About to receive Jorge Luis Borge's 'El Aleph', a collection of short stories. Can't say i haven't read a few already!


----------



## MozartEarlySymphonies

I am currently reading William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

I'm really enjoying it.


----------



## Cheyenne

Duncan Wu's Hazlitt biography (perhaps inadvertently) made me interested in the life of Coleridge, so I am now continuing my journey into the biographies and works of the eminent authors of Romanticism.


----------



## Gilberto

Clint Eastwood - A Biography by Richard Schickel

Half way through this and my respect for Clint has increased. I might even watch some of those monkey movies after I get done with this book.


----------



## Blancrocher

aszkid said:


> About to receive Jorge Luis Borge's 'El Aleph', a collection of short stories. Can't say i haven't read a few already!


As it happens, I'm in the midst of Borges' "A Personal Anthology," a selection of the author's favorites among his fiction and non-fiction (which can sometimes be hard to tell apart from each other!). I'd read them before years ago, but many had become dim memories. Bought it at a very good price.


----------



## Kieran

Been on a Hemingway kick recently: A Moveable Feast, The Old Man & the Sea, and now, The Sun Also Rises. I like the way he writes, kind of plain and direct but still beautiful.

I have Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat ready to go next, but I'm balking a little. Not because of him, because I love his books, but this is an early one and it drew some controversy over his portrayal of the people in it, charges of racism, and people saying he didn't understand the people he was writing about.



> "Few Mexican Americans of Monterey today see themselves in _Tortilla Flat_ any more than their predecessors saw themselves in it thirty-four years ago." Ortego also charged that Mexican Americans do not speak as Steinbeck's characters do, either in Spanish or English. Arthur C.Pettit (_Images of the Mexican American in Fiction and Film_, 1980) was equally clear: "_Tortilla Flat_ stands as the clearest example in American literature of the Mexican as jolly savage... [T]his is the book that is most often cited as the prototypical Anglo novel about the Mexican American..the novel contains characters varying little from the most negative Mexican stereotypes."


Now, I don't know if these criticisms are valid, but I'm Irish and I've seen a few diddly Oirish stereotypes by American films over the years, enough to cringe when I come across them. I wouldn't like to read a book that - with all the best intentions on the part of the author, obviously - was so far wrong in its portrayal of the people in it. I totally give Steinbeck the benefit of the doubt, because he loved the people he wrote about. There's a discussion of this issue in the foreword of the book, basically saying the same thing as the Wiki page...


----------



## Crudblud

@Kieran: Did you ever finish _Mason & Dixon_? I've been so curious to know what you think of it.


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> @Kieran: Did you ever finish _Mason & Dixon_? I've been so curious to know what you think of it.


I did! I loved it and I meant to write here about it but got sidetracked. Several thoughts occurred to me: firstly, I almost ended up thinking in that language. Second, what kind of insane brilliant person decides to write a whole - and very long - book that way? Thirdly, Dixon and Mason - er - became one of the great and absurd double acts, as well as fiercely real characters.

The sensational and fabulous sides of the book were marvelous: the swallowed watch, the invisible flying duck, the speaking clocks, talking dogs, the witty over-use of _Magnetick _and _Masonickal_, all the great diversions and speeches and famous people who he brings into it. It's incredible. It took a while to read, because I could only digest a chapter at a time, and I wondered why he didn't finish it where he began, with Reverand Cherrycoke and his avid listeners, but really, I had no complaints.

I must admit to not understanding everything in it, but I also didn't mind that. It's a magnetick language-field he drags us through, and his research and method of expression is immense, even down to Dixon's dialogue almost always finishing with a question mark, because thah's hoo thee speak..?

Best and most original book I've read in a long time - and all thanks to you, and your review here! Cheers! :tiphat:


----------



## Il_Penseroso

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë.

Plus a review on Bryan Magee's The Story of Philosophy, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World (A Novel about the History of Philosophy) and Morteza Ravandi's The History of Social Developments (Persian).


----------



## Celloman

Recently started the Diary of Anne Frank. This is my first time reading it. Impressed with the depth of writing and teenage angst during one of the darkest chapters of human history...very engaging.


----------



## GreenMamba

Tenth of December by George Saunders. Short stories.


----------



## Guest

Mine isn't the Kindle Edition. It's very good so far--informative, engaging, and well written.


----------



## cwarchc

"You can't say that" memoirs of Ken Livingstone


----------



## Marschallin Blair

*Mucha for the Eyes, Hayek for the Mind*









While listening to music at home.









Friedrich not Salma.


----------



## starthrower

I've been picking up quite a few B&N editions of classic literature, and some philosophy.

A Brief History Of Thought by Luc Ferry
Theologico-Political Treatise by Spinoza
Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Collected Oscar Wilde
Poems and Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
The Essential Writings Of Rousseau

And from the library: This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitin

Currently reading the Spinoza, Ferry, and Levitin books.


----------



## brotagonist

I recently finished:

_This is your Brain on Music_ by Daniel Levitin

There is a lot of technical science in it, but the first chapter really explains a lot of musical concepts and it helped me a lot. Of particular interest was the chapter on why one likes what one likes.


----------



## starthrower

brotagonist said:


> I recently finished:
> 
> _This is your Brain on Music_ by Daniel Levitin
> 
> There is a lot of technical science in it, but the first chapter really explains a lot of musical concepts and it helped me a lot. Of particular interest was the chapter on why one likes what one likes.


Concerning that last part, that's a question that has always fascinated me, so I'll go to that chapter next. Thanks!


----------



## MagneticGhost

I have just finished 2 books that I've had on the go for a little while. Robert Fisk - Great War for Civilisation - was a mammoth task to get through, both in sheer size and emotionally. A searing indictment of Western foreign policy and the darkest sides of humanity in general.









And on a more pleasing and optimistic side - this great life-affirming and encouraging story of the author's determination to conquer Chopin's G minor Ballade at the age of 56. After giving up the piano at 16
Alan Rusbridger - Play it Again


----------



## Kieran

Okay, I gave up on *Tortilla Flat* because it's too much silliness, and the Mexicans speak as though they lived in Ol' Shakespeare's time: Dost thou speakest so, forsooth? It's all corny tales of how these guys spend the rent money on drink, and how wonderful it all is, how funny.

Too gammy and self-conscious. I prefer older Steinbeck, the commie books, _*Grapes of Wrath*_, *Mice and Men*, this one is maybe a precursor to the great *Cannery Row*, but it reads more like that fine book's overwrought sequel, _*Sweet Thursday*_.

I'm gonna source more Hemingway, *Islands in the Stream*, maybe, but first, back to Tom Holland, *In The Shadow of a Sword*, the tale of how the ancient world was overrun by Islamic blades. Holland writes with pace and wit, and he makes history accessible. It's the final book of four by him, for me to read...

:tiphat:


----------



## Tristan

Just started _*Kafka on the Shore*_ by Haruki Murakami. I like a bit of surrealism in a book and this is one that I have heard about for a long time but never read. As a self-professed Japanophile, I should have some Murakami under my belt.


----------



## Piwikiwi

At home by Bill Bryson and How to read literature like a professor by Thomas C. Foster


----------



## Blue Hour

*An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson*

*IBSN:* 0500288755​


----------



## GreenMamba

Piwikiwi said:


> *At home by Bill Bryson *and How to read literature like a professor by Thomas C. Foster


Me too! Just started it.


----------



## Blue Hour

*IBSN*: 0394531922










*IBSN*: 0224031201










*IBSN*: 022403121X

Rereading these as the fourth and final volume is published this year.​


----------



## cwarchc

Monday or Tuesday - Virginia Woolf


----------



## Morimur

*Samuel Beckett: Watt*

Beckett is just about the only fiction I read nowadays. His books are all about one thing: human disintegration. Sad, humorous, pointless; such is life without hope and purpose.

View attachment 41217


----------



## Vaneyes




----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Beckett is just about the only fiction I read nowadays. His books are all about one thing: human disintegration. Sad, humorous, pointless; such is life without hope and purpose.
> 
> View attachment 41217


No doubt influenced by Dostoevsky.


----------



## mirepoix

A biography of Billy Strayhorn.


----------



## Morimur

Huilunsoittaja said:


> No doubt influenced by Dostoevsky.


Yes, Dostoevsky was an influence, though I must confess to never having read him. I have a policy of not reading translations. If I don't know the language, I will not read it. Nabokov is the only Russian author I am familiar with and he wasn't fond of the former: _"My position in regard to Dostoevsky is a curious and difficult one. In all my courses I approach literature from the only point of view that literature interests me-namely the point of view of enduring art and individual genius. From this point of view Dostoevsky is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one-with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between." - Vladimir Nabokov_


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Yes, Dostoevsky was an influence, though I must confess to never having read him. I have a policy of not reading translations. If I don't know the language, I will not read it. Nabokov is the only Russian author I am familiar with and he wasn't fond of the former: _"My position in regard to Dostoevsky is a curious and difficult one. In all my courses I approach literature from the only point of view that literature interests me-namely the point of view of enduring art and individual genius. From this point of view Dostoevsky is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one-with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between." - Vladimir Nabokov_


Oh what a shame! Just because you don't know Russian doesn't mean you're not worthy to read it! There are great translations out there, and old ones too, made during the lifetimes of the authors so that they were verified and such. The more conversational of a translation you can find, the better. And LOL at Nabokov. I've not heard of him and I'm a Russian culture fan, so if that says enough, I doubt that particular opinion is of utmost importance. :tiphat: Sounds like he was annoyed by Dostoevsky's spirituality, which is reasonable. It's downright _uncomfortably _Christian! :lol:


----------



## Morimur

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Oh what a shame! Just because you don't know Russian doesn't mean you're not worthy to read it! There are great translations out there, and old ones too, made during the lifetimes of the authors so that they were verified and such. The more conversational of a translation you can find, the better. And LOL at Nabokov. I've not heard of him and I'm a Russian culture fan, so if that says enough, I doubt that particular opinion is of utmost importance. :tiphat: Sounds like he was annoyed by Dostoevsky's spirituality, which is reasonable. It's downright _uncomfortably _Christian! :lol:


Well, I can tell you that Nabokov was not a religious man, so that might have influenced his opinion of Dostoevsky. As for Beckett, I'll have to phase him out soon. I've been convicted to shift my focus entirely to 'religious' works.


----------



## Mahlerian

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Well, I can tell you that Nabokov was not a religious man, so that might have influenced his opinion of Dostoevsky.


Nabokov was uncomfortable with what he saw as heavy-handedness or sentimentality, and those were the things he really disliked about Dostoevsky. Mahler, on the other hand, loved Dostoevsky above all other authors...

And this is completely unrelated to what I've been reading.


----------



## Kieran

I started _East of Eden_ the other day, a huge improvement on the silliness of _Tortilla Flat_.

By the way, I understand the idea of reading only books which nourish the spirit and so forth. I think it's a good idea...


----------



## Katie

I just finished K-PAX for the second time; it's simply one of those books my mind will turn to on occasion, I suspect because it illustrates such a broad range of human pathos through a remarkably gripping story. The movie was fine, especially the planetarium scene (which did not occur in the book), but it's Brewer's nuts and bolts discussion of legitimate psychiatric study throughout the story that makes the book a superior specimen.

I bought this book for 50 cents at a yardsale!









Edit: Well, I've just ordered K-Pax II & III, though I'm a bit dubious about even Brewer's ability to 'prot'-ract






the premise that long...we'll see!/k


----------



## samurai

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Well, I can tell you that Nabokov was not a religious man, so that might have influenced his opinion of Dostoevsky. As for Beckett, I'll have to phase him out soon. I've been* convicted *to shift my focus entirely to 'religious' works.


That "conviction", is it for a misdemeanor or felony? :devil: Hope it's the former! :lol:


----------



## samurai

In light of the recent contretemps on these boards over various controversial topics such as the Bible and anti-semitism, etc., etc., I have started reading the following, in the hope that I might become more "enlightened" {pardon the pun, please} vis a vis these topics:

Bart D. Ehrman--*Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why*.
Many thanks go to my fellow TC member hpowders,:tiphat:, who had cited Professor Ehrman in one of his posts, which in turn reminded me that I in fact had this book but had yet to read it.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> Mahlerian: Nabokov was uncomfortable with what he saw as heavy-handedness or sentimentality, and those were the things he really disliked about Dostoevsky. Mahler, on the other hand, loved Dostoevsky above all other authors...


Nabokov, not unlike Henry James, needed to step just a little more out his ambit of tea parties and precision manners. It would give some real psychological _depth_ to his craftsmanship.

Mahler had both, to his eternal credit.

And that's why Mahler's art and Dostoevsky's portraitures can speak to me in a way_ Pale Fire _or_ Lolita _never can.


----------



## Blancrocher

Marschallin Blair said:


> Nabokov, not unlike Henry James, needed to step just a little more out his ambit of tea parties and precision manners. It give some real _depth_ to the craftsmanship.


Yes, Nabokov was an incorrigible social lepidopterist.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Brilliant stylist, superb craftsman, I do enjoy reading lots of Nabokov. . . but someone like Dostoevsky or Conrad with their wealth of real-world experience in dealing with all classes of people just far exceeds Nabokov with insight into people.

For all of his social butterfly flights of fancy, where did it leave him?-- always in the salon of _ancien regime_, Franco-philiac, Romanov Russia.


----------



## Blue Hour

*The Captive Mind* ~ *Czeslaw Milosz*

*IBSN:* 0141186763​


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Two Satyr plays: Euripedes "Cyclops"/Sophocles "Ichneutai" (The Searching Satyrs) translated by Roger Lancelyn Green

The satyr plays are the beginnings of drama, and according to the introduction of this book, may well predate tragedy itself. By the time these two were written (circa 440 B.C.) one was performed after every three tragedies in the great dramatic festival at Athens. This served the purpose of giving the audience a release from the tragic tension of the previous plays. They are quite amusing, especially Silenus and his band of satyrs, who seemingly always appeared in them, Silenus always ready to take the side of whoever is in the strongest position at any given moment! Things don't change, eh? I do love the Greek plays I've read thus far, and would love the chance to see them acted, so if anyone hears of anybody doing them, do tip me the wink as it were, and I'll do my best to get to see them (if they're in Britain that is- and in English!).


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Blue Hour said:


> *The Captive Mind* ~ *Czeslaw Milosz*
> 
> *IBSN:* 0141186763​


Right on.

http://www.amazon.com/Darkness-at-N...597&sr=8-1&keywords=darkness+at+noon+koestler

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Will-Bac...68&sr=1-1&keywords=time+will+run+back+hazlitt


----------



## Cosmos

Picked up a thin Cormac McCarthy novel I feel I can read in a couple days. "Child of God" tells the story of a mentally disturbed man through vignettes from different viewpoints. First half of the novel, the reader quickly figures out that Lester Ballard's lack of social skills makes him an easy target for ill fate. I can't imagine this one will end well.


----------



## Blancrocher

Igor Stravinsky, "An Autobiography"

Free online: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36169/36169-h/36169-h.htm


----------



## samurai

Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein--*The New Anti-Semitism*


----------



## Pysmythe

'Richard Wagner and the Jews,' in a probably futile attempt to come to terms with that aspect of the man... and 'The Soul Consortium,' a quite interesting sci fi work about the far future and the ability to actually fully live the life of any human being who has already died through a type of high-tech, total immersion with their stored, or completely replicated, consciousness.


----------



## Varick

Great story about his journey through America and how many of his ideas and thoughts about America formulated. He originally came here to study the American Penitentiary System with his friend Gustave de Beaumont. Colossal Book, but great reading.

And just about finished with









Fascinating yet frightening book. Another book into my journey of exploring Islam and the Islamic culture.

V


----------



## Kieran

Anybody here ever read any Charles Bukowski novels, or Notes of a Dirty Old Man? If so, would you recommend him? :tiphat:


----------



## Piwikiwi

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, I also ordered Ulysses, portrait of an artist, dubliners, Alice in wonder, through the looking glass and beowulf.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Piwikiwi said:


> Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, I also ordered Ulysses, portrait of an artist, dubliners, Alice in wonder, through the looking glass and beowulf.


I also need to read a couple of german and dutch books next year


----------



## Mahlerian

Gustav Mahler, by Bruno Walter


----------



## Antiquarian

Just finished Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, now debating with myself whether to read John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor. Presently I am reading Charles deLint's Moonlight and Vines - a bit lighter read than Pynchon, and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (a critical survey of the work, not particularly for pleasure).


----------



## Levanda

Kieran said:


> Anybody here ever read any Charles Bukowski novels, or Notes of a Dirty Old Man? If so, would you recommend him? :tiphat:


I huge fan of Charles Bukfwski, his poetry so wonderful, I have not read but I do listening them online at least once per week with my coffee morning is stimulating even more.


----------



## Kieran

Levanda said:


> I huge fan of Charles Bukfwski, his poetry so wonderful, I have not read but I do listening them online at least once per week with my coffee morning is stimulating even more.


Thanks Levanda!

I got the Diary of an Old Man from the library, looking forward to getting stuck in. Currently, I'm reading John Steinbeck again, but this time, _East of Eden_.

Also from the library I got William Burroughs _Junky_, and Flann O'Brien's _At Swim-Two-Birds_.

A lot of happy reading for me over the next couple weeks...


----------



## Blancrocher

Piwikiwi said:


> I also need to read a couple of german and dutch books next year


In the original languages, I take it? I'm curious about what books in particular--I'm not familiar with many Dutch writers.

*p.s.* I've started reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century," having read a lot of reviews of it over the last little while.


----------



## GreenMamba

Antiquarian said:


> Just finished Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, now debating with myself whether to read *John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor. *


Go for it! Although I preferred Giles Goat-Boy.


----------



## Guest

I started rereading Smith Brindle's book on 12-tone composition (which I had abandoned some years ago) but I regret to say I have abandoned it for a second time because of time constraints. [_Liar. Ed._]. I'll come back to it another time, I'm sure. [_Another lie. Don't listen to him. Ed._] What is really gripping me at the moment with increasing alarm is this:
*Cybersecurity and Cyberwar : What Everyone Needs To Know*, P.W. Singer & Allan Friedman, OUP 2014.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Blancrocher said:


> In the original languages, I take it? I'm curious about what books in particular--I'm not familiar with many Dutch writers.
> 
> *p.s.* I've started reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century," having read a lot of reviews of it over the last little while.


I don't know yet, it's for school. I've read some Kafka and goethe for german but I haven't decided on the dutch bools


----------



## cwarchc

Katie said:


> View attachment 41353
> I just finished K-PAX for the second time; it's simply one of those books my mind will turn to on occasion, I suspect because it illustrates such a broad range of human pathos through a remarkably gripping story. The movie was fine, especially the planetarium scene (which did not occur in the book), but it's Brewer's nuts and bolts discussion of legitimate psychiatric study throughout the story that makes the book a superior specimen.
> 
> I bought this book for 50 cents at a yardsale!
> 
> View attachment 41355
> 
> 
> Edit: Well, I've just ordered K-Pax II & III, though I'm a bit dubious about even Brewer's ability to 'prot'-ract
> View attachment 41354
> the premise that long...we'll see!/k


I had to go and get the book
Love the film, Kaie's post intrigued me
I have to say, the book is much better
Thanks for the head up
One of my all time faves now


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Aspects of Cortot by Thomas Manshardt

Just started this fascinating book, which I found on amazon for a decent price (at last- it is usually up for grabs at £80+, got this for £14!), Manshardt was a private pupil of Cortot from 1957-62 and has many interesting things to say on Cortot's beliefs about music and performance.


----------



## starthrower

The Collected Oscar Wilde.

Today I read The Ballad Of Reading Gaol. Brilliant!!!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Robert Fossier - Life in the Middle Ages - a history that concentrates more on the everyday life of the average "little man" of the Middle Ages than on the great historical figures.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

*Official Lies*

















For the Establishmentarian take.


----------



## Le Beau Serge

​


----------



## samurai

Andy Weir--*The Martian*


----------



## mirepoix

This is the sort of thing that many years ago I'd have picked up with the hope of..._borrowing_...a few ideas from. Nowadays, not so much. In fact, not at all. But old habits die hard and I still enjoy seeing an idea taken and then developed to the final form.


----------



## Varick

Just flipped through this book again that one of my brothers recommended to me:









I read it through the first time and I suggested it to a friend of mine (who shares my sense of humor). 
This is one of the funniest damn books I have ever read. I can't count how many times I literally laughed out loud while reading this.

I guess the funniest part (which is why my brother told me about it) is that the author's father reminds me a somewhat of my late father.

Absolutely hysterical!

V


----------



## mirepoix

I only know one poem by Rossetti 'A Nuptial Sleep' and on the back of it picked up a collection of his work.
Swinburne I'm a little more familiar with, although in my case that's saying nothing and so it's all an exciting new discovery for me.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Ulysses by James Joyce and I feel like an idiot when I'm reading it.


----------



## Tristan

Piwikiwi said:


> Ulysses by James Joyce and I feel like an idiot when I'm reading it.


You're not alone.

As for me, I'm reading:


----------



## GreenMamba

The Lenient Beast by Frederic Brown

1950s crime thriller with a good first chapter at least.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Tristan said:


> You're not alone.
> 
> As for me, I'm reading:


Do you recommend it?

I tried to read the metamorphosis in German for school and I really had a hard time understanding the story. Maybe I should have picked an easier book after two months of German:'), even though German is quite similar to Dutch(I'm Dutch) it was still to hard.


----------



## aleazk

Piwikiwi said:


> Do you recommend it?
> 
> I tried to read the metamorphosis in German for school and I really had a hard time understanding the story. Maybe I should have picked an easier book after two months of German:'), even though German is quite similar to Dutch(I'm Dutch) it was still to hard.


Can't say about the German part of your question since I don't speak German, but _The Trial_ is a landmark of 20th century literature, so it's definitely recommended.


----------



## Blancrocher

Piwikiwi said:


> Do you recommend it?
> 
> I tried to read the metamorphosis in German for school and I really had a hard time understanding the story. Maybe I should have picked an easier book after two months of German:'), even though German is quite similar to Dutch(I'm Dutch) it was still to hard.


The Trial is fairly easy reading in terms of vocab/grammar, though absurdist fiction can always be tricky to follow--you tend to wonder _did that really just happen?_ Kafka's worth sticking with, as Aleazk said, because he's a genius, though for starting out I'd probably recommend something like Robert Walser.

I'm sure you're aware, but I thought I'd mention that all of Kafka's works are available free online--many of them in audiobook versions. Librivox is a great resource for learning the language.


----------



## Tristan

Piwikiwi said:


> Do you recommend it?
> 
> I tried to read the metamorphosis in German for school and I really had a hard time understanding the story. Maybe I should have picked an easier book after two months of German:'), even though German is quite similar to Dutch(I'm Dutch) it was still to hard.


I would definitely recommend it 

I don't want to be discouraging or anything, but The Metamorphosis is often considered a starting point for getting into Kafka and is a bit easier to understand than The Trial, I think. However, to me, The Trial is more interesting and more entertaining so I would absolutely encourage you to try it


----------



## Le Beau Serge

I'm about to start the above book which my Partner picked up for me in a bookstore for pennies. I was quite pleased and then shocked.

However she has no idea what she has done! I have a pathological need for completeness and as the book is volume one of five I won't be able to sleep until the other four are in my possession.

They are somewhat expensive even for used copies (in good condition) so finding the first volume was a real triumph. Should be a good read however it is marred by not having the complete set.


----------



## schuberkovich

Started reading Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Liking it so far. I enjoyed Kafka on the Shore but found it a bit too strange and overindulgent. Hopefully I can make more sense of Norwegian Wood.


----------



## samurai

Thurston Clarke--*JFK's Last Hundred Days* 
Poul Anderson--*The Horn of Time* 
Frederick Pohl--*Platinum Pohl:* *The Collected Best Stories*


----------



## SottoVoce

Rereading The Master, Henry James, with a lot more enjoyment than the first time around. The Golden Bowl, which was totally incomprehensible to me, now makes sense. But Portrait of a Lady is now, I think, the great American novel (even though it takes part mostly in England and Florence!)

On the nonfiction side, I am working through "What is Mathematics", a math 'textbook' which Einstein called a "A lucid representation of the fundamental concepts and methods of the whole field of mathematics...Easily understandable." I'm fairly knowledgeable on mathematics, but wanted a broad overview over mathematics; this book is far from "easily understandable", but I recommend it for anyone who knows basic, mechanical high school mathematics, and is willing to feel a little intellectual pain and struggle in order to access a wide net of beauty.


----------



## Blancrocher

Frederick the Great, the last of Nancy Mitford's great quartet of biographies of Enlightenment figures (the others being Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, and Voltaire). Each of them has been informative, gossipy, well written, and highly entertaining--Mitford is a genius.


----------



## SottoVoce

Piwikiwi said:


> I think I hate Werther more than I hate Holden Caulfield.


Although Goethe is obviously sympathetic to him, Werther seems to be throughout the book a very childish figure. A very good read is _Conversations with Goethe_, basically a German version of Boswell's Johnson. It is the book that Nietzsche called (albeit early in his career) "the greatest German book there is". Goethe, in the book, says of Werther that his creation was more of a purging of a sort of personality for himself then accepting him (the Sturm and Drag sentimentality that was very popular at this time), and says something very nice: "There is a point in a young man (or women's, in my opinion) life where it seems that this book was written for them alone". I think that time had passed before I read Werther; maybe 2 or 3 years before I read it, I could've somehow sympathized with the brat (mostly because I was a brat!)


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Le Beau Serge said:


> I'm about to start the above book which my Partner picked up for me in a bookstore for pennies. I was quite pleased and then shocked.
> 
> However she has no idea what she has done! I have a pathological need for completeness and as the book is volume one of five I won't be able to sleep until the other four are in my possession.
> 
> They are somewhat expensive even for used copies (in good condition) so finding the first volume was a real triumph. Should be a good read however it is marred by not having the complete set.


--
If you want to know the essence of what Herbert Marcuse's about, don't fret with _One Dimensional Man_ or even _Eros and Civilization_; but rather check out his essay "Repressive Tolerance."

Fascism's never existed in a more distilled form; even _with_ his fake-Left, Freudian-Marxist overlay.


----------



## TinyTim

I just finished reading Rick Atkinson's trilogy on WWII. The first book, _An Army at Dawn_, won a Pulitzer for history.


----------



## SimonNZ

Frank Kermode's essay collection Pieces Of My Mind


----------



## ShropshireMoose

In Search of Wales by H.V. Morton

Enjoying this already, with two chapters read. I've read, thus far, In Search of: England, Scotland and Ireland, respectively, and thoroughly enjoyed each one. Thus I embark on this with high expectation, the more so as this is a signed copy!


----------



## Morimur

Has anyone read the* 'My Struggle'* series by *Karl Ove Knausgård*?


----------



## GreenMamba

Richard Russo, That Old Cape Magic


----------



## SimonNZ

Deyan Sudjic - B is For Bauhaus


----------



## Dustin

Just finished: Queen of Bedlam by Robert McCammon, maybe my favorite writer. Great sequel to Speaks The Nightbird although the beginning of the book is a bit slow.









Now reading: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. This is the recent sequel to the classic King novel The Shining. About 100 pages in out of 500 and it's mostly introductory but the excitement is building.


----------



## GreenMamba

*Rubicon *by Tom Holland, about the end of the Roman Republic


----------



## cwarchc

Just downloaded this onto the Kindle
Think I'll wait until my hols/vacation, so I can devote some quality time


----------



## Gondur

I prefer to write my own stories than to read those written by others.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Freedom not repression.









Beauty unbound.


----------



## Kieran

GreenMamba said:


> *Rubicon *by Tom Holland, about the end of the Roman Republic
> 
> View attachment 43501


How are you enjoying that? Quite an evocative, stirring book, eh? I read all four of his books and I like this one, and Persian Fire, the most. The guy tells history with the panache of a master novelist...


----------



## GreenMamba

Kieran said:


> How are you enjoying that? Quite an evocative, stirring book, eh? I read all four of his books and I like this one, and Persian Fire, the most. The guy tells history with the panache of a master novelist...


I have only read a few chapters so far, but it certainly isn't dry. It's a colorful era. Then again, there aren't a ton of primary sources, so it's tough on a historian.


----------



## Guest

Bram Stoker's *Dracula*.


----------



## hpowders

The Holocaust; The Fate of European Jewry.
Leni Yahil
Translated to English from the original Hebrew.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I went back to reading my Tolstoy book again, _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_. At the rate I was reading today, I'll finish the book in maybe 5 more reading sessions, be that in 5 days or more.

Then I will get new Dostoevsky books!


----------



## ShropshireMoose

This is thus far an excellent biography of one of my favourite conductors. The author studied conducting with Monteux 1953-7, and writes very well of his subject. Looking forward to getting further into this.


----------



## Kieran

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I went back to reading my Tolstoy book again, _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_. At the rate I was reading today, I'll finish the book in maybe 5 more reading sessions, be that in 5 days or more.
> 
> Then I will get new Dostoevsky books!


Dostoevsky has new books? 

I have *Demons *by Dostoevski, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky. I've read several Russian classics translated by them, and the next two are *Demons*, and hopefully *The Brothers Karamazov*, before Christmas.

Currently on a Hemingway kick: *For Whom the Bell Tolls*. There are aspects of this which are a bit dated, to my mind, but I'm enjoying it as a powerful example of his writing. Recently read *A Moveable Feast*, *The Old Man and the Sea*, and *Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises*, all of which are brief and better for it, from my perspective...


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Kieran said:


> Dostoevsky has new books?


I wanna get Notes from Underground, the Gambler, and the Double (apparently the Double is remarkably accurate in describing the social media anxiety crisis today, about what it means to live a "double" life)


----------



## SimonNZ

Ann Patchett - Truth And Beauty: A Friendship


----------



## Antiquarian

Started reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) after a recomendation from a literary forum. It looks to be a substantial read.


----------



## Figleaf

I' m reading a biography of Mark Twain by Ron Powers. It's brilliantly witty and well written, and very good on the development of mass media in the US. Also re-reading the biography of Jean de Reszke by Clara Leiser (available as a free download). It's a fascinating story, well worth suffering the author's horrible stilted prose. Also reading Sitting Pretty by the actor Clifton Webb, a gifted author with a scurrilous, spiky wit.
I wish I had the attention span to just read one book at a time, but I'm like a kid in a sweetshop with books and I go a bit crazy...
Oh, also reading A Mingled Chime by Sir Thomas Beecham, which I found in a Norfolk junk shop while I was in the throes of an obsession with his Faust recording. The prose isn't quite as distinguished as you'd expect from such a famous wit, but there are some interesting vignettes of famous singers he worked with: I was especially charmed by his description of working with Victor Maurel, who wore a top hat and multicoloured silk pyjamas to rehearse in! They don't make them like that any more- singers that is, not pyjamas. How I would like to have been a fly on that wall... Sir Thomas also offers a robust defence of the old star system in opera, reminding us that it's simply about getting the very best singer for the part, "hardly a crime against music" as he puts it.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

"Getting to Know Obama"

A withering autopsy.


----------



## samurai

Jack Vance--*Tales Of The Dying Earth
*Jack Cheevers--*Act Of War: Lyndon Johnson, Norh Korea, And The Capture Of The Spy Ship Pueblo*


----------



## cwarchc

I'm in Kurt Vonnegut mode
Reading "Man without a country"
and downloaded another 6 on my kindle, so I have something to read, away in the Highlands


----------



## SiegendesLicht

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Children of Hurin.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

*Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State & the Decline of Freedom*









http://library.mises.org/books/John...xecutive State and the Decline of Freedom.pdf


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I got new books!!! 

When I will read them all is to be determined, but once I finish my Tolstoy novel, I'm on to _Notes from the Underground_!


----------



## KenOC

Just re-read Inferno, always a fun read! Can our hero escape Dante's Hell with the help of Benito Mussolini?










Now re-reading Bester's The Stars my Destination. Remember Presteign of Presteign? Old Times I guess.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Copyright might just be copywrong.

Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig shows how modern-day copyright laws are used to restrain trade rather than to promote it.


----------



## samurai

I am perusing the following books in order to plan my next tattoo {my last! :devil: }, which shall be on my right arm:

A.C. Fox-Davies--*A Complete Guide to Heraldry*
J.M Bergling and Charles Dexter Allen--*Heraldic Designs*


----------



## Kieran

I'm kinda flip-flopping about a bit. Been reading the notes on William Burroughs _Naked Lunch_, but when I tried to dip in, I wasn't in the mood. Likewise, I enjoyed Charles Bukowski's _Diary of a Dirty Old Man_, but eventually his constant seediness bored me. I have Flann O'Brien bedside -_ At Swim-Two-Birds_ - and I've been threatening it for a while, without yet getting it into bed with me.

John MacGahern is a great Irish writer and he's been the one I've read most of recently, including the book of short stories, _High Ground_, which I'm reading now...


----------



## Cheyenne

A sort of pseudo-biography of Carlyle, with his marriage as the focal point and his wife (and her relationship with Carlyle) handled in meticulous detail too. Rosemary Ashton has experience writing biographies, and it shows. Everything works.


----------



## Blancrocher

"On Music and Musicians," a selection of famous writings by Robert Schumann.

Available free online: http://books.google.com/books?id=JD...nepage&q=schumann music and musicians&f=false


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Copyright might just be copywrong.
> 
> Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig shows how modern-day copyright laws are used to restrain trade rather than to promote it.


This gets to a thing that interests me very much - music from sources like youtube that violates those copyright laws. I wonder if Lessig has anything to say about that?


----------



## Alypius

Rainer Marie Rilke, _Selected Poems_, Oxford World's Classics
trans. Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)










Simply the finest translation of Rilke that I've seen.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> This gets to a thing that interests me very much - music from sources like youtube that violates those copyright laws. I wonder if Lessig has anything to say about that?


He does, but a much more sustained argument against copyright laws in all of its forms (which would include You Tube) from a free market point of view is patent attorney Stephen Kinsella's book:










http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> He does, but a much more sustained argument against copyright laws in all of its forms (which would include You Tube) from a free market point of view is patent attorney Stephen Kinsella's book:
> 
> http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf


Though skeptical for the traditional reasons (~I would support whatever copyright policy seems to maximally incentivize innovation), I would be interested in that argument. I don't look for good things out of the Mises Institute, so at this point I would begin with Lessig's book if I decide to look into this.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Though skeptical for the traditional reasons (~I would support whatever copyright policy seems to maximally incentivize innovation), I would be interested in that argument. I don't look for good things out of the Mises Institute, so at this point I would begin with Lessig's book if I decide to look into this.


Yes, science, I'm fully _au fait _of your political orientation as you are no doubt of mine. ;D Ha. Ha. Ha. Which is to say: I wouldn't look for good things out of the Aspen Institute, Foreign Affairs, or, say, the National Endowment for Democracy, for instance. . .

All the same, check out both books. The ramifications of mercantilist corporate fascism masquerading as the free market affect us all, regardless of our political stances.


----------



## Ravndal

Finished The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Just started on Inferno by Dan Brown.


----------



## Valkhafar

Bernard Cornwell: The Pagan Lord.


----------



## SixFootScowl

A fascinating and very informative book:


----------



## GreenMamba

Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (on my Kindle)


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Valkhafar said:


> Bernard Cornwell: The Pagan Lord.
> 
> View attachment 45378


looks like a great story.


----------



## Valkhafar

SiegendesLicht said:


> looks like a great story.


Yes. Indeed it is.


----------



## hpowders

Straight Talk About Cosmetic Surgery, Arthur W Perry, MD, FACS

"Look at me!! Just look at me, Jerry!! I'm hideous!!!"


----------



## Alypius

Jacques LeGoff, _History and Memory_, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)


----------



## Vesteralen

Two among several


----------



## ProudSquire

Kindred 
Octavia E. Butler


----------



## Blancrocher

Beaumarchais' "The Marriage of Figaro," in an early translation by Thomas Holcroft (in the public domain).

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1563


----------



## Marschallin Blair

From the publisher:

_Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto _diagnoses what is wrong with the American political system and tells us what we need to fix things. The cure is a radical one because, as the book incontrovertibly shows, the many problems that confront us today are no accident. They stem from the nature of government itself. Only peaceful cooperation based on the free market can rescue us from our present plight.

The book shows how the government is based on war, both against foreign nations and against the American people themselves, through massive invasions of our liberties. Fueled by an out-of-control banking system, the American State has become in essence fascist. We cannot escape our predicament through limited government: the government is incapable of controlling itself. Only a purely private social order can save us, and Rockwell succinctly sets out how an anarcho-capitalist order would work.


----------



## schuberkovich

Finished The Grapes of Wrath. Now reading East of Eden.


----------



## Cheyenne

_Estimating Emerson_, a comprehensive collection of writings about Emerson from many respected writers, including Borges, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and Virginia Woolf; and _Noriko Smiling_, a brief book about a single film: Yasujiro Ozu's _Late Spring_.


----------



## Vesteralen

Two more among several. The first is a book of reminiscences of an Roumanian Ex-Diplomat trying to support his family in NYC in the 1950s. The second is another in the wonderful Flavia de Luce series.


----------



## Cosmos

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Like it so far. I love Wilde's humor


----------



## Kieran

^^ He's was an incredibly beautiful writer too.

I'm reading a book-length interview with Martin Scorsese, Conversations with Scorsese.

The interviewer is Richard Schickel, and it's not very deep or insightful, but it helps me to sleep... :tiphat:


----------



## cwarchc

Having a run on Kurt Vonnegut books 
Got a pile of them for my hols
What a fanatastic person:tiphat:


----------



## Antiquarian

Just finished "Quicksilver" by Neal Stephenson, book one of "The Baroque Cycle". I'm now taking a little break from the series, and am revisiting a book I haven't read since I was thirteen years old: Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury. It is one of those books you can read one way as a child and another as an adult. There is an interesting scene at the end of chapter nineteen. Will Halloway (the 14 year old co-protagonist) remarks that the demonic carousel at the nightmare fair is playing Chopin's Funeral March backwards!


----------



## SimonNZ

Ford Maddox Ford - Some Do Not

first part of Parade's End


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Don Quixote by Cervantes. It is brilliant, especially the characters.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Marschallin Blair said:


> View attachment 45730
> 
> 
> From the publisher:
> 
> _Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto _diagnoses what is wrong with the American political system and tells us what we need to fix things. The cure is a radical one because, as the book incontrovertibly shows, the many problems that confront us today are no accident. They stem from the nature of government itself. Only peaceful cooperation based on the free market can rescue us from our present plight.
> 
> The book shows how the government is based on war, both against foreign nations and against the American people themselves, through massive invasions of our liberties. Fueled by an out-of-control banking system, the American State has become in essence fascist. We cannot escape our predicament through limited government: the government is incapable of controlling itself. Only a purely private social order can save us, and Rockwell succinctly sets out how an anarcho-capitalist order would work.


geeeeee capitalism? I sure do hope that it doesnt dig itself into an inescapable hole with this theory!


----------



## Crudblud

Anarchosyndicalism all the way, baby!

Having at long last finished _Gravity's Rainbow_ I've moved on to easier fare in the form of _Animal Farm,_ which should keep me occupied at least for this morning.


----------



## Crudblud

Now rereading _Cat's Cradle_ by Kurt Vonnegut.


----------



## Guest

Crudblud said:


> Now rereading _Cat's Cradle_ by Kurt Vonnegut.


From Cat's Cradle:

And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.
And He went away.


----------



## GreenMamba

Just started *Cleopatra: A Life *by Stacy Schiff. A follow-up to watching an old performance of Antony and Cleopatra.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> geeeeee capitalism? I sure do hope that it doesnt dig itself into an inescapable hole with this theory!


Capitalism, Dear, is unfortunately none too understood. Capitalism is pillaged for the sins of mercantilism-- which is a form of statism.

http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Tr...180&sr=1-1&keywords=george+reisman+capitalism


----------



## Marschallin Blair

*Dragnificent*


----------



## Bruce

schuberkovich said:


> Finished The Grapes of Wrath. Now reading East of Eden.


I'd be interested in your reaction to East of Eden. I very much like Steinbeck, and enjoyed East of Eden, but found the narrator intruded rather too much. My favorite Steinbeck is, I think, Tortilla Flat.


----------



## Bruce

David Halberstam's The Fifties. Nice summary of the decade.


----------



## clavichorder

I just finished Anthony Trollope's, Dr. Wortle's School. A nice read. 

Now I'm onto Sinclair Lewis-Babbit.


----------



## Vaneyes

Rereads--Ben Hogan's *"Five Lessons - The Modern Fundamentals of Golf"*, and Tommy Armour's *"How To Play Your Best Golf All The Time"*.


----------



## musicrom

I'm planning to read Solzhenitsyn's _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ once it arrives at my library. Has anyone read it?


----------



## Alypius

Jean-Luc Nancy, _Listening_, 
trans. Charlotte Mandell 
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).

Jean-Luc Nancy is a remarkable, cutting-edge contemporary French philosopher. This offers a striking phenomenological analysis of the nature of listening (to speech, to music, to the wider world). Like Michel Foucault, Jean-Luc Marion, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard (i.e., the leading French philosophers a generation older -- two of these directed his dissertation), Nancy is both subtle and an enormously creative thinker. He's also more interested in aesthetics than other leading French philosophers. Here's the blurb on it:



> In this lyrical meditation on listening, Jean-Luc Nancy examines sound in relation to the human body. How is listening different from hearing? What does listening entail? How does what is heard differ from what is seen? Can philosophy even address listening, écouter, as opposed to entendre, which means both hearing and understanding? Unlike the visual arts, sound produces effects that persist long after it has stopped. The body, Nancy says, is itself like an echo chamber, responding to music by inner vibrations as well as outer attentiveness. Since "the ear has no eyelid" (Quignard), sound cannot be blocked out or ignored: our whole being is involved in listening, just as it is involved in interpreting what it hears. The mystery of music and of its effects on the listener is subtly examined. Nancy's skill as a philosopher is to bring the reader companionably along with him as he examines these fresh and vital questions; by the end of the book the reader feels as if listening very carefully to a person talking quietly, close to the ear.


I have on order a related volume by Peter Szedy, _Listen: A History of Our Ears_, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007)


----------



## starthrower




----------



## GreenMamba

musicrom said:


> I'm planning to read Solzhenitsyn's _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ once it arrives at my library. Has anyone read it?


Yes, in high school. Good book and a short introduction into to the work Solzhenitsyn.


----------



## schuberkovich

Bruce said:


> I'd be interested in your reaction to East of Eden. I very much like Steinbeck, and enjoyed East of Eden, but found the narrator intruded rather too much. My favorite Steinbeck is, I think, Tortilla Flat.


Well I finished it yesterday and think it's my favourite book ever. It completely blew me away with its sheer power. I didn't notice the narrator too much.


----------



## Kazaman

_Foucault's Pendulum_ by Umberto Eco
_A Book of Abstract Algebra_ by Charles Pinter
_Vector Spaces and Matrices_ by Robert Thrall and Leonard Tornheim


----------



## Tristan

Right now I'm reading "A Russian Diary" by Anna Politkovskaya. Pretty interesting insight into the corrupt regime of Putin.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## brianvds

musicrom said:


> I'm planning to read Solzhenitsyn's _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ once it arrives at my library. Has anyone read it?


Erm, yeah, just make sure you take some anti-depressants before and during the reading. It's brilliant stuff, but I was practically chewing off my wrists by the time I finished it.

Currently busy with "My sister's keeper," which is light comedy by comparison.


----------



## SimonNZ

musicrom said:


> I'm planning to read Solzhenitsyn's _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ once it arrives at my library. Has anyone read it?


Yes, but despite being a big Solzhenitsyn fan I've never found the need to return to that one. Try instead The First Circle, artistically a quantum leap from One Day, and his masterpiece in fiction.


----------



## Piwikiwi

A short history of English Literature and a German translation of the third harry potter book,


----------



## PabloElFlamenco

These last few days I've been reading a somewhat loose autobiographical work, "Mi pais inventado" by Isabel Allende (translate it as "My invented country"). I'm used to reading "Spanish-Spanish" books, whether they be Basque, Castilian, Galician, Catalan or Andalusian (who did I leave out? ..a few, I know) and have read very little Latin-American literature, mostly because I was learning "Castilian Spanish". Reading Isabel Allende is to me, in comparison with "Iberian" authors, similar to "reading" Woody Allen. The book, by the way, is very interesting, and it teaches me that there are huge differences even between Latin-American countries, due to, i.a., the different nature of their immigration.


----------



## Varick

Just finished this amazing story.

I was fascinated by this story for the simple realization that our identity of *WHO we are is entirely based on our memory.*

Absolutely fascinating story!

V

PS: Edit: Sorry about the huge photo. I don't know how to re-size it. When I copy and paste an image off Amazon, the image here on TC is either too small or too big.


----------



## Crudblud

Paul Auster - _Moon Palace_


----------



## Kieran

John McGahern, Collected Short Stories.

This man is one of the greatest writers Ireland ever produced. Mostly tales from rural Ireland, he pains a vivid image, while capturing the anger, frustration, hardship, humour and love of life in the backwaters. Absolutely beautiful at creating an image...


----------



## Varick

Kieran said:


> John McGahern, Collected Short Stories.
> 
> This man is one of the greatest writers Ireland ever produced. Mostly tales from rural Ireland, he pains a vivid image, while capturing the anger, frustration, hardship, humour and love of life in the backwaters. Absolutely beautiful at creating an image...


I'll have to check him out. How do you like Frank McCourt? I've only read "Angela's Ashes" (Who hasn't?"), but being an American, I thought the book charming and enjoyed his style of writing, who also eloquently weaved hardship and humor in his prose.

Or is he not considered a legit Irish writer because he was born in America?

V


----------



## ShropshireMoose

Aeschylus: The Oresteian Trilogy (tr. Philip Vellacott)

Arnold Bax: Farewell, My youth

I've just read the Oresteian Trilogy, a very powerful set of plays and this translation by Philip Vellacott makes them very accessible, whilst keeping, as near as possible to the original rhythm of the Greek. I enjoyed it very much (so much in Greek literature deals in timeless themes, that makes it seem relevant even today), and will certainly read it again.
Now I'm just starting Arnold Bax's autobiography, he seems to have quite a whimsical way of writing that I rather like.


----------



## SimonNZ

Crudblud said:


> Paul Auster - _Moon Palace_


I was thinking about Paul Auster just this morning, and how I'd like to re-read the autobiographical Winter Journal that came out a couple of years ago and which I felt to be one of his very best works.


----------



## samurai

Herman Melville--*Moby Dick
*Carlo D'Este--*Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life*


----------



## Droogie

I am currently in the middle of James Joyce's Ulysses.
It's an astonishing piece of work with much humour(wet and dry).I had read Finnegans wake and Dubliner's already.


----------



## Kieran

Varick said:


> I'll have to check him out. How do you like Frank McCourt? I've only read "Angela's Ashes" (Who hasn't?"), but being an American, I thought the book charming and enjoyed his style of writing, who also eloquently weaved hardship and humor in his prose.
> 
> Or is he not considered a legit Irish writer because he was born in America?
> 
> V


I haven't read any Frank McCourt but I always thought he was born in Ireland, but a quick check shows he wasn't. I'm not sure about his reputation either way, sorry! I'd imagine he's considered to be Irish-American...


----------



## cwarchc

Just bought this today
Who got there first?
Was it Cook or Peary?
OR
Were they both just fraudsters?
The juries still out after more than a 100 years
Fasinating book though


----------



## Varick

Kieran said:


> I haven't read any Frank McCourt but I always thought he was born in Ireland, but a quick check shows he wasn't. I'm not sure about his reputation either way, sorry! I'd imagine he's considered to be Irish-American...


He was born in Brooklyn, NY but was raised in Ireland. I would consider him much more Irish than American. His story is definitely Irish.

V


----------



## Fugue Meister

Just finished "Hitler's Panzers" by Dennis Showalter. Great read if you like history. Now I'm rereading Joseph Hellers Catch-22 one of my favorites, and I started V by Thomas Pynchon my first Pynchon experience.


----------



## Blancrocher

Droogie said:


> I had read Finnegans wake


I gave you a "like"--it's the least I could do.


----------



## Varick

Historically in the USA and on the whole, conservatives have always defended Israel, and the liberals/leftists have always condemned Israel. So I decided to read a book written by a liberal on Israel. So far a concise case (how fitting from one of the most famous lawyers in America) on the legitimacy for Israel's existence.

V


----------



## cwarchc

Varick said:


> View attachment 46449
> 
> 
> Historically in the USA and on the whole, conservatives have always defended Israel, and the liberals/leftists have always condemned Israel. So I decided to read a book written by a liberal on Israel. So far a concise case (how fitting from one of the most famous lawyers in America) on the legitimacy for Israel's existence.
> 
> V


Remiinds me of a song
I read new republic and nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, i've memorized lerner and golden
I feel like i'm almost a jew
But when it comes to times like korea (insert any conflict from the last 100 years)
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me,Im a liberal


----------



## Kieran

Varick said:


> He was born in Brooklyn, NY but was raised in Ireland. I would consider him much more Irish than American. His story is definitely Irish.
> 
> V


If you're interested in Irish literature that isn't composed at a remove, I'd recommend John McGahern. He's powerful, but also witty, and his tales contains darkness as well beauty. A brilliant book about nothing? That They May Face the Rising Sun.

His most famous is Amongst Women, but I haven't read that yet...


----------



## Piwikiwi

Varick said:


> View attachment 46449
> 
> 
> Historically in the USA and on the whole, conservatives have always defended Israel, and the liberals/leftists have always condemned Israel. So I decided to read a book written by a liberal on Israel. So far a concise case (how fitting from one of the most famous lawyers in America) on the legitimacy for Israel's existence.
> 
> V


A doubt that a book with a title like that has an objective evaluation of the situation in Israel. The reviews on amazon were also quite terrible.


----------



## Crudblud

Dershowitz's attempts to discredit and defame people holding opposing views on Israel, notably Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky, are well documented. People who want to get the gist of his views and tactics might be interested in his debate with Chomsky at Harvard.


----------



## Varick

Piwikiwi said:


> A doubt that a book with a title like that has an objective evaluation of the situation in Israel. The reviews on amazon were also quite terrible.


Well overall the reviews on Amazon were more positive than negative. Any subject as controversial as the Israeli/Palestine issue is going to create some vitriol and bad reviews. Heck, if I wrote a book on how ice cream is delicious I would still get a few 1 star reviews with comments such as, "_the authors claim that ice cream tastes good is simply not true..._"

So, on a topic this heated I would expect nothing less. If this were a book against Israel, there would probably be just as many 1 & 2 star reviews.

I'm not saying this book isn't biased (I'm not saying it is biased either - I've only just begun), but I do believe one can have a stance on this subject (or any subject) and still be objective. I believe one can be against helmet laws, yet state unequivocally the benefits & wisdom of wearing one when riding a motorcycle.



Crudblud said:


> Dershowitz's attempts to discredit and defame people holding opposing views on Israel, notably Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky, are well documented. People who want to get the gist of his views and tactics might be interested in his debate with Chomsky at Harvard.


Yeah I saw that debate a few years ago. Chomsky lost me when he was telling an Israeli who was actually at Camp David during the Clinton/ Araffat/Barak negotiations that another person was there & the Israeli said the person Chomsky was referring to was not there. But Chomsky kept saying he was there.

V


----------



## Antiquarian

I just finished "The Confusion" by Neal Stephenson, volume two of "The Baroque Cycle", and in order to give myself a little break, I'm reading "Maigret's Pipe" by Georges Simenon. Its a collection of short stories, and it has rekindled my interest in the Chief Inspector.


----------



## Alypius

A new book by one of the best medieval intellectual historians:

Denys Turner, _Thomas Aquinas: A Portrait_ (Yale University Press, 2013) 
(new in paperback, as of late May)


----------



## Crudblud

Varick said:


> Yeah I saw that debate a few years ago. Chomsky lost me when he was telling an Israeli who was actually at Camp David during the Clinton/ Araffat/Barak negotiations that another person was there & the Israeli said the person Chomsky was referring to was not there. But Chomsky kept saying he was there.


I'm pretty sure Chomsky said that guy was a background advisor at the Taba talks. In any case, I'm more likely to believe Chomsky, who is known for rigorous fact checking and having reliable, accessible sources for everything he says in his lectures and debates, over the word of some random guy who claimed to be there with no proof whatsoever.


----------



## mirepoix

'Under the Roofs of Paris' by Henry Miller.
Filthiest book ever.


----------



## Vaneyes

*GG: A Life and Variations* *(1989)*, by Otto Friedrich (1929 - 1995).


----------



## Morimur

The Bible: Book of Exodus


----------



## Il_Penseroso

J.F. Bierlein: Parallel Myths (in a handsome readable Persian translation)

See Here.


----------



## schuberkovich

Just finished _Breakfast of Champions_ by Kurt Vonnegut. I thought it had moments of brilliance and hilarity but was overall slightly unsatisfying.


----------



## bombino

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 

If you have any interest in social psychology, you should check this one out.


----------



## clara s

Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti 

by Patricia Albers


I do not know if anybody here has ever heard of Tina


----------



## mirepoix

If it's the same Tina Modotti that I'm thinking of she was a colleague and friend of Edward Weston.


----------



## clara s

mirepoix said:


> If it's the same Tina Modotti that I'm thinking of she was a colleague and friend of Edward Weston.


perfectly right monsieur

and the muse of Edward as well

great artists


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Crudblud said:


> I'm pretty sure Chomsky said that guy was a background advisor at the Taba talks. In any case, I'm more likely to believe Chomsky, who is known for rigorous fact checking and having reliable, accessible sources for everything he says in his lectures and debates, over the word of some random guy who claimed to be there with no proof whatsoever.


Is this the same compulsively-truth-telling Chomsky who was denying the atrocities of the Khymer Rouge in the nineteen-seventies?

http://www.amazon.com/Political-Pil...&sr=8-1&keywords=political+pilgrims+hollander









_American Power and the New Mandarins_ has some great stuff in it, certainly. But some of his political pronouncements are so daft its hard to take him seriously.


----------



## mirepoix

clara s said:


> perfectly right monsieur
> 
> and the muse of Edward as well
> 
> great artists


Indeed. Weston is one of the very few photographers who when viewing their work continually makes me stop to think. I think I've still a copy of 'Forms of Passion'. Sadly, I've nothing by Ms. Modotti.
In any case, I hope you enjoy(ed) the biography.


----------



## Crudblud

Marschallin Blair said:


> Is this the same compulsively-truth-telling Chomsky who was denying the atrocities of the Khymer Rouge in the nineteen-seventies?


I don't know what he said about the Khmer Rouge. I didn't say that he was "compulsively truth telling" either, only that he is known for checking his facts and providing sources for his claims. Chomsky's no less biased than anyone else, I'm sure he's gotten plenty wrong over the course of his life, but in the context of that debate it was his word vs. that of some random guy from the audience with no evidence that anything he said was true.


----------



## clara s

mirepoix said:


> Indeed. Weston is one of the very few photographers who when viewing their work continually makes me stop to think. I think I've still a copy of 'Forms of Passion'. Sadly, I've nothing by Ms. Modotti.
> In any case, I hope you enjoy(ed) the biography.


Weston was independent finacially most of his life, that's why he was free to create.

A true master of photography like Ansel Adams, Mapplethorpe, Cartier-Bresson or Yousuf Karsh

who are my favourite

Modotti has done some good photography

i have read her biography many times, this is one more.


----------



## mirepoix

That's a fairly wide range of names you have there, each notable in their own way.
At the risk of taking this thread further off topic - do you take photos?


----------



## clara s

mirepoix said:


> That's a fairly wide range of names you have there, each notable in their own way.
> At the risk of taking this thread further off topic - do you take photos?


I take photos

I am an amateur, but photography is a composite art

and I like trying to see differently through a lens

you like photography?


----------



## mirepoix

clara s said:


> I take photos
> 
> I am an amateur, but photography is a composite art
> 
> and I like trying to see differently through a lens
> 
> you like photography?


Things can appear different through a lens. The trick is to develop the ability to see it without the lens.

Yes, I still like photography. It's how I earn my living.

I've started a thread dedicated to photography. Please feel free to contribute.

http://www.talkclassical.com/33205-photography-thread.html


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Crudblud said:


> I don't know what he said about the Khmer Rouge. I didn't say that he was "compulsively truth telling" either, only that he is known for checking his facts and providing sources for his claims. Chomsky's no less biased than anyone else, I'm sure he's gotten plenty wrong over the course of his life, but in the context of that debate it was his word vs. that of some random guy from the audience with no evidence that anything he said was true.


Got'cha. Sorry for the impetuous outburst. It has everything to do with Chomsky and absolutely nothing to do with you. A friend of mine met him once and was giving me the less-than-stellar dish on his personality.


----------



## Crudblud

Marschallin Blair said:


> Got'cha. Sorry for the impetuous outburst. It has everything to do with Chomsky and absolutely nothing to with you. A friend of mine met him once and was giving me the less-than-stellar dish on his personality.


No problem, I just wanted to clear up my position. No umbrage taken, I assure you.


----------



## Andreas

Knut Hamsum, Hunger


----------



## Marschallin Blair




----------



## Marschallin Blair

End the Fed.

End the ECB.

. . . and end the business cycles and end the depressions.


----------



## mstar

As for now, I'm reading Moby Dick, rereading David Copperfield (Dickens), and also reading Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo). Soon I'll probably start Great Expectations... I love reading multiple books at a time


----------



## schuberkovich

Just finished The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.


----------



## SimonNZ

Anton Chekhov - A Life In Letters


----------



## mirepoix

Finally managed to get some Giraudoux.


----------



## JACE

SimonNZ said:


> Anton Chekhov - A Life In Letters


That looks fantastic. Need to add it to my list.

I'm now reading:










_Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of "War and Peace"_ by Dominic Lieven


----------



## Lukecash12

mstar said:


> As for now, I'm reading Moby Dick, rereading David Copperfield (Dickens), and also reading Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo). Soon I'll probably start Great Expectations... I love reading multiple books at a time


Same here. Lately I've been reading some essays by David Horowitz, puzzling over Aristotle's sea battle argument and the whole issue of determinism, Aquinas' _summa contra gentiles_, and returning as always to Martin Buber's _Ich und du_.

Of course I'm enjoying some bible studies as well but that's it's own thing with it's own allotted time, a bit different from the other stuff I cycle through. Lately I've been contemplating John 11, Acts 6-8, and comparing Luke 14 & 15. With those two chapters in Luke it is interesting to note that it's all talking about one occasion, when you wonder why the three parables in 14 are so different from the three in 15. I personally like to think that it has to do with the audience.


----------



## Crudblud

In need of some simpler fare while the weather is hot and humid, I've decided to give Ian Rankin's Rebus stories a go, so I'm reading _Let it Bleed_.


----------



## Crudblud

Crudblud said:


> In need of some simpler fare while the weather is hot and humid, I've decided to give Ian Rankin's Rebus stories a go, so I'm reading _Let it Bleed_.


20 pages convinced me otherwise. The prose just seems so insubstantial, the humour isn't working for me, and I just don't think I can get through 200 more pages of it.

Jumping right into Laurence Sterne's _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_, which I was going to read anyway but feared my brain would not be able to deal with the extra difficulties presented by 18th century literature owing to the heat and humidity currently visited upon my house. After trying to read something simple and finding myself up for a greater challenge than I had anticipated, here we go!


----------



## JACE

Crudblud said:


> Jumping right into Laurence Sterne's _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_, which I was going to read anyway but feared my brain would not be able to deal with the extra difficulties presented by 18th century literature owing to the heat and humidity currently visited upon my house. After trying to read something simple and finding myself up for a greater challenge than I had anticipated, here we go!


There's nothing else like _Tristram_. A great, great, HILARIOUS book.


----------



## Guest

A gripping police thriller set in Norway. (The author is Norwegian and writes in his native language; Is he aware of the amusing English translation of his protagonist's name?)  His books are deadly serious, so he is not being flippant if he is aware!


----------



## Antiquarian

Just finished The System of the World (Book Three of the Baroque Cycle) by Neal Stephenson. In total 2623 pages of riotous fun. Also finished Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, not for fun, but to understand the origins of noninterventionism in capitalistic economic thought. In point of fact, both these books deal with the subject of economics. My next book (in my serious adult reading stack) is "G.K.'s Weekly - A Sampler" (Loyola University Press) a collection of G.K. Chesterton's writings on Distributism (an alternative to Capitalism). In my other stack is John Connolly's The Wolf In Winter, the latest book in the Charlie Parker series.


----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


> A gripping police thriller set in Norway. (The author is Norwegian and writes in his native language; Is he aware of the amusing English translation of his protagonist's name?)  His books are deadly serious, so he is not being flippant if he is aware!


My missus loves Harry Hole, and Jo Nesbo. I read a couple of them and they're certainly thrillers. Watched the film, Headhunters too, which I thought was brilliant. He wrote it.

Currently, I'm devouring Robert Hughes *Rome*, ahead of my trip there next month...


----------



## Lukecash12

Antiquarian said:


> Just finished The System of the World (Book Three of the Baroque Cycle) by Neal Stephenson. In total 2623 pages of riotous fun. Also finished Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, not for fun, but to understand the origins of noninterventionism in capitalistic economic thought. In point of fact, both these books deal with the subject of economics. My next book (in my serious adult reading stack) is "G.K.'s Weekly - A Sampler" (Loyola University Press) a collection of G.K. Chesterton's writings on Distributism (an alternative to Capitalism). In my other stack is John Connolly's The Wolf In Winter, the latest book in the Charlie Parker series.


Smith's Wealth of Nations hasn't just intrigued and resounded with me over the years, it has taught me some principles that I've kept and benefited from all of my life.


----------



## schuberkovich

I finished Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. I thought it was nice but tried a bit too hard to be cute and ended up irritating.
Now I'm rereading The White Hotel by D M Thomas.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Antiquarian said:


> Just finished The System of the World (Book Three of the Baroque Cycle) by Neal Stephenson. In total 2623 pages of riotous fun. Also finished Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, not for fun, but to understand the origins of noninterventionism in capitalistic economic thought. In point of fact, both these books deal with the subject of economics. My next book (in my serious adult reading stack) is "G.K.'s Weekly - A Sampler" (Loyola University Press) a collection of G.K. Chesterton's writings on Distributism (an alternative to Capitalism). In my other stack is John Connolly's The Wolf In Winter, the latest book in the Charlie Parker series.


I still want to read the wealth of nations but I'm a bit skeptical about "classical" liberalism as a whole, I'm currently studying for my history exam and it's simply impossible to ignore the absolute horror of economic inequality in the 19th century when most governments had strict noninterventionist policies. Only out of fear for revolution, like those 1858, they began to do something about the inequality. To me liberalism(libertarianism for the Americans),and communism for that matter, have both been caught up by reality. I strongly feel we are better off abandoning those strong ideological views of politics, economy and society and try to figure out what works.


----------



## Varick

Piwikiwi said:


> I still want to read the wealth of nations but I'm a bit skeptical about "classical" liberalism as a whole, I'm currently studying for my history exam and it's simply impossible to ignore the absolute horror of economic inequality in the 19th century when most governments had strict noninterventionist policies. Only out of fear for revolution, like those 1858, they began to do something about the inequality. To me liberalism(libertarianism for the Americans),and communism for that matter, have both been caught up by reality. I strongly feel we are better off abandoning those strong ideological views of politics, economy and society and try to figure out what works.


Well that's the dilemma isn't it? In order to diminish economic inequality, one must diminish a certain amount of liberty. It is impossible to diminish the former without diminishing the latter if doing so via gov't mandate or programs.

To me, Liberty is THE most important macro value in any society, not equality of outcome. Every society/gov't that has tried to equalize economic status on it's citizenry has done so by lowering the average sometimes to horrific effect - outright squalor for the vast majority (see Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, China, Cambodia, etc.). At best, it has retarded (not eliminated) economic growth and opportunity for the majority and caused massive national debt (see Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, etc. and soon the USA with it's seemingly unstoppable and ever expansion of gov't).

There are consequences to everything, and I often steal Churchill's line about Democracy and apply it to Capitalism: Capitalism is the worst economic system in the world, except for all the others.

V


----------



## Piwikiwi

Varick said:


> Well that's the dilemma isn't it? In order to diminish economic inequality, one must diminish a certain amount of liberty. It is impossible to diminish the former without diminishing the latter if doing so via gov't mandate or programs.
> 
> To me, Liberty is THE most important macro value in any society, not equality of outcome. Every society/gov't that has tried to equalize economic status on it's citizenry has done so by lowering the average sometimes to horrific effect - outright squalor for the vast majority (see Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, China, Cambodia, etc.). At best, it has retarded (not eliminated) economic growth and opportunity for the majority and caused massive national debt (see Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, etc. and soon the USA with it's seemingly unstoppable and ever expansion of gov't).
> 
> There are consequences to everything, and I often steal Churchill's line about Democracy and apply it to Capitalism: Capitalism is the worst economic system in the world, except for all the others.
> 
> V


 I'm not talking about communism, I specifically mentioned it as another failed ideology. I'm talking about things like anti-trust laws, minimum wage, regulation against child labour and government pensions. These things were highly controversial when they were first implemented in Europe and the USA because they were seen as meddling by the government in the free market.

Also the national debt in southern European country is simply because of mismanagement, Scandinavian plus The Netherlands also have a welfare state and they are doing fine economically. Look I'm really not arguing against capitalism, capitalism works great as long as there is a way to make sure that things like inequality, monopolies and " too big to fail" banks are not getting out of hand.


----------



## Vaneyes

JA's sixth collection of short stories, published 2010.


----------



## hpowders

Hitler's Willing Executioners; Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen


----------



## cwarchc

Some of it I like very much, then other times, I'm not sure if he's trying to be too clever?
Still, an interesting read


----------



## Kieran

Kieran said:


> Currently, I'm devouring Robert Hughes *Rome*, ahead of my trip there next month...


See, this started good, but now I'm skimming over huge swathes of it. It's not that I mind anti-Catholic bias - I've come to expect it - but I wouldn't mind if it was served with a dollop of wit or understanding. I'm surprised by a lot of Hughes venom, which relates as much to the core beliefs, as anything else. Meanwhile, the pagan beliefs of the Romans are treated to nary so much as a dimpled sneer. So this kind of stuff is irritating me, and taking the good out of the book, which is strong on stuff like art and architecture - he was a foremost art critic - but friskily shaky on history.

I was kind of enjoying this book and now I'm kind of disappointed by it...


----------



## Lukecash12

hpowders said:


> View attachment 47476
> 
> 
> Hitler's Willing Executioners; Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
> Daniel Jonah Goldhagen


Like they said in Dachau: "We have all been lied to." I'll have to give that a read though, because I have a number of family members who were there and they have all said that that stuff is pretty debatable. I can well imagine that if you or I were there we would have been pretty incredulous at the idea that these "nice", "ordinary" people were ignorant of what was going on right next to town. Some of those camps were so close I wouldn't be surprised if they could even smell the stench from their homes.


----------



## hpowders

Lukecash12 said:


> Like they said in Dachau: "We have all been lied to." I'll have to give that a read though, because I have a number of family members who were there and they have all said that that stuff is pretty debatable. I can well imagine that if you or I were there we would have been pretty incredulous at the idea that these "nice", "ordinary" people were ignorant of what was going on right next to town. Some of those camps were so close I wouldn't be surprised if they could even smell the stench from their homes.


The premise of the book is Hitler was preaching to the choir. The ordinary German people were already steeped in eliminationist antisemitism. They were all too willing to get rid of the Jews. Many books were written in the 19th century and early 20th calling for killing the Jews. The ordinary Germans did not want to say no to Hitler. If they did, Hitler couldn't have accomplished the murder of 6 million. Do you realize the depth of what had to be done to kill six million? Thousands of willing collaborators had to be involved. And they were mostly ordinary Germans, for whom Jew-hatred was as natural as breathing.

The fallacy of outside observers was that they believed the ordinary German people in the 1930's went along with Hitler's policies due to fear of the Nazis, that the German people were just like us in the US, repelled by Jew murder. In actuality, ordinary Germans were rabidly anti-semitic and were very happy to make Jew-killing the national pastime.

When the killing was in full force, ordinary Germans certainly knew what was going on. Why didn't they protest? Simply because most of them were willing collaborators.


----------



## Lukecash12

Varick said:


> Well that's the dilemma isn't it? In order to diminish economic inequality, one must diminish a certain amount of liberty. It is impossible to diminish the former without diminishing the latter if doing so via gov't mandate or programs.
> 
> To me, Liberty is THE most important macro value in any society, not equality of outcome. Every society/gov't that has tried to equalize economic status on it's citizenry has done so by lowering the average sometimes to horrific effect - outright squalor for the vast majority (see Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, China, Cambodia, etc.). At best, it has retarded (not eliminated) economic growth and opportunity for the majority and caused massive national debt (see Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, etc. and soon the USA with it's seemingly unstoppable and ever expansion of gov't).
> 
> There are consequences to everything, and I often steal Churchill's line about Democracy and apply it to Capitalism: Capitalism is the worst economic system in the world, except for all the others.
> 
> V


Imo, economic inequality has just as much or more to do with the cultural vehicle of the times. The problem with all of these ideas that look great on paper is when people come into the picture. They simply can't be accounted for and I must agree that all that really can be fairly done is for liberty to be upheld.


----------



## Lukecash12

hpowders said:


> The premise of the book is Hitler was preaching to the choir. The ordinary German people were already steeped in eliminationist antisemitism. They were all too willing to get rid of the Jews. Many books were written in the 19th century and early 20th calling for killing the Jews. The ordinary Germans did not want to say no to Hitler. If they did, Hitler couldn't have accomplished the murder of 6 million. Do you realize the depth of what had to be done to kill six million? Thousands of willing collaborators had to be involved. And they were mostly ordinary Germans, for whom Jew-hatred was as natural as breathing.
> 
> The fallacy of outside observers was that they believed the ordinary German people in the 1930's went along with Hitler's policies due to fear of the Nazis, that the German people were just like us in the US, repelled by Jew murder. In actuality, ordinary Germans were rabidly anti-semitic and were very happy to make Jew-killing the national pastime.
> 
> When the killing was in full force, ordinary Germans certainly knew what was going on. Why didn't they protest? Simply because most of them were willing collaborators.


Precisely. You remind me of an interesting quotation, and I wonder where it came from... It goes along these lines: "After the night of broken glass, everyone around me told me how shameful it was. So I wondered, who broke the glass?"


----------



## GreenMamba

Frederick Dillen's *Beauty*, a novel I picked up at the library with very little foreknowledge. It has back cover blurb from Tom Perrotta, who I like.

So far, so good.


----------



## hpowders

Lukecash12 said:


> Precisely. You remind me of an interesting quotation, and I wonder where it came from... It goes along these lines: "After the night of broken glass, everyone around me told me how shameful it was. So I wondered, who broke the glass?"


It's a fascinating book. I can't put it down.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Between the acts - Virginia woolf


----------



## Sonata

I just finished Wally Lamb's "We are Water" Good but almost too emotionally intense at the end. I'm now reading "The Chemistry of Joy" which was loaned to me by my doctor, she's awesome about loaning out books to me, this is the 3rd or 4th I think. She knows that I am also a medical practitioner and have a keen interest in psychology. The book was written by a psychiatrist who's had diverse training and background. The book is synthesis of ideas from Western medicine and Eastern philosophy, as well as mind-body medicine as a comprehensive picture of mental health. It's a viewpoint I strongly endorse, not just for psychology but for health in general, "whole person" medicine which is very important to me as both a patient and a medical provider.


----------



## GreenMamba

Walter Kirn's Blood Will Out, about the author's friendship with a murderous con-man ("Clark Rockefeller").


----------



## Crudblud

Miguel de Cervantes - _Don Quixote_, _Part 1_ (trans. Rutherford)

Picked up a couple of years back for 50p. No sign of _Part 2_ in the same translation (there are editions collecting the full text, but _Part 1_ seems a weighty enough tome in its own right without piling another 500 pages on top) but I can't read them both at the same time, can I?


----------



## SimonNZ

"The Cambridge Companion To Medieval Music" - Mark Everist, ed.


----------



## mirepoix

We're on an Anais Nin kick at the moment and have a copy of 'Henry & June' on the way that we'll fight over who gets to read first.


----------



## Lukecash12

Aristotle's _Nicomachean Ethics_. He tickles my brain, I just get lost in his better works sometimes.


----------



## Piwikiwi

A practical approach to 18th century counterpoint


----------



## Guest

I purchased Sophocles' Theban plays - Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus - and have been making my way through them. I read Antigone back in high school, but confess I remembered little about it. I recently listened to a lecture about Oedipus Rex and became very much interested in reading all three. Thus far I have read through Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and have been blown away. These are really fantastic plays.


----------



## Lukecash12

DrMike said:


> I purchased Sophocles' Theban plays - Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus - and have been making my way through them. I read Antigone back in high school, but confess I remembered little about it. I recently listened to a lecture about Oedipus Rex and became very much interested in reading all three. Thus far I have read through Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and have been blown away. These are really fantastic plays.


I'm shaking some cobwebs in my head... and I think I remember that Sophocles' was the first playwright who was famous for deus ex machina?


----------



## musicrom

I'm not quite sure why I'm reading this, but I am:









It's not even for school or anything; I'm just reading it just because.


----------



## Alypius

Earlier I had been reading the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, his monograph _Listening_. (See the thread: "Listening: Philosophic Reflections". The following volume is a similar philosophic (phenomenological) exploration of the phenomenon of listening, with an emphasis of musical listening:

Peter Szendy, _Listen: A History of Our Ears_, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). [French original: _L'ecoute: une histoire de nos oreilles_ (2001)]


----------



## Guest

Lukecash12 said:


> I'm shaking some cobwebs in my head... and I think I remember that Sophocles' was the first playwright who was famous for deus ex machina?


I'm not sure if that is the case - might have been Aeschylus or Euripides. At least in the Theban plays, while the gods are ever-present in the consciences, especially Apollo, whose prophecy launches the whole tragic Oedipean saga, these plays pretty much follow through in a logical progression, and don't require any particular deus ex machina to come to the resolution.

But I could be wrong. I am by no means an expert, and have yet to read the third play still.


----------



## Lukecash12

DrMike said:


> I'm not sure if that is the case - might have been Aeschylus or Euripides. At least in the Theban plays, while the gods are ever-present in the consciences, especially Apollo, whose prophecy launches the whole tragic Oedipean saga, these plays pretty much follow through in a logical progression, and don't require any particular deus ex machina to come to the resolution.
> 
> But I could be wrong. I am by no means an expert, and have yet to read the third play still.


Well, if you've read two so far and Sophocles hasn't used that device it probably isn't him. The guy I'm thinking of actually used it in most of his plays, and would even have godlike figures lowered onto the stage as well as (if my memory serves me right) using a panel and wenches to bring someone up out of the ground.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

hpowders said:


> The premise of the book is Hitler was preaching to the choir. The ordinary German people were already steeped in eliminationist antisemitism. They were all too willing to get rid of the Jews. Many books were written in the 19th century and early 20th calling for killing the Jews. The ordinary Germans did not want to say no to Hitler. If they did, Hitler couldn't have accomplished the murder of 6 million. Do you realize the depth of what had to be done to kill six million? Thousands of willing collaborators had to be involved. And they were mostly ordinary Germans, for whom Jew-hatred was as natural as breathing.
> 
> The fallacy of outside observers was that they believed the ordinary German people in the 1930's went along with Hitler's policies due to fear of the Nazis, that the German people were just like us in the US, repelled by Jew murder. In actuality, ordinary Germans were rabidly anti-semitic and were very happy to make Jew-killing the national pastime.
> 
> When the killing was in full force, ordinary Germans certainly knew what was going on. Why didn't they protest? Simply because most of them were willing collaborators.


Wow! Did you get your historical education out of Hollywood?

Oh well, pardon me, I did not see at first that you were talking about the contents of the book, not your own opinion. Or am I mistaken again?


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> Wow! Did you get your historical education out of Hollywood?
> 
> Oh well, pardon me, I did not see at first that you were talking about the contents of the book, not your own opinion. Or am I mistaken again?


I don't know to what extent the German people supported the Holocaust. I suspect it is somewhere between absolutely and not at all. Whether they were fully on board with the extermination program or not, we can't overlook the fact that Hitler was initially elected, and his views on such subjects as the Jews were not a closely held secret. So they were either willing collaborators or willfully chose to ignore his own words. At this point, we can only speculate.

But anti-semitism is never too far from the surface, even today, in the New Europe. How else to explain protests of the current war in Gaza that are going on in Europe, where people carry signs saying Hitler was right, and Jews to the gas?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

DrMike said:


> I don't know to what extent the German people supported the Holocaust. I suspect it is somewhere between absolutely and not at all. Whether they were fully on board with the extermination program or not, we can't overlook the fact that Hitler was initially elected, and his views on such subjects as the Jews were not a closely held secret. So they were either willing collaborators or willfully chose to ignore his own words. At this point, we can only speculate.
> 
> But anti-semitism is never too far from the surface, even today, in the New Europe. How else to explain protests of the current war in Gaza that are going on in Europe, where people carry signs saying Hitler was right, and Jews to the gas?


How about explaining it with the fact that there are large quantities of Muslims all across Europe? Or do you really think it is Germans and other Europeans who are carrying those signs? I know this is an off-topic political discussion, but I secretly hope that, even if the German government seems not to care one bit about the threat these large quantities pose to the native Germans, then maybe at least their enmity to the Jews will make this government see, just how incompatible with the Western civilization they are.

As for the German collaboration, unfortunately I cannot cite any relevant historical literature (being at work right now), but the Nazi government did its best in order to make the extermination of the Jews as secret as possible. Even jews themselves were often not aware of that, thinking that they were only going to labor camps. Most ordinary Germans had no idea. That is also why such phenomenon as Holocaust denial is possible. You cannot deny something that was common knowledge in a many-million nation. You can deny only something that was done in an atmosphere of secrecy.


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> How about explaining it with the fact that there are large quantities of Muslims all across Europe? Or do you really think it is Germans and other Europeans who are carrying those signs? I know this is an off-topic political discussion, but I secretly hope that, even if the German government seems not to care one bit about the threat these large quantities pose to the native Germans, then maybe at least their enmity to the Jews will make this government see, just how incompatible with the Western civilization they are.
> 
> As for the German collaboration, unfortunately I cannot cite any relevant historical literature (being at work right now), but the Nazi government did its best in order to make the extermination of the Jews as secret as possible. Even jews themselves were often not aware of that, thinking that they were only going to labor camps. Most ordinary Germans had no idea. That is also why such phenomenon as Holocaust denial is possible. You cannot deny something that was common knowledge in a many-million nation. You can deny only something that was done in an atmosphere of secrecy.


Some of the actions were done secretly. Some were so out in the open that claiming ignorance of intent begs credulity. What of Kristallnacht? Maybe they weren't on board with exterminating them, but where was the outrage when they trashed their businesses, relegated them to second-class citizens, robbed them of property, and forced them to wear the armbands?

And while not every German lived next to a concentration camp, those who did surely had to know something sinister was occurring. I mean, for crying out loud, Allied troops could smell the camps before they ever came near them. Burning human corpses are hard to ignore. And they were frequently located near to at least some kind of town, so as to make transport by train possible.

No, I don't think the average German necessarily wanted to exterminate the Jews. In fact, I think that the vast majority of Germans probably didn't want to exterminate Jews. But when push came to shove, they didn't care enough for it to really matter.


----------



## Guest

Lukecash12 said:


> Well, if you've read two so far and Sophocles hasn't used that device it probably isn't him. The guy I'm thinking of actually used it in most of his plays, and would even have godlike figures lowered onto the stage as well as (if my memory serves me right) using a panel and wenches to bring someone up out of the ground.


Sophocles wrote over 100 plays, but only 7 complete ones still, to our knowledge, exist. I don't know if Sophocles employed such devices in the other plays, but none such exist in at least the first 2 of the Theban plays, and based on what I have read about Oedipus at Colonus, it is also free of such devices.

He did contribute other important things to drama. He introduced the third character in his plays, whereas previous to him, the maximum number was 2 (with the Chorus counting as one character). With that, he added much more drama to his plays. He was very successful - he is said to have placed 1st in 19 competitions, and I'm not sure if he ever finished lower than 2nd. His plays were definitely highly revered even then. I think the timelessness of his plays comes from the fact that he doesn't introduce a deus ex machina, making it much easier to relate. The gods play a role, and man is trapped by his fate, decreed by the gods, in spite of all his effort to avoid it. But one can still be heroic in the midst of such horrible tragedy as that which ensnares Oedipus. Foretold to kill his father and wed his mother, he is sent off to die in the mountains by his parents, but the shepherd charged with the task instead gives him to another, who delivers him to the king of Corinth, who raises him as his son. As he gets older, he learns of the prophecy concerning him, and so flees Corinth to avoid such unspeakable acts against those he believes to be his parents, only to walk straight into the very acts he hopes to avoid. Then, as the truth is slowly revealed to him, he has the courage to continue to seek out that truth, in spite of what he knows must become of him when it all is revealed. The gods are ever-present throughout, but never make an appearance. And then his daughter, Antigone, faced with the moral dilemma later on between her duty to her own blood and the conflicting orders of her king and uncle. What is more important? Fealty to blood, or obedience to the law? And also questions regarding the role of the government - should it be unyielding, or flexible to ever-changing circumstances, or does that make it appear weak?

Great questions raised.


----------



## Vesteralen

Lukecash12 said:


> Well, if you've read two so far and Sophocles hasn't used that device it probably isn't him. The guy I'm thinking of actually used it in most of his plays, and would even have godlike figures lowered onto the stage as well as (if my memory serves me right) using a panel and wenches to bring someone up out of the ground.


I can see those Greek girls fighting over whose turn it is to bring someone up next.


----------



## Vesteralen

History of Photography
The Popular Guide to Classical Music
The Complete Peanuts 1959-1960
Schumann: A Chorus of Voices
Sophokles: The Complete Plays (trans. Mueller)
Uncle Fred in the Springtime - Wodehouse
Sketches - Mark Twain
Heat Lightning - Hildegarde Dolson


----------



## Guest

Vesteralen said:


> History of Photography
> The Popular Guide to Classical Music
> The Complete Peanuts 1959-1960
> Schumann: A Chorus of Voices
> Sophokles: The Complete Plays (trans. Mueller)
> Uncle Fred in the Springtime - Wodehouse
> Sketches - Mark Twain
> Heat Lightning - Hildegarde Dolson


My Sophocles is the Fagles translation. I haven't experimented with different translations - this one appealed to me because the English is more modern, making it much easier to understand. I have read some critiques, though, that suggest some of his translation drops some of the meaning from the original Greek. How do you find the Mueller translation?


----------



## Vesteralen

DrMike said:


> How do you find the Mueller translation?


So far, I've only read "Aias" and "Women of Trachis", but I love Mueller's translation. My standard is, good Sophocles should always give me chills (which, I realize, is an emotional response, rather than a learned one)- and his translation does.


----------



## Guest

After I finish the Theban plays, I intend to also get translations of the 4 other complete plays. I'll have to look into Mueller.


----------



## elgar's ghost

'Where They Ain't' by Burt Solomon. The rollicking story of the rise and fall of the brilliant but cynically rule-bending 1890's Baltimore Orioles baseball team, featuring the roles played by the club's (mainly Irish) prime movers such as Wee Willie Keeler, John McGraw and Ned Hanlon in turning the Orioles into a powerhouse who were ahead of their time on the field but who were ruthlessly - and fatally - asset-stripped off it when at their peak.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

DrMike said:


> Some of the actions were done secretly. Some were so out in the open that claiming ignorance of intent begs credulity. What of Kristallnacht? Maybe they weren't on board with exterminating them, but where was the outrage when they trashed their businesses, relegated them to second-class citizens, robbed them of property, and forced them to wear the armbands?
> 
> And while not every German lived next to a concentration camp, those who did surely had to know something sinister was occurring. I mean, for crying out loud, Allied troops could smell the camps before they ever came near them. Burning human corpses are hard to ignore. And they were frequently located near to at least some kind of town, so as to make transport by train possible.


Well, I am back home now with this book:









("Travelling in German History"), written by a group of German professors. These esteemed professors also write that the extermination of the Jews was supposed to be kept secret. The few instances when it was openly discussed, for example in Himmler's "Posen Speeches" were meant only for the ears of high-ranking Nazis, not for the general public. Concerning Kristallnacht, yes, the Germans were quite eager to strip Jews of their (as they perceived) dispoportional wealth and influence, but it does not mean they were ready to kill them. In fact, one of the Nazi leaders (either Goebbels or Himmler) complained at the time that Germans were too protective of the Jews, that "every German has his favorite Jew whom he tries to hide". Before the beginning of the war Jews were allowed to emigrate freely. As for the smell of the burning corpses - really, how is everybody supposed to know what burning corpses smell like?



> No, I don't think the average German necessarily wanted to exterminate the Jews. In fact, I think that the vast majority of Germans probably didn't want to exterminate Jews. But when push came to shove, they didn't care enough for it to really matter


Don't forget the Nazis also had Gestapo for those who did care.

And the book I am reading right now is Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five".


----------



## Alypius

arrived today:

Peter Burt, _The Music of Toru Takemitsu_, 
series: Music in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)


----------



## Mahlerian

Alypius said:


> arrived today:
> 
> Peter Burt, _The Music of Toru Takemitsu_,
> series: Music in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)


Ah, that's a good book indeed.

Currently reading through:

Gustav Mahler, by Jens Malte Fischer


----------



## LancsMan

Just finished 'The War That Ended Peace' - by Margaret MacMillan - an account of the attitudes and events that led to the outbreak of The First World War. This book won the Samuel Johnson Prize.

Am following that with Max Hastings 'Catastrophe- Europe Goes to War 1914' which The Times had as 'History Book of The Year'.

We smugly think we couldn't be dragged into another conflict like this, but there are some ominous rumblings in Europe as well as the wider world.

I have also just read the Man Booker Prize winning 'Bring Up The Bodies' by Hilary Mantel - the follow on from Wolf Hall. These are very compelling accounts of Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry The Eighth. 

Half way through Christopher Hitchens 'Arguably' a collection of Hitchen's writings. I don't always agree with his opinions, particularly his views on the War in Iraq.


----------



## Blancrocher

J. G. Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur. The story of the siege of a fictional town in India. One of the best novels I've read in some time--a real page-turner!


----------



## clavichorder

I greatly enjoyed Babbit by Sinclair Lewis, and have read a few things since(Anthony Trollope's "Barchester towers" among them, which I really enjoyed), and now I've been reading more Sinclair Lewis. 

But rather than read Main Street or Arrowsmith, the famous ones, or even Dodsworth or Elmer Gantry, or some later one, I picked up his first novel, Our Mr. Wren: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentleman. I am enjoying it and not merely for it being an enjoyable little novel, but also for its setting and time period. I was reading it on the Kindle, because that was the only way to get it or so I though, but then I found a copy at a used book store and now I'm really happy!


----------



## Guest

From Amazon: "When No Price Is Too High, Pleasure Knows No Limit....

For homicide detective Stuart Haydon, murder is just the beginning. His investigation into the brutal slaying of a cameraman in a Houston ad agency's darkroom sets him on the trail of a most bizarre and twisted series of crimes...the kind that only money can buy."

So far, so good!


----------



## Posie

Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (second time around) and Narcissus & Goldmund - both written by Hermann Hesse

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading."
- William Styron


----------



## GreenMamba

A Very Short Introduction to Numbers.


----------



## schuberkovich

Catch-22. Enjoying it a lot so far.


----------



## Ingélou

I took 'Beethoven's Hair' on holiday - I enjoyed it, and was moved by the story of the Danish Jews, but I thought it 'went on' a bit at the end, repeating what had already been said. Still, the idea that plumbism caused Beethoven's deafness and other health problems was extremely interesting.


----------



## Varick

Mahlerian said:


> Ah, that's a good book indeed.
> 
> Currently reading through:
> 
> Gustav Mahler, by Jens Malte Fischer


I can't believe Mahlerian is reading a book about Mahler. How strange!

V


----------



## Cosmos

C.S. Lewis - Perelandra, part of his "space trilogy"

Very...unique to say the least


----------



## Lukecash12

Augustine: City of God.









Augustine's famous and gargantuan work criticizing ideas from Origen, Lactantius, and Plato on the ideal city, or more pointedly: the ideal society. As is common in many works from antiquity, theology and philosophy are thought of in the same context as the social sciences and implications are borrowed freely between them.


----------



## Alypius

Lukecash12 said:


> Augustine: City of God.
> 
> Augustine's famous and gargantuan work criticizing ideas from Origen, Lactantius, and Plato on the ideal city, or more pointedly: the ideal society. As is common in many works from antiquity, theology and philosophy are thought of in the same context as the social sciences and implications are borrowed freely between them.


Luke, are you actually reading it in the original Latin? I ask only because the attached picture is a facsimile of a medieval manuscript. The _De ciuitate dei_ in the Latin original is pretty challenging reading.

Actually, I presume you're doing it via a translation. What translation are you using? There is a superb new translation by William Babcock in the _Works of St. Augustine_ series, in two volumes, I/6: Books 1-10 (New City Press, 2012) and I/7: Books 11-22 (New City Press, 2013). I look forward to hearing how it goes.










By the way, let me recommend reading it alongside another volume: namely, James Wetzel, ed. _Augustine's City of God: A Critical Guide_ (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Right now, it's only in hardcover but is forthcoming in paperback soon.


----------



## Lukecash12

Alypius said:


> Luke, are you actually reading it in the original Latin? I ask only because the attached picture is a facsimile of a medieval manuscript. The _De ciuitate dei_ in the Latin original is pretty challenging reading.
> 
> Actually, I presume you're doing it via a translation. What translation are you using? There is a superb new translation by William Babcock in the _Works of St. Augustine_ series, in two volumes, I/6: Books 1-10 (New City Press, 2012) and I/7: Books 11-22 (New City Press, 2013). I look forward to hearing how it goes.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> By the way, let me recommend reading it alongside another volume: namely, James Wetzel, ed. _Augustine's City of God: A Critical Guide_ (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Right now, it's only in hardcover but is forthcoming in paperback soon.


Wetzel's recent work I found helpful when I picked it up last year, of notable mention also is his work in 92 _Augustine and the Limits of Virtue_. Medieval Latin certainly is challenging, much harder to read than the Vulgate or classical period literature from authors like Cicero. I do however own a copy of the 15th century manuscript you see there and have owned it since I wrote my thesis on church history at A. W. Tozer. As regards a translation, I've mostly been using Dyson's translation from 95 as of late, I may have to look up Babcock and make some comparisons but I have always preferred the original. It most certainly is challenging but it is all the more rewarding. IMO, English lit majors deal with works that pale in comparison to classical literature.


----------



## Ingélou

I am rereading 'Mansfield Park', and empathising with Jane Austen's heroine Fanny Price & her sensitive observation of the selfishness around her.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

marinasabina said:


> Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (second time around) and Narcissus & Goldmund - both written by *Hermann Hesse*


I am reading a collection of his poetry just now. My sentiment after getting halway through is somewhat similar to that after hearing Wagner for the first time: "What the hell have I been doing all my life and why did I not get to know him before?" I think "Narcissus and Goldmund" is going to be next.


----------



## Jos

J.G. Ballard, milleniumpeople. 

Cheers,
Jos


----------



## Alypius

Lukecash12 said:


> Wetzel's recent work I found helpful when I picked it up last year, of notable mention also is his work in 92 _Augustine and the Limits of Virtue_. Medieval Latin certainly is challenging, much harder to read than the Vulgate or classical period literature from authors like Cicero. I do however own a copy of the 15th century manuscript you see there and have owned it since I wrote my thesis on church history at A. W. Tozer. As regards a translation, I've mostly been using Dyson's translation from 95 as of late, I may have to look up Babcock and make some comparisons but I have always preferred the original. It most certainly is challenging but it is all the more rewarding. IMO, English lit majors deal with works that pale in comparison to classical literature.


The version that I work with is from the Corpus Christianorum series that Brepols put out in a pricey paperback a few years ago (but vastly cheaper than the hardcover). If you enjoy Wetzel's work, I strongly recommend his collected essays that appeared last summer. Here's the Amazon link: Parting Knowledge: Essays After Augustine (Wipf & Stock, 2013).


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## samurai

Bernard Malamud--*The Tenants* 
Don DeLillo--*Underworld*


----------



## Varick

Alypius said:


> The version that I work with is from the Corpus Christianorum series that Brepols put out in a pricey paperback a few years ago (but vastly cheaper than the hardcover). If you enjoy Wetzel's work, I strongly recommend his collected essays that appeared last summer. Here's the Amazon link: Parting Knowledge: Essays After Augustine (Wipf & Stock, 2013).


Question (for Lukecash as well): Would you recommend reading Wetzel's "Parting Knowledge" before tackling Saint Augustine's "City of God?" I have never read anything by St. Augestine but have always wanted to read "City of God." I just have never gotten around to it.

I always like to read a precursor of something "big" like City of God. I found a small book years ago that gave a history and background to Plato's "Republic" and I'm so glad I read that before "The Republic." I'm wondering if the same would help with "City of God."

Thank you in advance.

V


----------



## Alypius

Varick said:


> Question (for Lukecash as well): Would you recommend reading Wetzel's "Parting Knowledge" before tackling Saint Augustine's "City of God?" I have never read anything by St. Augestine but have always wanted to read "City of God." I just have never gotten around to it.
> 
> I always like to read a precursor of something "big" like City of God. I found a small book years ago that gave a history and background to Plato's "Republic" and I'm so glad I read that before "The Republic." I'm wondering if the same would help with "City of God." Thank you in advance.
> 
> V


Varick, You don't want to start with _City of God_. The first 10 books are a complex attack on 4th/5th-century paganism; the last 12 are Augustine's summa, his vision of world history. Unless one brings a lot of background, it is easy to get lost in his eloquent meanderings -- remember the book is 1500 pages. And many readers simply give it up after a while. Wetzel's _After Knowledge_ essays are not the place to start either. They are brilliant, refined essays for those already with a good basic familiarity with his thought.

If you want to get into Augustine, two recommendations. The first is an anthology of Augustine's writings, surveying his entire corpus and career: _Augustine In His Own Words_, ed. William Harmless (Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Here's the blurb from Amazon:



> Few thinkers have shaped Western civilization more powerfully than St. Augustine (354-430). This volume offers a comprehensive portrait--or rather, self-portrait, since its words are mostly Augustine's own--drawn from the breadth of his writings and from the long course of his career. One chapter is devoted to each of his masterpieces (Confessions, On the Trinity, and City of God) and one to each of his best-known controversies (against Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians). It also explores the often overlooked facets of his career, namely, his everyday work as a bishop, preacher, and interpreter of the Bible. Augustine was an extraordinarily prolific writer, and his eloquent long-windedness can prove overwhelming not only to newcomers, but even to experts. Few know what to read first or how best to read him in context, given the complex and dauntingly remote world of Late Antiquity. This collection is designed to help readers not only to sort through his vast corpus of writings but also to tune their ears to the melodies of his speech and the swirl of his mind. What catches our ear today, as it caught the ear of Augustine's first hearers, is the heart beneath the voice, his uncanny ability to speak across the centuries, heart to heart, his heart to ours. His was an agitated eloquence, and he used it to ponder and wrestle aloud with life's mysteries, both those glimpsed in the epic of human history and those astir in the depths of the human heart. But Augustine's center and passion was another far greater mystery, the God he met in the Bible and in his heart.


If you go Amazon, clink on the cover, then the "first pages" tab, and it will let you read the entire introduction. Actually, as I scrolled through it, it looks like you can preview much of the book. That should give you a good feel for it.

















It is best to read this anthology alongside Peter Brown's masterful _Augustine of Hippo: A Biography_, rev. ed. (University of California Press, 2000). Brown is an exquisite writer and brings alive Augustine's world and life in extraordinary ways. He first wrote it in 1968, then added two lengthy appendix chapters in 2000. There is a 2013 "45th Anniversary Edition" with a new cover, but it's the 2000 version. Pairing excerpts of his writings with a biography, I've found, is the best way to get a hold of his personality, career, and very intricate thought. Let me know how you find these.


----------



## mtmailey

I am reading a book on learning portuguese & kanji .kanji IS NOT EASY for me.


----------



## Lukecash12

Alypius said:


> Varick, You don't want to start with _City of God_. The first 10 books are a complex attack on 4th/5th-century paganism; the last 12 are Augustine's summa, his vision of world history. Unless one brings a lot of background, it is easy to get lost in his eloquent meanderings -- remember the book is 1500 pages. And many readers simply give it up after a while. Wetzel's _After Knowledge_essays are not the place to start either. They are brilliant, refined essays for those already with considerable familiarity with his thought.
> 
> If you want to get into Augustine, two recommendations. The first is an anthology of Augustine's writing, surveying his entire corpus and career: _Augustine In His Own Words_, ed. William Harmless (Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Here's the blurb from Amazon:
> 
> If you go Amazon, clink on the cover, then the "first pages" tab, and it will let you read the entire introduction. Actually, as I scrolled through it, it looks like you can preview much of the book. That should give you a good feel for it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is best to read this anthology alongside Peter Brown's masterful _Augustine of Hippo: A Biography_, rev. ed. (University of California Press, 2000). Brown is an exquisite writer and brings alive Augustine's world and life in extraordinary ways. He first wrote it in 1968, then added two lengthy appendix chapters in 2000. There is a 2013 "45th Anniversary Edition" with a new cover, but it's the 2000 version. Pairing excerpts of his writings with a biography, I've found, is the best way to a hold of his personality, career, and very intricate thought. Let me know how you find these.


I would second this, Augustine draws a lot from his own earlier material and mentions things in his life like his conversion from Neoplatonism to Christianity. If you haven't read anything by Augustine yet, I actually wouldn't recommend even attempting to start with _City of God_, rather I think you would find his _Confessions_ more relatively accessible and just as entertaining. It is more autobiographical but those elements are incidental to understanding his view of different Greek philosophy schools, and it is key to note that his primary exposure to Greek philosophy is through Cicero writing in Latin. Because of it's autobiographical nature, _Confessions_ is typically considered the starting point, but really there are a whole host of books to choose from as Augustine was a very prolific writer.


----------



## science

Reading Eco's _The Name of the Rose_ and reflecting on the blessing and curse of the internet. Without a doubt it's a blessing that we now have such easy access to so many books (and so much music!), but a little bit of romance has been lost, the romance of exploring old libraries and bookshops and finding some old gem.... I guess that hasn't been lost for the people who want to collect stuff, but it is no longer necessary now, and it used to be necessary.


----------



## Pugg

Edward St Aubyn : Some hope.
Very gripping

​


----------



## Jos

samurai said:


> Don DeLillo--*Underworld*


Have to pick that one up again. Started on it two or three times, but for some reason I can't seem to finish it. Maybe I should get the translated version.
Finished "cosmopolis" in a day on summerholiday last year.

Cheers,
Jos


----------



## Blancrocher

Lukecash12 said:


> If you haven't read anything by Augustine yet, I actually wouldn't recommend even attempting to start with _City of God_, rather I think you would find his _Confessions_ more relatively accessible and just as entertaining.


Fwiw, I'll second the recommendation of the "Meditations" (text and translations here). It's an extraordinary tour de force by any standard, irrespective of one's scholarly interests. Given our context here, one might also like to have a look at his philosophical dialogues "On music."

I'm also glad to see Peter Brown mentioned. His biography of Augustine is a classic for Augustinians, though it's an early work written while he was a graduate student. In his later books about late antiquity he develops a truly original prose style--to my mind, he's one of the best historical writers since Gibbon!


----------



## clavichorder

Really enjoying "Our Mr. Wren" by Sinclair Lewis. Not sure why more people don't read this book.


----------



## Guest

I read Augustine's Confessions back in college as part of a History of Civilization class, along with the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, and Confucius. I have to admit I don't remember a lot from it.

I am finding myself, though, drawn more and more back to these titans of literature - the writings of those who made up the very foundation of what we now refer to as Western Civilization. I have read, among others, Plato's Republic, various works of Shakespeare, I am currently working on the plays of Sophocles, I have read the Bible (King James Version), Machiavelli's Prince, Homer's Iliad, and still have many more on my list. Perhaps now I also need to toss Augustine onto that pile.


----------



## mtmailey

today i got JAPANESE FOR DUMMIES plan to read it soon .


----------



## Alypius

Blancrocher said:


> I'm also glad to see Peter Brown mentioned. His biography of Augustine is a classic for Augustinians, though it's an early work written while he was a graduate student. In his later books about late antiquity he develops a truly original prose style--to my mind, he's one of the best historical writers since Gibbon!


I agree, but would argue that while his biography of Augustine may have been written when he was still in late 20s and early 30s, it remains a work of historical genius. His command of Augustine's texts (especially the letters and sermons -- many of which had not been translated at that time) was staggering. But it was his ability to get not only inside Augustine's and his contemporaries' heads but into their hearts, to be attuned to their feel for the world. The prose is spritely and vivid. Of course, in writing it, he kept his eye very much on Gibbon. I have read everything that I know that he has written, and I believe that for all the genius of his later books he has not surpassed that first one (though _The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity_ is a very close second).

That said, I recommend virtually everything he has written. Have you read his most recent, _Through the Eye of the Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD_ (Princeton University Press, 2012)? It has just recently appeared in paperback. I'm nearly finished with it. This is, in many ways, his real answer to Gibbon -- and a lot else. It's much more thickly written than most of his works, more overtly academic in style, but also packed with erudition, teacherly lucidity, and a good revisionist reading of Late Antiquity. Not to be missed:


----------



## hpowders

Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen


----------



## Blancrocher

Alypius said:


> I agree, but would argue that while his biography of Augustine may have been written when he was still in late 20s and early 30s, it remains a work of historical genius.


Yes, I agree--can't go wrong with Peter Brown, be it this or the new book, Through the Eye of the Needle. Though it's "The Body in Society" that I'd take with me to the desert island!


----------



## Varick

Thank you Elypius, Lukecash, and Blancrocher for your insights and recommendations. Now all I have to do is find the time to read and listen to everything I would like to on a given day. Basically speaking, all I'd have to do is win the lottery. All you need is a dollar and a dream.... and an obscene amount of luck!

Thanks again gentlemen.

V


----------



## science

Varick said:


> Thank you Elypius, Lukecash, and Blancrocher for your insights and recommendations. Now all I have to do is find the time to read and listen to everything I would like to on a given day. Basically speaking, all I'd have to do is win the lottery. All you need is a dollar and a dream.... and an obscene amount of luck!
> 
> Thanks again gentlemen.
> 
> V


Don't do it baby! Save, invest, save, invest, save, invest, save, invest.... It pays off someday!


----------



## Lukecash12

science said:


> Don't do it baby! Save, invest, save, invest, save, invest, save, invest.... It pays off someday!


Depends on what you buy and how much you spend. I like to save with cheap groceries, a reasonable living space for my age, no silliness like these internet phones and different cable packages, cutting free fire wood so I don't spend a dime on heating during the winter, all kinds of ways to save money. Now my library, my music, my fly fishing tackle and cigars, those would be the last things to suffer. Imo, that's the problem for a lot of Americans nowadays, they don't know how to spend money like an old fart.


----------



## GreenMamba

*Mr Norris Changes Trains*, one-half of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories.


----------



## mirepoix

Lermontov - 'A Hero of Our Time'.


----------



## Badinerie

Reading Ava Gardner's Biography Love is nothing. "By she were a naughty lass!" I dont think Lee Server, the author thought much of Frank Sinatra either. he gets a real pasting. Not a book for your maiden aunt to read.


----------



## Ingélou

Badinerie said:


> Reading Ava Gardner's Biography Love is nothing. "By she were a naughty lass!" I dont think Lee Server, the author thought much of Frank Sinatra either. he gets a real pasting. Not a book for your maiden aunt to read.


I recall reading the first autobiography of the lately-deceased Lauren Bacall - she was Sinatra's fiancée at one stage - and that she wrote 'Frank was a complete sh**!' 
(And _edit_ - I recall that Moody once met Frank Sinatra when M was in the record business, and also thought he wasn't a nice character. It's on a long-lost thread here somewhere.)

I love biographies of just about anybody. Must try and get this from our local library.


----------



## Taggart

The posts were:



moody said:


> Bing Crosby started as a jazz singer and I have many,many of his records going right back to that time
> He is marvellous and always completely on the note
> I had the misfortune to meet Sinatra once,a more objectionable individual I can't imagine.


and



moody said:


> I had taken over the job of Sales director at Saga records. My predecessor ,Mike Smith,had gone to Sinatra's label at the time --CBS I believe.
> He called me and asked me whether I'd like to go with him to Heathrow Airport as he was going to greet Sinatra.
> Sinatra was churlish ,snappy and demanding ,he talked over everyone ,wouldn't answer queries .
> When we got to the Dorchester hotel he gave everyone a bad time and demanded priority over other guests. He complained about every possible thing he could.
> He was of course wearing his overcoat across his shoulders gangster-style and upon arrival removed it and threw it over the head of a minion with the terse command,"Hang that!".


----------



## Blancrocher

Sorry not to see moody around here these days.


----------



## Ingélou

He is not very well. I am in touch with him still, if anyone would like news.


----------



## hpowders

Ingélou said:


> I recall reading the first autobiography of the lately-deceased Lauren Bacall - she was Sinatra's fiancée at one stage - and that she wrote 'Frank was a complete sh**!'
> (And _edit_ - I recall that Moody once met Frank Sinatra when M was in the record business, and also thought he wasn't a nice character. It's on a long-lost thread here somewhere.)
> 
> I love biographies of just about anybody. Must try and get this from our local library.


Sinatra proposed marriage and dumped her after she leaked the impending marriage to a newspaper reporter. He refused to take her phone calls. He could be a cold dude at times.


----------



## thetrout

World War One phrase...

John Keegan's _The First World War_
Richard Holmes's _Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front_
Barnett's _The Swordbearers_


----------



## Billy

The last of several books I was skimming through tonight was Don Quixote, my favorite novel.


----------



## cwarchc

Billy said:


> The last of several books I was skimming through tonight was Don Quixote, my favorite novel.


I'm reading this at the moment
Can't believe I've not read it before


----------



## mtmailey

View attachment 48976
I AM READING THIS NOW it is a long book.


----------



## Blancrocher

hpowders said:


> Sinatra proposed marriage and dumped her after she leaked the impending marriage to a newspaper reporter. He refused to take her phone calls. He could be a cold dude at times.


Yeah--though he learned how that felt when Ava Gardner played him like a fiddle. She did such a number on him that he even kept a shrine for her in his house during a subsequent marriage.

Quite the piece of work, indeed.


----------



## Tayfun

I've just finished Karamazov Brothers and i can declare that this is not a regular literary book, this is a holly book.
The other book i adore is Voyage To The End of The World which is written by Louis Ferdinand Celiné.


----------



## science

Ingélou said:


> He is not very well. I am in touch with him still, if anyone would like news.


Tell him we hope he gets back to his old self soon!


----------



## Cheyenne

I am rereading my favorite play: Goethe's _Iphigenia in Tauris_.


----------



## starthrower

http://www.bathedinlightning.com/


----------



## Varick

mtmailey said:


> View attachment 48976
> I AM READING THIS NOW it is a long book.


Did you start at the back of the book or is that just Chinese?

V


----------



## Mahlerian

Varick said:


> Did you start at the back of the book or is that just Chinese?
> 
> V


Modern Japanese, like modern Chinese, reads both ways. If you're reading horizontally, the lines are aligned in the Western manner, but if you're reading vertically, the lines are right to left.


----------



## brianvds

A Game of Thrones.

Somewhat to my own surprise, I find myself riveted.


----------



## clavichorder

A big project: Henry Esmond, Thackeray's personal favorite of his novels, written with loving labor, so I have heard. I have also heard from a prolific reader friend that he thought it was tedious, despite Trollope's high recommendation.

All this this made me curious. And this is coming from a guy who hasn't even read Vanity Fair, though I've read a good helping of Trollope and a little Dickens. So far I find nothing to object to, though I am only 77 pages in. I am enjoying the historical intrigue, and wondering what it is my friend found so tedious about it, as I am finding a captivating and magical, if thick and sometimes complicated delivery and writing style. I have had to do a lot of re reading of the same passages though, in this early stage of the book, and expect to reference to the beginning again as I progress, because its a historical novel and there is serious background detail that is very hard to take in at first. 

So far, the Henry Esmond is a kid living in a mansion called Castlewood, and he is telling his newcomer 'kinsman'(with Thackeray's help to us readers) about his past at Castlewood before they arrived. Some of it reminds me of David Copperfield, but with an 18th century edge to it and allusions to all the political intrigue with the church and Dutch aristocracy at the time, and how it upsets his home life. I love being so immersed in another time, by a writer of another time about a time earlier than his. 

But, though I am optimistic at this stage of my reading, maybe I will find things that drag on or that I don't like as I get further along. I don't know. I am determined to climb the mountain of Henry Esmond though! 

I will keep you updated on my progress and see if I can't recommend people to read it when I'm finished.


----------



## Ingélou

:tiphat:, Clavichorder - respect! I never got more than halfway through Vanity Fair. It was very witty, but it was 'too much'. Looking forward to hearing your verdict.

I've just started a second hand paperback that I picked up in the York Oxfam Shop, *Henry Purcell - Glory of his Age* by Margaret Campbell (Oxford University Press, 1993). So far I'm enjoying it - lots of social detail about the habits of the age.


----------



## Mahlerian

So, I finished Fischer's biography, and here's my take:
It's a good volume, far more condensed than La Grange's set of tomes and still quite substantial in terms of presenting a very complete picture of Mahler's life and work. My main quibble is with the chapters dedicated to individual works, which are inserted after the chapters in which he writes them. This makes it somewhat confusing to keep track of the events in Mahler's life, because the gap between the composition of a work and its first performance was always a matter of several years (so right after talking about the composition of Das Lied von der Erde, Fischer discusses that work, and then proceeds in his biography to describe the premiere of the Seventh). I also find that his interpretations of the works are overly literal: "X means this", "Y cannot possibly be Z", etc. While acknowledging the existence of a multiplicity of interpretations, the author usually implies or outright states that Adorno's view (or a tempered version thereof) of whatever work is clearly the most correct. He also reiterates the canard that the Andante of the Sixth has no motivic connections to the other movements, which is false.

Despite these reservations, the volume is fully worthwhile, and does a great job of describing Mahler's personality (the good and the bad), his character, and the world he lived in. Like La Grange, he deconstructs the myths surrounding Mahler's last few years, revealing a man who, despite the trials and troubles of life, had an enormous will to live and create, right up to the onset of his final illness.


----------



## Crudblud

John Kennedy Toole - _A Confederacy of Dunces_

I don't know how long it'll take me to read this, I've just finished the first chapter and I was pausing to laugh so often it might have taken me twice as long as ten pages normally would.


----------



## brotagonist

I'm trying to learn a little something about music, so I picked up a used copy (one I actually intend to keep, instead of trade in after I am done!) of Aaron Copland's _What to Listen for in Music_, a book that has pretty much become the Bible in music appreciation. There is a lot of material and I want to absorb it as much as I can in the first reading, so I am taking it rather slowly, a chapter or section of a chapter every day or few days.









The book is very well written and covers a lot of material, just the kind of thing for someone who likes to know stuff


----------



## ptr

Crudblud said:


> John Kennedy Toole - _A Confederacy of Dunces_


I've had some of my biggest laughs reeding JKT!

/ptr


----------



## GreenMamba

Reading David McCullough's *The Path Between the Seas *(about the building of the Panama Canal) which is on sale for $3 as a Kindle ebook. Normally I don't like reading long books digitally, so we'll see. So far, so good.


----------



## starthrower

I read several chapters of Bruford's book over the weekend. He has a great writing style, and some interesting observations and insights into music, culture, and artistry.


----------



## BRHiler

brianvds said:


> A Game of Thrones.
> 
> Somewhat to my own surprise, I find myself riveted.


It's more of a historical fiction with some fantasy elements thrown in. If you've seen the TV show before reading the books, then expect some minor (and later some major) differences. And Martin is brutal to his characters...all of them.

I myself am re-reading Game of Thrones now. Also reading the Pollack Copland book, and then for some light reading, am reading some Brad Thor thriller.


----------



## Marcel

Werther by Johann Wofgang von Goethe.


----------



## Andreas

Italo Svevo, Senilità


----------



## SixFootScowl

Just started this. Picked it up at a book sale and only because I knew about Medgar from the Bob Dylan song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" (lyrics)


----------



## Cheyenne

I finished _The Quarrel of the Age: The Life and Times of William Hazlitt_ yesterday. Now I am reading _The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style_.


----------



## brotagonist

I am about halfway through a book I purchased a few weeks ago, Aaron Copland's _What to listen for in Music_. I decided to set it aside for a while, since I was at the public library yesterday and I found a copy of Rob Kapilow's _All you have to do is listen_. I decided that the library book should have priority. I am already enjoying it a lot and stayed up pretty late last night reading the first 3 chapters


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Germaine de Staël, _Considérations sur les principaux événemens de la Révolution française_, 3 vols., 1818

http://lf-oll.s3.amazonaws.com/titles/1345/0969-01_Bk.pdf


----------



## mirepoix

'Le Grand Meaulnes' - by Alain-Fournier.


----------



## SimonNZ

"Bach's St. Matthew Passion" - Victor Lederer

considerably lighter than what I was hoping for


----------



## brotagonist

I just finished Rob Kapilow's _All you have to do is Listen_. Luckily, I had some free time  as it snowed from Monday to today  I spent the better part of the last three days reading. This is a sensational book that aims to teach you to become a better listener. It opened up my mind to some new concepts that I hope to train my ears to implement. The book is going back to the library and it is supposed to be warm tomorrow, meaning deep pools of water everywhere 

And I am back to reading Aaron Copland's _What to Listen for in Music_, which I had set aside briefly. I am not in a panic to finish that one, as it is my own copy. Kapilow claims that "all you have to do is listen," which is what I want to get back to doing  as I rehearse into skill some of the new ideas for more active listening.


----------



## senza sordino

Why Mahler?
View attachment 50859

Very interesting, very readable.


----------



## Kopachris

Having another go at Schenker's _Harmony_. Didn't get very far the first time.


----------



## Blancrocher

Kopachris said:


> Having another go at Schenker's _Harmony_. Didn't get very far the first time.


Whenever your energy begins to flag, I'd suggest reading his non-technical criticism. Hilarious rants!


----------



## Badinerie

On holiday I took Sophocles, "Electra and other plays". ( Ajax, Women of Trachis. Philoctetes) and Raymond Chandlers Farewell my Lovely. Right now Im reading Gilbert Frankau "Concerning Peter Jackson and Others"


----------



## Cosmos

For class: James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I've only read about 1/5th of it so far, but it's one of the better books I've read in a while


----------



## Ingélou

Have just finished re-reading Amy Chua's *Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother*. It's the perfect book for a hospital bedside (while Taggart is dozing) as it is so funny & yet thought-provoking too; easily laid by for later, but yet engrossing.


----------



## schuberkovich

Cosmos said:


> For class: James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
> 
> I've only read about 1/5th of it so far, but it's one of the better books I've read in a while


I'm doing Dubliners for school at the moment.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

I'm amidst Virginia Woolf's first novel 'The Voyage Out' (published in 1915) at the moment.

I tried Woolf more than 20 years ago (Mrs. Dalloway) at the recommendation of a colleague, but I didn't get very far amongst career demands, babies etc.

I've been spurred to try again by my son reading 'Mrs. Dalloway' and 'To the Lighthouse'. Well, if a 19-year old can read her, I surely can. I'm enjoying her powers of observation and description, certainly, even if the social attitudes and casual racism are a bit eye-opening.


----------



## BaronScarpia

The Coma by Alex Gardner at present.

Up next is... Midnight's Children.


----------



## Guest

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - perhaps my 6th time reading it. One of those for which I never tire. Often duplicated, never bested. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is also a masterwork, but there is something to the innocence of Tolkien that just isn't there with Martin.


----------



## Antiquarian

DrMike said:


> Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - perhaps my 6th time reading it. One of those for which I never tire. Often duplicated, never bested. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is also a masterwork, but there is something to the innocence of Tolkien that just isn't there with Martin.


Agree completely. Every couple of years I read LOTR. I haven't yet read the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' yet, even though I do have the series in my library. I am waiting for Martin to finish the whole series before I begin it... so it may be ten years before I get around to reading it.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies


----------



## Piwikiwi

DrMike said:


> Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - perhaps my 6th time reading it. One of those for which I never tire. Often duplicated, never bested. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is also a masterwork, but there is something to the innocence of Tolkien that just isn't there with Martin.


I love fantasy but I just couldn't love the last two books of song of Ice and Fire.


----------



## Ingélou

Whenever stress beckons, I turn to Jane Austen and her perfectly ordered prose. While Taggart was in hospital I began rereading 'Persuasion' at home, and now we're in early-days recovery, I'm on 'Sense & Sensibility'. Jane Austen's *voice* - amused, aware, analytical - is something I really relate to.

PS Jane Austen's prose has its equivalent in the best baroque music - discuss!


----------



## arpeggio

_Mars Trilogy_ by Kim Stanley Robinson


----------



## Guest

Piwikiwi said:


> I love fantasy but I just couldn't love the last two books of song of Ice and Fire.


I've read that series 3 times through now - the last two books aren't the best of the series, I agree. But they do have some very important things in them, and the more times I read them, the more I come to appreciate them. I actually didn't mind Dragons that much.


----------



## Guest

Antiquarian said:


> Agree completely. Every couple of years I read LOTR. I haven't yet read the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' yet, even though I do have the series in my library. I am waiting for Martin to finish the whole series before I begin it... so it may be ten years before I get around to reading it.


Yeah, with their currently being two more projected books, there is no telling when you will get around to reading it all. I'll try and not spoil anything for you!


----------



## Piwikiwi

schuberkovich said:


> I'm doing Dubliners for school at the moment.


I'm also reading Dubliners. I think "the dead" might be one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read.


----------



## Piwikiwi

TurnaboutVox said:


> I'm amidst Virginia Woolf's first novel 'The Voyage Out' (published in 1915) at the moment.
> 
> I tried Woolf more than 20 years ago (Mrs. Dalloway) at the recommendation of a colleague, but I didn't get very far amongst career demands, babies etc.
> 
> I've been spurred to try again by my son reading 'Mrs. Dalloway' and 'To the Lighthouse'. Well, if a 19-year old can read her, I surely can. I'm enjoying her powers of observation and description, certainly, even if the social attitudes and casual racism are a bit eye-opening.


I read to the lighthouse last year for school and I was completely blown away.


----------



## Cheyenne

_Selected Essays, Poems and other Writings_ by George Eliot, including an excellent study of Edward Young; and volume II of the works of Edward Young!


----------



## trazom

Piwikiwi said:


> I love fantasy but I just couldn't love the last two books of song of Ice and Fire.


I think this sentiment is shared by a good portion of the fans. I read each book in close succession so the drop in quality didn't bug me as much. Some of Cersei's private thoughts were amusing to read, though. I'm anxious to see how she'll get her revenge on the church, but I'm not anticipating the next book to come out any time soon...or ever.

To answer the OP, I've been reading so much fiction now that I've graduated and my time isn't spent reading textbooks. I've started on a great pulpy/popular fiction author Robert McCammon after finishing some classics. I've heard nothing but praise for Swan Song and Boy's Life, so naturally I started with his earliest, poorest novels first. I've read about 6 and just finished Mystery Walk, after Usher's Passing, both of which were merely okay. Stinger is my favorite so far. It's the most perfectly crafted thriller B-movie plot ever, like a mix between Tremors and Predator but with more wit.


----------



## Triplets

Ingélou said:


> Whenever stress beckons, I turn to Jane Austen and her perfectly ordered prose. While Taggart was in hospital I began rereading 'Persuasion' at home, and now we're in early-days recovery, I'm on 'Sense & Sensibility'. Jane Austen's *voice* - amused, aware, analytical - is something I really relate to.
> 
> PS Jane Austen's prose has its equivalent in the best baroque music - discuss!


 Don't know about the Baroque Music part; I always pictured Jane as more of a Classicist. I loved Persuasion. Last year I was vacationing in the U.K. The first stop was Bath. In the Pump room, I kept expecting Anne Eliot to walk in any minute, followed by Mr. Darcy.


----------



## Ingélou

Triplets said:


> Don't know about the Baroque Music part; I always pictured Jane as more of a Classicist. I loved Persuasion. Last year I was vacationing in the U.K. The first stop was Bath. In the Pump room, I kept expecting Anne Eliot to walk in any minute, followed by Mr. Darcy.


Followed by Captain Wentworth wanting to know what was up... 
I have never had time to look round Bath properly, so I'm very envious.


----------



## trazom

Ingélou said:


> Followed by Captain Wentworth wanting to know what was up...
> I have never had time to look round Bath properly, so I'm very envious.


Speaking of Bath and Jane Austen, I finished Northanger Abbey a couple weeks ago. It actually was an enjoyable read even if it's not as sophisticated as some of her later novels. And if we compare her writing style to music, I remember reading an article a couple years ago comparing her last completed novel Persuasion with Mozart's 27th piano concerto. Both are the artist's valedictory works(in the genre, in Mozart's case), are somewhat autumnal in tone, and there's a feeling a longing throughout. You can say that with a lot of Mozart's pieces, but I get what they were saying.


----------



## samurai

Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick--The Cassandra Project


----------



## Triplets

trazom said:


> Speaking of Bath and Jane Austen, I finished Northanger Abbey a couple weeks ago. It actually was an enjoyable read even if it's not as sophisticated as some of her later novels. And if we compare her writing style to music, I remember reading an article a couple years ago comparing her last completed novel Persuasion with Mozart's 27th piano concerto. Both are the artist's valedictory works(in the genre, in Mozart's case), are somewhat autumnal in tone, and there's a feeling a longing throughout. You can say that with a lot of Mozart's pieces, but I get what they were saying.


I read Northanger Abbey last year. It is my least favorite of Jane's books, because I really didn't care very much for Fanny Price.


----------



## Ingélou

Triplets said:


> I read Northanger Abbey last year. It is my least favorite of Jane's books, because I really didn't care very much for Fanny Price.


Fanny Price is the heroine of *Mansfield Park*; in *Northanger Abbey*, it is Catherine Morland.

Both these novels are not rated as highly as *Emma* & *Pride and Prejudice*, and I agree with this critical verdict, but they are still witty, sensitive and insightful. I reread them both recently & think they are little gems.


----------



## Tristan

Been reading "God's War" by Christopher Tyerman and "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes" by Amin Maalouf. Both very interesting works on the Crusades


----------



## Crudblud

Salman Rushdie - _The Satanic Verses_


----------



## Varick

Crudblud said:


> Salman Rushdie - _The Satanic Verses_


I have always wanted to but never read that book. Please tell me what you think of it when you are finished. I would greatly appreciate it.

V


----------



## mirepoix

'Selected Poems 1923 - 1958' ee cummings
_
"may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old"_

When my girl returns from the club tonight I will (after firstly inspecting her for illegal fingerprints) regale her with such stuff, and then perhaps I'll also open the window, sit on the sill and share it with the street too. Lucky them.


----------



## clavichorder

I am reading through Sci Fi short fiction magazines and anthologies of recent years, in order to make a compilation for my brother for his birthday. I will also include some classics in the genre(roughly).


----------



## samurai

clavichorder said:


> I am reading through Sci Fi short fiction magazines and anthologies of recent years, in order to make a compilation for my brother for his birthday. I will also include some classics in the genre(roughly).


Hi, Clavichorder. That sounds very interesting; I'd really like to see the classics you will include in your compilation. The sci-fi genre has long been one of my favorites, along with that of history. Thanks!


----------



## clavichorder

samurai said:


> Hi, Clavichorder. That sounds very interesting; I'd really like to see the classics you will include in your compilation. The sci-fi genre has long been one of my favorites, along with that of history. Thanks!


Hi Samurai, so far I have four classics in mind, three of which aren't exactly science fiction, but are kind of trippy. Ambrose Bierce, _An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge_; Julio Cortazar, _Axolotl_, and Franz Kafka, _Jackals and Arabs_, are the three trippy but non science fiction stories. I was thinking of including Isaac Asimov's _The Last Question_. I was also thinking of including a Bradbury, though I'm not sure which. And maybe an Arthur C. Clarke. Maybe an Ursala le Guin. Do you have any suggestions? That would actually help me tremendously.

I'm just trying to make a little anthology to interest someone who isn't really much of a short story reader but likes elements of fantasy and science fiction and might be impressed with mind warping things(that aren't too complex).


----------



## Piwikiwi

Das nibellungenlied. In the original middle german. Anyone got any advice reading medieval literature? I've already read beowulf and Canterbury Tales but the "medieval style" still irritates me.


----------



## Orpheus

Just finished C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy (which somehow had eluded me until now). Quite an enjoyable read in general, though he was obviously beginning to get his hand in for his later religious polemics and hectoring Narnia-esque allergy (sorry, my innate reaction to such things causes Freudian slips, I meant of course ALLEGORY) towards the end of the second book, _Perelandra_. Then through the last book, _That Hideous Strength_, he took up the cudgels for his cause in earnest, and started to browbeat this bored reader over the head with a combination of Lewisite Christian doctrine relentlessly exposited, allegory and symbolism so clunking that it made Narnia seem positively subtle at times, and some _very_ strange Arthurianism (apparently transplanted directly from that of his friend Charles Williams, without much thought of applicability to the actual story Lewis was trying to tell) until the original plot, which was already lumbering along unhurriedly, seemed almost forgotten alongside all the other elements he was attempting to shoehorn in. It bought the series to a rather plodding conclusion; but there was plenty of interest even in the last book, and the series as a whole had plenty of good things (particularly when he let his active imagination run riot when imagining alien worlds and unfamiliar states of being) to make it very worth reading.



Piwikiwi said:


> Das nibellungenlied. In the original middle german. Anyone got any advice reading medieval literature? I've already read beowulf and Canterbury Tales but the "medieval style" still irritates me.


Well, maybe, but the request is a bit too general for me to be able to say anything of much use at present. Is there anything _in particular_ that irritates you or otherwise causes you to find literature of that period difficult?


----------



## Ingélou

Piwikiwi said:


> Das nibellungenlied. In the original middle german. Anyone got any advice reading medieval literature? I've already read beowulf and Canterbury Tales but the "medieval style" still irritates me.


*Beowulf* is Old English literature; you could also try *The Battle of Maldon*, *The Wanderer*, and *The Seafarer*. I have a feeling that you aren't religious, so won't recommend *The Dream of the Rood*, though it's lovely.

In Middle English literature, I love the alliterative poem *Gawain & the Green Knight *for its subtle message, humour and scenic descriptions; apart from that, medieval romances are rather nice.* Thomas of Erceldoun* is related to a ballad sung by Steeleye Span, Thomas the Rhymer - and another one that springs to mind, very delicate and Christmassy, is *Sir Cleges*. Some of the fifteenth century ballads are very entertaining, in particular *A Gest of Robyn Hode*, in which Little John advises his master not to mind about a disgruntled knight being rude - 'Thereof no force - he is a churl, and kan no curtesye!' Very useful as a life maxim.

But then the medieval style doesn't irritate *me* - it enthrals me. 
So maybe don't bother...


----------



## samurai

Hi, Clavi. Re: Ray Bradbury, I would definitely recommend the following stories: "Something Wicked This Way Comes", "A Sound Of Thunder", The Martian Chronicles" and "The Illustrated Man".
I'm not that conversant with Leguin, but I would definitely urge you to include a short story penned by Harlan Ellison called "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream".
I hope you find these suggestions helpful in your quest.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Ingélou said:


> *Beowulf* is Old English literature; you could also try *The Battle of Maldon*, *The Wanderer*, and *The Seafarer*. I have a feeling that you aren't religious, so won't recommend *The Dream of the Rood*, though it's lovely.
> 
> In Middle English literature, I love the alliterative poem *Gawain & the Green Knight *for its subtle message, humour and scenic descriptions; apart from that, medieval romances are rather nice.* Thomas of Erceldoun* is related to a ballad sung by Steeleye Span, Thomas the Rhymer - and another one that springs to mind, very delicate and Christmassy, is *Sir Cleges*. Some of the fifteenth century ballads are very entertaining, in particular *A Gest of Robyn Hode*, in which Little John advises his master not to mind about a disgruntled knight being rude - 'Thereof no force - he is a churl, and kan no curtesye!' Very useful as a life maxim.
> 
> But then the medieval style doesn't irritate *me* - it enthrals me.
> So maybe don't bother...


I must admit that using the word irritate was a bit of a hyperbole. Thank you for the recommendations I sincerely appreciate it. I quite liked Beowulf btw. I´m indeed not religious and I had a feeling I missed a lot of things when reading The Canterbury tales because of my lack of knowledge about roman Catholicism and Ancient Greek writing.

The problem that I have with it is that every page feels like a struggle, it is very exhausting to read das nibellungenlied.


----------



## Ingélou

Ah - you liked 'Beowulf', that wondrous heroic tale. 
Hmm... 
Have you tried reading Child's 'English & Scottish Popular Ballads', maybe in a one-volume edition, or in a collection such as The Oxford Book of Ballads or the Faber Book of Ballads? Although the best ballads that we have come from the eighteenth century, they reflect the beliefs and interests of an earlier way of life - regarding blood feuds, witchcraft, marriage and so on - it's stirring stuff and I just love them. The border ballads retain a lot of older words but are much easier to read than full-on Middle English literature and you could dip into them at your leisure. 
Just a harmless attempt at proselytisation from a ballad nut!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Piwikiwi said:


> Das nibellungenlied. In the original middle german. Anyone got any advice reading medieval literature? I've already read beowulf and Canterbury Tales but the "medieval style" still irritates me.


Wow! You have my unlimited admiration, sir.

As for other medieval literature, the first things that come to mind, are Wolfram von Eschenbach's *Parzival*, *Tristan* by Gottfried von Strassburg and the two *Eddas*. Of the latter you will probably enjoy the Poetic Edda more.


----------



## Badinerie

Portrait Of A Marriage Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson by Nigel Nicolson.
Another loft clearance discovery.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## GreenMamba

Just started Teju Cole's novel Open City.


----------



## Cosmos

Reading through an anthology, The Art of the Story, full of contemporary short stories. Most recent one was The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami. Very unusual, but I enjoyed his writing style.

Also, still going through James Joyce's _A Portrait of the Artist..._ I'm surprised how relatable the main character is! The language is a bit lofty at times, but the story is so intimate!


----------



## Piwikiwi

Ingélou said:


> Ah - you liked 'Beowulf', that wondrous heroic tale.
> Hmm...
> Have you tried reading Child's 'English & Scottish Popular Ballads', maybe in a one-volume edition, or in a collection such as The Oxford Book of Ballads or the Faber Book of Ballads? Although the best ballads that we have come from the eighteenth century, they reflect the beliefs and interests of an earlier way of life - regarding blood feuds, witchcraft, marriage and so on - it's stirring stuff and I just love them. The border ballads retain a lot of older words but are much easier to read than full-on Middle English literature and you could dip into them at your leisure.
> Just a harmless attempt at proselytisation from a ballad nut!


Now I have even more to read on top of the ones I already had lying at home


----------



## mirepoix

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.
This is a re-read, as I knew I would want to come back to it after a while.









An aside: when I post about a book I've read or a CD I'm listening to I often take a photo and include it. But this photo was taken by my girlfriend - and the look of comprehension on her little face as the concept of a shallow DOF finally sunk in was wonderful. Having said that, her natural air of _'I am permanently delighted with myself_' really didn't need the extra layer of smugness as she announced _"I'd like my own professional camera"._


----------



## SixFootScowl

Opera
Origins and Sidelights
by Ruth Berges, 1961

Picked it up at the library today. Fascinating book giving background on operas and opera composers and some of the stories behind the operas.


----------



## senza sordino

I just finished this book, Six Cello Suites, JS Bach, Pablo Casals and the search for a masterpiece.
View attachment 52483

I really liked this book, the author alternated stories about Bach with Casals and his own experience with this music. Eric Siblin has been a pop music critic in Montreal. He fell in love with this music, and now he's a convert to classical. A well researched book written by a non expert. I now know a lot more about the life of Bach and the life of Casals.

And now I'm reading The Quiet American by Graham Greene.

P.S. I don't read enough.


----------



## samurai

Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston--*Earth Afire: The First Formic War* 
Carlo D'Este--*Patton: A Genius For War.* Having just finished his magisterial biography of general Eisenhower--which I found quite fascinating and informative--I'm certain I will be no less impressed with his Patton biography, under whom my father served during the Second World War.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

I enjoyed Virginia Woolf's novel 'The Voyage Out' sufficiently to embark on her next one, 'Night and Day'. I have just started it.


----------



## Guest

I'm reading _The Snowman _by Jo Nesbø. It's excellent so far. If you like Nordic noir crime thrillers, then I can highly recommend him.


----------



## Cheyenne

_The Crown of Wild Olive_ and_ Sesame and Lilies_ by John Ruskin, as well as _John Ruskin: The Critical Heritage_.. The didactic, puritan strain in his writings on society annoyed me at first; but I believe it has kindled in me a long burnt-out belief in love and justice which required reanimation. I feel invigorated with an almost pious compassion -- a strange passion, which no other writer, save perhaps De Quincey, has ever before awakened in me.

"The truth of infinite value that he teaches," noted George Eliot, "is realism - the doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place of definite, substantial reality." What a doctrine it is! "The thorough acceptance of this doctrine would remould our life; and he who teaches its application to any one department of human activity with such power as Mr. Ruskin's, is a prophet for his generation."

My beautiful, century-old, leather-bound copy of _Sesame and Lilies _and _The Ethics of the Dust_ arrived today. It is a charming little volume, seemingly inoffensive in its modest appearance, but filled with humane and passionate effusions which cover the whole scope of human ambition. It struck me, upon studying this little volume, that I know in real life a spirit as gently passionate as Mr. Ruskin himself -- and it struck me, too, that I have not done her enough justice as a friend and ally. I will do so now.

For those interested, the Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin is available for free online.


----------



## Jos

"Starter for ten", by David Nicholls.

Started at uni in the same period as the protagonist (1985) so good for a few very recognizable scenes from that era.
Easy and entertaining reading.


----------



## Ukko

"Losing It", by William Ian Miller. Yale University Press - New Haven and London. © 2011

Dr. Miller - he is a law professor by trade, and a medievalist historian, and an excellent wordsmith too - was 65 when he started this book, while, he says, he still had enough mind left to write it. Near as I can tell, he wasn't aging faster than normal - and was a much better than average thinker to start with.

I am going to refrain from recommending this book. My fellow geezers may not appreciate Miller's attitude, and our whippersnappers have enough trouble respecting our cognitive powers already. I will offer an example of the book's subject matter though - and have chosen one of the weaker ones to hedge my bet that the whippersnappers won't pay attention anyway.

Miller's suspicion about the truth of the proverbial association of wisdom with old age: He relates the commonly held notion that the aged regard things with care and consideration, and condenses it to "Look before you leap". It is inappropriate, he says, when applied to people who can no longer leap, nor see much when they look.

I have my own notions about 'the wisdom of the aged'. Even with the necessary self esteem I have vested, they aren't significantly more complimentary than Miller's. He is a much better writer than I am though. If you geezers think you can handle it, read his book. You whippersnappers, forget I brought it up.


----------



## hpowders

The New Testament....but I can't find the author(s) to give appropriate credit.


----------



## hpowders

Genesis from the Old Testament. Would love to credit the author.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

I'm just starting *55 Years in Five Acts: My Life in Opera *the biography of Astrid Varnay written by the women herself with Donald Arthur.


----------



## trazom

Finished a collection of SciFi/Psychological horror stories that play on the reader's perspective. NOW, back to my new favorite mass market fiction writer: Robert McCammon's _Mine_.


----------



## SimonNZ

Rereading Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment (Constance Garnett, trans.)

to be followed by a first reading of Y.Karyakin's "Re-reading Dostoevsky" (which focuses on C&P)


----------



## Pugg

Moffatt Oxenbould : A Tribute to Dame Joan Sutherland


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Cheyenne said:


> _The Crown of Wild Olive_ and_ Sesame and Lilies_ by John Ruskin, as well as _John Ruskin: The Critical Heritage_.. The didactic, puritan strain in his writings on society annoyed me at first; but I believe it has kindled in me a long burnt-out belief in love and justice which required reanimation. I feel invigorated with an almost pious compassion -- a strange passion, which no other writer, save perhaps De Quincey, has ever before awakened in me.
> 
> "The truth of infinite value that he teaches," noted George Eliot, "is realism - the doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place of definite, substantial reality." What a doctrine it is! "The thorough acceptance of this doctrine would remould our life; and he who teaches its application to any one department of human activity with such power as Mr. Ruskin's, is a prophet for his generation."
> 
> My beautiful, century-old, leather-bound copy of _Sesame and Lilies _and _The Ethics of the Dust_ arrived today. It is a charming little volume, seemingly inoffensive in its modest appearance, but filled with humane and passionate effusions which cover the whole scope of human ambition. It struck me, upon studying this little volume, that I know in real life a spirit as gently passionate as Mr. Ruskin himself -- and it struck me, too, that I have not done her enough justice as a friend and ally. I will do so now.
> 
> For those interested, the Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin is available for free online .


Yes, the meticulously-formed style and exquisite and enchanting prose of writers like Ruskin, Johnson, De Quincy, Stevenson, and Pater can be heady stuff.

I sometimes find it a very mixed bag though as far as the quality of the _arguments _go; rhetorical flourishes and literary camouflages aside.

Some of what once seemed to me as a teen as lofty eloquence now reads more like hollow bombast, swollen banalities, and pompous rhetoric--- mere preciosity and surface sheen.

Ruskin's still a first-rate mind, though; unquestionably-- and great fun to read.

Thanks for the wonderful links.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Pugg said:


> Moffatt Oxenbould : A Tribute to Dame Joan Sutherland


I _love _it.

Someone gave it to me as a birthday present once.

Thumbs-up.


----------



## elgar's ghost

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes. Covering the first murmurs of discontent during the reign of Nicholas II through to the final days of Lenin and the Bolsheviks' ruthless elimination of other Socialist factions once there was nothing to stand in their way, this epic account has been devoured by me three times before and I'm enjoying it just as much this time. Here's hoping he'll consider writing a similarly substantial follow-up about the ensuing Stalin era.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Beware of 'philanthropic research,' so-called. The technology just might be used against you. Excellent autopsy.

http://z4.invisionfree.com/The_Great_Deception/ar/t11290.htm

http://www.amazon.com/The-Molecular-Vision-Life-Rockefeller-ebook/dp/B001F0RHZA


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Since I last posted in this thread, I have read several of Herman Hesse's books: "Narcissus and Goldmund", "Siddhartha", "Beneath the Wheel", and two volumes of his short stories. His most famous books "The Glass Bead Game" and "Steppenwolf" I have left until later.


----------



## Cheyenne

Marschallin Blair said:


> Yes, the meticulously-formed style and exquisite and enchanting prose of writers like Ruskin, Johnson, De Quincy, Stevenson, and Pater can be heady stuff.


I disagree with Johnson: Hazlitt - my favorite stylist - uttered what I thought when he said he had "neither ease nor simplicity": "What most distinguishes Dr. Johnson from other writers is the pomp and uniformity of his style. All his periods are cast in the same mould, are of the same size and shape, and consequently have little fitness to the variety of things he professes to treat of. His subjects are familiar, but the author is always upon stilts." Hazlitt is perhaps the only one who continuously blows me away with astounding eloquence. I would fain even attempt to write a single sentence like his average one during my entire lifetime. No wonder he is one of the models Stevenson played The Sedulous Ape to! There is actually a book-length study of his prose style: _The Day-star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style_. The day-star of the title refers to this passage:



> All things move, not in progress, but in a ceaseless round; our strength lies in our weakness; our virtues are built on our vices; our faculties are as limited as our being; nor can we lift man above his nature more than above the earth be treads. But though we cannot weave over again the airy, unsubstantial dream, which reason and experience have dispelled,
> 
> "What though the radiance, which was once so bright,
> Be now for ever taken from our sight,
> Though nothing can bring back the hour
> Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower:" -​
> yet we will never cease, nor be prevented from returning on the wings of imagination to that bright dream of our youth; that glad dawn of the day-star of liberty; that spring-time of the world, in which the hopes and expectations of the human race seemed opening in the same gay career with our own; when France called her children to partake her equal blessings beneath her laughing skies; when the stranger was met in all her villages with dance and festive songs, in celebration of a new and golden era; and when, to the retired and contemplative student, the prospects of human happiness and glory were seen ascending like the steps of Jacob's ladder, in bright and never-ending succession. The dawn of that day was suddenly overcast; that season of hope is past; it is fled with the other dreams of our youth, which we cannot recall, but has left behind it traces, which are not to be effaced by Birth-day and Thanksgiving odes, or the chaunting of Te Deums in all the churches of Christendom. To those hopes eternal regrets are due; to those who maliciously and wilfully blasted them, in the fear that they might be accomplished, we feel no less what we owe-hatred and scorn as lasting!


In any case, I am currently reading John Batchelor's biography of John Ruskin; but I got sidetracked by references to Carlyle, and was therefore reading some parts of _Past and Present_. Matthew Arnold was just when he delivered solemn judgment upon him: "He has surpassingly powerful qualities of expression, far more powerful than Emerson's, and reminding one of the gifts of expression of the great poets,-of even Shakespeare himself." What a perfectly idiosyncratic style, with untold rhetorical power!

Perhaps I should read some Hemingway next.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Cheyenne said:


> I disagree with Johnson: Hazlitt - my favorite stylist - uttered what I thought when he said he had "neither ease nor simplicity": "What most distinguishes Dr. Johnson from other writers is the pomp and uniformity of his style. All his periods are cast in the same mould, are of the same size and shape, and consequently have little fitness to the variety of things he professes to treat of. His subjects are familiar, but the author is always upon stilts." Hazlitt is perhaps the only one who continuously blows me away with astounding eloquence. I would fain even attempt to write a single sentence like his average one during my entire lifetime. No wonder he is one of the models Stevenson played The Sedulous Ape to! There is actually a book-length study of his prose style: _The Day-star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style_. The day-star of the title refers to this passage:
> 
> In any case, I am currently reading John Batchelor's biography of John Ruskin; but I got sidetracked by references to Carlyle, and was therefore reading some parts of _Past and Present_. Matthew Arnold was just when he delivered solemn judgment upon him: "He has surpassingly powerful qualities of expression, far more powerful than Emerson's, and reminding one of the gifts of expression of the great poets,-of even Shakespeare himself." What a perfectly idiosyncratic style, with untold rhetorical power!
> 
> Perhaps I should read some Hemingway next.


I rather like gourmandizing on Hazlitt too; _Henry_ Hazlitt as well; you know: the American economist and sometime literary critic. . .

Though Carlyle and Ruskin have the utmost fluency of address at times, they always seem to lose the first blush of their charm with me when they go political. . . but perhaps I exaggerate the intrinsic badness. It's been awhile since I've read Ruskin, in all fairness to the man.

You like _Hemingway's_ style? Well, to each their own, certainly. But for me?-- its too Spartan in literary expression. I vastly prefer the posh, guilded-rococo stylistic-literary Versailles salons of Carlyle, T.H. Huxley, and H.L. Mencken for my time and aesthetic enjoyment. . . but that's the French in me; even if the narrative is in English. _;D_


----------



## clara s

I love reading various plays

so recently, it was Equus and Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

two very successful theatrical productions

and also the Chairs by Eugene Ionesco


----------



## Marschallin Blair

clara s said:


> I love reading various plays
> 
> so recently, it was Equus and Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
> two very successful theatrical productions
> 
> and also the Chairs by Eugene Ionesco


Cheers to _Amadeus_- and to grand old Saliere, the Patron Saint of All Mediocrity.

Jesus, aren't we all. _;D_

Hail Mozart!


----------



## clara s

Marschallin Blair said:


> Cheers to _Amadeus_- and to grand old Saliere, the Patron Saint of All Mediocrity.
> 
> Jesus, aren't we all. _;D_
> 
> Hail Mozart!


but if there weren't all these mediocre Salieris,

how the geniouses would emerge?

viva la liberta


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Nomi Prins, former Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, Britain, is a sharp cookie.

She knows a thing or two about toxic-asset, fractional-derivative garbage-- and _how_ these huge investement banks that put them on their balance sheets decimate whole economies and plunder the taxpayer with their stuntshow shennanigans and central bank bailouts.

She breaks down all of this white-collar fraud wonderfully.

Fantastic book.

http://www.amazon.com/Takes-Pillage...F8&qid=1412979839&sr=1-2&keywords=naomi+prins


----------



## Marschallin Blair

clara s said:


> but if there weren't all these mediocre Salieris,
> 
> how the geniouses would emerge?
> 
> viva la liberta


Well, we need _them_; they don't need _us_. We just get in their way-- my blonde-self first and foremost.

_;D_


----------



## clara s

Marschallin Blair said:


> Well, we need _them_; they don't need _us_. We just get in their way-- my blonde-self first and foremost.
> 
> _;D_


Life needs variety

geniouses and mediocre

blondes and brunettes

warriors and peacemakers

Mozarts and Salieris 

otherwise everything would be so boring


----------



## Cheyenne

Marschallin Blair said:


> I rather like gourmandizing on Hazlitt too; _Henry_ Hazlitt as well; you know: the American economist and sometime literary critic. . .


Hazlitt's father has a charm too!



Marschallin Blair said:


> Though Carlyle and Ruskin have the utmost fluency of address at times, they always seem to lose the first blush of their charm with me when they go political. . . but perhaps I exaggerate the intrinsic badness. It's been awhile since I've read Ruskin, in all fairness to the man.


I was reading Ruskin's _The Nature of Gothic_ yesterday, which Morris declared was one of the few "necessary and inevitable utterances of the century". There are numerous objections to be had to its contents; but its sincere sympathy and elevated tone save it, and make it powerfully emotional as not much political writing is. The Carlyle of the _Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question_, on the other hand, is.. eh.. best left to history 



Marschallin Blair said:


> You like _Hemingway's_ style? Well, to each their own, certainly. But for me?-- its too Spartan in literary expression. I vastly prefer the posh, guilded-rococo stylistic-literary Versailles salons of Carlyle, T.H. Huxley, and H.L. Mencken for my time and aesthetic enjoyment. . . but that's the French in me; even if the narrative is in English. _;D_


Hemingway's style works very well in his best stories -- but it was a joke, to contrast the bareness of his style with the elaborate verbosity of all the other writers whom I was reading recently. I love Mencken too: truly one of a kind.

I am reading a dual-language edition of Tennyson's _In Memoriam_ -- English and Dutch! That poor translator! He does a better job than the man who translated De Quincey's _Confessions_!


----------



## Marschallin Blair

clara s said:


> Life needs variety
> geniouses and mediocre
> 
> blondes and brunettes
> 
> warriors and peacemakersMozarts and Salieris
> 
> otherwise everything would be so boring


Amen, Sister. It couldn't have been said better.


----------



## Pugg

​Fascinating reading. 
Such a determent and yet lovely person.:tiphat:


----------



## GreenMamba

James McPherson's *Embattled Rebel*, about Jefferson Davis.


----------



## Andolink

Jan Swafford's *Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph*









Has anyone read Swafford's biography of Brahms? That one looks good too.


----------



## Guest

clara s said:


> I love reading various plays
> 
> so recently, it was Equus and Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
> 
> two very successful theatrical productions
> 
> and also the Chairs by Eugene Ionesco


Have you ever seen _Equus_ in the theater? Properly done, it is a harrowing and shattering play. I teach it to my AP English students. Reading it is one thing, but experiencing it live is another! That's true of most plays, of course, but the theatricality of the play really needs to be seen live. I was lucky enough to see Sir Ian McKellen as Dr. Dysart--wow.


----------



## GioCar

Just finished this










A masterpiece! Not to be missed.


----------



## clara s

Kontrapunctus said:


> Have you ever seen _Equus_ in the theater? Properly done, it is a harrowing and shattering play. I teach it to my AP English students. Reading it is one thing, but experiencing it live is another! That's true of most plays, of course, but the theatricality of the play really needs to be seen live. I was lucky enough to see Sir Ian McKellen as Dr. Dysart--wow.


sorry I just saw your post

no, I have not seen Equus on stage, although If I was going to see it, 
I would prefer to see an English National theatre producton at the Old Vic.

I did not Know that Ian Mc Kellen had played Dr. Dysart,
I knew he was a memorable Salieri in Amadeus.

Daniel Radcliffe played Alan recently.

Equus is a strong play, having a structure that examines many values of human life.
Theatre is a way of dreaming...


----------



## drvLock

The Silmarillion.


----------



## Schubussy

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita


----------



## JACE

Schubussy said:


> Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
> View attachment 53906


I've been meaning to read that for forever. Haven't gotten around to it yet.

Are you enjoying it?


----------



## brotagonist

^ I loved it, too. It has been a few decades. Maybe I'll manage to reread it within this one


----------



## Schubussy

JACE said:


> I've been meaning to read that for forever. Haven't gotten around to it yet.
> 
> Are you enjoying it?


Yeah it's fantastic, I'd definitely recommend.


----------



## Morimur

*'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy*










Read it in two days. A fine, sobering book.


----------



## clara s

Schubussy said:


> Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
> View attachment 53906


this is a very interesting book

I would recommend it strongly to people


----------



## JACE

Have you ever had the experience of reading a book and after only a few pages you're already thinking, _"Oh wow. This is going to be something special."_? It happened to me today.

During my lunch break, I started reading Daniel Mendelsohn's _The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million_.










I'm only 25 pages in. And I didn't want to put it down.


----------



## Marschallin Blair




----------



## clara s

Marschallin Blair said:


>


is this a reply to Thomas Hobbs'

"Leviathan or the Matter, Form and Power of a Comonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil"?


----------



## Piwikiwi

Marschallin Blair said:


>


Pff it is clear that am absolute monarchb is the way to run a country; )


----------



## Cheyenne

Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin and The Modern Temper by Edward Alexander - available in free PDF files from The Ohio State University website. I have read separate biographies of the two, but this format is far more pleasing and insightful to me. Mr. Alexander's comments are daring -- he doesn't idolize his subjects:

In the years before 1848 the silence of Arnold and Ruskin on social and political questions was so nearly complete as to offer evidence for the accusation that literary men, although they are bored by the tasks of reform, adore revolution; that they ignore the despair of their fellow men until it turns into rage and violence; and that they are disinclined to speak of society at all until they can shriek with Byron that "revolution / Alone can save the earth form Hell's pollution."​
He is one of the best quoters I have ever read too: everything he quotes is truly first-rate and beautiful: it makes me want to rush to Ruskin and Arnold's books!


----------



## GreenMamba

Paul Autser's novel, *The Book of Illusions*. I've liked what I've read form him previously.


----------



## samurai

Orson Scott Card--*Ender's Game. *Excellent read; I am looking forward with great anticipation to reading the follow on sequels to this one, as I just finished his *Earth Unaware and Earth Afire *prologues. Reading these books--in conjunction with reading about real military figures such as Eisenhower and Patton--has proven to be quite an interesting and rewarding experience. The old adage our instructors used to pound into us--in both the military and law enforcement--about how one trains is also the way he will fight, is especially brought home in the Ender book.


----------



## clavichorder

Would you believe it? I am almost done with A History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray. I was interrupted in my progress of it for a while with a birthday project for my brother involving short stories, and school, but really that was a hard book. I actually greatly enjoyed it though! 

Wait, I'm talking in past tense. I still have one more chapter to go. I'll get back to you when done.

Edit: 

There is no point in making a new post. I'll just say here that I've finished it now! I thought it was an amazingly intricate novel, very well thought out, and with some exciting intrigues that could only really be appreciated until one gets used to the overbuilt style that Thackeray uses. After I had gotten into that Thackeray rhythm, I went back and re read the earlier chapters, and the preface/intro which was illuminating. I really liked being immersed in the 18th century, and it seemed to be from a very well realized 19th century perspective(as that is when the novel was written). 

I think the book deserves to be more widely read, but I can see why it isn't, due to its methodical and maybe even cluttered style. Not to say it is poorly executed in the least, it just takes getting used to. 

If anybody would like a synopsis, I would be happy to offer one when I have a little more time later.


----------



## trazom

DrMike said:


> Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - perhaps my 6th time reading it. One of those for which I never tire. Often duplicated, never bested. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is also a masterwork, but there is something to the innocence of Tolkien that just isn't there with Martin.


I went through an obsession with Tolkien's Middle Earth and its history(rereading the stories, daydreaming, drawing my own maps and pictures) after seeing the first film FotR when it was released in theaters back in 2001. I was only 11 and just started middle school, but it was the most memorable experience I ever had at the movie theaters. I think it was the only time my dad and I both loved the same film--at the theaters, anyway. I get misty-eyed with nostalgia thinking of it. I got the trilogy the following Christmas, couldn't make it past the first 200 pages; but I tried again 3 years later when starting high school and it clicked somewhere after Tom Bombadil and I read the whole thing, then The Hobbit, then reread both.


----------



## Tristan

samurai said:


> Orson Scott Card--*Ender's Game. *Excellent read; I am looking forward with great anticipation to reading the follow on sequels to this one, as I just finished his *Earth Unaware and Earth Afire *prologues. Reading these books--in conjunction with reading about real military figures such as Eisenhower and Patton--has proven to be quite an interesting and rewarding experience. The old adage our instructors used to pound into us--in both the military and law enforcement--about how one trains is also the way he will fight, is especially brought home in the Ender book.


Ender's Game is excellent--glad you liked it


----------



## senza sordino

I don't hang out much in this thread, because I'm not much of a reader. When I read I tend to go for short magazine articles. I get through only two or three books a year. Not good I know. I'm busy, and I was never a prolific reader. Anyway, I just finished reading

The Quiet American, by Graham Greene. Terrific. I didn't realize the CIA was already in Vietnam in the early 50's.


----------



## Cheyenne

senza sordino said:


> I don't hang out much in this thread, because I'm not much of a reader. When I read I tend to go for short magazine articles. I get through only two or three books a year. Not good I know. I'm busy, and I was never a prolific reader. Anyway, I just finished reading


I'm an awful reader, technically: I have extreme difficulties reading for prolonged periods of time -- more than half an hour is usually rather vexing; and I rarely read books from cover to cover too. By having many books by my side, and reading many shorter pieces (essays, poetry) I can remain an active reader, bypassing many of my limitations. I have more difficulties with novels: I get bored by them easily. Lengthy descriptions of places and events have never particularly interested me for one reason or another. In essays I see the indelible marks of the creative force behind it directly -- it is as if I converse directly the great man or woman. In novels, I see more average and varied persons, and the creative force can only be indirectly felt through the way he treats them. That is why I usually read poetry, essays, short stories (which do not have trouble keeping my attention), and non-fiction books. I still have trouble reading books from cover to cover, and reading for long periods of time; but this way I can keep myself reading. (Emerson, by the way, apparently rarely read a book from cover to cover after he had turned 30. He had very similar problems to me. Carlyle also rarely read novels, though he read incredible amounts of history books. Hazlitt almost stopped reading new books after his thirtieth birthday or so: he spoke about it in _On Reading Old Books_.)

I am still going through Dryden's collected poetry, which I bought 2 years ago and started reading that very day. There are many, many bookmarks scattered around the house. It works for me this way. I am a strange reader: like Borges, I hunt "for specific passages, or even just phrases, that move". (From Michael Greenberg, _The Daggers of Jorge Luis Borges_; New York Review of Books, January 9.)

It's a bit of a mess, but I get through a lot of material this way.

Speaking of which, I emailed Edward Alexander, the man who wrote _Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin and The Modern Temper_, which I praised earlier, and he was kind enough to send me an article he wrote on Lionel Trilling, and directions to Dutch libraries which have his first book, written as an undergraduate.


----------



## clavichorder

Now I am reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, my first experience with Austen. Its amazing how this book was written in the early 19th century and yet the style is so much more straightforward and less antiquated seeming than the Thackeray I just read, published maybe 30 or 40 years later.


----------



## Bruce

At the moment, I'm in the middle of The Last Crusaders, by Barnaby Rogerson. His concentration is on three of the world powers during the late 1400s and early 1500s--Portugal, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire. It's refreshing to see perspectives from both sides of the religious divide--the Muslim empire and the Christian. Very well written, filled with the type of anecdotes that makes history so fascinating.


----------



## samurai

Orson Scott Card--*Speaker For The Dead {Book # 2 in the Ender's Game Series}*


----------



## Antiquarian

I'm reading for Tales From the Nightside by Charles L. Grant (Arkham House, 1981). Every October I depart from my usual reading schedule and delve into Horror and Supernatural. This particular Arkham House gem is a series of loosely connected short stories set in Oxrun Station, a fictional town that Grant populates with, let us say, unusual characters.


----------



## Ingélou

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I'm reading some piffling detective stories at present. We're a little in Limbo, waiting for Taggart to recover his strength, and I'm the driver and lifter and Star-Trek-DVD companion, so I don't think I'd manage anything deep. So the *Superintendent Gently* series by Alan Hunter it is. It's curious - the plots are ridiculous, the murderer is usually predictable, and there are always strange characters who hold forth about Life, The Universe and Everything in a totally unnatural way. But Hunter has an incredible knack of getting you involved. There's also the added interest of identifying the Norfolk settings, as his novels are set in 'Northshire', the capital of which is 'Norchester', and where there's a port called 'Starmouth'. We've lived in seaside Norfolk for 24 years now, & we love it here, but we still don't feel like insiders and are endlessly fascinated...


----------



## Figleaf

Ingélou said:


> I'm almost ashamed to admit that I'm reading some piffling detective stories at present. We're a little in Limbo, waiting for Taggart to recover his strength, and I'm the driver and lifter and Star-Trek-DVD companion, so I don't think I'd manage anything deep. So the *Superintendent Gently* series by Alan Hunter it is. It's curious - the plots are ridiculous, the murderer is usually predictable, and there are always strange characters who hold forth about Life, The Universe and Everything in a totally unnatural way. But Hunter has an incredible knack of getting you involved. There's also the added interest of identifying the Norfolk settings, as his novels are set in 'Northshire', the capital of which is 'Norchester', and where there's a port called 'Starmouth'. We've lived in seaside Norfolk for 24 years now, & we love it here, but we still don't feel like insiders and are endlessly fascinated...


Lighter reading has its uses- I remember getting through all the then existing Harry Potters, up to volume 4 I think it was, when nursing my firstborn!

I find Norfolk very friendly as a visitor, but I can imagine it might be strange to arrive in such a rural and (relative to what I'm used to) tight knit community as someone relocating across the country. My parents grew up there, but I don't know how they will adapt to living there full time when they retire- a moveable feast which is always 'next year'! Might be a culture shock after living for so long in the the Hertfordshire commuter belt, where you can't really be an 'insider' because there's no community to speak of, the locals having been mostly been displaced by house price refugees from London, whose social centre of gravity is elsewhere.


----------



## Dupamplont

James Ellroy's new novel PERFIDIA because I attended a talk he gave on Thursday and when asked his writer influences he didn't name one writer, but said, "My biggest influence in writing is classical music. I've been listening to it for 50 years and I try to incorporate what i hear into my writing. After all, the sonata inspired the three-act play."


----------



## Xaltotun

Ingélou said:


> Fanny Price is the heroine of *Mansfield Park*; in *Northanger Abbey*, it is Catherine Morland.
> 
> Both these novels are not rated as highly as *Emma* & *Pride and Prejudice*, and I agree with this critical verdict, but they are still witty, sensitive and insightful. I reread them both recently & think they are little gems.


I also find Northanger Abbey very witty and great fun, but Mansfield Park is for me the best! Fanny is the greatest heroine, I just love that character.


----------



## Ingélou

Xaltotun said:


> I also find Northanger Abbey very witty and great fun, but Mansfield Park is for me the best! Fanny is the greatest heroine, I just love that character.


So do I - she is so sensitive, and feels things so keenly - this is what I felt like in my teenage years, and is probably something that a lot of us can identify with.


----------



## schuberkovich

Dupamplont said:


> James Ellroy's new novel PERFIDIA because I attended a talk he gave on Thursday and when asked his writer influences he didn't name one writer, but said, "My biggest influence in writing is classical music. I've been listening to it for 50 years and I try to incorporate what i hear into my writing. After all, the sonata inspired the three-act play."


You should hear his appearance on Desert Island Discs. He's completely obsessed with Beethoven.


----------



## samurai

Bruce said:


> At the moment, I'm in the middle of The Last Crusaders, by Barnaby Rogerson. His concentration is on three of the world powers during the late 1400s and early 1500s--Portugal, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire. It's refreshing to see perspectives from both sides of the religious divide--the Muslim empire and the Christian. Very well written, filled with the type of anecdotes that makes history so fascinating.


Hi, Bruce. Thanks so much for mentioning this book; I just ordered it via Amazon, despite a lot of negative reviews asserting that the author is too pro Muslim and anti-Christian. I have also ordered Karen Armstrong's "Blood In The Fields" from the History Book Club.
Thanks again for putting "The Last Crusaders" on my "radar screen." :cheers:


----------



## Guest

"The World of Ice and Fire" by George R. R. Martin (mostly, with some help).








I am a huge fan of the "Game of Thrones" series, more appropriately called A Song of Ice and Fire. While I am waiting (for what seems an eternity) for Martin to finish the 6th and 7th books in the series, I am contenting myself with his other works in this universe. This reads much like a history, or even an encyclopedia, of the world of that series. While it has thus far not offered up any spoilers, it does fill in some history that puts a lot of context into the story. For example - did we know that Mad King Aerys was once a capable warrior, was close friends with Tywin Lannister and Steffon Baratheon, father of Robert, Stannis, and Renly, and fought with them in the War of the Ninepenny Kings? Or that it was widely rumored that Rhaegar Targaryen himself had orchestrated the great tourney at Harrnehall in the Year of the False Spring, where he crowned Lyanna Stark Queen of Love and Beauty, and Aerys believed he organized it to bring together the great Lords of the realm to hold a council to oversee the deposing of Aerys?

Martin stays in character, and the whole thing is written as if by a Maester of the Citadel, so little credence is given to stories of the Others - it is speculated they were actually merely a clan of wildlings forced South by the bitter long winter known as the Long Night, and that over time the Starks and the North depicted them as monsters to make themselves look more heroic.

Anyways, it is a little more dry than his other books, but it is not meant to be exciting - it is meant to provide historical information. The nice thing about it, as well, is that it gives a little more history of the origins of all the great houses, as well as the empires of Essos.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

I just got it tonight.

Superb autopsy. A withering analysis.

Nelson's book just before this one: _LBJ: Mastermind of he JFK Assasination_-- covered LBJ's coordination of the Dallas police, FBI, secret service, and CIA in the murder of JFK. The new book covers post-JFK LBJ high crimes and misdemeanors from the false-flagging of the Gulf of Tonkin to lie us into war with Vietnam, to his involvement in the Billie Sol Estes scandal which bilked taxpayers of untold millions of dollars, and then of course, one of my favorites: LBJ's complicity with the Israeli government in a false-flag attack on the _U.S.S. Liberty_ in 1967 in order to get the U.S. into the Six Day War.

There's tons of dirt in this book. It's a sobering _Realpolitik _counterbalance to the establishment propaganda and whitewash of court historians like Robert E. Caro.

From the publisher:

Phillip F. Nelson's new book begins where _LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination_ left off. Now president, Johnson begins to push Congress to enact long-dormant legislation that he had previously impeded, always insisting that the timing wasn't right. Nelson argues that the passage of Johnson's "Great Society" legislation was designed to take the focus of the nation off the assassination as well as lay the groundwork for building his own legacy.

Nelson also examines Johnson's plan to redirect US foreign policy within days of becoming president, as he maneuvered to insert the US military into the civil war being fought in Vietnam. This, he thought, would provide another means to achieve his goal of becoming a great wartime president. In addition, Nelson presents evidence to show that the Israeli attack on the _USS Liberty _in 1967 was arguably directed by Johnson against his own ship and the 294 sailors on board as a way to insert the US military into the Six-Day War. It only failed because the Liberty refused to sink.

Finally, Nelson presents newly discovered documents from the files of Texas Ranger Clint Peoples that prove Johnson was closely involved with Billie Sol Estes and had made millions from Estes's frauds against taxpayers. These papers show linkages to Johnson's criminal behavior, the very point that his other biographers ignore.


----------



## Turangalîla

This is _amazing_-get it!

http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=21181


----------



## senza sordino

Ingélou said:


> I'm almost ashamed to admit that I'm reading some piffling detective stories at present. We're a little in Limbo, waiting for Taggart to recover his strength, and I'm the driver and lifter and Star-Trek-DVD companion, so I don't think I'd manage anything deep. So the *Superintendent Gently* series by Alan Hunter it is. It's curious - the plots are ridiculous, the murderer is usually predictable, and there are always strange characters who hold forth about Life, The Universe and Everything in a totally unnatural way. But Hunter has an incredible knack of getting you involved. There's also the added interest of identifying the Norfolk settings, as his novels are set in 'Northshire', the capital of which is 'Norchester', and where there's a port called 'Starmouth'. We've lived in seaside Norfolk for 24 years now, & we love it here, but we still don't feel like insiders and are endlessly fascinated...


I've been watching George Gently on TV, the English version of course. It plays here in BC on public non commercial TV. I'm enjoying it, though Sgt Baccus is a total ******.


----------



## SimonNZ

Marschallin Blair said:


> There's tons of dirt in this book. It's a sobering _Realpolitik _counterbalance to the *establishment propaganda *and *whitewash of court historians* like Robert E. Caro.


That's about as far from an accurate description of Robert Caro as you can get.

You know practically every critic of note on earth has praised the depth of his research and his insight into the mechanics of political power and political psychology, along with the beauty of his prose.

I understand this "court historian" has also been refused a place on the shelves of the Johnson Library for what the family percieve (equally inaccurately) as his hostility and muckraking approach to his subject.


----------



## Bruce

samurai said:


> Hi, Bruce. Thanks so much for mentioning this book; I just ordered it via Amazon, despite a lot of negative reviews asserting that the author is too pro Muslim and anti-Christian. I have also ordered Karen Armstrong's "Blood In The Fields" from the History Book Club.
> Thanks again for putting "The Last Crusaders" on my "radar screen." :cheers:


You're very welcome. I read the negative reviews after having purchased the book, but found that they were only marginally valid. There are places where Rodgers seems to assign more brutality to the European Christians than to the Muslims, but he also has plenty of examples of the obverse. Now that I've finished it, I can note that there are weaknesses in the book. There are times when his narration of events seems a little uneven--one doesn't quite understand how he reaches some of his conclusions, but these are minor criticisms. Certainly a more complete knowledge of the period can only be obtained by reading more books on the subject, but I find Rodgers's book an excellent place to start. I've really got a good basic knowledge of what went on between the great powers of the time, and he treats parts of the world that were neglected by other histories I've read. Happy reading!


----------



## Bruce

clavichorder said:


> Would you believe it? I am almost done with A History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray. I was interrupted in my progress of it for a while with a birthday project for my brother involving short stories, and school, but really that was a hard book. I actually greatly enjoyed it though!
> 
> Wait, I'm talking in past tense. I still have one more chapter to go. I'll get back to you when done.
> 
> Edit:
> 
> There is no point in making a new post. I'll just say here that I've finished it now! I thought it was an amazingly intricate novel, very well thought out, and with some exciting intrigues that could only really be appreciated until one gets used to the overbuilt style that Thackeray uses. After I had gotten into that Thackeray rhythm, I went back and re read the earlier chapters, and the preface/intro which was illuminating. I really liked being immersed in the 18th century, and it seemed to be from a very well realized 19th century perspective(as that is when the novel was written).
> 
> I think the book deserves to be more widely read, but I can see why it isn't, due to its methodical and maybe even cluttered style. Not to say it is poorly executed in the least, it just takes getting used to.
> 
> If anybody would like a synopsis, I would be happy to offer one when I have a little more time later.


I read this quite a few years ago, and like you, found it a little difficult. Thackeray's style is not easy to adjust to. The film by Stanley Kubrick, I thought, was an excellent adaptation of it.


----------



## clavichorder

Bruce said:


> I read this quite a few years ago, and like you, found it a little difficult. Thackeray's style is not easy to adjust to. The film by Stanley Kubrick, I thought, was an excellent adaptation of it.


Just one thing: Stanley Kubrick's film was based on The Luck of Barry Lyndon, not the History of Henry Esmond, which I read. I still have yet to read The Luck of Barry Lyndon. But I love that movie!


----------



## Bruce

Am now reading As You Wish by Cary Elwes. About the making of The Princess Bride (a great flick!)









Nothing profound here; it's nice to see some of the things that go into making a movie, a subject I know almost nothing about. Pleasant, quick read. Elwes obviously had a good time making this film, and enjoyed the company of the other actors.


----------



## Guest

Dostoevsky's _The Brothers Karamazov_.


----------



## mirepoix

'Life A User's Manual' (La Vie mode d'emploi) - Georges Perec


----------



## Badinerie

Boys own stuff...


----------



## Ingélou

I've just finished reading Claire Tomalin's *The Invisible Woman*, her biography of Nelly (Ellen) Ternan, the young actress for whom Dickens very publicly left and vilified his wife.










I was really engrossed by this - the depiction of the Victorian theatre, the detective work using diary entries and letters, and Tomalin's reflections on the plight of Nelly as a hidden 'fallen woman' and Dickens' guilt and constant fear of having his image as a jolly, decent family man overturned. Even when Nelly injured her arm in a train incident, travelling with Dickens, her identity had to be hidden and he refused to give evidence at the inquest. Then when Nelly's son discovered the truth after she'd died, it poisoned his whole memory of her. Recommended.


----------



## mirepoix

^^^^ sounds like he was a cad, a bounder, and potentially a blackguard.

At the same time as reading Georges Perec I'm also dipping into this:









'Dancing on my Grave' by Gelsey Kirkland. It's the first volume of her autobiography and a fascinating (if harrowing) insight into the life of hugely talented but flawed ballerina.

(Please excuse pseudo-Dutch angle in the above photo, but I was too lazy to sit up straight.)


----------



## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> I just got it tonight.
> 
> Superb autopsy. A withering analysis.
> 
> Nelson's book just before this one: _LBJ: Mastermind of he JFK Assasination_-- covered LBJ's coordination of the Dallas police, FBI, secret service, and CIA in the murder of JFK. The new book covers post-JFK LBJ high crimes and misdemeanors from the false-flagging of the Gulf of Tonkin to lie us into war with Vietnam, to his involvement in the Billie Sol Estes scandal which bilked taxpayers of untold millions of dollars, and then of course, one of my favorites: LBJ's complicity with the Israeli government in a false-flag attack on the _U.S.S. Liberty_ in 1967 in order to get the U.S. into the Six Day War.
> 
> There's tons of dirt in this book. It's a sobering _Realpolitik _counterbalance to the establishment propaganda and whitewash of court historians like Robert E. Caro.
> 
> From the publisher:
> 
> Phillip F. Nelson's new book begins where _LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination_ left off. Now president, Johnson begins to push Congress to enact long-dormant legislation that he had previously impeded, always insisting that the timing wasn't right. Nelson argues that the passage of Johnson's "Great Society" legislation was designed to take the focus of the nation off the assassination as well as lay the groundwork for building his own legacy.
> 
> Nelson also examines Johnson's plan to redirect US foreign policy within days of becoming president, as he maneuvered to insert the US military into the civil war being fought in Vietnam. This, he thought, would provide another means to achieve his goal of becoming a great wartime president. In addition, Nelson presents evidence to show that the Israeli attack on the _USS Liberty _in 1967 was arguably directed by Johnson against his own ship and the 294 sailors on board as a way to insert the US military into the Six-Day War. It only failed because the Liberty refused to sink.
> 
> Finally, Nelson presents newly discovered documents from the files of Texas Ranger Clint Peoples that prove Johnson was closely involved with Billie Sol Estes and had made millions from Estes's frauds against taxpayers. These papers show linkages to Johnson's criminal behavior, the very point that his other biographers ignore.


I'm no LBJ fan, but I just love these new "reveal" books that have uncovered, after all these years, devastating documents from obscure sources that turn all previous thought on its head to challenge everything we know. And the fact that nobody else has found such evidence before is just further proof of the cover up.

I'm sorry - we live in a country where people just LOVE to leak things. They find wrongdoing where there is none. They will reveal anything for their 15 minutes of fame. I don't think major conspiracies - like an assassination of a sitting president - can really work. The more cogs, the more that can break down. And I am to believe that the Dallas police, the FBI, the Secret Service, AND the CIA were all working happily together with the Vice President to assassinate JFK? Right - because those organizations have such a long and storied history of working together - you can't get them to cooperate under the best of circumstances - like telling each other when there may be potential terrorists in the country who might want to coordinate a major strike on American soil. But they will all get together to assassinate a president and keep completely quiet. That requires quite the suspension of disbelief.


----------



## JACE

Kontrapunctus said:


> Dostoevsky's _The Brothers Karamazov_.


Such a great, great book.


----------



## Pugg

​
I am so intrigued by this family, specially this woman .
With no other than historic interested .


----------



## SixFootScowl

From inside flap:


> In the face of a new lightly romanticized view of Native Americans, Killing the White Man's Indian bravely confronts the current myths and often contradictory realities of tribal life today. Following two centuries of broken treaties and virtual government extermination of the "savage redmen," Americans today have recast Native Americans into another, equally stereotyped role, that of eternal victims, politically powerless and weakened by poverty and alcoholism, yet whose spiritual ties with the natural world form our last, best hope of salvaging our natural environment and ennobling our souls.
> 
> The truth, however, is neither as grim , nor as blindly idealistic, as many would expect. The fact is that a virtual revolution is underway in Indian Country, an upheaval of epic proportions. For the first time in generations, Indians are shaping their own destinies, largely beyond the control of whites, reinventing Indian education and justice, exploiting the principle of tribal sovereignty in ways that empower tribal governments far beyond most American's imaginations. While new found power has enriched tribal life and prospects, and has made Native Americans fuller participants in the American dream, it has brought tribal governments into direct conflict with local economics and the federal government.
> 
> Based on three years of research on the Native American reservations, and written without a hidden conservative bias or politically correct agenda, Killing the White Man's Indian takes on Native American politics and policies today in all their contradictory--and controversial-guises."


----------



## Badinerie

Going back the the Seventies. Been listening to some classic rock music and reading this.


----------



## Art Rock

Going through the complete output of Nelson DeMille.


----------



## ptr

*Sophus Müller* - *Vor oldtid*. Danmarks forhistoriske archaeologi (Kjøbenhavn 1897)










I quite enjoy reading textbooks on historical subjects from yesteryears. Linked above to archive.org where a scan is available (Book is OOC), cus naturally all you intelligent TC members read Danish as if it was Your first language don't You!

/ptr


----------



## Blake

_Give My Regards to 8th Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman._


----------



## GreenMamba

Laurence Gonzales' *Flight 232*, about a DC-10 crash near Sioux City in 1989. I don't remember the crash, but the book has gotten rave reviews and is very interesting so far.


----------



## Ingélou

I'm reading *Hidden Lives - a Family Memoir* by Margaret Forster, an account of the lives of her grandmother, mother, aunts and herself - working class women - in Carlisle in the earlier twentieth century. It's enthralling, funny, and sad, and as a Northerner about 13 years younger than the author, who also 'escaped' via the education system, I can relate to quite a bit of it.


----------



## Musicforawhile

i am reading 'Beethoven and his nephew' by Edith Sterba and Richard Sterba

Has anyone read this? What did you think?
It seems really interesting so far.


----------



## Kije

_Hytti nro 6_ (_Compartment No 6_) by Rosa Liksom, published in 2011, and _Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen_ (_The Moomins and the Great Flood_) by Tove Jansson, published in 1945. Finnish literature, yeah!


----------



## samurai

Orson Scott Card--*Xenocide {Book # 3 of 4 in the Ender's Game Series}.*


----------



## trazom

GreenMamba said:


> Laurence Gonzales' *Flight 232*, about a DC-10 crash near Sioux City in 1989. I don't remember the crash, but the book has gotten rave reviews and is very interesting so far.
> 
> View attachment 56090


I got this for my birthday last July and read through it pretty quickly. The narrative is good at holding your interest, and the writer obviously researched the accident very meticulously. The only downside was just feeling incredibly sad for the people that were lost, mainly which depended on nothing more than where they were sitting when it crash landed. I won't say anything more specific on that but I went on to facebook after reading it and all the survivors had a 25th anniversary/memorial ceremony back in Iowa just a few months ago (which was also when the book was released) and they even formed their own group on a facebook page where they post and re-connect. The author of the book is actually the most frequent poser there, posting facts and answering questions, talking with other survivors(and promoting his book. hehe). I don't know if he said why and I just forgot but he's very, very interested in the topic that it borders on obsession. I don't know why.


----------



## JACE

ptr said:


> *Sophus Müller* - *Vor oldtid*. Danmarks forhistoriske archaeologi (Kjøbenhavn 1897)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I quite enjoy reading textbooks on historical subjects from yesteryears. Linked above to archive.org where a scan is available (Book is OOC), cus naturally all you intelligent TC members read Danish as if it was Your first language don't You!
> 
> /ptr


My great-grandfather could have read it. He was Danish.

My surname is Mortensen, just like his was.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

JACE said:


> My surname is Mortensen, just like his was.


King Aragorn, is that you?


----------



## elgar's ghost

Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment. This is about my fifth attempt to break the back of it. I'm enjoying it more this time, but as on previous occasions some of the dialogue is just plain dull and doesn't actually seem to go anywhere, especially when the well-meaning motormouth Razumikhin is doing most of the talking (which is often). I prefer it when anti-hero Raskolnikov is alone with his thoughts and wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, which the author evokes so well. 

I'm about 33% of the way through now so hopefully I'll finish it this time.


----------



## JACE

SiegendesLicht said:


> King Aragorn, is that you?


Unfortunately, no. 

A distant relative ...maybe?


----------



## JACE

elgars ghost said:


> Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment. This is about my fifth attempt to break the back of it. I'm enjoying it more this time, but as on previous occasions some of the dialogue is just plain dull and doesn't actually seem to go anywhere, especially when the well-meaning motormouth Razumikhin is doing most of the talking (which is often). I prefer it when anti-hero Raskolnikov is alone with his thoughts and wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, which the author evokes so well.
> 
> I'm about 33% of the way through now so hopefully I'll finish it this time.


I've never made it through _Crime & Punishment_ either. Need to give it another shot.

It's strange because I LOVED _Brothers Karamazov_.


----------



## Ingélou

elgars ghost said:


> Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment. This is about my fifth attempt to break the back of it. I'm enjoying it more this time, but as on previous occasions some of the dialogue is just plain dull and doesn't actually seem to go anywhere, especially when the well-meaning motormouth Razumikhin is doing most of the talking (which is often). I prefer it when anti-hero Raskolnikov is alone with his thoughts and wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, which the author evokes so well.
> 
> I'm about 33% of the way through now so hopefully I'll finish it this time.





JACE said:


> I've never made it through _Crime & Punishment_ either. Need to give it another shot.
> 
> It's strange because I LOVED _Brothers Karamazov_.


I idolised Dostoevsky and adored *Crime & Punishment*: when I was about fifteen, we went on a trip to my sister's house, and even though I loved my sister and her new babies, I had to go up to a spare bedroom and carry on reading. I kept rereading this book all through university too. I found it compelling and horrifying that he murders an old woman for a theory, and the cat and mouse game played with the police inspector kept me turning the pages too.

But twenty-some years later, I had to supervise a male student who'd chosen to write his extended essay (for English A-level) on *Crime & Punishment* compared and contrasted with Joseph Conrad's *Under Western Eye*s - another book I adored when I was a teenager and again at university. But this time, to my surprise, I found both books rather heavy-going.

On the other hand, I reread *War & Peace* at this time and got much more out of it than I had at the age of fifteen.

But *Anna Karenina*? No, that book continues to defeat me...

So these books have to get you at the right time in your life!


----------



## JACE

Ingélou said:


> On the other hand, I reread *War & Peace* at this time and got much more out of it than I had at the age of fifteen.


_War & Peace_ is my favorite book. I first read it when I was nineteen. And I've re-read it many times since then.

My kids laugh at me because I'm constantly relating events in "real life" to scenes in _War & Peace_. None of them have read the novel yet -- although my younger son Aaron did watch the BBC mini-series with me (the version with Anthony Hopkins as Andrei). So at least _he_ has a bit of context when I'm talking about how much something or somebody reminds me of that book!



Ingélou said:


> So these books have to get you at the right time in your life!


So true!


----------



## Levanda

War and Peace is absolutely great writing of Tolstoy, I just try to be little critical is not easy to take thoughts and to understand, special for western world. I have read it in past time Ana Karenina in Russian and in English. I did read in my youth War and Peace, I did not even finished so I cheated I watched film and play.


----------



## mirepoix

Took delivery of this today and I'm planning to bump it to the top of my _to read_ list - a biography of the boxer, Jack Dempsey.


----------



## Ingélou

mirepoix said:


> Took delivery of this today and I'm planning to bump it to the top of my _to read_ list - a biography of the boxer, Jack Dempsey.
> 
> View attachment 56564


Ah, now I'll have all evening as an ear-worm that song about 'My brother Sylvest, with a row of forty medals on his chest *(fine chest!)*...' who 'used to ring the bell in the belfry - now he's gone to fight Jack Dempsey'! :lol:
Hope you enjoy your book, but my father was an army boxer and I had enough of watching/hearing about boxing in my childhood to last a lifetime!

Edit: Here's a link to the song *My Brother Sylvest*, also known as *The Big Strong Man*, which was popular in the early 70s on the folk circuit, and earlier on in the Irish Music Halls & on 1950s variety TV. 



Thank your stars you were born too late for this!


----------



## mirepoix

^^^^ I've never heard that song. What weight division did your father compete in?

(*totally ignores the fact that Ingélou has just said "_...I had enough of watching/hearing about boxing in my childhood to last a lifetime!_" Heh.


----------



## Ingélou

It was in the second world war. He took part in a challenge boxing match and was co-opted into the army boxing team meant to maintain troop morale. This was a good thing for us as his regiment went off to Burma & Dad was newly-married. Who knows if I or my five siblings would even be here, if it wasn't for boxing!

I think he varied between middle weight and light heavy weight as they were at that time. He was tall - about 6 feet - but skinny with it. He won a number of cups and medals in the bouts and got his nose flattened as well. His personality changed, according to my mother, too - he developed a violent temper. I remember him getting madly excited during tv matches, shouting advice to the fighters etc. I used to hate seeing boxers get bloodied. I remember the then 'Cassius Clay'/Henry Cooper match & Cooper's paper thin skin round his eyes getting mashed up. (shudders....)

The only time Dad was disqualified was when he and another boxer were in the finals of a tournament and they were so tired, they stopped punching and started propping each other up. So they were both disqualified, and presumably the cup was unwon, or went to the next contender down.


----------



## mirepoix

^^^^ that's all very interesting stuff. Thanks for taking the time to share it.
Funny you should mention 'paper thin skin' round the eyes. I've so much scar tissue above/to the side of one of my eyes. It opens and bleeds so easily, but today was itching like _hell_. Heh.


----------



## clavichorder

K, I expect to have Pride and Prejudice done by the end of this week. I'll let you know what I think, but so far I'm thinking its fantastic!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Ingélou said:


> So these books have to get you at the right time in your life!


Gosh, Ingelou, how I wish these words were ever heard by our educators! They shove War & Peace, Crime & Punishment and other heavyweight classics onto kids around the age of 16-17, when most of those kids have entirely different things on their minds. The majority of those kids leave school imbued with a hatred for anything "classical", and some with a general hatred of reading. These books were never meant for teenagers!


----------



## Chordalrock

Love for Lydia

Finally a novel with a female character I really like. Maybe I've just been reading the wrong kind of books or not reading enough.

First part finished for a while now. I need to be in the right mood to continue this gem. 

M John Harrison mentioned this as one of his favorites years ago and I've finally gotten around to reading it. Glad that I did.


----------



## senza sordino

Slowly making my way through Ray Bradbury The Illustrated Man. I'm not a slow reader, I just don't spend much time reading at each sparse interval reading session.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

Voltaire's 'Candide'. Very odd.


----------



## Kobak

My uni books T_T


----------



## MagneticGhost

Just finished Harari's Sapiens - A Short History of Humankind







Really interesting read.

Just about to read David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks


----------



## Ingélou

TurnaboutVox said:


> Voltaire's 'Candide'. Very odd.


Strangely, Dr Johnson's *Rasselas*, a book with a similar theme, was written independently at almost the same time. I read *Rasselas* for the first time when I was eighteen, just after the sudden death of my father, and found it very consoling, but later I found that most of my peers couldn't get on with Johnson's orotund style. I've always liked its gravity and balance. I read *Candide* much later, and found it interesting (and odd, true enough), but still prefer Dr Johnson.


----------



## Guest

elgars ghost said:


> Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment. This is about my fifth attempt to break the back of it. I'm enjoying it more this time, but as on previous occasions some of the dialogue is just plain dull and doesn't actually seem to go anywhere, especially when the well-meaning motormouth Razumikhin is doing most of the talking (which is often). I prefer it when anti-hero Raskolnikov is alone with his thoughts and wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, which the author evokes so well.
> 
> I'm about 33% of the way through now so hopefully I'll finish it this time.


I teach it to my AP English seniors--most of them love it! It brings up all sorts of complex moral issues, has fantastic character development, and some of the most heart-wrenching scenes ever committed to paper! Please stay with it. Of course, these classics sometimes work better in the classroom with a teacher who has studied it many times and can provide help with the intricacies and provide valuable insight.


----------



## Speranza

Dickens short stories, he seems to get more sentimental the shorter the book.


----------



## mirepoix

'Henry & June' by Anaïs Nin


----------



## musicrom

I won this book at a competition, but I didn't realize it was in French. Nonetheless, I am making an attempt to read it despite my limited knowledge of the language. I've gotten through about 20 pages, and I understand most of it!


----------



## mirepoix

^^^^^well done. It's often remarkable what we find we can do.


----------



## Haydn man

Just started this big book, small print equals long read for me.
I do enjoy history books and like a meaty book such as this periodically


----------



## Crudblud

Thomas Pynchon - _Inherent Vice_

Fairly recent offering from Pynchon, shaping up to be another fun ride so far. Looking forward to Paul Thomas Anderson's upcoming film adaptation.


----------



## trazom

Kobak said:


> My uni books T_T


I'll be joining you in this in the next months or so, and they usually take up more time and concentration than books I'd rather be reading.

For now, I've been enjoying Paul Henry Lang's biography on the musical genius that is Handel:


----------



## scratchgolf

Yesterday at a used book store I picked up _Islands in the Stream_, _War and Peace_, and an O'Henry collection. All for $13 and in hard cover. I just finished my library, complete with fireplace, and now have evening reading and listening sessions there with my sons. I'll begin reading the Hemingway tonight.


----------



## JACE

scratchgolf said:


> Yesterday at a used book store I picked up _Islands in the Stream_, _*War and Peace*_, and an O'Henry collection. All for $13 and in hard cover. I just finished my library, complete with fireplace, and now have evening reading and listening sessions there with my sons. I'll begin reading the Hemingway tonight.


The beginning of _War & Peace_ is a tough slog. Tolstoy dumps the reader right into the middle of events, and there are many characters being introduced. The historical setting (Napoleon's rise and eventual invasion of Russia) and the name of the characters (due to Russian patronymics) can be very confusing.

*But stick it out!!! *

Because once it gets rolling, it's *unbelievably* good. Tolstoy is my favorite author, and I think _War & Peace_ is the best novel ever written. 

IIRC, you're a military man, right? Hemingway claimed that Tolstoy's writings portrayed battle more realistically, more accurately than any other writer.









_The Battle of Schöngrabern_ by K. Bujnitsky









_In 1812_ by I. Pryanishnikov (the retreat from Moscow)

Sorry for the un-asked-for Tolstoy evangelism. It's just SUCH a great book. And his writing is one of the few things that gets me revved up as music does.


----------



## scratchgolf

JACE said:


> The beginning of _War & Peace_ is a tough slog. Tolstoy dumps the reader right into the middle of events, and there are many characters being introduced. The historical setting (Napoleon's rise and eventual invasion of Russia) and the name of the characters (due to Russian patronymics) can be very confusing.
> 
> *But stick it out!!! *
> 
> Because once it gets rolling, it's *unbelievably* good. Tolstoy is my favorite author, and I think _War & Peace_ is the best novel ever written.
> 
> IIRC, you're a military man, right? Hemingway claimed that Tolstoy's writings portrayed battle more realistically, more accurately than any other writer.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _The Battle of Schöngrabern_ by K. Bujnitsky
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _In 1812_ by I. Pryanishnikov (the retreat from Moscow)
> 
> Sorry for the un-asked-for Tolstoy evangelism. It's just SUCH a great book. And his writing is one of the few things that gets me revved up as music does.


No need to apologize as your write up is much appreciated. I've never been an avid reader but I tend to be a binge reader. My dream was owning a home where I could turn a room into a library/office/listening room. It had to have a fireplace and would NEVER contain a television. After moving home to New York I was able to make this dream a reality. And yes, I retired from the Army in August after nearly 20 years. I've experienced some very intense and harrowing combat so I look forward to Tolstoy's take on it, as it's a very difficult thing to portray accurately.

As for my library, my father joked with me that library shelves are like wine racks. Your initial desire is to completely fill them as quickly as possible. Once filled, you refill them with things you actually want. I just hope I reach for the book shelves at least as frequently as I reach for the wine rack.


----------



## Ingélou

^^^^^ My grandfather, who fought in World War One, used to tell a story of a man he knew who was wounded and in hospital; his wound wasn't that serious but he'd lost the will to live. One of the doctors told him that it would be a crime to die without having read the world's greatest novel, *War & Peace*, and lent him his copy - by the time he'd finished it, he was on the road to recovery.


----------



## scratchgolf

Ingélou said:


> ^^^^^ My grandfather, who fought in World War One, used to tell a story of a man he knew who was wounded and in hospital; his wound wasn't that serious but he'd lost the will to live. One of the doctors told him that it would be a crime to die without having read the world's greatest novel, *War & Peace*, and lent him his copy - by the time he'd finished it, he was on the road to recovery.


That's a beautiful story. Fortunately, my wounds were not life threatening either. I do walk with a cane but that won't keep me from sitting and reading _War and Peace_. I believe Mr. Hemingway just got bumped to #2 on the depth chart.


----------



## mirepoix

scratchgolf said:


> No need to apologize as your write up is much appreciated. I've never been an avid reader but I tend to be a binge reader. My dream was owning a home where I could turn a room into a library/office/listening room. It had to have a fireplace and would NEVER contain a television. After moving home to New York I was able to make this dream a reality. And yes, I retired from the Army in August after nearly 20 years. I've experienced some very intense and harrowing combat so I look forward to Tolstoy's take on it, as it's a very difficult thing to portray accurately.
> 
> As for my library, my father joked with me that library shelves are like wine racks. Your initial desire is to completely fill them as quickly as possible. Once filled, you refill them with things you actually want. I just hope I reach for the book shelves at least as frequently as I reach for the wine rack.


Your room sounds a wonderful place for you and yours to be. Enjoy!


----------



## Johannes V

I've just come to finishing Madame Bovary (what a splendid book; Flaubert is such a detailed artist) and, having finished Ivan Ilyich only a month ago, am now midway through Anna Karenina. I swear, there is no more sympathetic writer than Tolstoy. He writes with such great care and detail.


----------



## clavichorder

I am reading Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. At about this time last year, maybe a little earlier, I was first exposed to this author through his historical fantasy duology, 'The Sarantine Mosaic.' I loved it overall, and its intriguing Byzantine era atmosphere, and lively writing style, and it was THE book to get me back into reading after a rough period where I couldn't focus on anything. I attribute some of my improvement in mental and emotional health, I believe accurately, to getting back into the hobby of reading novels and it is something almost sacred for me these days, though I am not still very adept at focusing for long periods of time. 

It was through this author that I decided I could take it easy on sci-fi and fantasy for a while, before moving onto some more grounding literature and classics, and so unintentionally, maybe this is sort of an anniversary celebration. Lol. But I'm kind of serious, things started getting better for me after this, and I had something to look forward to again. 

Tigana is sort of 'historical fantasy' as well, but more loose in that. It could be a sort of medieval Italian setting, in its parallel universe that its in. Really, Guy Gavriel Kay is a very imaginative author who does fantasy a little differently, and his writing style can make mundane things seem interesting.


----------



## JACE

clavichorder said:


> I am reading Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. At about this time last year, maybe a little earlier, I was first exposed to this author through his historical fantasy duology, 'The Sarantine Mosaic.' I loved it overall, and its intriguing Byzantine era atmosphere, and lively writing style, and it was THE book to get me back into reading after a rough period where I couldn't focus on anything. I attribute some of my improvement in mental and emotional health, I believe accurately, to getting back into the hobby of reading novels and it is something almost sacred for me these days, though I am not still very adept at focusing for long periods of time.
> 
> It was through this author that I decided I could take it easy on sci-fi and fantasy for a while, before moving onto some more grounding literature and classics, and so unintentionally, maybe this is sort of an anniversary celebration. Lol. But I'm kind of serious, things started getting better for me after this, and I had something to look forward to again.
> 
> Tigana is sort of 'historical fantasy' as well, but more loose in that. It could be a sort of medieval Italian setting, in its parallel universe that its in. Really, Guy Gavriel Kay is a very imaginative author who does fantasy a little differently, and his writing style can make mundane things seem interesting.


One of my friends LOVES _The Lions of Al-Rassan_ by Guy Gavriel Kay. It's on my on "to-read" list.


----------



## samurai

Ian Senior--*Home Before The Leaves Fall: A New History Of* *The German Invasion Of 1914*


----------



## GreenMamba

*The Year of Living Biblically* by A.J. Jacobs, wherein the author tries to follow all the rules in The Bible. Amusing so far, but I'm wondering how he manages to get 300 pages out of it.


----------



## clavichorder

JACE said:


> One of my friends LOVES _The Lions of Al-Rassan_ by Guy Gavriel Kay. It's on my on "to-read" list.


Glad to hear a good word put in for another of Kay's novels. I'll have to read that too!


----------



## Ingélou

I'm reading a biography of Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin - a really good read.


----------



## davidaunes

I just finished *Letter to His Father* (Kafka).

It's very interesting to understand better the rest of Kafka's work.


----------



## Bruce

I've just finished The Ape That Spoke, by John McCrone.

This is a work about the evolution of consciousness and the role language played in it. McCrone is a very lucid writer, and I'm amazed at how cogent his argument is, as well as the depth of information he includes in less than 300 pages. 

Am now moving on to Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem. Friedman is a journalist for the New York Times. He spent several years covering events in the Middle East during the civil war that raged in Beirut, and the consequent Israeli occupation of Lebanon. An excellent writer, Friedman provides an account of the social context of those events.


----------



## samurai

Peter Hart--*Gallipoli*


----------



## brotagonist

I used to be really good at math. I even went up to second year university in mathematics. Unfortunately, I have forgotten most of it. I am reading *A Tour of the Calculus* by David Berlinski. It is a light-hearted, but serious and historical account of the development of the calculus, with forays into algebra and geometry and philosophy and related fields.


----------



## Crudblud

Thomas Pynchon - _V_.


----------



## Piwikiwi

The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In by Hugh Kennedy.









It is about the foundation of the Rashidun Caliphate and the expansion of it when it became the Umayyad Caliphate.

So far it is really interesting. I really didn't know a lot about how a bunch of desert nomads and loosely organized tribes created the largest empire the world had yet seen.


----------



## LarryShone

The Link by Colin Tudge, a book about an early fossil primate that was discovered, a young female lemur-like creature that they named Ida.


----------



## Badinerie

Biography of Idina Sackville. Much naughtyness in Kenya between the wars. And afterwards to be frank...


----------



## Lunasong

_Good Omens_ by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - so far, delightful.

"It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people."


----------



## Tristan

_*Kafka on the Shore*_ by Haruki Murakami. One of the most interesting novels I've ever read, to say the least.


----------



## schigolch




----------



## Piwikiwi

Lunasong said:


> _Good Omens_ by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - so far, delightful.
> 
> "It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people."


I finished _Raising Steam_ this week. I now have read and own all 40 discworld novels.


----------



## trazom

Piwikiwi said:


> I finished _Raising Steam[/] this week. I now have read and own all 40 discworld novels. _


_

Now you can start them all over again, if you want. I've only 4, but I enjoyed them very much._


----------



## geralmar

The Starr Report. It really seems like yesterday's news, however.


----------



## starthrower

Just picked up this one.


----------



## GreenMamba

*Lost Memory of Skin* by Russell Banks, a novel about a young man trying to get by in life as a registered sex offender.


----------



## SimonNZ

Joseph Epstein - The Middle Of My Tether: Familiar Essays

re-reading this 1983 collection by one of my favorite modern essayists - one of the handful of living writers I'm devoted to reading every word they've written and eagerly anticipate each new book

and seriously considering re-reading all of his essay collections after this


----------



## JACE

Now reading this:










*Franz Liszt: The Man and the Musican by Ronald Taylor*

I'm enjoying this book very much.


----------



## samurai

Orson Scott Card--*Children Of The Mind {Fourth and final book in the Ender's Game Quartet}*


----------



## elgar's ghost

London Characters and Crooks. A compilation of mid-19th century observations and interviews by Henry Mayhew on the lives and conditions of what would have been called 'the lower orders' back then - tradesmen, hawkers, beggars, urchins etc.

One or two of the stories are positively heartbreaking but was surprised me most was how so many who were interviewed seemed resigned to their lot rather than being angry about the misfortune from which many of them had suffered - and were often good-natured and polite with it.


----------



## ahammel

*Gateway* by Fred Pohl. Humans trying to figure out and profit from the technology left behind by the Heechee, a species of aliens who have long since disappeared.

*The Robots of Dawn* by Isaac Asimov. Last of the trilogy of Elijah Bailey/R. Daneel Olivaw sci-fi whodunits.

*The Mythical Man-Month* by Fred Brooks Jr. A slightly dated series of essays about the trials and tribulations of software engineering.


----------



## Cosmos

Finally started a book my sister got me for Christmas two years ago: Tana French's Faithful Place

It's one of the books in her so called "Dublin Murder Squad" series. When he was 19, Frank Mackey planed to run away with his girlfriend, Rosie. But she never showed up, so he assumed she abandoned him, and he left. Years later, now a detective, he gets news from home that Rosie's suitcase was found in a fireplace. Did she purposely hide it there so many years ago? Or did something more sinister happen? Now he has to return to his dysfunctional, distant family and solve the case

I'm only a few chapters in, but the writing's pretty good. Plus, I'm always intrigued by mysteries


----------



## Ingélou

*The Fishing Fleet - Husband-Hunting in the Raj *by Anne de Courcy, 2011. I love reading about British India and this is very entertaining.

p.128: No story of viceregal entertaining would be complete without mention of the most famous faux pas of the inter-war years. The Viceroy had his own orchestra, which used to play throughout dinner, and once when he recognised a tune but could not put a name to it and nor could anyone else, an ADC was sent to ask the bandmaster for the song's title. When the ADC came back everyone was talking so he patiently waited his turn. Finally the babble of conversation ceased and the young man seized his chance. Leaning forward and gazing at the Viceroy, he announced into the sudden silence: *'I Will Remember your Kisses, your Excellency, When You Have Forgotten Mine.'*


----------



## SimonNZ

ahammel said:


> *Gateway* by Fred Pohl. Humans trying to figure out and profit from the technology left behind by the Heechee, a species of aliens who have long since disappeared.


I love the "Gateway" books, and particularly admire the way each one is wider in scope and implications than the previous, like concentric circles radiating out in water - no falling back on formula, or resting on the laurels. Most have been out of print for far too long, and its high time someone like Gollancz did a big omnibus bind-up of them all.


----------



## GreenMamba

Ned Beauman's novel Boxer, Beetle


----------



## trazom

I got a History of Westeros book for Christmas and I feel obligated to read it. Not because I'm that interested in the lore of the Song of Ice and Fire world, but because it was a gift. At least I'll be able to out-nerd everyone else here on the subject of GoT once I finish it.:lol:


----------



## TurnaboutVox

Underground Art: London Transport Posters 1908-1988 (Oliver Green)


----------



## clavichorder

Working on the classic historical novel, Waverly, by Sir Walter Scott.


----------



## Speranza

clavichorder said:


> Working on the classic historical novel, Waverly, by Sir Walter Scott.


I just finished Bride of Lammermoor by Scott I am going one day get to Waverly. I find Scott can be a bit mixed as a writer so is it any good?

I am reading Reprinted pieces by Charles Dickens


----------



## Ingélou

Speranza said:


> I just finished Bride of Lammermoor by Scott I am going one day get to Waverly. I find Scott can be a bit mixed as a writer so is it any good?
> 
> I am reading Reprinted pieces by Charles Dickens


Scott is not popular these days. Long novels are not popular these days - and for his historical novels, you need to know about history - eighteenth-century history for *Waverley*, and it isn't widely studied nowadays. For the Scottish bit, you need to know about Scotland. So you mightn't find *Waverley* to your taste...

Even when I was at uni and studying Scott, he wasn't popular - only one other student turned up to my presentation, along with the lecturer.  But *Waverley* is a wonderful read and a very 'good novel', in my opinion.

The only thing to do is try it; but if you don't get along with it, that doesn't *necessarily* mean that it's 'no good'. 
Horses for courses.


----------



## Perotin

I just finished reading The Book of Mormon. Now I am reading Dostoevsky: Possessed and Sermons on the Song of Songs by Bernard of Clairvaux.


----------



## Speranza

Ingélou said:


> Scott is not popular these days. Long novels are not popular these days - and for his historical novels, you need to know about history - eighteenth-century history for *Waverley*, and it isn't widely studied nowadays. For the Scottish bit, you need to know about Scotland. So you mightn't find *Waverley* to your taste...
> 
> Even when I was at uni and studying Scott, he wasn't popular - only one other student turned up to my presentation, along with the lecturer.  But *Waverley* is a wonderful read and a very 'good novel', in my opinion.
> 
> The only thing to do is try it; but if you don't get along with it, that doesn't *necessarily* mean that it's 'no good'.
> Horses for courses.


It's a shame Scott's not popular these days however he is popular with me and apparently with you so YAY 

As for long novels well I love them it really gives a chance to sink into the characters and world.

I said he was mixed only because I thought Rob Roy was terrible (put me off for a long while) but at the same time I think Ivanhoe is a truly great novel, in fact one of the best though I am sure that is very very disputed 

When you say need to know about history how much are we talking here? I have a general knowledge of the jacobites, Border Reivers, Hanoverians and probably your average english persons understanding of Scottish history as a whole. If on the other hand you need to have in depth knowledge of Whig policy to understand then it might be a different story.

I had to look up what "Horse for courses" meant it's a nice phrase and very true, thanks for teaching me.


----------



## Ingélou

^^^^ Yay indeed! You know what's needful about Caledonia, so well done, you! These days, it makes you a wonder! :tiphat:


----------



## Mahlerian

Started in on:
*Schoenberg's New World, The American Years*, by Sabine Feisst









Good so far at overturning a number of the biggest assumptions about the complex relationship between Schoenberg and his adopted country.


----------



## schuberkovich

About halfway through Mrs Dalloway, for school. There are some bits I like but in general I feel like...what's the point.


----------



## Speranza

Ingélou said:


> ^^^^ Yay indeed! You know what's needful about Caledonia, so well done, you! These days, it makes you a wonder! :tiphat:


Lol no one has taken their hat off to me before, thanks.

I have Scott to thank as he taught me about the reivers. The rest I picked up from TV, who knew that watching too much TV would be good for me? 

Good to know about Waverley so thanks again, I was worried for a second.


----------



## Ingélou

schuberkovich said:


> About halfway through Mrs Dalloway, for school. There are some bits I like but in general I feel like...what's the point.


My sympathies. Virginia Woolf is someone I have never fancied reading at all. But then, when I was teaching at our sixth form college in the 1990s, I was asked to help a student who was writing an essay on *Mrs Dalloway*, so I had to read it. Wey hey - I liked it, much to my surprise, and I saw the point! 

So maybe you just have to wait another twenty-five years and try again, schuberkovich?


----------



## Kieran

John McGahern, The Barracks.

From Santa Claus, I got Beckett's 3 novels, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable.

And a special edition of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, which includes false starts, alternate endings and titles.

And a book voucher!


----------



## Piwikiwi

schuberkovich said:


> About halfway through Mrs Dalloway, for school. There are some bits I like but in general I feel like...what's the point.


Do you mean the lack of a plot driven story? Because that is not the point of the book. The point of the stream of consciousness is to experience the world from someones point of view and have a look at their thoughts and feelings. Besides the language is absolutely fantastic. I might be slightly biased because Virginia Woolf is my favourite author.


----------



## SimonNZ

Henry Chadwick's The Early Church


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans)... Persian translation... for a second time!


----------



## schigolch




----------



## scratchgolf

Thanks to millionrainbows for this recommendation. I'm thoroughly enjoying this wonderfully written book.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

British political memoir, Volume II - a well written, unpretentious read by a mostly well thought-of politician (and Beatles fan- hence the title). Some think he might be a better leader than...oh, don't go there, T-V, you'll only make yourself unhappy.


----------



## Piwikiwi

"A portrait of an artist of a young man" by James Joyce and "Eline Vere" by Couperus


----------



## Kieran

^^ I got A Portrait from the library as a semi-intro to Ulysses, which I intend to never read, but always have on my to-read list.

Homer's Iliad, the prequel to Ulysses, translated by Alexander Pope, with my voucher. €3.75 in Easons, ridiculous, really. Has notes and so forth, which I'll badly need. I'm not sure I'll be able to hack this, to be honest, but why not try, at that price? :tiphat:


----------



## Piwikiwi

Kieran said:


> ^^ I got A Portrait from the library as a semi-intro to Ulysses, which I intend to never read, but always have on my to-read list.
> 
> Homer's Iliad, the prequel to Ulysses, translated by Alexander Pope, with my voucher. €3.75 in Easons, ridiculous, really. Has notes and so forth, which I'll badly need. I'm not sure I'll be able to hack this, to be honest, but why not try, at that price? :tiphat:


Haha, I've already read Ulysses last year. It is quite fun if you completely let go of any expectations before hand.


----------



## Kieran

Piwikiwi said:


> Haha, I've already read Ulysses last year. It is quite fun if you completely let go of any expectations before hand.


A friend told me that A portrait is a good introduction to it, since Ulysses is virtually impregnable if we go in expecting normal linear tales. I have it at home somewhere. The only part I ever read was the ending...


----------



## Piwikiwi

Kieran said:


> A friend told me that A portrait is a good introduction to it, since Ulysses is virtually impregnable if we go in expecting normal linear tales. I have it at home somewhere. The only part I ever read was the ending...


Haha, the last chapter is definitely the toughest chapter(for me at least)


----------



## TurnaboutVox

Sigmund Freud
Case Histories I - A Case of Hysteria (1905)
Penguin Freud Library - Volume 8










For a seminar I'm teaching the week after next. Beautifully written, as is all of Freud's published work.


----------



## Bruce

I'm just about finished with Christopher Herbert's Culture and Anomie, a fascinating book about the process by which we began to define exactly what a culture is back in the middle of the 19th century.


----------



## samurai

Douglas Porch--*The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History Of The Legendary Fighting Force
*George R. R. Martin--*A Dance With Dragons* {the fifth and final book in the *Game of Thrones Saga}
*


----------



## Piwikiwi

> The quick light shower had drawn off, tarrying in clusters of diamonds among the shrubs of the quadrangle where an exhalation was breathed forth by the blackened earth. Their trim boots prattled as they stood on the steps of the colonnade, talking quietly and gaily, glancing at the clouds, holding their unbrellas at cunning angles against the few last raindrops, closing them again, holding their skirts demurely.


Prose like this is why I love James Joyce so much.


----------



## cwarchc

East of Eden - John Steinbeck
My youngest has developed a taste for some classic literature.
I'm reaping the rewards


----------



## Guest

samurai said:


> Douglas Porch--*The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History Of The Legendary Fighting Force
> *George R. R. Martin--*A Dance With Dragons* {the fifth and final book in the *Game of Thrones Saga}
> *


The fifth book, but not the final . . . unless he kicks the bucket before finishing the final two. I enjoyed A Dance With Dragons. It got things back on track from A Feast For Crows. Still not the best though. I have to admit, though, that Danaerys' character has started to get tedious for me. Is it bad that I wish her head to be the next one on Martin's chopping block?

Incidentally, I found The World of Ice and Fire book to be interesting - sort of an encyclopedia for the world in the series. No earth-shattering spoilers in it, but helps put the history in context, and give some more insight in the recent history - especially the events that led up to Rhaegar's death.


----------



## trazom

DrMike said:


> The fifth book, but not the final . . . unless he kicks the bucket before finishing the final two. I enjoyed A Dance With Dragons. It got things back on track from A Feast For Crows. *Still not the best though. I have to admit, though, that Danaerys' character has started to get tedious for me. Is it bad that I wish her head to be the next one on Martin's chopping block?*
> 
> Incidentally, I found The World of Ice and Fire book to be interesting - sort of an encyclopedia for the world in the series. No earth-shattering spoilers in it, but helps put the history in context, and give some more insight in the recent history - especially the events that led up to Rhaegar's death.


Not really, that's a pretty common complaint from fans of the book. The actress on the show doesn't exactly make it any better, either; though I hope the producers will at least have the sense enough to at least trim her story down compared to all her filler scenes in the book. I haven't read much about Martin's latest thoughts, but when the fourth season was still on, he seemed almost reluctant to work on the series, as though he's already tired of it or just can't keep up with all the characters and subplots he's created.


----------



## Guest

trazom said:


> Not really, that's a pretty common complaint from fans of the book. The actress on the show doesn't exactly make it any better, either; though I hope the producers will at least have the sense enough to at least trim her story down compared to all her filler scenes in the book. I haven't read much about Martin's latest thoughts, but when the fourth season was still on, he seemed almost reluctant to work on the series, as though he's already tired of it or just can't keep up with all the characters and subplots he's created.


Actually, I had heard he had cut back on his involvement in the series so that he could focus on writing - even going to help with one episode was apparently a significant investment of time. There is concern that the series will catch up with the books, bringing many complications to the table. I would hate for the series to get ahead of the books. I have not watched the series, but hear that there are numerous alterations, so I would hope the books would come first. I understand that he has given the producers the rough sketch of how it all ends. It hate for them to be able to steer the particulars.


----------



## Pugg

I am hooked on *Edward St Aubyn*
_Lost for words _


----------



## Mahlerian

Finished the Schoenberg book. I found it an entirely worthwhile read, and although the numerous details of Schoenberg's finances and remunerations for each commission and lesson could feel extraneous to those who aren't particularly interested, the description of the genesis of each composition he wrote while he was in America, including who commissioned it and why he went for the style of a given work, makes it recommendable for those interested in the composer.

But I've already moved on to:
*Janacek: A Biography*, by Jaroslav Vogel


----------



## Bruce

I've just begun Gordon Craig's _Germany, 1866 - 1945_, covering the period when Germany was first unified into a nation under Bismarck, and ending with its catastrophic destruction at the end of the Second World War. So far, the writing style is not overly academic, quite lucid and I'm enjoying it.


----------



## GreenMamba

Just picked up Eric Schlosser's Command and Control, about nuclear weapons security issues.


----------



## trazom

DrMike said:


> Actually, I had heard he had cut back on his involvement in the series so that he could focus on writing - even going to help with one episode was apparently a significant investment of time. There is concern that the series will catch up with the books, bringing many complications to the table. I would hate for the series to get ahead of the books. I have not watched the series, but hear that there are numerous alterations, so I would hope the books would come first. I understand that he has given the producers the rough sketch of how it all ends. It hate for them to be able to steer the particulars.


Well, it's true he was writing--only not the 6th book in the series, but other stories that are in the same ASoIF world. I don't know what he's doing now, though. The series has already caught up in some places but not in others. For example, they spoiled something in the 4th series that wasn't revealed in the books and have killed off characters that didn't even die in the novels(if they're going to at all). I was just annoyed with how poorly some of it was handled by the writers working on the show.


----------



## Guest

trazom said:


> Well, it's true he was writing--only not the 6th book in the series, but other stories that are in the same ASoIF world. I don't know what he's doing now, though. The series has already caught up in some places but not in others. For example, they spoiled something in the 4th series that wasn't revealed in the books and have killed off characters that didn't even die in the novels(if they're going to at all). I was just annoyed with how poorly some of it was handled by the writers working on the show.


Yeah, that is why I don't watch the show (that, and I don't have HBO). 
Yes, he has been working on tangential works - short stories set in the same world, as well as his World of Ice and Fire book. I have read them all, and enjoyed them immensely. For anybody who hasn't read them, I recommend the Dunk and Egg novellas. There are three out already, and he is reportedly working on a 4th, after which I have heard they will release them all together in a single book.

Perhaps it was for this coming season that I read he was going to be working less on the series to focus on Book 6. At any rate, he has separated himself from the show a bit more, and a significant reason is to get on with book 6. Still, if we see it this year, I will be amazed. He has already released a handful of chapters - some of them he had already written and were initially intended to go in book 5, but he decided to hold them back, as it was already overly long. I read some comments from his editor, and she indicated that he was getting along well, and I think she is expecting to get a draft this year.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Eline Vere by Couperus; late 19th century first world problems.


----------



## Cheyenne

I'm reading parts of _Estimating Emerson_ again. The copious quotations from Emerson are the true gold, many of them from obscure sources like diary entries and letters that I would have otherwise never found. "Why should we fret and drudge? Our meat will taste tomorrow as it did yesterday, and we may at last have had enough of it." "In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life." "[E]very man should be so much an artist that he could repeat in conversation what had befallen him." "The poet sees the stars because he makes them." "[O]nly then is the orator successful when he is himself agitated & is as much as a hearer as any of the assembly. In that office you may & shall (please God!) yet see the electricity part from the clouds & shine from one part of heaven to another." "From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. … Temparement is the iron wrie on which the beads are strung." "After thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning excepting perhaps five or six until the day of his death."

Many critical remarks are great too. The best are mere phrases from forgotten corners of certain essay: Emerson's "language schemed against his innocence." Wow. Also recommended for music fans is Charles Ives' Essay Before a Sonata.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

I'm reading Oliver Twist.


----------



## Morimur

*The Good Life by Charles Colson*


----------



## aajj

Have not read Hosseini's first two novels but this one, his third, i loved. I'm not a car fanatic but the history of the auto industry was highly interesting, each chapter focusing on a different make/model.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Piwikiwi said:


> Eline Vere by Couperus; late 19th century first world problems.


With racist slurs:S


----------



## elgar's ghost

I'm going to have a crack at Dostoyevsky's House of the Dead. Sadly I gave up once again on his Crime & Punishment some time ago but I want to give this a chance as I like the Janacek opera based upon it.

I've also re-read Dan Hedges biography of Yes (originally printed c. 1980 not long after Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman had flown the coop). No sordid revelations of rock 'n' roll debauchery here as they were never really that kind of band but Hedges, who served as their Press Officer, writes in a refreshingly unpretentious manner and is complimented by the participation of all the group's members both past and present once the author introduces each of them with brief biographies of their pre-Yes existence. 

The contributions by the more single-mindedly ambitious members of the group (namely Jon Anderson and Chris Squire) are key to providing an insight into a quiet but steely determination to succeed after what was a distinctly unpromising first two and a half years - even drummer extraordinaire Bill Bruford briefly quit the band at one point to study at Leeds University as he couldn't see much of a future.


----------



## Ravndal

Dostoyevsky - Crime And Punishement

Great stuff.


----------



## Guest

American Sniper - Autobiography of Navy Seal Sniper Chris Kyle.


----------



## Kivimees

I just finished the Estonian translation of the Swedish novel, "Analfabeten som kunde räkna", which is known in English as "The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden". The author is Jonas Jonasson, who apparently doesn't live far away from our good friend, ptr.


----------



## clara s

to go on with the Fyodor series

" the possessed" 

I read it for one more time

a masterpiece

I have also seen it 2-3 times in the theatre

Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, a great complicated character


----------



## SimonNZ

just started:

"Hindemith, Hartmann and Henze" - Guy Rickards


----------



## Ingélou

clara s said:


> to go on with the Fyodor series
> 
> " the possessed"
> 
> I read it for one more time
> 
> a masterpiece
> 
> I have also seen it 2-3 times in the theatre
> 
> Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, a great complicated character


I read this at university when I was in my Russian phase. I must read it again - I can't remember a thing about it now, except that I loved it!


----------



## Piwikiwi

I read around 700 pages in two days and I feel like my brain just wants to give up.

Currently reading Salman Rushdie's _Midnight's Children_ and it is amazing so far.

And I solemnly swear that I will never voluntarily read any romantic literature for the rest of my life.


----------



## Tristan

Right now I'm reading "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen. What a downer. But I like his style of writing, annoying characters notwithstanding. I intend to finish it


----------



## GhenghisKhan

Runaway horses, by Yukio Mishima


----------



## Antiquarian

Just finished The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, a yearly re-reading that has however, been damaged by my viewing of the Peter Jackson films. When I was young my imagination ran free; now my mental imagery has been hobbled by someone elses. Every year it gets better though, and someday I will completely forget that Saruman ended his days impaled on debris in Isengard. And now for something completely different: I'm starting Headhunters by Jo Nesbø, a recomendation from my uncle.


----------



## Kieran

Antiquarian said:


> Just finished The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, a yearly re-reading that has however, been damaged by my viewing of the Peter Jackson films. When I was young my imagination ran free; now my mental imagery has been hobbled by someone elses. Every year it gets better though, and someday I will completely forget that Saruman ended his days impaled on debris in Isengard. And now for something completely different: I'm starting Headhunters by Jo Nesbø, a recomendation from my uncle.


I haven't read LOTR in years, but those kind of liberties with the tale put the reading of it somewhat at odds with the films, which were marvelous, none the less. In my opinion, that is. I think Headhunters is a Jo Nesbo book he based on his own screenplay for the film, which was very good. Never read the book, but I like Nesbo's cop, Harry Hole.

Currently reading some Homer Iliad, translations by Pope and Fitzgerald, an old classic translation alongside a very stirring modern one. And also finishing Joh Macgahern's The Barracks, which I stopped reading due to problems managing my time...


----------



## Jeff W

'Howl's Moving Castle' by Diana Wynn Jones is my current read. I think 'The Hobbit' will be next as I expect to finish 'Howl' very soon.


----------



## Badinerie




----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Guest

What If: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

by Randall Munroe.


----------



## Bruce

GhenghisKhan said:


> Runaway horses, by Yukio Mishima


Have you read the other books in this tetralogy? I thought the first, _Spring Snow_, was the best of the four.


----------



## Bruce

I've just started _The Civilization of the Renaissance _in Italy by Jacob Burkhardt.

So far, it's rather anecdotal, and Burkhardt does not place the events in Italy within the larger context of events in Europe. The anecdotes themselves are rather interesting, but after a while it becomes a bit tedious. He often mentions names which he expects the reader to know from a prior knowledge of the Renaissance. I believe this book would better serve a reader with a more complete knowledge of the era.


----------



## Cosmos

_The Lover_ by Marguerite Duras










Fantastic book, so far. It's an autobiography about her living in Vietnam back when it was a French colony, and about a love affair she had with a Chinese man. She's also been talking about the hardships of her family being poor and her mother's depression, and her general distant feelings toward her family. It's beautifully written, like snippets of memories out of order. And it's only about 100 pages, so I would definitely recommend it if you want to pick up a book for a Sunday afternoon


----------



## Cheyenne

Selections from the writings of George Jean Nathan. Some of these are truly superb. "Marriage is the reward that women graciously withhold from the men they have truly loved." "A man's wife is his compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart." "Men go to the theatre to forget; women, to remember." His dabbling in Mencken-like social commentary is often funny:

"LIFE would be endurable," observed Lord Palmerston, "if it were not for its pleasures." Like many another profound saying, this one has suffered because of its epigrammatic air and has been dismissed as being merely an amusing bit of smart-aleckry. Yet what reflective man of mature years does not appreciate its truth? The so-called pleasures of life, in the instance of each individual, are largely repetitive; they cuckoo one another more or less exactly from year to year, since a man's taste changes little after he has crossed the line of thirty. In his younger years, these pleasures are still fresh and new to him; they have a kick that is infinitely agreeable; but, as time goes on, they lose their erstwhile appeal and gradually become transformed into bores. After thirty, the individual's pleasures fall into the pigeonholes of his set predilections. Some of them are left-overs from his earlier years; others are of a relatively new contour. But, whatever their nature, he finds soon or late that they are in themselves very much of a piece and that each is but a recurrent echo of its former self. And presently each quondam pleasure becomes a stereotyped thing, to be undertaken, at best, in the half-light of duty; and, furthermore, the indulgence in each of them becomes more and more irksome and peace-disturbing.​
I like a man like Nathan who admits to being a hedonist without shame. "What interests me in life," he says, "is the surface of life: life's music and color, its charm and ease, its humor and its loveliness. The great problems of the world -social, political, economic, and theological-do not concern me in the slightest."


----------



## Pugg

Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

The Shining by Stephen King.


----------



## Überstürzter Neumann




----------



## Ravndal

The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde


----------



## GreenMamba

*The Floating Opera* by John Barth

I had read a lot of his stuff many years ago, but never this early novel.


----------



## JACE

Just started this:










_Emerson: The Mind on Fire_ by Robert D. Richardson, Jr.


----------



## SimonNZ

Re-reading this, because a number of scenes from it have been playing on my mind recently

And its holding up really well, I'm pleased to say. Admiring the careful structure and the illusion of simple straightforward storytelling.


----------



## Vronsky

The last two were Ernesto Sabato -- _El Túnel_ and Mikhail Ageev -- _Novel with Cocaine_. I plan to start reading _The Best Intentions_ from Ingmar Bergman next week.


----------



## trazom

chillowack said:


> I'm currently reading _Mozart: A Biography_, by Piero Melograni.


I thought the book was good with most of the facts; but the author seemed ignorant when it came to the subject of the Requiem Mass.


----------



## Andreas

Recently finished: Christian Kracht, Imperium.

Currently reading: Michel Houellebecq, Submission.


----------



## Posie

Strangely, though I have never been a stereotypical baby-obsessed female, I have been glued to Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. It's a great book, even if you don't know if you want children.


----------



## Figleaf

marinasabina said:


> Strangely, though I have never been a stereotypical baby-obsessed female, I have been glued to Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. It's a great book, even if you don't know if you want children.


I've always felt a bit guilty that I've never read a single childcare book. My son was a total surprise and I spent that pregnancy trying to sort out practicalities. I don't think I even knew childcare manuals existed until I went to post natal classes and all the other mums (mostly vastly older than me) were discussing them. My advice to anyone bamboozled by conflicting commercial and official 'advice' would be to listen to your instincts as a parent (if/when you become a parent) instead of following some regime laid out in a manual. (Although according to my Mum who works in childcare, Dr Spock is one of the good ones. Not so Gina Ford.)


----------



## Piwikiwi

I'm still reading _Midnight's Children_ by Salman Rushdie and it is one of the best books I've ever read.


----------



## Celloman

I've just started Milton's _Paradise Lost_. Brilliant and imaginative, so far.


----------



## Guest

The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam by Jonathan Riley-Smith. Riley-Smith is a prominent historian of the Crusades, and is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. This short book is actually a collection of lectures he gave on the topic. He tries to dispel the mythistory that now passes for the history of the Crusades. He contextualizes them in the mindset of the period in which they occurred, turns on their head all the error regarding them that is now taken for granted, and describes how our current thinking regarding the Crusades is due to fairly recent thinking - the end of the 19th century.


----------



## Posie

Figleaf said:


> I've always felt a bit guilty that I've never read a single childcare book. My son was a total surprise and I spent that pregnancy trying to sort out practicalities. I don't think I even knew childcare manuals existed until I went to post natal classes and all the other mums (mostly vastly older than me) were discussing them. My advice to anyone bamboozled by conflicting commercial and official 'advice' would be to listen to your instincts as a parent (if/when you become a parent) instead of following some regime laid out in a manual. (Although according to my Mum who works in childcare, Dr Spock is one of the good ones. Not so Gina Ford.)


That is why I love Dr. Spock's book. He begins the book telling parents to trust themselves and their instincts. The tone of the book is very informative and not patronizing at all.


----------



## Figleaf

marinasabina said:


> That is why I love Dr. Spock's book. He begins the book telling parents to trust themselves and their instincts. The tone of the book is very informative and not patronizing at all.


It sounds very good. Too bad I skipped the research stage of parenthood and/or got put off by the idea of a childcare book written by a Vulcan.


----------



## Cosmos

*Djinn*, by Alain Robbe-Grillet










A metafictional novel. It's like a spy mystery, except the narrator keeps pointing out how fake everything is, and keeps reminding you that you're reading a story. It's also got a decent amount of humor. Apparently, it was commissioned by a French language professor to be used like a text book: as the story progresses, the next chapter deals with more difficult aspects of French grammar. Reading an English translation, that aspect of the novel is lost on me


----------



## Bruce

Just started The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester









Extremely well written. The history of the Krupp firm in Germany and its involvement with arms production during both world wars.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

_Tempo and Mode in Evolution: Genetics and Paleontology 50 Years After Simpson_


----------



## Jeff W

Upon finishing 'Howl's Moving Castle', I tore through J. R. R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' in less than a week. Much better than the movie!









Completely demolished Diana Wynne Jones' sequel to 'Howl's Moving Castle', 'Castle in the Air' in about a day and a half. Really enjoyed this one too.









Now onto 'The Fellowship of the Ring', the first part of 'The Lord of the Rings'.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Jeff W said:


> View attachment 63661
> 
> 
> Upon finishing 'Howl's Moving Castle', I tore through J. R. R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' in less than a week. Much better than the movie!
> 
> View attachment 63662
> 
> 
> Completely demolished Diana Wynne Jones' sequel to 'Howl's Moving Castle', 'Castle in the Air' in about a day and a half. Really enjoyed this one too.
> 
> View attachment 63663
> 
> 
> Now onto 'The Fellowship of the Ring', the first part of 'The Lord of the Rings'.


_MUCH_ better than the movie, Jeff?- come on now: tell the truth, shame the devil.

Peter Jackson's elaborate GCI, set design, and cinematography eclipse anything Tolkien ever _dreamed_ of.

_;D_


----------



## Jeff W

Marschallin Blair said:


> Peter Jackson's elaborate GCI, set design, and cinematography eclipse anything Tolkien ever _dreamed_ of.
> 
> _;D_


The movies did excel at all of those but too many extraneous plots created solely for the movie bogged it down for me.


----------



## Guest

Jeff W said:


> View attachment 63661
> 
> 
> Upon finishing 'Howl's Moving Castle', I tore through J. R. R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' in less than a week. Much better than the movie!
> 
> View attachment 63662
> 
> 
> Completely demolished Diana Wynne Jones' sequel to 'Howl's Moving Castle', 'Castle in the Air' in about a day and a half. Really enjoyed this one too.
> 
> View attachment 63663
> 
> 
> Now onto 'The Fellowship of the Ring', the first part of 'The Lord of the Rings'.


You really can't beat Tolkien. I am reading The Hobbit to my 9-year-old son.


----------



## phlrdfd

The final volume in the trilogy:


----------



## Albert7

Amy Poehler's new book:


----------



## Don Fatale

albertfallickwang said:


> Amy Poehler's new book:
> 
> View attachment 63685


I'm just done with the audiobook (with Amy reading it of course). Very engaging for the most part but you have to have a high tolerance for celebrity name-dropping and talk of how great is everybody she works with.


----------



## clara s

the art of deception

Kevin Mitnick

(or the high art of hacking)


----------



## Piwikiwi

I just started with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.


----------



## GreenMamba

Every Third Thought by John Barth.


----------



## senza sordino

I just finished reading Stradivari's Genius. The author follows five violins and one cello from creation to now. Very interesting, but hard to remember all the details, especially the instrument's owners in the 19th century.

The Five violins: The Messiah, The Viotti, The Khevenhūller, The Paganini, The Lipiński.
The Cello The Davidov

View attachment 64027


----------



## pierrot

Most people refrain from Freud because of his libido theories and 'dated' thinking, but he is onto something very important here. I recommend.


----------



## Freischutz

Some short stories by E. M. Forster, particularly _The Machine Stops_. Interesting and surprisingly prescient technological dystopia from someone who wrote about things I generally don't care about (i.e. turn of the century British class - BORING).


----------



## Marschallin Blair




----------



## Lord Lance

View attachment 64127


India's multifaceted, ever young acting genius - Dev Anand. *salute*


----------



## spokanedaniel

Great Expectations. I read it decades ago, and am now re-reading it. There is so much I had forgotten about it.


----------



## Kieran

Still rassling with Homer, but for Lent I've begun a modern Catholic classic, Thomas Merton's _Contemplative Prayer _ ,a beauty of spirituality. This I'll read alongside a _ Prayer of Love and Silence _ by an anonymous Carthusian monk. These books are food, indeedy!


----------



## Vesteralen

A true child prodigy with both perfect pitch and synesthesia demonstrated from at least the age of four. Wrote the musical notations for her early pieces in her head only committing them to paper much later. Fascinating.


----------



## Vesteralen

"There's no fee unless we sing an aria for YOU!"

Interesting material in opening chapters on theories regarding physical production of sound via the human voice. Stuff I never knew.


----------



## Ingélou

A very readable biography: *Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Unpredictable Life of the Author of 'The Secret Garden'*, by Gretchen Gerzina (Rutgers University Press 2004)


----------



## Vesteralen

Jessica Mitford's "Hons and Rebels" sort of made me think I wouldn't enjoy this. But, I am.


----------



## Vesteralen

Rather a unique experience - parenting memories of a Swedish man who was already rather old when his daughter was born. A Swedish humorist...never encountered one before.


----------



## clavichorder

Its been a long haul, because I have had other distractions, but I am nearing the end of Waverly. I want to say that it is seeming like one of the best reading decisions I have made in a long time. I am enjoying it immensely, and Sir Walter Scott was a genius! 

Its right up my alley; historical, adventurous, domestically subtle, elaborate and flowery prose that still contains much pith, "exotic" Scotland, gentle wry humor, picturesque descriptions, and very well constructed plot. Just now I have a sense of how its all coming together. There is a reason this book was so successful in its time.


----------



## Vesteralen

Otherwise known as "On the Nature of Things". My first encounter with Lucretius. Seems to be a very "readable" translation. I have no way of knowing how accurate it is. But, nothing hinges on my knowing, so, I'm okay with that.


----------



## Vesteralen

From what is probably Wodehouse's best period. The plots have already become repetitive, but the writing is superb.


----------



## Blancrocher

Vesteralen said:


> View attachment 64260
> 
> 
> Jessica Mitford's "Hons and Rebels" sort of made me think I wouldn't enjoy this. But, I am.


"Love in a Cold Climate" is an interesting book. Have you read any of Nancy Mitford's historical writing? I got into her histories last year and loved them all. "The Sun King" is my favorite.


----------



## Vesteralen

Blancrocher said:


> "Love in a Cold Climate" is an interesting book. Have you read any of Nancy Mitford's historical writing? I got into her histories last year and loved them all. "The Sun King" is my favorite.


No, "Hons and Rebels" was my first Mitford book, and "LIACC" is my first Nancy Mitford book. But, knowing my penchant for completism....you never know


----------



## Ingélou

Vesteralen said:


> View attachment 64347
> 
> 
> Otherwise known as "On the Nature of Things". My first encounter with Lucretius. Seems to be a very "readable" translation. I have no way of knowing how accurate it is. But, nothing hinges on my knowing, so, I'm okay with that.


That's how I'd prefer to read it - in translation. And I might be interested to - *now*! 

One book of Lucretius' 'De Rerum Natura' was set as our Latin A-level text. The problems for teenage girls were a) that we weren't riveted by the subject matter of molecules and physical forces and b) Lucretius used a deliberately archaic style, so it was like no Latin we'd ever come across. At O-level, we'd just translated bits of Caesar and about half of Book II from Virgil's *Aeneid*.

In the end our kind Latin mistress gave up and let us study an alternative set text, another book from *The Aeneid *.


----------



## Cheyenne

_Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt_. The biography ends with the death of Shelley, hence the "first life". That's where the life of Hunt the great Romantic essayist and poet ended, and where his continued struggle as the "last survivor of a race of giants" began. One wonders who much different the reputations of Coleridge and Hunt would have been, if they had died early too!


----------



## Vesteralen

Ingélou said:


> That's how I'd prefer to read it - in translation. And I might be interested to - *now*!
> 
> [/B].


Well, it is a very understandable translation. On that basis, at least, I can recommend it.


----------



## pierrot

After nearly two years (reading other books intermittently) I finally started the last volume. And I just don't want to finish.


----------



## Figleaf

pierrot said:


> After nearly two years (reading other books intermittently) I finally started the last volume. And I just don't want to finish.
> 
> View attachment 64461


Best novel of all time! (in the opinion of this reader who hardly ever reads novels, so don't listen to me...) You don't have to finish it as such: by the time you reach the end of the final volume, you can just start again with Swann's Way,etc, and unless you possess a remarkable memory, much of it will seem new to you!


----------



## pierrot

Figleaf said:


> Best novel of all time! (in the opinion of this reader who hardly ever reads novels, so don't listen to me...) You don't have to finish it as such: by the time you reach the end of the final volume, you can just start again with Swann's Way,etc, and unless you possess a remarkable memory, much of it will seem new to you!


Indeed, in the first three books the names don't mean as much as in this last volume, which have all the characters much more vivid (in the face of war). I just need to get a decent physical copy.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Re-reading The Grand Entertainment, Steven Parissien's entertaining biography of George IV (cr. 1821 - d. 1830).

Reviews of this book have been mixed mainly due to the accusation against the author of not holding his subject in sufficient enough regard for the work to be subjective; who can blame him - Georgie Porgie, with the possible exception of Charles II, was arguably the most self-centred and over-privileged waster ever to ascend the British throne and I would have thought it nigh-on impossible to have too many good things to say about him without making it seem like a toadying whitewash job. Just to show how unbiased he is, he doesn't exactly have many nice things to say about George's brothers and parents either.


----------



## Fox

elgars ghost said:


> Re-reading The Grand Entertainment, Steven Parissien's entertaining biography of George IV (cr. 1821 - d. 1830).
> 
> Reviews of this book have been mixed mainly due to the accusation against the author of not holding his subject in sufficient enough regard for the work to be subjective; who can blame him - Georgie Porgie, with the possible exception of Charles II, was arguably the most self-centred and over-privileged waster ever to ascend the British throne and I would have thought it nigh-on impossible to have too many good things to say about him without making it seem like a toadying whitewash job. Just to show how unbiased he is, he doesn't exactly have many nice things to say about George's brothers and parents either.


If you would be so kind as to share your thoughts on the book once you have finished I would perhaps pick this one up myself.

Regards,

Fox


----------



## Fox

*On Blindness: Letters between Bryan Magee and Martin Milligan* ~ *Bryan Magee*​


----------



## elgar's ghost

Fox said:


> If you would be so kind as to share your thoughts on the book once you have finished I would perhaps pick this one up myself.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Fox


With pleasure - look in on this thread again in about a week from now.


----------



## MagneticGhost

Just finised Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. There is something about her writing style I'm not too keen on - but the subject matter was enough to keep me going.








I've also read a lot of Alexander McCall Smith's books over the last few weeks. Out of his three main series, I like the Isabel Dalhousie Novels the best. That mix of philosophy, art and music, interwined with amateur detective work, is a treat.
The Ramotswe novels are pleasantly diverting and it is refreshing to read about characters with such a simple, positive outlook on life.








I've got some holiday time coming up - so I'll have the time to invest in something a little more challenging.
I've got Dostoyesky's The Idiot lined up


----------



## Jeff W

Diana Wynn Jones - House of Many Ways. Read mostly in two different sittings over the course of the weekend. Finished this morning. Onwards now to:









J. R. R. Tolkien - The Two Towers. Just started this one.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

*Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment *


----------



## Vesteralen

Well, there's a co-writer on this, but all I have to say is, if the co-writer did most of the work, he certainly got the Borge-speak down perfectly. If not a laugh-out-loud book, at least it's a chuckle-out-loud one.








And, while I'm on the subject of Borge(s)...just started this one


----------



## GreenMamba

Reading about the Glorious Rev. Maybe will work my way forward to the George IV book mentioned above (although I think backwards is more interesting).


----------



## Cosmos

Paul Auster - City of Glass










Really enticing, so far. It's a detective story, but it's also very metaficional: theres a bit on how mysteries, whether great or poor, are a wonderful genre because every word is potentially important, and a clue can be on any page. In a way, the detective is the author him/herself, trying to piece the story together. To add onto this motif, a client calls the main character, mistaking him for Paul Auster, the author himself, who is also known as a detective [and therefore, an author]. That bit may be odd, but other than the few moments like this, it's a really interesting story.

I'm also reading the 1798 edition of the *Lyrical Ballads*, which includes several of Wordsworths poems, plus Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Not a fan of this Coleridge Poem, but Wordsworth's words always move me in some way


----------



## Morimur

Cosmos said:


> Paul Auster - City of Glass
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Really enticing, so far. It's a detective story, but it's also very metaficional: theres a bit on how mysteries, whether great or poor, are a wonderful genre because every word is potentially important, and a clue can be on any page. In a way, the detective is the author him/herself, trying to piece the story together. To add onto this motif, a client calls the main character, mistaking him for Paul Auster, the author himself, who is also known as a detective [and therefore, an author]. That bit may be odd, but other than the few moments like this, it's a really interesting story.
> 
> I'm also reading the 1798 edition of the *Lyrical Ballads*, which includes several of Wordsworths poems, plus Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Not a fan of this Coleridge Poem, but Wordsworth's words always move me in some way


Nice cover! I am a graphic designer, so I feel compelled to comment on such things.


----------



## Fox

Morimur said:


> Nice cover! I am a graphic designer, so I feel compelled to comment on such things.


I am not a graphic designer but I am an artist and I did think the same but felt it would be stupid you know "judging a book by it's cover". However it seems I am not alone thankfully.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Fox said:


> I am not a graphic designer but I am an artist and I did think the same but felt it would be stupid you know "judging a book by it's cover". However it seems I am not alone thankfully.


Fox, I have read the George IV already so here's a precis for you:

First of all, the book does not proceed chronologically (in fact, it opens with the king's impending death), rather it deals with his life by breaking it down into different subjects and his place within them i.e. politics, art, the military, his marriage/divorce and, naturally, the other women in his life.

Although the book on the surface may read like a never-ending catalogue of the Seven Deadly Sins, SP has the gift to deftly, almost dispassionately, detail the king's tastes, habits and personality while simultaneously managing to avoid coming across as a gossip-column bitch.

The author mentions that the austere, terminally torpid conditions in which George was raised (presumably an ill-fated attempt by George III to avoid the criticisms levelled at his Hanoverian forefathers' taste for both extravagance and licentiousness at court) may have had a detrimental effect on the child prince who did seem to be deprived of genuine parental affection, and, coupled with his father's reluctance to bestow upon him any real responsibility when he was older unlike many of his other brothers, led him to have too much time on his hands and be easily led by the wrong kind of people once he had set up his own alternative court.

That said, it's natural that there is more to be had from the failings of George IV's own making, and Parissien does not spare him when apologists trot out the old attempts to exonerate George because of his artistic tastes by mentioning that many of his building schemes and art purchases were funded by the taxpayer (and usually way over budget) and most of his jewellery and clothes remained unpaid for.

The book, at 462 pages, is often fast-paced but not in a tabloid-y way, and the style in which it was written suits both the subject and the spirit of the age. Highly recommended.

p.s. for a really good customer review, go to Amazon.co.uk and look up the entry from someone calling him/herself 'Peasant'.


----------



## pierrot

Emma Bovary and the Underground Man would form a _terrific _couple.


----------



## Guest

A good Nordic noir novel.


----------



## Mahlerian

Finished
The First Moderns: Profiles in Twentieth Century Thought by William Everdell









Interesting snapshot biographies of the innovators in science, literature, and the arts and their innovations, but the section on Schoenberg (as nice and sympathetic as it is) reveals very clearly that the author is not a musician (among other things, he says that F-sharp minor has *six* sharps in its key signature), and leaves me wondering how accurate his explanations of the areas I'm not as knowledgeable in are. Still, an enjoyable read.

I've moved on to
Tolstoy: The Collected Shorter Fiction, Vol. 2


----------



## Avey

Ugh, man, why did I only now discover THIS thread!?

Recently finished *Dickens* _Bleak House_ and *Twain's* _Letters from Earth_















Currently in *McCarthy's* _Blood Meridian_


----------



## samurai

Michael Haag--*The Tragedy Of The Templars*


----------



## Guest

A French (English translation) serial killer novel that is not for the faint of heart!


----------



## JACE

*Who I Am - Pete Townshend*










Unabridged audiobook version read by Townshend


----------



## Guest

I am boning up on my British history - right now I am at the dawn of the House Plantagenet, reading Dan Jones' "The Plantaganets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England."


----------



## Tristan

_Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin_ by Nicholas Ostler

It's part history, part linguistics text--overall very interesting and right tup my alley


----------



## Perotin

Just finished A short history of ethics by Alasdair MacIntyre. Not very well written book, but I did learn quite a few things, so it was not a complete waste of time.


----------



## Blancrocher

Tristan said:


> _Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin_ by Nicholas Ostler
> 
> It's part history, part linguistics text--overall very interesting and right tup my alley


I like how Ostler's book-blurb from 2008 says that he knows 18 languages, while his website today says that he knows 26. He might want to stop mentioning a number in print since by the time anyone reads it the information will be out of date :lol:

Clearly a busy man!


----------



## Guest

Just started on _The New Confessions_ by *William Boyd*. As the MacDonald advertising would have us repeat, "I'm liking it". (Maybe the bad grammar reflects the crap food?)


----------



## Morimur

*The Painted Bird (Jerzy Kosiński)*


----------



## Avey

Reread *DFW's* _E Unibus Pluram_ essay









Now immersed in *Faulkner's* _As I Lay Dying_


----------



## arpeggio

_Contact_ by Carl Sagen. Seen the movie several times. Decided to read the book.

Took me forever to get through the Robinson's _Mars Trilogy_. Excellent novels but for me they were a difficult read.


----------



## Vesteralen

First meeting of Grace Latham and Colonel Primrose (which most likely means nothing to anyone now)


----------



## JACE

Avey said:


> Now immersed in *Faulkner's* _As I Lay Dying_
> 
> View attachment 66085


Vardaman: "My Mother is a Fish"

I read _As I Lay Dying_ in a Faulkner seminar in grad school about twenty years ago. But that scene with Vardaman has stuck with me.


----------



## JACE

Deleted. Duplicate post.


----------



## Dim7

Current Listening Vol 1. I'm going to read all pages of both volumes to avoid repeating what others have already said in these threads.


----------



## aajj

I joined a monthly book club at a library and for this month read a first novel by M.L. Stedman, _The Light Between Oceans_. It's set in a remote area in Australia after WWI, concerning a lighthouse keeper and his wife and the desperate need to have a child. The writing was not always top drawer but the story was well constructed. Questions of ethical behavior and judgment are raised over and over and it made for an interesting chat at our monthly meeting.

Separately, I recently read _Mornings on Horseback_ by David McCullough. A highly interesting subject: Teddy Roosevelt's family during his early years. I feared that McCullough would become too closely attached to the subject and sound like a public relations agent on their behalf: sure enough, he did; for example, when defending the character of Teddy's mom. I had the same problem with his biography of John Adams.


----------



## samurai

John Gardner--*Grendel*. Gives a little different slant to *Beowulf.*
Fred Hoyle--*October the First Is Too Late*
H.G. Wells--*The Time Machine and The Chronic Argonauts*


----------



## MagneticGhost

My phone broke down earlier this week - and I'm often using the iBooks App within. I was reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot on iBooks.

Due to the loss of iBooks - I was forced to start another book. 
I should have picked something short and easy to read in the knowledge that my phone would be back online within a few days. 
But No!! I've started Proust. Half way through Swann's Way


----------



## Jos

^^
"Earlier this week" and already halfway through a volume of a la recherche !! That is very quick, MG. 
It took me over a week to get through the first part of "Combray".....:lol:

I did get to appreciate extremely long sentences that had to be red at least four times to be understood/appreciated.
Must revisit !


----------



## techniquest

I just finished reading 'The Dumbing Down of Britain' by Duncan Barkes. It's a tiny little book presumably designed for people with a similar sized attention span and ability to reason. Off to the charity shop with it!


----------



## Vronsky

_Don Quixote_ -- Miguel de Cervantes

Pivot of the world literature...

_The Tenth Brother_ -- Josip Jurčič http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tenth_Brother

_The Tenth Brother_ is the first novel in Slovene language ever written (Earlier, Slovenian authors wrote in German and Latin).


----------



## Figleaf

aajj said:


> Separately, I recently read _Mornings on Horseback_ by David McCullough. A highly interesting subject: Teddy Roosevelt's family during his early years. I feared that McCullough would become too closely attached to the subject and sound like a public relations agent on their behalf: sure enough, he did; for example, when defending the character of Teddy's mom. I had the same problem with his biography of John Adams.


Interesting. I wonder if there's a kind of biographer's Stockholm syndrome at work, or whether biographers simply gravitate towards subjects they are very sympathetic to anyway? I couldn't imagine writing the biography of someone I didn't love, given the amount of time one would have to spend with the subject- researching the life of an unsympathetic person must be almost like being stuck in a bad marriage!


----------



## GreenMamba

aajj said:


> Separately, I recently read _Mornings on Horseback_ by David McCullough. A highly interesting subject: Teddy Roosevelt's family during his early years. I feared that McCullough would become too closely attached to the subject and sound like a public relations agent on their behalf: sure enough, he did; for example, when defending the character of Teddy's mom. I had the same problem with his biography of John Adams.





Figleaf said:


> Interesting. I wonder if there's a kind of biographer's Stockholm syndrome at work, or whether biographers simply gravitate towards subjects they are very sympathetic to anyway? I couldn't imagine writing the biography of someone I didn't love, given the amount of time one would have to spend with the subject- researching the life of an unsympathetic person must be almost like being stuck in a bad marriage!


I suspect they inevitably sympathize with their subjects at least to some degree, which isn't necessarily a flaw.

I think the main tendency is to overstate the significance of the subject. Practically all biographies argue that the person is more important than given credit for. Maybe that was the impulse to write to begin with, but I doubt many writers undertake all the research and then say "you know, he really isn't all that important to us today."


----------



## Figleaf

GreenMamba said:


> I suspect they inevitably sympathize with their subjects at least to some degree, which isn't necessarily a flaw.
> 
> I think the main tendency is to overstate the significance of the subject. Practically all biographies argue that the person is more important than given credit for. Maybe that was the impulse to write to begin with, but I doubt many writers undertake all the research and then say "you know, he really isn't all that important to us today."


Great point. There's a fine line between making the case for an underrated artist and/or unjustly neglected historical figure, and boosterism like you describe. Probably the biographer himself is not the best person to make the distinction unless he is unusually self-aware as a writer. Regularly showing the draft to other knowledgeable people and receiving their feedback is probably the best way to avoid slipping into hyperbole or just dodgy arguments, so it's unfortunate that writing biography tends to be a solitary activity because of its time consuming, research-intensive nature and the fact that the finished result is unlikely to make anybody rich!


----------



## clavichorder

A little review:

I was inspired to submit my first review to goodreads, thanks to Waverly. This was my first foray into Scott's work, and literature of this period in general. I've been seeing some bad reviews, and I'm really glad I allowed myself to form my own opinion and not peruse goodreads reviews before reading. I came into the experience with a mind eager to understand the innovation of Scott in making one of the first major historical novels, and I came out of it feeling very satisfied in ways that I did not expect. 

Having read Henry Esmond by Thackeray(which also deals with Jacobite relating things in an earlier period) and for the most part, having actually enjoyed it(though it was a difficult read), I was expecting something similar and was surprised at how satisfying and entertaining Waverly was by contrast. With the plotting, the characters, the scene descriptions, the gentle wry humor that reminds me of Anthony Trollope, Waverly shows that Scott is not lacking in any departments of what goes into making a great novelist. It is a long and difficult read if you are not accustomed to this sort of thing, but if you like historical novels, and great literature, this is a book that you won't want to miss. I can confidently say its my favorite I've read in years and I would be more inclined to fault the reviewers for reading with a mind for comparison to other works(Jane Austen is a very different author), and not just enjoying what they read on its own terms and in Scott's case, with genuine patience that you can expect to be repaid.


----------



## heatedbonfire

I found this book at the Village Discount - book it for $2 - imagine that.










Anyway, I'm reading this and learning some history  Nice way to spend my Sunday.


----------



## heatedbonfire

Sorry for this post - just want to know something ... 

please look at my previous post. How come the image is not showing? Please let me know for future reference. Thanks  

The book I am reading is Pearl Harbor : The Movie and The Moment.


----------



## GreenMamba

How did you add the image? you need to use the tree icon above, and it's best to copy the link from online (rather than download to you computer). 

There may also be a rule about images if you have fewer than 10 posts. I don't know.


----------



## Avey

Onward!, and into...

*Kafka*, _The Sons_: 








*Adams*, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_:








And obviously, some music biographical reading:


----------



## Avey

Oh, and wondering if anyone has read this gem:








I anticipate one particular member here has, but beyond him, if you enjoy biographic and compositional analysis books about composers, their work, and their whole _raison d'etre_, Rosalie Sandra Perry put together an astounding history of Mr. Ives.


----------



## Bruce

I'm about half way through Marcella, by Mary Augusta Ward.









Very slow starting, but I'm finding the characters fascinating. Ward is ambiguous in her judgments of her characters. Each is a quite realistic combination of strengths and weaknesses, selfishness and generosity.


----------



## clavichorder

I have just started _Childhood's End_ by Arthur C Clarke. I have only read _2001_ so far, but I really enjoyed it. I am anticipating enjoying this one as well.


----------



## geekfreak

ok i`m reading Miles Davis Bio....


----------



## Cosmos

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, by Michael Ondaatje










So far, interesting. It's a bunch of prose poems following the life of the famous gunslinger


----------



## pierrot

Never a 1500-page book seemed so short.


----------



## Piwikiwi

My current to read list.


----------



## 20centrfuge

The Martian by Andy Weir


----------



## 20centrfuge

geekfreak said:


> ok i`m reading Miles Davis Bio....


That's sitting on my bookshelf at home! I haven't read it but have been meaning to. Let me know how you like it. My brother read it and loved it.

I understand he swears like a mother****** all through the book, FWIW


----------



## Blancrocher

Avey said:


> I anticipate one particular member here has, but beyond him, if you enjoy biographic and compositional analysis books about composers, their work, and their whole _raison d'etre_, Rosalie Sandra Perry put together an astounding history of Mr. Ives.


Thanks for the tip--it's on my wish list. In the meantime, though, I discovered Ives' own "Essays Before a Sonata" is a free Kindle download so I'll start with that.

Here's the "introductory footnote":



> These prefatory essays were written by the composer for those who can't stand his music-and the music for those who can't stand his essays; to those who can't stand either, the whole is respectfully dedicated.


So far so good!

http://www.amazon.com/Essays-Before...8&qid=1426852102&sr=1-1&keywords=charles+ives


----------



## hpowders

20centrfuge said:


> That's sitting on my bookshelf at home! I haven't read it but have been meaning to. Let me know how you like it. My brother read it and loved it.
> 
> I understand he swears like a mother****** all through the book, FWIW


Your relatively pithy posts are a joy to the eye.


----------



## Shibooty

I am reading Flaubert's Madame Bovary. After this I *should* pick back up on Sinclair's The Jungle, but I cannot contain my excitement to read Crichton's The Lost World.


----------



## elgar's ghost

An illuminating effort on the turbulent and often bloody story of the men and women who struggled to establish early medieval Scotland as a united country and the country's subsequent resistance to Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and then Norman/Plantagenet/Tudor English interference right up until the time when the House of Stewart ruled what was to become the United Kingdom in the early 18th century.


----------



## JACE

20centrfuge said:


> That's sitting on my bookshelf at home! I haven't read it but have been meaning to. Let me know how you like it. My brother read it and loved it.
> 
> I understand he swears like a mother****** all through the book, FWIW


Miles' autobiography is a fascinating book. I think you'll enjoy it.

Interestingly, Miles doesn't portray himself very sympathetically. He often comes across as a narcissistic prick. But his single-minded pursuit of music -- and his musical genius -- can't be denied.

And, yes, he is very fond of the "f-word." Very, _very_ fond.


----------



## aajj

^^^
Not only the f-word but the "m-f" (rhymes with brother) word, which he uses again and again and again, sometimes as a compliment (as in, "he played like a m-f") and sometimes not (as in, "that white m-f"). 

I also recall - from my reading of many years ago - in one instance he criticized (with an array of expletives) a music instructor for pushing "Tea for Two" on him. Then, on another page he seemed to flatter himself for a good performance of the song. 

Not to focus too much on his language; the book is a page-turning document of an African-American's struggles in a hostile country and, of course, his music and his encounters with an endless array of jazz masters.

Miles is purely himself, which for me made the read fascinating. No pulling of punches, here i am in all my rough & raw glory, you don't like it you can kiss my booty.


----------



## Kivimees

elgars ghost said:


> An illuminating effort on the turbulent and often bloody story of the men and women who struggled to establish early medieval Scotland as a united country and the country's subsequent resistance to Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and then Norman/Plantagenet/Tudor English interference right up until the time when the House of Stewart ruled what was to become the United Kingdom in the early 18th century.


And as it happens, here is a book I bought last summer in Inverness that I haven't started yet. Maybe when we're both finished we can test each other.


----------



## elgar's ghost

aajj said:


> ^^^
> Not only the f-word but the "m-f" (rhymes with brother) word, which he uses again and again and again, sometimes as a compliment (as in, "he played like a m-f") and sometimes not (as in, "that white m-f").
> 
> I also recall - from my reading of many years ago - in one instance he criticized (with an array of expletives) a music instructor for pushing "Tea for Two" on him. Then, on another page he seemed to flatter himself for a good performance of the song.
> 
> Not to focus too much on his language; the book is a page-turning document of an African-American's struggles in a hostile country and, of course, his music and his encounters with an endless array of jazz masters.
> 
> Miles is purely himself, which for me made the read fascinating. No pulling of punches, here i am in all my rough & raw glory, you don't like it you can kiss my booty.


I remember reading somewhere about the time a fan went to the toilet at a venue (possibly in London) where Miles was playing and the man himself walked in to use the facilities dressed in all of his early 70s psychedelic finery. The fan was overwhelmed but had the gumption to meekly declare his admiration for him while they were both there at the trough. Miles turned his head for a second to glower at the fan through his massive sunglasses, after which he turned his head back to the wall and rasped 'F*** you, white boy...' :lol:


----------



## elgar's ghost

Kivimees said:


> And as it happens, here is a book I bought last summer in Inverness that I haven't started yet. Maybe when we're both finished we can test each other.
> 
> View attachment 66647


I remember seeing his series on BBC - he knows his stuff but strikes me as being a little biased at times!


----------



## aajj

elgars ghost said:


> I remember reading somewhere about the time a fan went to the toilet at a venue (possibly in London) where Miles was playing and the man himself walked in to use the facilities dressed in all of his early 70s psychedelic finery. The fan was overwhelmed but had the gumption to meekly declare his admiration for him while they were both there at the trough. Miles turned his head for a second to glower at the fan through his massive sunglasses, after which he turned his head back to the wall and rasped 'F*** you, white boy...' :lol:


An entirely plausible story! I'm guessing there were dozens of such encounters with Miles. The guy got off easy: Miles could've elected to urinate on him. :lol:

Miles was himself a sharp, fashion-conscious dresser and i kind of wish he'd commented on the guy's "psychedelic finery." :lol:


----------



## Kivimees

elgars ghost said:


> I remember seeing his series on BBC - he knows his stuff but strikes me as being a little biased at times!


Thanks for the warming, EG. Fortunately, the history books I read in school made in an expert in spotting bias. :devil:


----------



## Jos

Just finished Joris Luyendijks book based on his Guardian blog on Citybankers (recommended btw. Not sure if the translation is out yet) I now go for the heavier stuff regarding post-capitalist society : Pikkety , "Capital in the 21th century".


----------



## realdealblues

I just finished this one:

View attachment 66662


Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness In The West

I kept reading about this book being one of the greatest modern novels and was looking for a gritty western to read so I gave it a shot. I was really disappointed and generally disliked it. It was almost like reading a piece of abstract art in some spots. I didn't mind the ultra-violence but the story itself just seems jumbled and while I don't mind some books that leave an open ending, this ending just made me look back and question what the hell I just read. I know some people like things just because they're weird, but I guess I'm not one of those people or it was just too weird for me.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Don't be fooled: Anti-trust laws were set up to protect and enforce the monopolies of politically-favored elites- and not to break them up.

An absolutely withering analysis.


----------



## cwarchc

on the road jack kerouac

Just picked this up today for my bookclub


----------



## Jeff W

Finally finished up 'The Two Towers' after putting it down after some intervening real life issues. Starting up 'The Return of the King' now!


----------



## Pazuzu

Richler - Barney's Version









Adams - Watership Down









Sloterdjik - Spheres I

and









Isotta - La virtù dell'elefante

Always too many (but I'm not capable of sticking with only one book at a time).


----------



## GreenMamba

Maugham - The Razor's Edge


----------



## Guest




----------



## Vronsky

*Karlo Štajner -- 7000 Days in Siberia*









Karlo Štajner -- 7000 Days in Siberia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlo_Štajner


----------



## Cheyenne

I'm in love! He did not predict right:

The world is taking little heed
And plods from day to day:
The vulgar flourish like a weed,
The learned pass away.

We miss him on the summer path
The lonely summer day,
Where mowers cut the pleasant swath
And maidens make the hay.

The vulgar take but little heed;
The garden wants his care;
There lies the book he used to read,
There stands the empty chair.

The boat laid up, the voyage oer,
And passed the stormy wave,
The world is going as before,
The poet in his grave.​
He has long been in his grave, but my world has changed reading him! How did I not know about him?


----------



## Bruce

Two books simultaneously; like Pazuzu I can't just stick to one.

Die Chronik der Deutschen, by numerous authors:









And a History of Impressionism by John Rewald


----------



## Vesteralen

I love this whole series from Amadeus Press, but this book I'm reading now is especially informative. I now have even greater appreciation for this genius of Monteverdi. I just wish I could retain all the details to use when I'm listening.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Bruce said:


> Two books simultaneously; like Pazuzu I can't just stick to one.
> 
> Die Chronik der Deutschen, by numerous authors:
> 
> View attachment 67107


I would give you ten likes if I could just for that one, sir. It is an excellent book, one of the best history books I have ever come across. My man owns a copy, and we have spent a lot of happy and productive evenings over it. Have fun with your reading!


----------



## AndreasFink

SiegendesLicht said:


> I would give you ten likes if I could just for that one, sir. It is an excellent book, one of the best history books I have ever come across. My man owns a copy, and we have spent a lot of happy and productive evenings over it. Have fun with your reading!


Oh yes! This is ME who owns a copy.  I have it at home since high school. One of my favourite history books at all.


----------



## Bruce

*Sl & af*

Thanks, SiegendesLicht and AndreasFink,

I've never run across a book that gives such a concise and thorough history of a nation throughout its history. So often, such books offer only superficial sketches, but this book seems to be quite in depth and comprehensive. Though I've only progressed to 1934, I feel it's given me a much better understanding of German history.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

If you are interested in learning more about German history by the time you finish, I can recommend you my second favorite history book:









Peter Watson - The German Genius. It is an intellectual history of Germany, of its philosophers, composers, scientists, poets etc., from the time of Friedrich the Great until now. It is not as huge and comprehensive as Chronik der Deutschen, but a good one nevertheless.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

I'm currently reading three books.

- The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
- The Beethoven Quartet Companion (5 out of 5 stars, by the way. _Very_ highly recommended.)
- Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (Jan Swafford)


----------



## Wandering

I read a horror anthology called Night Visions with works from Stephen King, Dans Simmons and George R. R. Martin. The Dan Simmons stories were very interesting and fresh, I'd never read him before. _Vanni Fucci is Alive and Well and Living in Hell _could very well interest other readers here. I also enjoyed the Goerge R. R. Martin novella _The Skin Trade_, a great Noir Goth horror story, kept me both laughing and intrigued.


----------



## Avey

Well, looks like I stumbled into a series...









Familiarizing myself with some classics recently...









And an _ostinato_, for the next couple months, in the long term...


----------



## Cheyenne

I loved _The Father_, _Miss Julie_ (and its preface!) and _A Dream Play_. I've order four of the one-act plays (among them _The Outlaw_ and _The Bond_) and _Getting Married_ -- curious about those too!


----------



## SarahNorthman

The Shades of London series. Its not hard or sophisticated reading but it definitely keeps my interest and I can never take my nose out of them! They are my new obsession! And to me, thats what is important.


----------



## clavichorder

I finished Arthur C Clarke's _Childhood's End_. It was an amazing, inspiring, and yet somewhat disturbing short read.

Now I'm onto another Walter Scott; _Old Mortality_.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

Tomorrow I start Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_, why I never read this during college I don't know.

I kan't wait to start it.


----------



## Bruce

*Fried - Eakins - Crane*

I'm about halfway through Michael Fried's Reading, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane









Fried makes quite a few interesting observations regarding both Eakins's paintings, and Crane's narratives. Amazing what one can draw out of a text with a bit of practice.


----------



## Bruce

*Kant Critique*



DiesIraeVIX said:


> Tomorrow I start Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_, why I never read this during college I don't know.
> 
> I kan't wait to start it.
> 
> View attachment 67613


Good luck. Let me know what you think of it. I recently read his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Fascinating, but a tough go.


----------



## Andreas

Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)

Maybe one has to be a Freudian in order to fully appreciate this text. It struck me as a comprehensive summary of man's knowledge of man. Or a quick guide to the human condition. It is also composed and written beautifully, giving one an idea why Freud was suggested for the Nobel Prize for Literature by former laureate Romain Rolland.


----------



## Vronsky

DiesIraeVIX said:


> Tomorrow I start Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_, why I never read this during college I don't know.
> 
> I kan't wait to start it.
> 
> View attachment 67613


I suggest _Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics_. _Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics_ is much more accessible to enter Kant's epistemology and metaphysics.


----------



## Kivimees

I'm reading Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon:









It's part history, part geography, part sociology, part ecology.

It's also a very difficult read - a real challenge of my English skills.


----------



## JACE

Bruce said:


> I'm about halfway through Michael Fried's Reading, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane
> 
> View attachment 67620
> 
> 
> Fried makes quite a few interesting observations regarding both Eakins's paintings, and Crane's narratives. Amazing what one can draw out of a text with a bit of practice.


One of my professors in grad school -- Dr. James Nagel -- wrote a book about Crane called _Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism_. Sounds like it might be covering similar ground to the book you're reading, Bruce.


----------



## Cosmos

I've got two that I'm going to get through these next couple days

Jane Austin's Northanger Abbey










and D.M. Thomas' The White Hotel


----------



## Bruce

*Crane*



JACE said:


> One of my professors in grad school -- Dr. James Nagel -- wrote a book about Crane called _Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism_. Sounds like it might be covering similar ground to the book you're reading, Bruce.


Very likely. I just now finished the second essay in the book (it only contained two essays, one on Eakins, one on Crane). Fried's main idea seemed to be the unconscious inclusion by Crane in his stories of the act of writing. Quite a few expressions can be tied to this. Just as one example, Crane's use of the metaphor of a face as a blank page to be written on. (An example of this is to be found in "The Veteran", in which the protagonist of The Red Badge of Courage, as an old man, finds his barn on fire. "His face ceased instantly to be a face; it became a mask, a grey thing, with horror written about the mouth and eyes." There are many other similar examples.)


----------



## brotagonist

Charles Seife
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Fascinating. It started out talking about zero and how long it took for the world to accept the concept of nothingness and its sibling concept of the infinite. In the final chapters, discussion went to physics, relativity, string theory, etc., all attempts to come to terms with 0 and ∞.


----------



## Ingélou

Richard Francis, _*Ann the Word* - the Story of Ann Lee, Female Messiah, Mother of the Shakers, the Woman Clothed with the Sun_ - London, Fourth Estate Publishing, 2000

It's very readable, gives interesting details on the historical background, and is more than a little sardonic in places:

'The two daughters of Abel Jewett were early converts, and went over to the Cooper family... to demonstrate their new faith. They "set down on their feet, put their hands under their knees & hopped or jumped across the room in that position". This performance, *athletic though it was*, did not have the desired effect...' (p. 169)


----------



## Vesteralen

Current reading list includes:

Full Moon (P G Wodehouse)
Portrait of Jennie (Robert Nathan)
Agamemnon (Aeschylus)
Palace of Culture (CLoP)
Bulfinch's Mythology
Deutsche Grammophon: State of the Art 1898-Present
Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea
Symphonies and Other Orchestral Works -(Donald Francis Tovey)
Dawn (H Rider Haggard)

and many others


----------



## brotagonist

Rather dated, but I found it at a used book store and it kind of fits with the things I have been thinking about:

Francis Fukuyama - The End of History and the Last Man

I am barely into it, but it is interesting to review some of the recent events in history and ponder how differently, or not, it has turned out so far.


----------



## GreenMamba

brotagonist said:


> Rather dated, but I found it at a used book store and it kind of fits with the things I have been thinking about:
> 
> Francis Fukuyama - The End of History and the Last Man
> 
> I am barely into it, but it is interesting to review some of the recent events in history and ponder how differently, or not, it has turned out so far.


I read his many years ago. "End of XXX" titles seemed to be all the rage then, although the meaning of XXX was never as straightforward as it would seem.

Still, it was an interesting. Last year was the book's 25th anniversary, which lead to a number of articles revisiting its thesis.


----------



## Guest




----------



## GreenMamba

Jo Walton, My Real Children. A novel about a woman with dementia who remembers two past lives, and the novel alternates between the two of them.


----------



## MagneticGhost

Cosmos said:


> and D.M. Thomas' The White Hotel


That's one dark book.
Very well written - but I can't really say that I enjoyed it.


----------



## Easy Goer

Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native


----------



## Bruce

*Balzac*

Honoré de Balzac - Lost Illusions


----------



## Blancrocher

Easy Goer said:


> Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native


There's a pretty good movie version of that one, btw, which I don't think many people saw.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218378/


----------



## Perotin

I just finished Madame de Sévigné: Letters. Since Proust held her in high regard, I also had high expectations, which, unfortunately, she didn't fully meet. Her letters giva a good insight into the culture of the era of Luis XIV. She was quite a good stylist and had a pleasant personality. But the content of her letters is somewhat shallow and after a while, reading gets a bit tedious.


----------



## Schubussy

Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan


----------



## Ingélou

I am reading *Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century* by David Johnson (1972,2003), a book that Taggart found out about and ordered for us. This book combines three of my most passionate loves - Scotland, baroque, and Scots folk music. It's a fabulous read, and full of wry Scottish humour too. What's not to like!


----------



## Art Rock

I am going through the 40 Discworld novels by the late Terry Pratchett once more. Starting with the Watch series (Guards! Guards! and Men at arms done, Feet of clay in progress).


----------



## MagneticGhost

Blancrocher said:


> There's a pretty good movie version of that one, btw, which I don't think many people saw.
> 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218378/


If your link is correct - The Claim - that's an adaptation of Mayor of Casterbridge.

I love Thomas Hardy's novels. If I was only allowed to read one author for the rest of my life I'd probably choose him. Return of the Native, Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the Durbervilles and Jude the Obscure are all magnificent.


----------



## Blancrocher

MagneticGhost said:


> If your link is correct - The Claim - that's an adaptation of Mayor of Casterbridge.
> 
> I love Thomas Hardy's novels. If I was only allowed to read one author for the rest of my life I'd probably choose him. Return of the Native, Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the Durbervilles and Jude the Obscure are all magnificent.


Ha--that was dumb of me. Anyways, despite having messed up the titles I'd agree that Return of the Native and The Mayor of Casterbridge are very great and memorable books!


----------



## Figleaf

Re-reading 'The Valley of the Dolls' by Jacqueline Susann. I hate myself.  I am actually envious of my best friend, who sneakily read her mum's copy of this under the bedclothes in her early teens: probably the novel's cynicism about men had a salutary effect, since she's made fewer stupid life choices of the kind the book's heroines make, than I have! It's a bit of a period piece now, but no less of a page turner. Then back to sensible books for me, and back to learning French- I've been too distracted lately to be studious!


----------



## AnotherSpin

Sri Ramana Maharshi books


----------



## SarahNorthman

I am reading the Shades of London series currently. I highly suggest them. Its not complex reading at all, but boy does it keep your interest. I am also currently reading some Milton. The author of course.


----------



## Schubussy

Art Rock said:


> I am going through the 40 Discworld novels by the late Terry Pratchett once more. Starting with the Watch series (Guards! Guards! and Men at arms done, Feet of clay in progress).


I've only read a few of the more popular ones, still got a huge amount to read


----------



## Piwikiwi

I'm currently reading _*Satanic Verses*_ by Salman Rushdie, it is amazing so far.


----------



## GreenMamba

Japan 1941, by Erin Hotta.


----------



## cwarchc

Oranges are not the only fruit
Really enjoyed it
Different style


----------



## clara s

Belye nochi by Dostoyevsky

these extraordinary white nights of Saint Petersburg, by the embankments of Neva river


----------



## Pugg

​
Can't help Singing: the Life of *Eileen Farrel.*

_Fascinating reading by a down to earth lady._


----------



## clavichorder

I am still reading Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott, which is quite riveting. But I intermittently read a few short stories; two by George Gissing, "The Day of Silence" and "Lou and Liz", and one by Anthony Trollope, "The Panjandrum". They were all excellent stories. The Day of Silence is very tragic but wonderfully constructed. Lou and Liz is truly feminist in its overall message within the context of the times, and gives one a sense of justice, while leaving an interestingly ambiguous exit for speculation. The Panjandrum is a fascinating and funny account of people who were trying to start a magazine, and ultimately through some real stress could just not keep it together, though there were some interesting rewards from the endeavor.


----------



## Guest

A signed copy! (No, I didn't meet him--Costco had a batch of signed copies...of all places!)


----------



## Blancrocher

Houellebecq's "Submission." Everyone I know seems to be reading it, so I'm trying to finish it before some jerk tells me the ending.


----------



## Guest

Alors, à la fin de ce livre il y a un dénouement extraordinaire où le protagoniste François décide, après la victoire de Ben Abbes [full dénouement deleted by the Mods to save Blancrocher's suspense]


----------



## Blancrocher

I made a bet with my wife that TalkingHead would answer my last post in this thread. She has to cook dinner tonight.


----------



## Vesteralen

As soon as I receive them - one by mail, one from the library - I plan on reading these (slowly) with the anthologies and actual music samples.


----------



## Guest

Blancrocher said:


> I made a bet with my wife that TalkingHead would answer my last post in this thread. She has to cook dinner tonight.


Veal's head in vinegar?


----------



## SixFootScowl

From the translator'g preface: "The doctrine of justification is the heart of Luther's and Lutheran theology. It was also the central article of Melanchthon's Loci communes, at least in the earlier editions. And it was the heart of the Lutheran Confessions and of the Loci Theologici of Martin Chemnitz" a 16th Century Lutheran theologian.


----------



## arpeggio

Richard McKenna: _The Sand Pebbles_


----------



## Tristan

I just stared *The Magus* by John Fowles.

I've been wanting to read this for a while, but didn't start it until today. I already can't put it down


----------



## Sonata

"Full Dark and No Stars" by Stephen King


----------



## TurnaboutVox

I bought this at Abbotsford House (Sir Walter Scott's home) when we visited a couple of weeks ago:

Waverley: Newly Adapted for the Modern Reader by Jenni Calder










And it's fascinating reading, too. This has been sensitively updated, and this is enabling me to read Scott with pleasure.


----------



## MagneticGhost

Tristan said:


> I just stared *The Magus* by John Fowles.
> 
> I've been wanting to read this for a while, but didn't start it until today. I already can't put it down


One of my favourite books.


----------



## Ingélou

TurnaboutVox said:


> I bought this at Abbotsford House (Sir Walter Scott's home) when we visited a couple of weeks ago:
> 
> Waverley: Newly Adapted for the Modern Reader by Jenni Calder
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And it's fascinating reading, too. This has been sensitively updated, and this is enabling me to read Scott with pleasure.


:tiphat: I love Scott, and have twice been to Abbotsford too.


----------



## Dustin

Sonata said:


> "Full Dark and No Stars" by Stephen King


I just "forced" my mom to start reading this yesterday when we went to the library. We both love reading but I have less time so I occasionally use her as my personal reviewer for books I'm interested in. She said she enjoying it so far but not loving it. She hasn't been a huge King fan up to this point either though. She's read the 1922 story and the Good Marriage story so far.


----------



## Ingélou

I am reading a biography of Geoff Hamilton, a BBC TV gardening presenter who died suddenly at the height of his fame in 1996. My mother used to idolise him, so we reserved this for her in big print from our local library, but sadly, owing to her dementia, she didn't make much of it.

It's written by his identical twin brother Tony, Geoff's junior by 35 minutes. The book is certainly entertaining and often funny, but apparently Geoff was a prankster and practical joker & some of the tricks are questionable & even 'sharp practice', so I've gone right off him. 
However, it has a certain interest as a study of twins and how an elder twin can lead life differently to a younger twin.


----------



## Guest

768 pages seems daunting, but his story is quite interesting, so I'll see how it goes. I suppose it's nice to take a break from all the crime thrillers that I usually read!










Hmmm...sort of a weird double image!


----------



## Albert7

I have been reading the same book for the past 10 years.










Sadly enough a date long time ago took my book and never returned it. I have to hunt down a new copy. Best book ever written apart from some Buddhist texts.


----------



## abbado71

Just a question, what book(or kind) are you studing in United States ? Or at past because I think you've completed school


----------



## Kivimees

I'm reading Demons in Eden: The Paradox of Plant Diversity









Simply, this is a book that presents the reader with a fascinating introduction to plant life on our planet. The author, Jonathan Silvertown, is a professor of ecology, but his book is understandable to - and it seems aimed primarily at - the non-specialist. It's a bit like a Cosmos-style (Carl Sagan) version of botany.

I would recommend it to anyone who is keen on natural history.


----------



## Perotin

Dante Alighieri: La Vita Nuova. What can I say? Crazy stuff! Were people taking hallucinogenic drugs already back then in the middle ages?


----------



## Bruce

For some strange reason, I really enjoy novels by James Fenimore Cooper. In order to get a different view of the author, I'm reading one of his non-fiction works:









It's a travel account of his time spent in Europe, traveling mainly in France, but also up the Rhine. I find it interesting to read his comments on life and society in Europe during the 1820s and 30s, roughly the same time Balzac was writing.


----------



## Easy Goer

Norman Lebrecht - Book of Musical Anecdotes


----------



## Ingélou

I'm rereading a book about a drunken poetic Clan Chief who was 'out' in three Scottish risings - Claverhouse's Rebellion 1688, and also the 'Fifteen and the 'Forty-Five, the Old and Young Pretenders. After the first two rebellions he was exiled to France, but managed to be pardoned and return, largely owing to the efforts of his sister Margaret, whom he treated appallingly, kidnapping her and beating her up when she tried to get the money owed her under a legal settlement. After the battle of Prestonpans in 1745, the Chief being well on in his seventies, his clansmen took him home in the defeated General Cope's carriage, and when they came to Rannoch Moor and the roads ceased, they took the wheels off and carried Chief and Carriage on their shoulders. After Culloden, he was attainted again, but was too old to go into exile, so spent his time being hidden, whisky-sodden, in his loyal clansmen's huts.










It's a fascinating read, and because of my Scottish father, I love to bone up on Scottish history - but boy, am I glad that I live in modern times, instead of being one of the Poet Chief's highland tenants:

*'The weather in Rannoch was no better then than it is now. Clothing was heavy wool, and for half the year it must have been impossible to dry it. The floor would have been mud for most of the year and, when the sun set at 3.30 on Winter afternoons and scarcely rose before 9 the following morning, people would be confined to these dismal hovels with nothing but the moon and stars to illuminate the landscape outside - and that only on those rare occasions when the gales paused and the rain or snow clouds cleared. There are descriptions of men spending the dark months crouched over miserable peat fires in the centre of their huts and their thighs becoming blackened by soot.'* (page 43)


----------



## Piwikiwi

I am currently reading _Bleeding Edge_, by Thomas Pynchon. It is alright, it has a lot of funny/nostalgic early 2000's references and they main character is very interesting. The plot, however, is not. It is a bit too vague and not enough happens.

I've bought a lot of books lately because I have, thanks to my sister, discovered a great English language bookstore. I've bought _In search of lost time/remembrance of things past_ by Proust, _Inherent Vice_ by Thomas Pynchon and _Underworld_ by Don Delilo. I couldn't carry anymore books otherwise I would have probably bought a few more books by Salman Rushdie. The only books I've been truly afraid of to start are _Finnegans Wake_ and _Gravity's Rainbow_.


----------



## clavichorder

I finished _Old Mortality_ by Scott last week. That one topped Waverly in my opinion! So much drama, it had a certain dark intensity and rawness to it that was not as present in the more domestically oriented Waverly. John Balfour of Burley and John Grahame of Claverhouse were truly fascinating antagonistic characters. Henry Morton, the main character was of a mythological sort of heroic perfection, almost boring in that sense but his mettle was sure tested to the extreme by the harrowing plot of the novel. There really wasn't a ***** in _Old Mortality_'s armor, in terms of plotting, characterization, imagery and atmosphere.

So, now I'm onto the famous _Ivanhoe_.


----------



## clavichorder

Ingélou said:


> - Claverhouse's Rebellion 1688


We must be on the same wavelength, Ingelou, because Old Mortality featured a character named Claverhouse, likely the same one you are reading about. That rebellion was an element in the later section.


----------



## GreenMamba

Russell Banks' *Continental Drift*.

Also, Michael Stenmark's *Miesekatze Putzt*, which I recommend.


----------



## SimonNZ

clavichorder said:


> I finished _Old Mortality_ by Scott last week. That one topped Waverly in my opinion! So much drama, it had a certain dark intensity and rawness to it that was not as present in the more domestically oriented Waverly. John Balfour of Burley and John Grahame of Claverhouse were truly fascinating antagonistic characters. Henry Morton, the main character was of a mythological sort of heroic perfection, almost boring in that sense but his mettle was sure tested to the extreme by the harrowing plot of the novel. There really wasn't a ***** in _Old Mortality_'s armor, in terms of plotting, characterization, imagery and atmosphere.
> 
> So, now I'm onto the famous _Ivanhoe_.


Walter Scott came in for quite a bit of criticism in Neil Oliver's ten-part History Of Scotland, to my surprise, for his myth-making and for what Oliver saw as the reactionary political intention behind the writing of the novels: a national identy where everybody knows their place and stays in it - not listening to that noisy French Revolution across the chanel. The pagentry he created for the visit of Charles IV was also boggling.

Not that means the novels aren't worthy, or anything. But I thought it was a very well made series, if anyone hasn't seen it.

Anyway, recently started:










Julian Barnes - Keeping An Eye Open: essays On art


----------



## clavichorder

SimonNZ said:


> Walter Scott came in for quite a bit of criticism in Neil Oliver's ten-part History Of Scotland, to my surprise, for his myth-making and for what Oliver saw as the reactionary political intention behind the writing of the novels: a national identy where everybody knows their place and stays in it - not listening to that noisy French Revolution across the chanel. The pagentry he created for the visit of Charles IV was also boggling.
> 
> Not that means the novels aren't worthy, or anything. But I thought it was a very well made series, if anyone hasn't seen it.
> 
> Anyway, recently started:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Julian Barnes - Keeping An Eye Open: essays On art


Bah, Sir Walter Scott critics are missing out. They are indeed stories; novels not to be substituted for history. And they are great stories.

I have a feeling fans of classic fantasy by the likes of Tolkien would apprceciate some Scott very much.


----------



## SimonNZ

Oh, I wasn't trying to run the books down - I'm sure they're fine and fun. Just fishing for a little feedback from people who know more about Scottish history than I, and pushing what I thought was a well made documentary series and wondering if anyone else had seen it.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Boccaccio's Decameron. I bought this years ago and misplaced it after reading very little of it. I've now found it so this will be my 'dipping into' book for the foreseeable future seeing it comprises of 100 short stories.


----------



## Schubussy

David Mitchell - Number 9 Dream


----------



## elgar's ghost

Ingélou said:


> It's a fascinating read, and because of my Scottish father, I love to bone up on Scottish history - but boy, am I glad that I live in modern times, instead of being one of the Poet Chief's highland tenants:
> 
> *'The weather in Rannoch was no better then than it is now. Clothing was heavy wool, and for half the year it must have been impossible to dry it. The floor would have been mud for most of the year and, when the sun set at 3.30 on Winter afternoons and scarcely rose before 9 the following morning, people would be confined to these dismal hovels with nothing but the moon and stars to illuminate the landscape outside - and that only on those rare occasions when the gales paused and the rain or snow clouds cleared. There are descriptions of men spending the dark months crouched over miserable peat fires in the centre of their huts and their thighs becoming blackened by soot.'* (page 43)


At least he let them stay. I remember reading about a right toerag called Alexander Ranaldson MacDonell, the 15th Chief of Clan MacDonell of Glengarry who, in the early 19th century, formed the Society of True Highlanders (in reality a bunch of landowning drinking cronies) who'd fervently toast the martial renown of the Highland Clansmen of the '45 while conveniently overlooking the fact that he had ruthlessly kicked off many of those same clansmen's descendants from his vast estates without compensation in order to replace them with sheep.

P.S. He was also a friend of Sir Walter Scott's!


----------



## Dustin

I'm reading "The Langoliers", a novella in Stephen King's Four Past Midnight. Very enjoyable so far.


----------



## omega




----------



## Art Rock

The re-reading of Pratchetts Discworld novels continues. In the Watch series, I have now arrived at










Still the very best imo. Recommended though to read the preceding watch novels before this one.


----------



## Celloman

*Macbeth* - Shakespeare

This will be my 9th Shakespeare play to date. I familiarized myself with the storyline by watching a video recording of Verdi's _Macbeth_ and Akira Kurosawa's _Throne of Blood_, an adaptation of the Macbeth story set in feudal Japan.


----------



## Cosmos

As per usual, I'm in between multiple books at the moment, but the two I'm going to finish pretty soon are:

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. Short book, looks like a coming of age story with the main plot being about a murder in the town the narrator grew up in










Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. Odd book. The writing is great, but the plot is bananas. Satirical novel about a man who grew up in an extremist death cult in rural America and is now about to become a pop culture icon, eventually leading up to the day he hijacks a plane.


----------



## Tristan

*The Ebony Tower *by John Fowles.










People on Amazon didn't seem to like this book that much, but I just love the way he writes. I could read his prose all day


----------



## Dustin

Celloman said:


> *Macbeth* - Shakespeare
> 
> This will be my 9th Shakespeare play to date. I familiarized myself with the storyline by watching a video recording of Verdi's _Macbeth_ and Akira Kurosawa's _Throne of Blood_, an adaptation of the Macbeth story set in feudal Japan.


I've recently been wanting to read some Shakespeare again. I was forced to read Macbeth and Hamlet back in high school but I had no interest back then and couldn't understand the language. I think I need to familiarize myself with some of the commonly used Shakespearean words and how the grammar works and I'll be able to comprehend it much better.


----------



## PKW

Strange and slightly obscure Norwegian novel from the 1990s where the husband of the main character goes crazy and spends most of his time lying on couch listening to Tristan.


----------



## mellame

I just started reading "Angela's Ashes" last week, and it's an interesting read. It's written in a strange way, though, without any quotations when there is dialogue, so it's taking me extra long to read because I have to go back and clarify whether what was said was narration or something a character said. But other than that, I'm really enjoying it!


----------



## GreenMamba

I loved Angela's Ashes. I think there may have been blow back against it at some point because it was such a hit, but it really is a good book. 

Not using quotation marks to differentiate dialogue is pretty common in fiction and memoirs. It keeps the narrative flowing better. I believe this is (or is related to) what they call Free Indirect Style.


----------



## Piwikiwi

I'm currently reading _Swann's Way_ by Marcel Proust, the first part of _In Search of Lost Time_. I'm about 30 pages in and it is amazing. The pacing is amazing and the prose is very beautiful.


----------



## Figleaf

'The Peterloo Massacre' by Joyce Marlow. One of those bits of history that didn't get taught in schools in my day, because it didn't quite fit the narrative of the industrial revolution as a time of glorious progress. I see that BBC Bitesize has a section on it now, there's been some improvement since then:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/shp/britishsociety/electoralreformrev2.shtml










http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/an-inquest-on-a-death-caused-by-the-peterloo-massacre


----------



## hpowders

'A Brief History of Time', Stephen Hawking.

Nothing brief about it. Thorough grounding in relativity and quantum mechanics concerning the beginning of the universe and its expansion.


----------



## Figleaf

hpowders said:


> View attachment 69702
> 
> 
> 'A Brief History of Time', Stephen Hawking.
> 
> Nothing brief about it. Thorough grounding in relativity and quantum mechanics concerning the beginning of the universe and its expansion.


I have it. I doubt I'll ever read it. I know my limitations.


----------



## hpowders

Figleaf said:


> I have it. I doubt I'll ever read it. I know my limitations.


It is quite dense, but so was the universe in its infancy.

Professor Hawking was one of the greatest geniuses of all time (pun intended).


----------



## LancsMan

*The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia 1772 - 1832* by Alan Taylor.

Excellent book - winner of the Pulitzer Prize. The bulk of the book covers the War of 1812 - you know the one where us dastardly Brits burnt the Whitehouse down. Interesting account by this American historian in which for the main part the Brits are rather more sympathetic (and certainly more efficient) than the Americans - just a shame about the Battle of New Orleans!

Lots of detail about the lives of individual Virginian slave holders and their slaves, many of whom escaped to British warships and gained their liberty.

Also interesting in that although a 'draw' and one in which the Americans did pretty badly militarily, they won the propaganda war and shaped a commonly held American view that this really was an American victory - facts be damned.

Unfortunately the war reinforced Virginian anti Northern attitudes which led to the rather more painful American Civil War.


----------



## Sloe

PKW said:


> View attachment 69622
> 
> 
> Strange and slightly obscure Norwegian novel from the 1990s where the husband of the main character goes crazy and spends most of his time lying on couch listening to Tristan.


Reminds me of my life.
Then my girl friend broke up with me.

I am currently reading. Tor Heyerdahls book about the Tigris expedition.


----------



## Wood

F Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby










I found this languishing on my bookshelves so I thought I'd give it a punt. 20th Century bourgeois novels from either side of the pond really turn me off these days, and this hasn't started too well. No doubt I'll see it through though.


----------



## Levanda

I got from Library a book "The last quarter of the moon" by Chi Zijian. So far I ego to learn about deer and I do like way of life in China.


----------



## mellame

GreenMamba said:


> I loved Angela's Ashes. I think there may have been blow back against it at some point because it was such a hit, but it really is a good book.
> 
> Not using quotation marks to differentiate dialogue is pretty common in fiction and memoirs. It keeps the narrative flowing better. I believe this is (or is related to) what they call Free Indirect Style.


Is it really? I've never come across a book written like it before, but then again, I haven't read that many memoirs either.


----------



## Albert7

Roland Barthes' S/Z. Probably the second best book ever written.


----------



## Blancrocher

Wood said:


> F Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby


Even if you don't finish it, you may enjoy this background for the novel:

http://www.clickhole.com/article/amazing-check-out-these-letters-between-ernest-hem-2431


----------



## Marschallin Blair




----------



## Figleaf

Marschallin Blair said:


>


I'd really love to read one of those two books. I bet you can't guess which...


----------



## dwindladwayne

Bertrand Russell's _Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism_. I'm not used to this kind of reading, but it's veeery interesting.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Figleaf said:


> I'd really love to read one of those two books. I bet you can't guess which...


Not indulging idle fripperies that are no use to civilization and staying fixated on how to improve the beautiful ebb and flow of this beautiful planet, I imagine you'd chose wisely- and go to the soiree like I did with Miss Golightly.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Figleaf said:


> I have it. I doubt I'll ever read it. I know my limitations.


I read it a while ago and it is not that hard. There is no need to give up without trying. ^^


----------



## Piwikiwi

I love Proust. Fifteenfifteen



> All these memories, following one after another, were condensed into a single substance, but had not so far coalesced that I could not discern between the three strata, between my oldest, my instinctive memories, those others, inspired more recently by a taste or 'perfume', and those which were actually memories of another, from whom I had acquired them at second hand -- no fissures, indeed, no geological faults, but at least those veins, those streaks of colour which in certain rocks, in certain marbles, point to differences of origin, age, and information.


----------



## Jeff W

Ian Fleming - Casino Royale


----------



## Kivimees

Albert7 said:


> Roland Barthes' S/Z. Probably the second best book ever written.


"No such thing as best."

- Albert's 1st Law of Elasticity.


----------



## Metairie Road

Re-reading (for the umpteenth time) A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. One of the best post-apocalyptic novels ever written. First published in 1960.









Below is a link to the superb Radio dramatization broadcast by Public Radio in the 1980's.

A Canticle for Liebowitz - Radio dramatization
https://archive.org/details/ACanticleForLiebowitz

Best Wishes
Metairie Road


----------



## SiegendesLicht

"Why we are all musical" - a very layman's explanation of scienece behind human understanding of music and enjoyment of it.


----------



## Kivimees

SiegendesLicht said:


> View attachment 69969
> 
> 
> "Why we are all musical" - a very layman's explanation of scienece behind human understanding of music and enjoyment of it.


I may give this book a try. It sounds interesting and it would be good to sharpen my German.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

^ Sharpening your German is always a good idea


----------



## Marschallin Blair




----------



## Guest




----------



## elgar's ghost

Beyond the Shadow of the Senators by Brad Snyder.

A thought-provoking account of the existence of baseball's Negro League during the 1930s/40s pre-integration era and which specifically focusses on the Homestead Grays, a brilliant all-black team from Washington DC stuffed with future Hall of Famers such as Josh Gibson and James 'Cool Papa' Bell who co-existed side by side with the perpetually lame Washington Senators of the then exclusively white American League.

The decision to allow the Grays the use of the Senators' Griffith Stadium whenever the Senators were on the road by owner Clark Griffith may seem on the surface a philanthropic one, until digging deeper reveals a man obstinately against the integration of black players into the two major leagues (losing revenue from Grays games in a weakened Negro League may have been one factor) and who simultaneously implemented a distasteful restricted access policy for black fans attending Senators games when the Grays were on the road.

There was nothing on paper to stop Griffith taking any of the Grays to the Senators - bringing in only a handful would probably have reversed the Senators' on-field fortunes dramatically - but, as with so many other owners (aside from Bill Veeck, then owner of the Cleveland Indians, and a notable advocate of integration), Clark Griffith preferred to cut off his nose to spite his face and maintain the status quo in the form of the loathsome unwritten 'Gentleman's Agreement' with which club owners had effectively banned black players from the majors since the late 19th c.

The Senators had a glorious chance of making history and vastly increasing their popularity with an already massive black population in DC no end, but Clark Griffith with his ostrich-like stance blew it. Less than a decade after Jackie Robinson finally broke the colour bar in 1947 Clark's nephew Calvin sold Griffiths Stadium, indicating a desire to move the team out of the city and eventually the floundering, semi-ignored Senators were relocated to Minneapolis-St.Paul in 1960.


----------



## drpraetorus

The complete stories of H. P. Lovecraft


----------



## GreenMamba

Thunder On the Mountain, by Peter Galuszka.

About the Big Brand Mine accident a few years back, and more broadly, about coal and West Virginia.


----------



## Lukecash12

Coolidge, by Amity Shlaes. IMO, an unknown and under-appreciated president.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Phillip K. Dick.
Principia Mathematica, Newton.
Monadology, Leibniz.
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle.

I'm incapable of reading just one book.


----------



## Albert7

One of the "best" (favorite) three novels ever written in any language of humanity.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## Easy Goer

Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier


----------



## clavichorder

Finishing up Ivanhoe in my "new" set of Sir Walter Scott novels, having transferred from a decent paper back copy. Two other novels share its volume; The Talisman, supposedly notable for its relatively compassionate portrayal of Muslims and being set in Palestine in the time of the crusades, and another medieval one called Castle Dangerous.


----------



## Levanda

Reading Yevgeny Yevtushenko poetry, I is good poet.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

The most thorough and conclusive autopsy of Marx's Labor Theory of Value that I've ever read.










A critical examination of Marx's Labor Theory of Value, Theory of Surplus Value, and Dialectical Materialism.










'Marxism: an Obituary of an Idea'- would be my choice of title for this excellent collection of essays on the failed legacy of Marxism.


----------



## Levanda

Marschallin Blair said:


> The most thorough and conclusive autopsy of Marx's Labor Theory of Value that I've ever read.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A critical examination of Marx's Labor Theory of Value, Theory of Surplus Value, and Dialectical Materialism.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 'Marxism: an Obituary of an Idea'- would be my choice of title for this excellent collection of essays on the failed legacy of Marxism.


Yea apparently capitalism doing better job than socialism or Marxism, Leninism and Maoism. Sadly but is truth but I am glad you reading those books. I have read many of them and I still got no idea how we can get to Socialism. So I leave this chapter freedom to free market and Adam Smiths legacy.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Levanda said:


> Yea apparently capitalism doing better job than socialism or Marxism, Leninism and Maoism. Sadly but is truth but I am glad you reading those books. I have read many of them and I still got no idea how we can get to Socialism. So I leave this chapter freedom to free market and Adam Smiths legacy.


Well, aside from, say Luxembourg or Hong Kong, what we have today in the world isn't 'capitalism' but rather 'mercantilism'- which is a government-corporate monopoly which plunders the taxpayer and decimates productivity.

The problem isn't that capitalism doesn't work- but that it hasn't been tried.


----------



## Vronsky

*Rainer Maria Rilke -- Letters to a Young Poet*

Rainer Maria Rilke -- Letters to a Young Poet

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/..._Poet?from_search=true&search_version=service


----------



## Jeff W

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice

Going to read all the Jane Austen novels over the next few months.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Bartok Writings on Folk Music... (Persian Translation)


----------



## Celloman

The Tragic and the Ecstatic - Eric Chafe

An excellent book that explores the influence of Schopenhauerian philosophy on Wagner's opera.


----------



## Mahlerian




----------



## SiegendesLicht

Mahlerian said:


>


I have that book in the original German but have not read it yet. I think I'll do it next.


----------



## Mahlerian

SiegendesLicht said:


> I have that book in the original German but have not read it yet. I think I'll do it next.


The author debunks some of the ideas about Wagner's operas, including the idea that Beckmesser and Alberich are to be regarded as Jewish stereotypes and the idea that Wagner's technique could be reduced merely to the presentation of a list of leitmotifs. I'm sure you'll appreciate his criticism of the more extreme Regietheater distortions of his work as well (he's against it whenever it runs completely contrary to the work). The idea to have a few paragraphs on Jewish people in their relationship to Wagner at the end of each chapter is interesting but probably a bit shoehorned in. It's best in its descriptions of the music and how it supports and elevates Wagner's theatrical conceptions, as well as how those conceptions developed over time.

I enjoyed the book, but it's not perfect, and I preferred the author's book on Bach, which I would thoroughly recommend.


----------



## GreenMamba

Revenge: A Novel, by Stephen Fry


----------



## Crudblud

Umberto Eco - _Foucault's Pendulum_


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Mahlerian said:


> The author debunks some of the ideas about Wagner's operas, including the idea that Beckmesser and Alberich are to be regarded as Jewish stereotypes and the idea that Wagner's technique could be reduced merely to the presentation of a list of leitmotifs. I'm sure you'll appreciate his criticism of the more extreme Regietheater distortions of his work as well (he's against it whenever it runs completely contrary to the work). The idea to have a few paragraphs on Jewish people in their relationship to Wagner at the end of each chapter is interesting but probably a bit shoehorned in. It's best in its descriptions of the music and how it supports and elevates Wagner's theatrical conceptions, as well as how those conceptions developed over time.
> 
> I enjoyed the book, but it's not perfect, and I preferred the author's book on Bach, which I would thoroughly recommend.


Sounds very good, thank you!


----------



## Andolink

Thoroughly enjoying this so far!


----------



## Perotin

Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks. I think I'll never learn to appreciate this writer. I already read Doktor Faustus and The Magic Mountain and some short stories and never particularly liked it. And I heard and read many times, how great this writer is and so I thought, lets give him another try, maybe I'll finally grow fond of him. Ah, it was to no avail!


----------



## Perotin

@Mahlerian

Spinoza and Spinozism, would you care to write a review of this book?


----------



## Blancrocher

I'm currently reading Kirkpatrick's life of Domenico Scarlatti (though not for long, as I expect my Google preview will run out shortly). As I've become engrossed in his keyboard sonatas, I've been increasingly interested to learn about his life--though to hear it from Kirkpatrick I shouldn't expect my curiosity about this enigmatic figure to be satisfied:



> Domenico Scarlatti's private sentiments, other than those expressed in his music, remain completely unknown to us throughout his entire life. No letters or anecdotes have survived to give us more than a pale indication of his personality, and the years of his youth and early manhood pass with a particularly mysterious anonymity. Of Domenico's adventures, attractions, and involvements in the forty-two years preceding his marriage we know absolutely nothing.


Well, that said--I'll still track down a copy of this book and glean what I can! Any tips about where else to look for info about this fascinating composer would be much appreciated.


----------



## Dustin

On a whim yesterday I made the decision I wanted to read a work of classic literature and luckily just happened to find The Picture of Dorian Gray on my bookshelf. I'm not sure what inspired me to pick it up but I'm actually going to give classical music a lot of credit here. I'm not afraid to admit I used to despise any book that was considered a classic. Authors such as Stephen King and Dean Koontz have been my go-to writers before now. However, I think a few years of classical music listening has been a metaphorical masterclass on how to enjoy works that require more significant investment of time, focus and thought. Until now, I never figured that lesson would expand beyond music but I may be on the verge of becoming a literature nut. After reading the first chapter last night, I was nothing short of thrilled. I knew Oscar Wilde had a legendary way with wit and words after seeing some of his quotes over the years and it obviously translates well to his masterwork here. I'll admit I had my dictionary in my left hand while I had Dorian Gray in my right but I found that was half the fun. I'll probably post an update here once I finish it. After this, I'm probably going to jump into the world of Shakespeare and see what treasures I've been ignoring there.


----------



## Easy Goer

The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski


----------



## elgar's ghost

Plague, Pox and Pestilence: Disease in History (edited by Dr. Kenneth Kiple)


----------



## Mahlerian

Perotin said:


> @Mahlerian
> 
> Spinoza and Spinozism, would you care to write a review of this book?


I'm only halfway through, but so far it's an extremely lucid and accessible introduction to a modern interpretation of Spinoza's thought. Spinoza was a very original philosopher with many ideas that seem to presage modernity, but his work is so difficult to interpret because of its stilted academic style and idiosyncratic use of terms that interpretations of his metaphysical system have varied widely over the years, all the way from mystical pantheism to thoroughgoing materialist atheism. Hampshire writes well and helps to shed light on what he meant and why his philosophy is important.

In fact, it's a lot more easily understood than I recalled when I read parts of Spinoza back in college; I suppose the intervening years in constant contact with academic texts have made it easier.


----------



## Proms Fanatic

Richard Dawkins - The Extended Phenotype. Just finished reading The Selfish Gene. He's a great writer that makes evolutionary concepts easy to understand


----------



## EdwardBast

Crudblud said:


> Umberto Eco - _Foucault's Pendulum_


Fun book. Might be amusing to have a look at the book that inspired it, if you haven't already: _The Illuminatus!_, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.


----------



## EdwardBast

mellame said:


> Is it really? I've never come across a book written like it before, but then again, I haven't read that many memoirs either.


The practice is becoming fairly common in fiction lately. Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is done that way along with several others I have read recently.


----------



## Crudblud

EdwardBast said:


> Fun book. Might be amusing to have a look at the book that inspired it, if you haven't already: _The Illuminatus!_, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.


I haven't, though I have seen it come up a few times, mostly in discussions about Thomas Pynchon.


----------



## clavichorder

Finished Ivanhoe. It was brilliant!

Now I'm taking it easy and finishing a fantasy novel I put down a while back due to other distractions. Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Its very fun reading.


----------



## Tristan

Right now I'm reading *1984* by George Orwell. One of those books I should've read a long time ago, but since no one ever "made" read it, I think I'm enjoying it more now than I would have if I had read it in high school or something.


----------



## Levanda

I finished a Russian book written by Sorokin "Norma". I thought this book great to read because of book cover. How I was wrong. Dull, plenty of swearing, exploitation. Dam this book what a rubbish.


----------



## Potiphera

I am reading a new book called , Orwell, Huxley and the Fallacies of Futurity. 
By Robert Neville.

For part of the book he imagines a conversation between these two great writers just after 1984 came out, and therefore just before Orwell's own untimely death. 
The other bits look at the themes in the book and some of the main ideas. 
What I liked about it was that it does not buy into the standard line we seem to get nowadays, that their two great novels are prophetic. Instead, Neville perceptively sees both men agreeing that they are more warnings than anything else. Obviously I can see the writer has done a lot of research, but its engaging and though provoking to read with many, many ideas in it. I bought it on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Orwell-Huxley-The-Fallacies-Futurity/dp/1291951555#reader_1291951555

.


----------



## GreenMamba

Tom Rachman's novel The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. I enjoyed his debut, The Imperfectionists, so I figured I'd give this a go. Didn't even check to see what it was about before beginning.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Levanda said:


> I finished a Russian book written by Sorokin "Norma". I thought this book great to read because of book cover. How I was wrong. Dull, plenty of swearing, exploitation. Dam this book what a rubbish.


Don't judge a book by its cover - literally. Sorokin is trash.


----------



## Levanda

SiegendesLicht said:


> Don't judge a book by its cover - literally. Sorokin is trash.


Yes I do agree with you. Shame I did read this book after I had good joy for myself what a rubbish Levanda is reading. 
Now I am reading Orhan Kemal "In Jail with Nazim Hikmet", loving half way already so enjoying his poetry and is harsh life in prison.


----------



## Easy Goer

Javier Marías - A Heart So White


----------



## AClockworkOrange

I have to stop re-reading books when I have such an immense backlog of books which are new to me.

My most recent reading has consisted of re-reading:
- *Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange 
- John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids 
- H.G Wells' War of the Worlds and The Time Machine*.

I haven't decided what I 'm going to read next. I won't have time (or the energy) to read until at least Friday with work commitments so I'll decide later on.


----------



## arpeggio

After seeing Hollywood massacre it three times, I decided to read the original _I am Legend_ by Richard Matheson.

Note: I discovered that there was a fourth version that was released directly to DVD: _I Am Omega_. It appears that this is a loser as well.

Note 2: I just read something awesome about Robert Neville, the main character of _I am Legend_. He likes classical music and uses it to drown out the wails of the vampires.


----------



## trazom

arpeggio said:


> Note 2: I just read something awesome about Robert Neville, the main character of _I am Legend_. He likes classical music and uses it to drown out the wails of the vampires.


I remember that from the book as well, he was also proud of his cultivated taste as well. When one of the female characters he meets later on requests that he put on Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, he notes to himself that 'her tastes weren't very sophisticated' or something like that.


----------



## Lukecash12

Counterfeit Revival by Hank Hanegraaf.
Classical Arminianism by F. Leroy.
Summa Contra Gentiles by Thomas Aquinas.
Yi Jing 易經 by an unknown author and Shí Yì 翼, often supposed to be Confucius' ten commentaries on the work.


----------



## Albert7

One of my top favorite novels:


----------



## Xaltotun

Wagner: Mein Leben
Wagner: Oper und Drama
Emslie: Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love
Corse: Wagner and the New Consciousness
Salmi: Imagined Germany - Richard Wagner's National Utopia
Donington: Wagner's 'Ring' and its Symbols
Magee: Richard Wagner and the Nibelungs
Pylkkö: Richard Wagner ajattelijana - antimodernisti, luonnonmystikko, gnostikko
Freud: Totem and Taboo
Freud: Civilization and its Discontents
Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams
Freud: Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Antigone
etc...

on an unrelated note, also Auerbach: Mimesis.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Wow, that is quite a Wagnerian library!



Xaltotun said:


> Salmi: Imagined Germany - Richard Wagner's National Utopia.


I have read _about_ that book, but never read the book itself. Is it good?


----------



## Xaltotun

SiegendesLicht said:


> Wow, that is quite a Wagnerian library!
> 
> I have read _about_ that book, but never read the book itself. Is it good?


This might be a good time to reveal that I'm in the process of writing a Master's thesis about the libretto of the _Ring..._ or at least the first two music dramas... or at least _Die Walküre._ I've delved too little to that particular book (Salmi) as for now, but I'll tell you my verdict of it as soon as I finish it. What I'm doing is comparing Wagner's own intentions and philosophy to a psychoanalytic interpretation, hence the Freud books. What I'm finding is a lot of similarities in the structure of Wagner's and Freud's (and Lacan's) thought, but also crucial differences in attitude.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

^ That is awesome. Wagner was a great poet as well as a great composer (although many believe otherwise). I imagine writing a thesis about his poetry is very rewarding all by itself. Good luck, Xaltotun!


----------



## arpeggio

clavichorder said:


> Finished Ivanhoe. It was brilliant!
> 
> Now I'm taking it easy and finishing a fantasy novel I put down a while back due to other distractions. Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Its very fun reading.


Recently read _Ivanhoe_ as well. Outstanding


----------



## arpeggio

arpeggio said:


> Richard McKenna: _The Sand Pebbles_


Completing this book was a very interesting experience.

I always liked the movie. For me it is difficult to say which was better, the film or the book. They were different.

Some personal observations.

For me the main character, Jake Holman, in the book was different than the character as portrayed by Steve McQueen. They both had issues but the McQueen Holman was a more troubled character. The Holman in the book disliked authority but he did not clash with the crew like McQueen did in the movie.

Another difference was the portrayal of the crew. They were not saints, but they were not as harsh as the crew in the movie.

The book was also much more critical of the missionaries.

Movie came out in the sixties. It had an air of anti-establishment that did not come across as strongly as it appeared in the book. In the movie the Lt. Collins is killed but in the book, he survives.


----------



## clavichorder

Whoops, a duplicate. I am forgetful.


----------



## Albert7




----------



## arpeggio

Novel/Movie Kick.

Now reading _To Kill a Mockingbird_.


----------



## starthrower

The History Of Jazz by Ted Gioia


----------



## Guest

The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham

View attachment 71351


What is meant by 'the rule of law'?
Who should have the final say over the laws of the land - government or judiciary?

Excellent and easy read. If you still want to find an authoritative view on the legitimacy of the invasion of Iraq, look no further.


----------



## Arie

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. 3/4th over.


----------



## Jos

Jonathan Franzen, "freedom"

I enjoyed "the corrections" very much. Just started this one.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Easy Goer

Václav Havel - The Power of the Powerless


----------



## Albert7

The Marquis de Sade's novel remains one of the landmark works of Western civilization. One of the few transgressive works along with Jean Genet that remains embedded in my mind.

Someday hopefully there will be a scholarly version of the complete works of de Sade.


----------



## Albert7

Reading this book in parallel to de Sade's novel. Fairly comic and for me, a rather amusing tract on certain issues.










Coulter reminds me of Jonathan Swift and she writes rather clearly even though the ideas aren't teeming to the brim with always the best formative ideas. Still worth an examination.

Also I kinda wish that her publisher not use her mug shot on every book she writes. Seriously, she is a model but perhaps they should do a Stephen Colbert move instead.


----------



## GreenMamba

William Sheridan Allen's classic account of Nazi party political tactics in one German town (Nordheim).


----------



## Albert7

Oh and I must that I have been reading this particular book for the past 10 years.










I am a huge fan of Walter Benjamin and I subscribe heavily to the Frankfurt School for a lot of my postmodernist beliefs. These guys are seminal in any type of analysis.

The Arcades Project is the best exposition on shopping, the concept of imagery in the origins of photography, and the awesomeness of the flaneur.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Tacitus - The Annals of Imperial Rome. Probably the most magisterial surviving account of the time between the deaths of Augustus (a.d. 14) and Nero (a.d. 68), even if it may have been written from a second century a.d. perspective when the more unsavoury aspects of the Julio-Claudian dynasty were dwelled upon possibly in order to place the current Nerva/Trajan/Hadrian era in an even better light.

Sadly, crucial sections are lost - esp. the whole four-year reign of Caligula, the first six years of the reign of Claudius and the final three years of the reign of Nero, but what remains is a riveting read.


----------



## Lukecash12

elgars ghost said:


> Tacitus - The Annals of Imperial Rome. Probably the most magisterial surviving account of the time between the deaths of Augustus (a.d. 14) and Nero (a.d. 68), even if it may have been written from a second century a.d. perspective when the more unsavoury aspects of the Julio-Claudian dynasty were dwelled upon possibly in order to place the current Nerva/Trajan/Hadrian era in an even better light.
> 
> Sadly, crucial sections are lost - esp. the whole four-year reign of Caligula, the first six years of the reign of Claudius and the final three years of the reign of Nero, but what remains is a riveting read.


Now that's my stuff. Being a historian myself, sources like Tacitus, Plutarch, Syneschus, Cicero, the first three tracts of the Talmud, and anything else of the period gets my blood pumping. If you folks would like to see some of my work just look me up on EPS and St. Anselm's, where I love to write.


----------



## elgar's ghost

^
^

I've been meaning to read some Plutarch but have never got around to it - is there any particular edition of _Parallel Lives _which you would recommend, please?


----------



## Lukecash12

elgars ghost said:


> ^
> ^
> 
> I've been meaning to read some Plutarch but have never got around to it - is there any particular edition of _Parallel Lives _which you would recommend, please?


It's been a while since I've read a translation because the only copies I own are Carl Sintenis' Bibliotheca Teubneriana (one of a number of books included in that manuscript) and βίοι παράλληλοι, a sixteenth century Florentine manuscript of unknown authorship that carefully reproduced the Koine Greek. The entries in the Loeb Classical Library by Bernadotte Perrin are probably the most widely enjoyed today, and while the translation makes me wince from time to time it's still perfectly appropriate for any history enthusiast, especially if they happen to own a reputable Greek lexicon like Lidell and Scott (Lidell and Scott includes a concordance and lexicon with exhaustive references to Plutarch and others).

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674991101


----------



## elgar's ghost

^
^

Many thanks for your reply.


----------



## omega

Albert7 said:


> *The Marquis de Sade's novel remains one of the landmark works of Western civilization*.


Emmm... Even if I have never read Sade (or _dared _ read Sade), I am still convinced this statement has to be qualified.



> Someday hopefully there will be a scholarly version of the complete works of de Sade.


The first parental advisory labelled scholar edition?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

I've tried reading Marquis de Sade once. I puked about page ten, when he came to a description of doing it with a chicken...


----------



## SiegendesLicht

elgars ghost said:


> Tacitus - The Annals of Imperial Rome. Probably the most magisterial surviving account of the time between the deaths of Augustus (a.d. 14) and Nero (a.d. 68), even if it may have been written from a second century a.d. perspective when the more unsavoury aspects of the Julio-Claudian dynasty were dwelled upon possibly in order to place the current Nerva/Trajan/Hadrian era in an even better light.
> 
> Sadly, crucial sections are lost - esp. the whole four-year reign of Caligula, the first six years of the reign of Claudius and the final three years of the reign of Nero, but what remains is a riveting read.


From Tacitus' account of the Roman wars in Germania:

_It was a restless night for different reasons, the barbarians in their festivity filling the valleys under the hills and the echoing glens with merry song or savage shouts, while in the Roman camp were flickering fires, broken exclamations, and the men lay scattered along the intrenchments or wandered from tent to tent, wakeful rather than watchful. A ghastly dream appalled the general. He seemed to see Quintilius Varus, covered with blood, rising out of the swamps, and to hear him, as it were, calling to him, but he did not, as he imagined, obey the call; he even repelled his hand, as he stretched it over him. At daybreak the legions, posted on the wings, from panic or perversity, deserted their position and hastily occupied a plain beyond the morass. Yet Arminius, though free to attack, did not at the moment rush out on them. But when the baggage was clogged in the mud and in the fosses, the soldiers around it in disorder, the array of the standards in confusion, every one in selfish haste and all ears deaf to the word of command he ordered the Germans to charge, exclaiming again and again, "Behold a Varus and legions once more entangled in Varus's fate." _

A riveting read indeed.


----------



## Lukecash12

omega said:


> Emmm... Even if I have never read Sade (or _dared _ read Sade), I am still convinced this statement has to be qualified.
> 
> The first parental advisory labelled scholar edition?


The playwright Aristophanes was more vulgar.


----------



## Morimur

*"Survival In Auschwitz" by Primo Levi*


----------



## Albert7

omega said:


> Emmm... Even if I have never read Sade (or _dared _ read Sade), I am still convinced this statement has to be qualified.
> 
> The first parental advisory labelled scholar edition?


The Marquis' works have been felt far and wide... Examples of his influence include:














































And countless other examples including government officials doing war crimes of tortures, feminists, surrealists, Dadaists, literary essay writers, The New French Extremity movement in cinema, the Saw series of films, Pasolini's Salo, etc. etc.

For me, that counts as being rather culturally essential.


----------



## clavichorder

I am reading Thomas Hardy's _Far from the Madding Crowd_, now. So far, thoroughly impressed.


----------



## Crudblud

Previously: Mary Mackey - _McCarthy's List_

Now: Don DeLillo - _Underworld_


----------



## TxllxT

We (my wife's reading aloud) have almost finished reading 'Petersburg' (1913) by Andrei Bely. Nabokov was very excited about it (nr. 4 on his all-time shortlist), but Bely actually rewrote Dostoyevsky's 'Demons'. Andrei is perhaps more humourous than Fyodor (talking about humour, is there any humour at all to be found in Dostoyevsky's books?), but Dostoyevsky knows, respects and enters the soul while Bely just keeps flashing brilliantly over the surface. The main character Apollon Apollonovich has his mind set on mathematical figures in order to maintain his composure. That's why he loves Petersburg, the most mathematically perfect metropole on earth. In the end reading Dostoyevsky compares with meeting & getting to know 'real' people, whereas Bely is playing an highly clever mindgame without ever meeting anyone 'for real'. 'Petersburg' is a modern novel indeed and worthwhile for those crave for an excellent aesthetic pastime. When we will shut the book, that will be it, no one will continue to accompany us. No Alyosha Karamazov, no prince Myshkin...


----------



## Xaltotun

Albert7 said:


> Oh and I must that I have been reading this particular book for the past 10 years.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I am a huge fan of Walter Benjamin and I subscribe heavily to the Frankfurt School for a lot of my postmodernist beliefs. These guys are seminal in any type of analysis.
> 
> The Arcades Project is the best exposition on shopping, the concept of imagery in the origins of photography, and the awesomeness of the flaneur.


I also really like Walter Benjamin, nice to meet a fellow admirer! But I sometimes see him as an obstacle, a great question to which I must find an answer. So, I think he's basically right in everything that he percieves but he gives us this puzzle without solutions. How should we live in a modern world? I'm determined to find it out! My favourite essay is the one in which he talks about language and how things express themselves... "Of language in general and human language" or something like that. I actually made some hidden references to that essay in one of my recent TC posts.


----------



## Xaltotun

TxllxT said:


> We (my wife's reading aloud) have almost finished reading 'Petersburg' (1913) by Andrei Bely. Nabokov was very excited about it (nr. 4 on his all-time shortlist), but Bely actually rewrote Dostoyevsky's 'Demons'. Andrei is perhaps more humourous than Fyodor (talking about humour, is there any humour at all to be found in Dostoyevsky's books?), but Dostoyevsky knows, respects and enters the soul while Bely just keeps flashing brilliantly over the surface. The main character Apollon Apollonovich has his mind set on mathematical figures in order to maintain his composure. That's why he loves Petersburg, the most mathematically perfect metropole on earth. In the end reading Dostoyevsky compares with meeting & getting to know 'real' people, whereas Bely is playing an highly clever mindgame without ever meeting anyone 'for real'. 'Petersburg' is a modern novel indeed and worthwhile for those crave for an excellent aesthetic pastime. When we will shut the book, that will be it, no one will continue to accompany us. No Alyosha Karamazov, no prince Myshkin...


Interesting, I've read about that book but never heard of anyone actually reading it. I wonder if the Apollon Apollonovich character is a Nietzsche reference?


----------



## Albert7

A short interruption to read this "feminist" tract and documentary book.


----------



## Xaltotun

SiegendesLicht said:


> From Tacitus' account of the Roman wars in Germania:
> 
> _It was a restless night for different reasons, the barbarians in their festivity filling the valleys under the hills and the echoing glens with merry song or savage shouts, while in the Roman camp were flickering fires, broken exclamations, and the men lay scattered along the intrenchments or wandered from tent to tent, wakeful rather than watchful. A ghastly dream appalled the general. He seemed to see Quintilius Varus, covered with blood, rising out of the swamps, and to hear him, as it were, calling to him, but he did not, as he imagined, obey the call; he even repelled his hand, as he stretched it over him. At daybreak the legions, posted on the wings, from panic or perversity, deserted their position and hastily occupied a plain beyond the morass. Yet Arminius, though free to attack, did not at the moment rush out on them. But when the baggage was clogged in the mud and in the fosses, the soldiers around it in disorder, the array of the standards in confusion, every one in selfish haste and all ears deaf to the word of command he ordered the Germans to charge, exclaiming again and again, "Behold a Varus and legions once more entangled in Varus's fate." _
> 
> A riveting read indeed.


_Germania_ is the first historical account that mentions the Finns, that's why it has been printed in Finland many times, much more than some other ancient classics. The short passage goes roughly like this: "Up north, as the last human beings right before there be just monsters, there life the Finns. They have nothing, they know nothing, and so, they have succeeded in that in which many much more civilized folk have failed: they crave nothing."


----------



## SimonNZ

TxllxT said:


> We (my wife's reading aloud) have almost finished reading 'Petersburg' (1913) by Andrei Bely. Nabokov was very excited about it *(nr. 4 on his all-time shortlist)*, but Bely actually rewrote Dostoyevsky's 'Demons'. Andrei is perhaps more humourous than Fyodor (talking about humour, *is there any humour at all to be found in Dostoyevsky's books?*), but Dostoyevsky knows, respects and enters the soul while Bely just keeps flashing brilliantly over the surface. The main character Apollon Apollonovich has his mind set on mathematical figures in order to maintain his composure. That's why he loves Petersburg, the most mathematically perfect metropole on earth. In the end reading Dostoyevsky compares with meeting & getting to know 'real' people, whereas Bely is playing an highly clever mindgame without ever meeting anyone 'for real'. 'Petersburg' is a modern novel indeed and worthwhile for those crave for an excellent aesthetic pastime. When we will shut the book, that will be it, no one will continue to accompany us. No Alyosha Karamazov, no prince Myshkin...


What were the other books on Nabokov's shortlist?

In the introduction to one of the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations they lambast the imo great Constance Garnett for among other things missing all the humour in Dostoevsky. They then give a couple of examples of his "subtle" jokes. They weren't in the slightest bit funny. Not one iota. I doubted there was even the intention in the examples they gave.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## Jeff W

*In which Jeff starts a new book*









H. Rider Haggard - She: A History of Adventure


----------



## Morimur

Albert7 said:


> The Marquis' works have been felt far and wide... Examples of his influence include:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And countless other examples including government officials doing war crimes of tortures, feminists, surrealists, Dadaists, literary essay writers, The New French Extremity movement in cinema, the Saw series of films, Pasolini's Salo, etc. etc.
> 
> For me, that counts as being rather culturally essential.


Sade's legacy is nothing but filth; worthless trash which does nothing but poison the minds of men and women.


----------



## Balthazar

Morimur said:


> Sade's legacy is nothing but filth; worthless trash which does nothing but poison the minds of men and women.


Well that's a strong opinion. Have you read _Philosophy in the Bedroom_? It's a pretty significant piece of literature. Better in French, of course. And I'm pretty healthy.


----------



## ptr

*Friedrich von Hausegger*; Die Musik als Ausdruck (1887)

/ptr


----------



## TxllxT

Xaltotun said:


> Interesting, I've read about that book but never heard of anyone actually reading it. I wonder if the Apollon Apollonovich character is a Nietzsche reference?


Sure, but also Akaky Akakievich resounds..


----------



## Levanda

I surprise Fifty shades of grey made huge amount of money, sorry to write absolutely rubbish. I am sad that majority reading those books.


----------



## Albert7

Balthazar said:


> Well that's a strong opinion. Have you read _Philosophy in the Bedroom_? It's a pretty significant piece of literature. Better in French, of course. And I'm pretty healthy.


Evidently he didn't read this wonderful essay then: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/513-salo-the-present-as-hell


----------



## Sonata

Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges.
by Drs Steven Southwich and Dennish Charney.

This was loaned to me by my doctor. It's a really good read. It's about personality and lifestyle factors that contribute to high resilience. (examples: Physical fitness, cognitive flexibility, optimism, etc). We were talking about stress, and how I have trouble with managing day to day accumulation of life stress. This book involves people in more severe stresses: birth defects leading to disability in one case, accounts of POWs and how they got through their time being imprisoned. But the factors involved in resilience can be utilized in day to day life stress too. I highly recommend it. They also go into some detail about the neuroscience behind stress related illnesses and recovery.


----------



## GhenghisKhan

Lee Kuan Yew: A man and his ideas


----------



## musicrom

I finished reading Macbeth for the first time about a week ago. I'm in the process of reading The Stranger in French, but that's taking me a while. I just recently ordered Buck's The Good Earth from the library, hoping to get it soon.

This summer is on pace to be my best summer for reading in a while, lol.


----------



## Blancrocher

starthrower said:


>


You probably know it, but the film biography "Straight, No Chaser" is well worth seeing. It's currently available in full on Youtube, I see.


----------



## Guest

Balthazar said:


> Well that's a strong opinion. Have you read _Philosophy in the Bedroom_? It's a pretty significant piece of literature. Better in French, of course. And I'm pretty healthy.


Mein Kampf is also a pretty significant piece of literature. As is Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Significant is an interesting word to use there - I noticed you didn't say "Good" piece of literature. A book that details perversion in the process of advocating the "if it feels good, do it" philosophy doesn't sound particularly beneficial for reading material. Nor one that advocates the idea that the committing of a crime in the process of seeking pleasure should not be punished by law is a pretty deplorable ideology. Jeffrey Dahmer got perverse sexual pleasure out of raping, killing, and eating boys. By de Sade's reasoning, he should still be a free man.

Sorry - books like that have nothing worthwhile to say to humanity.


----------



## Albert7

But how do you judge a book without even opening it up?



DrMike said:


> Mein Kampf is also a pretty significant piece of literature. As is Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Significant is an interesting word to use there - I noticed you didn't say "Good" piece of literature. A book that details perversion in the process of advocating the "if it feels good, do it" philosophy doesn't sound particularly beneficial for reading material. Nor one that advocates the idea that the committing of a crime in the process of seeking pleasure should not be punished by law is a pretty deplorable ideology. Jeffrey Dahmer got perverse sexual pleasure out of raping, killing, and eating boys. By de Sade's reasoning, he should still be a free man.
> 
> Sorry - books like that have nothing worthwhile to say to humanity.


----------



## Levanda

DrMike said:


> Mein Kampf is also a pretty significant piece of literature. As is Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Significant is an interesting word to use there - I noticed you didn't say "Good" piece of literature.
> Sorry - books like that have nothing worthwhile to say to humanity.


p

Oh please no Mein Kampf.


----------



## Guest

Albert7 said:


> But how do you judge a book without even opening it up?


You can learn about it in other ways. Not everything occurring in book form is worth reading. I also don't have to experience cancer to know that it is horrible. The ideology that de Sade espoused is repugnant to me, so I don't see what benefit it would be to read his works.


----------



## Sonata

Albert7 said:


> But how do you judge a book without even opening it up?


oh the wikipedia was plenty thanks. significantly vile.


----------



## KirbyH

I just started Stokowski: A Counterpoint of View, am about a quarter way through Ken Follett's "Edge of Eternity," half through Cecil Forsyth's "Orchestration" and just finished Doris Goodwin's "The Bully Pulpit."

Now if I could just get more into "Cibola Burn" by James S.A. Corey - the first three books in The Expanse were a rip snorting good time, this one just... I don't know yet, I'll try a little harder. Perhaps its one of those books that requires patience.


----------



## cwarchc

I've just finished
"Uncle Toms' Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe

I'm not sure how I feel about it

In it's day, it must have been very controversial

Now, over 150 years later, it strikes me as difficult

A middle class, white, woman writing about slavery, emancipation and religion.


----------



## senza sordino

I've started to read
The Mastery of Music, ten pathways to true artistry, by Barry Green
View attachment 71824


What makes the great musicians great? Chapter titles include Communication, Courage, Discipline, Fun, Passion, Tolerance, Concentration, Confidence, Ego and Humility, Creativity.

I'd like to know what makes the great musicians great, and I'm hoping reading this book can make me a better performer. It's more than technique, music is more than notes following more notes.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

DrMike said:


> Mein Kampf is also a pretty significant piece of literature.
> 
> Sorry - books like that have nothing worthwhile to say to humanity.


I've read _Mein Kampf_ - as another piece of German history. It was not anything I would agree with - mostly, but unlike Marquis de Sade, it did not create physiological revulsion (=puking) in me either.


----------



## Easy Goer

In the First Circle - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


----------



## SimonNZ

Easy Goer said:


> In the First Circle - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


That was probably my favorite novel when I was in my late teens (or rather the original Harvell edition translation called The First Circle). I've never read the "uncensored" version. I'd be very interested to know what you make of it.


----------



## Easy Goer

SimonNZ said:


> That was probably my favorite novel when I was in my late teens (or rather the original Harvell edition translation called The First Circle). I've never read the "uncensored" version. I'd be very interested to know what you make of it.


This book has been sitting on my shelf for while but I'm glad I finally took the time to read it. I'm really not very good at providing reviews on music or books so all I can really say is this is one of the better books I have read in a while. A lot of characters to absorb but I loved their development. If you can recommend any of his other books please let me know. Excellent read.


----------



## Albert7

Easy Goer said:


> This book has been sitting on my shelf for while but I'm glad I finally took the time to read it. I'm really not very good at providing reviews on music or books so all I can really say is this is one of the better books I have read in a while. A lot of characters to absorb but I loved their development. If you can recommend any of his other books please let me know. Excellent read.


----------



## SimonNZ

Easy Goer said:


> This book has been sitting on my shelf for while but I'm glad I finally took the time to read it. I'm really not very good at providing reviews on music or books so all I can really say is this is one of the better books I have read in a while. A lot of characters to absorb but I loved their development. If you can recommend any of his other books please let me know. Excellent read.


Glad to hear you liked it. Its been quite some time now since I read near all of his books in a headlong rush. First Circle is, for me, the high point of his fiction. The earlier One Day In The Life and Cancer Ward are raw and immediate, but don't have the precision and polish, nor the depth of the interior monologue that FC has. The later August 1914 in contrast is a little over-literary, stylistic devices in the manner of John Dos Passos overwhelming and distorting the content.

My other favorites were the two volumes of literary menoirs, The Oak And The Calf and Invisible Allies detailing his struggles to get published and the many ways and attempts to subvert the censorship imposed on his work. Then, of course there's the monumental Gulag Archipelago, which justifies his Nobel Prize and is the work he deserves to be remembered for, but there's a lot of it and the culmative effect is very heavy indeed.

The early plays and short stories I'm afraid I'd forgotten almost immediately after reading them, and their mostly being long out of print doesn't seem a tragedy.


----------



## Levanda

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I would be ok if I don't read his book, my personal reasons are he was Franco supporter Spanish dictator and Vietnam war supporter, this is not my cup of tea. Majority like his books and maybe he was good writer and deserved Nobel prize for Literature. Apologies for those whom admire him as a writer or philosopher.


----------



## TxllxT

We just started to read Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, which has both the (hilarious!) humour and insights into human soul we savour from word to word. There exists an excellent Russian TV serial, but Dostoyevsky's own imaginations have a subtlety, especially with regard to Biblical references, that is even more delightful. Before this book we read 'Demons', which somehow lacks the qualities of 'The Idiot': no oasis of disarming openheartedness and constantly squeezing & compelling with its drab realism.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

I am rereading the Bible, straight through Genesis to Revelation. Got to Numbers and the adventures of the Israelites in the desert for now.


----------



## Balthazar

TxllxT said:


> We just started to read Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, which has both the (hilarious!) humour and insights into human soul we savour from word to word. There exists an excellent Russian TV serial, but Dostoyevsky's own imaginations have a subtlety, especially with regard to Biblical references, that is even more delightful. Before this book we read 'Demons', which somehow lacks the qualities of 'The Idiot': no oasis of disarming openheartedness and constantly squeezing & compelling with its drab realism.


Prince Myshkin is one of my favorite characters in literature. The scene where he gives his "Beauty will save the world!" speech is indelibly etched in my mind.


----------



## TxllxT

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am rereading the Bible, straight through Genesis to Revelation. Got to Numbers and the adventures of the Israelites in the desert for now.


If you are able to read German (what I suppose you do) I recommend to give Martin Buber's _Verdeutschung_ of _Die Schrift_ a try. His translation has the Wagnerian grandness you will love...


----------



## Easy Goer

SimonNZ said:


> Glad to hear you liked it. Its been quite some time now since I read near all of his books in a headlong rush. First Circle is, for me, the high point of his fiction. The earlier One Day In The Life and Cancer Ward are raw and immediate, but don't have the precision and polish, nor the depth of the interior monologue that FC has. The later August 1914 in contrast is a little over-literary, stylistic devices in the manner of John Dos Passos overwhelming and distorting the content.
> 
> My other favorites were the two volumes of literary menoirs, The Oak And The Calf and Invisible Allies detailing his struggles to get published and the many ways and attempts to subvert the censorship imposed on his work. Then, of course there's the monumental Gulag Archipelago, which justifies his Nobel Prize and is the work he deserves to be remembered for, but there's a lot of it and the culmative effect is very heavy indeed.
> 
> The early plays and short stories I'm afraid I'd forgotten almost immediately after reading them, and their mostly being long out of print doesn't seem a tragedy.


Thanks Simon & welcome back.


----------



## Guest

I'm reading a book I found on a park bench entitled "How _not_ to make friends and therefore _not_ influence people because you're above all that crap and don't give a flying fig given that you're a rich *******". Fascinating stuff.


----------



## starthrower

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am rereading the Bible, straight through Genesis to Revelation. Got to Numbers and the adventures of the Israelites in the desert for now.


I'm reading about the books that were left out of the bible.


----------



## Jeff W

*In which Jeff does some reading*

On my mini-hiatus, I finished up 'She' and then read...















two by C. S. Lewis. 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' and 'Prince Caspian'. Now I'm starting...









Elizabeth Gaskell's 'North and South'.


----------



## GreenMamba

Robert Harris' Enigma. 1995 novel about Bletchley Park ww2 code breaking. Alan Turing is a minor character.

Enjoying it so far. Apparently there's a film version that wasn't bad.


----------



## Easy Goer

Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now


----------



## clavichorder

Easy Goer said:


> Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now
> 
> I love Trollope! I am planning on reading Can You Forgive Her? of the Palliser novels soon. Let us know how you like this hulking one; I have not read it yet.
> 
> In reading *Far From the Madding Crowd*, by Thomas Hardy, I am beginning to suspect this book will be among my top favorites. Its so completely vivid in its descriptions of the natural world, especially when he chooses to take a more metaphorical slant, usually reinforcing things in a way that feels utterly true.
> 
> I've never been able to share so many passages with other people out of context and have it provoke such reactions.
> 
> And the descriptions of people faces, the literal and visual aspect of character is done in such an insightful way that it falls into few of the cliches that other, even great writers of the time might. Its a feast for the imagination bolstered with very relatable philosophical and general life pronouncements, this book, and it has humor and darkness/richness of atmosphere. Why isn't Hardy considered quite as up there with Dickens? Such a fresh read.


----------



## Cosmos

Last Saturday I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. I read through the whole thing in one sitting. I loved the narration and style, but my biggest issue with it is that I'm afraid that it will be one of those books that I'll love the first time I read it, but never come back to read again










Right now, I'm nearing the end of Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I've liked it so far, not one of my favorites though. But Mitchell's writing is always great, even if it is with the voice of a 13 year old who's biggest fear is that the other kids will think he's gay


----------



## LarryShone

Bought a 6 book set of Lord of the Rings and began reading the first book the other day.


----------



## Avey

LarryShone said:


> Bought a 6 book set of Lord of the Rings and began reading the first book the other day.


Very close to re-reading this trilogy.

After my current obligations, of course.


----------



## Balthazar

LarryShone said:


> Bought a 6 book set of Lord of the Rings and began reading the first book the other day.


How is it six books? Did they update _The Hobbit_ and divide it into three parts? :lol:


----------



## Lukecash12

My last little dialogue in this thread sparked something again and I had to pick up some Plutarch. I'm reading his _Lives_ again and right now I'm on Alcibiades. The more I read the Greek characters of his _Lives_, the more I'm struck again with the thought that democracy can truly be a monstrous thing.


----------



## Albert7

Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann but the old Lowe-Porter translation.










The Mahler of German lit for me.


----------



## Ingélou

Antonia Fraser: *Love & Louis XIV* - The Women in the Life of the Sun King. London, 2006

Packed with gossip, intrigue, dress details, sex, piety, & wit, with a rare smidgeon of Lully. Just the sort of history I like.
And in big print too!


----------



## LarryShone

Balthazar said:


> How is it six books? Did they update _The Hobbit_ and divide it into three parts? :lol:


LOTR was never a trilogy, its made up of 6 books. If you read Tolkien's introduction he explains that it is often mistakenly labeled a trilogy, when its actually 6 books.


----------



## Balthazar

LarryShone said:


> LOTR was never a trilogy, its made up of 6 books


Right. Just a movie joke. :tiphat:


----------



## Ingélou

I am a bit perturbed by the idea of a long-drawn-out Hobbit, but I still want to see it when it comes out on dvd.
Has anyone seen it, and what do they think?


----------



## Dr Johnson

Ingélou said:


> I am a bit perturbed by the idea of a long-drawn-out Hobbit, but I still want to see it when it comes out on dvd.
> Has anyone seen it, and what do they think?


I watched the first film on TV a few weeks ago. It was indeed drawn out with a lot of stuff not in the book. I shall not be buying a DVD except, possibly, at bargain bin prices but I will probably watch the next installment when it reaches Freeview (assuming I have nothing else to do )


----------



## Dr Johnson

I have just started reading *At Freddie's* by Penelope Fitzgerald.

Unfortunately once I have finished it I will have read all her novels


----------



## Cosmos

Ingélou said:


> I am a bit perturbed by the idea of a long-drawn-out Hobbit, but I still want to see it when it comes out on dvd.
> Has anyone seen it, and what do they think?


I haven't read the book, but was concerned at first to see they dragged a 300 page book out to almost 9 hours. I figured that must mean a lot of details were included and it must stick close to the story.

The trilogy was just...bad. I'll just use that adjective. It was just tedious, full of over the top CGI fighting. They also squeezed in a love triangle between the most attractive dwarf and an elf whose character was written for the films. No emotion, no joy, not fun like the LOTR trilogy. It's a shame too, because you can tell the actors are trying their hardest working with an abysmal script.

Smaug looked really cool at least.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Ingélou said:


> I am a bit perturbed by the idea of a long-drawn-out Hobbit, but I still want to see it when it comes out on dvd.
> Has anyone seen it, and what do they think?


I pretty much agree with Cosmos' assessment. I have seen the first film, and it seemed to me so artificial and pointless I did not bother with the other two (and I am a HUGE Tolkien fan). And the love story is a total perversion of the author's idea. Better watch LOTR or read the books one more time


----------



## Dr Johnson

I wonder if they are planning a _*Silmarillion*_ tetralogy/pentalogy/hexalogy (etc ad nauseam)?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

I hope not......


----------



## GreenMamba

The third book in his English history series. I haven't read the first two, but I like this so far. A "popular history," Ackroyd writes well and knows an interesting anecdote when he sees it.


----------



## Easy Goer

clavichorder said:


> Easy Goer said:
> 
> 
> 
> Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now
> 
> I love Trollope! I am planning on reading Can You Forgive Her? of the Palliser novels soon. Let us know how you like this hulking one; I have not read it yet.
> 
> In reading *Far From the Madding Crowd*, by Thomas Hardy, I am beginning to suspect this book will be among my top favorites. Its so completely vivid in its descriptions of the natural world, especially when he chooses to take a more metaphorical slant, usually reinforcing things in a way that feels utterly true.
> 
> I've never been able to share so many passages with other people out of context and have it provoke such reactions.
> 
> And the descriptions of people faces, the literal and visual aspect of character is done in such an insightful way that it falls into few of the cliches that other, even great writers of the time might. Its a feast for the imagination bolstered with very relatable philosophical and general life pronouncements, this book, and it has humor and darkness/richness of atmosphere. Why isn't Hardy considered quite as up there with Dickens? Such a fresh read.
> 
> 
> 
> A clever satire. This was my second reading of this novel. I've previously read all the Hardy and Trollope novels and with the exception of maybe one or two I have liked them all.
Click to expand...


----------



## EricABQ

Just finished _The Martian_ by Andy Weir, which was fantastic. A very exciting, fairly quick read. Looking forward to the movie this October.


----------



## bestellen

Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher. Part of his series "The Dresden Files", about Chicago's only professional wizard, Harry Dresden.

Highly recommended if you're into rough, ready and brutal wizardry going up against demons, vampires and faeries (amongst other things). I read the last book in the series out of curiosity (it was in a 3for2 at Waterstones) and then went and bought the other 8 in the series.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Started Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (Persian Translation).


----------



## Easy Goer

Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. A 1981 collection of short stories.


----------



## Guest

Dr Johnson said:


> I wonder if they are planning a _*Silmarillion*_ tetralogy/pentalogy/hexalogy (etc ad nauseam)?


I doubt it - it is more a collection of stories. There is a linkage between them all, but it would be almost impossible to turn into a film. Now, there are some individual stories in it that could be adapted to film, like the story of the children of Hurin, which has a definite Oedipus feel to it.

Regarding the movies, they were entertaining, but having read the Hobbit at least 10 times, they were disappointing. They added things that seemed to serve no other purpose than to drag out a rather brisk read into 3 lengthy films. The entire Hobbit is shorter than any one of the parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy - it did not need the same number of movies. I blame part of it on Peter Jackson, and part of it on the current craze in Hollywood to drag out movie series - where the final film in a series always needs to be broken into a 2-parter (e.g. the final Harry Potter book took 2 movies, the final Twilight book took 2 movies, the final Hunger Games book took 2 movies). That seems to be their latest gimmick.

If you haven't read the book, the movies are entertaining enough, but are dragged down by unnecessary, superfluous plot lines, like the ridiculous love story they insert. And yes, Jackson seems to have fallen a bit into the George Lucas trap of just going overboard with the special effects.


----------



## Mahlerian

Just finished:


----------



## GreenMamba

Easy Goer said:


> Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. A 1981 collection of short stories.


If only someone would turn this into a play. Maybe some washed up old action hero...


----------



## Balthazar

Mahlerian said:


> Just finished:


Mahlerian, how do you find the musical analysis sections of the book? I am finishing up Worthen's excellent Schumann biography, but he studiously avoids any detailed discussion of the works. I was thinking of picking up the Geck to flesh that aspect out and would be interested in your thoughts.

... and now I know why we've had a fair amount of overlap on the Current Listening thread recently.


----------



## Mahlerian

Balthazar said:


> Mahlerian, how do you find the musical analysis sections of the book? I am finishing up Worthen's excellent Schumann biography, but he studiously avoids any detailed discussion of the works. I was thinking of picking up the Geck to flesh that aspect out and would be interested in your thoughts.
> 
> ... and now I know why we've had a fair amount of overlap on the Current Listening thread recently.


He doesn't go very far in depth (no full analyses of works, for example, more pointing to specific characteristic sections), though he highlights some of the less well-known works and provides a number of musical examples to make his points. There is a fine mini-chapter contrasting _Genoveva_ with _Lohengrin_. The thing which I feel is covered well is the changes in Schumann's style over the course of his career and the reasons for them. The musical life of the 1830s and 1840s is revealed in all of its factional, fractured glory.


----------



## SARDiver

I'm currently reading "Walden", by Thoreau. When that's finished, Democracy in America by Tocqueville, or perhaps The Iliad.


----------



## Dr Johnson

DrMike said:


> I doubt it - it is more a collection of stories. There is a linkage between them all, but it would be almost impossible to turn into a film. Now, there are some individual stories in it that could be adapted to film, like the story of the children of Hurin, which has a definite Oedipus feel to it.


I must confess that my tongue was hovering in the vicinity of my cheek when I posted that.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

DrMike said:


> I doubt it - it is more a collection of stories. There is a linkage between them all, but it would be almost impossible to turn into a film. Now, there are some individual stories in it that could be adapted to film, like the story of the children of Hurin, which has a definite Oedipus feel to it.


The Children of Hurin is a great story, but I would not trust Hollywood to preserve the dark and heroic atmosphere and that sense of struggle against insurmountable odds.


----------



## Tristan

Lately I've been reading _*The Picture of Dorian Gray*_ while listening to Beethoven's String Quartets. It's been an interesting combination


----------



## cwarchc

Good Omens
Terry Pratchett

Not upto the normal standard, but pleasant enough


----------



## Guest

My biggest problem is trusting new authors. I love reading, and am jealous of my reading time, and hate when I invest significant time in a book with which I find myself incredibly disappointed. When I find an author that I enjoy (and that is not an easy thing), I will devour everything they have written. When I come to the end, I stare off into the abyss, wondering where to go next. What reviews can I trust? And as a result, I end up re-reading works multiple times, because they are a known quantity, and I already know that I enjoy them.

I don't know why I have a hard time trying new authors.


----------



## EricABQ

_A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn. The last Great Battle of the American West._ by James Donovan.

I'm about a third of the way through so far and thus far impressed. Lots of detail and background on the major players.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Not a book, but a MOJO 'special' on David Bowie from 2003. Nice to re-read this and I'm glad I kept all of my old Mojos from 1994 to when I stopped buying it some 10 or so years later.


----------



## Avey

elgars ghost said:


> Not a book, but a MOJO 'special' on David Bowie from 2003. Nice to re-read this and I'm glad I kept all of my old Mojos from 1994 to when I stopped buying it some 10 or so years later.


Uh-oh, BOWIE ADDICT ALERT.


----------



## elgar's ghost

^
^

Oh, I dunno about that - I can think of at least three of his studio albums which bring me out in blotches and over the years he never released a really good live one either.


----------



## Albert7

Some light reading for this summer.










Sadly enough, I wonder if anyone here shares the same tastes here as I do?


----------



## Easy Goer

Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf


----------



## Pugg

Susan Greenfield: Mind Change.
very interesting reading :tiphat:


----------



## Cheyenne

Fascinating!


----------



## Dr Johnson

I've nearly finished reading this. Strange but well written.


----------



## Torkelburger

*Five Plays*
by Lord Dunsany

Borgo Press


----------



## Blancrocher

I'm reading an oldish and fairly famous article from 2004 called "Consider the Lobster," by David Foster Wallace.

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html

I was prepared to be annoyed, but I'm enjoying it despite myself. 10 pages long--hope nobody minds that I've fudged the "book" part of the thread title.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Needed some light reading. Love these old Peanuts books. Used to read them in the 1960s:


----------



## Balthazar

Blancrocher said:


> I'm reading an oldish and fairly famous article from 2004 called "Consider the Lobster," by David Foster Wallace.
> 
> http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html
> 
> I was prepared to be annoyed, but I'm enjoying it despite myself. 10 pages long--hope nobody minds that I've fudged the "book" part of the thread title.


That's a great piece. I remember when that article first came out, I was very surprised that _Gourmet_ printed it in their magazine -- one wouldn't assume their readership to be too receptive to its perspective...


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

This is super late notice, but I read this whole short story on the way to California on July 10...










Dostoevsky had quite a sense of humor!! The Gambler was funny too, which I read a few months ago.


----------



## Centropolis

I will start this novel very soon:


----------



## Avey

blancrocher said:


> i'm reading an oldish and fairly famous article from 2004 called "consider the lobster," by david foster wallace.
> 
> http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html
> 
> i was prepared to be annoyed, but i'm enjoying it despite myself. 10 pages long--hope nobody minds that i've fudged the "book" part of the thread title.


*go further*


----------



## GreenMamba

Avey said:


> *go further*
> 
> View attachment 72830


Big Red Son is really good in that as well. Still, I prefer A Supposedly Fun Thing...


----------



## breakup

"Evolution and Christian Faith"

https://books.google.com/books/cont...rk9EAf5Byy1uuVWPO0hlyPKhXjIX9FUq7Ufqz5dzNkIMh


----------



## Oebis

Fernando Pessoa - "The Book of Disquiet" and Rilke - "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge"


----------



## Balthazar

Oebis said:


> Fernando Pessoa - "The Book of Disquiet" and Rilke - "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge"


Great selections! I wouldn't mind re-reading the Pessoa myself this summer.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Florestan said:


> Needed some light reading. Love these old Peanuts books. Used to read them in the 1960s:


I used to have about a dozen of these books when they were issued on Coronet in the UK during the 70s - like so many newspaper cartoon books from my teen years (Giles, Andy Capp etc.) they went long ago but now I wish I'd kept them.


----------



## Heliogabo

Albert7 said:


> Some light reading for this summer.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sadly enough, I wonder if anyone here shares the same tastes here as I do?


Light reading? :lol: a socratic irony I guess.


----------



## SixFootScowl

elgars ghost said:


> I used to have about a dozen of these [Charlie Brown comic strip] books when they were issued on Coronet in the UK during the 70s - like so many newspaper cartoon books from my teen years (Giles, Andy Capp etc.) they went long ago but now I wish I'd kept them.


Yeah, I started grabbing them when we went to a lot of Garage sales some years ago. Just checked my stash and i now have 8 of them.

The other cartoon book that is really good is Dennis the Menace.


----------



## Blancrocher

I just read a pretty good essay by Julian Barnes about Van Gogh, referencing a couple new publications: the selected letters of Van Gogh, and a short biography by Julian Bell. I may read both of these (time permitting!)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n15/julian-barnes/selfie-with-sunflowers

I see that Barnes himself has a collection of essays about art that might be worth checking out. Anyways, I can vouch for "Flaubert's Parrot" and "The Sense of an Ending," which are great novels.


----------



## TxllxT

We are re-reading Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' and we notice sharper than before how 'La Dame aux Camélias' & 'Carmen' are being used for creating a Russian _femme fatale_. These parts of the book are quite dragging...


----------



## TxllxT

The heart of 'The Idiot': Rogozhin changes crosses with Prince Myshkin and immediately takes him to his old mother, who has become utterly childish. He asks his mother to bless his adopted brother and before anyone realises what is happening, she already has blessed the Prince. The title of Dostoyevsky's book points at her!


----------



## Guest

Just finished reading a collection of short stories by *Julian Barnes* called _Pulse_, and now embarking on a novel by *William Boyd* called _Brazzaville Beach_.


----------



## Barbebleu

Have a few on the go just now. Perfidia by James Elroy, Dead Girl Walking by Christopher Brookmyre , Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr and Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz. 

On the music front, Bathed in Lightning by Colin Harper, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford and Schubert's Winter Journey by Ian Bostridge.


----------



## clara s

TxllxT said:


> We are re-reading Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' and we notice sharper than before how 'La Dame aux Camélias' & 'Carmen' are being used for creating a Russian _femme fatale_. These parts of the book are quite dragging...


Nastásya Philíppovna Baráshkova in all her beauty...

a masterpiece of a great author

by the way have you visited Saint Petersburg?
there is the Anna Akhmatova museum, in her house as I remember


----------



## clara s

anthology of modern french poetry 

all the "Crème De La Crème" of french poets

"I have kissed the summer dawn. Before the palaces, nothing moved. 
The water lay dead. Battalions of shadows still kept the forest road."


----------



## TxllxT

clara s said:


> Nastásya Philíppovna Baráshkova in all her beauty...
> 
> a masterpiece of a great author
> 
> by the way have you visited Saint Petersburg?
> there is the Anna Akhmatova museum, in her house as I remember


Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' has in our opinion a wavering quality: sometimes enthralling, sometimes like we're getting stuck in a writer's block. We visited Saint Petersburg three times; last year we did Akhmatova's museum-apartment, this year we marvelled at her monument opposite the 'Kresty' prison on the Neva riverbank.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Barbebleu said:


> Have a few on the go just now. Perfidia by James Elroy, Dead Girl Walking by Christopher Brookmyre , *Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr* and Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz.
> 
> On the music front, Bathed in Lightning by Colin Harper, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford and Schubert's Winter Journey by Ian Bostridge.


I discovered the Bernie Gunther series a few months ago. I am completely hooked.


----------



## Guest

I'm not reading anything. I haven't for some time. I don't know what I want to read...


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

_*D.W Lawrence *_-Sons and Lovers.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Having run out of new things to read I thought I'd have another look at this:










A book about the origins and rise of English folk- rock, it casts a wide net, including a picture of the composer Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) while he was sharing a house with E.J. Moeran in a village in Kent in the 1920s:

*"Their residence lasted three years, during which time they managed to scandalise the village. Warlock had a manservant, Hal Collins (actually a Maori called Te Akua), who would fill up on stout and break into tribal dances around the huge bonfires Warlock loved to ignite in the garden. Warlock was seen riding his motorbike in the nude, and many visitors to the house - including Arnold Bax, Augustus John, Constant Lambert and Lord Berners - would often end up stripping off too; some even wandered naked into local shops to collect food, or were pushed around the streets in a wheelbarrow."
*


----------



## GreenMamba

Garry Wills' What Paul Meant, an attempt to "rehabilitate" Paul of Tarsus (from a liberal Catholic).


----------



## Tristan

Been reading *Labyrinths* by Jorge Luis Borges. I have to say it's one of the most fascinating reads I've ever done. I'm usually not into short stories, but these very short philosophical pieces are amazing


----------



## clara s

TxllxT said:


> Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' has in our opinion a wavering quality: sometimes enthralling, sometimes like we're getting stuck in a writer's block. We visited Saint Petersburg three times; last year we did Akhmatova's museum-apartment, this year we marvelled at her monument opposite the 'Kresty' prison on the Neva riverbank.


Fyodor is a real master with a unique insight in the human psychology

he is a giant in searching the human soul

some years ago I saw the "Idiot" in the theater, seven hours in a row, without a breath.

wonderful

my favourite is the "Possessed"

I would love to visit Dostoyevsky's house in Saint Petersburg.

Akhmatova was a very inspired poet


----------



## Xaltotun

Been reading Michel de Montaigne's essays. He's sometimes very infuriating in his smug prudence, his self-conscious, proud modesty. But he's a lovely rascal nonetheless, with no pretensions about himself.


----------



## clavichorder

Tristan said:


> Been reading *Labyrinths* by Jorge Luis Borges. I have to say it's one of the most fascinating reads I've ever done. I'm usually not into short stories, but these very short philosophical pieces are amazing


Borges is pretty darned cool.


----------



## Blancrocher

I just finished the short story "Black Box," by Jennifer Egan.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/black-box-2

A gripping story, very unlike anything else I've read. I'm definitely going to seek out more by this author.


----------



## starthrower

A compilation of essays and articles on jazz and claasical music with a beautifully written foreward by Milton Babbitt.


----------



## Harmonie

Alternating between "The Bassoon (Yale Musical Instrument Series)" and Anthony Baines' "Brass Instruments: Their History and Development".


----------



## Blancrocher

"The Diseased Garden," by Michel de Ghelderode.

http://www.diseasedgardens.com/MyNewBlog/michel-de-ghelderode-the-diseased-garden/

In addition to this and countless other things, Ghelderode authored the text that became the basis for Ligeti's "Le Gran Macabre."


----------



## Dr Johnson

I have just started this. My appetite was whetted by this review.


----------



## GreenMamba

Dr Johnson said:


> I have just started this. My appetite was whetted by this review.


I read that several years ago and liked it a lot. Curious that the review is dated last month.


----------



## Dr Johnson

GreenMamba said:


> I read that several years ago and liked it a lot. Curious that the review is dated last month.


Apparently it took 10+ years to find an English publisher!

* "The real mystery, though, is how it took so long - more than a decade - to get a British publisher. Did they think, perhaps, that Wodehouse fans would be offended, or wouldn't get it? If so, it was an unworthy thought. Thank goodness it is finally here."
*
_The Grauniad_ _26/05/15_


----------



## Badinerie

The Gaiety Stage Door; Thirty Years' Reminiscences of the the Theatre by James Jupp.

Stories from the Edwardian Musical Theatre.


----------



## GreenMamba

I'm re-reading Williams Gaddis' novel *Carpenter's Gothic*.


----------



## arpeggio

Connie Willis: _To Say Nothing of the Dog_.


----------



## clavichorder

I just finished Hardy's _Far From the Madding Crowd_. And have tortured myself by reading reviews of perhaps my most loved classic novel I've yet read(can't believe the negative reactions some people have...)! This was really right up my alley in so many ways.


----------



## breakup

clavichorder said:


> I just finished Hardy's _Far From the Madding Crowd_. And have tortured myself by reading reviews of perhaps my most loved classic novel I've yet read(*can't believe the negative reactions some people have.*..)! This was really right up my alley in so many ways.


There will always be someone who doesn't like something. My father-in-law used to get really upset about grammar in the Sarah-Lee commercials from the early 70's.


----------



## omega

*Patrick Modiano*
_Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier (So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood)_


----------



## Blancrocher

100 Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper.

I've been meaning to read this (and the other T-R letter volumes) since I heard about them. T-R is on my short list of favorite historians, and he's a great writer by any measure. Reading these letters it's easy to see why he was so generally hated, but also why he was so intensely loved by his small circle of intimate friends. Fascinating reading.


----------



## cwarchc

Just starting this


----------



## Piwikiwi

I am almost halfway in "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust


----------



## Morimur




----------



## Avey

I can finally read (for pleasure) again! Let us [me] get to it:









(Part II, for reason relevant in these parts...)


----------



## clavichorder

Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson and also Robinson Crusoe.

Self Reiiance...that´s a damn compelling read for me. I want to share with you this quote and my reaction.


¨The Pupil takes the same delight in subordinating everything to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany, in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his masters mind.¨
(here is the kicker) ¨But in all unbalanced minds the classification is idolised, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the systems blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe¨ (stops to rearrange my neurons, but to no purpose)
¨the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built.¨

Screw you Emerson, for doing exactly what you are explaining as a thing to watch out for, to me. I feel like this will always be pertinent and see no reason examine it with my own less clear perceptions, any time soon.


----------



## Wood

Dr Johnson said:


> Having run out of new things to read I thought I'd have another look at this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A book about the origins and rise of English folk- rock, it casts a wide net, including a picture of the composer Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) while he was sharing a house with E.J. Moeran in a village in Kent in the 1920s:
> 
> *"Their residence lasted three years, during which time they managed to scandalise the village. Warlock had a manservant, Hal Collins (actually a Maori called Te Akua), who would fill up on stout and break into tribal dances around the huge bonfires Warlock loved to ignite in the garden. Warlock was seen riding his motorbike in the nude, and many visitors to the house - including Arnold Bax, Augustus John, Constant Lambert and Lord Berners - would often end up stripping off too; some even wandered naked into local shops to collect food, or were pushed around the streets in a wheelbarrow."
> *


An obnoxious bunch of toffs for sure.

It is a fine book though, with plenty of ideas for future listening.


----------



## Wood

*Joseph Jenkins* - The Humanure Handbook










Plenty to peruse here, with a scientific approach to recycling, the perils of mains water, fecophobia and much more.

Recommended for its solid content.


----------



## Guest

In honor of the 125th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft's birthday yesterday, I am reading this:


----------



## omega

*Albert Camus*
_La Peste (The Plague)_


----------



## musicrom

musicrom said:


> I finished reading Macbeth for the first time about a week ago. I'm in the process of reading The Stranger in French, but that's taking me a while. I just recently ordered Buck's The Good Earth from the library, hoping to get it soon.
> 
> This summer is on pace to be my best summer for reading in a while, lol.


Finally finished _The Good Earth_. I liked it more than I expected. 
Next book ordered from the library: _Ficciones_, by Jorge Luis Borges.


----------



## Piwikiwi

musicrom said:


> Finally finished _The Good Earth_. I liked it more than I expected.
> Next book ordered from the library: _Ficciones_, by Jorge Luis Borges.
> 
> View attachment 74003
> View attachment 74004


Ficciones, might be the best book I have ever read.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Richard Fletcher - Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England.










_'On a gusty March day in 1016, as King Canute was completing his subjugation of the north of England, he commanded the appearance of the greatest of his northern subjects, Earl Uhtred of Northumbria, at a place called Wiheal, probably near Tadcaster in Yorkshire. Uhtred had been loyal to Canute's predecessor, Ethelred the Unraed, but realized that Canute had an overwhelming upper hand, and came with forty retainers to Wiheal to make his submission. However, as Richard Fletcher recounts in his opening to this book, "Treachery was afoot". Uhtred and his men were ambushed and slaughtered by an old enemy of Uhtred's called Thurbrand, with Canute's connivance. This book analyses the long bloodfeud which resulted from this act of treachery'._


----------



## Pugg

​
*James Baldwin: Another country.*


----------



## Avey

I just completed *Douglas Adams*' fantastic _Hitchhiker's Guide_ series. I would say the fourth book was the low point, but fifth is terrific, and overall, an extraordinarily fun collection here. I recommend it to all sci-fi fans, and, more importantly, all those who just appreciate _good, unique writing_. I cannot think of anyone who writes like Adams. Very special.

Anyways, I turn to:

*Carson McCullers* - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter


----------



## brotagonist

James Hillman - A Terrible Love Of War

Generally, quite interesting, but a bit heavy on the myths and old gods  Much of what he said about our modern culture and its relationship to war mirrors my own views, but I had never considered how Christianity is instrumental in the perpetuation of warring. I got a bit impatient toward the end and might have missed the whole point  or maybe not, since it is kind of rambling and poetic.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Finding myself (yet again) without fresh reading material I have been dipping into this again.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## TurnaboutVox

Very terse and impressionistic, and capable of invoking very vivid imagery in the reader; Jacob's Room has a very minimalistic plot. It seems to me a kind of novelistic equivalent of Seurat's pointillist style of visual art, or (in another direction) perhaps also close to what Webern was trying to evoke by means of very intense, concentrated expressions.


----------



## Levanda

On Sunday I went to car boot sale, I got a book War and Peace by Tolstoy for 10 pence is bargain I should to long read after when I finish book by Haruki Murakami Dance Dance Dance.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

Levanda said:


> On Sunday I went to car boot sale, I got a book War and Peace by Tolstoy for 10 pence is bargain I should to long read after when I finish book by Haruki Murakami Dance Dance Dance.


I read and loved 'Anna Karenina' between school and university, but I never got round to 'War5 and Peace' afterwards, as i had intended. POst-retirement, perhaps. I hope you enjoy reading it, Levanda.


----------



## Dr Johnson

The only 19th century Russian novel which I have read and enjoyed is _Dead Souls_ by Gogol.

I'm sorry to say I fell down very quickly with the usual suspects. My bad.


----------



## Ilarion

The Ten Worst Economic Theories by Bjorn Wahlroos.


----------



## Crudblud

Will Self - _The Quantity Theory of Insanity_


----------



## Piwikiwi

*Sodom and Gomorrah* by Proust. I have finally struggled my way through *the Guermantes Way*. The latter one had parts that were (intentionally?) very dull, luckily it seems to pick up again. This books has been fantastic so far even if the translation is a bit too much at times. Normally, I have no problems with reading English but I regularly need to use a dictionary for this book.


----------



## Ingélou

I'm halfway through '*Victorian Miniature'* by *Owen Chadwick (1960)* & it's brilliant. Owen Chadwick was a scholar I'd come across in my MA studies, and he died recently. In the obituary, we saw that this book was regarded as his masterpiece, so we ordered it from Lowestoft Library's Reserve Stock - John has already read it. (He's a book-reading machine.)

It's the account of life in a Victorian parish, Ketteringham in Norfolk, so not far from where we live. The squire (Sir John Boileau) & the parson (William Wayte Andrew) both kept diaries for the best part of 30 years, and these have survived. So we can know the ins-and-outs of the power struggle between them, their differing religious views, their misunderstandings, their feelings of frustration. It's a one-off, this book - absolutely fascinating.

The following is quoted from page 87 and throws an astonishing light on the rural psyche in Victorian Norfolk:

*On 27th April, 1847, Lady Catherine Boileau was out walking in the village with her daughter Agnes & met Mrs Durrant. She asked after her rheumatism, and then Mrs Durrant exclaimed in a voice of lamenttion, 'What a sad thing this is, is it not, my Lady? Is it not dreadful?'

'What thing?'

'Why sure, have you not heard, my Lady? I mean about the children being killed?'

'No,' said Lady Catherine. 'What children? And how?' She supposed that some accident must have happened.

'O dear, I wonder you have not heard, that the Queen has ordered all the children in the kingdom under five years of age to be killed.'

Lady Catherine wanted to laugh; but Mrs Durrant looked so unhappy and so serious that she could not. She tried to explain that the Queen had no power to order such a thing even if she wished it, but that she was a good and kind woman and never would wish it. She wento all the cottages & found everyone else, except the sceptical Mrs Thrower, believing the report. Some said they hardly knew how to believe it, especially as it was said that the Queen was to begin with her own children - but then, as they were dumb & had not their right know (i.e. were idiots) she did not perhaps mind so much.

Upon inquiry the Boileaus found that this idea of Queen Victoria as a modern Herod was widely believed in Hethersett and other neighbouring villages. It appeared to have arisen because the Poor Law authorities had issued a decree that all the children in the poor house should be vaccinated.*


----------



## TurnaboutVox

"The theme and narrative structure of the novel is modelled on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Les Confessions, the reading of which has a huge impact on the protagonist's life." That's as maybe, but I am finding it quite hard to stay focused on this novel, precisely because of the discursive narrative structure and the sense that actions do not really have consequences for the protagonist. Maybe I should wait to pass judgement until I've finished it, though.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Piwikiwi said:


> *Sodom and Gomorrah* by Proust. I have finally struggled my way through *the Guermantes Way*. The latter one had parts that were (intentionally?) very dull, luckily it seems to pick up again. This books has been fantastic so far even if the translation is a bit too much at times. Normally, I have no problems with reading English but I regularly need to use a dictionary for this book.


I enjoyed Sodom and Gomorrah. When I next have a go at Proust I have to tackle The Prisoner and The Fugitive. I am already sick of Albertine, now there's a whole book about her. I can't understand why Proust, having dealt brilliantly with sexual jealousy in Swann in Love, had to bang on about the wretched Albertine and the narrator's obsession with her at such length.

Are you reading the Penguin Classics edition edited by Christopher Prendergast? I think it a massive improvement over Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (never got further than the opening of the second volume with either of them).


----------



## Guest

TurnaboutVox said:


> "The theme and narrative structure of the novel is modelled on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Les Confessions, the reading of which has a huge impact on the protagonist's life." That's as maybe, but I am finding it quite hard to stay focused on this novel, precisely because of the discursive narrative structure and the sense that actions do not really have consequences for the protagonist. Maybe I should wait to pass judgement until I've finished it, though.


Oh TV, I read that only a couple of months ago, the first Boyd novel I ever read and I thought it was absolutely magnificent!! I agree with you in part that at the outset I found it difficult going (a bit like a Bruckner symphony, you can't really grasp it if you keep putting it down for a break, you have to keep going to keep the narrative arch in focus), but as the work/novel unfolds it starts to tighten up and the excitement really builds. I recently finished his _*Brazzaville Beach*_, which I found a little under par compared to TNC, but still taught and highly enjoyable. I have to say that I'm a recent convert to Boyd and I am happy to see that there are many novels of his awaiting me.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

TalkingHead said:


> Oh TV, I read that only a couple of months ago, the first Boyd novel I ever read and I thought it was absolutely magnificent!! I agree with you in part that at the outset I found it difficult going (a bit like a Bruckner symphony, you can't really grasp it if you keep putting it down for a break, you have to keep going to keep the narrative arch in focus), but as the work/novel unfolds it starts to tighten up and the excitement really builds.


Yes, I think part of the problem is that I tend only to have time to read novels when I'm on holiday from work (during term time I'm kept pretty busy with what I have to read). So I got 4/10 of the way through this at Easter and only picked it up again last Sunday on the flight back home. Your enthusiasm will strengthen my resolve to finish it over the next few days.


----------



## Mahlerian

Finished this monster of a textbook:









Started on this:


----------



## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> Finished this monster of a textbook:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Started on this:


Blimey, Mahlerian (I can't quite reduce that to a more informal "Mahl"), you seem to be a funster (a raver, a party animal) at heart, hey! Nah, just kidding, these tomes have to be read, there's no doubt. You know, it's been more or less several years now (I leave the precise duration vague) that I embarked on the collected essays of Adorno. I will get there, one day.


----------



## Mahlerian

TalkingHead said:


> Blimey, Mahlerian (I can't quite reduce that to a more informal "Mahl"), you seem to be a funster (a raver, a party animal) at heart, hey! Nah, just kidding, these tomes have to be read, there's no doubt. You know, it's been more or less several years now (I leave the precise duration vague) that I embarked on the collected essays of Adorno. I will get there, one day.


As I said the other day to someone on this forum, I'm probably the only person here to have actually read all four volumes of La Grange's Mahler biography, front to back.


----------



## Blancrocher

Mahlerian said:


> As I said the other day to someone on this forum, I'm probably the only person here to have actually read all four volumes of La Grange's Mahler biography, front to back.


Careful, Mahlerian--people have lost their modships for saying things like this!


----------



## Dim7

Blancrocher said:


> Careful, Mahlerian--people have lost their modships for saying things like this!


IMO forcing someone to be a mod (with all the responsibilites, not just powers) would seem to be a more likely consequence.


----------



## Blancrocher

Dim7 said:


> IMO forcing someone to be a mod (with all the responsibilites, not just powers) would seem to be more likely consequence.


You're probably right. I recall they forced Frederik Magle to be the site's owner when he admitted to reading Taruskin's history of music front-to-back.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

TalkingHead said:


> Blimey, Mahlerian (I can't quite reduce that to a more informal "Mahl")


Oh, I don't know, he's answered to 'M' in the past...


----------



## Piwikiwi

Dr Johnson said:


> I enjoyed Sodom and Gomorrah. When I next have a go at Proust I have to tackle The Prisoner and The Fugitive. I am already sick of Albertine, now there's a whole book about her. I can't understand why Proust, having dealt brilliantly with sexual jealousy in Swann in Love, had to bang on about the wretched Albertine and the narrator's obsession with her at such length.
> 
> Are you reading the Penguin Classics edition edited by Christopher Prendergast? I think it a massive improvement over Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (never got further than the opening of the second volume with either of them).


I'm reading the Moncrieff version because the whole thing only cost me 30 euros. The vocabulary is a drag but I still quite like it. I really want to learn French this year and I want the second time I read it to be in French, that might take a a while.

Haha, I quite like Albertine actually, the person I am sick of is Duchess de Guermantes. People always say that this book is about memory but this book seems to be about obsession more than anything to me.

I'm still unsure if I made the right decision the read the whole thing in one go but I want to read it again anyway.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Piwikiwi said:


> I'm reading the Moncrieff version because the whole thing only cost me 30 euros. The vocabulary is a drag but I still quite like it. I really want to learn French this year and I want the second time I read it to be in French, that might take a a while.
> 
> Haha, I quite like Albertine actually, the person I am sick of is Duchess de Guermantes. People always say that this book is about memory but this book seems to be about obsession more than anything to me.
> 
> I'm still unsure if I made the right decision the read the whole thing in one go but I want to read it again anyway.


Well. you're a better man than I am if you've ploughed through Moncrieff this far! :tiphat:

Mind you, mention of his version prompted me to see if I could find a picture of the edition I bought in 1982. And I did:










A slice of nostalgia, but not for Moncrieff's prose.

I find all the Guermantes family ramifications hard to follow, so much so that I found a website called something like who's who in Proust.

Obsession certainly looms large in the book.

Have you read George Painter's biography of Proust? Very entertaining and interesting.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Dr Johnson said:


> Well. you're a better man than I am if you've ploughed through Moncrieff this far! :tiphat:
> 
> Mind you, mention of his version prompted me to see if I could find a picture of the edition I bought in 1982. And I did:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A slice of nostalgia, but not for Moncrieff's prose.


Haha, that one looks better than mine. It is the standard cheap wordsworth edition with some kind of Impressionistic panting.

You made me curious about how much better the other books are. I've also read infinite jest this year and that greatly increased my tolerance for thick, purple prose.



> I find all the Guermantes family ramifications hard to follow, so much so that I found a website called something like who's who in Proust.


Would you be so kind to share that website?



> Obsession certainly looms large in the book.
> 
> Have you read George Painter's biography of Proust? Very entertaining and interesting.


Thank you for the recommendation, that sounds like an interesting read and proust has certainly turned into one of my favourite authors.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Moncrieff's (English) prose is often unnecessarily ornate and flowery.

The Who's Who in Proust website is here.

Here's a link to Amazon for the biography.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

I haven't been reading, but I have been writing. I may post it on TC in my short story blog when it's done. It's about a girl who either develops schizophrenia... or she is telling everyone the truth... that the Conservatory is haunted! 

On side note, this was my 3001 post.


----------



## brotagonist

^ That sounds so gothic! You could turn it into an opera. You'll be able to fit yourself into the role ut:


----------



## Avey

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I haven't been reading,* but I have been writing.*


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Guest




----------



## SiegendesLicht

Jacob Grimm - Teutonic Mythology, the book that was the main source of inspiration for Wagner and for everyone after him who attempted to give their Germanic heritage a new life. A dry and difficult at times, but very enlightening read.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Avey said:


> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


If you care to read something, check out my TC blog! I've called it the Wandering Tower Short Story Blog. I have maybe 4 or 5 stories there.


----------



## BalalaikaBoy

Venture Deals (it's a book on venture capitalism from the perspective of both the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist)


----------



## omega

Mahlerian said:


> As I said the other day to someone on this forum, I'm probably the only person here to have actually read all four volumes of La Grange's Mahler biography, front to back.


And you can see the cat who sighs: _"Mahler, again..."_


----------



## Wood

Carol Steinfeld: Liquid gold










Just a wee read this, without the substance of the last book that I backed out. Urine separation doesn't get me going and I was a little pished at how much this book cost.

I'll get my coat....


----------



## hpowders

"Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (English translation of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky).

Too many convenient coincidences. Not my cup of tea (in a tall glass).


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

hpowders said:


> "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (English translation of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky).
> 
> Too many convenient coincidences. Not my cup of tea (in a tall glass).


HAHAHAHA that's how you viewed it? I viewed it more like Raskolnikov was prejudiced to his own circumstances, further egged on by temptation and pride. There is always spiritual component to Dostoevsky though.


----------



## hpowders

Huilunsoittaja said:


> HAHAHAHA that's how you viewed it? I viewed it more like Raskolnikov was prejudiced to his own circumstances, further egged on by temptation and pride. There is always spiritual component to Dostoevsky though.


No argument. But, when the despicable Svidrigailov just happens to be renting the adjoining room to Sonya's, given all the rooms available to rent in St. Petersburg, and hears Raskolnikov's confession to Sonya.....


----------



## Blancrocher

hpowders said:


> No argument. But, when the despicable Svidrigailov just happens to be renting the adjoining room to Sonya's, given all the rooms available to rent in St. Petersburg, and hears Raskolnikov's confession to Sonya.....


Oh, I don't know--If the expensive housing market in St. Petersburg these days is any indication I can easily believe that it was the only flat available.


----------



## hpowders

Blancrocher said:


> Oh, I don't know--If the expensive housing market in St. Petersburg these days is any indication I can easily believe that it was the only flat available.


It seems a bit too convenient for me. Fyodor had an astonishing knowledge of human nature and the human soul, but occasionally his situations seem a bit contrived to me.

But then again, what do I know? I drink my tea out of a mug instead of a tall glass.


----------



## clara s

hpowders said:


> "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (English translation of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky).
> 
> Too many convenient coincidences. Not my cup of tea (in a tall glass).


"When reason fails, the devil helps!"

That's Fyodor hahaha
either you love him or hate him

novels must represent all the messiness of life, its coincidences, false starts, and blind alleys,
as i read somewhere

ps try your tea in a tall glass straight from a samovar

pure russian tea


----------



## hpowders

clara s said:


> "When reason fails, the devil helps!"
> 
> That's Fyodor hahaha
> either you love him or hate him
> 
> novels must represent all the messiness of life, its coincidences, false starts, and blind alleys,
> as i read somewhere
> 
> ps try your tea in a tall glass straight from a samovar
> 
> pure russian tea


I don't hate him! I've been spending so much time dissecting Crime and Punishment, when I actually finish it in a few days, I will surely miss it! I love when he refers to the size of the flats these people were able to rent as "closets". At least meals and maid service came with the rooms!

My Russian grandfather always drank his hot tea in a tall glass. I remember being dragged there as a kid!

I will continue with Fyodor after C & P. Not sure which novel. Perhaps "The Brothers Karamazov".

That one should keep me away from TC a good 6 months at least!


----------



## clara s

hpowders said:


> I don't hate him! I've been spending so much time dissecting Crime and Punishment, when I actually finish it in a few days, I will surely miss it! I love when he refers to the size of the flats these people were able to rent as "closets". At least meals and maid service came with the rooms!
> 
> My Russian grandfather always drank his hot tea in a tall glass. I remember being dragged there as a kid!
> 
> I will continue with Fyodor after C & P. Not sure which novel. Perhaps "The Brothers Karamazov".
> 
> That one should keep me away from TC a good 6 months at least!


one of my favourite quotes from this novel is this

"Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. 
Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare"

top quote

you had a russian grandfather? very interesting
what was his name?

between the 2 novels you mentioned, read "white nights"
and then "the underground"

short but veeery strong, less than six months hahaha


----------



## hpowders

clara s said:


> one of my favourite quotes from this novel is this
> 
> "Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up.
> Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare"
> 
> top quote
> 
> you had a russian grandfather? very interesting
> what was his name?
> 
> between the 2 novels you mentioned, read "white nights"
> and then "the underground"
> 
> short but veeery strong, less than six months hahaha


Max Pollack I don't know if it was "Americanized"). He never spoke. He just sat there drinking tea out of his tall glass, always with a stern look. Never ever even tossed me a kopeck!

Thanks! So much to read. So little time!


----------



## Vaneyes

Didn't he also say, "Two wrongs not make right, but two rights make U-turn."

No, sorry...Confucius.


----------



## Crudblud

Fiction: Thomas Pynchon - _Bleeding Edge_

Non-fiction: Noam Chomsky - _Failed States_


----------



## Tristan

*Never Let Me Go* by Kazuo Ishiguro

So far I've only read "The Remains of the Day", loved it, and wanted to check out his other work. It's bizarre and captivating so far


----------



## Balthazar

*Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician*
_John Worthen_










This is an excellent, comprehensive biography of Schumann with a heavy reliance on primary sources. Notably, Worthen eschews the trend to "back-read" Schumann's final mental illness into the earlier phases of his life, and in the process de-bunks certain myths and mis-conceptions perpetuated by less rigorous biographers.

An excellent portrait of one of the giants of Romanticism, but potential readers should be aware that this volume contains no musical analysis.


----------



## elgar's ghost

A history of the fertile Manchester music scene consisting mainly of illuminating quotes from many of the prime movers from the mid-70s onwards - all set to a backdrop of post-industrial decay and with a palpable lack of glamour, both of which were key constituents which helped define a distinctive musical environment even before the legendary Factory organisation was set up.

Author/singer John Robb must carry some clout in that neck of the woods - he even managed to get the notoriously reticent Morrissey involved.

Different cover to the one shown below.


----------



## hpowders

Still reading Crime and Punishment.

Now it's getting good!


----------



## brotagonist

I've read almost all of Dostoyevsky's major novels (decades ago—I'm long overdue for rereading), but that one I still haven't read


----------



## Avey

Completed _The Aeneid_; completed _Faust: Part II_. Not commenting on those here.

Finished _The Heart is a Lonely Hunter_. Very simple prose, which began to wear on me about 3/5 through. Great book, sympathetic figures and whatnot. But it was the final moments that were truly haunting. Impressing end.

Also, Mick -- the quasi-protagonist -- was infatuated with music, and she mentions Mozart, Beethoven's 3rd, etc. Thus, it is relevant to us, people.

Next, another *Bolano* novel, _Amulet_.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

hpowders said:


> Still reading Crime and Punishment.
> 
> Now it's getting good!


You are luckier with that book than I was. It gave me a headache after 50 pages.


----------



## GreenMamba

C.V. Wedgwood on Cardinal Richilieu. Slim old paperback.


----------



## hpowders

SiegendesLicht said:


> You are luckier with that book than I was. It gave me a headache after 50 pages.


Yes, but it gets better, though! One of my favorite characters, despicable though he was, just put a bullet in his head!
I took it personally and feel horrible! 

I would complain to the author....but he is long dead....so I must suffer in silence!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

hpowders said:


> Yes, but it gets better, though! One of my favorite characters, despicable though he was, just put a bullet in his head!
> I took it personally and feel horrible!
> 
> I would complain to the author....but he is long dead....so I must suffer in silence!


Right, that is the problem with Dostoevsky. He makes you feel horrible.

Goethe's young Werther puts a bullet through his head too, but before that, there is much in the story that is uplifting and beautiful. Dostoevsky's world is a world in impenetrable gray, with not a ray of light in sight.


----------



## hpowders

SiegendesLicht said:


> Right, that is the problem with Dostoevsky. He makes you feel horrible.
> 
> Goethe's young Werther puts a bullet through his head too, but before that, there is much in the story that is uplifting and beautiful. Dostoevsky's world is a world in impenetrable gray, with not a ray of light in sight.


Yes. D's Russia is quite bleak. His character rents a "closet" instead of a room and frequently shares a bed with a mouse.


----------



## elgar's ghost

I've attempted to read Crime & Punishment at least three times. The author evokes the atmosphere of (?)mid-19th century St. Petersburg as brilliantly as he does Raskolnikov's mental deterioration but I just found the action too static - once I got about halfway through the book each page seemed as if it was twice as long as the previous one.


----------



## Guest

elgars ghost said:


> I've attempted to read Crime & Punishment at least three times. The author evokes the atmosphere of (?)mid-19th century St. Petersburg as brilliantly as he does Raskolnikov's mental deterioration but I just found the action too static - once I got about halfway through the book each page seemed as if it was twice as long as the previous one.


Too bad "D" didn't include a few chase scenes...


----------



## cwarchc

An amazing history


----------



## elgar's ghost

Kontrapunctus said:


> Too bad "D" didn't include a few chase scenes...


Good point - the Nevsky Prospekt would have been ideal for it.


----------



## hpowders

Finally finished Crime & Punishment. Redemption through love. Wonderful!


----------



## Ingélou

Reading 'Terry Wogan - An Autobiography', a book we got from a charity shop. Tag read it first and spent days chortling, and now it's my turn. Here's my favourite bit so far, about the famous Irish race-course commentator Michael O'Hehir (pp 145-6):

*One sunny afternoon, Michael was presenting & commentating on the television coverage of a meeting from the Curragh, the Mecca of Irish race-courses. He set the scene from the paddock, as the horses for the first race paraded around him:

'Dia Dhuibh, a chairde Ghael - Good afternoon & welcome to another great day's racing from the glorious setting of the Curragh of Kildare!'

The camera tracked in, from long panoramic shot to close-up of the great O'Hehir. Even as it did, Michael's free hand, the one not holding the microphone, flashed across his chest, to his heart. Now in close-up, Michael looks at the camera, hand on heart without a word. It is unheard of - Michael O'Hehir is silent. His expression is one of pain, of pleading... The camera stays on him, the director as transfixed as O'Hehir himself, and a half a million Irish viewers.

As the great commentator stands mute, speechless & growing ever more wan, the terrible suspicion grows. In the outside broadcast control van, the penny finally drops:
'Get the camera off Michael!' shouts the director. 'He's having' a heart attack!'

Off the camera zooms, to a long shot of the course, the stands, the bookies, anything... As he sees the camera move off him, Michael O'Hehir himself moves for the first time. Swiftly, the hand on his heart moves to his mouth. He smiles, and begins to talk again. It is a miracle ... a miracle that he caught his false teeth as they flew out of his mouth on the word Kildare. A miracle that he did not brain the director for keeping the camera on him so long, when all he wanted to do was get his teeth back in ...*


----------



## Piwikiwi

I'm taking a short break from reading "In Search of Lost Time" and I'm now reading Virginia Woolf's novel "The Waves". "To the Lighthouse" is what sparked my interest in English literature and this books is just as great. I can't think of any writer who can write so beautifully and who paces her story as well as she does.


----------



## Chopiniana93

The last book I read this summer was a travel book, _Mirrors of the Unseen_. It's a beautiful book about the 3 years-long journey of the writer to Iran, I urguely recommend it!


----------



## Andolink

75 pgs. into this:


----------



## gHeadphone

The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross, its a great book but its so long i feel like ive been reading it for weeks and still halfway through!


----------



## Badinerie

This one.


----------



## Blancrocher

Italo Calvino: The Complete Cosmicomics (Trans. McLaughlin, Parks, and Weaver)


----------



## Guest

It's pretty good so far, but I don't think the writing is as good as Larsson's--lacks his depth and edge.


----------



## Sonata

Andrew Porter's translation of The RING libretto. just finished Walkure


----------



## Crudblud

Mervyn Peake - _Titus Groan_


----------



## musicrom

musicrom said:


> Finally finished _The Good Earth_. I liked it more than I expected.
> Next book ordered from the library: _Ficciones_, by Jorge Luis Borges.


Finished _Ficciones_! At first, it kind of confused me, but as I read more and more, I began to understand better. Definitely an interesting collection; philosophical in nature, and Borges' writing style is very unique in its succinctness. For some reason, I was expecting more of a Garcia Marquez style which would just carry you through the stories. I'm not sure that Borges is really for me at the moment, but still, it was a worthwhile read.

Next book ordered from the library: _Cat's Cradle_ by Kurt Vonnegut.


----------



## schigolch

Rereading (with great pleasure) this wonderful classic. I've left too many years passing before coming back to Gibbons.


----------



## Blancrocher

schigolch, I think you ought to post about your progress volume by volume--otherwise you'll be putting in far too much work for too few likes. In any case, for anyone interested in Gibbon I'd also recommend his quite amusing--and short!--autobiography.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2199


----------



## starthrower

I won't read all that Gibbons, 'cause I don't want to die a torturous death like Gibbons. Gotta get some exercise. I do have the condensed version. A mere 1300 pages.

Just started this one.


----------



## SarahNorthman

Ah Pride and Prejudice has all of my love right now. Honestly it always does, but even more so these days.


----------



## Piwikiwi

I've returned to the creepy adventures of stalker marcel in *In Search of Lost Time*


----------



## Dr Johnson

Piwikiwi said:


> I've returned to the creepy adventures of stalker marcel in *In Search of Lost Time*


I'm wondering whether to skip Volume 5 (The Prisoner and The Fugitive) and go straight to Volume 6.


----------



## Blancrocher

Adam Phillips - Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst


----------



## Guest

Being Mortal.

Atul Gawande.


----------



## Tristan

*The Plague* by Albert Camus.

Just finished _The Stranger_ and it was appropriately one of the strangest books I've ever read. So on to reading more by him


----------



## starthrower

Looking ahead, this is the next book I'd like to read. Ms. Wulf was interviewed by Ira Flato on his public radio show Science Friday, and it was a fascinating conversation. Seems that Von Humboldt was the most famous naturalist of the 19th century, and a huge inspiration to Darwin, Muir, and many others. And for whatever reasons, he was forgotten in the 20th century. The father of environmentalism, Humboldt was thinking and talking about the human impact on the planet and climate change in the first half of the 19th century. He was also a vigorous world traveler, scaling mountains in South America to the tune of 19,000 feet! 200 years later, Ms. Wulf attempted the same feat, but only managed to make it to 16,400 feet. Humbolt died in 1859 at age 90.


----------



## arpeggio

Maynard Solomon: _Mozart. A Life_.

As a result of all of the recent gobbledygook that has been posted about Mozart, including a post accusing me of not knowing what I am talking about, I have been motivated to read this biography of Mozart (my wife got it for me as a present), in order to separate the facts from any bogus nonsense.

For me one positive result from all of the contrary discussions.


----------



## Vronsky

Poor Folk - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67326.Poor_Folk


----------



## SarahNorthman

I'm not sure if it counts, but for school I am currently reading The Canterbury Tales, and The Wife of Bath's Tale.


----------



## clavichorder

I decided to read the one Asimov novel I never finished, apart from his children's novels which I will probably never read. *The Stars Like Dust.* Its entertaining enough and typical for him, it seems.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Tristan said:


> *The Plague* by Albert Camus.
> 
> Just finished _The Stranger_ and it was appropriately one of the strangest books I've ever read. So on to reading more by him


Good luck with The Plague. I found it one of the most boring books I've ever read. In fact I didn't finish it.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Dr Johnson said:


> I'm wondering whether to skip Volume 5 (The Prisoner and The Fugitive) and go straight to Volume 6.


I've decided to grit my teeth and plod through Volume 5 before tackling Volume 6.


----------



## Perotin

The Great controversy between Christ and Satan by founder of Sevent-day Adventist movement, Ellen G. White
Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha and Fairy tales


----------



## Pugg

Andrew Hollinghurts ; Line of Beauty

​


----------



## Jeff W

*In which Jeff starts a new book... finally...*

'North and South' took me a bit longer than I had expected. Mostly due to house work\repairs that needed doing. However, everything is almost done so now I can begin to enjoy some off hours!









'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' - C. S. Lewis


----------



## clavichorder

clavichorder said:


> I decided to read the one Asimov novel I never finished, apart from his children's novels which I will probably never read. *The Stars Like Dust.* Its entertaining enough and typical for him, it seems.


Definitely not Asimov's best. But I am glad to have read all his novels now. And it was kind of fun.

Now I have to decide what to read next...and the decision will be made quickly. It is between Hardy, Scott and Trollope. For Scott, either Kenilworth or Heart of the Midlothian. For Trollope, either Rachel Ray or Mr. Scarborouqh's Family. Or for Hardy, The Return of the Native. 5 books to choose from, based on what I'm feeling like.


----------



## Crudblud

James Joyce - _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_


----------



## Blancrocher

I recently read a review of what looks like an important new book about Nazi Germany -- "KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps," by Nikolaus Wachsmann. I plan to read it when I have the opportunity.

The review, btw, is written by the historian Thomas Laqueur, who I always find worth reading. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of objective, systematic history, but his review is punctuated with powerful reminiscences about the experiences of his own relatives in concentration camps. As always with such material, of course, it's difficult reading.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/thomas-laqueur/devoted-to-terror


----------



## clavichorder

I started reading *Rob Roy* by Sir Walter Scott.


----------



## GreenMamba

Kind of an interesting approach. Short chapters on 50 items that were relevant to the era: slave shackles for a child, a painting of a slave family, photographs, paintings, letters, uniforms, etc.


----------



## cwarchc

Another classic for me
I've only just started it, I'm undecided yet?


----------



## Avey

_Absalom, Absalom!_









About a quarter through, and I may confidently say that this is one of the more difficult books I have ever read, along with _Ulysses_, _Gravity's Rainbow_, _Faust II_, for examples I am familiar with. With Faulkner, however, the language is incredibly rich and the reward is never out of reach (or ignored).


----------



## Jeff W

*In which Jeff stays in Narnia*

Continuing through Narnia. I've been reading them in publication order and not the chronological order.









C. S. Lewis - The Horse and His Boy


----------



## aleazk

Mario Bunge - Treatise on Basic Philosophy (in eight books).

So far, I have read:

Book 2 - Semantics II: Interpretation and Truth.










Book 4 - Ontology II: A World of Systems.










Strongly recommended for anyone interested in a fresh take on some classic philosophical topics but up to date with the modern scientific developments. I would say it's a treatise on philosophy for scientists.

The second book is a masterpiece in clearing the semantical interpretations of the formalism of quantum mechanics from all the usual nonsense about observers, apparatuses and other positivism/operationalism stuff that is the dogma in the technical textbooks... but which is wrong.


----------



## Pugg

*Paul Golding: Senseless *








Raw and uncensored.


----------



## clara s

Mikhail Bulgakov's

Master and Margarita

reading it for third time


----------



## Abraham Lincoln

I'm currently skimming a few different Bach biographies right now.


----------



## Ingélou

Abraham Lincoln said:


> I'm currently skimming a few different Bach biographies right now.


Please tell us which you think is the most readable so we can just cherry-pick that one!


----------



## Guest




----------



## SiegendesLicht

G.K. Chesterton - the complete Father Brown series.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

Émile Zola - Nana.


----------



## arpeggio

Brian Aldiss _Helliconia Spring_.


----------



## mstar

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy). 

Just finished Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), War and Peace (Tolstoy), and Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky again), almost all at once. I'm looking for another book to read at the same time as Karenina...


----------



## Abraham Lincoln

Bach, Beethoven and the Boys


----------



## Dr Johnson

Dr Johnson said:


> I've decided to grit my teeth and plod through Volume 5 before tackling Volume 6.


Although I have taken the _decision_ I have not yet started the actual plod.

Thus I have been rereading bits of _The New Shostakovich_ by Ian MacDonald. Apart from being an interesting book about Shostakovich himself it is as good an introduction to the sheer paranoid lunacy of the Soviet system and the human consequences thereof as you could hope to find.

I've also just finished _The Silver Locomotive Mystery_ by Edward Marston, a whodunnit set in 1854 (picked up in a charity shop for £1.75). Not brilliantly written but entertaining enough at the price.


----------



## Kivimees

Comedy: A Year in the Scheisse - Getting to Know the Germans


----------



## Jeff W

*In which there is more Narnia*









Book Six (in publication order) of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Magician's Nephew.


----------



## Abraham Lincoln

Ingélou said:


> Please tell us which you think is the most readable so we can just cherry-pick that one!


Evening in the Palace of Reason (Bach and Frederick the Great combined, these two are my OTP) is still my favourite. The other two are a tad too stodgy for my tastes. :'P


----------



## Pugg

​*David Leavitt ; The page Turner. *


----------



## SarahNorthman

I am going to begin The Epic of Gilgamesh.


----------



## Jeff W

*In which there is The Last Battle*

Concluding the Narnia series next:









C. S. Lewis - The Last Battle. I'll probably tear through this one just as fast as the others.


----------



## Strange Magic

For cwarchc: I am happy to see that you are reading Moby Dick, even though it is not the unedited original-- it may spark you to read the Melville classic some day. When young, I myself read many classics of literature for the first time as Classic Comics, then later as a young adult read The Real Thing. I am admittedly a special case, but I have read Moby Dick at least a dozen times, averaging a re-read every five years or so, and am always again stupefied by the grandeur and intensity of this titanic masterpiece of literature. Melville drew heavily on Shakespeare and the King James for much of his style, and the results are superb, with phrases that will ring in your ears for the rest of your life. Also, do not let the intermixing of factual chapters on whaling and the usages of the sea with the ongoing story distress you--like many of the most compelling works of literature, Moby Dick is a great stew of dissimilar ingredients, each to be savored for its own qualities. And be warned: there are passages of such power and beauty in the book that you may find yourself in tears.....


----------



## Jeff W

*On second thought let's not go to Camelot, it is a silly place*

Blasted through C. S. Lewis' The Last Battle. Time to start something new!









Sir Thomas Malory - Le Morte Darthur. I read (most) of this one once before back in college. However, that was in the Early Modern English\Late Middle English and I struggled greatly with it. This edition has been rendered into Modern English by Professor Dorsey Armstrong.


----------



## Ingélou

I'm reading *Samuel Johnson: A Life* by David Nokes, Faber & Faber, 2009. I picked it up in a charity shop. It's excellent - and I speak as one who reads everything about Dr Johnson that I can lay my hands on.

I fell in love with his writing and character after reading *Rasselas* at the age of eighteen. It was on my pre-university reading list, and my father had just died, suddenly, of a heart attack while we were in holiday in Wales, on the afternoon of the day that I received my A-level results & knew that I'd got in at Durham. We came home to Chesterfield, and I forced myself to read all the stuff on the list despite my grief - I never found any other student who had done that!

I found *Rasselas* very calming & Johnson's melancholy view of life and ironic sense of humour were also right up my street. I chose Dr Johnson as one of my three eighteenth-century authors for my Finals - the other two were Pope & Swift.

Anyway, what I like about David Nokes is that he somehow conveys a flavour of the Great Cham's Inside Realness:

*A month later he was at his diary again, trying to create a grid to work out how many lines (of Latin verse) he could commit to memory a day, a week, a month, or a year. He started at ten lines per day, which would be very easy, and went up by progressive stages (thirty, sixty lines per day) until he reached 14,400 a month. All these mental calculations were very impressive but actually prevented him from doing what they were designed to promote, that is, reading and memorising. It was a device which he very often attempted when under stress; refusing to attempt the effort of what he could do, in favour of doing something else at which he frequently committed errors. This time he made no mistakes, but was unable to see whether he could actually memorise 7280 lines in a year, which, at sixty lines a day, he reckoned a decent average. In December 1729 he left Pembroke and did not return for twenty-three years. (page 29) *


----------



## TxllxT

We are reading Ivan Goncharov's _Talmud tome_ novel The Precipice (Обрыв). Sparkling humour, true to life dialogues, very romantic. A kind of Russian Sense & Sensibility.


----------



## Sonata

Class Dis-Mythed by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye

Robert Asprins Myth series is enjoyable for anyone looking for humorous fantasy, fans of Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld would likely enjoy Asprin's books.


----------



## brotagonist

For my light pleasure reading, I am reading (not another western  but) a crime thriller set in pre-revolutionary Russia called The White Russian by Tom Bradby. Like many in the genre, this, too, has a crime-fighting duo, Ruzsky and Pavel. The mystery has something to do with the Empress of all Russias and her relationship with the just murdered Rasputin. It's a page turner and I'm enjoying it.


----------



## clavichorder

I'm now reading _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ by Mark Twain. This should be an antidote to too much Sir Walter Scott, if there ever was one(I love Scott, but I'm more than ready for some Twain).


----------



## DiesIraeCX

We're going over _The Prince_ by Machiavelli right now in my class, it may be a bit over their heads, but quite a few of them are grasping it! I'm an eleventh grade literature teacher, by the way. I love challenging them with stuff like this, especially with books that I read in college.

Chapters VXII and XVIII


----------



## Blancrocher

I'll be reading this one soon: Karin Wieland's dual biography "Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives"

Very interesting review in the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/bombshells-a-critic-at-large-pierpont


----------



## Dr Johnson

Not my usual bill of fare but I am going to get this:

_Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction_, Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner

Review here.


----------



## Triplets

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough


----------



## Blancrocher

The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris, by Colin Jones

About the revolutionary emergence of the toothy smile. Interesting book.


----------



## Ken B

I always have several on the go at once. One I picked up as an impulse is The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, by Malmont. A modern pastiche pulp novel.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Lent to me by the proverbial bloke in the pub. A subject close to my heart due to being both born in Worcester and having an occasional liking for the hop. This book is well-researched but also poignant as countless boozers were closed and many then demolished during the sustained campaign for architectural disfigurement which started to plague the city in earnest during the 60s and 70s. Also features a section on some of the departed characters who involuntarily helped to make Worcester such an interesting (and sometimes dangerous) place, such as the unofficial street entertainer "Chicken" George Webb and infamous drunken brawlers such as Nobby Guy and Eddie Ruddick.


----------



## Mahlerian

I've started a long journey through:

W.A. Mozart, by Hermann Abert (translated by Stewart Spencer, edited by Cliff Eisen to bring it up-to-date)









Make no mistake, at around 1,500 pages, this is a monumental tome.


----------



## Kieran

Mahlerian said:


> I've started a long journey through:
> 
> W.A. Mozart, by Hermann Abert (translated by Stewart Spencer, edited by Cliff Eisen to bring it up-to-date)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Make no mistake, at around 1,500 pages, this is a monumental tome.


Some light reading there, brother! :lol:

I saw that book in town years ago, it was priced too high at the time. I hope you enjoy it!

I'm on a history kick at the moment, all things Ancient. Upstairs beisde the bed, I have Anthony Everitt's thrilling book, The Rise of Rome. I'd often wondered, _why Rome?_ Why was Rome so successful, as opposed to other cities in the ancient world. This book helps me understand.

Downstairs, in contrast to this, I have Adrian Goldsworthy's hefty tome, The Fall of the West, tracking the western empires collapse through hundreds of years of decline through almost endless civil war.

In the kitchen, I'm reading Julius Caesar's commentary on the Gallic Wars, great derring-do stuff, brilliantly written. So a bit of a Roman binge, of late... :tiphat:


----------



## musicrom

musicrom said:


> Finished _Ficciones_! At first, it kind of confused me, but as I read more and more, I began to understand better. Definitely an interesting collection; philosophical in nature, and Borges' writing style is very unique in its succinctness. For some reason, I was expecting more of a Garcia Marquez style which would just carry you through the stories. I'm not sure that Borges is really for me at the moment, but still, it was a worthwhile read.
> 
> Next book ordered from the library: _Cat's Cradle_ by Kurt Vonnegut.
> 
> View attachment 75243
> View attachment 75242


Finished Vonnegut's _Cat's Cradle_. A nice read, and also interesting; I enjoyed it quite a bit. Debating what should be my next book - a philosophical one in Mill's _On Liberty_, or Hardy's _The Mayor of Casterbridge_, or perhaps another book I could get from the library.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Translation: Glazunov: On life and works of the great Russian musician by Oleg Kunistyn










I'm going to be reeling over this book for months...!



It's the book I would have written. That's the best way I can put it. I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK. All 700-something pages of it! This book has EVERYTHING. I can't help feeling like it's a bit glossed up in parts... and yet, if it's true nonetheless... (should I even say this here or would people discredit me?) he is actually a much more interesting but _different_... and _sadder_... and _happier _person than I ever could have imagined. And can it be true?? An... "intentional alcohol poisoning?" This book is interesting mixture of realism and idealism, some things left to the mind to interpret...

I'm gonna spend more hours today pouring over the hardest segments to understand and translate today. It will take me many hours total to go through it all, but it's so long I'm skipping some stuff. Dag, haven't I wanted to feel like that over a book about him for so many years...??? :lol:


----------



## Blancrocher

Ingrid Rowland, From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town


----------



## Guest

Has anybody read _When We Were Orphans_ by Kazuo Ishiguro? I'm rereading pieces of it to just check that I hadn't been mistaken in my first full reading of it (about 10 years ago). Some of the reviews I've just been reading seem to rely more on what Ishiguro has written about his work than the work itself.

It's insanely absurd. Quite surreal. The plot, deliberately, does not stand up to scrutiny as the "detective mystery" that some took it for. The central character and first person narrator, Christopher Banks, is as unreliable as they come. Yet Philip Hensher gives us this, in The Guardian:



> The single problem with the book is the prose, which, for the first time, is so lacking in local colour as to be entirely inappropriate to the task in hand. One can't only admire a book's structure. There is something troubling about Ishiguro's prose style that took me a while to pin down, and it's this - he hardly ever uses a phrasal verb.


http://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/mar/19/fiction.bookerprize2000

And the 'task in hand' is? (Hensher doesn't say.)



> Ishiguro's avoidance of phrasal verbs is a major problem here - it gives his narrator a circumlocutious, cautious air which isn't really very helpful. More than that, it gives him a particular tone of voice which is not that of his social setting. It is bizarrely unconvincing as an idea of upper-middle-class London in the 1930s


It seems to me that he misses the point. Whatever else Banks is, he isn't supposed to be a convincing detective, this is not a detective story, and the style of speech is not meant to convey middle-class London in the 1930s.

I must say that whilst I've enjoyed the four Ishiguro novels I've read, there is something about the deliberately stilted English that his characters use that can get wearing at times. It's as if he himself has learned English from a text book and knows no better, so all his lead characters speak in the same way, whether they're talking about being a detective, a butler, a carer or a concert pianist.

Anyone else get the same vibe?


----------



## Avey

Gosh, so much I want to read, but I just dove into something and too far in to quit now (plus, like yeah, I enjoy it):

*John Barth* - End of the Road


----------



## Blancrocher

Roberto Bolaño - A Little Lumpen Novelita (trans. Natasha Wimmer)


----------



## Avey

Blancrocher said:


> Roberto Bolaño - A Little Lumpen Novelita (trans. Natasha Wimmer)


That one was on my list. Just went through his other novellas.


----------



## Blancrocher

Avey said:


> That one was on my list. Just went through his other novellas.


Yeah, he's a great writer--one of my favorites. I'll read everything by him eventually.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

I'm currently reading:
Joseph Conrad - Lord Jim
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex


----------



## Avey

Venedikt Erofeev - Moscow to the End of the Line









Had to visit four or so different book shops to find a copy.


----------



## Abraham Lincoln

Just readying myself for the Bachpocalypse.


----------



## cwarchc

I'm about halfway through this lightweight bedside reading


----------



## Dr Johnson

I've been browsing in this excellent book (playing truant from Proust again):










It is interesting to note that many of those recorded here did their turn on both sides of the law, i.e. sheriff or deputy one minute, outlaw the next. Also interesting that many of those who survived into the 20th century became actors, writers, journalists (Bat Masterson became a sports writer in New York).


----------



## Levanda

Finally I finished War and Peace in English I have to admit it not that was easy for me to read. Currently I am now reading Chekov short stories.


----------



## Levanda

Avey said:


> Venedikt Erofeev - Moscow to the End of the Line
> 
> View attachment 77219
> 
> 
> Had to visit four or so different book shops to find a copy.


Thanks so much I just found audio in Russian vow I can't wait to listening.


----------



## Blancrocher

Kim Stanley Robinson, "Aurora"


----------



## Schubussy

Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian








First Cormac McCarthy novel I've read, certainly won't be the last. Absolutely loving it.


----------



## Dr Johnson

I shall soon be tucking into this:


----------



## Guest

Blancrocher said:


> View attachment 77267
> 
> 
> Kim Stanley Robinson, "Aurora"


How do you like it? He lives in my town, and I have had him speak to my high school English classes when I taught Science Fiction (That's the name of the class--hence the capital letters!) He's a great guy.


----------



## TxllxT

We agree with Goncharov's own opinion about his last novel "The Precipice" (1870), that it is the best he has written (it took him twenty years to finish it). It's the thickest book ever my wife has undertook for reading aloud and we're so happy it will take us through the long winter! Highly recommended for Sense & Sensibility, Downton Abbey, Upstairs Downstairs lovers: your heart & love will grow.


----------



## GreenMamba

Good, but does not replace Gordon Prange for me.


----------



## Pugg

Less than Zero- Easton Ellis


----------



## Dr Johnson

Dr Johnson said:


> I shall soon be tucking into this:


My copy came on Saturday and I read it over the weekend.

Not much about the eponymous wombat but a lot of stuff about Victorians and animals, some of it entertaining.

For example:

*"Dean Buckland [of Christ Church) was a keen naturalist but his naturalism took a strange form as he determined to eat his way through the animal kingdom. He ate all manner of insects and slimy things. He wondered whether bluebottles or moles tasted worse. Reputedly he took a bite from the embalmed heart of Louis XIV when he was shown it out of its reliquary.......

On one occasion dinner was interrupted by a terrible crunching sound coming from beneath a chaise: it proved to be a hyena munching a guinea pig and this was perhaps appropriate as it was Buckland's discovery of the pre-historic hyenas' den [in Yorkshire] that made his reputation. [He] was also a strict disciplinarian and when a monkey turned up drunk at Christ Church he had it escorted off the premises."
*


----------



## Blancrocher

Kontrapunctus said:


> How do you like it? He lives in my town, and I have had him speak to my high school English classes when I taught Science Fiction (That's the name of the class--hence the capital letters!) He's a great guy.


I've been busy lately, so I'm only halfway through, but I'm loving it so far. The only other books I've read by him were the 3 parts of the Mars Trilogy, which I thought were fantastic. If you're interested in "terraforming," this guy's for you!


----------



## Ingélou

There's a second hand bookshop in the Victoria arcade in Great Yarmouth where you can pick up books at £1 each. We got a two volume paperback - The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 by Antonia Fraser, GB 1996, paperback edition 2002. It was really awkward to read these little paperbacks, straining one's fingers to hold them open, and annoying that she kept talking about pictures to be found in 'the plates section', which doesn't exist in this edition.

But it was absolutely riveting. It has a lot of relevance to today's world, as the title makes plain. It seems that most of the conspirators were in it because of the charisma of Robin Catesby - proving that the charm of individual personality has the power to change history. The Jesuits knew about the plot but were bound by the seal of the confessional, and Fr Henry Garnet, the head of the order in England, sent a frantic message to Rome to try and get the Pope to issue a ban against violent action. Garnet was later sentenced to being hung, drawn & quartered (but his words on the scaffold impressed the crowd, who wouldn't allow the hangman to cut him down early).

Antonia Fraser's histories always tell the human story, and for me, as a Catholic convert whose brother went to Guy Fawkes' old school in York, it had personal resonance too. St Peter's School didn't allow Bonfire Night celebrations, as being disrespectful to an Old Boy.

Here's an extract from Part Two, pages 65-6, about Father Tesimond, a Jesuit priest who wasn't actually implicated in the plot but who was arraigned as a traitor by the government, and a *wanted *poster was issued with his description:

*In London Father Tesimond had the unnerving experience of reading details of his 'good red complexion' & his tendency to wear showy clothes 'after the Italian fashion' when the proclamation was posted up. Then the priest's eyes met those of a man in the crowd & he realised that his appearance was being checked out. When the stranger suggested that they go together to the authorities, Tesimond with seeming docility allowed himself to be led away, until they reached a quiet street, where the priest took to his heels and ran off. Tesimond then rapidly & discreetly left London, managing to smuggle aboard a cargo of dead pigs headed for Calais. From there he went to St Omer and finally on to Rome. Here a long & comparatively happy life awaited him: Father Tesimond survived for another thirty years after these tumultuous events. More importantly, he was one of those who lived to tell the tale from the Catholic angle.

*


----------



## Guest




----------



## arpeggio

Brian Aldiss _Helliconia Summer_.


----------



## arpeggio

Blancrocher said:


> View attachment 77267
> 
> 
> Kim Stanley Robinson, "Aurora"


Recently completed the Mars Trilogy.


----------



## Avey

Just finished *Philip K. Dick's* _A Scanner Darkly_









And onward, to continue the *Bolano* trek (as I mentioned previously to Blancrocher):


----------



## Cosmos

Unfortunately, because I read so often for class, I haven't read anything for "fun" in a while. Though I do enjoy the required school books:

*James Hogg* - Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner










Very interesting work...it was written in 1824 but has all of the genre bending satire you would expect from a postmodern novel. Bounces from funny and grotesque. For just about 200 pages, I enjoyed it.

*Elisa Gabbert* - The Self Unstable










A collection of paragraph long prose poems that come together as something like an essay on the self, divided into different sections. My favorite text from this semester so far.

Now, I have to go and start reading [for the first time ever]...
*Mary Shelley* - Frankenstein


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

I've just started reading The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks


----------



## Blancrocher

Homer's Iliad, trans. Peter Green


----------



## Blancrocher

arpeggio said:


> Recently completed the Mars Trilogy.


I'm not a big fan of Aurora, in the end--a bit too focused on interpersonal relationships and group behaviors, with too little speculative s/f.

Loved the Mars Trilogy, though--looking forward to the upcoming miniseries.


----------



## SarahNorthman

Does this long a** fanfiction count?


----------



## GreenMamba

More WW2 PTO.


----------



## Sonata

I have a book by the Buddhist monk *Thich Nhat Hanh *in my bag ready to go. It's called *Transformation & Healing*. This will be my third Hanh book. I am Christian, not Buddhist, but Hanh is a wonderfully peaceful person and his books or less are on bringing peace to the self. I look forward to starting it...whenever I happen to get my paperwork caught up here at the office!


----------



## conclass

Life is a Dream (play) - Pedro Calderon de La Barca


----------



## Dr Johnson

I have ordered the above on the recommendation of our own Ingélou. Eager to enjoy it to the full I have dug out my copy of The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettleheim.

I am somewhat dismayed to see that Bettleheim's reputation has taken a bit of a bashing recently.

Nonetheless, I am agog for my new purchase.


----------



## Iean

One of his best:angel:


----------



## Balthazar

conclass said:


> Life is a Dream (play) - Pedro Calderon de La Barca


Fantastic! Thanks for mentioning this -- I haven't read it in years and this is a perfect time to revisit it. A good companion to the Spanish keyboard music I've been exploring thanks to the thread on that topic.


----------



## Gouldanian

Great expectations by Charles Dickens. Almost done. Recommended? Yes but I find it a little overrated. If it's on your reading list read the other ones first.


----------



## SarahNorthman

This. This is an amazing book. I love it a lot.


----------



## Guest

And yes, it's every bit as charming as you imagine.


----------



## Blancrocher

Javier Marías - The Man of Feeling (Trans. Margaret Jull Costa)


----------



## Ingélou

Gouldanian said:


> Great expectations by Charles Dickens. Almost done. Recommended? Yes but I find it a little overrated. If it's on your reading list read the other ones first.


I know what you mean. The beginning bit, with the convict, is terrific; the end bit, with the convict, is exciting. But the bit in the middle about the larks of the humorous Pocket family is pretty tedious!

I remember teaching that to a class once, and it was hard going.


----------



## Guest

Ingélou said:


> I know what you mean. The beginning bit, with the convict, is terrific; the end bit, with the convict, is exciting. But the bit in the middle about the larks of the humorous Pocket family is pretty tedious!
> 
> I remember teaching that to a class once, and it was hard going.


A Tale of Two Cities still remains my favorite. Great Expectations was good, but I would say it is my third favorite, after Cities, and David Copperfield.


----------



## Ingélou

DrMike said:


> A Tale of Two Cities still remains my favorite. Great Expectations was good, but I would say it is my third favorite, after Cities, and David Copperfield.


Great choices! :tiphat:_A Tale of Two Cities_ is my favourite, too, followed by _Hard Times_. As I said, I do enjoy the beginning & end of _Great Expectations_, and I have a sentimental attachment to _David Copperfield_, as we 'did it at school'.

And at this time of year, who the Dickens can resist _A Christmas Carol_?


----------



## Xaltotun

Got two going on right now. Dostoyevsky's _Brothers Karamazov_ for the times when I feel I can concentrate, and St. Augustine's _De Civitate Dei_ for the times when I'm more tired or lazy or have less time. Not that the latter is a simple book, but that its argument proceeds in short pieces.


----------



## Mahlerian

Ingélou said:


> I know what you mean. The beginning bit, with the convict, is terrific; the end bit, with the convict, is exciting. But the bit in the middle about the larks of the humorous Pocket family is pretty tedious!
> 
> I remember teaching that to a class once, and it was hard going.


I wrote an essay on Great Expectations, which I hadn't particularly enjoyed, as my experience was much the same as your description. My teacher said that I "understood the craft of Dickens' novel," so I came to assume that I'd really never read it again. That said, more recently I've wondered if I might go back to it at some point...


----------



## Blancrocher

Ingélou said:


> As I said, I do enjoy the beginning & end of _Great Expectations_


Curiously enough, the novel has two endings. Dickens rewrote it at the urging of his publisher. The edition I read included both, which was convenient--I could decide what happened to Pip depending on my mood.


----------



## Ingélou

Yes - I prefer the ending where Pip doesn't get the girl, because she's too damaged. On the other hand, of the two endings of Hardy's Return of the Native, I prefer the one where Tamsin marries the Reddleman. In both cases, I choose the ending which I judge 'more like life'. In the former, I go with the author; in the latter case, against. But then Hardy *was* preternaturally gloomy. 

Oh dear - maybe I should have posted a *spoiler alert*? 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(VVVVV Job done, I hope!)


----------



## Blancrocher

Ingélou said:


> Oh dear - maybe I should have posted a *spoiler alert*?


Edit your post--are you out of your mind?! If people are going to start revealing the endings of books I'm out of this thread forever!


----------



## Tristan

Right now I'm reading *Swann's Way*, the first volume in Marcel Proust's *In Search of Lost Time*. Took me a while to get into his style of prose--but now I cannot wait to read the rest of the series. I asked for the other 6 volumes for Christmas, so we'll see what happens with that


----------



## Iean

Better exercises and more straight-forward proofs :angel:


----------



## Blancrocher

Kate Nesin - Cy Twombly's Things


----------



## Figleaf

Just rereading this cheerful tome. It's not as interesting or original as the same author's _Reinventing Collapse_, with its first person testimony of the end of the USSR and its lawless aftermath. _The Five Stages_ contains quite a lot of rehashed blog posts (and it's to Orlov's credit that he gives away most of his writing for free) as well as material lifted from various sociological studies, some of questionable relevance. I kind of gave up on Orlov and his doomer blog after he began his bonkers quest to reform English spelling ('Project Unspell') but I'd still recommend his first book, _Reinventing Collapse _, as a creative work which is genuinely helpful to anyone wishing to prepare themselves for life in a rapidly deteriorating society, and which is, importantly, rooted in deep thought that stems from lived experience, unlike some of the wilder kinds of dystopian fantasy found in this genre.


----------



## Cheyenne

*John Ruskin's Fors Clavigera*: a fascinating title where Fors (meaning "chance" or "accident") is a symbolic word that stands for Force ("the power of doing good work"), Fortitude ("the bower of bearing necessary pain, or trial of patience"), and Fortune ("the neccesary fate of man"). Clavigera is the female version of Claviger, which is made up of Clava (meaning "club") or Clavis (meaning "key") or Clavus (meaning "nail" or "rudder") and gero meaning "to carry", thus standing for either the club-bearer, the key-bearer or the nail-bearer. For Ruskin these words all corresponded to one of the three forces.

"Fors, the Club-Bearer, means the Strength of Hercules, or of dead
Fors, the Key-bearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or of patience
Fors, the Nail-bearer, means the strenght of Lycurgus, or of law"

These are the first, second and third force interwoven into a huge series of disorganized letters to the workmen of England. Ruskin at this point stayed away from his flowery language so his language is clean and straightforward. Many of the letters are essentially diatribe, and Ruskin's views are often quaint and outdated, but Carlyle is right in that Ruskin's power lies in always looking for the ideal, dismissing common and crass delusions -- looking to something higher. Like Hazlitt said of his Milton, his chief strength is _elevation_. Due to that it's a fun read. A strange, dizzying masterpiece of invective that needs to be read in its proper context to be appreciated.


----------



## Dr Johnson

I have just read this review of a biography of Alma Mahler, _Malevolent Muse: The Life of Alma Mahler_ by Oliver Hilmes, translated by Donald Arthur.

Judging by the review, not a terribly flattering portrait, but it sounds like an interesting read.

An excerpt (from the review):

*"Alma even interfered with Mahler's compositions, demanding - based on her authority as the widow - that the middle movements of his Sixth Symphony be reordered ('First scherzo, then andante', Alma's telegram to the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg in 1919). It was true that Mahler had originally arranged the symphony scherzo-andante, but he then changed his mind, and from the premiere in 1906 onwards always conducted it andante-scherzo. Such was Alma's force, however, that her version of the structure was accepted by most Mahler conductors for the rest of the 20th century."*


----------



## Morimur

'The Stranger' by Camus.

Entertaining read even if you don't buy into Camus' flimsy philosophy.


----------



## Jos

Figleaf said:


> Just rereading this cheerful tome. It's not as interesting or original as the same author's _Reinventing Collapse_, with its first person testimony of the end of the USSR and its lawless aftermath. _The Five Stages_ contains quite a lot of rehashed blog posts (and it's to Orlov's credit that he gives away most of his writing for free) as well as material lifted from various sociological studies, some of questionable relevance. I kind of gave up on Orlov and his doomer blog after he began his bonkers quest to reform English spelling ('Project Unspell') but I'd still recommend his first book, _Reinventing Collapse _, as a creative work which is genuinely helpful to anyone wishing to prepare themselves for life in a rapidly deteriorating society, and which is, importantly, rooted in deep thought that stems from lived experience, unlike some of the wilder kinds of dystopian fantasy found in this genre.


Thanks, Figleaf, I'll give "reinventing collapse" a try. Been watching a lot of dystopian documentaries on YT lately, about the (lack of) distribution of wealth, the stuff we eat, data and thoughtcontrol from governments, the whole depressing lot. I'm not a conspiracy theorist (although some are entertaining) but some of these docs realy get under the skin. Some mild prepping might be in order.


----------



## Blancrocher

"A Brief History of Portable Literature," a novel by Enrique Villa-Matas (trans. Anne McLean and Thomas Bunstead)


----------



## KirbyH

Far too many to list here within reason - I've really tried to up my reading game the last couple of months, so I'll hit on a couple highlights.

I've been a James Bond fan for a long, long time now and finally in my mid-twenties I decided to take the plunge and read all of the original Ian Fleming novels. I've read a few by the authors who succeeded him - and they're wonderful - but nobody does it better than the original. I won't say they're all of the same level of quality but I've loved the ride they've taken me on. In particular I've enjoyed From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and You Only Live Twice. Of course in our modern times they're awfully anachronistic but it's been an enlightening experience all the same.

So far as music books are concerned, I not long ago finished D. Kern Holoman's biography of Berlioz. I read it during my freshman year of college, didn't comprehend much of it, and mostly forgot what I read. Returning to it this year was eye-opening, and thus my appreciation for the old rogue deepened greatly. My plan for December is to listen through all of major works, starting with the Fantastique, of course. Magnificent, beautiful stuff. 

Oh and I'm working on The Rest is Noise for the sixth time - fantastic stuff, almost well written enough to make me want to listen to Schoenberg.


----------



## conclass

Balthazar said:


> Fantastic! Thanks for mentioning this -- I haven't read it in years and this is a perfect time to revisit it. A good companion to the Spanish keyboard music I've been exploring thanks to the thread on that topic.


Have you also read "The Great Theatre of the World" by Calderon?


----------



## conclass

Act of the Ship of Hell, by Gil Vicente, which is part of "the trilogy of the ships" (hell, purgatory, and heaven), and
Philosophy of Freedom, by Rudolph Steiner.


----------



## Celloman

A Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky


----------



## Gouldanian

Mahlerian said:


> I wrote an essay on Great Expectations, which I hadn't particularly enjoyed, as my experience was much the same as your description. My teacher said that I "understood the craft of Dickens' novel," so I came to assume that I'd really never read it again. That said, more recently I've wondered if I might go back to it at some point...


I just finished reading it. I didn't enjoy the ending and to be quite honest I wasn't blow away by the novel overall.

I went online to see what was up with the ending and realized that there are different ones, that C.D. had changed the original one because the first draft had a very cynical ending, to a point where a friend suggested he should change it to a more cheerful one. Still, I was upset that the ending took about half a page to develop whereas the whole novel included long and useless details about the most random things. I expected the ending to be a little more detailed and fulfilling.... reminded me of the last episode of the Sopranos.


----------



## Vaneyes

Halfway through Richard Ford's "Frank Bascombe trilogy". No redeeming qualities thus far.


----------



## Xaltotun

conclass said:


> Have you also read "The Great Theatre of the World" by Calderon?


I'd like to read as much Calderon as possible, but alas, there's only one play translated into Finnish. I sense a kindred spirit in him.


----------



## Ingélou

I have just given way to impulse and started a social group for people who would like to discuss literature in any shape or form - spy novels, science fiction, contemporary poetry, Shakespeare, Jane Austen,  *whatever*...

Please do join and post something. It's just a place to say how you feel - nobody need feel pressure about their posts.

It's called Book Chat.
http://www.talkclassical.com/groups/book-chat.html

Look forward to meeting you there! :tiphat:


----------



## Pugg

I am reading : Blood book.
Bloed book in our languages .
The writer has rewritten the first four parts from the old testament.
I do hoop it's get translated for you all.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Pugg said:


> I am reading : Blood book.
> Bloed book in our languages .
> The writer has rewritten the first four parts from the old testament.
> I do hoop it's get translated for you all.


I've been looking for something like that: the story told from the viewpoint of those who found themselves on the receiving end of Jahweh's dealings with mankind. One more reason to start learning Dutch.


----------



## Lukecash12

What is on my literary itinerary? My healthy dose of cerebellum flagellum?

Here is the sum of the day's cognitive palliative:

*Boethius- Consolatio Philosophiae/Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius- Opuscula Sacra/Theological Tractates: "Against Eutyches and Nestorius" & "How Substances can be Good in Virtue of their Existence Without Being Absolute Goods"
Desiderius Erasmus- Against War
Plutarch- Life of Antony
Pseudo Dionysus- Celestial Hierarchy
S. MacDonald- Goodness as a Transcendental: the Early Thirteenth-Century Recovery of an Aristotelian Idea*

A salivating appetizer for my friends at TC (Boethius' Tractates): http://www.ccel.org/ccel/boethius/tracts.iii.html


----------



## Easy Goer

Muriel Spark - The Public Image (1968)


----------



## Blancrocher

Martin Luther King, Jr. - The Radical King (ed. Cornel West)


----------



## hpowders

A Tale of Two Cities; Cliff Notes. Pithy. Just the way I like it!!


----------



## Avey

^^^ oh boooo ^^^

FYI (update) _The Savage Detectives_ was amazing. You dig *Bolano*, then move to that novel immediately (following _2666_).

-----

Next up, an author I have admittedly failed to read in the past. So catching up now, as with many things, it seems...

*Raymond Carver*, _Beginners_


----------



## GreenMamba

Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

This is popping up on a number of year's best lists, so I thought I'd give it a try. Interesting enough so far, although it's going to have to step it up to be memorable. It's a thriller that's being made into a movie.


----------



## Jeff W

Whoops. Posted in the wrong thread!


----------



## GreenMamba

Jeff W said:


> Doing my monthly backup of all my files. Good timing too as the fiancee and I have to be out of the house for the week or so while the contractor puts in hardwood floors in the house.


Wrong thread?


----------



## Jeff W

GreenMamba said:


> Wrong thread?


Yup! Totally posted in the wrong thread!


----------



## Balthazar

conclass said:


> Have you also read "The Great Theatre of the World" by Calderon?


I don't believe I have. I will keep my eyes open for that one.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

I'm currently reading Men of Maize by Miguel Ángel Asturias.


----------



## Easy Goer

Patrick White - The Vivisector


----------



## Lukecash12

Jeff W said:


> Yup! Totally posted in the wrong thread!


Let me guess, you were using a bunch of tabs?


----------



## Pugg

Gore Vidal: The city and the Pillar.
Two different editions.
Seems to be very controversial in that time.


----------



## Blancrocher

Michael Bundock, The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave Who Became Samuel Johnson's Heir


----------



## Kieran

A strange one. I was in the public library, looking lazily about but unsure of what for, when an old woman tugged my sleeve and offered me a book: "that's a great book, you should read it."

I didn't want to be rude so I thanked her and held the book while I walked about. I was going away for a few days and thought, why not? It's a thriller, a bit of action is good.

Dear friends, it wasn't good, it was great! That old dame was correct. I dunno what she looks like or if I'd recognise her again but I'd love to thank her. Seriously, this book isn't so much a page turner, as a book where you almost rip the pages out to get to the next bit. A spy thriller, where the action takes place in Siberia. It's so intelligently crafted, there's times I read with open gob and gasped, "you clever bass turd," and I dunno if it was the great main character I was praising, or the author:

*Kolymsky* *Heights*, by Lionel Davidson... :tiphat:


----------



## arpeggio

Brian Aldiss _Helliconia Winter_.

Starting third volume of series. Reminds me of George R. R, Martins _A Song of Ice and Fire_ series.


----------



## Jeff W

Lukecash12 said:


> Let me guess, you were using a bunch of tabs?


That and posting in a hurry led to such a rookie mistake. Anyways, currently reading 'Good Omens' by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.


----------



## Guest

GreenMamba said:


> Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
> 
> This is popping up on a number of year's best lists, so I thought I'd give it a try. Interesting enough so far, although it's going to have to step it up to be memorable. It's a thriller that's being made into a movie.
> 
> View attachment 78510


I found it to be quite underwhelming. If you want to read a good book with the word "girl" in the title, try _Gone Girl _or _The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo._ 

I'm reading this book. It's good, but so far, less gritty than his later novels in the series.










By the way, the detective's last name is pronounced "Hoo-leh."


----------



## GreenMamba

Kontrapunctus said:


> I found it to be quite underwhelming. If you want to read a good book with the word "girl" in the title, try _Gone Girl _or _The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo._


I've read the Stieg Larsson trilogy, but not Gone Girl. I don't read many thrillers.


----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


> I'm reading this book. It's good, but so far, less gritty than his later novels in the series.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> By the way, the detective's last name is pronounced "Hoo-leh."


I read a few of those Hoory Hoo-leh novels, they're very good. He does get grittier as he goes along, too. He's become a little lighter in his non-Hole books, although The Son was meant to be good. Scandi-noir is fairly fascinating, and the Wallander books by the late Henning Mankell are good too...


----------



## SarahNorthman

Ive decided to finally read this one.


----------



## Blancrocher

Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II


----------



## Kivimees

Re-reading Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island:









It makes me want to catch the next flight to England!


----------



## Dr Johnson

Found this in a charity shop for £1. Some good stuff in it.


----------



## Guest

Kivimees said:


> Re-reading Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island:
> 
> View attachment 78887
> 
> 
> It makes me want to catch the next flight to England!


It catches "Englishness" in a way that only foreign eyes can. Although I still think the Malhamdale wave sounds rather over-exuberant.


----------



## kartikeys

The Chymical Wedding by Lindsay Clarke. Thumbs Up.


----------



## Flamme

*''War Memoirs'' *of general *Heinz Guderian *and in parallel *''Stalingrad''* by admiral Yeryomenko...It is interesing to compare two philosophies and lifestyles but also a psychology of a Conquer and the Conquered...Although russkies kicked german behinds, really bad very fast in Stalingrad and elsewhere


----------



## Blancrocher

George Kateb, Lincoln's Political Thought

*p.s.* I'm somewhat disconcerted that the author of a book on Lincoln admits he hasn't read much of Lincoln's writings as a lawyer because they're "boring."

Just skimming, now.


----------



## Easy Goer

David Storey - Pasmore


----------



## Lyricus

Pale Fire, Nabokov


----------



## Pugg

Rereading this:









The woman need a golden headstone. :tiphat:


----------



## Lukecash12

Theodoret's Ecclesiastical History, volume 2. Theodoret was a 5th century Cyrene bishop. An older translation is available for free here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf203.iv.iv.i.html


----------



## Badinerie

Anyone remember these?


----------



## Ingélou

Badinerie said:


> Anyone remember these?


I certainly do! The text of these J_anet & John books _is dreadful, but I used to love the pictures. I remember one featuring a flower-clad *verandah* - the first time I'd ever come across the word, which still holds a poetic charm for me!


----------



## elgar's ghost

Seemingly well-researched but a little dry for my taste - probably better for a student of 20th century political sociology than a casual reader of history like myself.


----------



## Blancrocher

Saul Bellow, Herzog.

Recommended by a friend. Loving it--much better than the other Bellow I'd read.


----------



## Avey

I rarely ever read contemporary authors. But here I am, on a total whim:

_A Little Life_, *Hanya Yanagihara*









Amazing thus far. I am truly stunned that I happened to pick one recent publication, without any forethought, and I happen to adore it. Also, there is a _Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen_ discussion on p. 110. For real?!


----------



## Avey

Something a little more, well, technical and academic:

*Metaphors We Live By*, _Lakoff and Johnson_


----------



## Lukecash12

Avey said:


> I rarely ever read contemporary authors. But here I am, on a total whim:
> 
> _A Little Life_, *Hanya Yanagihara*
> 
> View attachment 79174
> 
> 
> Amazing thus far. I am truly stunned that I happened to pick one recent publication, without any forethought, and I happen to adore it. Also, there is a _Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen_ discussion on p. 110. For real?!


Woah, you had me confused for a minute there. I went hunting through p. 110 of this thread for that discussion! Too bad, because when I say that I thought to myself "hot damn, I don't want to miss this!"


----------



## Guest

James Rhodes
Instrumental


----------



## GreenMamba

David McCullough's latest, on the Wright Brothers.


----------



## Blancrocher

Greg Grandin, Kissinger's Shadow


----------



## Kivimees

Reading about music for a change:









Ralph Vaughan Williams: An essential guide to his life and works

(Xmas loot)


----------



## mstar

I finished *A Clockwork Orange* two days ago. It took me a few hours - I couldn't put it down. Problem is, I find myself slipping a few nadsat words here and there. Who knew you could pick up a bad habit in such a short time? Anyway, it was one of the best books I've ever read... immeasurably better than *Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina*, both of which I recently finished. 
*Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov* is hard to beat though... 
I also just finished *The Help*, surprisingly contemporary for my taste, but still an excellent book. 
I'm still looking for a new read...


----------



## starthrower

I enjoy reading Camus, even though I don't really comprehend many of his ellaborations on the basic themes.


----------



## aleazk

Badinerie said:


> Anyone remember these?


Ah, the DC-3:


----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## Guest

Damn creepy so far...as the cover suggests.


----------



## Levanda

My son gave me a present a Kindle so I can read books from Amazon, sadly I got some issues with Amazon I wish not to purchasing anything. I got free book "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky. 
There are some other resources where I can get books for free and I am not complaining about that the only my problem with technology, I have to charge batteries useless tasks. I would rather use libraries to borrow a books.


----------



## Cosmos

I've been going through this short story collection from Donald Barthelme, one of my favorite authors:










His writing style is so unique, every time I read one of his stories it makes me want to sit down and write :lol:


----------



## Flamme

I have read in a breathe this excellent piece of work







. Since my childhood i was surrounded by both sceptical nad belivers books about aliens, ghosts and paranormal in general...As a kid actually i disliked this book because it ruined my dreams of ''something in the skies''...But now as a grown up i have read it couple of times...Great scientific approach, not dry but lively, that cuts through the ufo religion and illusions...Im still watching the skies though. But nothing ever happens...


----------



## starthrower

This memoir is truly fascinating! An encyclopedic journey through the 20th century told with great wit and charm by the man that lived in every decade of its tumultuos history.


----------



## Easy Goer

Beryl Bainbridge - Sweet William (1975)


----------



## Blancrocher

Richard Wright: Early Works (Lawd Today! Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, How "Bigger" Was Born)


----------



## Guest

Levanda said:


> My son gave me a present a Kindle so I can read books from Amazon, sadly I got some issues with Amazon I wish not to purchasing anything. I got free book "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky.
> There are some other resources where I can get books for free and I am not complaining about that the only my problem with technology, I have to charge batteries useless tasks. I would rather use libraries to borrow a books.


I have had a Kindle for about 5 years now, and I absolutely love it. Yes, you have to charge the battery on it, but the battery lasts a LONG time. I don't leave the WiFi on, and with steady daily reading, one charge will last at least a week. I thought as you did initially, that I would prefer a real book. But it is really convenient having a whole library at your fingertips. I love it best when I am exercising - I can make the text bigger, and set it down on the exercise bike stand and easily read - not as easy to do with an actual book. I still buy some books, but most of my collection is now made up on my Kindle.


----------



## Dr Johnson

I have just finished this, the last (unfortunately unfinished) book by the excellent J.G. Farrell.

I first came across Farrell several years ago quite by accident, buying the superb *The Siege of Krishnapur* in a charity shop for a pound or two.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Topics systematically covered in this book include, natural selection, genetics and DNA, the origin of life, the fossil "record," the geologic "record," radiometric dating, cosmology, ethics and morality.


----------



## Doulton

Right now I am reading Anthony Trollope's "The Last Chronicle of Barset" (I am almost always reading something by Trollope) and for a book club, "The Boys in the Boat"==about the crewmen representing the USA in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.


----------



## Barbebleu

SPQR by Mary Beard, Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz and The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.


----------



## Barbebleu

Badinerie said:


> Anyone remember these?


I'm still reading them!


----------



## Guest

Written very much with a skeptical mind towards the reality of the theology and it's central figure, I still picked this up more as a means to get a better understanding of the general history of Christianity, when and where various schisms, heresies, orthodoxies, creeds, etc., etc., occurred. At 1200 pages, this is no light book, rather a hefty tome. And yet it still reads surprisingly well, and does a relatively good job, thus far, of explaining the various philosophies throughout Christianity - although admittedly I am still in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, and have only really touched, thus far, on Gnosticism, Montanism, and individuals such as Origen, Ignatius, Jerome, and Clement, and other issues and people in this post-Jerusalem/pre-Constantine phase. I disagree with much of the dismissal of the theology, but I am a die-hard amateur historian at heart, so I am loving just learning the how, where, when, and why of it all.


----------



## Avey

Reading *Jessica Duchen's* biography on _E.W. Korngold_. About half-way through and it is fantastic. I opted for the shorter of the two noted biographies, and I have gotten precisely what I wished for: a detailed account of his early life, compositional process and intent, and random anecdotes to fill the spaces.


----------



## Pugg

Just ordered :

*The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes*



> In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
> 
> So begins Julian Barnes's first novel since his Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending. A story about the collision of Art and Power, about human compromise, human cowardice and human courage, it is the work of a true master.


This is a fictional biography of Shostakovitch


----------



## TxllxT

We finished 'The Precipice' (1869) by Ivan Goncharov, which is an extremely thick novel that is well worth the time invested into it. Recommended for all lovers of Sense & Sensibility going Russian. 
Now we've started 'The Cathedral Clergy' (1872) by Nikolai Leskov. Both have the great gift of relaying true dialogues, and one really becomes a witness of the story's characters: very witty indeed!


----------



## Avey

A few short novels (novellas?) are in my queue:

*Cormac McCarthy*, _Child of God_


----------



## Easy Goer

Jane Gardam - God on the Rocks (1978)


----------



## GreenMamba

The third astronaut from Apollo 11 tells the tale of the US space program up to the late '80s. Not a memoir, although Collins does draw from his personal experiences a bit. He is a very good writer.


----------



## Ingélou

I've just finished *Angel* (1957) by Elizabeth Taylor. 
So funny - so brilliant - so atmospheric! :tiphat:


----------



## Piwikiwi

I finished Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" this Wednesday and it was amazing. Especially the last book.


----------



## Pugg

Michael Cunningham ; The Snow queen


----------



## helenora

"*The Book of Mirdad" by Mikhail Naimy*. When I've just started reading it first I thought the book was similar to Khalil Gibran's ideas and style and later I checked a biography of Mikhail Naimy and indeed they are both were friends.


----------



## Guest

It begins with police discovering the corpse of a young boy fused with the corpse of a deer, then things get weird.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

George Orwell - 1984


----------



## Dawood

I've just started









I really wouldn't know where to begin to sum up the subject but essentially the writer converted to Islam when he was a teen - inspired by Malcolm X, traveled from the States to Pakistan - gave up with conservative understandings of Islam - created a world where punk and Islam got on just fine - found out that world sort of actually existed - then has spent the rest of his young life wrestling with father figures, the fringes of religious practice and being an academic.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

OldFashionedGirl said:


> George Orwell - 1984


Prepare to want to kill yourself at the end of it. Perhaps the most depressing book I've ever read


----------



## Doulton

Ingelou, I love Elizabeth Taylor. As I enter old age, I frequently reread "Mrs. Palfrey at the Clarmont". Angel is devastatingly brilliant.

Right now:
All for book clubs and all rereads:
Dickens: Martin Chuzzlewit
Trollope: Orley Farm
Nabokov: Pnin









Also: can anyone help me attach a photo to my avatar? I am a bit clueless. I need the help of somebody like Dr. Johnson!


----------



## Doulton

Elizabeth Taylor---She is such a wonderful writer; I managed to get all of her books (mostly in Virago editions) about 25 years ago.


----------



## Guest

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Prepare to want to kill yourself at the end of it. Perhaps the most depressing book I've ever read


Indeed. I'm teaching it (_1984_) to my AP seniors at the moment. We're in the middle of part two--things haven't even gotten grim compared to later!


----------



## andrewsmolich1

Just finishing Point-Counterpoint by Aldous Huxley. Got my interest piqued after I read the section about Beethoven's Heiliger Dankesang. Very very good book!


----------



## Guest

Avey said:


> A few short novels (novellas?) are in my queue:
> 
> *Cormac McCarthy*, _Child of God_
> 
> View attachment 80115


Not a fun read.


----------



## Avey

*Ursula Le Guin*, _The Lathe of Heaven_


----------



## Piwikiwi

Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow"


----------



## elgar's ghost

Leafing through some old copies of MOJO magazine from about 20 years ago - currently at nos. 15-20 (the oldest one I have is no. 5). The one below was a particular favourite. Surprising when reading through these mags how relatively few of the artists I actually liked, but it was good for pointing you in the right direction if you wanted to investigate some unfamiliar stuff - this was the time before the 'interweb' became the global phenomenon it is now plus I didn't have a computer anyway, so MOJO was really the only info source I had. I stopped collecting years ago but I'm glad I held onto all of my back issues, if only for the nostalgia kick.


----------



## Easy Goer

A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr (1980)


----------



## Bellinilover

_The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ by Agatha Christie. Sure, I know how it ends as I've read it before. But it's one of my favorite mysteries so I'm reading it again.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

_The Perfume: The Story of a Murderer_ - by Patrick Süskind. Quite impressive.


----------



## Dr Johnson

I have just finished this. Every bit as good as _The Siege of Krishnapur_.


----------



## Andolink

Thoroughly enjoying this:


----------



## Tristan

Just started this:










Loving it so far


----------



## HaydnBearstheClock

Reading _Anna Karenina _by Leo Tolstoy in Russian. Been very good so far.


----------



## Blancrocher

Dr Johnson said:


> I have just finished this. Every bit as good as _The Siege of Krishnapur_.


That's a bold statement, Dr Johnson--I've ordered it.


----------



## Levanda

My kindle doing good so far ad much I had troubles before managed to read few books, just finished Taras Bulba by Gogol, well is anti Semitic and is not best book. Now I am reading Plato republic.


----------



## HaydnBearstheClock

Levanda said:


> My kindle doing good so far ad much I had troubles before managed to read few books, just finished Taras Bulba by Gogol, well is anti Semitic and is not best book. Now I am reading Plato republic.


Ahh, Gogol - I want to read his 'Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka' - the English translation of that name loses all the colour of the original though - 'Hutor' is much less common word than 'farm', though finding an equivalent might be difficult.


----------



## Doulton

*OLD FILTH by Jane Gardam*









I seem to love reading about the elderly (among my favorites are "The Sea, The Sea," by Murdoch, "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," by Elizabeth Taylor, "Quartet in Autumn," by Barbara Pym, "The Old Boys," by William Trevor).

So Jane Gardam has hit my sweet spot: desuetude and senescence in "Old Filth". I am glad to see that somebody else is reading a book by her.


----------



## GreenMamba

Unockring the Past, a book about the history of alcohol, written by an archaeologist.


----------



## Morimur

DrMike said:


> View attachment 79949
> 
> Written very much with a skeptical mind towards the reality of the theology and it's central figure, I still picked this up more as a means to get a better understanding of the general history of Christianity, when and where various schisms, heresies, orthodoxies, creeds, etc., etc., occurred. At 1200 pages, this is no light book, rather a hefty tome. And yet it still reads surprisingly well, and does a relatively good job, thus far, of explaining the various philosophies throughout Christianity - although admittedly I am still in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, and have only really touched, thus far, on Gnosticism, Montanism, and individuals such as Origen, Ignatius, Jerome, and Clement, and other issues and people in this post-Jerusalem/pre-Constantine phase. I disagree with much of the dismissal of the theology, but I am a die-hard amateur historian at heart, so I am loving just learning the how, where, when, and why of it all.


Bought a copy over the Christmas holidays. Looking forward to reading it.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Blancrocher said:


> That's a bold statement, Dr Johnson--I've ordered it.


I hope it doesn't disappoint!


----------



## Vronsky

Amin Maalouf -- Samarkand
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142395.Samarkand


----------



## Crudblud

New (second hand) acquisitions, 2016/01/30

John Barth - _The Sot-Weed Factor_
Saul Bellow - _More Die of Heartbreak_
Don DeLillo - _Libra_
Eugène Ionesco - _Rhinoceros / The Chairs / The Lesson_
Lao Tzu - _Tao Te Ching_
Thomas Mann _Buddenbrooks_
Cormac McCarthy - _The Road_
Molière - _The Misanthrope / The Sicilian / Tartuffe / A Doctor in Spite of Himself / The Imaginary Invalid_
Molière - _The Miser / That Would-Be Gentleman / That Scoundrel Scapin / Love's the Best Doctor / Don Juan_
Orhan Pamuk - _The White Castle_
Plato - _The Symposium_
Jean Rhys - _Wide Sargasso Sea_
Philip Roth - _The Human Stain_
Gore Vidal - _The Smithsonian Institution_
Virgil - _The Aeneid_
Virgil - _The Eclogues_
Voltaire - _Candide_
Walt Whitman - _Leaves of Grass_
Tom Wolfe - _The Bonfire of the Vanities

_I sure 's hell didn't need no more stinkin' books than I already got, but I got 'em anyway, ma, I got 'em anyway.


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> New (second hand) acquisitions, 2016/01/30
> 
> Virgil - _The Aeneid_
> Virgil - _The Eclogues_


I got on a Roman binge of things a couple years ago, Seneca, Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Caesar's commentaries, touches of Cicero, etc. The Aeneid was fairly graphic and electric, truly epic. Unfortunately, I only had a prose copy, not poetry. Did you get a good poetry translation?


----------



## Crudblud

Kieran said:


> I got on a Roman binge of things a couple years ago, Seneca, Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Caesar's commentaries, touches of Cicero, etc. The Aeneid was fairly graphic and electric, truly epic. Unfortunately, I only had a prose copy, not poetry. Did you get a good poetry translation?


It's in verse to be sure, whether it's any good I'll just have to find out! It's a Cecil Day Lewis translation published by Oxford World's Classics. My _Eclogues_ is a nice bilingual edition on Penguin Classics translated by Arthur Guy Lee. My Homers are prose translations, which I don't mind so much because narrative poetry makes my head spin, but I'm looking forward to giving it a good shot this year with Milton, Virgil et al.


----------



## GreenMamba

Crudblud said:


> New (second hand) acquisitions, 2016/01/30
> 
> John Barth - _The Sot-Weed Factor_
> Cormac McCarthy - _The Road_


Some good ones on that list, but these two would be my favorites of them.

I am a big fan of Roth, but The Human Stain isn't his best.


----------



## Kieran

Crudblud said:


> It's in verse to be sure, whether it's any good I'll just have to find out! It's a Cecil Day Lewis translation published by Oxford World's Classics. My _Eclogues_ is a nice bilingual edition on Penguin Classics translated by Arthur Guy Lee. My Homers are prose translations, which I don't mind so much because narrative poetry makes my head spin, but I'm looking forward to giving it a good shot this year with Milton, Virgil et al.


I left work a few years back to both write a book and also to improve my reading. That is, get around to all those heavy books that I didn't have the energy for when I was desk bound and going crazy. The books of the ancient world are my preferred ones now, sometimes history but often poetry or writings of old philosophers and orators, historians and generals like Caesar. I tried Homer's Iliad on for size recently and had a good time with two translations side by side: Alexander Pope's stirring rhyming and Robert Fitzgerald's drier but probably more accurate free verse. Both are incredible in different ways. What Pope lost maybe in literal meaning he gained by retaining the rhyme and generating great power and rhythm. Fitzgerald went for a clearer and more accurate translation - beautiful in its own way - but without that staggering momentum.

The Aeneid is a great tale, comparable to Homer, and I'm not sure but it might have been that Virgil wanted it destroyed when he passed, but fortunately it wasn't. It was either that or another one, it's been a while for me...


----------



## drpraetorus

"The Templar" Michael Haag
"The Federalist" Hamilton, Madison, Jay. Also known as The Federalist Papers







Alexander Hamilton


----------



## ldiat

"Extreme Pace Handicapping" by Randy Giles You asked..and yes i bet the horses:devil: study the PP's and listen to opera


----------



## Morimur

I was quite underwhelmed my McCarthy's 'The Road'. And I read it twice.


----------



## Pugg

Bidden en vallen meaning Pray and falling
Auteur: Henk van Straten










It's about a married man off a sudden age who makes a big mistake by following a young hustler in to the wood for sex.
His whole world is about to co laps, told from all persons in that perspective.
A.K.A himself, his wife , the male hustler etc .


----------



## Easy Goer

Jessica Anderson - Tirra Lirra by the River.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Tristan

This is my current fictional read:


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Tristan said:


> This is my current fictional read:
> 
> View attachment 81026


The Mr. Pamuk from Season 1 of Downton Abbey who only gets randomly mentioned maybe once or twice each season?


----------



## Andolink

Doulton said:


> View attachment 80716
> 
> 
> I seem to love reading about the elderly (among my favorites are "The Sea, The Sea," by Murdoch, "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," by Elizabeth Taylor, "Quartet in Autumn," by Barbara Pym, "The Old Boys," by William Trevor).
> 
> So Jane Gardam has hit my sweet spot: desuetude and senescence in "Old Filth". I am glad to see that somebody else is reading a book by her.


Sounds like you would really like this:







a very wonderful novel about a man dealing with aging


----------



## Lukecash12

Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars, The Lives of the Grammarians, & Rhetoricians and Poets.


----------



## Avey

Just read:

*Truman Capote*, _Breakfast at Tiffany's_









And onto a short novel I have been meaning to read for awhile, per overwhelming support:

*Shirley Jackson*, _We Have Always Lived in the Castle_


----------



## Crudblud

William Faulkner - _Intruder in the Dust_

It had been too long since I read a sparsely punctuated sentence that ran for three whole pages, so I decided to check in with my old buddy Faulkner.


----------



## arpeggio

One of my favorite sand and sandal epics from the fifties was _The Egyptian_. I am reading the novel the movie was based on. _The Egyptian_ by Waltari Mika.


----------



## Avey

crudblud said:


> *william faulkner* - _intruder in the dust_
> 
> it had been too long since i read a sparsely punctuated sentence that ran for three whole pages, so i decided to check in with my old buddy faulkner.


_The master_ .


----------



## GreenMamba

This novel by Rana Dasgupta, telling the life story of an old Bulgarian man. I started reading without even knowing what it's about. Nothing like going in completely cold.


----------



## Easy Goer

A Confederacy of Dunces By John Kennedy Toole


----------



## Kieran

After the brilliant and previously unheard of thriller, Kolymsky Heights, was recommended to me by a vanishing old woman in a public library, I ordered 3 more books by Lionel Davidson. First to arrive, The Chelsea Murders....


----------



## Dr Johnson

This arrived yesterday:


----------



## Blancrocher

Nella Larsen - Passing


----------



## Guest

Lukecash12 said:


> Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars, The Lives of the Grammarians, & Rhetoricians and Poets.
> 
> View attachment 81047


Suetonius is on my short list of works to read. I have been delving deeply as of late into the history of ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. After I finish the current tome on the history of Christianity that I have been reading, then I plan on reading Aeschylus' The Oresteia. Perhaps after that, I will go to Suetonius.


----------



## Lukecash12

DrMike said:


> Suetonius is on my short list of works to read. I have been delving deeply as of late into the history of ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. After I finish the current tome on the history of Christianity that I have been reading, then I plan on reading Aeschylus' The Oresteia. Perhaps after that, I will go to Suetonius.


Which tome are you referring to, Doc? These tomes are my primary stomping grounds when it comes to Christian history. I remember when I bought the set and sat there looking at it in the bedroom shelf... it was calling to me incessantly. I couldn't help but sate my mad appetite and read.  Who needs a television anyways, friend? One's own mind is inestimably superior.


----------



## Adair

Ernest Hemingway, _The Last Interview and Other Conversations_


----------



## Guest

Lukecash12 said:


> Which tome are you referring to, Doc? These tomes are my primary stomping grounds when it comes to Christian history. I remember when I bought the set and sat there looking at it in the bedroom shelf... it was calling to me incessantly. I couldn't help but sate my mad appetite and read.  Who needs a television anyways, friend? One's own mind is inestimably superior.


I have been reading, "Christianity: The First 3000 Years," by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Perhaps not the best if you want it written by a full-blooded believer, but I was interested more in a broad overview of Christianity, the chronology of the developments of the different creeds and practices and schisms, and how it progressed in the various parts of the world. Again, the curiosity spring from my studying of the Roman empire, which is so intertwined with the history of Christianity.


----------



## Kieran

DrMike said:


> Suetonius is on my short list of works to read. I have been delving deeply as of late into the history of ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. After I finish the current tome on the history of Christianity that I have been reading, then I plan on reading Aeschylus' The Oresteia. Perhaps after that, I will go to Suetonius.


Tacitus is a good read. He fairly lays into the mad emperors. Suetonius is good on the first 12 Caesars. I've been binge-reading Ancient History for a while and there's something fairly thrilling about reading the original sources. Of the modern writers, Tom Holland is the most accessible and droll, narrative history at its best. I just finished Dynasty, about the fall of the house of Caesar, tales of Caligula and Nero and so on. Tragic and odd and ugly, it amazes me how the great Romans allowed their Republic become a plaything of loons. Read a few of Adrian Goldsworthy's books too, he has a very good one on Julius Caesar...


----------



## Stirling

Keroauac _On the Road_


----------



## starthrower

Re-reading this one.

Howard Zinn-The 20th Century: A People's History


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Tacitus is a good read. He fairly lays into the mad emperors. Suetonius is good on the first 12 Caesars. I've been binge-reading Ancient History for a while and there's something fairly thrilling about reading the original sources. Of the modern writers, Tom Holland is the most accessible and droll, narrative history at its best. I just finished Dynasty, about the fall of the house of Caesar, tales of Caligula and Nero and so on. Tragic and odd and ugly, it amazes me how the great Romans allowed their Republic become a plaything of loons. Read a few of Adrian Goldsworthy's books too, he has a very good one on Julius Caesar...


Tacitus is also on the list. And Caesar's Conquest of Gaul. Right now, I am mostly interested in these primary works - the ancient classical literature. In time, I may also add more modern works. The more I get into it, the longer the list of works that I "need" to read becomes. Still, I'd rather have too much too read than too little. I love my Kindle. I just got a newer one, and I have it loaded up with lots of things that I haven't gotten to yet. I still need to read the final play in Sophocles' Theban trilogy, Oedipus at Colonus. I surprised myself at how much I enjoy ancient Greek plays. And then I also have Plutarch's Lives to read.


----------



## Guest

Incidentally, Kieran and Lukecash12 - I am always looking for good recommendations on what translations are best. Typically I go with the Penguin classics, as they tend to be a safe bet. But if you know of better ones (that don't break the bank, and preferably are available for the Kindle), I am all ears.


----------



## Kieran

DrMike said:


> Incidentally, Kieran and Lukecash12 - I am always looking for good recommendations on what translations are best. Typically I go with the Penguin classics, as they tend to be a safe bet. But if you know of better ones (that don't break the bank, and preferably are available for the Kindle), I am all ears.


Hi DrMike,

My translation of Seutonius was by Robert Graves, of I Claudius fame, and Tacitus is translated by Michael Grant. Both Penguin Classics. I read Caesars commentaries from Gaul recently and that might have been Graves too, I can't remember, it was a library book. Stirring stuff too, exciting tales from the front, part entertainment and part propaganda, but wholly interesting - and beautifully written...


----------



## Lukecash12

DrMike said:


> Incidentally, Kieran and Lukecash12 - I am always looking for good recommendations on what translations are best. Typically I go with the Penguin classics, as they tend to be a safe bet. But if you know of better ones (that don't break the bank, and preferably are available for the Kindle), I am all ears.


Also awesome for learning on the road, or wherever else, would be these audio books (a number of which are even free):

https://librivox.org/aeneid-by-vergil/
https://librivox.org/on-the-nature-of-the-gods-by-marcus-tullius-cicero/
https://librivox.org/philippics-by-cicero/
https://librivox.org/on-the-laws-by-marcus-tullius-cicero/
https://librivox.org/confessions-by-saint-augustine-of-hippo/
https://librivox.org/platos_republic/
http://www.amazon.com/The-Aeneid/dp/B00309U8B4
http://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/Selections-from-the-Writings-of-Cicero-Audiobook/B004TH1SWY
http://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/The-Confessions-of-St-Augustine-Audiobook/B002V5GQ64
http://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-of-Plato/dp/B0000545CU


----------



## Crudblud

James Kelman - _How Late It Was, How Late_

Although the prose here is fairly unconventional it's a cakewalk next to the Faulkner I finished reading earlier.


----------



## Guest

Lukecash12 said:


> Also awesome for learning on the road, or wherever else, would be these audio books (a number of which are even free):
> 
> https://librivox.org/aeneid-by-vergil/
> https://librivox.org/on-the-nature-of-the-gods-by-marcus-tullius-cicero/
> https://librivox.org/philippics-by-cicero/
> https://librivox.org/on-the-laws-by-marcus-tullius-cicero/
> https://librivox.org/confessions-by-saint-augustine-of-hippo/
> https://librivox.org/platos_republic/
> http://www.amazon.com/The-Aeneid/dp/B00309U8B4
> http://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/Selections-from-the-Writings-of-Cicero-Audiobook/B004TH1SWY
> http://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/The-Confessions-of-St-Augustine-Audiobook/B002V5GQ64
> http://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-of-Plato/dp/B0000545CU


I have a hard time with audiobooks. I end up not paying as much attention. But I will look for the written versions. I have read some of these already - Plato's Republic and the Confessions of Augustine. Republic was probably the first of the Classics that I read - aside from reading Antigone in high school. But I got more off of my second reading of Antigone.


----------



## Pugg

Just started ;


----------



## Kieran

DrMike said:


> I have a hard time with audiobooks. I end up not paying as much attention. But I will look for the written versions. I have read some of these already - Plato's Republic and the Confessions of Augustine. Republic was probably the first of the Classics that I read - aside from reading Antigone in high school. But I got more off of my second reading of Antigone.


The modern styles of "reading" - such as audio-books, and Kindle - have gone whoosh over my head. I'm not quite unrolling scrolls of papyrus but I'm nearer to that than this. However, my uncle listens to audio-books in his car and he swears by them. I can definitely see the advantage. Just to go completely off-topic, the TV series Rome is an excellent one, to watch while you read of Caesar's campaigns in Gaul!


----------



## Guest




----------



## Flamme

Nice old one, very fluidly written, an easy read about hard topics!!! I have read it countless times in my childhood but only now i grasp how good and witty it was made...


----------



## Xaltotun

I've avoided this thread for a long time, since I was a student of literature during 2011-2015 and I felt my obligatory reading gave me an unfair edge! But now I think I can contribute more.

Just finished:

a couple of essay collections by Andre Bazin, the great French film critic;
_The Cloud of Unknowing_ by an anonymous author;
_Revelation of Divine Love_ by St. Juliana of Norwich.

Reading now:

_The Interior Castle_ by St. Therese of Avila;
_Brothers Karamazov_ by Dostoyevski (first time too!)
and _The City of God_ by St. Augustine.


----------



## Easy Goer

Fred Bodsworth - Last of the Curlews (1955)


----------



## Alydon

For some reason I have just managed to finish a couple of books recently - or the reason is having a bit of time off over the last month. The book I have just read is called Former People by Douglas Smith. This book is one of the most interesting and also the most bleak I can remember reading as it charts the destruction and persecution of the Russian nobility after the 1917 revolution. What is remarkable is that the aristocracy and landowners knew things were changing in their homeland and were remarkably resigned to the fact they were losing everything they ever knew. Tragedy for the former people come thick and fast; most of them end up without any means of supporting themselves or arrested as enemies of the state; Stalin's persecution was even worse in the 1930s and the nobility who were still in Russia were either set to the gulags, shot or labelled 'outcasts,' which meant they had no rights and were virtual beggars. A heavy read but worth the effort relating a very large chunk of forgotten history.


----------



## aleazk

Some works by Aldous Huxley.

Also, a volume which contains the complete poetry by Alejandra Pizarnik (my favorite poetry in the Spanish language).


----------



## PJaye

The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. A renaissance artist who's adventurous, a braggadocio, temperamental as well as sociable and good humored. He’s a man who gets about, as well as a man with a violent nature who finds plenty of trouble and frays of different sorts. You get a great perspective on the times, including Cellini rubbing shoulders with Michelangelo, some popes and many others. I'm halfway through the book and in the most recent twist, after barely surviving a prison stay, with bickering dukes and a pope on either side changing his fate on a whim, he finally gets out but soon kills a man in another fray, by shooting him in the throat. A well told and very readable bio all around.


----------



## kartikeys

I have not been able to finish a book for long. It is not good. I admit.


----------



## Kieran

kartikeys said:


> I have not been able to finish a book for long. It is not good. I admit.


I've been through phases like that, then gotten into books again. Sometimes I just couldn't find anything that held my attention...


----------



## Wandering

Wiesel's Night and Gardner's Grendel


----------



## Crudblud

Don DeLillo - _Mao II_


----------



## GreenMamba

Adam Hochschild on dissent and protest with Britain during WW1.


----------



## Kivimees

Evolution: The Whole Story









It's a very interesting book. The only problem is that it's the kind of book I enjoy reading a little before going to sleep. But it's printed on really heavy glossy paper. After a few minutes my arms are too tired to hold it up. :lol:


----------



## Guest




----------



## Easy Goer

The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis


----------



## HaydnBearstheClock

Been coming back to Russian literature of late:

Nikolay W. Gogol - _Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_ (1829 - 1832)
Leo N. Tolstoy - _Anna Karenina_ (1873 - 1877)
Alexander S. Pushkin - _Peter the Great's Moor_ (1827 - 1828)

Just noticed that these works by Gogol and Pushkin were written at about the same time .


----------



## Crudblud

Hector Berlioz - _Memoirs_

Berlioz has a reputation for mixing fact with fiction when it comes to his own life, and this appears to be borne out by some of the outright ridiculous situations and arguments he recounts, yet there is a certain charm to the author's perpetual attempt to mythologise the self, and his accounts of musical life in France, and in particular the difference in attitude towards music between his rural home town and the bustling Paris, are always interesting. For some reason I was expecting it to be a bit of a slog despite being aware of Berlioz's love of unwittingly comic exaggeration, but so far I am finding it highly enjoyable.


----------



## starthrower

Finishing up:

Man's Search For Meaning-Viktor Frankl
Why I Am Not A Christian:and other essays-Bertrand Russell

I was thinking of attempting to read a Dostoevsky novel, but I fear I'm too dense to comprehend his complex narratives. I could hardly comprehend the introduction to Crime And Punishment written by translator Richard Pevear.


----------



## Easy Goer

The Mandarins & She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir.


----------



## starthrower

Anybody read Moby-Dick, or made an attempt? Is it worth slogging through?


----------



## Xaltotun

starthrower said:


> Anybody read Moby-Dick, or made an attempt? Is it worth slogging through?


I've read it a couple of times. I understand it may not be for everyone, but it is one of my all time favourites, yes, even all the chapters that obsess over whaling. It'll make you laugh and shiver and think and smile and shun and reel and cry! It'll take you on a journey. Read it slowly, like savouring a fine meal. It's worth every second one puts into it!


----------



## starthrower

^^^
Thanks! I've already bought a copy, so I may as well peck away at it. I've been reading the long and minutely detailed introduction, which is becoming quite laborious, so I think I'll just cut to the novel and get started.


----------



## GreenMamba

I read Moby Dick some years back. I used to have a much greater tolerance for big, difficult novels. I actually recall it not being a hard read, though. As X says, don't rush it.


----------



## SarahNorthman

I am rereading all of my beloved Harry Potter books.


----------



## Pugg

Woman in Morning; Petra Possel.










Dutch radio presenter who lost her husband and written a book abouth it.
Fascinating reading what dead does to people .


----------



## Ingélou

I have just finished The House by the Dvina - a Russian Childhood by Eugenie Fraser. It is a wonderful biography, one of the best I've ever read, and I'm reproducing the post I've put in the social group *Book Chat*, in a thread about biographies - I'm hoping that other members of *Book Chat *have some biographies to recommend - and if you're not a member but have something to recommend, please do join *Book Chat*! 

Eugenie's mother was Scottish & her father a Russian from a line of merchants living in Archangel - progenitors were Dutch and German. She was born in 1905 & left Russia in 1920. She tells the story of her grandparents & parents as well as herself, and creates a real sense of how it felt to live under the Tsar, and during the days of the civil war and Bolshevik victory. Her descriptions are wonderful - but there are also so many dramatic, ironic, comic and/or tragic events.

Here's a short extract to give you the flavour. One of the most striking incidents is when Eugenie's grandmother, heavily pregnant with her father, had to go in the dead of winter from Archangel to St Petersburg to beg the Tsar to pardon her husband as a special Epiphany favour. Eugenie's grandfather had struggled with a sentry on his way home (by sledge) from a drunken party, and a gun had gone off & wounded the soldier, though not seriously. Now he had been sentenced to exile in Siberia but he was needed at home. There was no railway, so they travelled by troika from village to village, relying on the hospitality of officials or peasants. Eugenie's greatgrandmother went with her daughter to look after her as the child was almost due, and a manager of the family's timber mill sat in front with the coachman to help navigate.

*One day the troika set off in brilliant sunshine for a station a long way off. As they travelled, the temperature began to drop until it fell to such a level that a crow, frozen in mid-flight, dropped like a stone from the sky. That kind of frost was rare even in our parts. Everything became very still. The two hooded figures in front barely moved. No one spoke. It was difficult to breathe. The two women clung to each other for warmth. Nostrils and eyelids kept sticking and breath turned to ice on the shawls pulled over their faces. A thick rime like a shroud came down, enveloping them all and obscuring the signposts. Only Stepan's intuition kept them on the road. The horses also were suffering. Snorting and throwing their heads, they were fighting for breath. Stepan was forced to climb down and clear their nostrils of ice. The intense cold can dull the mind and just as they were reaching the dangerous stage when a somnolent indifference to their fate was settling in, the dark mass of the station came out of the mist.*


----------



## MagneticGhost

Halfway through Dostoyesvsky's The Idiot. (for the second time) - finding it much more rewarding than I did the first time I tried. 
Just finished Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar - which was absolutely fascinating.

In between times for light relief I've been catching up on my Ben Elton - Read 'Two Brothers' and about to dip into his 'Time and Time Again'


----------



## SimonNZ

Easy Goer said:


> The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir.


One of my very favorite novels. I'd be interested to hear your reaction to it.


----------



## starthrower

This brilliant essay by W.H. Auden serves as the introduction to the Loren Eiseley anthology The Star Thrower, from whose title I adopted as my TC handle. I hope you enjoy it! http://www.southerncrossreview.org/44/auden-eiseley.htm


----------



## Jeff W

*In which Jeff finds a book*

Finally found the missing boxes of books (long story for another time)! Pulled out something I've been wanting to start reading for a while now.









Nicolas Slonimsky's 'A Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time'. It is a collection of scathing howlers of reviews of now beloved classics by now (mostly) forgotten critics. Highly recommended!


----------



## Crudblud

Juan Rulfo - _Pedro Páramo_

Re-reading one of my favourites.


----------



## Xaltotun

Jeff W said:


> Finally found the missing boxes of books (long story for another time)! Pulled out something I've been wanting to start reading for a while now.
> 
> View attachment 82132
> 
> 
> Nicolas Slonimsky's 'A Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time'. It is a collection of scathing howlers of reviews of now beloved classics by now (mostly) forgotten critics. Highly recommended!


Wow - this one would seem to be extremely entertaining!


----------



## Lukecash12

Crudblud said:


> Juan Rulfo - _Pedro Páramo_
> 
> Re-reading one of my favourites.


What makes it one of your favorites? I'm curious to know because the title looks like it's a biography and I've been on a biography kick lately.


----------



## Strange Magic

Starthrower, _Moby Dick_ is a book I have read at least ten times; I re-read it about every five years, with always-increasing pleasure at the wonderfulness of Melville's prose--the greatest language in certain parts since Shakespeare. Certain passages make me tearful because of their power and beauty. It is a vast stew of a book--bits and pieces of everything thrown in, huge chunks of this and that, and it has its shortcomings (a few), but it will reward the patient reader like few other books. And it cries out to be read again after a certain number of years, as you will find more in it every time. And please do not skip over that long, laborious introduction, as it may induce you to skip over various other parts of the book and so come away with an incomplete understanding and appreciation of what Melville set out to do in writing the Great American Novel, so unlike anything written before.


----------



## Crudblud

Lukecash12 said:


> What makes it one of your favorites? I'm curious to know because the title looks like it's a biography and I've been on a biography kick lately.


It's actually a short novel, around 120 pages or so, generally considered to be one of the key texts of Latin American magic realism. It follows, at least initially, a man who goes in search of his father, whom he never met, at the behest of his dying mother. When he arrives at his father's home town, Comala, he finds it deserted, but is soon given over to hallucinations which seem to be visions of the town as it was when it was still populated. Although I'm reading it in a translation, and could not comment on Rulfo's original Spanish prose even if I tried to read it, what I find so compelling, in addition to the disjointed narrative framework which is built up of sporadic snatches of the past, is the beauty of the language. It's very simple yet elegant, conversational in some cases, and it captures the sadness of the characters and their lives brilliantly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Páramo


----------



## Avey

Easy Goer said:


> A Confederacy of Dunces By John Kennedy Toole


Just finished, as well. Incredibly smooth read, even with the 90% dialogue. Also, I can apply a wholly new verb in my daily relay, something like _ignatian: of or resembling the manner of Ignatius J. Reilly, protag--no, anti-her--no, character--no, just something subject to the whim of Fortuna_



starthrower said:


>


Due in tomorrow, and on my list!. Along with:

*Bolano*, _Nazi Literature in America_


----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## Blancrocher

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Blithedale Romance; Harold Frederic - The Damnation of Theron Ware

Free Kindle downloads.


----------



## Easy Goer

SimonNZ said:


> One of my very favorite novels. I'd be interested to hear your reaction to it.


My view is a little more mixed. While I enjoy her insight and subject matter I prefer her other works. The first half was well pace and compelling, the second half stalls for me. A worthy read but just lacking certain qualities as a novel.


----------



## taktojawojtek

W. A. Mozart - KV 50 (46b) - _Bastien und Bastienne_


----------



## Cosmos

I've got two short story collections to go through,

First, Mary Gaitskill - Bad Behavior










These stories are pretty bleak...all focusing on characters that are damaged or lost in this world. Very sad and painfully relatable.

Next, Lorrie Moore - Birds of America










I have no idea what these will be about, but I think they're all centered around middle America, relationships, family, etc.


----------



## LarryShone

Struggling through The Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens. Its a great story but so much unnecessary filling. Sometimes a whole sentence of extraneous words where a few would do.


----------



## Tristan

Selected non-fictions of Jorge Luis Borges:


----------



## Crudblud

Thomas Hobbes - _Leviathan_


----------



## Avey

May I admit I have never read this, until now:


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Descartes - Discourse on the Method
As I have been very busy these days, it will take a lot of time reading these books.


----------



## Crudblud

Hermann Hesse - _The Glass Bead Game_


----------



## Easy Goer

Edwin O'Connor - The Edge of Sadness (1961)


----------



## Blancrocher

Frank Norris, McTeague (free Kindle download)


----------



## Crudblud

Not strictly on topic, but I'm wondering if anyone might be able to recommend a good non-fiction maritime journal, diary, or travelogue from the Age of Sail, preferably that goes into detail concerning day-to-day life aboard a ship, as well as descriptions of places visited on shore leave. My current work requires some research into this subject, but it's not an area of literature I'm at all familiar with, so any suggestions for books would be greatly appreciated.


----------



## Guest

This Hugo award winning author lives in my town (I've had him talk to my students in my Science Fiction class when I used to teach it), so I thought it was time I read one of books! Pretty good so far.


----------



## severance68

_The Philadelphia Orchestra: A Century of Music_ (2000), edited by John Ardoin. A fascinating read, thus far, with nice pictures; I just finished the chapter on Stokowski, and have now moved into the chapter on the Orchestra's legacy on records.


----------



## Blancrocher

Crudblud said:


> Not strictly on topic, but I'm wondering if anyone might be able to recommend a good non-fiction maritime journal, diary, or travelogue from the Age of Sail, preferably that goes into detail concerning day-to-day life aboard a ship, as well as descriptions of places visited on shore leave. My current work requires some research into this subject, but it's not an area of literature I'm at all familiar with, so any suggestions for books would be greatly appreciated.


One place to start might be Patrick O'Brian. A few chapters of "Master and Commander" (the first novel in his popular series) should indicate whether it's the kind of thing you're looking for.

If you're looking for historical material, James Cook's journals are an entertaining read.


----------



## Pugg

Patricia Highsmith: Strangers on a train:tiphat:


----------



## Kieran

I'm still in my Lionel Davidson phase. After finishing the peerless thriller Kolysmky Heights, I then read the unusual satirical murder mystery, The Chelsea Murders, but last week I was chewing my nails and my carpets reading The Rose of Tibet. What's not to like about this one? An adventure tale which has been compared with the best of H Rider Haggard, it tells the tale of an aimless schoolteacher in London whose brother has been declared dead in Tibet, and he goes there to find evidence of the death for an insurance claim. It has a she-devil abbess in a monastery who falls in love with him, dark rituals, dangerous hikes through the Himalayan mountains, treachery, murder, and the whole Chinese army chasing after him by the end!

After this I'll read his first book, The Night of Wenceslas, a spy thriller set in Prague during the height of the Cold War. As an author, he's been a great discovery for me, where at the moment all I want to read is brilliant thrilling stuff. An old woman in the public library handed me Kolymsky Heights, and in one of those strange serendipitous occasions, it wasn't only a classic adventurous spy tale, but I also discovered that another friend of mine was devouring it at the same time. Since then, I've passed it on to others who got similarly hooked...


----------



## GreenMamba

One of the handful of Philip Roths I hadn't read before.


----------



## Blancrocher

Gertrude Stein - Three Lives

(free Kindle download)


----------



## Crudblud

David Mitchell - _Cloud Atlas_


----------



## Dawood

Thoroughly enjoying this.









I'm still trying to get to grips with Solti's Ring Cycle but I'm certainly fascinated by the process behind it: the ambition - the politics - the intricacies of the very process itself!


----------



## Kieran

A bit of Edgar Allen Poe last night, The Murders on the Rue Morgue. Shiver, etc. Great beautiful writing and the first appearance of Dupin, the worlds original private detective. Can clearly see where Sherlock Holmes comes from...


----------



## mstar

Trying to get over my "composers-are-not-real-people" mindset by reading (my first) composer autobiography. Should arrive soon; I'm abnormally frightened, actually.

On the subject of the "composers-are-not-real-people" mindset... I wonder what I'll think of _myself_ when/if I get a degree in music. What on earth....


----------



## mstar

OldFashionedGirl said:


> *Tolstoy - Anna Karenina*
> Descartes - Discourse on the Method
> As I have been very busy these days, it will take a lot of time reading these books.


Good luck getting through that one! War and Peace was hard enough for me, but I found A.K. to be - blatantly put - sentimental rot.
Then again, this is coming from an antisentimentalist who despises romance anything. But don't take my word for it...


----------



## Avey

I meant to post this yesterday, and I post it now. No big deal -- except(!) I am finished, and so this is now a retroactive posting:

*O'Brien*, _The Third Policeman_









I knew _nothing_ about this novel(la) when I picked it up, besides a single recommendation by a reviewer who also enjoyed Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always...", which is short, too, and equally mesmerizing.

This book is absolutely stunning. So bizarre. So unique. Not at all what I thought I was getting into.

Highly highly recommend.


----------



## Guest

Just finished "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson.










Lots of good research on the history of Chicago and the 1893 Columbian Exposition and America as a whole during the late Victorian period. It reads like novel but is fact. We also learn about the often surprising heritage that the Exposition has left us.

I am also slogging through Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt."










This book is a big undertaking. Some claim to read it by skipping around but I'm going for the linear cover-to-cover approach. There's such a wealth of information to be found therein that by skipping around, you stand to lose out. Carrier very painstakingly lays out his conclusion that Jesus was created by a sect of messianist Jews loosely linked to the Qumran Community as a replacement for the Jerusalem Temple which was corrupt and under the control of the Romans. Since military guerilla style war against the Romans would end in failure and since it was not possible to build a new temple to serve as their religious center, they opted for a spiritual temple that could never be corrupted or destroyed and the one who personified this temple was a celestial hero called Jesus Christ (himself an amalgam of a Jesus cult and a Christ cult) who was offered up to demons by God and who was slain and buried in the sub-lunar realm as a sacrifice to cleanse all sin. His story is told in Isaiah chapter 52, Daniel and Zecharia as well as the Wisdom of Solomon and some of the Psalms--all chief writings to the early Christians. But the chief mode of communication of Jesus to his followers was through visions or revelations and not by oral transmission or other histories which is why Paul placed so much emphasis on direct revelation and wrote not a word about any historical Jesus.


----------



## Guest

_Icehenge_ didn't hold my interest, so now I'm reading this one:


----------



## Crudblud

Crudblud said:


> David Mitchell - _Cloud Atlas_


Gave up on this half way through after reachin'e bit w're'vr'yun talks like 'is 'n'I be want'n'a punch 'em all right 'n 'ems gobby 'ole if y' be 'earin' me. I'd have to think about it before saying for certain, but this might be the most badly written, irritating, obnoxious pile of **** I've ever read.


----------



## Bayreuth

I just started "Swann's Way", the first of the seven parts that compose "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust. Looks good, dense and elaborated, but good. As always, I combine my "serious reading" with some other lighter stuff like poetry, a biography, a play, etc. In this case I'm reading some letters, essays and poems by Egon Schiele, an Austrian painter I first discovered and fell in love with a few years ago in Vienna


----------



## Badinerie

Picked up some Piers Anthony books today. The first four of the Incarnations of Immortality Series. I read these in the eighties and enjoyed them. The first one is On a Pale Horse.


----------



## Cosmos

Crudblud said:


> Gave up on this half way through after reachin'e bit w're'vr'yun talks like 'is 'n'I be want'n'a punch 'em all right 'n 'ems gobby 'ole if y' be 'earin' me. I'd have to think about it before saying for certain, but this might be the most badly written, irritating, obnoxious pile of **** I've ever read.


It's better if you read that part out loud, or just skip it, read a quick summary of that part, and start the decent backward in time


----------



## Crudblud

Cosmos said:


> It's better if you read that part out loud, or just skip it, read a quick summary of that part, and start the decent backward in time


That was merely the tipping point, I found the whole book up to that part just as insufferable.


----------



## Crudblud

Now: Orhan Pamuk - _The White Castle_


----------



## Blancrocher

Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad


----------



## Blancrocher

Bayreuth said:


> I just started "Swann's Way", the first of the seven parts that compose "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust. Looks good, dense and elaborated, but good. As always, I combine my "serious reading" with some other lighter stuff like poetry, a biography, a play, etc. In this case I'm reading some letters, essays and poems by Egon Schiele, an Austrian painter I first discovered and fell in love with a few years ago in Vienna


I love Schiele too, and highly recommend the Leopold Museum to anyone visiting Vienna. I'm curious to know what exactly you're reading by him--anything recommendable?


----------



## Pugg

*The Stranger's Child* :* Hollinghurst *


----------



## Easy Goer

Muriel Spark - The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960)


----------



## Bayreuth

Blancrocher said:


> I love Schiele too, and highly recommend the Leopold Museum to anyone visiting Vienna. I'm curious to know what exactly you're reading by him--anything recommendable?


The book is a selection of letters and poems he wrote from 1909 to 1918. It also includes a curious "manifesto" of the Neukunstgruppe (a minor artistic movement he was part of) and some short writings about some of his own paintings.

If you like Schiele it is a light, enjoyable reading, but is really not that illuminating nor it helps substancially to understand his paintings better.

I leave you here a picture of my book (it is in Spanish)









EDIT: Absolutely, the Leopold Museum was the most pleasant surprise an European city has ever provided me. It is not really well-known but is worth it 100%


----------



## Crudblud

John Barth - _The Sot-Weed Factor_

Only twenty pages in and loving it already. This seems like it would make a great companion piece for Thomas Pynchon's _Mason & Dixon_, or maybe the other way around, since Barth's Colonial American epic has seniority.


----------



## SimonNZ

Crudblud said:


> Not strictly on topic, but I'm wondering if anyone might be able to recommend a good non-fiction maritime journal, diary, or travelogue from the Age of Sail, preferably that goes into detail concerning day-to-day life aboard a ship, as well as descriptions of places visited on shore leave. My current work requires some research into this subject, but it's not an area of literature I'm at all familiar with, so any suggestions for books would be greatly appreciated.


Chiming in a bit late here, but have you read Two Years Before The Mast?


----------



## Crudblud

SimonNZ said:


> Chiming in a bit late here, but have you read Two Years Before The Mast?


I haven't, and thank you very much for bringing it to my attention.


----------



## Niels

The last volume of Alexander Herzen - My Past and Thoughts (Feiten en gedachten)
I really love these memoirs of Herzen, who was one of the most important figures of Russia's "golden age". Reading this was a thing I wanted to do for a long time (but so are reading the other hundreds of books that are on my wishlist), but after reading Isaiah Berlin's claim that this was on the same level as War and Peace I had to buy all volumes immediately and make this a priority. 
Now I think that Berlin's claim is certainly overstated (Herzen's prose definitely is not on the same level as Tolstojs) and not really a fair comparison to begin with (memoirs vs fiction), but it is a fantastic read indeed.


----------



## mstar

Still waiting for that (auto)biography to arrive. I must admit that I've argued several times with myself over actually reading it. You'd think I have enough going on in my own life so that I wouldn't have to read about someone else's. And so forth.

Well, no matter. It's time to get over this childishness...


----------



## Tristan

Right now I'm reading:

*Palimpsest*, a memoir, by Gore Vidal

and

*One Hundred Years of Solitude* by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


----------



## Easy Goer

John Steinbeck - The Wayward Bus (1947)


----------



## Cosmos

I'm about to start this short story collection, Airships by Barry Hannah










Apparently these are neo-Southern Gothic, so should be interesting


----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## Dawood

This book is for folk who basically want to get into Wagner but just don't know how. This is not me however. I wanted to get into Wagner so I listened to his music. Worked pretty well. However, I bought this book because it seemed like potentially a good read - not too heavy, amusing, bio of Wagner over 16 pages and not 1600 - and it has certainly delivered.

Seeing as I'm still quite new to the Angry German's work I'm skipping the synopsis' of the operas I haven't experienced.

Now, where's my 1600 page biography of Wagner...


----------



## Ingélou

Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island, because I found it in a second hand shop & had heard quite a lot about it. The shopkeeper said he'd heard it was good but like me had never read it.

I am quite enjoying it, despite the fact that it's 20 years old now - but I do feel that he over-eggs the pudding with his jokes, far-fetched metaphors, and his sentences choc-a-bloc with clauses and carefully placed swearwords. I shall probably recycle it back to a charity shop when I've finished it.


----------



## Cosmos

Dawood said:


> View attachment 82968
> 
> 
> This book is for folk who basically want to get into Wagner but just don't know how. This is not me however. I wanted to get into Wagner so I listened to his music. Worked pretty well. However, I bought this book because it seemed like potentially a good read - not too heavy, amusing, bio of Wagner over 16 pages and not 1600 - and it has certainly delivered.
> 
> Seeing as I'm still quite new to the Angry German's work I'm skipping the synopsis' of the operas I haven't experienced.
> 
> Now, where's my 1600 page biography of Wagner...


I picked this up at the library a couple years ago. I remember it was a fun, funny, and informative read.


----------



## majlis

Rereading Stephen King's Doctor Sleep. Yes, I'm "number one fan". Have more than 40 titles, and in spite that it isn't my mather's language, I only read him in English. Can´t stand Spanish translations, and I know that Master should be read in English.


----------



## Dawood

Craig P Russell's comic book adaptation of the Ring of the Nibelung (as a collected book)









I'm not a fan of the artwork - I would have preferred something more stylised. It reminds me of Kevin O'Neil's work (League of Extraordinary Gentleman, etc) but without the brutal energy and detail. Wow, I'm just going to ponder an Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neil comic book Ring Cycle just for a moment.

Anyhoo - the Craig Russell book is good - certainly an achievement - not so sure about the translation. I would have preferred if they had embraced a more olde worlde speak.


----------



## Pugg

:tiphat:


----------



## Blancrocher

Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts


----------



## DiesIraeCX

_Batman: The Dark Knight Returns_ by Frank Miller
_Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies_ by George Grove


----------



## GreenMamba

A compilation of essays from Edge.org about the big cosmological questions, written for the layman to understand.


----------



## Pugg

Tristan said:


> Right now I'm reading:
> 
> *Palimpsest*, a memoir, by Gore Vidal
> 
> [


I did order this one, had rave reviews :tiphat:


----------



## Easy Goer

Joseph Boyden - Three Day Road (2006)


----------



## Pugg

Denton Welch : A Voice through he Clouds.


----------



## Guest

So, I bought a signed first edition:









And here is his "signature":









Looks like a two-year old scribbled in it! Fortunately, his writing is much better!


----------



## Cosmos

Yet another short story collection, this time by Joyce Carol Oates.

Lovely, Dark, Deep










Oates' name is one that I've seen over and over again in the literary world, even though I haven't read anything by her before. Looks like this collection will focus on themes of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. Sounds like fun.


----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


> So, I bought a signed first edition:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And here is his "signature":
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Looks like a two-year old scribbled in it! Fortunately, his writing is much better!


Ah you like those great Scandi writers. have yur read anything Indridason, the Iceland writer of detective Erlandur novels? I like Scandi books too, especially Nesbo, who's a bit rock and roll and dark and pacy....


----------



## Avey

Long time posting, and moving forward, maybe even longer, given my current (new) read:

*William Gaddis*, _The Recognitions_


----------



## Morimur




----------



## Jeff W

Feels like it has been too long since I've read a book...









Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles


----------



## Guest

I am reading Fagles' translation of Homer's Illiad. Much easier to read than other translations I have attempted, thus making it a much more entertaining read!


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Ah you like those great Scandi writers. have yur read anything Indridason, the Iceland writer of detective Erlandur novels? I like Scandi books too, especially Nesbo, who's a bit rock and roll and dark and pacy....


I've read Indridason's _Jar City_--good stuff--definitely want to read some more.


----------



## Barbebleu

The Romanovs - Simon Sebag-Montefiore. What a horrible dynasty. On reading this I'm amazed they lasted until 1917. Ghastly, ghastly family but that's what true autocracy does.


----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


> I've read Indridason's _Jar City_--good stuff--definitely want to read some more.


They're all fairly much of a standard. What's maybe different is that some of Erlandur's colleagues take the starring role in some of the books. Some of it of course is very Scandi-dark, moody and grimy, with as usual the detective having a troubled family background, but all the books I've read are very good...


----------



## Easy Goer

A Treatise of Human Nature - David Hume


----------



## Guest

Removed . . . . . . . . .


----------



## Guest

Barbebleu said:


> The Romanovs - Simon Sebag-Montefiore. What a horrible dynasty. On reading this I'm amazed they lasted until 1917. Ghastly, ghastly family but that's what true autocracy does.


More than merely autocracy, but also this bizarre notion that leadership of a country should be controlled by the lottery of whatever kind of offspring arise from inbred aristocrats. The fact that the leaders of the major European powers fighting in WWI were all close cousins (Emperor of Germany, Czar of Russia, King of England) shows just how absurd this concept is.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Franz Liszt in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten by Everett Helm


----------



## Barbebleu

DrMike said:


> More than merely autocracy, but also this bizarre notion that leadership of a country should be controlled by the lottery of whatever kind of offspring arise from inbred aristocrats. The fact that the leaders of the major European powers fighting in WWI were all close cousins (Emperor of Germany, Czar of Russia, King of England) shows just how absurd this concept is.


Not a monarchist then?


----------



## Guest

What gave it away? Can't say that any of the current monarchs make a particularly strong case for the preservation of the system. If your current monarch had more power than she currently does, and parliament had less, would you really be happy?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Barbebleu said:


> The Romanovs - Simon Sebag-Montefiore. What a horrible dynasty. On reading this I'm amazed they lasted until 1917. Ghastly, ghastly family but that's what true autocracy does.


They still did not deserve to be murdered. And the country under them, although economically far behind the European powers, was nothing like the bloody mess that it was after 1917.


----------



## Guest

Hitler
1889-1936 Hubris

by Ian Kershaw.

Just started...


----------



## Jos

J.G. Ballard; super-cannes

Picked up a nice hardback edition in the thriftstore for one euro.
I enjoyed millennium people, hopefuly this one too.


----------



## Guest

Jos said:


> J.G. Ballard; super-cannes
> 
> Picked up a nice hardback edition in the thriftstore for one euro.
> I enjoyed millennium people, hopefuly this one too.


In a former life, when I read fiction, he was my favourite author.

I see a film has just been made of High Rise, which I shall have to check out.


----------



## Barbebleu

DrMike said:


> What gave it away? Can't say that any of the current monarchs make a particularly strong case for the preservation of the system. If your current monarch had more power than she currently does, and parliament had less, would you really be happy?


Absolutely not. If you are stuck with a monarchy then ours is the least offensive. The problem with the Romanovs was that they were still trying to run Russia as if they were still living in the seventeenth century. If they had gone the way of most of the European monarchies and agreed to be constitutional monarchies with no real power they might have survived the revolution. But I suspect not. Lenin could have quite easily spared them but I feel their executions were an act of revenge for the death of his brother under Nicholas's father, Alexander's reign. Three centuries of feudalism was just too much and the backlash reflected it. No way could Bolshevism tolerate any restoration of the monarchy happening at a later date.


----------



## Barbebleu

SiegendesLicht said:


> They still did not deserve to be murdered. And the country under them, although economically far behind the European powers, was nothing like the bloody mess that it was after 1917.


I'm not sure that is correct Siegendeslicht. Some dreadful stuff happened under the Romanovs, including during the reign of Nicholas II. He gave free reign to some unbelievably incompetent people because it suited him to have all enemies of the state eliminated if they posed any sort of threat to his autocracy. He considered the Russian people as his chattels and had plenty of opportunities to give them more autonomy. The Romanov, and particularly Nicholas's, anti-semitism was astounding and the Jews suffered terribly during his and his predecessor's time.


----------



## starthrower

Christopher Hitchens-Why Orwell Matters

It's a tragedy that Hitchens had to be a victim of cancer. It's a huge loss to the world of thinking people.
Sure, he was a polarizing figure, but that's what made him great! He commanded respect whether one 
agreed with him or not.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

DrMike said:


> More than merely autocracy, but also this bizarre notion that leadership of a country should be controlled by the lottery of whatever kind of offspring arise from inbred aristocrats. The fact that the leaders of the major European powers fighting in WWI were all close cousins (Emperor of Germany, Czar of Russia, King of England) shows just how absurd this concept is.


Ever seen this picture? Who's Russian and who's British? lol...


----------



## Huilunsoittaja

Barbebleu said:


> I'm not sure that is correct Siegendeslicht. Some dreadful stuff happened under the Romanovs, including during the reign of Nicholas II. He gave free reign to some unbelievably incompetent people because it suited him to have all enemies of the state eliminated if they posed any sort of threat to his autocracy. He considered the Russian people as his chattels and had plenty of opportunities to give them more autonomy. The Romanov, and particularly Nicholas's, anti-semitism was astounding and the Jews suffered terribly during his and his predecessor's time.


Nicholas II was a very passive czar, who hated actually having to do anything and just liked being rich. That's one reason WWI was fought so poorly. So from a leadership point of view, yes he was terrible. At least after the events of 1905 he had to relinquish some of his power and so did aristocrats. From 1906-1917 there was the Duma parliament which Putin has managed to resurrect and be today's Nicholas II, the "supreme autocrat" so to speak. But from a human rights point of view, there were worse czars than him. _Nicholas I_, who was in power in the mid 1800s, he was the first czar to institute the political and criminal _gulags _of Siberia. He was particularly power-paranoid, and acted more like a dictator than other czars. Dostoevsky went to such a gulag, a minor political prisoner. That was interesting thing to learn in Dostoevsky class, that the gulags had been in existence for _many _decades before the Bolsheviks got into power. The Bolsheviks had it all set up for them.

There's a powerful moment at the end of Mussorgsky's_ Boris Godunov_ where the last person singing on stage is a beggar who laments over Russia. Who _still _laments over Russia despite the fact that Boris was deposed and a new rightful czar came in power... because the cycle of oppression would never stop... the irony...


----------



## Pugg

New translation so I give it a try


----------



## Crudblud

Crudblud said:


> John Barth - _The Sot-Weed Factor_
> 
> Only twenty pages in and loving it already. This seems like it would make a great companion piece for Thomas Pynchon's _Mason & Dixon_, or maybe the other way around, since Barth's Colonial American epic has seniority.


Well, maybe not...

Barth tries admirably to craft the "Great American Novel," or at least to subvert it, in the manner of his lead, who finds Maryland not exactly to his liking, but fails. The book is let down by a number of things in my estimation, from the bawdy humour which often comes off sleazy and mean-spirited (this in particular is a great shame, as I recall some episodes early on in the story in which I had to put the book down for minutes at a time until I stopped laughing), to the interminable recountings of recountings of recountings of tales to everyone in Maryland and their grandmothers and their grandmothers' dogs, and a general sense of tedium that prevails for long sections during which _i'faith_s, _i'God_s, _in sooth_s and _'sblood!_s seem to take up more of the page than actual content. The last fifty pages or so get things back on track, and remind the reader just how clever and amusing Barth can be when he isn't trying too hard, but it can be quite a drag getting there. Ultimately, _The Sot-Weed Factor_ is neither good nor bad, sitting in that awkward "well, actually, some of it was very good, but..." kind of territory, and to respond at last to my first impressions, I will say that Barth at 30 simply cannot match Pynchon at the height of his powers, so it is with some disappointment that I must retract the quoted statement.

Now reading: Simone de Beauvoir - _The Woman Destroyed_


----------



## Cosmos

I'm about to start reading this book by Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down










Supposed to be a western, but plays around with genre tropes. Should be fun.


----------



## Niels

_Dostoevsky - Notes from a Dead House_








Through a fictional protagonist, Alexandr Petrovitsj, Dostoevsky writes about his experience as an exile in Siberia. In this novel, many of the themes and philosophies of his later masterworks are already present, and it is clear that this experience had a huge impact on him and greatly shaped his existential point of view.


----------



## Guest

Cosmos said:


> I'm about to start reading this book by Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Supposed to be a western, but plays around with genre tropes. Should be fun.


Ever read "Mumbo-Jumbo"?


----------



## Guest

Bayreuth said:


> I just started "Swann's Way", the first of the seven parts that compose "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust. Looks good, dense and elaborated, but good. As always, I combine my "serious reading" with some other lighter stuff like poetry, a biography, a play, etc. In this case I'm reading some letters, essays and poems by Egon Schiele, an Austrian painter I first discovered and fell in love with a few years ago in Vienna


----------



## drpraetorus

"The Federalist" authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay.



















Shortly after the U.S,. Constitution was ratified and the government went from theory to reality Hamilton and Madison became bitter political opponents.


----------



## Cosmos

Victor Redseal said:


> Ever read "Mumbo-Jumbo"?


I haven't read anything by this author before. If I like this book then I'll check that one out


----------



## Wood

Euripides: Alcestis









It is a shame that so many plays are not available to watch on DVD.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## starthrower




----------



## Crudblud

Don DeLillo - _White Noise_


----------



## clavichorder

Kontrapunctus said:


> This Hugo award winning author lives in my town (I've had him talk to my students in my Science Fiction class when I used to teach it), so I thought it was time I read one of books! Pretty good so far.


That's cool that you know him. I have heard/have my own mixed opinions of Robinson's work. I enjoyed Red Mars mostly, but did not enjoy 2312. He definitely goes into detail in his world building, that's a great strength of his.


----------



## EdwardBast

Just finished _Stalingrad_ by Antony Beevor, about the siege, 1942-43.

Now reading Jan Swafford's _Beethoven_ and China Miéville's _Embassytown_. The latter is a bizarre work of speculative fiction (or something  )


----------



## starthrower




----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Antiquarian

At the moment I'm binge (re)reading Umberto Eco.

Reread _Foucault's Pendulum, Baudolino,_ and am going to start _The Name of the Rose_.

I am debating whether I should read _The Island of the Day Before_. I probably will.

[/I]


----------



## Easy Goer

Aldous Huxley - Antic Hay (1923)


----------



## EdwardBast

Antiquarian said:


> At the moment I'm binge (re)reading Umberto Eco.
> 
> Reread _Foucault's Pendulum, Baudolino,_ and am going to start _The Name of the Rose_.
> 
> I am debating whether I should read _The Island of the Day Before_. I probably will.
> [/I]


I think all of the others you have listed are better than _The Isle of the Day Before_, which really annoyed me because there were about seven really fascinating options for the plot, all of which he passed up for a rather dull one.


----------



## Pugg

*Running with Scissors* is a 2002 memoir by American writer *Augusten Burroughs.*
The book tells the story of Burroughs's bizarre childhood life after his mother.

_Hilarious _:lol:


----------



## Guest




----------



## musicrom

Picked up Soseki's _I am a Cat_ from the library earlier. Seems interesting.


----------



## SarahNorthman

I am just beginning this book. It looks fascinating.


----------



## Bayreuth

I'm re-reading E.H.Gombrich's delightful masterpiece "The Story of Art". Those interested in Art shouldn't miss this one


----------



## SiegendesLicht

EdwardBast said:


> Just finished _Stalingrad_ by Antony Beevor, about the siege, 1942-43.


If you found it to be good, try _Berlin: The Downfall 1945_ by the same author.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Kontrapunctus said:


>


Is it anything like Patrick Süskind's _Perfume_?


----------



## EdwardBast

SiegendesLicht said:


> If you found it to be good, try _Berlin: The Downfall 1945_ by the same author.


Yes, it was very good! Another excellent account of the siege is found in Vasily Grossman's novel _Love and Fate_, one of the great works of 20thc literature. Grossman was there and, in fact, Beevor quotes Grossman numerous times in _Stalingrad_. I'm a little worn out with that period in history at the moment, however. Before Stalingrad I read an account of the whole operation Barbarosa.


----------



## MagneticGhost

Just finished Julian Barne's 'The Noise of Time' - a slim novella about Shostakovich's dialogues with 'Power'









and Mona Eltahawy's 'Headscarves and Hymens' 









Just started re-reading Hans Bemmann's wonderful 'The Stone and the Flute'


----------



## SiegendesLicht

EdwardBast said:


> Yes, it was very good! Another excellent account of the siege is found in Vasily Grossman's novel _Love and Fate_, one of the great works of 20thc literature. Grossman was there and, in fact, Beevor quotes Grossman numerous times in _Stalingrad_. I'm a little worn out with that period in history at the moment, however. Before Stalingrad I read an account of the whole operation Barbarosa.


Yes, I think such literature is most comfortably consumed in small doses.


----------



## SarahNorthman

SiegendesLicht said:


> Yes, I think such literature is most comfortably consumed in small doses.


Whatever will I do, I am consuming historic literature by the boatloads these days.


----------



## Pugg

I just bought a very heavy book ( 735 pages) by Roald Dahl


----------



## SiegendesLicht

SarahNorthman said:


> Whatever will I do, I am consuming historic literature by the boatloads these days.


Sure. I was talking specifically about WWII literature.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Pugg said:


> I just bought a very heavy book ( 735 pages) by Roald Dahl


Congratulations! I love that man's dark humor. Is it a full collection of his stories?


----------



## Pugg

SiegendesLicht said:


> Congratulations! I love that man's dark humor. Is it a full collection of his stories?


Yes it is, I had some urge towards a complete works about the man.:tiphat:


----------



## SarahNorthman

SiegendesLicht said:


> Sure. I was talking specifically about WWII literature.


AhI can get that. I have been reading a lot of WW1 literature.


----------



## Vronsky

Jorge Luis Borges: The Book of Sand
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/146422.The_Book_of_Sand_and_Shakespeare_s_Memory


----------



## Crudblud

Walt Whitman - _Leaves of Grass_


----------



## Antiquarian

I think I will revisit an old favourite of mine, _Mozart : His Character, His Work_ by Alfred Einstein. It was one of the first full biographies I read as a child. A thread topic elsewhere on the forum sparked a renewed interest in this work, and who knows, perhaps I will actually understand it better this time.


----------



## SarahNorthman

I will say I loved this book, in this case I love that it was a book of war letters. It is always so much more personal, and by the end I felt like I really got to know this young man. It was sad when it ended so abruptly. I wont say anymore in case any of you want to read this. All in all I am impressed and I cant wait to read the rest of these books in the collection.


----------



## Pugg

Beverly Sills ; An Autobiography .


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> Is it anything like Patrick Süskind's _Perfume_?


Couldn't say--haven't read _Perfume_ or anything by Süskind. It's a darker and contemporary Sherlock Holmes style mystery so far.

Edit: I did see the movie now that I think about it--no, they are nothing alike aside from both containing murders.


----------



## Dr Johnson

SarahNorthman said:


> AhI can get that. I have been reading a lot of WW1 literature.


Are you only reading novels about WWI? If you are also reading non-fiction, _The First Day on the Somme_ by Martin Middlebrook is worth a look.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Currently reading and enjoying Hardy' s Jude the Obscure. 
I tend to think of Hardy as a fine poet who also wrote novels, but Jude is a fine piece of work.


----------



## MagneticGhost

Pat Fairlea said:


> Currently reading and enjoying Hardy' s Jude the Obscure.
> I tend to think of Hardy as a fine poet who also wrote novels, but Jude is a fine piece of work.


Ahh - I love Thomas Hardy - and Jude had a great impact on me when I read it at University. I think it's time I revisited it. 
I tend to think of him as a master novelist who gave it all up to concentrate on poems!


----------



## Pugg

Andrew Solomon : A Stone Boat.


----------



## Blancrocher

William Gibson - Neuromancer

The kind of thing I like to read very rapidly, but unfortunately all the made-up words are slowing me down. But I'll persevere.


----------



## Varick

Crudblud said:


> Walt Whitman - _Leaves of Grass_


Please tell me what you think of it. I ask anyone I know once I heard they've read it because my mother was a voracious reader and read almost anything and everything. However, she always said that it was one of the only books she could never get through because it bored her to tears (She said she tried over 5 times in different periods of her life). She said growing up, she had a neighbor who always had it on her coffee table. Not because she liked it, but only to impress guests. She had an opinion that many people feigned enjoyment of it only to impress other people. So, I'm always interested in others opinions. One of these days, I'll give it the old college try myself.

V


----------



## Varick

Fascinating Book so far. Almost half way finished.

V


----------



## Tristan

The Unfolding of Language: an evolutionary tour of mankind's greatest invention









Anyone who's interested in linguistics would like this book. It delves into the origin of language in general and the evolution of language and languages over time. Historical linguistics and the deep roots of language have always been my favorite subfield of linguistics, so this book is right up my alley. And it's a nice less-technical break from some of the highly-technical jargon-filled works I usually read on this subject.


----------



## Crudblud

Varick said:


> Please tell me what you think of it. I ask anyone I know once I heard they've read it because my mother was a voracious reader and read almost anything and everything. However, she always said that it was one of the only books she could never get through because it bored her to tears (She said she tried over 5 times in different periods of her life). She said growing up, she had a neighbor who always had it on her coffee table. Not because she liked it, but only to impress guests. She had an opinion that many people feigned enjoyment of it only to impress other people. So, I'm always interested in others opinions. One of these days, I'll give it the old college try myself.
> 
> V


When I've finished it, I'll be happy to. Right now, having reached the halfway point, I'm taking a short break to read Voltaire's _Candide_.


----------



## Blancrocher

Varick said:


> Please tell me what you think of it. I ask anyone I know once I heard they've read it because my mother was a voracious reader and read almost anything and everything. However, she always said that it was one of the only books she could never get through because it bored her to tears (She said she tried over 5 times in different periods of her life). She said growing up, she had a neighbor who always had it on her coffee table. Not because she liked it, but only to impress guests. She had an opinion that many people feigned enjoyment of it only to impress other people. So, I'm always interested in others opinions. One of these days, I'll give it the old college try myself.
> 
> V


Fwiw, I think it's a wonderful book--rather high-strung and almost appallingly grandiose, but Whitman's a great and original personality. One of those books I, personally, wouldn't be without (though I can understand all sorts of reasons opinions may differ).

Also, there are some terrific sex scenes.


----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## SixFootScowl

Pugg said:


> Beverly Sills ; An Autobiography .


I just finished it. A wonderful read. She tells something gross and hilarious about Eileen Farrell preparing for performances (or nervous reaction to stage jitters)--I think on page 251.

She notes why Joan Sutherland is accused of mushy diction.

She tells how a Canadian opera company had English supertitles and so she brought them to her opera company and the trend took off.

There is tons of fun and interesting stuff in this book and her opinions of what she felt were her best performances.

Enjoy!


----------



## Pugg

Florestan said:


> I just finished it. A wonderful read. She tells something gross and hilarious about Eileen Farrell preparing for performances (or nervous reaction to stage jitters)--I think on page 251.
> 
> She notes why Joan Sutherland is accused of mushy diction.
> 
> She tells how a Canadian opera company had English supertitles and so she brought them to her opera company and the trend took off.
> 
> There is tons of fun and interesting stuff in this book and her opinions of what she felt were her best performances.
> 
> Enjoy!


She and Sutherland where friends, did you see the pic those two ready to do Die Fledermaus?
The initially should swap roles, with each another but that didn't work.
So Dame Joan did Rosalinde and Miss Sills , Adele.
( There's a pirate recording available)


----------



## Varick

Crudblud said:


> When I've finished it, I'll be happy to. Right now, having reached the halfway point, I'm taking a short break to read Voltaire's _Candide_.


Thank you. I look forward to it. Enjoy Candide!

V


----------



## Vronsky

Aldous Huxley: The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5128.The_Doors_of_Perception_Heaven_and_Hell


----------



## Lukecash12

The Diatessaron, by Tatian.


----------



## Mahlerian

Plowed through this:










The author gets into the psychological reasons why some people believe in conspiracy theories, touching on everything from the JFK assassination to the French Revolution to those reptiles David Icke believes control the world behind the scenes. It may be a little misleading of him to suggest that cognitive biases of the kinds discussed aren't controllable to any extent. We should be aware of the distortions our minds can produce so that we can reason better. That aside, this book was very easy to read and I enjoyed it a good bit, even if a lot of the discussion of specific psychological mechanisms was familiar already.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

I'm amazed by the highbrow stuff people read for pleasure! 

I'm reading Wodehouse.


----------



## Ingélou

Simon Winchester - The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2003

Picked up in a second hand shop. Previously we owned (but have now rehomed) the very entertaining biography of James A. H. Murray, the big book's chief maker, entitled 'Caught in the Web of Words' and written by his granddaughter K. M. Elisabeth Murray in 1977.

The Winchester book was a quieter & more mannered read (the prose ponderously 'Victorian'), but it had some fascinating anecdotes and potted biographies of the men who helped compile the great dictionary - for example, two Americans - Fitzedward Hall, a self-taught philologist who was dismissed acrimoniously from his post as Professor of Sanskrit & became a recluse in an East Anglian cottage - and Dr William Chester Minor, an insane murderer incarcerated at Broadmoor and repatriated to an American asylum after he mutilated himself in the most obvious (& to a male, repellent) way. _Ouch!_

All the same, I shall probably recycle it to a charity shop - unless countermanded by Taggart, who has been waiting for me to finish it. I've always been a slow reader and these days anyway get seduced by the computer.


----------



## Barbebleu

Philip Kerr -The Other Side of Silence (latest Bernie Gunther tale) and Mary Beard - SPQR (Ancient Rome, a cautionary tale!)


----------



## Crudblud

Crudblud said:


> When I've finished it, I'll be happy to. Right now, having reached the halfway point, I'm taking a short break to read Voltaire's _Candide_.


Okay, so after that digression I read up to the end of "Autumn Rivulets," and I think that just about marks the end of what I can tolerate of _Leaves of Grass_ for the time being. But I'll try to respond to Varick, since I am presently some 310 pages (of nearly 500 in the Oxford World's Classics edition) in, and doubt I'll be seeing page 311 for quite some time. The following is probably not all I have to say, I would have liked to have talked about some of the poems I liked (such as "Vocalism," "The Wound Dresser," and "A Boston Ballad"), but it's as much as I can find within me right now.

There is a general sense of aspiration to encyclopedism ─ the kind of all-inclusiveness one often encounters in large works of American literature ─ the poet seeking to contain within himself a microcosm of all humanity, this being embodied by a catalogue of American culture, society, sexuality, and life that is _Leaves of Grass_. All good in theory, but usually what this means in practice is lists. Lots and lots of lists and in quick succession. A profusion of lists. A deluge. So many lists of places, peoples, and professions, you could swear someone switched your copy of Whitman's magnum opus with the yellow pages. This poetry of lists can often feel like being beaten over the head with a heavy rubber foam bat.

Compounding that sensation, Whitman's language is relentlessly repetitive, bold, in-your-face, close, almost physical. This is perhaps the book's strongest point, and it gives the sense of intimacy between author and reader that is clearly one of its primary goals. The goal is achieved early on and proceeds to continue developing to an obnoxious degree, the feeling eventually becoming akin to playing host in the wee small hours to a loud, drunken acquaintance, met only a few times and long ago, who is going over the particulars of an anecdote he cannot quite remember, so he goes over it again and again, each time with a slight variation that contributes to a gradual yet functionally imperceptible transformation of the whole, the merits of which are cancelled out the fact that you are being yelled at in your living room by a drunkard at three o'clock in the morning.

So Whitman is a powerful writer, capable, purposeful, attention-grabbing, but definitely not economical, in fact he writes his poems to redundancy more often than not. He near always forgoes meter and rhyme, and much of the book can even feel like stilted prose that has been broken up into arrhythmic verse as if to distract the reader from its cumbersomeness. Yet there are also several parts of the book in which he displays a vocabulary and a natural flow that transcend this (some of them even contain lists!), and the half-certainty that there will be more of this to come later on is generally encouragement enough to persevere through the reiterations of reiterations of lists of things that make up the majority of the book, but not for as long as the poet apparently wishes.

Whitman also has a tendency to gaze in awe, almost naively, at America, and not just at America but at the particles that make up America, the farmers and the carpenters and the hunters and the fishermen and the husbands and the wives and the children and the dogs and the grandmas and the trees and the houses near the trees and the the houses the carpenters made so the farmers could raise their children and look after their grandmas while keeping dogs and... If it seems like I keep harping on the list thing to an excessive extent, it is only because that is the best way to communicate my experience with the book. The listing of things is the result of the gazing in awe, the awe being so great that this obviously talented poet is reduced to making lists.

A great deal of the book feels like unedited rambling, sometimes embryonic, frequently soporific, occasionally capable of inspiring the awe with which it was clearly written. I don't wish to cast aspersions upon the people who love it, but it does seem like a handful of great moments are made to represent the whole thing, and that the work is called a masterpiece for those moments alone, rather than for being a complete and consistent work in itself. Ultimately, I feel that it is probably better to take _Leaves of Grass_ in total as a sprawling anthology of connected yet often redundant objects rather than a self-contained work consisting only of vital parts, a thing to be dipped into rather than to be read from start to finish.


----------



## Pugg

*A Handful of Dust ; Evelyn Waugh*


----------



## clockworkmurderer

I've been looking into the Non-canonical gospels. Currently reading and rereading the gospel of Thomas.


----------



## Tristan

clockworkmurderer said:


> I've been looking into the Non-canonical gospels. Currently reading and rereading the gospel of Thomas.


I find those fascinating. I've read most of them, as well as a few books about the "apocrypha" in general.


----------



## clockworkmurderer

I like the idea of "forbidden knowledge." Serious Lovecraft fan here.


----------



## Crudblud

Eugène Ionesco - _Rhinoceros_


----------



## Avey

Crudblud said:


> ..._Leaves of Grass_.
> 
> ...definitely not economical, in fact he writes his poems to redundancy more often than not.
> 
> ...Ultimately, I feel that it is probably better to take _Leaves of Grass_ in total as a sprawling anthology of connected yet often redundant objects rather than a self-contained work consisting only of vital parts, a thing to be dipped into rather than to be read from start to finish.


I disagree with you, on the whole. But I appreciate your comments, and would agree on the highlighted parts. Anything but economical, and I am hard-pressed to see the work as a "collective" as well.

But, again, I disagree. Because the thing is sprawling and, as you say, physical, and as I say, _enveloping_, I think it is a stunning, mesmerizing work.


----------



## Crudblud

Avey said:


> I disagree with you, on the whole. But I appreciate your comments, and would agree on the highlighted parts. Anything but economical, and I am hard-pressed to see the work as a "collective" as well.
> 
> But, again, I disagree. Because the thing is sprawling and, as you say, physical, and as I say, _enveloping_, I think it is a stunning, mesmerizing work.


If you have the stomach for it, all's well. It is an exhaustive and exhausting work, both of which are admirable, I just find so much of it not to my taste.

Aside from Whitman, I'm currently reading _Buddenbrooks_ by Thomas Mann, in the H.T. Lowe-Porter translation.


----------



## clavichorder

I haven't been reading. What should I read? I always feel better when I get really into some book, and I don't think I'm up for laborsome, but frivolous would not hold my interest either.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Ingélou said:


> Simon Winchester - The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2003
> 
> Picked up in a second hand shop. Previously we owned (but have now rehomed) the very entertaining biography of James A. H. Murray, the big book's chief maker, entitled 'Caught in the Web of Words' and written by his granddaughter K. M. Elisabeth Murray in 1977.
> 
> The Winchester book was a quieter & more mannered read (the prose ponderously 'Victorian'), but it had some fascinating anecdotes and potted biographies of the men who helped compile the great dictionary - for example, two Americans - Fitzedward Hall, a self-taught philologist who was dismissed acrimoniously from his post as Professor of Sanskrit & became a recluse in an East Anglian cottage - and *Dr William Chester Minor*, an insane murderer incarcerated at Broadmoor and repatriated to an American asylum after he mutilated himself in the most obvious (& to a male, repellent) way. _Ouch!_
> 
> All the same, I shall probably recycle it to a charity shop - unless countermanded by Taggart, who has been waiting for me to finish it. I've always been a slow reader and these days anyway get seduced by the computer.


Winchester also wrote The Surgeon of Crowthorne about Minor, which I recommend.


----------



## Barbebleu

Crudblud said:


> If you have the stomach for it, all's well. It is an exhaustive and exhausting work, both of which are admirable, I just find so much of it not to my taste.
> 
> Aside from Whitman, I'm currently reading _Buddenbrooks_ by Thomas Mann, in the H.T. Lowe-Porter translation.


I love Thomas Mann. It's years since I red any of his stuff. Thanks for the reminder. Favourites are of course The Magic Mountain, Felix Krull and Joseph and his Brothers. But all the rest are great.


----------



## Guest

I'm about to start










and at school my senior AP Lit class will begin reading










It's one of my favorite plays. It took some doing to get the school board to approve it, though! It's far more harrowing in the theater than just reading it, but each year many students pick it as their favorite work that we studied.


----------



## Il_Penseroso

*From Lenin to Putin* by *M.Toloui*. A history of Soviet Russia plus an illustrative appendix devoted to the chronological relationship between Soviet Russia and Persia.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

*A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court*, by Mark Twain. A tour de force; he alternates between 19th century Yankee slang and high blown Maloryan fustian, full of braken spears and long, rambling paragraphs. He wasn't a fan of mediaeval chivalry, all the rage in those days (Burne-Jones & co); he thinks the Middle Ages was effectively a slave-owning society and regrets that the guillotine hadn't been invented.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

I've wanted to read Miguel De Cervantes' _Don Quixote_ for years and now I've finally begun.


----------



## Varick

Mahlerian said:


> Plowed through this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The author gets into the psychological reasons why some people believe in conspiracy theories, touching on everything from the JFK assassination to the French Revolution to those reptiles David Icke believes control the world behind the scenes. It may be a little misleading of him to suggest that cognitive biases of the kinds discussed aren't controllable to any extent. We should be aware of the distortions our minds can produce so that we can reason better. That aside, this book was very easy to read and I enjoyed it a good bit, even if a lot of the discussion of specific psychological mechanisms was familiar already.


I have never given in to conspiracy theories, because I have yet to see one proven true in my lifetime. I haven't read this book, but it does seem interesting. I've always said that many people believe in conspiracy theories (such as the JFK Assassination and 9/11) because it is very disconcerting that *one* "nobody/loser" (such as in JFK), or a group of "nobody's/average people" can do such colossal damage. I think many people don't realize how easy it is to destroy or do evil on a large scale, yet how difficult it is to build and do good on such a large scale. So they fall back on conspiracy theories to set their minds at ease.



Crudblud said:


> Okay, so after that digression I read up to the end of "Autumn Rivulets," and I think that just about marks the end of what I can tolerate of _Leaves of Grass_ for the time being. But I'll try to respond to Varick, since I am presently some 310 pages (of nearly 500 in the Oxford World's Classics edition) in, and doubt I'll be seeing page 311 for quite some time. The following is probably not all I have to say, I would have liked to have talked about some of the poems I liked (such as "Vocalism," "The Wound Dresser," and "A Boston Ballad"), but it's as much as I can find within me right now.
> 
> There is a general sense of aspiration to encyclopedism ─ the kind of all-inclusiveness one often encounters in large works of American literature ─ the poet seeking to contain within himself a microcosm of all humanity, this being embodied by a catalogue of American culture, society, sexuality, and life that is _Leaves of Grass_. All good in theory, but usually what this means in practice is lists. Lots and lots of lists and in quick succession. A profusion of lists. A deluge. So many lists of places, peoples, and professions, you could swear someone switched your copy of Whitman's magnum opus with the yellow pages. This poetry of lists can often feel like being beaten over the head with a heavy rubber foam bat.
> 
> Compounding that sensation, Whitman's language is relentlessly repetitive, bold, in-your-face, close, almost physical. This is perhaps the book's strongest point, and it gives the sense of intimacy between author and reader that is clearly one of its primary goals. The goal is achieved early on and proceeds to continue developing to an obnoxious degree, the feeling eventually becoming akin to playing host in the wee small hours to a loud, drunken acquaintance, met only a few times and long ago, who is going over the particulars of an anecdote he cannot quite remember, so he goes over it again and again, each time with a slight variation that contributes to a gradual yet functionally imperceptible transformation of the whole, the merits of which are cancelled out the fact that you are being yelled at in your living room by a drunkard at three o'clock in the morning.
> 
> So Whitman is a powerful writer, capable, purposeful, attention-grabbing, but definitely not economical, in fact he writes his poems to redundancy more often than not. He near always forgoes meter and rhyme, and much of the book can even feel like stilted prose that has been broken up into arrhythmic verse as if to distract the reader from its cumbersomeness. Yet there are also several parts of the book in which he displays a vocabulary and a natural flow that transcend this (some of them even contain lists!), and the half-certainty that there will be more of this to come later on is generally encouragement enough to persevere through the reiterations of reiterations of lists of things that make up the majority of the book, but not for as long as the poet apparently wishes.
> 
> Whitman also has a tendency to gaze in awe, almost naively, at America, and not just at America but at the particles that make up America, the farmers and the carpenters and the hunters and the fishermen and the husbands and the wives and the children and the dogs and the grandmas and the trees and the houses near the trees and the the houses the carpenters made so the farmers could raise their children and look after their grandmas while keeping dogs and... If it seems like I keep harping on the list thing to an excessive extent, it is only because that is the best way to communicate my experience with the book. The listing of things is the result of the gazing in awe, the awe being so great that this obviously talented poet is reduced to making lists.
> 
> A great deal of the book feels like unedited rambling, sometimes embryonic, frequently soporific, occasionally capable of inspiring the awe with which it was clearly written. I don't wish to cast aspersions upon the people who love it, but it does seem like a handful of great moments are made to represent the whole thing, and that the work is called a masterpiece for those moments alone, rather than for being a complete and consistent work in itself. Ultimately, I feel that it is probably better to take _Leaves of Grass_ in total as a sprawling anthology of connected yet often redundant objects rather than a self-contained work consisting only of vital parts, a thing to be dipped into rather than to be read from start to finish.


Great review and quite humorous at times. Thank you for such a detailed anatomy of the content and style.



SimonTemplar said:


> *A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court*, by Mark Twain. A tour de force; he alternates between 19th century Yankee slang and high blown Maloryan fustian, full of braken spears and long, rambling paragraphs. He wasn't a fan of mediaeval chivalry, all the rage in those days (Burne-Jones & co); he thinks the Middle Ages was effectively a slave-owning society and regrets that the guillotine hadn't been invented.


I'm still reading a biography on Mark Twain. Interesting person to say the least.

V


----------



## Mahlerian

Varick said:


> I have never given in to conspiracy theories, because I have yet to see one proven true in my lifetime. I haven't read this book, but it does seem interesting. I've always said that many people believe in conspiracy theories (such as the JFK Assassination and 9/11) because it is very disconcerting that *one* "nobody/loser" (such as in JFK), or a group of "nobody's/average people" can do such colossal damage. I think many people don't realize how easy it is to destroy or do evil on a large scale, yet how difficult it is to build and do good on such a large scale. So they fall back on conspiracy theories to set their minds at ease.


This effect is described in the book as being the result of our minds seeking to find big or important causes for events with significant effects. Interestingly, we're more inclined to believe that a conspiracy was involved if an assassination succeeded rather than if it failed, even if the outcome depends on all kinds of other factors over which a conspiracy would have no control.


----------



## Lukecash12

The Mishneh Torah, by Rambam, aka Moses Maimonides.


----------



## Pugg

*Dale Peck- Now It's Time to Say Goodbye*


----------



## Pazuzu

Two books that are bigger than anything I can usually handle, but are so tight and rich and amazing and...








*Musil - The man without qualities*








*Foucault - History of madness*


----------



## sospiro

Something light and not too taxing for my brain.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

clockworkmurderer said:


> I like the idea of "forbidden knowledge." *Serious Lovecraft fan here*.


Hey, something else we have in common


----------



## clockworkmurderer

SiegendesLicht said:


> Hey, something else we have in common


















I really like this book; it has a great arcane feel to it and of course Lovecraft's stories are so fun and creepy.  Have you read "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward"?


----------



## Kieran

DiesIraeCX said:


> I've wanted to read Miguel De Cervantes' _Don Quixote_ for years and now I've finally begun.


That's not only a great book - the best I've read, in fact - but it's also a great translation. Don Quixote is such a remarkable book, it defies categorisation. In fact, it defies time itself because it's a modern work, in some ways. Especially in how it deals with perspective and reality, but also in "what happens" in book 2, which I won't go into because you're reading it, but which could almost be an action of modernist and post-modernist authors. Except with Cervantes, everything is deliciously funny, even when it's riotously violent. I don't think I ever read a funnier book, in fact, no matter how bleak and tragic it gets.

Hope you enjoy it! :tiphat:


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills
John Dickson Carr's Department of Queer Complaints 
Conan Doyle's short stories


----------



## SiegendesLicht

clockworkmurderer said:


> I really like this book; it has a great arcane feel to it and of course Lovecraft's stories are so fun and creepy.  Have you read "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward"?


Yes. I like Lovecraft's language very much too.


----------



## John T

_Fall of a Titan_ by Igor Guzenko. Lengthy, but compelling.


----------



## clockworkmurderer

And to think that Lovecraft's work was never famous during his life (outside small readership of certain pulp style magazines)! But so it is with so many great artists


----------



## Kivimees

Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon:









A fascinating blend of history, economics and ecology to shed light on the development of Chicago and the 'wild west'.


----------



## Wood

MagneticGhost said:


> Ahh - I love Thomas Hardy - and Jude had a great impact on me when I read it at University. I think it's time I revisited it.
> I tend to think of him as a master novelist who gave it all up to concentrate on poems!


I read and enjoyed all of Hardy's novels when I was a teenager. I particularly liked Return of the Native, Tess, Two on a Tower and The Woodlanders. For many years he was my favourite novelist. However, a few years ago I re-read most of them, but this time my pleasure was limited by his excessive Victorian melodrama and very dated, almost pretentious, references to the Classics.

He did well though. To go from a builder's son to enjoying high society and success as a novelist in his lifetime would be a great achievement today, let alone in Victorian times. How on Earth did he manage to lose his West Country accent enough to satisfy the London snobs?


----------



## Wood

Mahlerian said:


> Plowed through this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The author gets into the psychological reasons why some people believe in conspiracy theories, touching on everything from the JFK assassination to the French Revolution to those reptiles David Icke believes control the world behind the scenes. It may be a little misleading of him to suggest that cognitive biases of the kinds discussed aren't controllable to any extent. We should be aware of the distortions our minds can produce so that we can reason better. That aside, this book was very easy to read and I enjoyed it a good bit, even if a lot of the discussion of specific psychological mechanisms was familiar already.


Conspiracy theories can be supported by rational evidence and waying up probabilities of particular potential conspiracies, such that bias and mind distortion plays no greater part than it does to one's view of any other phenomena in the public domain..


----------



## Wood

clavichorder said:


> I haven't been reading. What should I read? I always feel better when I get really into some book, and I don't think I'm up for laborsome, but frivolous would not hold my interest either.


Clavi, how about something middle brow like Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana for example, or anything by William Boyd. Early Louis de Bernieres is also pretty good ie the Latin American novels.

For middle brow non-fiction the works of Dervla Murphy, mostly travel books, come to mind.


----------



## Blancrocher

Walt Whitman, "Manly Health and Training," which was recently discovered by a graduate student from the University of Houston. It is, as the discoverer says, "sort of an insane document."

An article about the work: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/books/walt-whitman-promoted-a-paleo-diet-who-knew.html?_r=0

The work itself: http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2206&context=wwqr


----------



## dieter

Richard Ford: Let me be Frank with you. John Cheever Stories: Alice Munro Short Stories.


----------



## Lukecash12

Thomas Aquinas' _Summa Theologica_.


----------



## Kieran

Lukecash12 said:


> Thomas Aquinas' _Summa Theologica_.


Thats heavy duty gear, right there. I have the Summa Contra Gentiles, and although it's dry and technical, I can't help but be awestruck.

Currently reading Paul Johnson's book on Mozart, which I'm thoroughly enjoying, and about to start Raymond Chandler's The High Window, a Philip Marlowe mystery...


----------



## Pugg

Margaret Mazzantini, wonderful writer:tiphat:


----------



## Tristan

_Mrs. Dalloway_ by Virginia Woolf









Modernism is my favorite period of literature and I've been meaning to read more. When I first read Woolf I found it dense and hard to follow, but I'm much more used to her style now and I am especially enjoying this novel 

I'm also reading a number of non-fiction works as well, including some highly technical linguistics stuff, the most interesting of which is:

_The Syntax-Morphology Interface: A Study of Syncretism_


----------



## Wood

EURIPEDES: Iphigenia in Tauris

Having recently heard the Gluck opera for the first time, the original source complements it well.


----------



## starthrower

Better listen to all the music you can in the next 20 years!


----------



## Lukecash12

Two of my favorite gems on the shelf:
















And some more study lately of the Codex Sinaiticus:


----------



## kartikeys

Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4591.Genome


----------



## Jeff W

Haven't been able to do much listening with the baby around so I've been doing a bunch of reading instead.

View attachment 84852


Read this one over the weekend. Sam Watkins - Company Aytch. An account from a Confederate foot soldier who joined at the start and fought in many major battles.

View attachment 84853


Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights. Just started this one today.


----------



## Pugg

Stephen Gilbert; Willard


----------



## Guest

She is one of my favorite crime fiction writers. Her novels are gritty, and at times, not for the faint of heart.


----------



## agoukass

I've been working my way through Haruki Murakami's "1Q84."


----------



## Pugg

Just bought:







Includes: Goodbye to Berlin and Christopher and His Kind.


----------



## arpeggio

_The Fifth Season_ by J. K. Jemisin.

If one is familiar with the Sad and Rabid Puppy movement in the Science Fiction community, it is the only non-puppy novel that has been nominated for this year's Hugo.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

clockworkmurderer said:


> And to think that Lovecraft's work was never famous during his life (outside small readership of certain pulp style magazines)! But so it is with so many great artists


It is even more troubling to find out that in our "enlightened" age the image of a great writer like Lovecraft can be removed from being used as a symbol for World Fantasy Award - precisely the genre Lovecraft was so good at - merely for holding politically incorrect views during his life.


----------



## Blancrocher

Karl Ove Knausgaard, "A Death in the Family," book 1 of "My Struggle" (translated from the Norwegian by Dan Bartlett)

Gripping read--I intend to complete the series.


----------



## Mahlerian

A collection of essays; some of them were good, some less than great. The one on Renoir was disappointingly bland and uninformative, but I enjoyed reading about the history of connecting color and music (focusing on Scriabin), on Klimt's Schubert, and the influence of jazz and popular music on Mondrian.

Now I've started on this:


----------



## Chordalrock

Finally reading Fifty Shades of Grey. For, ugh, research purposes only... It's surprisingly good though, even though I'm a dude. I'm enjoying it, it's amusing. Women aren't known for scrutability, but this book is at times like peering into some secret mystery of the universe.


----------



## Crudblud

Günter Grass - _The Tin Drum_


----------



## Abraham Lincoln

Chordalrock said:


> Finally reading Fifty Shades of Grey. For, ugh, research purposes only... It's surprisingly good though, even though I'm a dude. I'm enjoying it, it's amusing. Women aren't known for scrutability, but this book is at times like peering into some secret mystery of the universe.


Why is it surprisingly good? That Grey guy is a harrasser and a total creep.


----------



## Chordalrock

Abraham Lincoln said:


> Why is it surprisingly good? That Grey guy is a harrasser and a total creep.


Well, me being a dude, I don't read it for Grey but for Anastasia, and I find her amusing and relatively realistic (I don't know about the constant blushing, but beyond that). I've only read 120 pages so far though, so maybe I'll get bored once the action starts.


----------



## Abraham Lincoln

Chordalrock said:


> Well, me being a dude, I don't read it for Grey but for Anastasia, and I find her amusing and relatively realistic (I don't know about the constant blushing, but beyond that). I've only read 120 pages so far though, so maybe I'll get bored once the action starts.


Matter of fact, many people don't think Anastasia is realistic at all.


----------



## Chordalrock

Abraham Lincoln said:


> Matter of fact, many people don't think Anastasia is realistic at all.


Many people don't think a lot of things are realistic or honest, yet they are.

The things I meant when I mentioned she behaved relatively realistic are things like:

(1) When Anastasia and Christian first meet, Anastasia at times blurts out provocative comments, subconsciously meant to test Christian's character. A lot of women do this to guys they're interested in, in the initial phase of getting to know them. As in the book, it just seems to happen rather than being premeditated. There's an evolutionary reason for this behaviour: it's supposed to intimidate men who are weak and not worth mating with, while men of stronger will-power will shrug them off. I have never read another novel - literary classic "masterpiece" or otherwise - where females were portrayed doing this. Have you?

(2) Anastasia having difficulty finding guys she actually finds sexy not just cute. Her friendship with and the events relating to Jose make this painfully obvious in a realistic fashion. A lot of women really do find it difficult to find men that seem truly thrillingly sexy, because women evolved to mate with alpha males and alpha males are rare, not to mention a social and financial liability in most cases ever since the paleolithic era ended if not ever since we climbed down from the trees. You should keep in mind just how genetically similar we are to chimpanzees; think of the implications for sexual behaviour. I think the book reveals this sort of thing very well just by being about BDSM, and as such is more penetrating than the typical literary novel.

(3) The book also does a good job of portraying Anastasia's ambivalence toward BDSM. On one hand, she's grown up to think of it as some sort of undignified deviation in human behaviour; on the other hand, she's discovering that it speaks to the forgotten depths of her being. I'm not sure most women are as clueless as Anastasia: after all, so many of them read Fifty Shades of Grey knowing full well it will be about BDSM. But then Anastasia is young and inexperienced, so the book is probably being realistic here too.

I could go on.


----------



## Guest

Hitler
1936 - 1945 Nemesis 

Part two of Ian Kershaw's biography.

"An achievement of the very highest order" - Michael Burleigh, Financial Times.


----------



## Dr Johnson

dogen said:


> Hitler
> 1936 - 1945 Nemesis
> 
> Part two of Ian Kershaw's biography.
> 
> "An achievement of the very highest order" - Michael Burleigh, Financial Times.


When you've finished that, if you're not utterly fed up with Hitler, you might find this amusing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Adolf


----------



## Guest

Dr Johnson said:


> When you've finished that, if you're not utterly fed up with Hitler, you might find this amusing:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Adolf


Crazy man. Fiction doesn't tempt me usually.


----------



## arpeggio

*The fifth season*



arpeggio said:


> _The Fifth Season_ by J. K. Jemisin.
> 
> If one is familiar with the Sad and Rabid Puppy movement in the Science Fiction community, it is the only non-puppy novel that has been nominated for this year's Hugo.


I just completed reading _The Fifth Season_.

It seems that every genre of art has disputes between conservative and modern factions: All art should look like Norman Rockwell, all music should sound like Mozart, _etc._ Over in the science fiction world there is a feud going on that makes our great tonal/atonal debate look like a tea party.

There are two groups in the conservative faction. The 'sad puppies' and the superconservative 'rabid puppies'. These two factions are trying to gain control over the Hugo Awards: The science fiction equivalent of the Oscars or Grammys. One of the means they are attempting trying to do this taking advantage of a loophole in the Hugo nomination process. The World Science Fiction Society is working on changing the rules for nominating. A good description of the situation https://morganpbillings.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/the-hugo-awards-controversy-for-the-uninitiated/

When one researches the nature of the dispute the rhetoric is almost identical to the tonal/atonal debate.

After reading this book I can see why the puppies have not endorsed it. It is the only novel that has been nominated that was not endorsed by either puppy faction. It is actually a pretty good book. It is a fantasy novel like the Martin _Game of Thrones Series_. The heroine has supernatural abilities. The book deals with pros and cons of how a person with such abilities can survive in society. How they would have to deal with the prejudices that may be directed at them and how some groups try to control them. According to the 'puppies' fantasy's should just be about Gonad the Barbarian slaying a dragon. Or Captain Kirk overcoming some alien threat while seducing a female antagonist. Nothing wrong with this type scifi/fantasy. It would be boring if is was the only type of scifi/fantasy.

What is sad is that this book may win the Hugo not because of its attributes but because of the politics of the situation. In spite of their bark the puppies are actually a small vocal minority who think they are the true voice of the science fiction community. Where have we heard this before?


----------



## Vaneyes

Number 14 in Fairstein's continuing NYC crime saga. Interesting travelogue always included. A producer should pick this series for PBS. The same ol' British who-done-its have become tiresome.


----------



## Avey

Avey said:


> Long time posting, and moving forward, maybe even longer, given my current (new) read:
> 
> *William Gaddis*, _The Recognitions_
> 
> View attachment 83217


Done! Definitely on the harder side - both a time commitment and dense subtext. If you enjoy his contemporaries (e.g., Gass, Barth, Pynchon), you'd probably like _The Recognitions_.

And not to ruin anything about the novel, but b/c of the context, I want to share one scene. **(So, just to be safe, maybe you should not continue reading if you hate reading even a _minor part from this novel_, probably like 0.0001% of the novel, albeit in a significant place in the story)**

There is a scene where one of the characters picks up organ music to play in a church, and when he enters, a priest warns him in Italian: "..._don't use too much bass, and low notes . . . and no strange combinations of notes, you understand._"

He plays. His "thumb and last finger come down time after time on three black keys between them, wringing out fourths." But "wringing that chord of the devil's interval from the full length of the thirty-foot bass pipes," the walls quiver, and the church literally collapses.

It is fantastic. The novel is littered with music references, as a side note.


----------



## Avey

Onward!

*Don DeLillo*, _Zero K_









*Flann O'Brien*, _The Dalkey Archives_


----------



## GreenMamba

Avey said:


> Done! Definitely on the harder side - both a time commitment and dense subtext. If you enjoy his contemporaries (e.g., Gass, Barth, Pynchon), you'd probably like _The Recognitions_.


I've never read The Recognitions, but liked both Carpenter's Gothic and A Frolic of His Own. I know The Recognitions is often considered his masterpiece, but my ability to withstand long, difficult novels has dropped substantially as I age.

Maybe someday...


----------



## Pugg

William Golding: The Double tongue.


----------



## Xaltotun

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Oration on the Dignity of Man
Mircea Eliade: The Myth of the Eternal Return
Livy: Ab Urbe Condita books I and II
Erasmus of Rotterdam: The Praise of Folly


----------



## Jeff W

View attachment 85377


Mark Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Twain lampoons the Arthurian legend and more specifically Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte D'Arthur'. I'm loving the parts where Malory is quoted directly and poked fun at.


----------



## SarahNorthman

I am currently crying my way through the Harry Potter series for the millionth time.


----------



## EarthBoundRules

Reading _Animal Farm_ for the third time.


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Enjoyable but I liked Pillars of the Earth better.


----------



## James Murphy

Jeanette Winterson's ' The Gap Of Time ', a modern version of ' The Winter's Tale'.


----------



## dieter

'Human Smoke'. Nicholson Baker.


----------



## dieter

dogen said:


> Hitler
> 1936 - 1945 Nemesis
> 
> Part two of Ian Kershaw's biography.
> 
> "An achievement of the very highest order" - Michael Burleigh, Financial Times.


To complement your curiosity about those times, read 'Human Smoke', by Nicholson Baker. I urge you to...


----------



## Guest

dieter said:


> To complement your curiosity about those times, read 'Human Smoke', by Nicholson Baker. I urge you to...


I shall, thanks. My interest is not so much "those times" as the politics and psychology; always current issues. But I will give it a look once I get through the final 600 pages!


----------



## EarthBoundRules

Continuing my Orwell session with _1984_.


----------



## Xaltotun

Jeff W said:


> View attachment 85377
> 
> 
> Mark Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Twain lampoons the Arthurian legend and more specifically Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte D'Arthur'. I'm loving the parts where Malory is quoted directly and poked fun at.


I remember owning a comic book adaptation of this as a kid. It had an "Enlightenment prevails"-sort of feeling, didn't it? Almost like written by Voltaire.


----------



## Xaltotun

James Murphy said:


> Jeanette Winterson's ' The Gap Of Time ', a modern version of ' The Winter's Tale'.


Winterson is wonderful. I've read one book (_Lighthousekeeping_) but I liked it very much.


----------



## Crudblud

Michel Houellebecq - _Atomised_


----------



## clockworkmurderer

White Fang, by Jack London


----------



## arpeggio

*Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold*

_Through Wolf's Eyes_ by Jane Lindskold






​


----------



## Tristan

Just started:

*One Hundred Years of Solitude* by Gabriel Garcia Marquez









This one's been on my to-read list for a while. I love the magical realism style, so I have no doubt I will love this book.


----------



## Pugg

Pai Hsien-Yung; Crystal Boy.


----------



## Vronsky

*Songs of Innocence and of Experience* by William Blake
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/171547.Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience

*The Little Prince* by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157993.The_Little_Prince


----------



## Avey

Tristan said:


> Just started:
> 
> *One Hundred Years of Solitude* by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
> 
> View attachment 85533
> 
> 
> This one's been on my to-read list for a while. ...


Same.

Yet! Re-reading these essays, which were set into a rough collection:









Never a poor decision to revisit, reread DFW.


----------



## Pugg

*The Two Hotel Francforts*

David Leavitt


----------



## Avey

I move on, to the obvious (for some, I suppose, like _greenmamba blancrocher_):


----------



## GreenMamba

Avey said:


> I move on, to the obvious (for some, I suppose, like _greenmamba blancrocher_):
> 
> View attachment 85619


Not sure I would have predicted it.  Never read it. Have you read Omensetter's Luck?


----------



## dieter

Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory. Not sure I like it...


----------



## Avey

GreenMamba said:


> Not sure I would have predicted it.  Never read it. Have you read Omensetter's Luck?


I have not. This was the first Gass that I could find at the local shops. Been meaning to read some of his work.


----------



## Blancrocher

Georg Trakl, Complete Poems (free Kindle download)

*p.s.* 

I haven't read that Gass either, Avery--any good?


----------



## Pugg

Margaret Mazzantini ; Twice Born.

The woman is good.


----------



## dieter

Just finished Dead Eye Dick, Vonnegut. I like Vonnegut a lot, love his politics as much as his writing.


----------



## Xenakiboy

What books am I reading? 

I regularly go between theory book's on composers such as Bartok, Xenakis, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and literature like Milton's "Paradise Lost", Shakespeare plays (my uncle brought me the complete collection a few years ago, even that I wasn't into Shakespeare, though It's interesting to take in the language and imagery used) and I also read a lot of music essay's. Not for education or even theory but for fun, I guess that's weird aye?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

dieter said:


> Just finished Dead Eye Dick, Vonnegut. I like Vonnegut a lot, love his politics as much as his writing.


I assume you appreciate Slaughterhouse Five as well?


----------



## Samuel Kristopher

> literature like Milton's "Paradise Lost", Shakespeare plays (my uncle brought me the complete collection a few years ago, even that I wasn't into Shakespeare


I think if I could be stranded on an island with only two books, Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's complete works would number among my top choices  having said that, I just finished War and Peace last month and I'm still reeling from how awesome it is, and sad that it's over. I can't wait to read it again!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Samuel Kristopher said:


> having said that, I just finished War and Peace last month and I'm still reeling from how awesome it is, and sad that it's over. I can't wait to read it again!


I think you would be of a different opinion if you were a 16-year old Russian teenager who has been shoved this book down his throat by the school literature course


----------



## Samuel Kristopher

Oh I'm sure  Out of all my Russian teenage students, I'd say the majority would be less than enthusiastic about it, but you get some who are really into it. In no other country have I had a young fifteen year old ask me: "What do you think about Count Bezukhov's motivations? Are they convincing? Because sometimes I didn't believe in his character."


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Samuel Kristopher said:


> Oh I'm sure  Out of all my Russian teenage students, I'd say the majority would be less than enthusiastic about it, but you get some who are really into it. In no other country have I had a young fifteen year old ask me: "What do you think about Count Bezukhov's motivations? Are they convincing? Because sometimes I didn't believe in his character."


Offtopic: you are a New Zealander teaching English to Russian students, am I right?


----------



## dieter

SiegendesLicht said:


> I assume you appreciate Slaughterhouse Five as well?


Ya wohl. Great writer.


----------



## dieter

SiegendesLicht said:


> I think you would be of a different opinion if you were a 16-year old Russian teenager who has been shoved this book down his throat by the school literature course


The beauty of your situation is that one day the light will shine and you'll understand the real Tolstoy. Yes, he was a complicated man but he did write great literature.


----------



## Samuel Kristopher

> Offtopic: you are a New Zealander teaching English to Russian students, am I right?


Yep! Although teenagers are only half of my students - actually most of them are adults.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Samuel Kristopher said:


> Yep! Although teenagers are only half of my students - actually most of them are adults.


A would-be English teacher here too - one who has a degree but has not worked at school for a single day of her life


----------



## Guest

_The Island of Dr. Moreau_ by H.G. Wells.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

As to what I am reading right now: Andreas Eschbach - One Trillion Dollars ("Eine Billion Dollar" in the original German). It is the story of a young man from New York who inherits the abovementioned sum of money - and with it a prophecy which predicts that his wealth will change the future of humanity. Except that the young man is somewhat weak of character and swiftly falls to the influence of another. At the point where I am right now, the two of them have just bought Exxon Mobil.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Just finished reading Hughes and Stradling on the English Musical Renaissance 1840 to 1940.









Much more entertaining than it sounds, wilfully opinionated, difficult to put down.


----------



## Guest

Having finally finished Fagles translation of Homer's Iliad, I am now moving on to his translation of the Odyssey. My plan, after that, is to either move to his translation of the Aeneid. If not, it will be Aeschylus' Oresteia.


----------



## Pugg

Patrick Dennis:


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

By Jules Verne


----------



## GreenMamba

Michael Faber's last novel. I loved The Crimson Petal and the White, so I figured I'd give this a try.


----------



## znapschatz

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson, a novel about an English woman born in 1910 and her family through the early 1950s. I wish it were possible to describe it more fully, but to do so would give away an important element of the unusual plot. If you do give this one a look, try not to read anything about it, including the jacket notes. It took about 50 pages before I figured out what was going on, and then it became a terrific read. It was recommended to me by my retired teacher brother, an avid reader, and he was spot on.


----------



## Pugg

Around the world with aunty Mame by Parick Dennis


----------



## Guest




----------



## Avey

*Renata Adler*, _Speedboat_


----------



## Pugg

I bought this one,


----------



## elgar's ghost

Lent to me by a crony last weekend. Bill Bryson is a familiar figure in the UK as he wrote and presented a series of charming Anglophile travel programmes (I gather he now resides here) so it's good to read something by him which entertainingly brings to life certain events from his own country during one particular year of the Roaring '20s.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Acté. Not the best Dumas by any means; this was his first published historical novel, and it shows. The prose is marmoreal.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Bah! I resign. Gerald Durrell instead.

In silence we watched Joy Adamson chasing Elsa, Elsa chasing Joy Adamson, Joy Adamson lying on top of Elsa, Elsa on top of Joy Adamson, Elsa in bed with Joy Adamson, Joy Adamson in bed with Elsa, and so on, interminably. At last the show ended and Huxley leant forward and switched off the set. He mused for a moment. I was silent.
‘D’you know what, Durrell?’ he asked suddenly.
I wondered what penetrating and lucid commentary on animal behaviour the greatest living English biologist was going to vouchsafe to me. ‘What, sir?’ I asked, and waited breathlessly for his answer. 
‘It’s the only case of lesbianism I have ever seen between a human being and a lioness,’ he said, quite seriously. 
After that, I felt that any further conversation would be an anti-climax, so I left.


----------



## Blancrocher

R.W. Southern - The Making of the Middle Ages


----------



## Blancrocher

Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066 - 1307 (3rd Ed.)
Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381
Paul Strohm, Chaucer's Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury


----------



## Kieran

Still hooked on Raymond Chandler's detective, Phillip Marlowe. These are very much classics of the detective genre, with Marlowe a wise cracking, tough, chess-loving private eye, working for $25 a day, plus expenses, "been in jail more than once, and I don't do divorce business."

Chandler's prose is like cut glass, and the characters he creates spring into your eye, just like as if you're watching a film. He draws mean portraits. I've so far read The High Window, The Little Sister, The Big Sleep, and The Lady in the Lake.

I reckon I have about 4 more to go...


----------



## helenora

Vronsky said:


> *Songs of Innocence and of Experience* by William Blake
> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/171547.Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience
> 
> *The Little Prince* by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157993.The_Little_Prince


amazing! two masterpieces....and they complement each other quite well.....Little Prince is like a song of innocence and wisdom, or wisdom of innocence - yes, it's paradoxical , but innocence can be wise ....and sometimes wiser than experience


----------



## helenora

Deux verbes expriment toutes les formes que prennent ces deux causes de mort : *vouloir et pouvoir*. Vouloir nous brûle et Pouvoir nous détruit.


----------



## Blancrocher

Martina Kempff, Die Königsmacherin (historical novel focusing on Bertrada of Laon, the mother of Charlemagne)
Einhard & Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne (Penguin)
La Chanson de Roland (text with trans. by Charles Scott Moncrieff; available for free online) 
Crétien de Troyes, Yvain: The Knight of the Lion (Trans. Burton Raffel)
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzifal (Trans. Arthur Thomas Hatto)
Hartmann von Aue, Der arme Heinrich
Michael Clanchy, England and its Rulers: 1066-1307
Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (biography of the humanist Poggio Bracciolini, who discovered Lucretius for modernity)


----------



## Pugg

Just received: La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas-fil


----------



## Suganthan

Just started reading "What to listen to in music" by Aaron Copland.


----------



## BaritoneAssoluto

I just started reading my part in Don Giovanni, Don Giovanni!


----------



## Pugg

Suganthan said:


> Just started reading "What to listen to in music" by Aaron Copland.


Welcome to Talk Classical with such a stunning opening post . :tiphat:


----------



## ilysse

I'm taking notes here as in the music posts haha. I needed a fun sort of summer read after going through a John Steinbeck kick and before reading and rereading some of the books I'll be requiring my daughter to read for homeschool. Currently, I'm reading Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It's pretty good with a few laugh out loud moments. There are, however, a few flaws in editing that want to drive me crazy haha Up next is Fahrenheit 451 again as that's the first book I'll have my daughter read.


----------



## starthrower

Great read!


----------



## Figleaf

ilysse said:


> I'm taking notes here as in the music posts haha. I needed a fun sort of summer read after going through a John Steinbeck kick and before reading and rereading some of the books I'll be requiring my daughter to read for homeschool. Currently, I'm reading Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It's pretty good with a few laugh out loud moments. There are, however, a few flaws in editing that want to drive me crazy haha Up next is Fahrenheit 451 again as that's the first book I'll have my daughter read.


My son is homeschooled and he likes Steinbeck too. Right now I'm trying to get the kids to concentrate on their French, because the younger ones could be starting school there next year. How old is your daughter?


----------



## ilysse

She is 15 and starting high school. She is a year behind due to family issues pertaining to having been a (my) foster child...that's an odd sentence; sorry haha. This is why we homeschool. She isn't a lover of reading but if I can get her off netflix long enough she'll attach herself to a book if she likes it. She is currently reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and loves it and even asked for the next one (I think there are 3 in the series). Her worst subject is math as is mine. This year we are going to try Time for Learning to try to get her up to speed in that subject. My middle child (17, in public high school) tries to help but she has her own studies to worry about so I can't put that pressure on her. She is doing American Sign Language as her second language. She's always had an interest and has been learning on her own so we were thrilled when we realized it was an option. Otherwise, we would have done Latin since she already has a small background as we did Latin as part of Language Arts years ago. I always recommend Latin or a Greek/Latin combo for elementary school. It has helped them with both spelling and vocabulary. 

Starting school in France? He'll have no choice but to learn French then.


----------



## Guest

A student gave this to me as an end of the year present. Quite a departure from my normal disturbing serial killer novels, but I like it so far. I gather it gets quite creepy as it develops. On a side note, I just discovered that Hitchcock used her short story "The Birds" as the basis of his movie.


----------



## Arturo Benedetti

I am reading and enjoying "Mahler: A Life" by Ian Carr. I highly recommended it.


----------



## helenora

Hi, dear members! any recommendations for non-fiction books about T.E. Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia.


----------



## Avey

Always onward...

*Roberto Bolano*, Antwerp









*Orwell, * Why I Write (and others)


----------



## Balthazar

helenora said:


> Hi, dear members! any recommendations for non-fiction books about T.E. Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia.


Be sure to read his autobiography, _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom_.

You will probably want to balance that with a more objective third part biography, but it is a fantastic story.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Orpheus in Paris: Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, by S. Kracauer

Vividly written, with entertaining anecdotes - grandes horizontales served up on platters with a sprig of parsley, dotty dandies, and automata.


----------



## Xenakiboy

I'm reminded that I own a biography of Sibelius that I haven't read yet, maybe I should dig it out!


----------



## Xenakiboy

I know it's not a well constructed question but what are some books that are good at immersing you in the story while also playing with your perception of the story or themes? (doesn't need to be mystery or in that vain, but can be)
Any surreal fiction would be great!
Thank you :tiphat:


----------



## Balthazar

Xenakiboy said:


> I know it's not a well constructed question but what are some books that are good at immersing you in the story while also playing with your perception of the story or themes? (doesn't need to be mystery or in that vain, but can be)
> Any surreal fiction would be great!
> Thank you :tiphat:


Some that come to mind are Borges (_Labyrinths_), Italo Calvino (everything, but especially _Cosmicomics_ and _If On Winter's Night a Traveler_), and Ishiguro (_When We Were Orphans_).


----------



## kartikeys

Skios - Michael Frayn


----------



## Tristan

I'm reading Thomas Mann's *Death in Venice* as well as other short stories of his.



Balthazar said:


> Some that come to mind are Borges (_Labyrinths_), Italo Calvino (everything, but especially _Cosmicomics_ and _If On Winter's Night a Traveler_), and Ishiguro (_When We Were Orphans_).


Excellent list. Ishiguro and Borges are two of my favorite authors. To that I would also add Murakami (particularly _Kafka on the Shore_).


----------



## bachstreet boys

Besides the books needed to finish my thesis I'm reading Woodcutters (Holzfällen) by Thomas Bernhard in the Danish translation. Apparently I seem to love every single book he writes.


----------



## Blancrocher

Kristin Ross, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune
T. J. Clark, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness


----------



## Blancrocher

Xenakiboy said:


> I know it's not a well constructed question but what are some books that are good at immersing you in the story while also playing with your perception of the story or themes? (doesn't need to be mystery or in that vain, but can be)
> Any surreal fiction would be great!
> Thank you :tiphat:


I'd recommend the works of Witold Gombrowicz, particularly Cosmos--one of my favorite novels.


----------



## Avey

*Baldwin*, Giovanni's Room

(K, lying, because I started it Saturday, finished it this morning. Nonetheless, "was" currently reading.)









*Gaddis*, Carpenter's Gothic


----------



## Kieran

Still on a pulp fiction kick, reading Raymond Chandler still - the fifth Phillip Marlowe tale I've read in a couple of months. This one is Playback, his final book. It has the trademarks all in place: prose so lyrical, it's like Steinbeck slumming it among the thrillers. Wit, sarcasm, one-liners so sharp they'd cut teeth. It's from Chandler we get the immortal "a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." I tried a few Dashiell Hammett stories, they're even older, but I found Red Harvest to be patchy. I have A Thin Man now from the library, and the start looks promising.

Ed McBain and Elmore Leonard can wait...


----------



## Pugg

Kato Kaelin; The Whole Truth.
I wonder if this is the truth?


----------



## Bryn Dizzy

Robert Harris: Dictator. The final part book in his trilogy of novels about Cicero.


----------



## Kieran

Bryn Dizzy said:


> Robert Harris: Dictator. The final part book in his trilogy of novels about Cicero.


Obviously they must be good if you read the other two. I'm tempted by them also. I enjoyed his Fatherland book and I think he's got a creative spin on things...


----------



## ilysse

Thought I'd update because I am in the middle of two new (to me) books that I'm loving. 
The first is Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find. A collection of short stories that are perfect for when you are sitting in waiting rooms haha. I'm just keeping it in my bag for such occasions but got through a few stories and once you start you'll want to keep reading. 

The second I started last night but just couldn't put it down and got about 1/3 of the way through before my eyes gave up on me. It's currently sitting on the sofa arm calling my name but I have stuff to do so I know I shouldn't pick it up yet. If you like Steinbeck I think you'll appreciate this one: The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin. As soon as my chores are done I'll be on the porch, this book in hand, a glass of iced tea at my side, and Dvorak in the background.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

John Stuart Mill - Utilitarianism.


----------



## starthrower

A pure joy to read what has sadly become a lost art. Kudos to Simeone for a terrific job choosing and assembling these letters from the vast archives, and for his painstaking research in authoring the invaluable footnotes.


----------



## Blancrocher

Nawal El Saadawi, _Woman at Point Zero_


----------



## Guest

Dark...very dark.


----------



## Xaltotun

Harold Bloom - _The Anxiety of Influence_
Wolfram von Eschenbach - _Parzival_


----------



## Ingélou

Antonia Fraser, 'Mary Queen of Scots'. She is *so* readable, and like me, interested in 'the human angle'. For example, Mary's grandmother wrote to her daughter advising her as a health measure to wash her hair once a month - so presumably most people washed it much much less often!

It's an old book, published in 1969 when I was actually studying Tudor history for A-level. We picked it up in our local second hand bookshop. Fascinating - wish I'd known about it back then.


----------



## musicrom

_Chess Story_ by Stefan Zweig.

A nice, short read for me, which relates a little bit to me, after winning a chess tournament last week. This is my first time reading Zweig, and I was pretty impressed. His writing style is very fluid and easy to read, and yet his words are profound.


----------



## helenora

musicrom said:


> View attachment 86811
> 
> _Chess Story_ by Stefan Zweig.
> 
> A nice, short read for me, which relates a little bit to me, after winning a chess tournament last week. This is my first time reading Zweig, and I was pretty impressed. His writing style is very fluid and easy to read, and yet his words are profound.


loved Zweig. read almost everything I could find. He is a great connoisseur of a human soul, always focusing light on hidden even dark places of a human consciousness and well, light places of this soul are already clearly seen in his writings.

Big novel to be recommended is " Beware of Pity".


----------



## Pugg

*The Story of the Night; Colm Tóibín*


----------



## Pugg

starthrower said:


> A pure joy to read what has sadly become a lost art. Kudos to Simeone for a terrific job choosing and assembling these letters from the vast archives, and for his painstaking research in authoring the invaluable footnotes.


Looks very interesting!


----------



## helenora

¨"Citadelle " Antoine de Saint-Exupery

mind blowing!!!!


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Kontrapunctus said:


> _The Island of Dr. Moreau_ by H.G. Wells.


That's a classic. Have you read "Moreau's Other Island" by Brian Aldiss? Highly recommended.


----------



## Tristan

Just started *Lincoln* by Gore Vidal. Looking forward to reading his series of historical novels that follow the timeline of American history. I've read a lot of Vidal's non-fiction, but have yet to read any of his novels.


----------



## geralmar

Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860; Larry Koger, University of South Carolina Press, 1985.

Excerpt: "The ex-slaves who owned human chattel regarded slavery not as oppressive institution but an economic necessity upon which their livelihood depended."

In the U.S. this book is like pornography: I can read it but I talk about it at my own peril.


----------



## Pugg

Tristan said:


> Just started *Lincoln* by Gore Vidal. Looking forward to reading his series of historical novels that follow the timeline of American history. I've read a lot of Vidal's non-fiction, but have yet to read any of his novels.


I've read two; The city and the pillar/ The City and the pillar revised .
I think from 1948.


----------



## Mahlerian




----------



## Ginger

Robert Gutman - ' Richard Wagner '
A very eye-opening biography about the man behind the music.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Ginger said:


> Robert Gutman - ' Richard Wagner '
> A very eye-opening biography about the man behind the music.


As far as I know, this is a particularly biased biography. There are much better ones. The one by Martin Geck comes to mind... I even own it in the German original.


----------



## arpeggio

Just completed John Scalzi's _Redshirts_.

Wonderful satire of _Star Trek_.


----------



## arpeggio

_In Harm's Way_ by James E. Bassett.

One of my favorite movies is based on this novel.

Note: Some interesting differences between the movie and the book. In the movie there is a very strained relationship between Torrey and his son. In the book there relationship is more amiable. The son joins the Navy to spite his mother and likes serving on the PT boats.


----------



## Pugg

​*Bram Stoker ; Dracula *


----------



## Vaneyes

Just started...










Related:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17654692-the-venetians


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Tristan said:


> Just started *Lincoln* by Gore Vidal. Looking forward to reading his series of historical novels that follow the timeline of American history. I've read a lot of Vidal's non-fiction, but have yet to read any of his novels.


Julian is excellent, in the same class as I Clavdivs and Yourcenar's Memoires d'Hadrien.

Couldn't get through Creation.


----------



## Guest

Pat Fairlea said:


> That's a classic. Have you read "Moreau's Other Island" by Brian Aldiss? Highly recommended.


No, I haven't. Sounds interesting, though.


----------



## Guest

Pugg said:


> ​*Bram Stoker ; Dracula *


What is the "extra material"?


----------



## Pugg

Kontrapunctus said:


> What is the "extra material"?


I haven't got a clue, just started it .


----------



## Guest

I was on holiday in Italy very recently and I stupidly forgot to pack my intended reading material (*Orhan Pamuk*: _The Museum of Innocence_; *John Irving*: _Avenue of Mysteries_). So, desperate for a a summer holiday read, I popped into the local town's bookstore and to my dismay the only book available in English was *Dan Brown*, _The Lost Symbol_. Utter tripe, but you know, flopping on a sunbed all day reading such "chewing gum" wasn't so bad after all. Anyway, once I had finished reading this "fast-food airport" literature, I swapped it with an American lady I met who had just finished reading Dan Brown's _Inferno_.
In that book there were lots of references to *Dante's* _The Divine Comedy_ and a couple of references to *Milton's* _Paradise Lost_, these being books I have never read (apart from extracts from the Milton, at school, years ago).
So, returning home I ordered them both and am now about to embark on *Clive Jame's* recent (2013) translation of the _Divine Comedy_ and *Joseph Lanzara's* _Paradise Lost in Plain English_ (a _Dumbdown_ Award Winner) which has the complete original poem side by side with the 'plain English' version.
I also now feel the urge to discover *Listz's* _Dante Symphony_ (which was also mentioned in _Inferno_).
All in all, despite my snotty disdain for Dan Brown's _oeuvre_, he has in fact led me to discover some of the great 'classics'.


----------



## Mahlerian

Years ago when The Da Vinci Code was hugely popular, I played a game with friends where I would ostentatiously pick the book up off the shelf, flip to a random page, and read the first sentence my eyes found (which would inevitably be over-dramatic and silly).


----------



## Guest

That's right, Mahlerian, nearly every line is so "portentous"; and then there is Brown's attention to "detail", like this (a paraphrase): _Langdon sat in his Toledo bull's leather Gucci seat on an executive XH325 Wankel-rotary twin-engine Learjet, digesting his melting Piedmont burrata as the plane shot through the turbulence over the Tuscany skies...._

And so on for about 500+ pages.


----------



## KirbyH

Since I'm reading far more books than any one person should, I'll just name one fiction and one non-fiction read:

*The Invisible Library* by Genevieve Cogman
*Classical Music in America* by Joseph Horowitz

The Cogman novel has a really neat idea behind it - there are a multitude of alternate universes and the protagonist, Irene, works for The Library, skipping across dimensions to preserve and disperse knowledge, distilling the best of what each universe has to offer. It's got this really nice blend of fantasy, historical backdrop, and even a little steampunk hiding in its pages. I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but it truly is great. I can't wait to read the next in the series when it's released in September.

The Horowitz I actually started to read back in college but never got the chance to finish, so here we are. I can already tell he's one of those "it was doomed from the start" authors but in my obsessive quest to get to the "why" I'm looking forward to delving further. To be fair, the classical scene in America is an ever-changing beast and it is a truly interesting subject. I'm hoping to walk away from the book with an even deeper appreciation for the craft as it's found on the soil of my homeland.


----------



## Avey

*O*'my...

Flannery O'Connor









Flann O'Brien


----------



## helenora

A play by Shakespeare which title shouldn´t be pronounced in a theater .... 
then will be continued listening to an opera


----------



## Dr Johnson

Just started this. Seems promising.


----------



## Ingélou

Ingélou said:


> Antonia Fraser, 'Mary Queen of Scots'. She is *so* readable, and like me, interested in 'the human angle'. For example, Mary's grandmother wrote to her daughter advising her as a health measure to wash her hair once a month - so presumably most people washed it much much less often!
> 
> It's an old book, published in 1969 when I was actually studying Tudor history for A-level. We picked it up in our local second hand bookshop. Fascinating - wish I'd known about it back then.


Still on this book - too busy fiddling and surfing the net to read more than a few pages a day; and then, *disaster!* The hard back second hand copy that we've got appears to have been printed without twenty pages just when it's getting on to Mary's sudden marriage to Darnley.

I could spit!!!


----------



## Dr Johnson

Ingélou said:


> Still on this book - too busy fiddling and surfing the net to read more than a few pages a day; and then, *disaster!* *The hard back second hand copy that we've got appears to have been printed without twenty pages just when it's getting on to Mary's sudden marriage to Darnley.*
> 
> I could spit!!!


Cruel, madam, very cruel!


----------



## Blancrocher

Tracy Letts, "August: Osage County"

Enjoyable enough that I'll try the author's other plays as well.


----------



## Judith

Reading Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking. Very challenging. Talks about living with Stephen. I'm going to read Shirley by Charlotte Bronte next, as I live in Yorkshire and its based on all the places that I know.


----------



## Scopitone

On my Kindle app on my phone, I am reading *Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera* by Fred Plotkin. I am learning a great deal, and I am still only in the "History of Opera" chapter. I have the huge *A History of Opera* by Carolyn Abbate on order from amazon. It sounds like it will be a great followup to this 101 book, especially since I am enjoying the history chapter so much.

My bathroom reading is *Charlie Chan at the Movies: History, Filmography, and Criticism* by Ken Hanke.

A classic. It has a chapter about each film with details on the making of the film as well as extensive summary with commentary interspersed. We also get some nice stills and promo images. The book came out originally in 1989, and it looks like Hanke interviewed Keye Luke quite a bit. So we get lots of anecdotes from him, as well - at least for the Oland period. Luke seems like he was a great guy.


----------



## Ginger

*Dave Eggers: The Circle*

...for the second time. A future fiction, which starts at the current technical possibilities and describes a company (The Circle), that combines Google, Facebook, Amazon and WhatsApp. The main character, a young woman called Mae is happy to have just been employed there. It´s very shocking to see how it starts so easy and "normal" and then gets really bad into the surveillance and human rights topic. I also liked the colloquial style of writing: Dave Eggers has written many other books on a higher level of language but in this book he uses a simple language to underline the naiveté of the characters.


----------



## Scopitone

Ginger said:


> *Dave Eggers: The Circle*
> 
> ...for the second time. A future fiction, which starts at the current technical possibilities and describes a company (The Circle), that combines Google, Facebook, Amazon and WhatsApp. The main character, a young woman called Mae is happy to have just been employed there. It´s very shocking to see how it starts so easy and "normal" and then gets really bad into the surveillance and human rights topic. I also liked the colloquial style of writing: Dave Eggers has written many other books on a higher level of language but in this book he uses a simple language to underline the naiveté of the characters.


I have read that one. It caused me to almost delete all my social media accounts. :lol:

PS - love the Ginger Rogers avatar. <3


----------



## Ginger

Scopitone said:


> I have read that one. It caused me to almost delete all my social media accounts. :lol:
> 
> PS - love the Ginger Rogers avatar. <3


Yes, me too!!! The first thing I did was checking all my safety and privacy settings everywhere... :lol:

Oh thank you  I´m quite a fan of her


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

I'm currently reading Fuenteovejuna.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Blancrocher

Ben Lerner, 10:04


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Ernest Reyer's Notes de musique and 40 ans de musique, and Adolphe Jullien's biography of Reyer.


----------



## Pugg

​
Never read it before so; here I go .


----------



## Poodle

Pugg said:


> ​
> Never read it before so; here I go .


I already reed those, they really good. :tiphat:


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

I'm currently reading Fahrenheit 451.


----------



## GreenMamba

Michel Faber: Under the Skin. I went in cold to get the full "what is going on here?" effect.


----------



## Poodle

GreenMamba said:


> Michel Faber: Under the Skin. I went in cold to get the full "what is going on here?" effect.


We, the Dutch support your decision :tiphat:


----------



## Pugg

Pugg said:


> ​
> Never read it before so; here I go .


This is so not me, I give it another small change or else.....


----------



## Pugg

Pugg said:


> I bought this one,


I can't stop recommending this one, gripping / breathtaking story.


----------



## Vaneyes

Terry Southern's Slim Pickens anecdote was my favorite inclusion.










Related:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/books/review/selected-letters-of-william-styron.html?_r=0


----------



## starthrower




----------



## Lukecash12

Albert Camus- Myth of Sisyphus.


----------



## Pugg

​
Mary Renault ; The Persian Boy .


----------



## Ingélou

Pugg said:


> ​
> Mary Renault ; The Persian Boy .


I read this - years ago - but I remember that I enjoyed it. I can't think of a Mary Renault novel that I haven't loved. Must start reading her again...


----------



## Pugg

Ingélou said:


> I read this - years ago - but I remember that I enjoyed it. I can't think of a Mary Renault novel that I haven't loved. Must start reading her again...


I just found out is part of a trilogy , so hunting for the other two now .


----------



## Tristan

*The Name of the Rose* by Umberto Eco









A book that combines history, philosophy, and murder--I knew it would be good, so I can't believe it took me this long to start reading it


----------



## Jos

2003 , Martin Amis, yellow dog


----------



## corndogshuffle

I've got two books going, one epic fantasy and one that's supposed to be a little "lighter".


----------



## Wood

Avey said:


> Always onward...
> 
> *Roberto Bolano*, Antwerp
> 
> View attachment 86560
> 
> 
> *Orwell, * Why I Write (and others)
> 
> View attachment 86559


I recently read the Orwell. What did you think of it?


----------



## Wood

OldFashionedGirl said:


> John Stuart Mill - Utilitarianism.


Poison. Try to balance it with some Marx.


----------



## Wood

David Tresemer: The scythe book










A controversial book in the modern scything world (  ) Tresemer provides a comprehensive survey of the types of scythes, their history back to the Bronze Age, the relative speeds of mowing of different implements, the parts of a scythe, scything technique and the spiritual and environmental aspects of scything.

A must read for anyone who has ever dreamed of one day becoming a manual mower.


----------



## Avey

Wood said:


> I recently read the Orwell. What did you think of it?


Honestly, I hate bragging/boasting etc. But my only reply is: I have read it thrice, and this time it was better than the previous two. Such an easy, necessary read. So fantastic.

OH, and WHAT AM I ONTO?: (_the absolutely fricking obvious_)


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

Wood said:


> Poison. Try to balance it with some Marx.


Why this book is poison?


----------



## Wood

OldFashionedGirl said:


> Why this book is poison?


Crikey, that was a bit strong. Sorry. 

Mill's utilitarianism is invalid when applied to an economy and how it should be managed by the government. It is wrong, but it has become a key foundation of the neo-liberal paradigm, causing untold misery, loss of prosperity, unemployment, mental illness and unnecessary death. He is worth reading, but should be counterbalanced with the writings of Kalecki, Keynes and Marx who all had a much better understanding of the dynamics of economies.

Mill's libertarian views didn't apply to Chinese and Indian peoples. He considered them 'barbarians' to be controlled by despots for their own good.


----------



## Wood

Avey said:


> Honestly, I hate bragging/boasting etc. But my only reply is: I have read it thrice, and this time it was better than the previous two. Such an easy, necessary read. So fantastic.


Cool. I much prefer his journalism. It doesn't seem dated today.


----------



## helenora

Hitchcock - Truffaut


----------



## Pugg

helenora said:


> Hitchcock - Truffaut


Kind of biography?


----------



## helenora

Pugg said:


> Kind of biography?


interviews, 52 hours with Hitchcock, interviewed by Truffaut. Very interesting reading, easy to read, and Hitchcock is a wonderful storyteller, full of humor and irony. Who could have doubt it?

It was recommended to me by one friend. Usually I'm not into this sort of books, but it's worth reading it, especially if one watches his movies, he explains some curious details of shooting process.


----------



## Barbebleu

Skagboys by Irvine Welsh. Prequel to Trainspotting. Brutal but entertaining.


----------



## Guest

Just finished the second and final book on Hitler by Ian Kershaw.

A warning from history, for sure.


----------



## Mahlerian




----------



## LarryShone

David Attenborough -Life on Air (biography)
8 Black Horses-Ed McBain


----------



## Guest

It's amazing how Spielberg turned a 37-page short story into a 2.5 hour movie!


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Kontrapunctus said:


> It's amazing how Spielberg turned a 37-page short story into a 2.5 hour movie!


Great book by a great writer.:tiphat:


----------



## LarryShone

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Great book by a great writer.:tiphat:


The only PKD book I enjoyed was Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. Superb book, I think he must have had no drugs when he wrote it!


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Game of Thrones Book 1


----------



## Guest

I'm also reading this rather densely written book from 1927. Had Joseph Conrad lived longer, one might think he wrote it! Interesting, but not a page-turner.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Vesteralen

Though I found his tempo choices in his later years often not to my taste, he always seemed to be a remarkable talent and a remarkable individual. Very enjoyable book.

Also read this entire book in one day







Loved it. I'm a sentimentalist.


----------



## kartikeys

The Good Doctor


----------



## Ginger

Vesteralen said:


> View attachment 87792
> 
> 
> Though I found his tempo choices in his later years often not to my taste, he always seemed to be a remarkable talent and a remarkable individual. Very enjoyable book.
> 
> Also read this entire book in one day
> View attachment 87793
> 
> Loved it. I'm a sentimentalist.


Oooooh, The Blue Castle is so charming.


----------



## Vesteralen

Ginger said:


> Oooooh, The Blue Castle is so charming.


I found this site this morning (maybe someone else here did too ). 

Looks like people are passionate about this story. No wonder. And, it would make a great movie. Though, I see Valancy as smaller than some of the actresses suggested there to play the role.


----------



## Pugg

*Annie Proulx*; Brokeback Mountain and other novels.


----------



## Blancrocher

View attachment 87988


Thomas Bernhard, _Extinction_ (trans. David McLintock)


----------



## Dr Johnson

Casanova comes to London.


----------



## Pugg

​
Bonuta Avenue : Peter Buwalda.
Based on a real story in my country about a fireworks factory explosion in Enschede .


----------



## Guest

She has a great last name for a crime writer!


----------



## GreenMamba

Aka, The Crimean War: The Last Crusade (this is one of those books where they pointlessly change the title in the US). Very interesting so far.


----------



## Barbebleu

The prequel to Trainspotting.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

The Heart of Midlothian (1818)
Sir Walter Scott

The first novel i've read in a while - I am really enjoying it.


----------



## Andolink

Just started on this behemoth and it's already totally fascinating:


----------



## arpeggio

GreenMamba said:


> Aka, The Crimean War: The Last Crusade (this is one of those books where they pointlessly change the title in the US). Very interesting so far.


Reminds me of the old song the soldiers of this war sang: "Crimea River".


----------



## arpeggio

Just completed John Scalzi's _Old Man's War_.

Just started Jeff VanderMeer's _Southern Reach Trilogy_.

I am glad the N. K. Jemisin's _The Fifth Season_ won the Hugo Award last night.


----------



## LarryShone

Making my way through this tome


----------



## Vaneyes




----------



## Ginger

Thomas Mann "Die Buddenbrooks"


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Ginger said:


> Thomas Mann "Die Buddenbrooks"


I have a (hugely Germanophile) friend who loves that book, but it has never quite grown on me.


----------



## Barbebleu

Love Thomas Mann. Favourites are Confessions of Felix Krull, Magic Mountain and Joseph and his Brothers. But really love all the rest too.


----------



## Ginger

SiegendesLicht said:


> I have a (hugely Germanophile) friend who loves that book, but it has never quite grown on me.


At the beginning it isn't easy to read but as soon as you have get used to his style it's brilliant  But at the moment I still prefer "Der Zauberberg"


----------



## Kivimees

The Cookery of England by Elizabeth Ayrton. Dr Johnson mentioned the book on the "Do you enjoy pies?" thread. I paid 1 pence on amazon for a copy hoping to get a good pie recipe. In addition to the recipes I received a fascinating tome on English cooking.


----------



## Pugg

​*Night train to Lisbon
Pascal Mercier*


----------



## Judith

I have started reading Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. Describes the Industrial Revolution, Luddites and Napoleon. Set in West Yorkshire where all the action was!!


----------



## SarahNorthman

I am just starting this book and am very anxious to see how it goes. It looks really really good.


----------



## znapschatz

SarahNorthman said:


> I am just starting this book and am very anxious to see how it goes. It looks really really good.
> 
> View attachment 88310


In re your interest in this conflict, have you read A.J.P. Taylor's *The First World War: An Illustrated History*? He approaches the war as a series of ironies, a very interesting and unique point of view, I find.


----------



## SarahNorthman

znapschatz said:


> In re your interest in this conflict, have you read A.J.P. Taylor's *The First World War: An Illustrated History*? He approaches the war as a series of ironies, a very interesting and unique point of view, I find.


I will have to check it out.


----------



## JosefinaHW

SarahNorthman said:


> I am just starting this book and am very anxious to see how it goes. It looks really really good.
> 
> View attachment 88310


There was a wonderful video series that told the history of the war and had several British actors reading quite a bit of the poetry. The two that really stand out in my mind were Jeremy Irons and Ralph Fiennes--gorgeous voices with amazing and deeply moving interpretations. I saw it on four VHS tapes from a library; it was out-of-print and a fortune at the time--approx. $500. I just searched now and I'm thrilled to see it was released in DVD format in the UK and the price is much lower.
_1914 - 1918 : The Great War And The Shaping Of The 20th Century [DVD]_
Ding, Dong--no wonder, it was a BBC production.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/1914-1918-Great-Shaping-Century/dp/B0007NBJN2

You must search for this series in your library or inter-library loan,


----------



## Pugg

​
@#@#@# days on a @#[email protected]#[email protected]#@ bole.
Dimitri Verhulst


----------



## SarahNorthman

JosefinaHW said:


> There was a wonderful video series that told the history of the war and had several British actors reading quite a bit of the poetry. The two that really stand out in my mind were Jeremy Irons and Ralph Fiennes--gorgeous voices with amazing and deeply moving interpretations. I saw it on four VHS tapes from a library; it was out-of-print and a fortune at the time--approx. $500. I just searched now and I'm thrilled to see it was released in DVD format in the UK and the price is much lower.
> _1914 - 1918 : The Great War And The Shaping Of The 20th Century [DVD]_
> Ding, Dong--no wonder, it was a BBC production.
> 
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/1914-1918-Great-Shaping-Century/dp/B0007NBJN2
> 
> You must search for this series in your library or inter-library loan,


Good ol Voldemort reading some poetry. I am down for some of that. In all seriousness though, I will definitely check this out! It sounds fascinating.


----------



## Dim7




----------



## Gordontrek

One of the greatest, most intelligent Enlightenment thinkers.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

A biologist's experiences among the baboons. Fascinating, often very funny, and in other parts quite grim. Strongly recommended.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

I'm reading Alison Weir's Wars of the Roses, and trying not to associate Jeremy Corbyn with Henry VI.


----------



## Mahlerian

Since I mentioned it in another thread, I'm currently going through this:


----------



## millionrainbows




----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Pugg

Florestan said:


>


I was waiting for this post


----------



## SixFootScowl

Pugg said:


> I was waiting for this post


I also just finished this one:










The previous book I read, Felix Mendelssohn and His Times, is very interesting and in the end has some stuff on Wagner publishing an anti-Jewish tract that took shots at Felix and other Jewish musicians, first under a pseudonym, but then after Felix died, republished under his real name. I'll see what the one posted above has to say on that topic.

Peter Mercer-Taylor has another book on Mendelssohn which is a collection of essays. I looked at some of the pages on Amazon and it appears to be pretty tough reading. Maybe give it a try if my library can get it.


----------



## Pugg

​
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People
Oscar Wilde/ Charles Osborne


----------



## Guest




----------



## OldFashionedGirl

*Thomas Bernhard* - The Lime Works.


----------



## Pugg

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter;Carson McCullers
We have a new translation from this classic .


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Rafael Sabatini: CAPTAIN BLOOD!


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

SimonTemplar said:


> Rafael Sabatini: CAPTAIN BLOOD!


Read this when I was a teenager and loved it. Re-read it recently but found it didn't have nearly the same appeal as it did 30 years ago


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

Struggling through The Brothers Karamazov. About 80 pages in and it's going very slow. I read Crime and Punishment 20 years ago and considered it one of the best books I'd read. Either Karamazov is really different or my taste has significantly changed. Maybe I should re-read Crime and Punishment to find out.


----------



## Ingélou

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Struggling through The Brothers Karamazov. About 80 pages in and it's going very slow. I read Crime and Punishment 20 years ago and considered it one of the best books I'd read. Either Karamazov is really different or my taste has significantly changed. Maybe I should re-read Crime and Punishment to find out.


This chimes in with my experience. I was a great reader of Dostoevsky when I was young because I was so struck by Crime & Punishment. I remember reading The Brothers Karamazov and, while appreciating it, not quite getting it - e.g. the visions of the Grand Inquisitor & the conversations with monks. It all had a great air of significance that I couldn't penetrate, I decided because I was too stupid & inexperienced - which I probably was! 

Years later I had to mark a student's essay on Crime & Punishment and reread it, and alas, it had lost its allure for me. So I didn't reread any more Dostoevsky. But now I think maybe I should - maybe now I'm in my third age, I will finally get the point?

Or should I 'keep meaning to' reread Karamazov so that I don't have to find out that I'm still too stupid & inexperienced? 

In any case, I hope the book improves for you. :tiphat:


----------



## znapschatz

SimonTemplar said:


> Rafael Sabatini: CAPTAIN BLOOD!





TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Read this when I was a teenager and loved it. Re-read it recently but found it didn't have nearly the same appeal as it did 30 years ago


Yes, I had the same experience. That is how you know you have grown up. 
Of course, there are other indicators, as well.


----------



## znapschatz

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Struggling through The Brothers Karamazov. About 80 pages in and it's going very slow. I read Crime and Punishment 20 years ago and considered it one of the best books I'd read. Either Karamazov is really different or my taste has significantly changed. Maybe I should re-read Crime and Punishment to find out.


My father in law was in the first scene of the movie version as one of the monks chanting at the père Karamazov bier. AFAIK, that was his only contact with the *The Brothers K*. He wasn't much one for Dostoevsky, but it was a day's pay.


----------



## millionrainbows

"Blues Crusader," the biography of John Mayall.


----------



## TwoPhotons

I like the fact that Rosen repeats everything he says on the next page. Helps to ingrain his points in your mind...


----------



## Pugg

​
A Moveable Feast ( new translation in Dutch)
Ernest Hemingway


----------



## Avey

*Ivan Doig*, _The Sea Runners
_









*John Williams*, _Stoner_


----------



## Pugg

Just ordered :

​Frits Zwart; The Mengelberg years in Amsterdam.

English translation follows in December .


----------



## Guest




----------



## Pugg

​
Vrouwkje Tuinman; Afscheidstournee (farewell tour)

A Dutch writer followed the journey Paganini's sons made with his father body.


----------



## Potiphera

Just bought from an antiquarian book shop.

The Magic Flute, a guide to the Opera.

By Peter Gammond.

Though I have seen and immensely enjoyed a performance in London at the R.H.O. years ago. 
I am looking forward to revisiting and reliving the Opera through reading the book.









.


----------



## Ingélou

It's definitely dated in its approach - but as a quick 'boning-up' exercise for me before our trip to Scotland, written with verve, wit & utter readability, I would still recommend it.


----------



## Dr Johnson

The first in his "Empire Trilogy".

A comment from the Times on the back sums it up:

"Mr Farrell is an eccentric and highly gifted writer."


----------



## starthrower

Some light reading!


----------



## Sonata

The Fault in Our Stars
Fast paced an engaging enough to pull me away from my planned Rigoletto viewing this evening.


----------



## Tristan

Just started *Foucault's Pendulum* by Umberto Eco. This is the second book by Eco I've read and I can't seem to get enough of his style.


----------



## Pugg

Sonata said:


> The Fault in Our Stars
> Fast paced an engaging enough to pull me away from my planned Rigoletto viewing this evening.


Do watch the film if you can / like, it's heartbreaking .


----------



## Sonata

Pugg said:


> Do watch the film if you can / like, it's heartbreaking .


I definitely will. I read this book in two days, finishing it yesterday evening and I bawled my eyes out!!


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

Dostoyevsky - Notes from Underground


----------



## schigolch




----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## Merl

Florestan said:


>


Spoiler Alert for Florestan!

Mendelssohn dies at the end.


----------



## Guest

I can't remember the last time I read any fiction but have gone a bit mad and bought Imperium by Robert Harris.


----------



## helenora

"Jedermann " ( Everyman) a Play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

after listening to *"Jedermann" Sibelius*

both are amazing pieces, one of music, the other of literature.

I'd like to read the original English play from 15th century "Everyman" Anonymous but can't find it.


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

The Double - *Dostoyevsky*


----------



## Blancrocher

Seems they've finally solved the "Elena Ferrante" mystery:

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/10/02/elena-ferrante-an-answer/


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

E.F. Benson - Ghost Stories


----------



## Kivimees

On the recommendation of an American colleague:









Paper Lion by George Plimpton

Although old, my colleague says it's very good.


----------



## Pugg

Paul Claes : De haas en de regenboog.

The Hare and the Rainbow.
The story of the stormy relation between Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine


----------



## Il_Penseroso

Shakespeare's The Tempest (in Persian), listening to the tremendous music Sibelius composed for the play in 1925-26


----------



## Avey

*J.S. Foer*'s new one:


----------



## Sonata

A nice pairing with my Verdi chronological project:










And unrelated: I am finally getting around to reading the Hunger Games. I saw the first movie a couple years ago, but haven't seen or read any of the rest. I picked it up with the library along with the Verdi Operas book.


----------



## Vaneyes




----------



## Blancrocher

Kamel Daoud, _The Meursault Investigation_ (trans. John Cullen) - A retelling of Camus' _L'Étranger_


----------



## Adamus

https://www.amazon.com/Signals-Brea...d=1476002093&sr=8-1&keywords=signals+malmgren

https://www.amazon.com/Rest-Noise-L...UTF8&qid=1476002131&sr=8-5&keywords=alex+ross


----------



## Guest




----------



## starthrower

Good read if you're a fan of the beats.


----------



## Pugg

​
Eduardo Mendicutti; Bulgarian lovers


----------



## Blancrocher

******* Bob Dylan. Gimme a break.


----------



## millionrainbows

Other Harmony. A great little book, with overviews on all kinds of musical thinking. The guy went to the library of Paris and dug up some rare, really interesting books.










From the review blurb:​HUNDREDS OF HARMONY BOOKS HAVE BEEN DEVOTED TO TONALITY, AND MANY HAVE DEALT WITH ATONALITY, BUT THIS BOOK CONSIDERS ALL THE OTHER HARMONY THAT HAS DOMINATED MUSICAL PRACTICE FOR AT LEAST 50 YEARS. AFTER CONSIDERING THE THEORIES OF ALLEN FORTE, LEONHARD EULER, OLIVER MESSIAN, AND A FEW LESSER KNOWN THEORISTS, TOM JOHNSON CONSIDERS ALL SORTS OF CHORD FAMILIES AND INTRODUCES HIS OWN HARMONIC PRACTICES HAVING TO DO WITH HEIGHTS, SUMS MODULO N, HOMOMETRIC PAIRS AND COMBINATORIAL DESIGNS. The author writes: When I was young, the virtues of tonal music and atonal music were strongly debated by composers and theorists, all of whom were quite divided on this subject. Nobody seemed to really notice that all this time Bartok and others were writing fine music without taking a position on one side or the other. I think we finally need a new harmony book that goes beyond tonal and atonal and considers all the Other Harmony that has dominated and continues to dominate music." The book's chapters are: 1. Introduction 2. Tonality 3. Atonality 4. Euler Harmonies 5. Hauer 6. Slonimsky 7. Obouhow 8. Schillinger 9. Messian 10. Equal and Complete 11. Heights and Sums 12. Advancing 13. Adjacent Intervals 14. Sums Modulo n 15. All-Interval Tetrachords and Other Homometries 16. Block Designs 17. Parallel Classes 18. Almost Not 19. References 20. Math Addendum


----------



## Adamus

Pugg said:


> ​
> Eduardo Mendicutti; Bulgarian lovers


Rotterdam heeft veel te bieden ;-)


----------



## Pugg

Adamus said:


> Rotterdam heeft veel te bieden ;-)


But a very boring book.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

William Dalrymple - _City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi_


----------



## Sonata

I started reading Shakespeare's Macbeth yesterday. It seemed fitting, I am pairing it with a listen to Verdi's Macbeth


----------



## hpowders

Books? Who needs books? I have the collected lyrics of Bob Dylan to peruse.


----------



## Guest

Sonata said:


> I started reading Shakespeare's Macbeth yesterday. It seemed fitting, I am pairing it with a listen to Verdi's Macbeth


The book is better.


----------



## Merl

Interesting read.


----------



## Flamme

Im still in 'Red October' factory in the rubble of Stalingrad and on the other side, in Prussia, overrun by Red Army Blizzard...


----------



## millionrainbows

Einstein, Stuart Isaacson. Mostly biographical, with very good layman's explanations of some of his thinking.


----------



## millionrainbows

You may NOT edit your posts, because the US Govt Secret Police want to compile a complete list of what everybody's been reading.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


>


That's a good one, I like Jo Nesbo, and his cop. I haven't yet read Police, which I believe might be the final Harry Hole story?


----------



## Guest

I've read _Police_, and I didn't get the feeling that Harry was done. (It's a great novel, by the way.) His response to a _Chicago Tribune_ journalist's question might solidify that feeling:

_Q: Where do you go next with the series?

A: As always when I finish a book, I'm so exhausted that I'm sort of letting myself think that this could be the end. But probably what will happen is what usually happens, which is that six months will pass and I will want to hang out with Harry again._

Here's the entire interview:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...harry-hole-crime-fiction-printers-row-journal


----------



## TurnaboutVox

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf


----------



## cwarchc

........................


----------



## Der Titan

Aristophanes - Comedies


----------



## helenora

T.E. Lawrence


----------



## Pugg

​
F. Scott Fitzgerald


----------



## OldFashionedGirl

*John Steinbeck* - Tortilla flat.


----------



## helenora

hehe, this book....it´s not for children at all


----------



## Manxfeeder

*Virgil Tomson, Composer on the Aisle.*

This gets consistently good reviews, but for me, it was a slog. The author spends chapters on people who should be footnotes, and I didn't come out of this with a desire to hear anything by Thomson. But if you want to know what it is like to be a semi-closeted gay composer in the middle 20th Century of America, this gives you a pretty detailed account.


----------



## TwoPhotons

*Gustav Mahler* by Jens Malte Fischer

I'm enjoying it so far. Seems well researched. My favourite anecdote:



> ...during rehearsals for the first performance of the revised version of his First Symphony in Hamburg in September 1893, Mahler found himself at loggerheads with the timpanist, who was unable to bring the necessary weight to the transitional passage that leads into the final movement. Incandescent with fury, Mahler leapt down among the players, seized the timpanist's sticks and belaboured the drum with terrifying force, achieving precisely the effect that the passage required. At its climax, the sticks flew out of his hands, describing a wide arc over the orchestra and prompting the remaining players and Mahler's friends in the rehearsal room to break into a round of applause.


I'm sure that Mahler wished many times that he could play all of the instruments in the orchestra himself in addition to conducting!


----------



## Pugg

Verdi With a Vengeance: An Energetic Guide to the Life and Complete Works of the King of Opera


----------



## Manxfeeder

*Ned Rorem, Knowing When to Stop*

This is diaries and personal recollections of his life up to the 1950s. Published in 1992, as a man in his '70s looking back, he anticipated this work with the passing of time ending up unread in a library. It's oddly prophetic that I first saw it ten years ago in a used bookstore, and there it sat until I picked it up last month in their 3 for $10 sale.

Like the Virgil Thompson biography, this is a pretty detailed account of gay musicians and artists in the first half of the 20th Century. It is better written than the Virgil Thompson book and filled with catty asides and pithy observations about the composers of that time, although I did find myself skipping pages because they were filled with descriptions of people about whom I wasn't much compelled to learn.


----------



## Easy Goer

Timothy Findley - The Last of the Crazy People (1967)


----------



## Dr Johnson

Just finished this. As with Fatherland he makes you want to turn the page. I know a lot more now about the Dreyfus case than I did before.


----------



## Ingélou

Samuel Johnson & James Boswell: A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.










I have been rereading this on my recent visit to Scotland and afterwards, and thoroughly enjoying it, as it combines my two loves, Dr Johnson (the non-TC original ) and Scotland.

Boswell's book is the most entertaining, but Johnson's is also fab.

These two extracts are from Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. First, Dr Johnson ad-libbed a wonderfully sentimental 'meditation on a pudding':

*Let us seriously reflect of what a pudding is composed. It is composed of flour that once waved in the golden grain, and drank the dews of the morning; of milk pressed from the swelling udder by the gentle hand of the beauteous milkmaid, whose innocence and beauty might have recommended a worse draught; who, while she stroked the udder, indulged no ambitious thoughts of wandering in palaces, formed no plans for the destruction of her fellow-creatures: milk, which is drawn from the cow, that useful animal, that eats the grass of the field and supplies us with that which made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet has compared to creation. An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers. Let us consider: can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding? If more is wanting, more may be found. It contains salt, which keeps the sea from putrefaction: salt, which is made the image of intellectual excellence, contributes to the formation of a pudding. *

And here is a lovely piece of eighteenth-century etiquette observed by Boswell at Inverary, the seat of the Duke of Argyll:

*A gentleman in company, after dinner, was desired by the duke to go to another room for a specimen of curious marble, which his grace desired to shew us. He brought a wrong piece, upon which the duke sent him back again. He could not refuse; but to avoid any appearance of servility, he whistled as he walked out of the room, to shew his independency. On my mentioning this afterwards to Dr Johnson, he said, it was a nice trait of character. *


----------



## SiegendesLicht

^ That is wonderful!

And my current reading is more of Hermann Hesse - Beneath the Wheel. One of the reviews I read called it "a practical guide for parents and teachers on how to destroy your child's soul most efficiently". Of course what it really is is a warning story on how to avoid unintentionaly destroying it.


----------



## opus55

Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. I've never read the book or watched film adaptation before. As a (relatively) recent immigrant to this country it is a fascinating story to read about the land.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Bettina

SiegendesLicht said:


> ^ That is wonderful!
> 
> And my current reading is more of Hermann Hesse - Beneath the Wheel. One of the reviews I read called it "a practical guide for parents and teachers on how to destroy your child's soul most efficiently". Of course what it really is is a warning story on how to avoid unintentionaly destroying it.


I love Hesse's writings! Especially his novel Steppenwolf. Lots of musical references there...at one point the main character meets Mozart.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Bettina said:


> I love Hesse's writings! Especially his novel Steppenwolf. Lots of musical references there...at one point the main character meets Mozart.


I have saved that one for last, but have read pretty much everything else by Hesse. I love his language very, very much. I wish I could write about nature like he does in Beneath the Wheel. After getting to know his writings for the first time, I had the same thought as after listening to Wagner for the first time: "Where the hell have I been before and why was I not aware of the existence of such great beauty?'"

But the one I am reading right now is Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. A very different world than those of Hesse, but no less fascinating.


----------



## Bettina

SiegendesLicht said:


> I have saved that one for last, but have read pretty much everything else by Hesse. I love his language very, very much. I wish I could write about nature like he does in Beneath the Wheel. After getting to know his writings for the first time, I had the same thought as after listening to Wagner for the first time: "Where the hell have I been before and why was I not aware of the existence of such great beauty?'"
> 
> But the one I am reading right now is Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. A very different world than those of Hesse, but no less fascinating.


You'll definitely enjoy Steppenwolf when you get to it. I'm sorry if my post was a spoiler!  Well, I'll be careful not to give away anything else about the plot. Many exciting surprises are in store!


----------



## hpowders

Bettina said:


> I love Hesse's writings! Especially his novel Steppenwolf. Lots of musical references there...at one point the main character meets Mozart.


I had to read it, but I don't remember it. From my "tune out" student days.


----------



## kartikeys

Maugham's 'Ashenden'.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## SiegendesLicht

Bettina said:


> You'll definitely enjoy Steppenwolf when you get to it. I'm sorry if my post was a spoiler!  Well, I'll be careful not to give away anything else about the plot. Many exciting surprises are in store!


It was not a spoiler by any means. I am sure I will enjoy it - if he has the same soft, warm, beautiful words in store.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

starthrower said:


>


This one sounds very interesting. Tell me, is the author an American or a German?


----------



## elgar's ghost

_Ivan the Terrible_ by Henri Troyat. Entertaining if somewhat lightweight account of one of Europe's most infamous rulers.

Just for the record, the cover depicts Ivan's immediate response after stabbing his son and heir in the temple with his iron-tipped staff-cum-spear.


----------



## Pugg

​
Garth Greenwell - What belongs to you.


----------



## Metalkitsune

This book.

Kinda read it.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

elgars ghost said:


> _Ivan the Terrible_ by Henri Troyat.
> Just for the record, the cover depicts Ivan's immediate response after *stabbing his son and heir in the temple with his iron-tipped staff-cum-spear.*


Dim7 territory, surely?

Currently reading:

*
To the Lighthouse*
Virginia Woolf (1927)


----------



## Guest




----------



## Pugg

Kontrapunctus said:


>


I just bought The Sinner, same auteur.


----------



## Avey

A read to last maybe a day:









And then the fiction:


----------



## Dr Johnson

Just finished it.


----------



## hpowders

Trios for Dummies.


----------



## Gouldanian

Read Siddhartha and Brave New World this week and now finishing The Medium Is The Message. All great books.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Re-reading Dominion, by C.J. Sansom. Far better than his Shardlake books.


----------



## Pugg

​
Rose Tremain: Gustav & Anton.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Easy Goer

Thomas Bernhard - Woodcutters (1985)


----------



## TxllxT

Hilarious humor with a perfect sense of timing.


----------



## Bettina

Easy Goer said:


> Thomas Bernhard - Woodcutters (1985)


Thomas Bernhard is one of my favorite novelists. I love the way that he writes about musicians and musicologists. In addition to _Woodcutters_, I also enjoy his novels _Concrete_ and _The Loser _.


----------



## TxllxT

TxllxT said:


> Hilarious humor with a perfect sense of timing.


At the very beginning of the book a golden statue of Mohammed has been stolen... Just imagine what would happen if a modern author would write this today.


----------



## Easy Goer

Bettina said:


> Thomas Bernhard is one of my favorite novelists. I love the way that he writes about musicians and musicologists. In addition to _Woodcutters_, I also enjoy his novels _Concrete_ and _The Loser _.


Indeed very enjoyable after you adjust to his style. I plan on reading The Loser in the new year and I will add Concrete to the list. Thanks


----------



## Guest




----------



## TxllxT

*Jack London: Martin Eden*










Forgot to tell that we finished Jack London's Martin Eden. The author uses so often the repetitive mode of money counting materialism, that we got the impression that his socialism is nothing more than an even more acute form of _bourgeois_ism that completely has turned sour and acerbic. The godlike manner how the all-knowing author hovers above the story contradicts the atheism he moralistically preaches. Finally for those who look for relief in a love story: it's worse than the most stiff-boarded Victorianism .


----------



## Guest




----------



## Guest




----------



## SarahNorthman

I am having a hard time deciding. Thoughts?


----------



## TxllxT




----------



## Dr Johnson

Just finished this:


----------



## Weston

I finally made it through this monster. Sadly I don't think I learned much new. I wonder what all the fuss was about.


----------



## Lenny

I have a bad habit of reading tons of books at the same time, losing the interest to most of them. Sometimes I return back to them, sometimes not. I feel like losing my ability to read... I blame the interwebs! So I'm always reading lots of books and not really reading. Just wanted to mention one particular on my table right now: Messiaen by Hill and Simeone. This time I try to take it in a way "interactive" - I'm following the music references in Spotify etc.


----------



## Sonata




----------



## Pugg

TxllxT said:


> At the very beginning of the book a golden statue of Mohammed has been stolen... Just imagine what would happen if a modern author would write this today.


Questions in parliament ( to the prime minister of course.)


----------



## Pat Fairlea

I'm currently meandering through Alan Bennett's _Keeping On Keeping On_.









It's a timely reminder of the value of quiet reflection, often quite funny and sometimes quite angry. I am probably biased because Bennett's views on a number of things (e.g. importance of public libraries, contempt for politicians, importance of educating and not just training the young) coincide with my own. In today's Britain, that probably damns me as some sort of lefty-liberal intellectual elitist.


----------



## Ondine

A book about existential analysis, its origins and foundations aside other essays from clinical cases.


----------



## Kieran

Ondine said:


> View attachment 91285
> 
> 
> A book about existential analysis, its origins and foundations aside other essays from clinical cases.


Sounds like an interesting read!

A couple years ago I read Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, at the recommendation of Crudblud. Well, today I got Pynchon's Inherent Vice out of the library. It's described as a sort of hallucinogenic hippy Noir detective novel. Perfect for me right now, in other words…


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

All quiet on the western front.


----------



## SarahNorthman

All Quiet on the Western Front and trashy fanfiction simultaneously.


----------



## SarahNorthman

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> All quiet on the western front.


Ah you too as well huh?


----------



## Tristan

Kieran said:


> Sounds like an interesting read!
> 
> A couple years ago I read Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, at the recommendation of Crudblud. Well, today I got Pynchon's Inherent Vice out of the library. It's described as a sort of hallucinogenic hippy Noir detective novel. Perfect for me right now, in other words…


Pynchon can be a bit of challenge, but I really love his stuff. I just finished _Vineland_ not too long ago.

Right now I'm reading:

*The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor* edited by Roger D. Woodward

and

*Midnight's Children* by Salman Rushdie


----------



## Pugg

​
Rindert Kromhout : Een Mann ( A Mann)
A story about Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann who doesn't want to live in his fathers shadow.
Not translated yet.


----------



## Kieran

Tristan said:


> Pynchon can be a bit of challenge, but I really love his stuff. I just finished _Vineland_ not too long ago.
> 
> Right now I'm reading:
> 
> *The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor* edited by Roger D. Woodward
> 
> and
> 
> *Midnight's Children* by Salman Rushdie


Salman Rushdie is on the list, once I finish with noir novels. You're right about Pynchon. Mason & Dixon is one of the most fabulous, weird, original books I ever reads. Inherent Vice isn't so weird but it keeps me on my toes. It's not noir, or pulp, as such, but it mines similar fields. Next I'll go for James Ellroy...


----------



## Dr Johnson

I have just finished this:










An account of fighting on the Western Front by a German. To quote the blurb on the back :

"A memoir of astonishing power, savagery and ashen lyricism, _Storm of Steel_ depicts Ernst Jünger's experience of combat in the German front line. It illuminates like no other book not only the horrors but also the fascination of a war that made men keep fighting on for four long years."


----------



## bz3

Dr Johnson said:


> I have just finished this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> An account of fighting on the Western Front by a German. To quote the blurb on the back :
> 
> "A memoir of astonishing power, savagery and ashen lyricism, _Storm of Steel_ depicts Ernst Jünger's experience of combat in the German front line. It illuminates like no other book not only the horrors but also the fascination of a war that made men keep fighting on for four long years."


I'm reading Richard J. Evans's Third Reich trilogy and he mentions Junger in the chapters on the lead-up to the rise of the Nazis. How'd you like it? I'm not much on memoirs but he seems like an interesting guy.


----------



## Guest




----------



## bz3

I also just finished Henry Green's Loving. Very good novel, worthy of the praise heaped on its author that I read somewhere a number of months ago.


----------



## Dr Johnson

bz3 said:


> I'm reading Richard J. Evans's Third Reich trilogy and he mentions Junger in the chapters on the lead-up to the rise of the Nazis. How'd you like it? I'm not much on memoirs but he seems like an interesting guy.


Very interesting. He also wrote a diary (or diaries) throughout WWII, where he was posted to Paris and (according to the introduction to the above) hung out with Picasso and Jean Cocteau. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that account, _Strahlungen_, has been translated into English.


----------



## schigolch

Trying to understand what could be the China policy of the new American administration.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Finished:

*Abbate & Parker - A History of Opera: The Last 400 Years*









Not recommended. The authors are modern academics, and it shows. They write (often approvingly) of Edward Said and Adorno, and they like Regietheater. _Freischütz_ is anti-Semitic, and _Aida_ is racist and colonialist. Verdi and Wagner were misogynists; so are most opera audiences. Wagner was clumsy at depicting romantic passion (after _Tristan_), and the Prize Song (_Meistersinger_) is "a terrible misfire ... one of Wagner's dullest and most predictable inspirations".

On the other hand, they do acknowledge Meyerbeer's importance and note his enormous historical influence, including on Berlioz and the Russians.

Some elementary howlers.

"One crucial _grand opéra_ element lacking in _Les Troyens_ is the 'frozen moment', which had been so important a part of the genre's early attraction." What is "Châtiment effroyable" (Ottetto & double choeur in Act I)?

The authors' example of an opera that established itself as a repertory piece immediately, without a sense that the work needed time and effort on the part of general audiences, is Gounod's _Faust_. This would be the same _Faust_ where the only scenes the public liked were the Kermesse scene and the Soldiers' chorus. Two famous publishers, both devotees of the Italian school, claimed that it wouldn't last a fortnight. Skeptics claimed that the opera lacked tunes; the music was souvenirs reassembled by a scholar. And the Garden Scene should be cut, because it held up the action. It was boring, it was long, it was cold. That _Faust_.

For a history of opera, readers should stick with Grout.

*James Branch Cabell - There Were Two Pirates*









Cabell was once considered one of the great American novelists, ranked with Hemingway and Faulkner, but his books have largely vanished. This is one of his late books - very amusing in parts, but not his best work. The anti-hero is, as usual, a supreme egotist who can morally justify any crime, and who falls in love with an ideal woman, only to be confronted with her in middle age.

Reading:
*Jacques Barzun - Classic, Romantic and Modern*


----------



## Jos

Spoilt Rotten. The toxic cult of sentimentality. 
Theodore Dalrymple, 2010

Hey, I'm over 50, I can handle a bit of mysanthropy and conservative grumpyness.


----------



## Easy Goer

James Robertson - And the Land Lay Still (2010)


----------



## Bettina

Jonathan Safran Foer--Everything Is Illuminated. In a nutshell, the protagonist travels to Ukraine in search of information about how the Holocaust affected his family. 

This is exactly the kind of novel that I love: it offers a creative blend of fact and fiction. Foer skillfully weaves together two different narratives, one in the past and one in the present.


----------



## bz3

I hate Safron-Foer kind of a lot.


----------



## Bettina

bz3 said:


> I hate Safron-Foer kind of a lot.


What do you hate about him? I'm really enjoying his work and I'm curious to hear what it is that irritates you so much!


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Pugg

Fascinating reading.


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## Kivimees

At the moment I'm not reading anything. On my recent trip to the US, I managed to steal some hours to inspect Tucson's used book stores and came home with 20-25 books (it could have easily been 100). Lots of 'Americana' but quite a wide selection of fiction/non-fiction.

Now trying to work out a reading schedule.


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## Guest




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## starthrower

Great find at my library! I had no idea these two great men were dear friends. I had become an admirer of Said several years before his unfortunate death from cancer, and of course we all know Daniel Barenboim. They both grew up in the middle east. Barenboim, a Jew, and Said, a Palestinian.


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## Guest




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## znapschatz

Just started to re-read _War and Peace_. I read it first at 16, loved and regarded it the best book ever, but perceived it from the perspective of an adolescent. Now that I am up in years, it's time to read it again with the viewpoint that comes with age. I think of it as a responsibility. Besides, by the time it is finished, I will be a lot older  .


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## Kieran

znapschatz said:


> Just started to re-read _War and Peace_. I read it first at 16, loved and regarded it the best book ever, but perceived it from the perspective of an adolescent. Now that I am up in years, it's time to read it again with the viewpoint that comes with age. I think of it as a responsibility. Besides, by the time it is finished, I will be a lot older  .


It's very interesting how we might view a book differently after maybe several decades between readings. I loved Jack kerouac's On The Road when I was a teenager, but maybe fifteen years later I read it again and found the characters to be petty, irresponsible, idiotic and boring. I must try reading it again, to see which view I really hold. I suspect I might actually like it again…


----------



## znapschatz

Kieran said:


> It's very interesting how we might view a book differently after maybe several decades between readings. I loved Jack kerouac's On The Road when I was a teenager, but maybe fifteen years later I read it again and found the characters to be petty, irresponsible, idiotic and boring. I must try reading it again, to see which view I really hold. I suspect I might actually like it again…


*On the Road* is one book you got right at second reading, I believe, and good for you. There are many books more worth reading than to waste your time on petty, irresponsible, idiotic and boring characters, to which I would add self indulgent writers. Actually, almost any  .

My teenage guilty pleasures were the Mickey Spillane novels, but I outgrew them pretty fast. Empty calories, at best. But I did respond well to William Burroughs' *Naked Lunch*, which I found exhilarating. It wasn't so much the content as the audacity. I mean, you can _really_ write stuff like that and get away with it? I found that aspect liberating, although never emulated any of it. Really sick stuff, but funny. The Cronenberg movie, by the way, is pretty worthless. In it there are exactly two paragraphs from the book, some "characters" from it, and the rest is fever dreams. Ick.


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## SixFootScowl




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## znapschatz

Florestan said:


>


That very book is on my nightstand even now. It was a gift from my sister in law, who knows my interest (obsession) in this little ditty. I haven't finished it yet, though, because of life and stuff. Can't get enough of that wonderful stuff.


----------



## SixFootScowl

znapschatz said:


> That very book is on my nightstand even now. It was a gift from my sister in law, who knows my interest (obsession) in this little ditty. I haven't finished it yet, though, because of life and stuff. Can't get enough of that wonderful stuff.


And my understanding it that this book should be the exact text (or close to it) that was used in the Goodall Ring. In fact, that cover image looks like it must be a shot from the live Goodall Ring which I understand had a space-age set.


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## znapschatz

Florestan said:


> And my understanding it that this book should be the exact text (or close to it) that was used in the Goodall Ring. In fact, that cover image looks like it must be a shot from the live Goodall Ring which I understand had a space-age set.


The Cheréau production in 1980 (?) is what sold me. It was a Bayreuth 1976 centennial program set in 4 time zones from ancient to modern with McIntyre, Jerusalem, Becht, Hofmann, Jones and an entirely worthy cast. I was never the same again. No kidding.


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## Varick

One of the greatest books I have ever read. I have read many excerpts from Victor Frankl's writings throughout the years. One in particular when I was a teenager that had a huge impact on how I viewed the world:

After WWII when he was liberated from the concentration camp he had spent years in, the Nazis had murdered his entire family. Years later he was interviewed and was asked if he hated the German Race. He answered, _"No, I do not hate the German race. There are only two races in the world: The decent and the indecent."_

I'm almost finished with this book (small - only 154 pages). Outstanding!

Also in the middle of this book as well:









What a character he was. Enjoying this very much.

V


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## TurnaboutVox

New Ways Through the Glens - Highland Road, Bridge and Canal Makers of the Early 19th Century

A.R.B. Haldane [David & Charles, 1962]










Which is essentially an account of Thomas Telford and his associates' work in Scotland between 1803 and 1826.


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## Ingélou

TurnaboutVox said:


> New Ways Through the Glens - Highland Road, Bridge and Canal Makers of the Early 19th Century
> 
> A.R.B. Haldane [David & Charles, 1962]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which is essentially an account of Thomas Telford and his associates' work in Scotland between 1803 and 1826.


This one looks fascinating. Do tell us what you think of it. :tiphat:


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## SiegendesLicht

Kurt Diemberger: K2: Dream and Destiny (Endless Knot in the English edition of the book) - the Austrian climber's story of his ascent to the world's most dangerous peak.









I bought it in a bookstore in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a Bavarian town in the Alps. Reading this book after coming home from wandering in the real mountains, even much smaller ones, is quite impressive.


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## starthrower

Varick said:


> View attachment 92160
> 
> 
> One of the greatest books I have ever read. I have read many excerpts from Victor Frankl's writings throughout the years. One in particular when I was a teenager that had a huge impact on how I viewed the world:
> 
> After WWII when he was liberated from the concentration camp he had spent years in, the Nazis had murdered his entire family. Years later he was interviewed and was asked if he hated the German Race. He answered, _"No, I do not hate the German race. There are only two races in the world: The decent and the indecent."_
> 
> I'm almost finished with this book (small - only 154 pages). Outstanding!


Agreed! I stumbled upon the Frankl book at a store one day about a dozen years ago. If you think your life is a shambles and you can't go on, read Frankel's harrowing story. This man had so much dignity and perseverance in the face of death, unbearable suffering, and humiliation. A great inspiration for humanity.


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## SixFootScowl

Along with the Ring libretto posted in #4020 above, I am reading this, which I checked out of the children's section of my library. It tells the story of Wagner's Ring Cycle in narrative form. Includes many nice woodcuts of scenes from the Ring and the 52 lines of music for each of 52 themes in the Ring. About 123 pages long, including a 7-page intro about Wagner. Chaptered by each opera and subheaded by each Act. Quite an enjoyable read and fits nicely between a synopsis and a libretto.


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## EarthBoundRules

I'm enjoying Anthony Kenny's _An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy_ (although at 404 pages, it's not _that_ brief). I've tried reading a philosophy book by Anthony Kenny before, but had to stop at the very hard to comprehend logic sections. This one claims to make things simpler to understand, so I think I'll like it!


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## Sonata

Varick said:


> View attachment 92160
> 
> 
> One of the greatest books I have ever read. I have read many excerpts from Victor Frankl's writings throughout the years. One in particular when I was a teenager that had a huge impact on how I viewed the world:
> 
> After WWII when he was liberated from the concentration camp he had spent years in, the Nazis had murdered his entire family. Years later he was interviewed and was asked if he hated the German Race. He answered, _"No, I do not hate the German race. There are only two races in the world: The decent and the indecent."_
> 
> I'm almost finished with this book (small - only 154 pages). Outstanding!


I'm so glad you posted this, I've had it on my to-read list for a couple years and have forgotten about it. I will definitely need to get it now!!

Though for now I'm reading something in an entirely different genre from Frankl; Stephen King. To be specific, the "Bachman Books" four novels he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman


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## Tristan

Just started *The Sea, The Sea* by Iris Murdoch:


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## znapschatz

Been meaning to do this for a while (@20 years, actually) but finally got to it, which was to re-read _War and Peace_. My first reading was in my teens, and I decided it was time to do it again, this time with the "wisdom" of years. It is wonderful, like a reunion with old friends :kiss::cheers: .


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## Bettina

znapschatz said:


> Been meaning to do this for a while (@20 years, actually) but finally got to it, which was to re-read _War and Peace_. My first reading was in my teens, and I decided it was time to do it again, this time with the "wisdom" of years. It is wonderful, like a reunion with old friends :kiss::cheers: .


Now for the big question: while reading _War and Peace_, which Russian composer are you listening to? Rachmaninoff or Shostakovich? :lol: :lol:


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## hpowders

znapschatz said:


> Been meaning to do this for a while (@20 years, actually) but finally got to it, which was to re-read _War and Peace_. My first reading was in my teens, and I decided it was time to do it again, this time with the "wisdom" of years. It is wonderful, like a reunion with old friends :kiss::cheers: .


Don't worry about it. Nobody here is Russian you.


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## znapschatz

Bettina said:


> Now for the big question: while reading _War and Peace_, which Russian composer are you listening to? Rachmaninoff or Shostakovich? :lol: :lol:


Funny you should ask. In fact, when I opened the book, the fm radio program I was listening to was playing the Bach Partita #2, performed by Itzhak Perlman. 
But that's a good suggestion. Tomorrow, I go Russian  .


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## znapschatz

Update: I couldn't decide on an appropriate Russian piece this morning, so I grabbed blindly at my Shostakovich/Rachmaninov shelf and came up with the Shostakovich 9th and 10th String Quartets, put them on the Victrola  and commenced my daily re-reading of W&P. While not actually a distraction, however, it didn't really enhance the experience, so in the end, I decided silence is best. But thanks for the suggestion, Bettina, especially since I really like those string quartets and hadn't heard them for too long a time.


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## Sonata

Bettina said:


> Now for the big question: while reading _War and Peace_, which Russian composer are you listening to? Rachmaninoff or Shostakovich? :lol: :lol:


Isn't it obvious? The opera War & Peace, penned by Prokofiev


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## TxllxT

TxllxT said:


>


We've almost finished reading "Raquel", (or "The Spanish Ballad" or "The Jewess of Toledo"). A must-read for those who want to know more about the _Convivencia_ of Islam, Christianity and the Jews. One of the things to learn: these religions existed not so much pluralistically & separate next to each other as well happened to merge with each other.


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## znapschatz

Sonata said:


> Isn't it obvious? The opera War & Peace, penned by Prokofiev


Synchronization would be the problem. It wouldn't do to listen to Anna Pavlovna's reception scene while reading about the battle of Austerlitz, now would it? Cognitive dissonance is such a challenge. I wish Tolstoy and Prokofiev had got their acts together.


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## Guest




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## Varick

TxllxT said:


> We've almost finished reading "Raquel", (or "The Spanish Ballad" or "The Jewess of Toledo"). A must-read for those who want to know more about the _Convivencia_ of Islam, Christianity and the Jews. One of the things to learn: these religions existed not so much pluralistically & separate next to each other as well happened to merge with each other.


Unfortunately the "Convivencia" is a complete myth. Reputable historians have debunked this myth rather thoroughly. I hope it was an interesting and good book though.

V


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## TurnaboutVox

Bettina said:


> Now for the big question: while reading _War and Peace_, which Russian composer are you listening to? Rachmaninoff or Shostakovich? :lol: :lol:


The Napoleonic wars being what they were, I think 'muddy' would be appropriate!


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## Pugg

Rindert Kromhout: Soldiers don't cry.


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## elgar's ghost

Currently devouring this...


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## Dr Johnson




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## TxllxT

Varick said:


> Unfortunately the "Convivencia" is a complete myth. Reputable historians have debunked this myth rather thoroughly. I hope it was an interesting and good book though.
> 
> V


What one may learn from Feuchtwanger's Raquel is not so much how Islam & Christianty & the Jews coexisted / 'lived together', as well how easily King Alfonso VIII took over Islamic habits like polygamy. The Pope from Rome ordered one holy war after another and the difference between _jihad_ and the Christian crusade-version is none. One side called the other side "unbelievers!" & vice versa. Only among a few individuals there was an enlightened way of discussion happening that reminds one of Lessing's three rings. What troubled me on a deeper level is Feuchtwanger's probing into the Christian concept of 'knighthood', 'knightly honour' & knightly longing for battle & war. This resembles frighteningly the Schopenhaueresque idea of permanent war, that was taken up and propagated by a WWI corporal A.H. with enormous success in post-war Germany.


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## SiegendesLicht

TxllxT said:


> What one may learn from Feuchtwanger's Raquel is not so much how Islam & Christianty & the Jews coexisted / 'lived together', as well how easily King Alfonso VIII took over Islamic habits like polygamy. The Pope from Rome ordered one holy war after another and the difference between _jihad_ and the Christian crusade-version is none. One side called the other side "unbelievers!" & vice versa. Only among a few individuals there was an enlightened way of discussion happening that reminds one of Lessing's three rings. What troubled me on a deeper level is Feuchtwanger's probing into the Christian concept of 'knighthood', 'knightly honour' & knightly longing for battle & war. This resembles frighteningly the Schopenhaueresque idea of permanent war, that was taken up and propagated by a WWI corporal A.H. with enormous success in post-war Germany.


That is very interesting. My father-in-law gave me that book recently, but I have not read it yet. He is of course aware of my fascination with certain "epic" parts of German cultural heritage. Makes me wonder what the motivation behind choosing that particular book might be... But I guess I am overthinking


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## itarbrt

At bedside now I have agatha christie's Il natale di Poirot and edward dent's Il teatro di mozart .


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## Tristan

Just started *A Confederacy of Dunces* by John Kennedy Toole.


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## Xaltotun

Just finished Aleksis Kivi's _Seven Brothers_, the high summit of Finnish literature. It was incredible, just incredible... it made me sad that so few people in the world will be able to read it in the original language. Kivi's language is a thing to behold... he has no respect for rules! He makes up his own way of saying things, you get ashtonished - can you use Finnish that way? - and in this playful, whimsical way, he cooks up volcanoes and terrors, you just shake from the primal power of the written word, as if a forgotten god would step up from the forests and utter sentences with the original language of creation. He's like Rabelais crossed with Moses!!

Now, reading Dennis Diderot's _Rameau's Nephew_, and I'm very pleased! Seldom has wit and irony so crossed with profundity! There's solemn analysis on the matter of good and evil, and then there's a lengthy bit on comparing the figurative and all-too-real kissing of the backsides of women!


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## Ingélou

Interesting - as life's too short for me to learn Finnish, I'll have to try Kivi's book in translation. 
Will look into it. 
(PS - I could have done without that last detail!  )


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## Triplets

I'm reading Margaret MacMillian's book about the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. I never realized that the process had dragged on for as long as it did and just how difficult the negotiations must have been to reshape the borders of perhaps half the Nations of the owrld (creating many in the process). WWII was a direct outcome of the various grievances of this conference.
MacMillian, a Canadian, isn't very kind to Woodrow Wilson, painting him as a bit of a teetotaling Moralistic prig that was incapable of making Practical Plans to accompany his high ideals. It is a very entertaining read on a subject that could otherwise be dry as dust.


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## Xaltotun

Ingélou said:


> Interesting - as life's too short for me to learn Finnish, I'll have to try Kivi's book in translation.
> Will look into it.
> (PS - I could have done without that last detail!  )


Eek - now I feel naughty! My apologies! I'm so happy, however, that I inspired someone to take on Kivi (and not just someone but you!!), and I'll give you some Finnish perspective on the context of _Seven Brothers_.

In mid-19th century, rural Finland still had a mixed relationship with... let's say, civilization. Due to the difficulty of traveling and the lack of roads, even the advancement of Christianity had been slow in Finland. We were Christianized in the middle ages, but some communities in the East and the North only had churches built in the 18th century! A lot of pagan leftover ideas and remnants still lingered in the 19th century. Add to that the changing of the center of political power - first, we were subjects of the Swedish king for hundreds of years (although very few spoke Swedish or could ever make a trip to Sweden proper), then we were subjects of the Russian Czar. So... we work hard, people from the West and then the East come to tell us what to do, we are not really abused... but we understand how primitive (still almost pagan!) and lowly we are when compared to the great civilizations of the West and the East. We have to give a lot, we are not given much, except this murky thing called civilization... rule of law, education... and we find ourselves asking - is it worth it? Should we flee to the forests and pursue unity with nature and true independence, or do these new things really have something to offer us? If we should join in the civilization, should we do it as forced objects or as willing subjects? Is there a way for us to grow "naturally" into civilization, so that we stay ourselves, stay as what we are, and then maybe, just maybe, at some point in the far future, meet Swedes and Russians and other great nations as equals? I think these are some of the questions the novel addresses.

Stylistically, the novel is preceded by the early 19th century classicism of the poet J.L. Runeberg that presented the matter of the Finnish people along classicist lines and with high idealism. After Kivi, the 19th century ended with strong national romanticism with an anti-classical and even primitivist bent. Kivi is in the middle, with high ideals of the past, but also with a realistic and unapologetic vision of the nature of the people. I think he's saying that with a whip and a hard hand of the rulers, the Finns will become barbarians and killers, hounds of Hell who care not if they die as long as they can tear civilization asunder; but, who, if given love and understanding by the rulers, will become the best, most loyal friends that civilization ever had.

There's much more than this particular theme to the novel, but I think this one might be hardest to understand by non-Finns, that's why the speech!


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## Oldhoosierdude

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy.
Also The Quick Red Fox by John D. MacDonald, ebook.


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## Pugg

​
Glenn Gould
Life off beat.


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## SiegendesLicht

^ Is it in German or in Dutch?


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## Pugg

SiegendesLicht said:


> ^ Is it in German or in Dutch?


German, from JPC


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## znapschatz

Well, re-reading seems to be on my current agenda. While still journeying through “War and Peace,” I discovered a paperback copy of Jon Crompton’s “The Life of the Spider” for sale on a web site, and had to have it. My first read was as a teenager, and it was a consciousness changer for me that persist to this day. I got it mainly for my wife, who never read the book, but it would probably not have the same effect on her, as she is already there. It is worth reading anyway as one of the most entertaining of popular books on a nature subject. 

BTW, there were capsule reviews of this on several bookseller sites, almost all of which agree with my two points on it. Another BTW; the 1954 edition, for what I paid $6, was 35 cents then.


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## Captainnumber36

The Picture of Dorian Gray is what I am currently reading, it's off to an awesome start!


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## Pugg

Captainnumber36 said:


> The Picture of Dorian Gray is what I am currently reading, it's off to an awesome start!


Fascinating book, they made good movies about it also.


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## Captainnumber36

Just finished "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and it was absolutely fantastic. I think it exaggerates conceding to temptation to explore the life of such a person who does to, in the end, show it's errors. 

I found myself questioning some of Harry's views, and while I think he makes sense, indulging in what he says does not lead to fulfillment which is what I feel Wilde's ultimate point is.


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## Guest




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## Barbebleu

Iron Man - Armor Wars II by John Byrne and Jon Romita Jr.


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## Bettina

The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector.


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## Jacred

How Not to be Wrong, by Jordan Ellenberg


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## StlukesguildOhio

At a sale held by the local used book store I picked up a number of big coffee table art books. One on Alphonse Mucha, one on Degas, another on Art Nouveau and Art Deco posters, and a final giant book on Raphael. The Raphael book is huge and probably ran around $200. I picked it up for around $45. The books focuses upon the artist's paintings in the Vatican. The reproductions of close-ups of these fresco paintings are especially enlightening... revealing just how freely painted they were... and how close they were to the Florentine/Roman traditions of drawing in the manner in which the forms were built up from layers of hatching.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

After finishing All Quiet on the Western Front recently, I read The Guns of August, The Great War and now reading A World Undone: The Story of the Great War. I guess I have a WW1 infatuation at the moment.


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

Substance: Inside New Order by Peter Hook.

I had previously read Hooky's book Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, and loved it. He gives a great perspective of what it was like with Joy Division - I was surprised how good a read it was. Growing up, Joy Division and New Order were perhaps my two favorite bands. I loved Hook's bass playing the most. Looking forward to this book.


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## Vronsky

Ambrose Bierce: Fantastic Fables

Review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/641271.Fantastic_Fables


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## Gordontrek

The Mexican War - K. Jack Bauer. One volume overview of the Mexican-American war of the late 1840s
Frontiers - Robert Hine. History of the American western frontier, which has lately become an interest of mine. That's why I'm reading both this and the Bauer volume about the Mexican War. 
Articles of the Federation - Keith DeCandido. This is a Star Trek novel, one of the few types of fiction I read.


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## Vronsky

Ambrose Bierce: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49256.The_Unabridged_Devil_s_Dictionary


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## TxllxT

*The Jew of Rome*










The Jew of Rome is a historical novel featuring Flavius Josephus as the main character together with consul/emperor Vespasianus. Flavius Josephus is not a pleasant person. In Alexandria he begs the leaders of the synagogue for 39 beatings with a leather stripped cane just in order to get a divorce from his wife Mara, who is pregnant of his son Simeon. Feuchtwanger describes in gripping detail how women and slaves were discriminated/dehumanised in those times. The fanaticism of the 'Revengers of Israel' reminds one of present day religious zealotism.


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## Meyerbeer Smith

(I'm reading the first British printing, 1938 Robert Hale.)

Adventures of an American archaeologist in Central and South America and SE Asia. He's captured by headhunters, adrift on a boat without water, and on the dragon-infested island of Komodo. Grim in parts - a comrade is bitten by a snake, a foreman is murdered - and in other parts quite funny.

E.P. Jacobs' _Blake et Mortimer - Le Mystère de la grande pyramide_

















BDs (Belgian comics) by a colleague of Hergé's (Jacobs co-wrote some of the books, including _Temple of the Sun_), aimed at a slightly older group; there's more of a science fiction element, and the writing is more detailed. Blake is in the British Secret Service; Mortimer (the series' hero) is a famous scientist. This one is set, obviously, in Egypt, and is full of action - kidnappings, impersonation, disguise, car chases, midnight burglaries, and cobras.


----------



## Vronsky

Luigi Pirandello: Six Characters in Search of an Author

Review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/741618.Six_Characters_in_Search_of_an_Author


----------



## John Kiunke

Biography of Carl von Dittersdorf (a suprisingly interesting read, surprising even for me, a classical period enthusiast) and Sherlock Holmes.


----------



## Guest

Jacred said:


> How Not to be Wrong, by Jordan Ellenberg


Is he right?


----------



## chill782002

TxllxT said:


> The Jew of Rome is a historical novel featuring Flavius Josephus as the main character together with consul/emperor Vespasianus. Flavius Josephus is not a pleasant person. In Alexandria he begs the leaders of the synagogue for 39 beatings with a leather stripped cane just in order to get a divorce from his wife Mara, who is pregnant of his son Simeon. Feuchtwanger describes in gripping detail how women and slaves were discriminated/dehumanised in those times. The fanaticism of the 'Revengers of Israel' reminds one of present day religious zealotism.


Thank you, I'm very fond of historical novels so I'll check this out.

I am currently re-reading "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves, one of my all time favourites.


----------



## Becca

The Ring - Anatomy of an Opera by Stephen Fay & Roger Wood

A fascinating saga of the (in)famous 1983 Bayreuth/Solti/Hall Ring production from when it was first proposed some years before to the opening season. Stephen Fay was a friend of Peter Hall and was allowed to follow all the twists and turns during the entire exhausting process. Wolfgang Wagner gave his assent, limited at first but then complete, for Mr Fay to be present at all meetings, whether in London or Bayreuth, and all rehearsals. Most involved come across with less than glowing marks including Hall, Wagner, William Dudley (designer) and especially Rainer Goldberg. There one or two who manage to keep their halos intact especially Hildegard Behrens. As to Solti, I would say that my view of him improved somewhat after reading the book.


----------



## Vronsky

Mikhail Bulgakov: A Country Doctor's Notebook

Review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/897363.A_Country_Doctor_s_Notebook


----------



## Vronsky

...continuing with Bulgakov.

Mikhail Bulgakov: Diaboliad & The Fatal Eggs
Reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7970550-diaboliad https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47323.The_Fatal_Eggs


----------



## Cheyenne

I am reading several books on Beckett, mostly on his theater. I've especially appreciated John Fletcher's On Beckett: The Playwright and the Work. The more I read of Beckett the more I respect him. I especially appreciate his rebuttals to frequent, obvious questions: What does it mean? "It means what it says". What does Godot represent? "If I'd known that, I'd have put it in the play". Is there a system behind your writing? "I'm not interested in any system. I can't see any trace of any system anywhere."


----------



## Pugg

I've just started: Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.


----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## Klassik

Has anyone read this one?

_What Killed the Great and Not So Great Composers?_
By Joseph W. Lewis, Jr., M.D.

Here's a synopsis from the publisher:


> From a personally assembled database of 13,859 classical musicians, What Killed the Great and not so Great Composers delves into the medical histories of a wide variety of composers from both a musical and medical standpoint. Biographies of musicians from Johann Sebastian Bach of the Baroque period to Benjamin Britten of the Modern era explore in depth their illnesses and the impact their diseases had on musical productivity. Other chapters referenced to specific composers are devoted to such diverse ailments as deafness, mental disorders, sexually transmitted diseases, surgery and war injuries, to name a few. A unique section of statistics and demographics analyzes various aspects of composers' lives such as their longevity related to contemporaneous nonmusical populations, the incidence of various illnesses they experienced over the centuries and the type of medical problems suffered by the so-called top 100 classical musicians. Although a precise and complete accounting of the great composers' ailments may never be possible, a general understanding of the medical problems experienced by these unique individuals, nevertheless, can heighten one's appreciation of their creative processes despite the hardships imposed by their physical and mental illnesses. Although some individuals surrendered to their disabilities for a variety of reasons, others were able to rise above their infirmities and produce the wonderful music mankind has enjoyed through the centuries.


Publisher's Link:http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000356840/What-Killed-the-Great-and-Not-So-Great-Composers.aspx

It's basically an encyclopedia of causes of death for many classical composers. I'm not sure why this is intriguing to me, but perhaps it can answer the question I've always had if anyone had a more comical demise than Lully.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Pugg said:


> I've just started: Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.


Oh good! Have you gone to Waugh before?


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Pugg

SimonTemplar said:


> Oh good! Have you gone to Waugh before?


Yup, big fan, Handful of Dust / and Brideshead Revisited are my favourite, in that order put the Decline and Fall in the middle now.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Pugg said:


> Yup, big fan, Handful of Dust / and Brideshead Revisited are my favourite, in that order put the Decline and Fall in the middle now.


I like _Decline and Fall_ a lot; but my favorites are _Black Mischief_ and _The Loved One_. I didn't like _Handful of Dust_ - not particularly funny, and rather grim.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Minor Sixthist

A Picture of Dorian Gray, though I'm getting a little bored with it.


----------



## Pugg

SimonTemplar said:


> I like _Decline and Fall_ a lot; but my favorites are _Black Mischief_ and _The Loved One_. I didn't like _Handful of Dust_ - not particularly funny, and rather grim.


That's the part I liked the most. 
( the film adaption is very poor though )


----------



## senza sordino

The Jazz of Physics, The Secret Link between Music and the Universe









Part autobiographical and part technical story of the connections between physics and music. Along the way he gets his PhD in physics while playing in jazz clubs at night. He meets Brian Eno, Ornette Colman and various inspirational advisors. If the structure of the universe is a result of a pattern of vibration, what causes the vibration? Is the universe behaving like an instrument?

He reprints a diagram drawn by John Coltrane, he draws various symmetrical and asymmetrical chord and note progressions, plus time and frequency graphs. A fascinating read.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I just finished up the original Mary Poppins book and I must say it's a really fun read.

**Spoilers***



I really feel the focus is the perspective of the children. Mary Poppins is like a spiritual guide that teaches them to mind their manners but allows them to explore their imaginations by taking them on wild adventures.

I like how Poppins is only kind when minded with manners, respect, and politeness. Otherwise she is quick to become offended and rightfully so. She is a strong woman who respects sophisticated behavior.


----------



## Captainnumber36

***More Mary Poppins Spoilers***


There was one passage in the book that really made me experience a different state of consciousness. I've never gotten that from a book before. It's the scene with the snakes. It's eerie and beautiful at the same time, I felt really pulled in to that scene. Also, when the children transport from being at the zoo to back home in their beds, my mind transported with them. It was really insane!


----------



## Bettina

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished up the original Mary Poppins book and I must say it's a really fun read.
> 
> **Spoilers***
> 
> I really feel the focus is the perspective of the children. Mary Poppins is like a spiritual guide that teaches them to mind their manners but allows them to explore their imaginations by taking them on wild adventures.
> 
> I like how Poppins is only kind when minded with manners, respect, and politeness. Otherwise she is quick to become offended and rightfully so. She is a strong woman who respects sophisticated behavior.


I love the Mary Poppins series, but I've long been puzzled by something: whenever she and the kids arrive back home after a day of magic, why does she always deny that the magical adventures happened? Every time that the kids say "it was so much fun to float in the air" or whatever, Poppins always says "What on earth are you talking about? I would never do such a silly thing!" I just don't understand why she would try to convince the kids that they imagined the whole thing...


----------



## Captainnumber36

Bettina said:


> I love the Mary Poppins series, but I've long been puzzled by something: whenever she and the kids arrive back home after a day of magic, why does she always deny that the magical adventures happened? Every time that the kids say "it was so much fun to float in the air" or whatever, Poppins always says "What on earth are you talking about? I would never do such a silly thing!" I just don't understand why she would try to convince the kids that they imagined the whole thing...


Good question!

Perhaps she wants to tickle their imaginations by taking them on these adventures, but to remember what is important which is the behavior modification she is engaging in with the children; to be proper and mind their manners.

Adults lie to children all the time to protect them, right?


----------



## Captainnumber36

How cute is the chapter on the twins! It's also very sad. It reminded me of the Polar Express; growing old and losing touch with childlike qualities.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

*Andrew Greig
In Another Light* [Phoenix, 2004]










A fine novel from a contemporary Scots poet and novelist. A meditation on illness and death, sons and fathers, Orkney 2004 and Malaya 1930, taking and not taking opportunities for love and companionship...un-put-down-able.


----------



## TxllxT

*The Jew of Rome - detail*

We just finished Lion Feuchtwanger's 'The Jew of Rome' that ends with the grand victory parade of Titus in Rome. As it is shown inside the triumphal gate on the Forum, they carried all the booty from Herod's destroyed Temple of Jerusalem with them. Now a hair raising detail: in the front of the huge marching crowd the elderly members of the Roman senate strode, who in the past had voted for the destruction of Jerusalem and sending in three Roman legions to carry out the job. How they were recognised as members of the senate? - They wore red shoes on high heels. When we read this passage, we were immediately reminded of the retired pope Benedict XVI, who loves to wear red shoes. Just by choosing this footwear one sees him flirting with Roman history... I wouldn't like to walk in shoes that brought so much evil in the world.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

^ Yeah, and every woman in the world that wears high red heels is a wicked anti-semite  To quote Wagner: wie kann ein Sinn unsinniger sein?*

*how can a sense be more non-sensical?


----------



## Kieran

TxllxT said:


> We just finished Lion Feuchtwanger's 'The Jew of Rome' that ends with the grand victory parade of Titus in Rome. As it is shown inside the triumphal gate on the Forum, they carried all the booty from Herod's destroyed Temple of Jerusalem with them. Now a hair raising detail: in the front of the huge marching crowd the elderly members of the Roman senate strode, who in the past had voted for the destruction of Jerusalem and sending in three Roman legions to carry out the job. How they were recognised as members of the senate? - They wore red shoes on high heels. When we read this passage, we were immediately reminded of the retired pope Benedict XVI, who loves to wear red shoes. Just by choosing this footwear one sees him flirting with Roman history... I wouldn't like to walk in shoes that brought so much evil in the world.


Firstly, Popes have long worn red shoes. It has nothing to do with that episode in Roman history.

And second, the idea of Benedict VXI wearing high heels made me giggle....


----------



## Captainnumber36

"Murder on the Orient Express" - Agatha Christie


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.


----------



## Abraham Lincoln




----------



## hpowders

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.


A "Golden Oldie".


----------



## Tristan

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.


I still really want to read this one. I'm currently reading this,









and in its account of Einstein, it's also telling the story of Germany's situation after WWI, the Weimar Republic, and rise of Hitler, so it'd be interesting to read in detail about it. I think it's a vital part of history that everyone should understand.


----------



## TxllxT

Kieran said:


> Firstly, Popes have long worn red shoes. It has nothing to do with that episode in Roman history.
> 
> And second, the idea of Benedict VXI wearing high heels made me giggle....


Red shoes in Rome have nothing to do with Roman history: of course the popes see/saw themselves as the true inheritors of the Roman Empire. To call the Roman senate anti-semitic is anachronistic: Feuchtwanger distinguishes between 'oriental' and 'western'. The Pharisees were in fact fervently pro-Roman: they led Pompejus into the Temple to sacrifice a pig just because of their deep hatred for the Sadducees.


----------



## Kieran

TxllxT said:


> of course the popes see/saw themselves as the true inheritors of the Roman Empire.


No. They see themselves as the head of the Church on earth...


----------



## TxllxT

Kieran said:


> No. They see themselves as the head of the Church on earth...


http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2013/03/12/why-pope-wears-red-shoes/

Quote: Cardinal red = Roman Senate red.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifex_Maximus

The present pope uses @pontifex as his twitter. Pontifex Maximus is typical Roman tradition.


----------



## Kieran

TxllxT said:


> http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2013/03/12/why-pope-wears-red-shoes/
> 
> Quote: Cardinal red = Roman Senate red.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifex_Maximus
> 
> The present pope uses @pontifex as his twitter. Pontifex Maximus is typical Roman tradition.


So they also speak Latin? The role of the Pope isn't the same role as a Roman emperor, senator, gladiator, or any other role or office held in the Roman Empire. He's the bishop of Rome in the Church. If he has Italian flair for design, it doesn't mean he also has the Roman flair for creating the worlds greatest empire.

Unless it's the world's greatest empire of souls. 

And by the way, I'm not overlooking the fact that many popes have behaved more like Caligula than St. Francis. But their role was never to be Caligula, or to extend the duration of the western Roman Empire beyond its generally held collapse in 476AD...


----------



## Tristan

Seems like this should be a different discussion, but yeah, popes and kings competed for power all through the Middle Ages, when the pope was very much a secular ruler as well as the head of the Church. That's not so much the case anymore, though there still is a remnant of the Papal States (Vatican City).


----------



## Guest




----------



## Kieran

John Lawton, Lily of the Field, a WW2 potboiler murder mystery, and quite good it is, too.

Next for me is Police by Jo Nesbo. I purchased his new book recently, The Thirst, which is the latest in the Harry Hole series...


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Just finished Time Out Of Joint, by Philip K. Dick. A gem. Kept reminding me of The Truman Show.


----------



## dillonp2020

What Hath God Wrought, a 900 page pulitzer prize winning account of American history from 1812 to the Mexican American war.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Free book at the library book store. I see the cheapest offering on line is $19.50. Anyway, At one time Preston worked for the Lincoln Park (Detroit suburb) Police. That was in the prohibition days and Lincoln Park was a focal point of the rum running so he had a pretty tough beat. There are stories of his police exploits. But what sticks in my mind so far is how he needed to route some wiring through a wall in his home and instead of wasting time looking for a drill, he pulled out his service revolver and blew a hole in the wall. Quite a character. Fascinating book.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

A bit depressing. "Grit" fiction.


----------



## TxllxT

*Isaac Babel - Collected Stories*


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command by Edwin B. Coddington. Coddington also covers the 6 months before the battle.


----------



## Barbebleu

I'm kind of on a poetry kick at the moment. Dipping into various things. Louis MacNeice, Anna Akhmatova, T.S. Eliot, Roger McGough, Allan Ginsberg, Liz Lochhead (former Scottish Makar) and a very fine omnibus which I've had for about fifty years called The New American Poetry edited by Donald M. Allen. It's the eighth printing from 1960, Grove Press, New York. it's a fantastic collection and sadly OOP now.

Also reading some excellent crime fiction by Chris Brookmyre. Quirky, humourous and intricately plotted.


----------



## Pugg

I started the complete work by: Roald Dahl.....


----------



## Kieran

Jo Nesbo: Police.

It's gripping. It's a thriller. It stops me going to sleep.


----------



## Barbebleu

Kieran said:


> Jo Nesbo: Police.
> 
> It's gripping. It's a thriller. It stops me going to sleep.


Yes, another one to add to the list. I love the Harry Høle thrillers.


----------



## Guest

Barbebleu said:


> Yes, another one to add to the list. I love the Harry Høle thrillers.


He has a brand new one: _The Thirst_. I haven't bought it yet, but it's on my list!


----------



## Vronsky

Milorad Pavić: Dictionary of the Khazars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/321566.Dictionary_of_the_Khazars


----------



## TxllxT

TxllxT said:


>


After a number of short stories my wife had enough of Babel. Babel combines descriptions of raw cruelty & poverty with a raw sense of humour, that is very adapted to masculine taste. My wife longs for liftings of the spirit, for the opposite of brutalism.


----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


> He has a brand new one: _The Thirst_. I haven't bought it yet, but it's on my list!


I have it! It's next for me, soon as I finish *Police*. Which will be in the next couple of days... :tiphat:


----------



## schigolch




----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> I have it! It's next for me, soon as I finish *Police*. Which will be in the next couple of days... :tiphat:


I just bought it. It's next in my pile!


----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


> I just bought it. It's next in my pile!


I'm on page 411 of Police, barrelling through it. Strange tension on every page. I think it's my favourite Nesbo so far. Dilemmas everywhere! Sometimes I can't even bear to turn the page - but I must!  :lol:


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> I'm on page 411 of Police, barrelling through it. Strange tension on every page. I think it's my favourite Nesbo so far. Dilemmas everywhere! Sometimes I can't even bear to turn the page - but I must!  :lol:


Haha, yes, it's one of best and most intense. While not Nordic, have you read any Mo Hayder or Val McDermid? Both write very gritty, dark novels.


----------



## Pugg

Taking a break from Mr Dahl, now reading: Ben Lerner: Leaving the Atocha Station.


----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


> Haha, yes, it's one of best and most intense. While not Nordic, have you read any Mo Hayder or Val McDermid? Both write very gritty, dark novels.


I haven't, but I'll dig them out, on your recommendation. I've read a lot of Scandi stuff, and I also like James Ellroy. I adore Raymond Chandler, I dunno if you ever read any of his. He's an original, a beautiful stylist, with gritty hard stories too...


----------



## TxllxT

Lion Feuchtwanger's Ugly Duchess is really entertaining and informative. At present we learn a lot about John of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, who left living traces of flirting in every medieval town of Europe... Don Giovanni would be jealous of him!


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> I haven't, but I'll dig them out, on your recommendation. I've read a lot of Scandi stuff, and I also like James Ellroy. I adore Raymond Chandler, I dunno if you ever read any of his. He's an original, a beautiful stylist, with gritty hard stories too...


No, but others have recommended Chandler, so I'll add him to my list. Any particular suggestions? I recommend _The Mermaids Singing_ by McDermid. It's the first in a wonderful (but brutal!) series of detective novels involving criminal psychologist Tony Hill. It and some of her other novels were the basis for a gripping TV series called "Wire in the Blood."


----------



## Kieran

Kontrapunctus said:


> No, but others have recommended Chandler, so I'll add him to my list. Any particular suggestions? I recommend _The Mermaids Singing_ by McDermid. It's the first in a wonderful (but brutal!) series of detective novels involving criminal psychologist Tony Hill. It and some of her other novels were the basis for a gripping TV series called "Wire in the Blood."


Thanks for that!

With Chandler, you won't be disappointed by anything he's written, but to me, the real biggest gems are _Lady in the Lake_, _Farewell My Lovely_, and _The Long Goodbye_.

I finished _Police _last night. With some relief! :lol:


----------



## Annied

I've just started this, I'm about 85 pages in. So far it's a fascinating read.


----------



## Blancrocher

"Sons of the Prophet," by Stephen Karam

Best recent play I've read in some time. Looking forward to reading his more recent "The Humans," which has gotten even more attention.


----------



## Guest

Not for the faint of heart...


----------



## Tristan

I need a new book to read. Just finished _*The Sun Also Rises*_ by Hemingway (oy, the anti-Semitism in that one. It was so blatant I wondered if it was supposed to be ironic, but I'm not sure. Otherwise enjoyable).

I have a lot of other good books to choose from. I was thinking maybe I'd read *Jane Eyre* next. I loved Wuthering Heights, so I figure I'd probably enjoy this one.


----------



## Guest

Tristan said:


> I have a lot of other good books to choose from. I was thinking maybe I'd read *Jane Eyre* next. I loved Wuthering Heights, so I figure I'd probably enjoy this one.


I suggest _Rebecca_ by Daphne Du Maurier--quite a good romantic mystery--with some gothic overtones.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Kontrapunctus said:


> Not for the faint of heart...


Is the Thurisaz rune on the cover there for a reason, or "just so"?


----------



## Tristan

Kontrapunctus said:


> I suggest _Rebecca_ by Daphne Du Maurier--quite a good romantic mystery--with some gothic overtones.


Unfortunately I've seen the movie so I already know the story fairly well, but I wouldn't mind reading it. I've read a lot of Daphne du Maurier's short stories and always enjoyed them.


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> Is the Thurisaz rune on the cover there for a reason, or "just so"?


It's important to the plot.


----------



## Pugg

Biography about Agnes Giebel


----------



## dillonp2020

Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.


----------



## znapschatz

About the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, often described as the dress rehearsal for WW2. Well written and an excellent introduction to this tragic affair, especially for those who not previously familiar with its history. Its main subject is the American volunteers, 2900 who participated in it, half of whom died in the attempt to stop the rise of fascism in Europe, but it also covers the convoluted politics surrounding this episode. Although I have a few nits to pick with it, the author does a good job of making it all intelligible.

My particular interest was that I knew several of the volunteers, members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and did some photography work for their organization. They were called "premature anti-fascists" by a hostile Congressional inquisitor during the McCarthy hysteria of the late 1940s-mid-'50s. None are still alive. Their story deserves to be told.


----------



## Kieran

Jo Nesbo's *The Thirst*, yet another thriller of his that isn't so much a page-turner, as a book where you rip the pages out of your way to get to the next one. A sequel to *Police*, so I'm glad I read that last week...


----------



## Kieran

Nobody reading anymore? The heatwave got you all togged out on the beach? :lol:

I'm reading Raymond Chandler, Trouble is My Business, starring Phillip Marlowe, the hardboiled detective with a chivalrous side. 4 novellas in one book, excellent reading during a heatwave!


----------



## Sound Of Silence

I just finished Emile Zola' s Nana. This is my first novel of Zola and İ totally love it. Book is about a prostitute and her lovers. İn the background you see 19th capitalist France and moral decline of a woman.

I am going to start Hitler' s My fight or Marquez' s Hundered years of solitude but i can' t decide.


----------



## TxllxT

We're re-reading Oblomov, relishing from sentence to sentence the humour & wisdom of Ivan Goncharov.


----------



## TxllxT

TxllxT said:


> We're re-reading Oblomov, relishing from sentence to sentence the humour & wisdom of Ivan Goncharov.


Just heard one of Oblomov's fantasies: 'he fancied how the peoples of Africa raided the peoples of Europe'.


----------



## Vox Gabrieli

Two very good books.


----------



## hpowders

Gabriel Ortiz said:


> View attachment 95601
> View attachment 95602
> 
> 
> Two very good books.


Good choices!


----------



## GOLTZIUS

Really?- although there are highlights I think Proust is largely too concerned with Gossip and Salom Melodrama. The famous section on the eating of the Madeline is wonderful, but there are fair and rew moments like it in the rest of the story.


----------



## Guest

This book greatly diminishes my view of him as a person. I guess one has to separate the artist from his art.


----------



## Judith

Reading a book about the history of "Kirkgate" which is the first street in Leeds.

Written by 
Kevin Grady (previous director of Leeds Civic Trust)
Steven Burt

Local history is my other passion as well as classical music!


----------



## znapschatz

Sound Of Silence said:


> I just finished Emile Zola' s Nana. This is my first novel of Zola and İ totally love it. Book is about a prostitute and her lovers. İn the background you see 19th capitalist France and moral decline of a woman.
> 
> I am going to start Hitler' s My fight or Marquez' s Hundered years of solitude but i can' t decide.


By all means, Marquez. Politics aside (as if ), Marquez is one of the greats of recent literature; Hitler, not so much. I tried, but gave up. For historical interest only, but it's a turgid read. *Mein Kampf* was sold widely during the Third Reich, made Hitler the richest man in Germany because of the royalties, but I would bet read by only 1 out of 1000, and finished by even fewer. Marquez, however, will enrich your soul. Also recommended by same; *Love in the Time of Cholera*.


----------



## znapschatz

Kontrapunctus said:


> This book greatly diminishes my view of him as a person. *I guess one has to separate the artist from his art.*


Usually a good idea.


----------



## JeffD

Books on other than musical topics: I am reading a collection of short stories by William Carlos Williams, a collection of short stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and the collection of short stories by Bandi, that have been smuggled out of North Korea.

Music related books: I just finished Edward Dusinberre's Beethoven for a Later Age.


----------



## JeffD

Now ask me about what Batman comics I am reading!


----------



## Bertali

JeffD said:


> Now ask me about what Batman comics I am reading!


What Batman comics are you reading?


----------



## Bertali

From the New York Times bestselling author and award-winning creator of Essex County, Secret Path, Descender, and The Underwater Welder comes an all-original graphic novel about a brother and sister who must come together after years apart to face the disturbing history that has cursed their family.

Derek Ouelette's glory days are behind him. His hockey career ended a decade earlier in a violent incident on ice, and since then he's been living off his reputation in the remote northern community where he grew up, drinking too much and fighting anyone who crosses him. But he never counts on his long-lost sister, Beth, showing up one day out of the blue, back in town and on the run from an abusive boyfriend. Looking to hide out for a while, the two siblings hunker down in a secluded hunting camp deep in the local woods. It is there that they attempt to find a way to reconnect with each other and the painful secrets of their past...even as Beth's ex draws closer, threatening to pull both Derek and Beth back into a world of self-destruction that they are fighting tooth and nail to leave behind.

Simultaneously touching and harrowing, Roughneck is a masterwork from New York Times bestselling writer/artist Jeff Lemire-a deeply moving and beautifully illustrated story of family, heritage, and the desire to break the cycle of violence at any cost from one of today's most acclaimed comic creators.


----------



## JeffD

Bertali said:


> What Batman comics are you reading?


Just finished the Hush series. Batman is the only superhero I follow.


----------



## Bertali

I have the Absolute version, the art by Jim Lee is pretty good.

Found this unboxing of the Absolute.


----------



## JeffD

I have often thought that a good author of modern hard boiled detective fiction, a Lawrence Block or a Jeffrey Deaver, could write an excellent serious Batman novel. I think Batman, more than the other superheroes, lends itself to a serious novelization, with the moral ambiguity and the tortured past and parentless upbringing and troubled relationships. Some very rich soil in which some compelling stories can grow. But of course, I am extremely prejudiced.

Because a graphic novel format leaves little to the imagination, my mind goes to back story and development and re-imagining the hard choices or dealing with portent and fear. 

I remember a moment, I think it was in Death and the Maidens, where through some complicated plot inventions, Bruce Wayne gets to imagine meeting his father again, now that he is grown up. And his father's reaction is "so this is what you have become?!...". The comic necessarily glosses over all the emotional fallout and runs to the healthier emotional results, but I would have loved to take the time only a novel can exploring all of that.

And I think it would be cool if comics could not only inspire movies but work the other way and inspire novels. Good ones, not novelizations of the movie, or of the comic, but real new stories of substance, firmly in the Batman universe.


----------



## JeffD

Bertali said:


> I have the Absolute version, the art by Jim Lee is pretty good.


I am not a collector, by any stretch. I have an accumulation, but I don't mind that they are worn, and in one case have a coffee ring on the cover. I love the art, don't get me wrong, but its a object to be used, not fetishized. IMO.

Just like books. I have a huge accumulation of books, spilling into every room in the house. Many great and wonderful titles. Fiction, non-fiction, ridiculous, sublime, old, new, hardcover (mostly), but no first editions (except, maybe, by accident) or anything of collectors value.


----------



## starthrower

Bulfinch's Mythology


----------



## Tallisman

Robert Tombs' excellent The English and Their History
Michel Foucault's impenetrable but compelling Discipline and Punish
Joseph Campbell's brilliant Hero with a Thousand Faces
Dipping in and out of St Augustine's Confessions as well

What I call a good summer...


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## MattB

Hello, first post here. Have been following this thread for a while though.

As summer goes, I've decided to indulge myself with some noir fiction that has been sleeping on my shelves for so long.

Here it goes, Ellroy's L.A. Quartet it is then, starting with The Black Dahlia:










It was about time.


----------



## Art Rock

The Joona series by Sweden's crime writer Lars Kepler.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind!


----------



## wolkaaa

Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_ and Goethe's _Faust_. :tiphat:


----------



## Tristan

Emmanuel Carrère's *The Kingdom*. It's an autobiographical speculative, yet also factual history of St. Paul and Luke and how they wrote their portions of the New Testament. Very interesting stuff 









I've also been reading stories of Philip K. Dick. Reading *Ubik* now. And Carrère wrote a biography of Dick that I intend to read next


----------



## JeffD

Tristan said:


> I've also been reading stories of Philip K. Dick. Reading *Ubik* now.


One of my very very favorite authors. Often makes me feel uncomfortable, never disappointed.



> "So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair… So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything..."


----------



## Guest




----------



## Pugg

*Juliana* , a book about the grandmother of our current king, the tricks her husband played, scandalous.


----------



## Kieran

The Cold Six Thousand, by James Ellroy. Follow-up to American Tabloid, which is fabulous, but maybe 80 pages too long. 

American Tabloid starts in 1958 and ends with JFK's assassination in 1963. The Cold Six Thousand carries on from that day, up til RFK gets shot in 1968. There's a final book in the trilogy, Blood's A-Rover, which continues up to 1973. It's a big ambitious project, typical of Ellroy to aggressively pursue this, they're 
long books, and so far highly stylised. This book is a tougher chew than AT, because he's using what he called his telegraph style of short, clipped sentences, but now gone into overdrive. I'm on about page 60, and the average length of sentences is about 3 words. As in, "Pete sniffed. Door/kitchen/cupboard. Smelt booze. Flashback. 58. Mother. Dog barked. Pete sniffed. Gun. Two goons inside. Giggles from somewhere." Then some nasty words, usually. These kinds of dense, too-swift, scenes. Persistently brief. Lacks detail, obviously, or any of his usual dirty lyricism.

I like a few of his books because in some ways he situates himself as a modern upgrade to Raymond Chandler, the author of great noir novels. But really, James Ellroy isn't a patch on Raymond Chandler...


----------



## ArnoldLy

wolkaaa said:


> Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_ and Goethe's _Faust_. :tiphat:


If you can read all of Crime and Punishment and fully understand it all then you are a better man than I.


----------



## wolkaaa

ArnoldLy said:


> If you can read all of Crime and Punishment and fully understand it all then you are a better man than I.


What do you not understand?


----------



## JeffD

The World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig, English translation by Anthea Bell. 

The translator's note alone brought me to tears. This is going to be a good ride.


----------



## JeffD

ArnoldLy said:


> If you can read all of Crime and Punishment and fully understand it all then you are a better man than I.


There is pretty close to nothing that I fully understand. God forbid that should stop me.


----------



## JeffD

Another book I just started is a copy of a historical book, entitled "A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates" published in 1724 and enlarged in 1726.

Brings out the boy in me, the boy who loved anything about pirates, volcanoes, and dinosaurs, and wanted a pocket knife.


----------



## bharbeke

_Crime and Punishment_ is one I had to read in school. My memory is that the protagonist (Kalashnikov?) commits murder, then he mentally tortures himself before he gives himself away. The punishment he inflicted in his own mind was worse than anything the legal system could do.

I just finished an excellent humor/essay book from Ellen Degeneres called _Seriously...I'm Kidding_.


----------



## JeffD

Tristan said:


> Emmanuel Carrère's *The Kingdom*. It's an autobiographical speculative, yet also factual history of St. Paul and Luke and how they wrote their portions of the New Testament. Very interesting stuff


I just ordered it. Looks like something I would love.


----------



## Guest

bharbeke said:


> _Crime and Punishment_ is one I had to read in school. My memory is that the protagonist (Kalashnikov?) commits murder, then he mentally tortures himself before he gives himself away. The punishment he inflicted in his own mind was worse than anything the legal system could do.


Raskolnikov (Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov). _C&P_ is one of the greatest psychological crime novels ever written in my opinion. I loved teaching it to my AP Literature students. Their outrage when they figured out his real motive always generated excellent and heated discussions!


----------



## JeffD

Tristan said:


> Emmanuel Carrère's *The Kingdom*. It's an autobiographical speculative, yet also factual history of St. Paul and Luke and how they wrote their portions of the New Testament. Very interesting stuff





JeffD said:


> I just ordered it. Looks like something I would love.


OK. A new author. I am addicted. Everything else I am reading has to be put aside while I dive head first into Emmanuel Carrere.


----------



## Tristan

JeffD said:


> OK. A new author. I am addicted. Everything else I am reading has to be put aside while I dive head first into Emmanuel Carrere.


Glad to hear. I'm going to read his book on Philip K. Dick next--I'm a huge fan of PKD and I'd love to read his biography of him (he mentions PKD several times in _The Kingdom_).


----------



## JeffD

Tristan said:


> (he mentions PKD several times in _The Kingdom_).


I see that once or twice already. I haven't yet put together the connection.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Opera Every Child Should Know, by Delores Bacon. I am only on the first opera, Balfe's Bohemian Girl, and already ordered a set of that opera on CD. Never heard of it before. Bought the book for its section on Flotow's Martha which is about 28 pages of detailed description in story book format.

Pictured is the 1913 edition. I got a 1940 edition without the pretty cover picture.










Table of contents:

I.	Balfe: The Bohemian Girl	3
II.	Beethoven: Fidelio	35
III.	Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust	51
IV.	Bizet: Carmen	69
V.	DeKoven: Robin Hood	95
VI.	Flotow: Martha	105
VII.	Humperdinck: Hänsel and Gretel	135
VIII.	Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana	152
IX.	Meyerbeer: The Prophet	163
X.	Mozart: The Magic Flute	191
XI.	Sullivan: Pinafore	218
XII.	Verdi: Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, Aïda	238
XIII.	Wagner: The Nibelung Ring, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, Lohengrin	306


----------



## Captainnumber36

This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald)


----------



## Pugg

John Irving: In one person.


----------



## wolkaaa

Captainnumber36 said:


> This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald)


Please tell me if you liked it. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books.


----------



## Captainnumber36

wolkaaa said:


> Please tell me if you liked it. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books.


I loved it! Here is my short review I wrote for FB:

Just finished F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise". It's a fascinating coming of age story of a boy with great intellectual curiosity who was raised from wealth in the 1920s. It reminded me of myself in college and how I dealt with the numerous ideas on a variety of topics that were thrown at me by friends and professors. Great story! smile emoticon


----------



## musicrom

I'm currently reading _A Blaze in a Desert_, by Victor Serge, a poetry collection by a Russian revolutionary who was critical of the Stalin regime.

I don't typically read poetry, but I won this in a giveaway, so I figured I should actually read it. The writing style is pretty good and clear for the most part, or at least better than I had expected. I would describe it as a series of images of everyday life, largely in the midst of tragedy and suffering. It's not really my thing, but I think the collection is pretty well-done


----------



## Guest




----------



## bharbeke

I'm currently reading Who Knew? Answers to Questions about Classical Music You Never Thought to Ask by Robert A. Cutietta. I am learning a lot about the classical concert world from this book, and I'm only 1/4 of the way through it.


----------



## Varick

wolkaaa said:


> Dostoyevsky's _Crime and Punishment_ and Goethe's _Faust_. :tiphat:


Crime & Punishment is an excellent book!









This is what I just started. Only a few pages in and I'm riveted. Johnson really goes into the Zeitgeist of eras he writes about. He goes into detail from where and when certain ideas originated and how they have evolved through time.

V


----------



## mathisdermaler

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima... Wow! a great novel. I just finished the stomping scene. My favorite Mishima novel, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with Sea, starts very strong and loses steam until it picks it up again at the very end. I hope this book isn't the same. Overall, I dont think the first 80 pages of this book are as strong as the first 50 of the Sailor, but it is already more consistent; no lull so far.

My ranking of the Mishima I have read:

1. The Sailor
2. The Temple (so far)
3. Death in Midsummer and other stories
3. Confessions of a Mask


----------



## wolkaaa

_The Picture of Dorian Grey_ by Oscar Wilde.


----------



## bharbeke

wolkaaa said:


> _The Picture of Dorian Grey_ by Oscar Wilde.


That is an excellent choice!


----------



## JeffD

Mozart's Music of Friends - Social Interplay in the Chamber Works 
By Edward Klorman

The basic idea is that many (most? almost all?) of Mozart's chamber works were written for his friends, with whom he got together to play music. The motivation for creation was not performance for an audience of strangers, but to provide music for the common avocation among amateur and professional musicians of the time to meet with friends at private homes and play music, and especially (maybe exclusively) for his friends with whom he played.

The author kind of rethinks and reexamines all of Mozoart's chamber works from this perspective. Really interesting.

Especially for me, because I get together with friends and play music once or twice a week, either at my home, or someone else's home, or at a local bar. So playing music _with _friends, as opposed to playing music _for_ friends, is something I am very familiar with.

Just getting into the book, but it is fascinating, and well written, and will provide yet another way to appreciate music.


----------



## Crystal

_Listening to music_ by Craig Wright. Very interesting.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I just finished "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", it was phenomenal.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", it was phenomenal.


Try The Wrong Box.


----------



## wolkaaa

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", it was phenomenal.


I've read it this year. Now I read _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ and I noticed some similarities. If you like _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ you will probably also like Wilde's masterpiece.


----------



## Crystal

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", it was phenomenal.


Yes, so interesting. I read it last year.


----------



## Captainnumber36

wolkaaa said:


> I've read it this year. Now I read _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ and I noticed some similarities. If you like _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ you will probably also like Wilde's masterpiece.


read it!  loved it


----------



## Crystal

I'm also reading " Classical music 101" by Fred Plotkin. Nice.


----------



## Joe B

Reading again for the second time......it's been over 30 years since I first read it.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Barbebleu

Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr. Latest in the Bernie Gunther series. Excellent start.


----------



## Barbebleu

mathisdermaler said:


> The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima... Wow! a great novel. I just finished the stomping scene. My favorite Mishima novel, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with Sea, starts very strong and loses steam until it picks it up again at the very end. I hope this book isn't the same. Overall, I dont think the first 80 pages of this book are as strong as the first 50 of the Sailor, but it is already more consistent; no lull so far.
> 
> My ranking of the Mishima I have read:
> 
> 1. The Sailor
> 2. The Temple (so far)
> 3. Death in Midsummer and other stories
> 3. Confessions of a Mask


I found Patriotism in Death in Midsummer a very difficult read. Otherwise I like Mishima's prose style.


----------



## Ingélou

I read a fab review of this book & reserved it from Lowestoft library. John & I think it's bound to become a classic - it deals with ornithological, scientific and ecological matters, but it is also a love-poem, conveying the birds' beauty & 'umwelt' (personal world-view) and the author's relationship with them.

The paragraph below, about the puffin, gives the flavour:

*'The colony is a world full of warnings and tip-offs, buried threats and hostile gestures, all conveyed with those demonstrative faces and bodies, as if this were an army of town criers, every puffin dressed in a near-identical herald's tabard, bright with maquillage and eyeliner, all saying Here I am, look at me, how good am I, watch what I am doing. On landing, each puffin bows and humbles himself, wings up, head down: no threat, no aggression. The the bird shakes his head, shudders his wings into position, sorts out a stray feather or two and joins the group. The humility fades a little and with his lovely giant orange feet and legs, he walks around, either in an old-sailor, rolling gait or with comic largeness, up and down in his giant galoshes, as if walking on hot coals, sometimes not actually moving but walking on the spot like a cat playing with a mouse. All this occurs in almost total silence. Only occasionally does the bird make its slow, low groan-croak, like a soft and miniature chainsaw starting up, a little gunning of the throttle, a fading of the note at the end as the revs drop away.' - pp 69-70. 
*
***** Highly recommended!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Ingélou said:


> I read a fab review of this book & reserved it from Lowestoft library. John & I think it's bound to become a classic - it deals with ornithological, scientific and ecological matters, but it is also a love-poem, *conveying the birds' beauty & 'umwelt' (personal world-view)* and the author's relationship with them.


Sorry, can't keep from commenting on this. The word you are looking for is "Weltanschauung". "Umwelt" means simply the environment.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## tdc

Current reading:

Robert Hewitt Brown - _Stellar Theology and Masonic Astrology_

Stephen King - _It_


----------



## Captainnumber36

Bram Stoker - Dracula


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Kieran

I'm still reading The Cold Six Thousand, by James Ellroy. You know what? That telegram style of writing I complained about earlier, sentences lasting only 3 or 4 words, no paragraphs longer than 4 sentences etc, it's fairly riveting and hurtles things along, which is good because it's a long enough book. Filthy characters, dodgy conspiracy stuff, racism, sexism, thugs, gangsters, Bobby Kennedy, Hoover, MLK, the Mafia, Cuba, Vietnam, Sonny Liston....it's a remarkable jaunt. Sure, it can be criticised too, but as a follow up to the great American Tabloid (Kennedy's, Hoffa, Hoover, the Mob, Cuba, sexism, racism, etc), it's fairly brilliant...


----------



## Totenfeier

I recently picked up a nice set of six of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels, so I'm rekindling an old love affair with witty 1930s armchair detective fiction (I'm a rabid Dashiell Hammett fan as well; I roll hardboiled when necessary).


----------



## Tallisman

joy...............


----------



## Judith

Trio written by Boman Desai. Wonderful biography about Schumanns and Brahms. Easy to read and understand even though about 800 pages. Just started it and can't put it down!


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Fascinating how few CM folks admit to reading pulp novels! High intellectual standards or selective memory?

Oh me? I'm currently reading Ian Rankin's 'The Complaints', an absorbing police procedural with no pretensions to being great literature.


----------



## Totenfeier

Tallisman said:


> joy...............
> 
> View attachment 96842


I am also reading those. New England Transcendentalism, while arguably a touch naive as a worldview, is nevertheless one of my highest literary joys.


----------



## wolkaaa

Pat Fairlea said:


> Fascinating how few CM folks admit to reading pulp novels! High intellectual standards or selective memory?
> 
> Oh me? I'm currently reading Ian Rankin's 'The Complaints', an absorbing police procedural with no pretensions to being great literature.


Too little time for pulp novels. I started to read Dostoevsky's _The Gambler_.


----------



## EdwardBast

_2666_ by Roberto Bolaño (English translation) I'm only 100 pages in. So far, it is about the trials and travails of four literary scholars all keen on the same mysterious and reclusive (or elusive) novelist.


----------



## EdwardBast

wolkaaa said:


> Too little time for pulp novels. I started to read Dostoevsky's _The Gambler_.


So, you're saying _The Gambler_ isn't pulp fiction! News to me.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Totenfeier said:


> I recently picked up a nice set of six of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels, so I'm rekindling an old love affair with witty 1930s armchair detective fiction (I'm a rabid Dashiell Hammett fan as well; I roll hardboiled when necessary).


Which Stouts? I find him very uneven; there are some good ones, but in too many of his books too little happens, or the solution is an anti-climax.

If you're after 1930s armchair detective fiction, have you read S.S. Van Dine, Ellery Queen or John Dickson Carr?


----------



## Antiquarian

Pat Fairlea said:


> Fascinating how few CM folks admit to reading pulp novels! High intellectual standards or selective memory?


Oh, I read a few. The last one I read was "The Cocktail Waitress", by James M. Cain. It was good, but not quite up there with "The Postman Always Rings Twice". If you consider Cain a pulp writer, that is.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
~ James Joyce, 1916










A re-reading of a text I first read in my late teens. Still a great novel with much to teach me about being human, though I'm no longer a young man by any stretch of the imagination.


----------



## Antiquarian

TurnaboutVox said:


> A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
> ~ James Joyce, 1916
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A re-reading of a text I first read in my late teens. Still a great novel with much to teach me about being human, though I'm no longer a young man by any stretch of the imagination.


I read this too when I was young. The sermon in chapter three about the nature of hell has remained with me to this day. It reminded me of Jonathan Edwards sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.


----------



## Tallisman

Totenfeier said:


> I am also reading those. New England Transcendentalism, while arguably a touch naive as a worldview, is nevertheless one of my highest literary joys.


An extraordinary writer. Profound but totally devoid of intellectual pretenses.


----------



## bharbeke

I just read Star Trek: Enigma Tales by Una McCormack. It's not great, but it's enjoyable to spend some time with those characters and see how Cardassia has changed since the end of the Dominion War.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I didn't love Dracula, it was great for the first part, then got really boring.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I'm going to try Melmoth the Wanderer.


----------



## bharbeke

Captainnumber36 said:


> I didn't love Dracula, it was great for the first part, then got really boring.


Jonathan Harker's first journey really is the best part of the book, although I still get a kick out of Lucy getting three proposals in a day.


----------



## Tallisman

Really enjoying Jane Eyre. Fine and touching novel, beautifully written.


----------



## Totenfeier

SimonTemplar said:


> Which Stouts? I find him very uneven; there are some good ones, but in too many of his books too little happens, or the solution is an anti-climax.
> 
> If you're after 1930s armchair detective fiction, have you read S.S. Van Dine, Ellery Queen or John Dickson Carr?


Read some Ellery Queen years and years ago; thanks for the other tips! (And I'm one of those who reads Nero Wolfe novels for the ambience, not the plotting).


----------



## TxllxT

We finished (my wife reading aloud) Goncharov's Oblomov for the 2nd time. Oblomov let a life of sleeping & dreaming, that was just continued on the nearby graveyard. The book beautifully balances between a tragedy and a comedy, bringing forward the holiness of a 'normal life', led by a person with a clean heart. In the very end there suddenly pops up small Andrej, the child of Oblomov and his hospita/wife: how in the world did he manage that feat ?! The miracle of miracles is the fact that Oblomov, who was totally unproductive and unable to manage his affairs, had true caring friends & true caring love. It is one of the most positive spirited novels ever written.


----------



## Judith

Tallisman said:


> Really enjoying Jane Eyre. Fine and touching novel, beautifully written.


One of my favourite novels. Haworth, where the Brontes lived is about thirty miles from me!


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Stephen King The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger:


----------



## Ziggabea

I haven't read any novels or biographies in quite some time but the last book I read was "_Fundamentals of Musical Composition_" by Arnold Schoenberg, which I really enjoyed and found enlightening.

I may read a romance novel some time soon, any suggestions?


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Totenfeier said:


> Read some Ellery Queen years and years ago; thanks for the other tips! (And I'm one of those who reads Nero Wolfe novels for the ambience, not the plotting).


Probably the best way to read them! Do try Carr, though - a good _storyteller_ as well as a brilliant _detective writer_.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Recently read:


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Reading...


----------



## Listenerris

Hi. Please tell me what book to read about adventures in the middle ages? Antique dealers, paintings, houses in the Baroque style, something like this... I searched but did not find anything suitable.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Listenerris said:


> Hi. Please tell me what book to read about adventures in the middle ages? Antique dealers, paintings, houses in the Baroque style, something like this... I searched but did not find anything suitable.


Hi Listerennis - I'm a bit confused! The Baroque age was a few centuries later than the Middle Ages. I can recommend plenty of good historical fiction, and works from the times themselves.


----------



## Listenerris

SimonTemplar said:


> Hi Listerennis - I'm a bit confused! The Baroque age was a few centuries later than the Middle Ages. I can recommend plenty of good historical fiction, and works from the times themselves.


Yes, it was a few inaccuracies on my part. What books you could be recommend by name? And something of these times in total.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Over the last few weeks I have been browsing extensively through _The New Penguin Opera Guide_ and, as far as reference books go, have found it an invaluable resource over the last few years. This came out about 15 years ago so it would be nice if an updated edition becomes available in the not-too-distant future.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Reading a book on eartraining made by professors at the Norweigian Academy of Music. I attended a course based on the book this spring and got new ideas for my own teaching. Hopefully the students will have some fun!


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Listenerris said:


> Yes, it was a few inaccuracies on my part. What books you could be recommend by name? And something of these times in total.


I'll send you a list tonorrow. (I'm away from home at the moment.)


----------



## Listenerris

SimonTemplar said:


> I'll send you a list tonorrow. (I'm away from home at the moment.)


I`m hope that I will be found something for the reading now.


----------



## jegreenwood

I spent August getting over pneumonia. For two weeks I was not up to listening seriously to music or reading anything more demanding than Robert Parker's Spenser novels (which were lifesavers under the circumstances). Mostly I watched TV and slept.

Over the last two weeks my mental energy has returned. Just finished Michael Chabon's "Moonglow." Next, I think, will be Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake."


----------



## jegreenwood

SimonTemplar said:


> Reading...


I think back to seeing Fiona Shaw as "Medea." One of the most devastating evenings I have ever spent in theatre. For the curtain call she and Jason came out holding the hands of their stage children. This was necessary to remind the audience that it was only a play.

Several years earlier I attended a reading of C.K. Williams' translation of "The Bacchae" that was almost as powerful.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Listenerris said:


> I`m hope that I will be found something for the reading now.


The Baroque period runs 150 years, from 1600 to 1750.

Historical (adventure) novels

Captain Blood (Sabatini) - pirate adventure story, set in late 17th century
The Musketeers cycle (Dumas) - mid-17th century France
Captain Alatriste series (Pérez-Reverte) - 17th-century Spain
(If you're after books about paintings, his _Flanders Panel_ is a murder mystery, set in the present, about a 15th century Dutch painting)
John Dickson Carr wrote several good historical novels with a mystery element; _The Devil in Velvet_ (1951, about a historian who makes a pact with Satan to travel back to Charles II's court) is probably the best
The Pyrates! (George MacDonald Fraser) - a loving parody of pirate novels and movies, set in the Spanish Main
Orlando (Woolf) - from Elizabethan age to 1920s (more literary fiction)

Works of the time
Non-fiction (?)

The Story of My Life (memoirs of Casanova) - 1725-98 (racy!)

Novels

Gulliver's Travels (Swift) - 1726 (and his essay "A Modest Proposal" is brilliant)
Tom Jones (Fielding) - 1749

Plays

Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy - Middleton: The Revenger's Tragedy (1606) and The Changeling (1622); Webster: The White Devil (1612), The Duchess of Malfi (1614) - on YouTube; Massinger: The Roman Actor (1626)
Wycherley: The Country Wife (1672/73) - on YouTube; The Plain Dealer (1676)
Congreve: The Way of the World (1700)
Farquhar: The Recruiting Officer (1706); The Beaux' Stratagem (1707)
Gay: The Beggar's Opera (1728) - parody of Italian opera

Just outside period:

These are satires

Candide (Voltaire) - 1759
Rasselas (Dr. Johnson) - 1759
Tristram Shandy (Sterne) - 1759 (literary fiction)

Hope this helps!


----------



## Pugg

Norma Major: Dame Joan Sutherland


----------



## Kieran

Is that Norma Major, as in, ex-PM John Major's missus?


----------



## Listenerris

Hope this helps![/QUOTE]

Thanks, SimonTemplar! Really, I think it should be very great list to me and it requires many times for the reading.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Listenerris said:


> Thanks, SimonTemplar! Really, I think it should be very great list to me and it requires many times for the reading.


Hope you enjoy them!


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

jegreenwood said:


> I think back to seeing Fiona Shaw as "Medea." One of the most devastating evenings I have ever spent in theatre. For the curtain call she and Jason came out holding the hands of their stage children. This was necessary to remind the audience that it was only a play.
> 
> Several years earlier I attended a reading of C.K. Williams' translation of "The Bacchae" that was almost as powerful.


Those Greek tragedies pack quite a punch! I like Euripides the most; his plays are psychologically quite modern, and, as you say, powerful!


----------



## jegreenwood

SimonTemplar said:


> The Baroque period runs 150 years, from 1600 to 1750.
> 
> Historical (adventure) novels
> 
> Captain Blood (Sabatini) - pirate adventure story, set in late 17th century
> The Musketeers cycle (Dumas) - mid-17th century France
> Captain Alatriste series (Pérez-Reverte) - 17th-century Spain
> (If you're after books about paintings, his _Flanders Panel_ is a murder mystery, set in the present, about a 15th century Dutch painting)
> John Dickson Carr wrote several good historical novels with a mystery element; _The Devil in Velvet_ (1951, about a historian who makes a pact with Satan to travel back to Charles II's court) is probably the best
> The Pyrates! (George MacDonald Fraser) - a loving parody of pirate novels and movies, set in the Spanish Main
> Orlando (Woolf) - from Elizabethan age to 1920s (more literary fiction)
> 
> Works of the time
> Non-fiction (?)
> 
> The Story of My Life (memoirs of Casanova) - 1725-98 (racy!)
> 
> Novels
> 
> Gulliver's Travels (Swift) - 1726 (and his essay "A Modest Proposal" is brilliant)
> Tom Jones (Fielding) - 1749
> 
> Plays
> 
> Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy - Middleton: The Revenger's Tragedy (1606) and The Changeling (1622); Webster: The White Devil (1612), The Duchess of Malfi (1614) - on YouTube; Massinger: The Roman Actor (1626)
> Wycherley: The Country Wife (1672/73) - on YouTube; The Plain Dealer (1676)
> Congreve: The Way of the World (1700)
> Farquhar: The Recruiting Officer (1706); The Beaux' Stratagem (1707)
> Gay: The Beggar's Opera (1728) - parody of Italian opera
> 
> Just outside period:
> 
> These are satires
> 
> Candide (Voltaire) - 1759
> Rasselas (Dr. Johnson) - 1759
> Tristram Shandy (Sterne) - 1759 (literary fiction)
> 
> Hope this helps!


Two more ambitious contemporary noveis that recall the 17th/18th century:

"The Sot-Weed Factor" - John Barth
"Mason and Dixon" - Thomas Pynchon

Also "An Instance of the Fingerpost" a mystery by Iain Banks


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

jegreenwood said:


> Two more ambitious contemporary noveis that recall the 17th/18th century:
> 
> "The Sot-Weed Factor" - John Barth
> "Mason and Dixon" - Thomas Pynchon
> 
> Also "An Instance of the Fingerpost" a mystery by Iain Banks


Yeah, the _Instance of the Fingerpost_ is very good! Clever plot, multiple narrators, and mixing science and medicine with politics and history.


----------



## Pugg

Kieran said:


> Is that Norma Major, as in, ex-PM John Major's missus?


Yes it is, they seems to be very close in those days.


----------



## Xtrapnel

1. Colloquies--Guido Gozzano (1885-1916) early modernist Italian poet, roughly analogous to the Malipiero of Impressioni dal vero.
2.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

The Bliss of Music (Of the Pleasure of Listening to Mozart).

It is a diary of the author who decided to listen to the various works of Mozart every single day for an entire year, his stories and impressions dealing with Mozart's music. Until now, I have pretty much neglected Mozart in my own classical explorations, now this book serves me as a guide in the vast world of his music.


----------



## Vronsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49455.Notes_from_Underground


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Pugg

Just started : James Baldwin; Another Country


----------



## TennysonsHarp

Herodotus, "On the War for Greek Freedom." Trans: Samuel Shirley. Notes and Introduction: James Romm

T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land" and "Four Quartets"


----------



## Mal

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

It's an exciting and funny page turner; it's also a Pullitzer prize winner. Best of all worlds - light going - serious fun - like Mozart.


----------



## Mal

NickFuller said:


> The Baroque period runs 150 years, from 1600 to 1750.


Baroque, Wikipedia: " exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur"

Hey! Don't forget Shakespeare, most of his plays fit this description. Also Cervantes: "Don Quixote". Also Defoe "Robinson Crusoe" and "Moll Flanders".

Historical (adventure) novels

Walter Scott - exciting reads about Scottish (and some English...) history in roughly this period.
R.L Stevenson - Treasure Island, etc,...

Works of the time
Novels

Gulliver's Travels (Swift) - 1726
Tom Jones (Fielding) - 1749

I second these, great!


----------



## Gordontrek

The Searchers by Glenn Frankel









The first half of the book covers the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, who in the mid-1800s was abducted from her family by Comanche Indians in Texas. As an adult she was rescued and brought back to "white" civilization, where she was never able to re-acclimate and died not long after she was found. 
The second half of the book covers the production of the film "The Searchers" directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung


----------



## poodlebites

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung


That is my favorite book when traveling. Well, that one and the "second volume": Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste.


----------



## Annied

I'm reading "Practical Hints to Young Females", by Mrs Taylor, published in 1822. I'm always fascinated when I read books like this to discover that nothing really changes.

"People think _their_ children can do no harm: the noise, the disturbance, even the diseases of _their_ children, can be unpleasant to no one. This mistake renders the visits of those who are accompanied by a rude and clamourous child, very unwelcome and irksome. As it is allowed to trample upon the chairs and sofas, to displace, break, and destroy whatever it pleases at home; those whom they visit cannot presume to defend their own furniture from similar depredation, but at the peril of offending the parent, or at least of doing violence to their own feelings. It is astonishing how much even superior people often depart from the rules of good breeding in this particular."


----------



## bharbeke

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

What is it like preparing to be an astronaut? What are the unexpected challenges and human considerations of a space program? This book answers these questions and many more. It talks to the common reader about the exploration of space without talking down.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## Pat Fairlea

I have just finished a novel - 'The Bridge', by Ian Banks. 

Highly recommended, if you enjoy multi-layered complexity, multiple protagonists (or are they...?) and sparkling writing.


----------



## wolkaaa

Siddharta by Hermann Hesse.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

bharbeke said:


> Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
> 
> What is it like preparing to be an astronaut? What are the unexpected challenges and human considerations of a space program? This book answers these questions and many more. It talks to the common reader about the exploration of space without talking down.


Roach is fun! Have you read _Stiff_?


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

wolkaaa said:


> Siddharta by Hermann Hesse.


I read this last month. What did you think of it?


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Started to read Robert Graves' _Golden Fleece_. Got up to page 70, and I'm resigning. Like wading through treacle: insanely detailed - each sentence has on average a dozen proper names. Almost as bad as Tolkien. And full of Goddess. (I wonder if Livia was an avatar?)


----------



## helenora

starthrower said:


>


what do you think about this book? substantial information?


----------



## bharbeke

NickFuller said:


> Roach is fun! Have you read _Stiff_?


I have not. Of her other books, Gulp is the one that interests me the most.


----------



## Guest

Two interesting books.O'Toole is one of my favorite actors.

Memoirs Solti


----------



## Kivimees

Travels With My Aunt - Graham Greene


----------



## starthrower

helenora said:


> what do you think about this book? substantial information?


Just started it. Will have to report later. From what I've read, Scott was an accomplished composer, author, and poet, so hopefully it will have something of substance to convey to the reader.


----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## Merl

I read 'Green Eggs and Ham' to my class today. They did so like Green Eggs and Ham. Thank you, thank you Merl-I-Am.


----------



## wolkaaa

NickFuller said:


> I read this last month. What did you think of it?


I've read only the half yet but I think it's great. I was interested in that book because I symphatize with buddhism, but actually it's less buddhistic and biographical as I thought. However, I love Hesse's writing and narrative style, already the first pages thrilled me. What about you?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

wolkaaa said:


> Siddharta by Hermann Hesse.


I love Hermann Hesse! Have you read "Beneath the Wheel"? If not, I heartily recommend it.


----------



## wolkaaa

SiegendesLicht said:


> I love Hermann Hesse! Have you read "Beneath the Wheel"? If not, I heartily recommend it.


No, never heard of "Beneath the Wheel" before. But I've read the description of it today and its topic interests me very, very much. I will read it probably this year, thanks.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

wolkaaa said:


> I've read only the half yet but I think it's great. I was interested in that book because I symphatize with buddhism, but actually it's less buddhistic and biographical as I thought. However, I love Hesse's writing and narrative style, already the first pages thrilled me. What about you?


I liked it when I read it, but I found _The Glass Bead Game_ more engaging.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## TennysonsHarp

I've been reading John Stuart Mill's _On Liberty_ recently. I think I might have found a new favorite philosopher.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Just One Catch


----------



## bharbeke

Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View


----------



## MattB

Revolution in Time by David Saul Landes










Started reading this one not long ago. Horology history at its best.


----------



## Pugg

​
Borrowed your pic Traverso.


----------



## jegreenwood

Recently:

"The Aeneid" (Fagles translation)
"Moonglow" by Michael Chabon

Now reading:


----------



## starthrower




----------



## JeffD

For a dose of deep but lucid thinking:









Something to read while listening to music.


----------



## Metalkitsune

Anyone read Dragonlance or Dragonriders of Pern?


----------



## TxllxT

While we were staying on Malta, we wanted to take a smaller book with us than the heavyweight Nadezhda Mandelstam. So every evening we read 'The Secret Agent' (1907) by Joseph Conrad. The beginning of the book is thrilling. But soon the story starts to suffer under the insensitive treatment of its characters by the author, who themselves by and large happen to be potential terrorists & anarchists. Much too much time is spoiled on ideological bubble talk that addresses no one. At present we're in the middle and hope that some human face & voice will reappear in the 2nd half. This is certainly not Conrad's best novel.


----------



## Kivimees

Something to get me in the mood for next year's adventure in Scotland:









Geology of East Fife, published in 1977 by the Institute of Geological Sciences, Edinburgh.
Picked up for next to nothing at amazon.uk


----------



## Gordontrek

The brand-new biography of Muhammad Ali by Jonathan Eig:









So far I am enjoying the biography a lot. Muhammad Ali has always been one of my favorite athletes of all time; an incredibly fascinating individual with unparalleled talent in the boxing ring. This bio is very well researched and very informative, and treats Ali with fairness and objectivity. I've found my respect for Ali both magnified and diminished at the same time. 
What would I give to go back and time and see the Rumble in the Jungle in person!


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

TxllxT said:


> While we were staying on Malta, we wanted to take a smaller book with us than the heavyweight Nadezhda Mandelstam. So every evening we read 'The Secret Agent' (1907) by Joseph Conrad. The beginning of the book is thrilling. But soon the story starts to suffer under the insensitive treatment of its characters by the author, who themselves by and large happen to be potential terrorists & anarchists. Much too much time is spoiled on ideological bubble talk that addresses no one. At present we're in the middle and hope that some human face & voice will reappear in the 2nd half. This is certainly not Conrad's best novel.


It inspired one of Hitchcock's best films, though:


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Pugg

​


----------



## SixFootScowl

Amazon listing summary:


> David W. Barber has delighted readers around the world with Accidentals on Purpose, When the Fat Lady Sings and other internationally bestselling books of musical humor. His bestselling Bach, Beethoven and the Boys chronicles the lives of the great (and not-so-great) composers as you've never read them before - exploring their sex lives, exposing their foibles and expanding on our understanding of these all-too-human creatures. Filled with information, interesting facts and trivia, this hilarious history covers music from Gregorian chant to the mess we're in now. From Bach's laundry lists to Beethoven's bowel problems, from Gesualdo's kinky fetishes to Cage's mushroom madness, Barber tells tales out of school that ought to be put back there. (Think how much more fun it would be if they taught this stuff.) As always, Dave Donald had provided witty and clever cartoon illustrations to accompany the text.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

^ Yes, the great composers were humans too, with bowel problems and laundry to do, so what? How is that interesting?


----------



## Guest

I'm reading works by Professor Jordan Peterson; "*Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief*". Heavy going.

I'm also tremendously interested in his psychological/philosophical discussions. (North American) public intellectuals like Peterson are currently right at the forefront and he is personally at the vanguard of dissidence and activism against the deep state. This beautiful man has been subjected to dreadful hatred and threats from the Thought Police and continues apace being brave:






Dr. Peterson has made several interviews on U-tube (one with Dave Rubin) and a discussion at Clemsen Institute which I'd highly recommend for those interested in being challenged with new, often difficult, ideas.


----------



## Annied

I picked this up in a charity shop. It's very much my kind of humour, so I've been getting some strange looks from my fellow passengers when I've been reading it on the train.


----------



## Kivimees

Scoop - by Evelyn Waugh

Not the easiest read, but not so difficult to make it unpleasant.


----------



## Kivimees

Annied said:


> I picked this up in a charity shop. It's very much my kind of humour, so I've been getting some strange looks from my fellow passengers when I've been reading it on the train.


I am intrigued. I will make a point of looking into this, although I fear I will not be able to find it at a charity shop anywhere near me.


----------



## jegreenwood

Finishing "them" by Joyce Carol Oates. Remarkably, given the number of books she's written, it's the first one I've read by her.

Written in the 1960s and covering the 30s through the 60s, it's pretty prescient about aspects of life in the U.S. today.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Guest




----------



## philoctetes

Wison Harris The Dark Jester


----------



## eugeneonagain

Wuthering Heights. I only ever read a few chapters a long time ago, I thought it was time to finish the rest.

I have a nice little hardback copy published by Thomas Nelson, perhaps in the '50s? 
No barcodes, no web addresses, no 'other titles in this series..'. No histrionic cover design, just a very plain cream binding with the title and author and little gold designs on the spine.


----------



## jegreenwood

Kontrapunctus said:


>


Her Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novels were horrific enough to put me off serial killer novels for several years. (And I've read a lot of them.)


----------



## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> Her Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novels were horrific enough to put me off serial killer novels for several years. (And I've read a lot of them.)


"Horrific" as in disturbing or poorly written? I really like them, and I look forward to her new one in the series.


----------



## jegreenwood

A staightforward historical novel (of NYC in WWII). Quite a change from "Goon Squad."


----------



## jegreenwood

Kontrapunctus said:


> "Horrific" as in disturbing or poorly written? I really like them, and I look forward to her new one in the series.


Disturbing. I've also read several other books by her.


----------



## Blancrocher

jegreenwood said:


> View attachment 99270
> 
> 
> A staightforward historical novel (of NYC in WWII). Quite a change from "Goon Squad."


Fwiw, her short story "Black Box" is one of my favorite recent works of fiction.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/black-box-2


----------



## JeffD

Tristan said:


> Glad to hear. I'm going to read his book on Philip K. Dick next--I'm a huge fan of PKD and I'd love to read his biography of him (he mentions PKD several times in _The Kingdom_).


Reading about lute music and I discovered a strong connection between PKD and the music of John Dowland. Check it out!


----------



## JeffD

Joe B said:


> Reading again for the second time......it's been over 30 years since I first read it.
> View attachment 96720


Your recommendation took over my October. What a wonderful book. One that I will read again, no doubt.

I read that there is no unabridged English translation. I did not detect any gaps in the story, but the whole thing was foreign enough feeling that I am not sure I would notice.

I wonder if there are any other English translations. I am too old to learn enough Japanese to read it in the original.

I am re-read the two Josey Wales books by Forest Carter, to continue in the American version of the same kind of feeling.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

An Edwardian detective story, by one of the greats.


----------



## TennysonsHarp

I'm reading _Dombey and Son_ by Dickens. This will be my second attempt. I tried to read it last year but got sidetracked.


----------



## TxllxT

"Play me some Chopin."

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or Wagner's music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli.

Elsewhere John Galsworthy (i.e. Old Jolyon) blames Wagner for having destroyed opera, the way how people were used to go to the opera as a natural part of their city culture. Wagner somehow made lots of people dislike & hate to continue in this tradition...


----------



## Guest




----------



## Tristan

Just finished *A Farewell to Arms*. So that was depressing...

Now reading:

*The Dying Animal* by Philip Roth (the first Roth novel I've ever read)

and

*The Satanic Verses* by Salman Rushdie (time to find out what all the fuss is about)


----------



## Merl

Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

I have a son who is greatly into comic books as of late, and so I have spent a good deal of time at comic book stores. I have, as a result, developed an interest in one particular graphic novel series - Hellboy, by Mike Mignola. I had seen the movies and enjoyed them. Don't judge!


----------



## Kivimees

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino:









An English translation, this is one of the most difficult books I have attempted. The sentences are really long and complicated. I find myself needing to read some two or three times.


----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## Kieran

I have 3 books bedside, a bit of a balancing trick, but so far I'm managing, thanks!

First among equals is Chester Himes brilliant, vivid and explicit account of being black in wartime LA. If He Hollers Let Him Go.  The prose is distinguished, the characters real flesh and blood, the violence imaginable, and really it's hard to ignore this book on race, by one of America's great black writers

Second up is an interesting book I found in a second hand book shop: A Pity Youth Does Not Last, by Michael O'Duiheen, the last of the great Blasket Islands poets, who left there in 1953, when the island was evacuated by the Irish government. The Blaskets are off the coast of Kerry. O'Duiheen's mother was Peig Sayers, who - if you went to school in Ireland at a certain point in time - you'd remember for her painstaking - and painful - book of island reminiscences, called simply Peig. This book, and others by Blasket Island writers, especially The Islandman, by Tomas O'Crohan, was lampooned famously, and brilliantly by Brian O'Nolan (AKA Flann O'Brien, AKA Myles na gCopaleen), in The Poor Mouth. The unrelenting misery and misfortune of the islanders was ripe for this, though it has to be said that O'Nolan had an admiration for these writers, and their old Gaelic storytelling tradition.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the book, reading it through a translation because I don't speak Irish, it has a quaintness, and honesty, and beauty, and it's about a people and a way of life which no longer exists.

Finally, a thriller called Moskva, by Jack Grimwood. A spy thriller set in the 80's. It's okay, it flips the pages, not in a silky way...


----------



## jegreenwood

I'm going to take another crack at "The Recognitions." My paperback copy was purchased new at some point in the 1970s. At that time i read 200 pages and concluded that if the length of the book had been 400 pages I would finish it, but that I wasn't ready to read another 800 pages.

In the 40 years since then, I've read "JR" and "A Frolic of His Own." So I figure "The Recognitions" deserves another try. I did just buy the e-book as the typeface in my paperback is pretty small.


----------



## josquindesprez

jegreenwood said:


> I'm going to take another crack at "The Recognitions." My paperback copy was purchased new at some point in the 1970s. At that time i read 200 pages and concluded that if the length of the book had been 400 pages I would finish it, but that I wasn't ready to read another 800 pages.
> 
> In the 40 years since then, I've read "JR" and "A Frolic of His Own." So I figure "The Recognitions" deserves another try. I did just buy the e-book as the typeface in my paperback is pretty small.


Good luck to you. I read JR and A Frolic of His Own and really liked both (loved JR). Got a copy of The Recognitions and found it a slog. Somehow I finished it but if I had picked it up now instead of when I did several years ago it would have been left half-read at best. I enjoyed Agape Agape too, and it's 1/10 the length of The Recognitions, so no big deal if it's not to your taste but it might be worth a look.


----------



## schigolch




----------



## EdwardBast

jegreenwood said:


> I'm going to take another crack at "The Recognitions." My paperback copy was purchased new at some point in the 1970s. At that time i read 200 pages and concluded that if the length of the book had been 400 pages I would finish it, but that I wasn't ready to read another 800 pages.
> 
> In the 40 years since then, I've read "JR" and "A Frolic of His Own." So I figure "The Recognitions" deserves another try. I did just buy the e-book as the typeface in my paperback is pretty small.


_The Recognitions_ is, IMO, Gaddis's best - also perhaps my favorite novel. One thing to note is that it is impossible to get it all in one reading because things said in passing on page 87, for example, might provide a subtle clue to something lurking in the background on page 654, but you won't remember the reference on page 87 and won't get the connection until the second reading. Not that it is necessary to make all of the connections. That is one of the great things about the book. It makes sense without them but it deepens and takes on unexpected meanings and angles when reread.

I'm now reading _A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius_ by Dave Eggars, which is lots of fun.


----------



## Guest

A Guide to the Good Life (the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy)

- William B. Irvine

A very readable introduction to Stoic philosophy. Stoicism is a very practical, rational, suck-it-up philosophy of life and Irvine tries to show how it is still as relevant today as it ever was in times past. I'm not fully on-board with all of it, but then Stoicism expects critical thinking ☺


----------



## jegreenwood

EdwardBast said:


> _The Recognitions_ is, IMO, Gaddis's best - also perhaps my favorite novel. One thing to note is that it is impossible to get it all in one reading because things said in passing on page 87, for example, might provide a subtle clue to something lurking in the background on page 654, but you won't remember the reference on page 87 and won't get the connection until the second reading. Not that it is necessary to make all of the connections. That is one of the great things about the book. It makes sense without them but it deepens and takes on unexpected meanings and angles when reread.
> 
> I'm now reading _A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius_ by Dave Eggars, which is lots of fun.


I hope you go on to "What is the What."

A second reason I bought the Kindle version is its search capability. So if I sort of, kind of recall a related passage 500 pages earlier I can try searching for it.

Ten days ago I listened to Jennifer Egan read the opening pages of "Manhattan Beach," which I had just finished. It was remarkable how many of the novel's themes and images she had hinted at.


----------



## Flamme

Aamazing read...Like watching everything unfolds before your very eyes! Also the moral, mental and physical strength of people, unlike poor wretches of ''modernity'', makes me sad...


----------



## jegreenwood

EdwardBast said:


> _The Recognitions_ is, IMO, Gaddis's best - also perhaps my favorite novel. One thing to note is that it is impossible to get it all in one reading because things said in passing on page 87, for example, might provide a subtle clue to something lurking in the background on page 654, but you won't remember the reference on page 87 and won't get the connection until the second reading. Not that it is necessary to make all of the connections. That is one of the great things about the book. It makes sense without them but it deepens and takes on unexpected meanings and angles when reread.
> 
> . . .


I noticed that the Kindle edition states that the average reading time for "The Recognitions" is 24 hours (or 40 pages an hour). So if I read three hours a day I can finish it in a Beatles' week!

Ummmmm - not very likely.


----------



## Flamme

''King Arthur and His Knights'' excellent ''old'' book, in new package with amazing, archaic english and tales that are head spinning and make you dream about wiazards, valiant knights, lords n ladies and justice prevailing, so much of it missing in a world of today...I have the most peaceful dreams when i read it before bedtime...







Beautiful illustrations too...


----------



## Guest




----------



## Dr Johnson

Been rereading this for the umpteenth time.


----------



## jegreenwood

Dr Johnson said:


> Been rereading this for the umpteenth time.


I'm halfway through _A Dance to the Music of Time_. Every few years I find a plot summary to remind me of all that I have forgotten, return to my 4 volume set and read the next volume (i.e. the next three novels).


----------



## Dr Johnson

jegreenwood said:


> I'm halfway through _A Dance to the Music of Time_. Every few years I find a plot summary to remind me of all that I have forgotten, return to my 4 volume set and read the next volume (i.e. the next three novels).


Hilary Spurling has written a good biography of Powell:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34836983-anthony-powell?ac=1&from_search=true


----------



## Tristan

Kontrapunctus said:


>


This is on my to-read list. Just picked up a copy at a recent book sale. It'll be my first read of the New Year if I can finish what I'm reading now in time:

*The Castle* by Franz Kafka

I tried to read this a few years ago and couldn't get into it (even though I had just read and loved _The Trial_). But now that I'm reading it again I'm loving it and finding it fascinating. Can't wait to see how it will [not] end. 

Also reading:

*Seeing* by José Saramago


----------



## Blancrocher

Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

Finished it this morning.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## Blancrocher

Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution


----------



## jegreenwood

Blancrocher said:


> Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon
> 
> Finished it this morning.


Wonderful book.

I tutor high school students for their SATs (as a volunteer). We're given a budget of $4.00 to spend per student - for the semester. I went on line and found 4 used copies of "Song of Solomon" selling for $0.01 each. That plus Amazon's $3.99 shipping charge per book  worked out perfectly. When Ms. Morrison gave a reading in NYC I got a ticket. After the reading I got her to sign all four books and at the end of the semester I gave them to my students.


----------



## Blancrocher

S. A. Smith, The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction
Christopher Hill, Lenin and the Russian Revolution
Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings (Dover)


----------



## Becca

I am just starting this so more comments to follow...


----------



## Guest

I gave up on _The Brothers Karamazov_--not nearly as gripping as _Crime and Punishment_. Maybe I'm not in the right mood for it at the moment. Back to murder mysteries! Johnathan Kellerman's _Rage_ is very good so far.


----------



## Sonata

I recently read the "Velveteen Rabbit" to my kids
one of my favorite children's books


----------



## Dr Johnson

Re-reading this:


----------



## Kivimees

856 pages of Graham Greene:









It's a long time until spring.


----------



## jegreenwood

EdwardBast said:


> _The Recognitions_ is, IMO, Gaddis's best - also perhaps my favorite novel. One thing to note is that it is impossible to get it all in one reading because things said in passing on page 87, for example, might provide a subtle clue to something lurking in the background on page 654, but you won't remember the reference on page 87 and won't get the connection until the second reading. Not that it is necessary to make all of the connections. That is one of the great things about the book. It makes sense without them but it deepens and takes on unexpected meanings and angles when reread.
> 
> I'm now reading _A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius_ by Dave Eggars, which is lots of fun.


A lot of typos in the Kindle version. My favorite so far is when I was introduced to Maude and Amy Munk, a lesbian couple who, in the late 1940s, were trying to adopt . . . oh wait . . . it's Maude and Arny Munk.

Taking a break after Part I. It's further than I got last time, and I'm pretty certain I'll finish it. The annotations and character list at williamgaddis.org help a lot.


----------



## JeffD

Becca said:


> I am just starting this so more comments to follow...
> 
> View attachment 100414


Read up on it a little. Looks good. Looks real good.


----------



## JeffD

JeffD said:


> For a dose of deep but lucid thinking:
> 
> View attachment 98172
> 
> 
> Something to read while listening to music.


On second thought, don't bother. I should have read up on him before. i would have found out he is a panpsychic, and not bothered.


----------



## Faramundo

thomas hardy's jude the obscure
a bit boring the first half, and that girl is profoundly neurotic; now i'm halfway and they both escaped their marriages, it's getting interesting but kinda slow; not to the level of tess or (even better) the mayor of casterbridge.


----------



## Pugg

Michael Wolff / Fire and Fury 

It's arriving today, now this will be fun.


----------



## philoctetes

Long term projects


----------



## Guest

Pugg said:


> Michael Wolff / Fire and Fury
> 
> It's arriving today, now this will be fun.


While you are reading it, keep reminding yourself that Trump is a "stable genius."


----------



## Listenerris

I want to reading in english. But it`s a yet quite difficult to me, and time to time, I was opened 
of some kind of one of my books, and sited in a chair into a comfortable in a deep silence.


----------



## Listenerris

In this time I am to read book about Herlock Holmes`s adventure,- "The Read Headed league"


----------



## Itullian




----------



## TennysonsHarp

I've been reading Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder for a philosophy class I am taking. It's a wonderful volume. Anybody here heard of it? If not, I really recommend it.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Listenerris said:


> In this time I am to read book about Herlock Holmes`s adventure,- "The Read Headed league"


The game's afoot, eh? Capital! Are you going to read all _The Adventures_, or just this story?


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

TennysonsHarp said:


> I've been reading Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder for a philosophy class I am taking. It's a wonderful volume. Anybody here heard of it? If not, I really recommend it.


I read it back in high school, and liked it. Good introduction to philosophy, and a clever plot.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Blancrocher

Charles O. Jones, The American Presidency: A Very Short Introduction
Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000
Harold Bloom, The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime
George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo


----------



## Nocture In Blue

Virginia Woolf - Jacob's Room and August Strindberg - Röda rummet

I don't like reading two books at the same time. I don't know why I keep doing it.


----------



## clavichorder

Since late September or October of last year, I have been on a kick of finishing books that I started and maybe got halfway through, but never finished. I started with Pride and Prejudice(Austen), then Heart of the Midlothian(Walter Scott), then Rachel Ray(Anthony Trollope), then A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court(Twain), and finally as of last night I finished The Hobbit(Tolkien). Now I have started Joseph Conrad's, The Secret Agent. I maybe got a third of the way through before. I don't know why I didn't finish it as I attempted it twice, but I'm confident I'll finish it this time. I really am enjoying the descriptions of the characters and places in the beginning, it has kind of a sly humor about it. I'm confident that I'm a better and more determined and thorough reader these days(though unfortunately very slow sometimes), so I expect I will finish this one and then conclude the number of books I set out to finish in the initial project with Robinson Crusoe. There are maybe a few more that I am no longer in possession of, but all in good time. It's a good project because it is exposing me to a variety of books by forcing me not to stick to one author, while entertaining me in finding out how well I recall what I had read before and satisfying my completist tendencies.


----------



## bharbeke

Star Trek: Sarek by A.C. Crispin

Beautiful.


----------



## Listenerris

NickFuller said:


> The game's afoot, eh? Capital! Are you going to read all _The Adventures_, or just this story?


Of course, it would be is well, if to read all of this Sherlock Holmes Adventures, but maybe a few of them I can. In current moment also I did adding in top-list is the same author- "The dancing men" which is too do not less more interesting . The game is going? Probably the life it is a game, or mean the reading it is something as game. I am understand right?


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Listenerris said:


> Of course, it would be is well, if to read all of this Sherlock Holmes Adventures, but maybe a few of them I can. In current moment also I did adding in top-list is the same author- "The dancing men" which is too do not less more interesting . The game is going? Probably the life it is a game, or mean the reading it is something as game. I am understand right?












The two best Sherlock Holmes stories, à mon avis, are "The Speckled Band" (in Adventures) and "The Devil's Foot" (in His Last Bow). "Silver Blaze" (in Memoirs) has the famous line about the dog in the night-time.

Adventures
•	A Scandal in Bohemia
•	The Red-Headed League
•	The Five Orange Pips
•	The Speckled Band

Memoirs
•	Silver Blaze
•	The Musgrave Ritual
•	The Greek Interpreter
•	The Final Problem

Return
•	The Empty House (sequel to "Final Problem")
•	The Norwood Builder
•	Charles Augustus Milverton
•	The Six Napoleons
•	The Abbey Grange (physical deduction + unorthodox resolution)
•	The Second Stain

His Last Bow
•	Wisteria Lodge
•	The Dying Detective ("oysters"!)
•	The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
•	The Devil's Foot

Casebook
•	The Problem of Thor Bridge
•	The Illustrious Client (one of the best Jeremy Brett TV episodes)


----------



## Guest

I attended his lecture last week and waited in a very long line to meet him and to get him to autograph his book. His talk was fascinating, as is his book. He's not the best writer I've encountered (he tends to repeat himself for one thing, and writes rather simply, for another), but it's a worthwhile read.


----------



## Listenerris

Now, I am understand. This is a dialogue in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange".Thank you very much! It would be as well in the future, does to touch in so the greatest things in that list.


----------



## bharbeke

Out this May, The Ensemble is a novel from Aja Gabel about the members of a string quartet. Based on the Barnes and Noble promotional copy, it sounds like a classical music version of That Thing You Do! I'm hoping this one will be good.


----------



## eugeneonagain

NickFuller said:


> The two best Sherlock Holmes stories, à mon avis, are "The Speckled Band" (in Adventures) and "The Devil's Foot" (in His Last Bow). "Silver Blaze" (in Memoirs) has the famous line about the dog in the night-time.
> 
> In my time I've read _Adventures_, _Return_, _Memoirs_ and _Casebook_. The only one I haven't read is _His Last Bow_.
> 
> Memoirs is my favourite, though I may be prejudiced by the format. I have a very fine hardback edition from John Murray published in the '30s. Very clean copy; no illustrations though.


----------



## Kivimees

Struggling to read the owner's manual of my new car. 

I seem to have no less than four ways of changing the radio station - something I never do.

Honestly - I just want to drive it to work, not fly it to Paris.


----------



## chill782002

Re-reading Charles Rigby's 1948 biography of Sir John Barbirolli. A treasured possession as my copy is autographed by the great man himself. Apologies for the poor picture quality.


----------



## Atomas

Beethoven's biography written by Alshwang


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Guest




----------



## Pugg

Re-reading : Patrick Dennis / Auntie Mame and Travels with Auntie Mame. :lol:


----------



## Blancrocher

William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew (ed. Ann Thompson)
The Taming of the Shrew (BBC Audio Dramatization)
John Fletcher - The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed (Folger online ed.)
Kiss Me Kate (DVD, dir. George Sidney)
The Taming of the Shrew (DVD, dir. Zeffirelli) 
10 Things I Hate About You (DVD, dir. Gil Junger)


----------



## vesteel

Stevenson's Treasure Island









Shakespeare's Macbeth


----------



## eugeneonagain

In relation to the above post..I've just this afternoon re-read Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It still has the power to unnerve you.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Useful for anyone contemplating the plunge into investing in antique flintlock duelling pistols.

I suspect that terror of ending up with a cunningly crafted fake means that reading this tome ("represents thirty-three years of careful and diligent research") will be as far as I get.

Still, something a bit different for this thread.


----------



## jegreenwood

Blancrocher said:


> William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew (ed. Ann Thompson)
> The Taming of the Shrew (BBC Audio Dramatization)
> John Fletcher - The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed (Folger online ed.)
> Kiss Me Kate (DVD, dir. George Sidney)
> The Taming of the Shrew (DVD, dir. Zeffirelli)
> 10 Things I Hate About You (DVD, dir. Gil Junger)


I see a theme here . . .

The best production of "Shrew" I've ever seen was one with Jonathan Pryce entering as Petruchio on a motorbike. That was after he had risen from the audience as Christopher Sly and berated the ushers. It ended with a totally defeated Kate kissing the boots of Petruchio, leaving the audience anguishing for her.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

eugeneonagain said:


> In relation to the above post..I've just this afternoon re-read Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It still has the power to unnerve you.


Stevenson was a master storyteller! Have you read _The Wrong Box_ or _The New Arabian Nights_?


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Blancrocher said:


> William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew (ed. Ann Thompson)
> The Taming of the Shrew (BBC Audio Dramatization)
> John Fletcher - The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed (Folger online ed.)
> Kiss Me Kate (DVD, dir. George Sidney)
> The Taming of the Shrew (DVD, dir. Zeffirelli)
> 10 Things I Hate About You (DVD, dir. Gil Junger)


The BBC Shakespeare with John Cleese is rather good. And _Kiss Me Kate_ is a hoot.


----------



## Blancrocher

NickFuller said:


> The BBC Shakespeare with John Cleese is rather good.


Thanks, I'll check it out.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## EricABQ

Just finished The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin 

An excellent series and a unique take on the sci-fi/fantasy genre. This isn’t a genre I spend a lot of time on but read these on a recommendation from a coworker and thoroughly enjoyed them.


----------



## bharbeke

I'm in the middle of two great ones right now:

Usagi Yojimbo Saga Book 3 by Stan Sakai (the omnibus including Grasscutter II)
Star Trek: Serpents Among the Ruins by David R. George III


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

After finishing the Illiad, and the Odyssey, I am finally tackling the Aeneid (and finally reading the story of the Trojan Horse).


----------



## vesteel




----------



## starthrower

I heard about this book a few years ago when the author was interviewed on public radio. Humbodlt (1769-1859) was the most famous 19th century scientist and naturalist whose admirers included Darwin, Jefferson, Goethe, Thoreau, Bolivar, and millions of others the world over. Homboldt the man has for the most part been forgotten today, but his influence on how we think about the natural world looms large. This book brings the man and his monumental accomplishments back to life.


----------



## The Deacon

ROB YOUNG " ELECTRIC EDEN"



Lost days. Times gone forever.
At 650 pages , Young goes through the adamant UK folkies (doomed to die) and the ones willing to adapt to the electric times.
And he goes thru SO MUCH MORE, tying it altogether to a fervent search for lost Albion, luddites and country-living, the pagan times - examples in film, book,etc. The neo-pagan countryside "hippy" lifestyle. The standing stones & leylines.The precarious lives of the folk artists.The offshoots of the folk revival.
The early outdoor festivals. The promoters.
Tying it back to the visionaries, Blake, Morris "News From Nowhere". To the English composers weaving the - already then -losing folksongs into classical music: Vaghan Williams,Bax,Delius,Warlock...
The hippy reads: Tolkien, Golden Dawn......

Everything I am interested in is in this wonderful book.




I know that somewhere else in this forum I noted some mistakes in the book - like Figgy Duff band being British. Also that he spent an inordinate amount of space on Kate Bush and (the later two lps) by Talk Talk (lps I cannot see having much connection to UK folk.). But, I had only been page-dropping then.
Now that I have finished it in entirety , its HIGHLY recommended.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Dr Johnson

Rereading this at the moment:


----------



## jegreenwood

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> View attachment 101593
> 
> 
> After finishing the Illiad, and the Odyssey, I am finally tackling the Aeneid (and finally reading the story of the Trojan Horse).


Read it a few months ago (Fagles translation). Enjoyed it.


----------



## Judith

Reading a wonderful book on the story of "Academy of St Martin in the Fields" by Meirion and Susie Harries. Tells about the history of the church St Martins and Neville Marriner starting the orchestra.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Recent reads:

_The Shout_, by Robert Graves. Good collection of short stories, by an uneven writer. Penguin reprint has a hideous cover, though.









_Arethusa_, by F. Marion Crawford. Entertaining historical novel set in 14th century Constantinople. I may be the first person to have read this in decades.

Current:


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Just a light little read


----------



## Blancrocher

Ferenc Karinthy - Metropole (trans. George Szirtes)
Perry Anderson - The New Old World


----------



## Guest




----------



## Taplow

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Just a light little read
> View attachment 102062


I own every edition of this fine publication, from its inception in 1960 to the very last in 2010 (including the yearbooks). Although I became increasingly disenchanted with its reviews over the years, I still often use it as a guide. Such a shame it met its demise, even before the death of two of its long-standing authors.


----------



## jegreenwood

Finished "The Recognitions." I can't say I liked it as much as JR or "A Frolic of His Own." (As to the latter, I'm a lawyer, and the novel cites a court decision from a litigation I actually worked on.)

I took a few breaks from Gaddis along the way. Now, I think I'm ready for a couple of detective novels.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

If you speak French, and have any interest in opera, get it.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I'm going to read "The B.F.G" by Roald Dhal and then begin to tackle "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph".


----------



## Pugg

Call Me By Your Name Paperback 
by Andre Aciman (Author)


----------



## Der Titan

I read "Beginners" from Raymond Carver. This was a wonderful tip for me as a German from a forum as the stories are short and the English not that difficult. But the most important thing: I like that, I like Raymond Carver.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Kivimees

From a View to a Death by Anthony Powell:

View attachment 102553


Our friend, Dr Johnson, posted he was (re)reading this book some time ago, and Dr Johnson strikes me as the kind who would not lead one astray. I'm half through: so far so good.


----------



## Blancrocher

Peter Brown, The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity
Philip Mansel, Levant: Splendor and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean
Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

p.s. Is there a way to make the images smaller?


----------



## Tristan

I enjoyed Greenblatt's work on Adam & Eve, and my Latin professor just loaned me his copy of this, so I'm expecting to like it!


----------



## Barbebleu

Philip Kerr, Greeks Bearing Gifts, latest in the Bernie Gunther series and probably the penultimate one. Philip Kerr sadly passed recently but had left final proofs for another Bernie Gunther book.


----------



## jegreenwood

Barbebleu said:


> Philip Kerr, Greeks Bearing Gifts, latest in the Bernie Gunther series and probably the penultimate one. Philip Kerr sadly passed recently but had left final proofs for another Bernie Gunther book.


I read "Prussian Blue" earlier this year. I can only hope that the last one brings Bernie some peace.

Right now reading "Lincoln in the Bardo."


----------



## starthrower

The Birth Of Britain by Churchill


----------



## JeffD

I am really enjoying Malevolent Muse: The Life of Alma Mahler, by Oliver Hilmes

Its a biography of a not easily summed up woman. The author leaves the contradictions and complications in place, while still giving a coherent portrait.

And as we know from Tom Lehrer's song, she was an incredible woman.

The book is also a window into one of my very favorite cities, Vienna, during one of its several very amazing historical periods.

I visited Vienna several years ago, and I would love to go back for a week. If there is anyone that knows the city and would like to be my tour guide, PLEASE PM me. Lets talk.


----------



## TxllxT

When we started this novel, we thought it would be quick to make us fall fast asleep. But this is really witty, entertaining and even 'spiritual' in a very superficial philosophical sense, precisely how the Biedermeier Bourgeois changed everything spiritual in frivolities. Great dialogues!


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Fritz Kobus said:


>


Have they done a book refuting Existence yet? if so I'll wait for the paperback


----------



## SixFootScowl

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Have they done a book refuting Existence yet? if so I'll wait for the paperback


The existence of such a book would disprove its main premise.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Fritz Kobus said:


> The existence of such a book would disprove its main premise.


Would make a good movie thou


----------



## Majed Al Shamsi

Animal Farm, by George Orwell. I'm almost embarrassed it has taken me this long to get to reading it.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Catch 22 .


----------



## Score reader

Reading the OP reminded me that's been more than 15 years since I read Dostoyevski's _The Double_. I need to revisit it at some point.

I am currently reading Ralph Ellison's _The Invisible Man_.


----------



## Pugg

James Comey -A Higher Loyalty
Truth, Lies, and Leadership


----------



## ldiat

Pugg said:


> James Comey -A Higher Loyalty
> Truth, Lies, and Leadership


watching Comey now on the TV. book is out in the states tue 17th. will buy it. how is the read so far??


----------



## Mal

The Rings Of Saturn by W.G. SEBALD. It's really good.


----------



## Pugg

ldiat said:


> watching Comey now on the TV. book is out in the states tue 17th. will buy it. how is the read so far??


If even half of this is all true.......


----------



## ldiat

Pugg said:


> If even half of this is all true.......


it is suppose to be. comey is a bit mad on how he got fired and some other things


----------



## Pugg

ldiat said:


> it is suppose to be. comey is a bit mad on how he got fired and some other things


So would I


----------



## hpowders

ldiat said:


> watching *Comey* now on the TV. book is out in the states tue 17th. *will buy it*. how is the read so far??


Just make sure you don't get any tomato sauce on it in case you want to resell it.


----------



## Desafinado

The Last Train to Zona Verde by Paul Theroux

Early China by Li Feng


----------



## TxllxT

Thomas Mann is competing with Jane Austen in creating the most repulsive clergyman ever. In Pride & Prejudice mr. William Collins appears as a sycophant & lickspittle. In Buddenbrooks it is Bendix Grünlich, who apart from being a mollusc is also a manipulator who knows no limits & cannot be stopped (very German indeed, isn't it?). Thomas Mann describes the romantic period in Germany in detail, but he himself is not a romantic. In this he differs greatly from Jane Austen. Mr. William Collins still remains a likeable character whose sliminess is larger than life. Bendix Grünlich however is much more true to life. He fills us continuously with abhorrence. Thomas Mann's wittiness is magnificent.


----------



## Jeffrey Smith

TxllxT said:


> Thomas Mann is competing with Jane Austen in creating the most repulsive clergyman ever. In Pride & Prejudice mr. William Collins appears as a sycophant & lickspittle. In Buddenbrooks it is Bendix Grünlich, who apart from being a mollusc is also a manipulator who knows no limits & cannot be stopped (very German indeed, isn't it?). Thomas Mann describes the romantic period in Germany in detail, but he himself is not a romantic. In this he differs greatly from Jane Austen. Mr. William Collins still remains a likeable character whose sliminess is larger than life. Bendix Grünlich however is much more true to life. He fills us continuously with abhorrence. Thomas Mann's wittiness is magnificent.


What about Obadiah Slope in Barchester Towers?
Or even better Schedoni in Radcliffe's The Italian?!
TD
The Storm Before the Storm Mike Duncan


----------



## Dr Johnson




----------



## Dr Johnson

Kivimees said:


> From a View to a Death by Anthony Powell:
> 
> View attachment 102553
> 
> 
> Our friend, Dr Johnson, posted he was (re)reading this book some time ago, and Dr Johnson strikes me as the kind who would not lead one astray. I'm half through: so far so good.


If you enjoy that, then you have a treat in store with A Dance To The Music Of Time.


----------



## Barbebleu

TxllxT said:


> When we started this novel, we thought it would be quick to make us fall fast asleep. But this is really witty, entertaining and even 'spiritual' in a very superficial philosophical sense, precisely how the Biedermeier Bourgeois changed everything spiritual in frivolities. Great dialogues!


I've read all Thomas Mann's works but only in translation. How wonderful to be able to read this in the original language. My own favourites are Felix Krull, Magic Mountain, Lotte in Weimar and Joseph and his Brothers. All the rest are great but for me these stand out.


----------



## Mal

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino - a remarkable work, containing visions of amazing cities, like the vision Coleridge had of Xanadu:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree: 
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
Through caverns measureless to man.
Down to a sunless sea... 


... but Calvino gives you a hundred such cities using his unbelievably fertile imagination.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Great read about the history of baseball in St. Louis and all the prime movers - Chris von der Ahe, Branch Rickey, Bill Veeck etc. Amazing to think that the Cardinals might have left St. Louis had Gussie Busch not bought the team and used his brewery's millions to build them a stadium - otherwise maybe they would have become the Baltimore Orioles rather than the Browns...


----------



## starthrower

The Faith Of A Heretic by Walter Kaufmann


----------



## Tristan

Mal said:


> Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino - a remarkable work, containing visions of amazing cities, like the vision Coleridge had of Xanadu:
> 
> In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
> A stately pleasure-dome decree:
> Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
> Through caverns measureless to man.
> Down to a sunless sea...
> 
> ... but Calvino gives you a hundred such cities using his unbelievably fertile imagination.


I've only so far read _If on a winter's night a traveler_ but I can't wait to read more of his work. 

Right now I'm reading:

*Siddhartha* by Hermann Hesse


----------



## JeffD

Reading Christopher Morley's The Haunted Bookshop.

Also Umberto Eco's Kant and the Platypus.


----------



## TxllxT

The Biedermeier Romantic period at the beginning of the 19th century has had terrible consequences: emotion (f.e. the adoration of Napoleon as 'the absolute spirit on horseback') was preferred over plain common sense. Thomas Mann makes us witness of how this emotion-adoration turns false into vile manipulation. The character Bendix Grünlich uses all registers of the emotion-organ to get what he wants. He's a kind of Trump _avant la lettre_.


----------



## Kieran

Shattered, written by two journos, describing Hillary Clinton’s campaign to become president. It almost makes me feel sorry for her...


----------



## ldiat

"Smart Bets" The Exacta Way" by keith hoffman the "Derby Man"


----------



## Barbebleu

Norse Myths - Neil Gaiman.


----------



## Guest

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari


----------



## Kieran

Jim Thompson, _Pop. 1280._

Think I'm gonna devour this one...


----------



## Kieran

Kieran said:


> Jim Thompson, _Pop. 1280._
> 
> Think I'm gonna devour this one...


Well, for an unknown reason, I put the Jim Thompson book aside and took up a book by Don Delillo - Zero K. Really enjoying it, as a change of pace from what I expected to read next, and as a story, and an examination of death, and attitudes to death, and for the sci-fi elements of it. It paints in broad strokes, confidently. Straddles a few fences. And avoids cliches, like I didn't do, just there...


----------



## Enthusiast

He was a very weird guy but somehow I love his books. I am just finishing this autobiography (up to about the age of 60). It has been a long haul but extraordinary. I read the odd relatively easy novel while reading this.


----------



## TxllxT

In 'Buddenbrooks' we have reached the event of Bendix Grünlich's going broke. He was counting on the help of his father-in-law Consul Buddenbrook, but this man is wiser than he. Thomas Mann describes his characters very true-to-life. The abhorrence that we feel for Grünlich originates out of pity for him. His wife Tonia marries him out of pity, when he says out of the deepest depth of his heart that he will kill himself if she would turn him down. I guess that this kind of both heartfelt and heartless love-manipulation was quite new in those days and very much in line with the heydays of the romantic movement (the thirties-forties of the 19th century). Thomas Mann is eminently at home in using references both to God and to fate, and shows how the mix-up of these references instigates a hopeless confusion of gloom & doom. We like this historical truthfulness to what romantic people felt and feel.


----------



## bharbeke

I decided to try Moby Dick a little bit at a time. I'm very impressed with the level of Melville's writing and use of language. There were some fun allusions and turns of phrase in the first three chapters. If this level of quality holds throughout the book, then it is no wonder that it has made so many lists of classic novels.


----------



## Jeffrey Smith

Have any of our UK members read.







For a Yank like me, it's a fascinating read.


----------



## cwarchc

I'm about half way through this
I'm finding it a little on the slow side and not what I expected?


----------



## SixFootScowl

For those interested, there is a look inside preview at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1987523784/


----------



## bz3

bharbeke said:


> I decided to try Moby Dick a little bit at a time. I'm very impressed with the level of Melville's writing and use of language. There were some fun allusions and turns of phrase in the first three chapters. If this level of quality holds throughout the book, then it is no wonder that it has made so many lists of classic novels.


Nobody ever tells you how funny that novel is. The humor lessens, true, as the novel goes on but it still has its moments.


----------



## Dr Johnson

Well written, which is not always the case with this kind of book.


----------



## starthrower

The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
Lapham's Quarterly - The Rule Of Law


----------



## Guest

Dr Johnson said:


> Well written, which is not always the case with this kind of book.


Oooo I may need to read this....


----------



## Capeditiea

Opus Sorabjianum: the life and works of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (version 1.16)



---edited for typo


----------



## MozartsGhost

A Project Guttenberg free ebook,

*The Complete Opera Book* by Gustav Kobbé

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40540

A good reference book that's been difficult to put down!


----------



## Gordontrek

Just finished this 800+ page beast:









Thoroughly enjoyed it. It wasn't perfect, but did a great job of presenting America's most important founding father objectively, hard to do given the myth and legend surrounding him. Sometime soon I want to sink my teeth into the same author's biography of Alexander Hamilton.

Currently reading this:









Incredible story. About a group of Filipino and American POWs who pulled off the only successful Japanese prison camp escape of World War II.


----------



## Cosmic Cowboy

Know thyself. Know thy enemy.


----------



## Cosmic Cowboy

^^^^^^ Is there no end to this not being able to edit madness?

Know thyself. Know thy enemy. Because sometimes one is one's own worst enemy.


----------



## Silver Bunyip

Not as funny as _The Code of the Woosters_ in my opinion, but still very humorous.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

I'm currently reading Arnold Bax's short autobiography _Farewell My Youth_.









It is an absolute joy. Witty, self-effacing and literate. And apparently the origin of the notion that one should try everything in life once "except incest and folk-dancing".


----------



## SixFootScowl

MozartsGhost said:


> A Project Guttenberg free ebook,
> 
> *The Complete Opera Book* by Gustav Kobbé
> 
> http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40540
> 
> A good reference book that's been difficult to put down!


Excellent! Thanks for posting. I have it bookmarked.


----------



## Dr Johnson

I've just finished this.

A just about tolerable murder mystery with some stuff about the early gramophone thrown in.


----------



## jegreenwood

Recently finished the third (1000 page) volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. It covers his years in the Senate (1949-60). Just think - in an institution where seniority was normally the be-all and end-all, he became majority leader in 6 years. A fascinating look at the pursuit and usage of power.

I also read "Outline" by Rachel Cusk.


----------



## TxllxT

https://www.grin.com/document/97374
Here a link to the thorough study of Buddenbrooks (The novel of Thomas Mann) and Music, written in German. With Google Translate or Deepl.Translator one can turn it into some kind of English. The interesting thing that Thomas Mann is investigating in classical music: is this the substitute for religion? Hanno Buddenbrooks receives his musical education from the organist of the main Lutheran church, who is very critical of the preachings he hears from behind the huge organ. Thomas Mann also thematises the difference between Bach and Wagner.


----------



## ldiat

a cook book The "best of food and wine"......" " ^^" " <---a shrug) ok 10-1 scale ....6


----------



## Guest

I'm currently reading Philosophy of New Music by Teodor Adorno.


----------



## TxllxT

With reading _Buddenbrooks_ by Thomas Mann we've reached the long agony of the old mother on her deathbed. She modeled her life as an impeccable Protestant believer. Her house in Lübeck was frequented by reverends & missionaries, who could stay for free, for food plus a night's rest. However, Thomas Mann drops in between all these high moral standard upkeepings one stinging observation: she was very egoistic. Today we would say: narcissistic. Around her deathbed two physicians were dutifully prolonging her life, injecting her with heart strengthening medicines. The protestant pastor arrives to deliver his prayer "with a modulating voice". Once kept in a subdued whisper, than suddenly exploding with the shouting of a breaking voice, he performed his duty in the perfunctory manner that all his colleagues had copied as well. While the suffering continues, the old mother starts begging for a soporific, she begs for "Barmherzigkeit!" - "Mercy!" The doctors however did not allow themselves to sidestep from their duties and to offer her any relief......


----------



## zootMutant

The Canterbury Tales -- not at all what I was expecting, quite a mixed-bag of stories
The Clingerman Files -- short stories (Sci-Fi and speculative fiction) from the 1950s by Mildred Clingerman


----------



## starthrower




----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

_When Giants Walked the Earth ( got it for my Birthday)







I've just got to the bit where they have released the first LP and ripped off everyone you can think of - even Jeff Beck. Its a wonder he had any tennis shoes after that........_


----------



## SixFootScowl

Summary from Amazon:


> This book will give you a new appreciation for the power and impact of Noah s Flood a pivotal event in the history of our planet. It was the biblical Flood, not millions of years, that deposited thousands of meters of folded, bent, and twisted rock strata all over the earth, and the billions of fossils contained therein. Researchers Oard and Reed have done a marvelous job compiling geological evidence for the Flood, as well as providing an easily-understood interpretation of the dynamic processes that occurred before, during, and after the Flood, which radically altered the planet.


----------



## DaveM

This is a new take on one of the pivotal moments in history:


----------



## Ingélou

I'm rereading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, preparatory to reading a biography of her that we've bought ('Prairie Fires' by Caroline Fraser. Fleet Books 2017). 

Her descriptive writing is as fresh and vivid as poetry, and her accounts of how a child thinks and feels are beyond price. I only came across them when I was an adult, and I'm glad, since, though I'm sure lots of children love them, I can appreciate the profound insights into life so much better.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Ingélou said:


> I'm rereading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, preparatory to reading a biography of her that we've bought ('Prairie Fires' by Caroline Fraser. Fleet Books 2017).
> 
> Her descriptive writing is as fresh and vivid as poetry, and her accounts of how a child thinks and feels are beyond price. I only came across them when I was an adult, and I'm glad, since, though I'm sure lots of children love them, I can appreciate the profound insights into life so much better.


On that note I should post that I am reading this one. Well, I started back last Sept after our second Laura Ingalls Wilder trip (did south leg then north leg, and this year we go east to the Almanzo Wilder site). It is one that I am not making great progress in because of the footnotes which sometimes are more than the actual text, but it is very interesting as it gives the real story that is behind the book series. In order to make much progress reading it though, I need dedicated time and usually my book reading is more in snippets of time here and there.


----------



## Ingélou

Fritz Kobus said:


> On that note I should post that I am reading this one. Well, I started back last Sept after our second Laura Ingalls Wilder trip (did south leg then north leg, and this year we go east to the Almanzo Wilder site). It is one that I am not making great progress in because of the footnotes which sometimes are more than the actual text, but it is very interesting as it gives the real story that is behind the book series. In order to make much progress reading it though, I need dedicated time and usually my book reading is more in snippets of time here and there.


That looks lovely. John is also rereading the books - he's a fast reader, and waits till I get two books ahead of him before starting the next leg. We've both always wanted to do a Laura Ingalls Wilder Trip, and maybe we will one day.

I hope you all have a great time visiting the Almanzo Wilder site.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I just finished reading "Big Fish" by Daniel Wallace and loved it! I recommend it if you are interested in exploring concepts of manhood and the relationship between a father and son.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I'm going to start "American Psycho" soon here!


----------



## Captainnumber36

Anyone here feel King is overrated?


----------



## Guest

TxllxT said:


> With reading _Buddenbrooks_ by Thomas Mann we've reached the long agony of the old mother on her deathbed. She modeled her life as an impeccable Protestant believer. Her house in Lübeck was frequented by reverends & missionaries, who could stay for free, for food plus a night's rest. However, Thomas Mann drops in between all these high moral standard upkeepings one stinging observation: she was very egoistic. Today we would say: narcissistic. Around her deathbed two physicians were dutifully prolonging her life, injecting her with heart strengthening medicines. The protestant pastor arrives to deliver his prayer "with a modulating voice". Once kept in a subdued whisper, than suddenly exploding with the shouting of a breaking voice, he performed his duty in the perfunctory manner that all his colleagues had copied as well. While the suffering continues, the old mother starts begging for a soporific, she begs for "Barmherzigkeit!" - "Mercy!" The doctors however did not allow themselves to sidestep from their duties and to offer her any relief......


Fantastic.

This is a book I started reading a while ago upon [finally] finishing Doktor Faustus......but I still need to get back to it! Why must Thomas Mann write such long novels? At least it is a little easier to read than Doktor Faustus......


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

I rarely post in these forums any more, my hearing, what's left of it, having reached the point where music listening is seldom enjoyable. I remain, however, an avid if slow reader, mainly but not exclusively of fantasy literature. These past several months have been devoted to David Eddings' *Belgariad* series. For the tenth time! Finished its concluding volume, *Enchanters' End Game*, late Tuesday evening, 03 Jul 2018. Am now not far into book one of the followup series, *The Malloreon*. As you might images, I consider these books a heck of a lot of fun, easy, lite reads and excellent re-reads. I do not, however, consider them out-and-out classics and could nitpick them to death should I so choose. But why bother? They are what they are and that's plenty good enough for my purposes.


----------



## TxllxT

At the age of 48 chain-smoking senator Thomas Buddenbrooks sinks into a kind of burn-out experience that is remarkably contrary to what one expects: Thomas turns towards the thought of dying / death but this experience turns out more like meeting a friend than something nasty & grueling. Thomas has sacrificed his life to the welfare of the Buddenbrooks family firm. He never had time to think about anything else than work - work - work. During his glaring burn-out transcendent night-meeting with death he decides to change his way of life fundamentally. But Thomas Mann just shows what happens on 'the day after': Thomas just gets consumed again by the cadence of work - work - work. He still thinks that he will reserve more time for reading, but delays the idea of speaking with his pastor about his burn-out to infinity. Thomas always appeared aloof and distant, even to his son and his wife. Thanks to his meeting with death he all of a sudden is opened up towards his son: they recognise and know each other eye to eye. Compelling narrative by Thomas Mann.


----------



## Barbebleu

Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. Not for the prudish or professionally offended.


----------



## bharbeke

Star Wars: Bloodline by Claudia Gray (reread)

This is the best post-Return of the Jedi novel in the new canon and makes a strong case for being one of the best Star Wars novels period. It's a great Leia story, and all of the newly introduced characters are written so well that you connect with them and care about them in a short time. For anyone who wants to better understand the political state of the galaxy during The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, this is essential reading.


----------



## Captainnumber36

What should I read first?

Dracula 
American Psycho 
or
Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> What should I read first?
> 
> Dracula
> American Psycho
> or
> Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone


If you go by the date they were written, Dracula would come first.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I just finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone and enjoyed it quite a bit! It's full of imagination and fantastical adventures between the three friends. I doubt I'll read the sequels, but the first one doesn't end on a cliff hanger making that necessary! I can now say I've been exposed to one of the most successful pieces of literature of our time.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone and enjoyed it quite a bit! It's full of imagination and fantastical adventures between the three friends. I doubt I'll read the sequels, but the first one doesn't end on a cliff hanger making that necessary! I can now say I've been exposed to one of the most successful pieces of literature of our time.


You are a speed reader. My kids do that.


----------



## Barbebleu

Captainnumber36 said:


> What should I read first?
> 
> Dracula
> American Psycho
> or
> Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone


Dracula is a superior piece of gothic writing and is light years ahead of either American Psycho or Harry Potter and (as we say in the U.K.) the Philosopher's Stone. Btw, I enjoyed both of these immensely! I usually give Dracula an outing every few years and it's still one of the most chilling stories I've had the pleasure of reading.


----------



## Score reader

Currently finishing Italo Calvino's _Invisible Cities_. i can't say I've read anything quite like it before.


----------



## bharbeke

Re: Dracula

The first section where Harker visits Dracula is the most tense and gripping. You'll know if the rest of the book is for you when you start hearing about Lucy's suitors. If that's not engaging you, just watch the Lugosi movie for the rest.


----------



## Captainnumber36

bharbeke said:


> Re: Dracula
> 
> The first section where Harker visits Dracula is the most tense and gripping. You'll know if the rest of the book is for you when you start hearing about Lucy's suitors. If that's not engaging you, just watch the Lugosi movie for the rest.


I love that movie, best adaptation of the book imo.


----------



## Roger Knox

_12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos_, by Jordan Peterson. He teaches at a local university so I decided to find out what makes him controversial. His 1st rule is: _Stand up straight_. Having spent much of my life at a piano, desk, or music workstation, this is a challenge. But it's a good book for helping you to face up to challenges!


----------



## TurnaboutVox

*McSmörgåsbord - What post-Brexit Scotland can learn from the Nordics*
Lesley Riddoch and Eberhard (Paddy) Bort
Luath Press, Edinburgh (2017)

Very thought provoking (I haven't finished reading it yet). The first author is a journalist and a friend of my brother, who has been active in the Scottish Independence movement. It examines all sorts of post-Brexit scenarios for Scotland.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I finished Dracula a few days ago, it's such a well written prose!


----------



## Captainnumber36

Barbebleu said:


> Dracula is a superior piece of gothic writing and is light years ahead of either American Psycho or Harry Potter and (as we say in the U.K.) the Philosopher's Stone. Btw, I enjoyed both of these immensely! I usually give Dracula an outing every few years and it's still one of the most chilling stories I've had the pleasure of reading.


They are all really different types of writing.


----------



## TxllxT

After the sudden demise of Thomas Buddenbrooks (thanks to a tooth infection) Thomas Mann turns our attention to Hanno Buddenbrooks, the only son who would never become a businessman in the footsteps of his father. If you are familiar with Dickens' long-winding descriptions of child-injustice, Thomas Mann is able to put all the horrors of a schoolboy so vividly in front of our reading eyes, that we like Hanno Buddenbrooks just don't want to get out of bed neither grow up. Hanno and his close friend invented a nickname for the headmaster: "The Lord Himself". This is stinging with deepest disgust for all protestant education. On the other hand it helps to evoke the Dickensian romantic atmosphere of school-terror quite effectively. Hanno gets up from his bed with both an headache and a stomachache. He had planned to learn Ovid by heart early in the morning, but nothing worked out. In the class everyone is in this same detriment: only one or two schoolboys, who are the favourites of "The Lord Himself", know to recite a few lines from Latin. The rest hates Latin and the headmaster. The way how Thomas Mann gets into this relief, when the headmaster happens to skip the letter 'B' (Buddenbrooks) for a different letter during the class examination, one really feels the weight falling off Hanno's stomach (and one's own stomach as well). Thomas Mann's minute stirring into this schoolboy's suffering is much more humorous and caustic, all boiling at the same time, compared with Dickens!


----------



## Guest

A collection of short and succinct essays that sort of flow from one to the next.......
and it's actually a really nice overview of music and cultural and aesthetic ideas related to composition in the 20th century.


----------



## TxllxT

After Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (1901) we started with another classic: Quo Vadis? by Henryk Sienkiewicz (1895). In 1905 he received the Nobel prize for literature. Well, to be honest, after the masterpiece of Thomas Mann which puts German _Kulturprotestantismus_ into its own twilight of the gods, we expected soon to be fed up with this so-called 'pro-Christian' novel. But after a few lines our interest was aroused by the question of Petronius (the Roman main character): Do women have a soul? -- Slowly the novel proceeds towards the meeting of Petronius with a woman hostage. By means of women the gospel was brought in the heart of the world: Rome.


----------



## Guest

Part of a series commissioned by Hogarth Publishing of modern writers rewriting Shakespeare plays into novels set in contemporary times. In Nesbo's version, Macbeth is a corrupt S.W.A.T. officer who is manipulated by Hecate, a drug lord, into becoming Police Commissioner. So far, so good, but I just started it. (It has received very mixed reviews.)


----------



## Guest

I'm just starting Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. It's about the effects of geography on global politics, and was a no.1 best seller on the Sunday Times list.

Chapter 1. 
Russia.


----------



## Highwayman

Nowadays I`m reading Poe`s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. I read one story per night. They can be fascinating and horrifying at the same time. I would also recommend listening to some Bartók while reading them. Some Soviet composer would also be a good match.


----------



## Guest

TurnaboutVox said:


> *McSmörgåsbord - What post-Brexit Scotland can learn from the Nordics*
> Lesley Riddoch and Eberhard (Paddy) Bort
> Luath Press, Edinburgh (2017)
> 
> Very thought provoking (I haven't finished reading it yet). The first author is a journalist and a friend of my brother, who has been active in the Scottish Independence movement. It examines all sorts of post-Brexit scenarios for Scotland.


Has work restarted on Hadrian's Wall yet?


----------



## vamei

Just started reading "The Divine and the Human" by Nicolas Berdyaev


----------



## Crawford Glissadevil

Good as Gold by Joseph Heller


----------



## Score reader

Just finished:

*Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love*


----------



## ldiat

the "odds are on your side" by Mark Cramer its about renaissance horse racing. making a "odds line" = 100%


----------



## SixFootScowl

_Scotto, More Than a Diva_, by Renata Scotto and Octavio Roca.


----------



## DaveM

Just finished Bad Blood (on top ten best seller lists) by John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal reporter who in the book exposes the truth about Elizabeth Holmes and her company, Theranous. One of the best books I’ve read in a long while. Reads like high fiction. Polished it off in a few days.


----------



## starthrower

Just bought Plato's Republic, and Dostoevsky's The Possessed. Now let's see if I can read them.


----------



## jegreenwood

starthrower said:


> Just bought Plato's Republic, and Dostoevsky's The Possessed. Now let's see if I can read them.


I read "The Possessed" ("Demons" in my translation) just after 9/11.

I read "The Republic" for my Intro to Philosophy class a very long time ago.

Currently reading "The Guns of August," which has been on my bookshelf for a very long time.


----------



## Taplow

_Thai: An Essential Grammar_
David Smyth
Routledge, 2nd Edition


----------



## LezLee

Joe Moran - Armchair Nation 'An intimate history of Britain in front of the TV'

Very perceptive and very nostalgic for Brits of my age!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Armchair-N...UTF8&qid=1533464012&sr=1-1&keywords=joe+moran


----------



## LezLee

TxllxT said:


> After Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (1901) we started with another classic: Quo Vadis? by Henryk Sienkiewicz (1895). In 1905 he received the Nobel prize for literature. Well, to be honest, after the masterpiece of Thomas Mann which puts German _Kulturprotestantismus_ into its own twilight of the gods, we expected soon to be fed up with this so-called 'pro-Christian' novel. But after a few lines our interest was aroused by the question of Petronius (the Roman main character): Do women have a soul? -- Slowly the novel proceeds towards the meeting of Petronius with a woman hostage. By means of women the gospel was brought in the heart of the world: Rome.


Quo Vadis was very popular in my Liverpool library. I think the Cathollc priests recommended it to their flock, though it's not an easy read.
Do you know the film with Peter Ustinov? This used to reduce my husband and I to giggles:






,


----------



## LezLee

bharbeke said:


> Re: Dracula
> 
> The first section where Harker visits Dracula is the most tense and gripping. You'll know if the rest of the book is for you when you start hearing about Lucy's suitors. If that's not engaging you, just watch the Lugosi movie for the rest.


Dracula's one of my favourite books. My friend and I went to see the Philip Glass ensemble accompanying a showing of the Lugosi film. Beautifully done, we were enthralled.
The BBC also did an excellent adaptation starring Louis Jourdan who emphasised the inherent sadness.


----------



## Varick

starthrower said:


> The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker


Outstanding book. I read it years ago when it first came out. It's one of those books I think everyone should read.

V


----------



## Varick

Been a while since I posted here. Since then, I have read:
























Outstanding Book!! Talk about a book everyone should read!!










V


----------



## Varick

I am currently reading:









V


----------



## TxllxT

After a few evenings we had enough of "Quo Vadis?" by Henryk Sienkiewicz. The story line became more and more fairy tale like and the women didn't become acting personages. They just lingered on as objects for the masculine passion of the main book character.
Now we've entered Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg / The Magic Mountain. This author's taste of humour is lovely grippingly brutal. We are quickly losing feel for the time of chronos and instead begin to breathe the time 'from above'.


----------



## Forss

For the whole summer now I've been in a rather deep Russian phase - or _adventure_, really - reading Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and, more recently, Svetlana Alexievich. The latter's _Voices from Chernobyl_ and _Secondhand Time_ are beyond this world.


----------



## LezLee

dogen said:


> Has work restarted on Hadrian's Wall yet?


Contrary to popular belief Hadrian's Wall does NOT divide England and Scotland. In some places it's about 68 miles from the boundary.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Captainnumber36

I just finished The Canterbury Tales and loved it. Full of wit and humor!


----------



## LezLee

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished The Canterbury Tales and loved it. Full of wit and humor!


We did the Canterbury Tales for 'O' Level exams at school and loved them. As teenage girls we particularly enjoyed the rude bits.
Our teacher brought in her record-player and LPs of Anthony Quayle reading some in Middle English, quite magical.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished The Canterbury Tales and loved it. Full of wit and humor!


I read some of that once and considered it on the same level as a trashy novel. I found zero literary value in it.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


> I read some of that once and considered it on the same level as a trashy novel. I found zero literary value in it.


I think this Poem is meant as Satire. Chaucer is attempting, through humor, to point out the parts he didn't like of the society he was noting on.

I think the constant descriptions of a perfect woman being submissive, beautiful and without ego throughout is one of the major points he was noting on. On the flip side, he painted men accurately as the pigs we are!


----------



## Captainnumber36

LezLee said:


> We did the Canterbury Tales for 'O' Level exams at school and loved them. As teenage girls we particularly enjoyed the rude bits.
> Our teacher brought in her record-player and LPs of Anthony Quayle reading some in Middle English, quite magical.


I read it in modern English translation, but it is put side by side the Middle English so if I ever so desire to learn Middle English, I can re-read it in the original text.

Whenever I read Shakespeare, I do the same thing.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> I think this Poem is meant as Satire. Chaucer is attempting, through humor, to point out the parts he didn't like of the society he was noting on.
> 
> I think the constant descriptions of a perfect woman being submissive, beautiful and without ego throughout is one of the major points he was noting on. On the flip side, he painted men accurately as the pigs we are!


The part that sticks in my mind was some episode of adultery. I suppose that can be part of the satirized society but does not make for good reading for me anyway.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I read Beowulf today, pretty inspiring story of having character, faith and passion. I'm agnostic, but I still found the protagonists faith intriguing.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


> The part that sticks in my mind was some episode of adultery. I suppose that can be part of the satirized society but does not make for good reading for me anyway.


I guess The Scarlet Letter isn't for you either.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> I guess The Scarlet Letter isn't for you either.


I didn't have any problem with The Scarlet Letter. I don't think they got into the details of the actual act, as did Chaucer.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


> I didn't have any problem with The Scarlet Letter. I don't think they got into the details of the actual act, as did Chaucer.


He doesn't go into much detail, he uses the word "thrust", but that's about it. But I can see how that can be too much for some and find it in bad taste.

I think it adds to the humor/satire of it all.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

My ebook of choice








Physical book of choice


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> He doesn't go into much detail, he uses the word "thrust", but that's about it. But I can see how that can be too much for some and find it in bad taste.
> 
> I think it adds to the humor/satire of it all.


Been a long time since I read Chaucer (30 or more years), but Wikipedia's synopsis starts with: "The Miller's Tale" is the story of a carpenter, his lovely wife, and two clerks (students) who are eager to sleep with her." Sounds like a story Mozart would set to an opera. One reason there is not much Mozart in my opera collection. But hey, Chaucer is highly regarded by many, so it must be just me.


----------



## LezLee

Fritz Kobus said:


> Been a long time since I read Chaucer (30 or more years), but Wikipedia's synopsis starts with: "The Miller's Tale" is the story of a carpenter, his lovely wife, and two clerks (students) who are eager to sleep with her." Sounds like a story Mozart would set to an opera. One reason there is not much Mozart in my opera collection. But hey, Chaucer is highly regarded by many, so it must be just me.


Don't worry about it. Dickens is adored by millions, but apart from A Tale of Two Cities, I can't stand him. All those silly names aren't remotely amusing and the characters are wildly exaggerated. If it's 'just me' I really don't care!


----------



## Roger Knox

Almost finished _The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life_ by Tom Reiss (Random House, 2006), the life of prolific author and adventurer Lev Nussimbaum/Essad Bey. Exciting and informative on everything from oil in Baku, Azerbaijan to the literary worlds of interwar Germany and Austria to Reiss's own exotic and surprising research decades after the events he describes. Raises themes of war's effects, truth and deception, the complex Middle East, that are highly relevant today.


----------



## starthrower

jegreenwood said:


> I read "The Possessed" ("Demons" in my translation) just after 9/11.
> 
> I read "The Republic" for my Intro to Philosophy class a very long time ago.
> 
> Currently reading "The Guns of August," which has been on my bookshelf for a very long time.


I have a copy of Guns... and I've read some of it. It's pretty slow going, but Barbara Tuchman did great research and she has an uncanny ability to bring to life long forgotten players in history. Her book A Distant Mirror:The Calamitous 14th Century is also a remarkable work.


----------



## jegreenwood

starthrower said:


> I have a copy of Guns... and I've read some of it. It's pretty slow going, but Barbara Tuchman did great research and she has an uncanny ability to bring to life long forgotten players in history. Her book A Distant Mirror:The Calamitous 14th Century is also a remarkable work.


It picks up . . . somewhat. I wish there were a digital edition with some kind of Googlish map that could trace the troop movements in detail. There are a few (hard to follow black and white) maps, but more would help. It does bring me back to the Amazon Hill games I played in my youth. Never played a WWI game though.


----------



## starthrower

Picked these up cheap and Barnes & Noble. In addition being nice overviews, the photography is beautiful.


----------



## jegreenwood

Finished "Guns." Roth's "The Plot Against America" arrives tomorrow.


----------



## ldiat

Calibration Handicapping by Jim Lehane.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I'm going to try to get through Hamlet and Grendel tonight. Both are really fast reads, then I'll start working through The Odyssey.


----------



## endelbendel

Ozeki, Tale for the Time Being.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

I haven't read a book for quite some time, so I'm starting with Edward Dusinberre's _Beethoven For a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet.

_


----------



## philoctetes

It's not just you Lez. 

A copy of "Ragas of Northern Indian Music" just arrived.


----------



## starthrower

I starting reading this in the bookstore and I couldn't put it down. It's obviously intended for dissatisfied western pleasure seekers like myself. And the author being one too.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I'm on act 4 of 5 in Hamlet. I'm enjoying it!


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Captainnumber36

I finished Hamlet today, I'll probably read a bit of Grendel later tonight; put a dent in it!  I feel Hamlet is more of a heroic tale than a tragedy, I feel empowered by Hamlet's conviction to truth and justice.

But he's flawed in his lack of sympathy for the murder of Polonius. And, I just don't agree with Murder as a solution, but it was a different time back then.


----------



## Kieran

A book with both feet heavily sunk in Tabooland - Lolita, by Nabokov. Recommended by a good pal as an example of first person writing _par excellence_. And he's correct. Hard to believe that Nabokov was writing in his second (or third?) language, this is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. However, the subject matter makes it difficult for me to continue, though I will, since the writing is so topnotch, and because it was given to me as a very generous gift...


----------



## distantprommer

A book that was given to me by my daughter for my birthday. She knows my reading pleasures and got this one right;

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari

Endlessly fascinating. What makes us so unique. I found his description of the cognitive revolution to be a big eye opener for me.At this point I am about halfway through the book.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I need to find more modern authors that write on the level of the Classics. I still have Grendel and The Odyssey to read, but I'd love some suggestions.

Though, I kind of want to read Twain's Fynn and Sawyer next.


----------



## Kieran

Captainnumber36 said:


> I need to find more modern authors that write on the level of the Classics. I still have Grendel and The Odyssey to read, but I'd love some suggestions.
> 
> Though, I kind of want to read Twain's Fynn and Sawyer next.


The great classic novel is _Don Quixote_, a book that was written about 400 years ago, but which has ideas in it which are far beyond their time. In fact, it's difficult to classify, but, for example, after Cervantes had finished the first part, some other author rushed out a sequel, while Cervantes was writing his own second part, so he incorporated some tales of the fake part two into his own sequel, having his characters confronted by the fake-news of what they were supposed to have been up to, according to the other author. It's an ingenious book and there were times when I was reading it I was in tears laughing, it's so hysterically funny. Violent too. Disturbing and sweeping. If you're looking for insanity and brilliance and tragedy and comedy, this book is impossible to beat. Adventurous too!

Modern classics? I like Dostoyevski (I know, not so modern) and Balzac, but also, Steinbeck's _Of Mice and Men_, and _The Grapes of Wrath_, these are great works too. I'm sure others have many more examples.

Yesterday I got Murakami's _Kafka on the Shore_ from the library, not sure what to expect, but it comes highly regarded...


----------



## Roger Knox

Boris Schwartz. _Great Masters of the Violin: From Corelli and Vivaldi to Stern, Zukerman and Perlman_, Simon and Schuster, paperback ed. 1987.

Somewhere between a reference source and a great read, by an excellent violinist who knew many of the artists he was writing about.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Kieran said:


> The great classic novel is _Don Quixote_, a book that was written about 400 years ago, but which has ideas in it which are far beyond their time. In fact, it's difficult to classify, but, for example, after Cervantes had finished the first part, some other author rushed out a sequel, while Cervantes was writing his own second part, so he incorporated some tales of the fake part two into his own sequel, having his characters confronted by the fake-news of what they were supposed to have been up to, according to the other author. It's an ingenious book and there were times when I was reading it I was in tears laughing, it's so hysterically funny. Violent too. Disturbing and sweeping. If you're looking for insanity and brilliance and tragedy and comedy, this book is impossible to beat. Adventurous too!
> 
> Modern classics? I like Dostoyevski (I know, not so modern) and Balzac, but also, Steinbeck's _Of Mice and Men_, and _The Grapes of Wrath_, these are great works too. I'm sure others have many more examples.
> 
> Yesterday I got Murakami's _Kafka on the Shore_ from the library, not sure what to expect, but it comes highly regarded...


While you have sparked my interest, highly, in Don Quixote, and while I will put it on my to read list, I'd like to get away from old text and find something more Modern to indulge in after I complete The Odyssey. I don't like getting stuck in trends!


----------



## Captainnumber36

On my to read list:

The Great Gatsby
1984
Lord of the Rings: All four (including The Hobbit) 
Tom Sawyer
Huckleberry Fynn 
More Works by Agatha Christie (I've only read Murder on the Orient Express)
Don Quixote 
Don Quixote Sequel

But none of these are what I want to read next, other than perhaps an Agatha Christie since that breaks the old english text loop I've been in.


----------



## bharbeke

Re: Agatha Christie books

You might try Death on the Nile. It's another great Poirot book that will soon be adapted onscreen again. Another I like is Cards on the Table. It features some recurring characters that are in other Christie books, so you can seek them out later if any of them appeal to you.

1984, Lord of the Rings, and Tom Sawyer are all good choices.


----------



## Captainnumber36

bharbeke said:


> Re: Agatha Christie books
> 
> You might try Death on the Nile. It's another great Poirot book that will soon be adapted onscreen again. Another I like is Cards on the Table. It features some recurring characters that are in other Christie books, so you can seek them out later if any of them appeal to you.
> 
> 1984, Lord of the Rings, and Tom Sawyer are all good choices.


Thanks for the Christie suggestions! I am also interested in reading The Sword of Truth series.


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## Captainnumber36

I just finished Grendel. It's a great book to show how Monsters are _created_ through ignorance and a closed minded attitude towards differences.

It also does a great job of not excusing Grendel's actions throughout the story.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Captainnumber36 said:


> On my to read list:
> 
> The Great Gatsby
> 1984
> Lord of the Rings: All four (including The Hobbit)
> Tom Sawyer
> Huckleberry Fynn
> More Works by Agatha Christie (I've only read Murder on the Orient Express)
> Don Quixote
> Don Quixote Sequel
> 
> But none of these are what I want to read next, other than perhaps an Agatha Christie since that breaks the old english text loop I've been in.


_Death on the Nile_ is a classic - Egyptian setting, good characterisation, several good murders. The must-reads are _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_, which put Christie on the map, and _And Then There Were None_ (ten strangers lured to island).

_Cards on the Table _ will probably appeal more if you're a bridge player. I like the set-up: Satanic host lures four detectives and four murderers to play cards; one of the murderers stabs him. Clues are in the players' psychology.

I also recommend _The ABC Murders_ (serial killer with an alphabet complex), _Hercule Poirot's Christmas_ (Christie's take on the country house family murder), _Evil Under the Sun_ (tricky alibis), _Five Little Pigs_ (murder in the past, beautifully characterised), _Towards Zero_, and _A Murder is Announced_ (the best Miss Marple).

Really, though, you're safe with anything written between 1933 and 1953. (_Dumb Witness_, though, is minor, and _Appointment with Death_ has a better build-up and characterisation than solution.)

The best of the late ones are _Ordeal by Innocence_, _The Pale Horse_ (murder for sale, by witchcraft), and _Endless Night_ (more of a romance than a detective story, but with some killer twists). _Curtain_ is depressing, but ingenious.

The really late ones - _By the Pricking of My Thumbs_, _Nemesis_, _Elephants Can Remember_, and _Postern of Fate_ - suffer from Christie's dementia. If you're a Wagnerian, you might find _Passenger to Frankfurt_ interesting.

If you like detective stories, get hold of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories, and anything by John Dickson Carr / Carter Dickson.


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## Kieran

I’m still reading Lolita. There are times the writing is so sublime it’s like reading a book by Mozart - then he starts perving again and it’s unwholesomely gruesome. I wonder if this book would be published today, and if so, what the reaction would be. But still, I recommend it, because it’s a masterclass in perfect prose...


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## Piwikiwi

I am currently reading "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Williams. It is an interesting take on life on the Dutch trading post on Deshima. The story is set in 1799 and the main character is a Dutch clerk who just arrived there.


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## starthrower

I did't get around to this one when it appeared over a dozen years ago, so I'm just reading it now. I'm only on the first chapter but it appears to be very well reasoned and argued.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I'm reading _The Odyssey_


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## Captainnumber36

starthrower said:


> I did't get around to this one when it appeared over a dozen years ago, so I'm just reading it now. I'm only on the first chapter but it appears to be very well reasoned and argued.


Is this non-fiction?


----------



## Varick

_"While you have sparked my interest, highly, in Don Quixote, and while I will put it on my to read list, I'd like to get away from old text and find something more Modern to indulge in after I complete The Odyssey. I don't like getting stuck in trends!"_

I usually read current events or non-fiction. When I do read fiction, I do enjoy the classics. However, when I was traveling all over the world for years during the '90s, I found "The Vampire Chronicles" by Ann Rice to be very well written. If you want something modern, I would recommend those 5 books ("Tale of the Body Thief" (4th book) is the weakest one of the lot, but still interesting).

V


----------



## Jeff W

*In which Jeff posts what he's read thus far in 2018*









I've been a very busy reader in 2018. My goal has been to read a book a week. I think I'm actually a little ahead of the pace right now. As you can see, I have a fairly eclectic taste in reading material.


----------



## TxllxT

*Der Zauberberg - Thomas Mann*










Thomas Mann loves to make use of the _Leitmotiv_. So when the main character Hans Castorp sits at the table for breakfast / lunch / dinner together with the other people 'from above' who were being treated in Davos for their lungs, there happens this ear- and mindshattering banging of a glass door. This _Leitmotiv_ introduces mdme Chauchat on the scene. She's Russian and moves towards the 'good Russian' table. Now my wife (who's from St Petersburg) made this observation. Before 1917 Russian people who visited Swiss spa resorts belonged to the nobility. Belonging to the Russian nobility implies: having learned good manners. Mdme Chauchat however is banging with the glass door. Either she was a revolutionary, who took over the manners of the common folk, or she was a person who did not belong to the nobility. Thomas Mann began this _Bildungsroman_ in 1912 and got it published in 1924. Perhaps he forgot about the good manners that were being upheld in pre-revolutionary times...
My wife also deems the description "Kirghiz-eyed" to be weird or even suspect.


----------



## bharbeke

Jeff W said:


> View attachment 107386
> 
> 
> I've been a very busy reader in 2018. My goal has been to read a book a week. I think I'm actually a little ahead of the pace right now. As you can see, I have a fairly eclectic taste in reading material.


I see the Q Continuum trilogy in that group. I like a lot of the stuff there, but it seemed stretched to fit 3 books, especially when I saw a similarly epic story (with a similar antagonist) done in one book in Q-Squared. Also, thumps up for the Tolkein books.


----------



## Jeff W

bharbeke said:


> I see the Q Continuum trilogy in that group. I like a lot of the stuff there, but it seemed stretched to fit 3 books, especially when I saw a similarly epic story (with a similar antagonist) done in one book in Q-Squared.


I can see where you're coming from. Books 1 & 2 give a lot of depth to Q's background that the TV series never went into but the third book kinda just drags to the inevitable conclusion where our heroes are victorious and no lasting damage will happen to the main characters.



> Also, thumps up for the Tolkein books.


I'm a sucker for Tolkien. I'm going through everything Tolkien again now that 'The Fall of Gondolin' is out. Chris Tolkien has done a great job with 'Children of Hurin' and 'Beren and Luthien' that I'm really looking forward to getting around to 'Gondolin'.


----------



## Guest

Very good so far.


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## jegreenwood

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished Grendel. It's a great book to show how Monsters are _created_ through ignorance and a closed minded attitude towards differences.
> 
> It also does a great job of not excusing Grendel's actions throughout the story.


Piwikiwi's post made me think of "Cloud Atlas." And if you start it without knowing anything about it, so much the better.

Right now I'm reading "Lord Jim."


----------



## jegreenwood

Captainnumber36 said:


> I need to find more modern authors that write on the level of the Classics. I still have Grendel and The Odyssey to read, but I'd love some suggestions.
> 
> Though, I kind of want to read Twain's Fynn and Sawyer next.


The classics are the classics because they've survived for hundreds of years. Hard to guess which modern authors will join that cadre. Some post WWII novels I consider to be candidates:

100 Years of Solitude (or Love in the Time of Cholera)
Midnight's Children (or The Moor's Last Sigh)
The Tin Drum
Beloved
Gravity's Rainbow
The Adventures of Augie March
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Waiting for Godot

I'd add Lolita, but I last read it 40 years ago. It's on my reread list.

I can't pick a specific Philip Roth book to add to that list, but the one to read right now is "The Plot Against America."


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## JeffD

Anything by Annie Dillard.


----------



## lucasbiblio

Well, I'm reading "The Beard of the Emperor" that tells the life of Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil, monarch of the tropics, second of Bragança's brazilian dynasty, considered the greatest brazilian statesman of all time, lover of the arts, music, science, spoke seventeen languages, read in twenty-three languages, abolitionist and admired throughout the world in the nineteenth century.









In parallel, I read War and Peace, a reading that I postponed for more than two months, but, fascinating as Tolstoi built this work, not for nothing that is taken as the classic of the classics. Both editions are brazilian.


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## starthrower

I look forward to digging into this one. The Finnish author now living in the states analyzes education, government, employee/employer relationships, and overall quality of life in America compared to Finland. And she debunks American assumptions about Nordic democratic socialist governments viewed as nanny states.


----------



## SixFootScowl




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## TxllxT

*Der Zauberberg - Thomas Mann*










We've reached the passage where the main character Hans Castorp is to be x-rayed. Thomas Mann writes about what is going on internally in Hans Castorp's mind and doubles this in a clever way with his description of the (in 1913/1924) new invention of x-ray photography. What is peculiar in this description however is the absence of any safety precautions against the x-ray radiation hitting all people present in the room over there in Davos. It just seems as if nobody still had any thought about the over-exposure to x-ray radiation being hazardous to one's health. The other interpretative possibility is that Thomas Mann just left out all descriptions of safety measures in order to streamline his literary diptych portrayal of Hans Castorp's internal body next to Hans Castorp's internal mind. Any mention of leaden slabs etc. on the body side would immediately call forward the parallel of 'leaden slabs' in the realm of the mind. 
Anyhow, we love Thomas Mann's masterly ability to render genuine dialogue. He is however quite prone to lapse into monologue-speculations (that very soon become a boring pastime).


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## Tristan

^What a coincidence. I just finished The Magic Mountain last night. Excellent (and long) novel. I especially enjoyed the debates between Naphta and Settembrini. I'm looking forward to reading more of Mann


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## TxllxT

*Der Zauberberg - Thomas Mann*

One peculiar aspect of _Der Zauberberg_ is the way how Thomas Mann describes the Russians. There is a 'bad' (-mannered) table and a 'good' (-mannered) table. Mdme Chauchat belongs to the latter, but at the table she is not sitting up with a straight back, but with loosely hanging shoulders. When Hans Castorp got his room in the Spa Hotel, he heard how the Russian couple next door were actively enjoying themselves with loud shrieks etc. Later on this reproachful writing returns, when the visiting doctor opens their door and finds them lying in the bed... Apparently Thomas Mann is on the side of the stiff military mannered Germans, who sit at the table like in harnesses. Thomas Mann probably thought he would win the favour of the German readership by means of expounding on the typical virtues & rigid morality of the Prussians against the free supple life-style of the Russians. How times have changed.


----------



## Antiquarian

I started (re)reading_ Gödel, Escher, Bach_ by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Have you ever read a book when you were young and been impressed or discouraged, and then later in life read it again and had an entirely different experience and opinion of it? This is, for me, that book. When I first encountered this book I was disconcerted by the textual structure. I found it slow going and disjointed, but now I see that the structure of the book actually mirrors the content.

I have also acquired, (but do not intend to read straight through) _Ticket to the Opera_ by Philip G. Goulding. It's a reference book for the opera Unwashed (his term). It is a wonderful book for those who have a budding interest in opera, but also a valuable resource for those of us who have more than a passing interest in the subject. Not only does it have succinct notes for 85 operas, but it also includes a brief history, a glossary of terms, and suggested discography. In essence, a miscellany of opera goodness. It is my new bathroom book.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## Vronsky

*Brain Droppings* by George Carlin
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55352.Brain_Droppings


----------



## elgar's ghost

I'm not a WWII history fan as such but I liked Antony Beevor's style with his books about Stalingrad and Berlin. Trouble with this book is that for most of the time there are so many mini-battles zigzagged over a wide area it's difficult to keep up with all the battalions, where they are at and what the current state of play is. This was lent to me by a crony from the local watering hole.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## philoctetes

The news this week has distracted me too much to read, I mean, it's like a modern opera in DC right now...

However, I just ordered one book which will likely interest no one, but looks pretty good to me right now...and I am thinking about reading a novel soon as the cold wet season moves in...


----------



## Judith

Just finished a wonderful book written by Peter Lovesey. "The Tooth Tattoo". A detective story with two murders involving a String Quartet.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I haven't read any novels for a very long time, but now I'm in the middle of "the Brilliant & Forever" by Kevin MacNeil. Fantasically funny  Yesterday I decided to order some more books. Several coming soon in both Norwegian and English.


----------



## jegreenwood

I listened to Kate Atkinson read an excerpt from _Transcription_ last week and bought a copy on the spot (and got it signed).


----------



## bharbeke

I finished Gerald Elias' Devil's Trill. This is a theft (and eventual murder) mystery set in the world of classical music, and the author and main character are professional violinists. I've got the second, Danse Macabre, on hold for me at the library.


----------



## Guest

The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe


----------



## JeffD

Reading "The Club Dumas" by Arturo Perez-Reverte. To expand on the back cover: think Umberto Eco with a little Dan Brown and a touch of Anne Rice.

It was made into a very mediocre movie by Roman Polanski.


----------



## hpowders

"The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars" by Paul Broks.

A neuropsychologist's odyssey through consciousness.


----------



## starthrower

A fascinating comparative investigation into the ambiguous meanings of the four biblical gospels, and that of Thomas in their original language.


----------



## senza sordino

I've just finished Childhood's End, by Arthur C Clarke. I really enjoyed it. This is the first fiction book I've read in about three years. I've read a lot of non fiction, parts of a non fiction book and lots of news recently instead of fiction. I enjoyed the escape I got from this fiction book so I immediately started reading another: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margeret Atwood. I've not read any of her books, and I guess if I'm to call myself a true Canadian I should.


----------



## DaveM

senza sordino said:


> I've just finished Childhood's End, by Arthur C Clarke. I really enjoyed it. This is the first fiction book I've read in about three years. I've read a lot of non fiction, parts of a non fiction book and lots of news recently instead of fiction. I enjoyed the escape I got from this fiction book so I immediately started reading another: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margeret Atwood. I've not read any of her books, and I guess if I'm to call myself a true Canadian I should.


I read Childhood's End in my early teens and I've never forgotten it. It has a very original plot that still stands up today.


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## Captainnumber36

I finished The Odyssey, finally! I got very busy for a while and had to put it off. I enjoyed reading it!


----------



## Captainnumber36

Should I read The Lord Of The Rings series next (starting w/ The Hobbit) or Atlas Shrugged? I know Rand isn't the most respected, but I do enjoy her stories and take the good from it. I have read The Fountainhead and Anthem and found them well written and engaging! 

(I'll be reading both, though)


----------



## Larkenfield

_The History of Power of Mind_, the mind-blowing book of metaphysics and the occult written by Richard Ingalese In 1900... I'm rereading it after many years and it's just as illuminating and intelligent now as when I first read it as a youth.


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## bharbeke

Read the Lord of the Rings books and see the Fellowship trilogy of films afterward, Captain!


----------



## bravenewworld

I'm currently read _High Minds_, a history of Victorian England from 1840 to 1880; it will be followed by _The Age of Decadence_, which continues from 1880 to 1914.

I'm concurrently reading an anthology of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetry.

When that's finished- well! I have a book, _Europe's Tragedy_, a history of the Thirty Years War to read, and then I plan on starting the _Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism_, and then Peter Singer's _Ethics in the Real World_, and then, and then, and then...

My reading pile grows and grows, while my available time only ever seems to shrink! Recently I've been doing barely any reading, and instead listening to Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_, with which I am currently a little bit obsessed.


----------



## jegreenwood

senza sordino said:


> I've just finished Childhood's End, by Arthur C Clarke. I really enjoyed it. This is the first fiction book I've read in about three years. I've read a lot of non fiction, parts of a non fiction book and lots of news recently instead of fiction. I enjoyed the escape I got from this fiction book so I immediately started reading another: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margeret Atwood. I've not read any of her books, and I guess if I'm to call myself *a true Canadian* I should.


Don't overlook Alice Munro. Very different subject matter. Almost exclusively short stories, so you can dip in (but don't start with the earliest, when she was just finding herself). The vast majority set in Canada, often in rural locations.


----------



## starthrower

Beginning my decent down the rabbit hole of this never ending investigation. I never did watch the Oliver Stone film, so I'll read the book that inspired it.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Captainnumber36 said:


> Should I read The Lord Of The Rings series next (starting w/ The Hobbit) or Atlas Shrugged? I know Rand isn't the most respected, but I do enjoy her stories and take the good from it. I have read The Fountainhead and Anthem and found them well written and engaging!
> 
> (I'll be reading both, though)


"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: _The Lord of the Rings _and _Atlas Shrugged_. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."


----------



## jegreenwood

Just starting Deborah Eisenberg's new short story collection.


----------



## Kopachris

Finally got around to starting A Song of Ice and Fire (again). I got through the prologue last time, but I'm several chapters in and enjoying it much better this time 'round.


----------



## JeffD

Captainnumber36 said:


> Should I read The Lord Of The Rings series next (starting w/ The Hobbit) or Atlas Shrugged? I know Rand isn't the most respected, but I do enjoy her stories and take the good from it. I have read The Fountainhead and Anthem and found them well written and engaging!
> 
> (I'll be reading both, though)


When in doubt, read the book that pisses off more people. Atlas Shrugged is up there. After that read the book that you think will **** you off the most.


----------



## Tristan

Currently reading *American Pastoral* by Philip Roth


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## jegreenwood

Tristan said:


> Currently reading *American Pastoral* by Philip Roth


A great book. Try _The Plot Against America_ next. Very timely.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Fritz Kobus said:


>


If it's 'unknown', how come someone has written a book about it? Eh?? Eh???


----------



## Pat Fairlea

On a more serious note, I'm currently reading and thoroughly enjoying Chris Thomas's _Inheritors of the Earth_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33785338-inheritors-of-the-earth

I used to work with Chris and expected nothing less from him than a contrarian view based on closely-researched, sound evidence. His topic is the current and future state of the biosphere, and his premise is that life adapts and goes on, and is demonstrably already doing so in the face of global human environmental change. Urbanisation, agriculture, intensive fishing, climate warming will all pose challenges to plants, animals, fungi etc and there will be winners and losers. But there will be, and already are, winners. Part of the challenge is to stop fetishising and bemoaning some imagined Eden of the past and regarding some of the current winners, such as street pigeons, as a 'problem'.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and refill the bird feeders that I have been trained to provide....


----------



## senza sordino

I finished reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It was written in 1986 and won a few awards. I read it quickly, I couldn't put it down. I thought it was terrific, so well written and such a good story. It's written in first person, a Handmaid recalling her present life situation and her past, weaving her past into her present situation, just like we recall memories. I don't plan on watching the new tv series. There has been another movie made in the past. In 2000 Poul Ruders wrote an opera based on this story.

Currently I'm reading How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia. It won't take me much time to read it, it's not too long nor complicated. It's a nice read. Not as long as his History of Jazz book, which I haven't read, but I'd like to sometime in the future.

My next fiction book I intend on reading starting on the weekend is The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. It was assigned to me in high school, but I never read it. I usually did do my homework in high school, but that book I never did read. I'm thinking of tracking down my old English literature teacher and handing in that book report I never did (Just kidding on the book report, but I will read the book)

I've got a few other dystopian novels lined up to read later.


----------



## Jan9Pot7ck1

Does anyone know of any stories or novels inspired by the operas of Gilbert & Sullivan? I recently read _The Pirates of Ersatz_ by Murray Leinster. I assumed because of the title it had something to do with _The Pirates of Penzance_.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Finally picked up this one.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

senza sordino said:


> I finished reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It was written in 1986 and won a few awards. I read it quickly, I couldn't put it down. I thought it was terrific, so well written and such a good story. It's written in first person, a Handmaid recalling her present life situation and her past, weaving her past into her present situation, just like we recall memories. ...........


Mrs Pat just finished _The Handmaid's Tale_. She thought it was brilliant, so I guess that's my next read.


----------



## starthrower

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 109151
> 
> 
> Finally picked up this one.


I've had this one on my mind for years. I remember reading a few pages in Border's one day and his gift for "poetic" prose really bowled me over.


----------



## Ingélou

Pat Fairlea said:


> Mrs Pat just finished _The Handmaid's Tale_. She thought it was brilliant, so I guess that's my next read.


Mrs Pat is right!


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Ingélou said:


> Mrs Pat is right!


Yes, that's the basis on which our marriage functions.


----------



## jegreenwood

Jan9Pot7ck1 said:


> Does anyone know of any stories or novels inspired by the operas of Gilbert & Sullivan? I recently read _The Pirates of Ersatz_ by Murray Leinster. I assumed because of the title it had something to do with _The Pirates of Penzance_.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1364719.Death_at_the_Opera

Television adaptation.






I've read a couple of the Mrs. Bradley mysteries but not this one. I did not see it on TV, despite being a long longtime fan of Diana Rigg.


----------



## philoctetes

Coover's Brunists just went back on the unread stack after I found this at Costco yesterday, already deep into the first chapter...


----------



## Guest

I'm reading three concurrently now:

_Why Evolution is True_ by Jerry Coyne

View attachment 109347


Coyne is a professor or Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. He describes the mechanism that drive evolution and shows how sex is a major factor. If life was simply created, we wouldn't see this long thread of how sex controls the course of evolution. Instead, you see an unbroken chain going back hundreds of millions of years. He shows how all of this led to us. It's written for the layman but the concepts are often difficult so he takes them apart and explains them and how each component contributes to the whole picture. You see that life could not have been created but rather developed and adapted to changing conditions in ways that are obvious but also not-so-obvious. It's something that could have only happened naturally. There is no point to saying, "God did this and God did that," because once you see the stages of development, you see that there is no reason it would not have and could not have happened naturally. For example, if you're laying on a cave floor where the tides wash over the roof and the ceiling becomes wet and a drop of water falls from the ceiling and lands on your forehead, there is no reason to assume that God guided that drop of water or made the ceiling become wet instead of the tides. It simply makes no sense. Everything is present for this event to have occurred naturally. So it is with evolution. Nothing magical is going on.

_Reinventing the Sacred_ by Stuart Kauffman









Kauffman is a professor at the University of Calgary and founding director of the Institute of Biocomplexity and Informatics. Kauffman discusses emergent order in evolution and how life is unpredictable from a purely materialistic point of view. Scientific reductionism says that ultimately everything--EVERYTHING--is reducible to physics. In other words, everything is ultimately just particles in motion through space. But looking at these particles in motion, how could we predict from it lush jungles teeming with exotic birds and big cats prowling around and elephants wading through pools squirting water with their trunks and amazing insects and arachnids flying and crawling and humans fashioning spears and performing ritual dances? Life is "emergent" which means it springs up spontaneously and is self-ordered and displaying stunning degrees of complexity. The religious people wants to ascribe all this to a god but Kauffman posits that what they see as God is really a boundless source of profound natural creativity giving rise to all manner of life. We need something other than scientific reductionism to explain the universe. This creative pool is actually the true sacredness of life called a biosphere and then, as the biosphere evolved, life evolved. All life is one and that one is the biosphere. So, as with Coyne's book, there is no need for God to have done anything. All the conditions were present and ripe for it to happen and so it happened.

_Your Inner Fish_ by Neil Shubin









Shubin earned degrees at Columbia, Harvard and U of C--Berkeley. He is professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago where he is an associate dean and he also Provost of the Field Museum. As the title suggests, Shubin's book shows painstakingly how everything that we are comes from the fish. We are still fish in a great many ways. He shows how fins became hands with fingers. This did not happen as fish moved up the ladder to become mammals but rather had already happened while they were still fish. Everything necessary to turn fins into hands we still have. We have right-handedness and left-handedness, aka polarity, due to a cluster of cells in the limb buds called the ZPA which sends out signals to form fingers and a thumb. These signals are a cluster of genes called "sonic hedgehog" that was founded on the front-to-back arrangement of the fly which was due to a cluster of genes they called called "hedgehog" and sonic hedgehog developed from that.

From fish to every animal from amphibians, reptiles, birds, dogs, cats, bears, horses, cows, pigs, rats, mice, monkeys, apes, humans, etc., all have sonic hedgehog. They isolated sonic hedgehog in one animal--say a rat--and inject it into the embryo of say, a chicken, and the chicken doesn't form rat paws instead of wings but rather the same wings it would have had anyway. This is because sonic hedgehog is universal. It's not unique in different animals but exactly the same. All life is one.

Most walking fish, all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, for example, have the same genetic information. So when fish learned to walk, such as lungfish, they had a single bone branching off the skeletal mass for each fin and walk on these bones stilt-like. We call this the humerus or femur. But other fish developed hands but hands need leverage so from the end of the humerus or femur arose two more bones in parallel--the ulna and radius (or tibia and fibula). These form both elbows/knees and wrists/ankles so that the hand or foot can swivel and position itself. Many walking fish have this 1-2 combo of limb bones. All amphibians have them, all reptiles, birds and mammals. We all come from fish. You have an inner fish as does your dog or cat and the hare sprinting across your yard and the squirrels scampering up and down the trees and the birds and bats soaring and fluttering overhead.

Without fish, we never would have existed.


----------



## SixFootScowl

> Without fish, we never would have existed.


Only if my parents were stranded on a desert island and the only food they had available was fish. Otherwise, we don't need fish and never did.


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Coover's Brunists just went back on the unread stack after I found this at Costco yesterday, already deep into the first chapter...


You never read "The Origin of the Brunists"???


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Is anyone else this crazy?

Books I am currently involved with:

Physical book:








Ebook:








Audio Book:








Plus at least one or two poems a day from this:








AND...

I read one chapter from the Gospels while my truck warms up every morning.

Have I lost my mind?


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> Is anyone else this crazy?
> 
> Books I am currently involved with:
> 
> Physical book:
> View attachment 109374
> 
> 
> Ebook:
> View attachment 109375
> 
> 
> Audio Book:
> View attachment 109376
> 
> 
> Plus at least one or two poems a day from this:
> View attachment 109377
> 
> 
> AND...
> 
> I read one chapter from the Gospels while my truck warms up every morning.
> 
> Have I lost my mind?


I've been reading Keats (and Wordsworth) as well.


----------



## Bob516

_The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August_, a beautifully written speculative fiction novel.


----------



## Dulova Harps On




----------



## Oldhoosierdude

starthrower said:


> I've had this one on my mind for years. I remember reading a few pages in Border's one day and his gift for "poetic" prose really bowled me over.


Poetic prose is an apt description. His character development is superb. His word volume may prove an issue for some as not a lot of current authors use this style effectively. I'm not usually a big fan of that, but have been captivated with Wolfe's approach.

I'm still not quite to the halfway point.


----------



## senza sordino

I just finished reading The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I generally liked it, though the ending was a _deus ex machina_ literary device, so a weak ending I thought. I was supposed to read this in junior high school, but I never did. I finally got around to doing my homework 38 years too late. Perhaps I should track down my former English literature teacher and hand in that overdue book report. Haha

Right now, I like reading dystopian books, speculative fiction. I don't want to read pure fantasy but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd consider them. In line next to read are Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury, Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut and a re read of Brave New World by Huxley.

I just recently found a notebook hidden among my shelves. I had written in this notebook every book, fiction and non fiction, I had ever read since I was a kid. I had kept scraps of paper listing what I had read up until the early 2000s, at which point I put them all one notebook in chronological order; it is this notebook I had recently found. However, I stopped recording what I had been reading in 2004. I am attempting to piece together and remember all the books I have read since 2004. I remember a lot, but I admit, I will not be able to reconstruct this notebook completely, there will be gaps in the past 14 years. But it's interesting to see that I read Anna Karenina in 1990, and I Robot in 1984 etc.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

senza sordino said:


> I just finished reading The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I generally liked it, though the ending was a _deus ex machina_ literary device, so a weak ending I thought. I was supposed to read this in junior high school, but I never did. I finally got around to doing my homework 38 years too late. Perhaps I should track down my former English literature teacher and hand in that overdue book report. Haha
> 
> Right now, I like reading dystopian books, speculative fiction. I don't want to read pure fantasy but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd consider them. In line next to read are Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury, Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut and a re read of Brave New World by Huxley.
> 
> I just recently found a notebook hidden among my shelves. I had written in this notebook every book, fiction and non fiction, I had ever read since I was a kid. I had kept scraps of paper listing what I had read up until the early 2000s, at which point I put them all one notebook in chronological order; it is this notebook I had recently found. However, I stopped recording what I had been reading in 2004. I am attempting to piece together and remember all the books I have read since 2004. I remember a lot, but I admit, I will not be able to reconstruct this notebook completely, there will be gaps in the past 14 years. But it's interesting to see that I read Anna Karenina in 1990, and I Robot in 1984 etc.


Funny you mention The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I have considered reading that one recently.


----------



## LezLee

I think you might enjoy Robert Heinlein’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ usually classed as SF but it’s nearer your dystopian theme. Very sad.
Also Don deLillo - ‘White Noise’. Hard to classify but here’s part of the Wiki summary:

“Set at a bucolic Midwestern college known only as The-College-on-the-Hill, White Noise follows a year in the life of Jack Gladney, a professor who has made his name by pioneering the field of Hitler studies (though he hasn't taken German lessons until this year). He has been married five times to four women and rears a brood of children and stepchildren (Heinrich, Denise, Steffie, Wilder) with his current wife, Babette. Jack and Babette are both extremely afraid of death; they frequently wonder which of them will be the first to die. The first part of White Noise, called "Waves and Radiation", is a chronicle of contemporary family life combined with academic satire.”


----------



## senza sordino

LezLee said:


> I think you might enjoy Robert Heinlein's 'Stranger in a Strange Land' usually classed as SF but it's nearer your dystopian theme. Very sad.
> Also Don deLillo - 'White Noise'. Hard to classify but here's part of the Wiki summary:
> 
> "Set at a bucolic Midwestern college known only as The-College-on-the-Hill, White Noise follows a year in the life of Jack Gladney, a professor who has made his name by pioneering the field of Hitler studies (though he hasn't taken German lessons until this year). He has been married five times to four women and rears a brood of children and stepchildren (Heinrich, Denise, Steffie, Wilder) with his current wife, Babette. Jack and Babette are both extremely afraid of death; they frequently wonder which of them will be the first to die. The first part of White Noise, called "Waves and Radiation", is a chronicle of contemporary family life combined with academic satire."


According to my notebook I recently found, I read A Stranger in a Strange Land in 1994. I vaguely remember reading it. I will consider rereading it.

Has anyone read Dune by Frank Herbert? Is it worth reading? I know it's not speculative fiction, nor considered dystopian, it fits into the category of science fiction fantasy.

I find myself reading a lot episodically. I go through phases of reading several books in quick succession, and then not reading much or any book, just magazine articles etc. For example, my notebook states I read over a dozen books in 1994 and one book in 1995. And I've done this for decades, one year a lot, the next almost nothing.


----------



## LezLee

Yes, I read ‘Dune’ and enjoyed it but not enough to read the sequels. The David Lynch film was truly dreadful.
I was a library assistant and when I was working I read on average, 4 books a week. Since I retired I’ve almost stopped reading altogether (just 2 books this year). I can’t begin to explain this.


----------



## bharbeke

I have read all of the Dune series through Paul of Dune. The first novel is an absolute masterpiece and classic, and I recommend it to anybody. If you want to see more of the characters and universe, you can check out the other novels. The Sci-Fi miniseries adaptations of the first three books are the best Dune available in visual media.


----------



## Manxfeeder

I don't have much time for pleasure reading, but I managed to squeeze in some time to find more about Maurice Ravel. Personally, I was disappointed with this book. I want to know about the music. The main premise of this book is, Ravel was gay. And it seems like every other page, the author has to throw in some reminder that "he was gay, you know." I didn't come out of this with much understanding of his music or his musical process, but now I know all the gay/bisexual people he hung around with.

I came out of this feeling like there is a better biography out there that I missed.


----------



## tdc

Manxfeeder said:


> I don't have much time for pleasure reading, but I managed to squeeze in some time to find more about Maurice Ravel. Personally, I was disappointed with this book. I want to know about the music. The main premise of this book is, Ravel was gay. And it seems like every other page, the author has to throw in some reminder that "he was gay, you know." I didn't come out of this with much understanding of his music or his musical process, but now I know all the gay/bisexual people he hung around with.
> 
> I came out of this feeling like there is a better biography out there that I missed.
> 
> View attachment 109742


_Ravel: Man and Musican_ by Arbie Orenstein is pretty decent, it goes into some detail on the music, and some events in his life. A good book, I wouldn't say great, but I thought it was worthwhile and as far as I recall does little to no speculating on his sexuality.

I don't think anyone has really written a definitive bio on Ravel yet.


----------



## tdc

I'm currently reading _Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician_ by Christoph Wolff and _A Garden of Pomegranates_ by Israel Regardie.


----------



## aleazk

Manxfeeder said:


> I don't have much time for pleasure reading, but I managed to squeeze in some time to find more about Maurice Ravel. Personally, I was disappointed with this book. I want to know about the music. The main premise of this book is, Ravel was gay. And it seems like every other page, the author has to throw in some reminder that "he was gay, you know." I didn't come out of this with much understanding of his music or his musical process, but now I know all the gay/bisexual people he hung around with.
> 
> I came out of this feeling like there is a better biography out there that I missed.
> 
> View attachment 109742


Try Ravel, by Roger Nichols. The author did a complete and authoritative revised edition of the composer's piano music for Edition Peters.

It's still a bio, though, so it's full with personal details (not so much about his sexuality, for which the author offers contradictory evidence and testimonies at some point and then moves on, although he seems slightly more inclined for the gay theory). But there are also analysis of all the relevant pieces, with score excerpts, talk about styles and influences, etc. The analysis are detailed enough but never get too academic.


----------



## Tchaikov6

Currently reading _Things Fall Apart_ by Chinua Achebe.


----------



## schigolch




----------



## jegreenwood

senza sordino said:


> . . . .
> 
> Right now, I like reading dystopian books, speculative fiction. I don't want to read pure fantasy but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd consider them. In line next to read are Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury, Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut and a re read of Brave New World by Huxley.
> 
> . . . .


There's "The Handmaid's Tale" of course. Atwood has also written a post-apocalyptic trilogy; I've read the first book, "Oryx and Crake." Also, you might want to try "Cloud Atlas," which I mentioned several months ago. It's . . . unique. And the less you know starting it, the better.

If you like reading plays, try "Mercury Fur." Or Sarah Kane's "Blasted." Both truly horrific dystopias. There's a lot of speculative drama these days, but those two are the most shocking.


----------



## philoctetes

For dystopian SF, Philip K Dick is still pretty good. 

Dune is indeed a masterpiece of any genre. Resist the temptation to read the sequels. If you can get your hands on it, watch the mini-series produced by the SciFi channel, it's far better than Lynch's mutilation. 

Also, just for kicks, see Jodorosky's Dune, a documentary about the El Topo director who almost made Lynch's movie...

I am halfway through How We Dismantled the FBI in Our Pajamas by Michel Moore


----------



## tdc

philoctetes said:


> For dystopian SF, Philip K Dick is still pretty good.
> 
> Dune is indeed a masterpiece of any genre. Resist the temptation to read the sequels. If you can get your hands on it, watch the mini-series produced by the SciFi channel, it's *far better than Lynch's mutilation*.


This film has been getting trashed here, so just thought I'd mention David Lynch did not get final cut on that film, and it doesn't represent his artistic vision. It was actually because of that movie, he ensured he had final edit on all of his other films.

Personally I thought it was an ok film with a few redeemable elements, but I'll have to read the book, I'm sure its way better.


----------



## philoctetes

Yes, it's legend that the production of Dune was a mess before Lynch got his hands on it, that's why the Jodorosky doc is worth seeing... I'm old enough to recall the rumors about the Jodorosky film, and my personal copy of Dune was an old Ace or Bantam paperback with the Jodorosky cover image...

Maybe it's not a bad film if the book hadn't spoiled you... Herbert's writing is very compelling, there is something almost Homerian about the way he tells the story. I must admit I never liked MacLachlan much as Paul, who is comparable to Ulysses. I mean the guy could at least have a beard or something manly 

Seems like somebody ought to be working on a remake, which could be quite amazing nowadays...

And now I'm wondering, If Dune is Homeric, which character corresponds to me, Philoctetes?


----------



## Tristan

I've started reading Anthony Powell's 12-volume *A Dance to the Music of Time*. This is going to be a long ride.


----------



## ldiat

lee child "past tense" staring Jack Reacher


----------



## senza sordino

I've just finished Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I really enjoyed this. Apparently, according to my notes, I read this book in ninth grade back in 1979. I have no recollection of that. My notebook is quite interesting, all the books I've ever read. (Doesn't include children's books I read learning to read, this list starts in 1979 when I was 14).

I've recently picked up this book, 50 Great Short Stories ed. by Martin Crane. 








I read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield. I'll read them out of order and not all at once. Next novel I'll start this evening is Neuromancer  by William Gibson.

Thanks for the science fiction and dystopian novels suggestions everyone.


----------



## philoctetes

If Neuromancer is the literary precursor to The Matrix, the works of Samuel Delany are a literary precursor to William Gibson, who acknowledges Delany as a prime influence in his Introduction to reprints of Dhalgren. 

Dune may have been my favorite sci-fi novel in the 70s, but Delany was my favorite sci-fi writer. I first read The Einstein Intersection, a novel that mixed cybernetics with the legend of Theseus, and Dhalgren arrived right around the same time I was beginning to appreciate "stream-of-consciousness" work like Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow... 

For a time, Delany was an icon of "speculative fiction" that included Ursula K.LeGuin, Thomas Disch and Joanna Russ, who were as much about human engineering as the rocket-ship kind. But not everybody appreciated Dhalgren, I had a personal conversation with Joan Vinge at an observatory one night when she praised Delany's earlier work but declared Dhalgren to be a disaster.

In the 90s, I finally read Triton, which had also been criticized as another backslide for the author, but I disagree and think it actually aged somewhat better than his other "hard" sci-fi novels because his grasp of science was never his strength and Triton deftly avoids those traps.

Anyway, for those who aren't discouraged by revisiting older sci-fi that was not mainstream but very influential, I recommend checking out something by Delany, and Dhalgren would be his Magnum Opus. For me, it is also a surreal glimpse of California after the wildfires wipe everything out...


----------



## jegreenwood

ldiat said:


> lee child "past tense" staring Jack Reacher


Finished it earlier this week. Not my favorite Reacher, but not my least favorite either. Explaining why would require spoiler disclosure.


----------



## jegreenwood

Tristan said:


> I've started reading Anthony Powell's 12-volume *A Dance to the Music of Time*. This is going to be a long ride.


I've done it three books at a time. I'm halfway through.

Speaking of long rides, HBO will be broadcasting the first episode of "My Brilliant Friend" tonight. I read the Neapolitan tetralogy - had to force myself to take breaks between the last three volumes. I'm trying to decide whether to watch the TV series. I may wait and binge watch.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Izma

The Art of Piano Playing by Heinrich Neuhaus. 

I'm halfway through. 

It is about piano playing, yes, but not just technique and not taught like a text book. It's like listening to him talking to himself about life, while he's telling stories about his teaching experiences with students who ranged from the miraculously talented to the totally not. He also goes beyond technique to discuss music from the point of view of someone who learned the art of piano playing, took it to pieces and didn't put it back together until he understood every piece. I don't agree with all of his philosophical points of view, however. His pomposity may put you off, but it's so extreme that it's more amusing than offensive. Keep in mind that he was born in 1888. 

Thanks for reading. This is my first post.


----------



## Blancrocher

D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature 

A "poetic" explanation of a series of early American classics by Benjamin Franklin, Crèvecoeur, Fenimore Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, and Melville. 

I've paused it to read Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, which is new to me. I'm about halfway through. It's a rather dry read, but I'm not minding it. I'm looking forward to Lawrence's probable crazy diatribe about it.


----------



## rodrigaj

Tristan said:


> I've started reading Anthony Powell's 12-volume *A Dance to the Music of Time*. This is going to be a long ride.


I've been through it 3 times. I also have Spurling's "Invitation to the Dance" which enhances the reading experience.

The inevitable comparisons of Powell to Proust are misguided IMO.


----------



## starthrower

Pagels is fascinating if you have an interest in the history of the early church. I have four of her books.


----------



## TxllxT

*Der Zauberberg / The Magic Mountain (1924)*










We reached the last quarter of Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg / The Magic Mountain. The book was published in 1924, but reflects Thomas Mann's Spa experiences of 1912 in Davos, Switzerland. It seems that Thomas Mann wanted to hitch-hike on the Roman Catholic Church's claim for possessing eternal validity. The disputes between Settembrini and Naphta derive their relevance from the Church's all-time presence on the background. These disputes however are tiring. Thomas Mann the novelist aspired to become more than a novelist. He resorts to deep oracling on the high mountain. We prefer much more the main 'hero' Hans Castorp getting lost while skiing with a snow blizzard in the back. So compared with Buddenbrooks this novel is uneven in quality. Thomas Mann in Buddenbrooks was tied to a family chronicle, that helped him to keep the characters distinct and believable. In The Magic Mountain these character distinctions wash out; whether Settembrini disputes or Naphta, we feel that Thomas Mann is the one who is pulling the strings.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Blancrocher said:


> D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
> 
> A "poetic" explanation of a series of early American classics by Benjamin Franklin, Crèvecoeur, Fenimore Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, and Melville.
> 
> I've paused it to read Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, which is new to me. I'm about halfway through. It's a rather dry read, but I'm not minding it. I'm looking forward to Lawrence's probable crazy diatribe about it.


If it's the same Lawrence who wrote Son's and Lovers lets hope he doesn't criticize for something being over long, wordy, or over descriptive. That book had hundreds of pages that added little to the story.


----------



## jegreenwood

Just finished Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones." By chance it was the second book in a row that involved Hurricane Katrina.


----------



## Blancrocher

Herman Melville, Typee and Omoo

I'm reading Melville's first "novels" before continuing with the penultimate chapter of Lawrence's "Studies in Classic American Literature" (the final one concerns Moby Dick). Typee started strong, including in its early chapters a quite suspenseful narrative involving the narrator and a friend being stranded on an inhabited island of the South Pacific. I was surprised the book isn't more famous, given the author. However, it quickly subsided into conventional ethnographic description of the period. I'm expecting more of the same in Omoo. Still, I'm enjoying the reading as I compare-and-contrast passages with Melville's later work.


----------



## Blancrocher

rodrigaj said:


> The inevitable comparisons of Powell to Proust are misguided IMO.


Agreed. Incidentally, I read a curious essay by Perry Anderson (a writer I admire) recently in which he proclaimed his preference of the former.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n14/perry-anderson/different-speeds-same-furies

I found it one of his less compelling pieces.


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## SixFootScowl

From the inner flap:


> Politically astute, ambitious, and beautiful, Yolande of Aragon, queen of Sicily, was one of the most powerful women of the Middle Ages. Caught in the complex dynastic battle of the Hundred Years War, Yolande championed the dauphin's cause against the forces of England and Burgundy, drawing on her savvy, her statecraft, and her intimate network of spies. But the enemy seemed invincible. Just as French hopes dimmed, an astonishingly courageous young woman named Joan of Arc arrived from the farthest recesses of the kingdom, claiming she carried a divine message-a message that would change the course of history and ultimately lead to the coronation of Charles VII and the triumph of France.
> Now, on the six hundredth anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc, this fascinating book explores the relationship between these two remarkable women, and deepens our understanding of this dramatic period in history. How did an illiterate peasant girl gain access to the future king of France, earn his trust, and ultimately lead his forces into battle? Was it only the hand of God that moved Joan of Arc-or was it also Yolande of Aragon?


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Barbebleu

George RR Martin's Fire and Blood. I know it's not the promised Winds of Winter but my word it's a great read. Fantastically inventive at every turn, this history of the Targaryens is excellent fare if you're a GoT fan at all!


----------



## TxllxT

In the last part of _Der Zauberberg_ a Dutch character pops up: Mynheer Peeperkorn. He made his fortune in the Dutch Indies, but paid the price with catching a tropical disease. Where ever Mynheer Peeperkorn appears, wine starts to flow abundantly. We think that Thomas Mann modeled this novel character more on the personality of Peter the Great (the Russian Czar who loved Holland and the Dutch way of life) than any Dutchman (Flying or not). Peter the Great had no match who could drink as much as he. His parties at Peterhof (near St Petersburg) were a true horror for the ambassadors. They knew in advance that they would end up staggering in the huge park, drunk as a skunk. Peter had a Dutch admiral, who was as steady as he himself. They were great friends.


----------



## Barbebleu

tdc said:


> I'm currently reading _Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician_ by Christoph Wolff and _A Garden of Pomegranates_ by Israel Regardie.


I thought I was the only person who had ever read Regardie! I'm shocked that there appears to be two of us.:devil:


----------



## bharbeke

I've been going through Agatha Christie's works in between some of my SFF reading. Recent successes include A Pocket Full of Rye and Murder is Easy.


----------



## Kieran

Going through a Murakami phase - second book in about a month, and enjoying both. First, Kafka on the Shore, which is an extraordinary and magical tale, now I'm reading Norwegian Wood.

Am in the market for further Murakami recommendations! :tiphat:


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> Going through a Murakami phase - second book in about a month, and enjoying both. First, Kafka on the Shore, which is an extraordinary and magical tale, now I'm reading Norwegian Wood.
> 
> Am in the market for further Murakami recommendations! :tiphat:


The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

And IQ84


----------



## jegreenwood

Fritz Kobus said:


>


Last week I saw Glenn Close on stage as "Mother of the Maid."


----------



## SixFootScowl

jegreenwood said:


> Last week I saw Glenn Close on stage as "Mother of the Maid."


Interesting. I quick survey of a review on Google indicates a lot of fictitious material, but it would have to be to make it work. After Joan left to see the dauphin, she apparently didn't see her mother again, or very briefly perhaps after the coronation of Charles VI. But I wonder if it has the post-Joan part where her mother is brought in to request a re-trial of the Pope, which was some years after her death.


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## SixFootScowl




----------



## Sloe

I am reading Ladies by Mara Lee yes she is a Korean adoptee. And I have a thing for Asian girls and I think she is pretty and that is why I got curious. But the book is really good. It is about some young women and their past.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Finished






A good Bond novel.

Now about 100 pages into






and I have to tell you, when its good, it's good. When boring, it's boring.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

bharbeke said:


> I've been going through Agatha Christie's works in between some of my SFF reading. Recent successes include A Pocket Full of Rye and Murder is Easy.


I keep a Christie always in queue. Usually a good read from her.


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## SixFootScowl




----------



## Blancrocher

Mark Twain, Puddn'head Wilson

Satirical, improbably plotted novel that begins with babies switched in their cribs. Interesting preoccupation with the science of detection.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Blancrocher said:


> *Mark Twain*, Puddn'head Wilson
> 
> Satirical, improbably plotted novel that begins with babies switched in their cribs. Interesting preoccupation with the science of detection.


Mark Twain wrote a Joan of Arc book. I might have to read it as part of my Joan of Arc binge.


----------



## Captainnumber36

So I realized, I enjoy reading, but can't commit to novels and prefer poetry, short stories, and novellas. Authors I want to explore deeper are Connon Doyle, Fitzgerald, CS Lewis, Louis Carrol and Robert Louis Stevenson. (I have a complete collection of Poe)

I have come to the conclusion that I don't love Dracula, it starts out so brilliant, but loses much stream when it focuses on Lucy and her suitors.

Frankenstein is still brilliant!


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> So I realized, I enjoy reading, but can't commit to novels and prefer poetry, short stories, and novellas. Authors I want to explore deeper are Connon Doyle, Fitzgerald, CS Lewis, Louis Carrol and Robert Louis Stevenson. (I have a complete collection of Poe)
> 
> I have come to the conclusion that I don't love Dracula, it starts out so brilliant, but loses much stream when it focuses on Lucy and her suitors.
> 
> Frankenstein is still brilliant!


If you like Poe, I found Nathaniel Hawthorne to have similarly fascinating and strange stories. Read his "The House of Seven Gables." Also has a lot of great short stories.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


> If you like Poe, I found Nathaniel Hawthorne to have similarly fascinating and strange stories. Read his "The House of Seven Gables." Also has a lot of great short stories.


He wrote The Scarlet Letter right?


----------



## Blancrocher

Fritz Kobus said:


> Mark Twain wrote a Joan of Arc book. I might have to read it as part of my Joan of Arc binge.


Supposedly Twain's own favorite of his novels, by the way.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> He wrote The Scarlet Letter right?


Right! Another good book.

Also, Authur Miller's book, The Crucible, is quite good.


----------



## Captainnumber36

So, I'm going to pick up Dicken's A Christmas Carol and Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". I want the Suess not only b/c I love it, but b/c I want inspiration. I do lots of drawings, they are very kid friendly, and I had the idea to create 3 books of 10 poems each with the 30 drawings I have (I have three remaining which will be the covers of the books). I will do more than these three books, but this is just the start!


----------



## Levanda

I am reading Lithuanian folk tales in Russian.


----------



## bharbeke

I have made a list for Book Riot's Read Harder 2019 challenge. It has really expanded my book choices from the normal sci-fi, media tie-in, and cozy mystery books that I usually favor.


----------



## Sloe

I am reading Hunger by Knut Hamsun. I have read Growth of the Soil and Pan before.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I finished these. 






The plot and main character are solid. But beware, this was written at a time when the expectation to the writer was a volume of words. For Dreiser this means repetition and excruciating detail details of everyone's thoughts and side story lines that go nowhere. Still, dude kills pregnant girlfriend because he wants someone else with money. His thought process and justification is interesting.







Good story with sympathetic main character whom you can't help rooting for. Off-putting writing style that utilizes poor grammar and sentence structure with thousands of words on the sea, landscape and weather. Obscure maritime references abound. I guess all of that is avant-garde or experimental or relevant or whatever. Anyway you get used to it and enjoy the story.


----------



## Red Terror

About fifty pages into it. It's a great book-reads a bit like Burroughs' work.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## jegreenwood

Captainnumber36 said:


> So, I'm going to pick up Dicken's A Christmas Carol and Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". I want the Suess not only b/c I love it, but b/c I want inspiration. I do lots of drawings, they are very kid friendly, and I had the idea to create 3 books of 10 poems each with the 30 drawings I have (I have three remaining which will be the covers of the books). I will do more than these three books, but this is just the start!


Have you seen the Leech illustrations for the original Christmas Carol? Or those by Phiz, Dickens' principal illustrator?


----------



## Phil loves classical

Don Quixote. It is hilarious. I'm not an avid reader of novels, so happy I found this one.


----------



## Captainnumber36

jegreenwood said:


> Have you seen the Leech illustrations for the original Christmas Carol? Or those by Phiz, Dickens' principal illustrator?


I haven't! Do link me.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I read "A Scandal in Bohemia" today, I love Holmes.


----------



## Captainnumber36

jegreenwood said:


> Have you seen the Leech illustrations for the original Christmas Carol? Or those by Phiz, Dickens' principal illustrator?


I don't much care for it, TBH.


----------



## jegreenwood

Captainnumber36 said:


> So, I'm going to pick up Dicken's A Christmas Carol and Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". I want the Suess not only b/c I love it, but b/c I want inspiration. I do lots of drawings, they are very kid friendly, and I had the idea to create 3 books of 10 poems each with the 30 drawings I have (I have three remaining which will be the covers of the books). I will do more than these three books, but this is just the start!


By the way, if you like A Christmas Carol, you should try one of Dickens' novels. Most are very long, but that allows you to live in his world. I've read most of them. My recommendations for where to start are Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield.

In the 1980s, the Royal Shakespeare Company presented a stage adaptation of Nicholas Nickelby. It was 8 and 1/2 hours long plus a dinner break, and it was one of the most marvelous experiences I've ever had at theatre.


----------



## SixFootScowl

.........................................


----------



## Blancrocher

bharbeke said:


> I've been going through Agatha Christie's works in between some of my SFF reading. Recent successes include A Pocket Full of Rye and Murder is Easy.


There's an excellent article by John Lanchester about Agatha Christie in the latest LRB, in case you're interested.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n24/john-lanchester/the-case-of-agatha-christie


----------



## Blancrocher

Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization (2nd ed., 2006)

Recognized as a classic in its field. Very well written and (rather unexpectedly) passionate. I enjoyed it as an introduction to ancient Egypt and as a powerful book in its own right.


----------



## Tristan

A collection of Susan Sontag's essay collections. This will be fun


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## bharbeke

Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire by Susan Tan

5 star story with enough layers that it can be enjoyed by children and adults alike


----------



## TxllxT

*Utter Chaos (1920)*










A book from 1920 (in German: Tohuwabohu), which transports one by means of live dialogue into Berlin 1904. Very clever, very Jewish, very keen in observing what is human, all too human.


----------



## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
> 
> And IQ84


I'm reading the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle now. I love his easy style. He takes big imaginative ideas and whizzes through them. Norwegian Wood was great too. Sometimes when I'm reading these books, I wonder if they're more of the brain than the heart (if you get me) and if this is particular to a Japanese style of writing? I haven't read many books by Japanese authors...


----------



## Guest




----------



## Guest




----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Physical book. 








Ebook


----------



## Sangburd




----------



## philoctetes

"Conspiracy Theory" - there, said it for ya. Reads like great LA crime fiction. Heavily referenced and footnoted.


----------



## Badinerie

A very good read.


----------



## bharbeke

I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson

This collection of articles highlights wonderful, weird, humorous, and disturbing truths about life in America.


----------



## Tomaslovestereza

I am reading the unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera in Dutch because i am from Belgium, therefore excuse me if i make spelling mistakes in English.
i watched the movie, which was great to be honest, but i prefer the book. The book really describes Tereza's feeling that cannot overcome jealousy and the agony it creates, no matter how hard the feeling tries to overcome the jealousy it will always be there. Tereza, who is being cheated on by her husband Tomas, who is a doctor in Prague. And don't get me wrong, he absolutely loves Tereza but he still has an urge to adultery and she knows it. She's devastated by the fact she will have to 'share' her husband with other women.
I am enjoying the book because i'm still at page 130.
i really recommend it!


----------



## SixFootScowl

From the review on Good Reads website:


> Everyone knows the hits-"Hanky Panky," "Mony Mony," "I Think We're Alone Now," "Crimson and Clover," "Crystal Blue Persuasion." They are nuggets of rock and pop history. However, few know the unlikely story of how these hits came to be...
> 
> Me, the Mob, and the Music tells the intimate story of the relationship between the bright-eyed, sweet-faced blonde musician from the heartland and the big, bombastic, brutal bully from the Bronx, who hustled, cheated, and swindled his way to the top of the music industry. It is also the story of this swaggering, wildly creative era of rock 'n' roll when payola and the strong arm tactics of the mob were the norm, and the hits kept coming.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Another good and very readable Chinese history book. Platt also wrote a great book on the Taiping Rebellion (the costliest war of the 19th century BTW) a few years back


----------



## Guest




----------



## Blancrocher

Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant

An introductory analysis of Shakespeare with the overtly presentist aim to satirize contemporary U.S. politics.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Mary Poppins Opens The Door, almost done with it. Two chapters left.


----------



## Highwayman

I`m on a Dickens marathon, began merrily with A Christmas Carol and currently digging into Great Expectations and have great expectations for it. 

I only own Oliver Twist and Hard Times besides these currently so my questions are:

-What other Dickens novels should I purchase afterwards? 
-What would be the most reasonable order to read them in?


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


>


I'd like to read more playwrights! Oscar Wilde is a good place to start.


----------



## jenspen

Highwayman said:


> I`m on a Dickens marathon, began merrily with A Christmas Carol and currently digging into Great Expectations and have great expectations for it.
> 
> I only own Oliver Twist and Hard Times besides these currently so my questions are:
> 
> -What other Dickens novels should I purchase afterwards?
> -What would be the most reasonable order to read them in?


I"m so glad you asked! Read them in this order:

David Copperfield (Dickens's own favourite, some of his childhood is recreated in it)

Bleak House (the critics' favourite and probably mine)

That's enough to be going on with...


----------



## jegreenwood

jenspen said:


> I"m so glad you asked! Read them in this order:
> 
> David Copperfield (Dickens's own favourite, some of his childhood is recreated in it)
> 
> Bleak House (the critics' favourite and probably mine)
> 
> That's enough to be going on with...


Hear, hear! And Great Expectations.

I was disappointed by Oliver Twist. I prefer his next novel, Nicholas Nickleby.

In any case, that's a lot of pages. I pick up a Dickens novel every few years. I've read 9 of them (plus reading/skimming A Tale of Two Cities in high school). I've read Bleak House twice.

The order doesn't matter too much. Over the years, Dickens' vision darkened. David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby, are my recommendations as starting points.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'd like to read more playwrights! Oscar Wilde is a good place to start.


George Bernard Shaw also did a Joan of Arc play. Sure there are others. I'm not too familiar with WIlde, but did read The Picture of Dorian Grey, which must have been the model for an episode of Twilight Zone.


----------



## starthrower

I know basically zilch about evolutionary biology. I figured I should read this classic, and also read about other theories. Stephen Jay Gould, etc...


----------



## Totenfeier

Just finished _A Christmas Carol_ for Christmas, and this is one of those winters where I am again visiting 18th century London, and Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the company of that young rapscallion James Boswell.


----------



## jenspen

Totenfeier said:


> Just finished _A Christmas Carol_ for Christmas, and this is one of those winters where I am again visiting 18th century London, and Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the company of that young rapscallion James Boswell.


I came across the old George Birkbeck Hill OUP edition with the fascinating, lavish footnotes. Boswell is great narrator, I was amazed, and I love his "Tour to the Hebrides". Lately, however, I've been enjoying the company of his deadly rival, the bubbly Hester Lynch/ Thrale/Piozzi who doesn't seem to know the use of full stops.


----------



## Zofia

John Milton, Paradise Lost: The Biblically Annotated Edition in English


----------



## jegreenwood

Fritz Kobus said:


> George Bernard Shaw also did a Joan of Arc play. Sure there are others. . . .


Jean Anouilh's "The Lark" - (with incidental music for the Broadway production by Bernstein). And in December, I saw Glenn Close as "Mother of the Maid" - a new play by Jane Anderson.

As for Wilde's plays, surely the most popular is "The Importance of Being Earnest." And then, of course, there's "Salome" which was the basis for the Strauss opera.


----------



## RockyIII

I like fiction. This week I'm reading "Pandemic" by Robin Cook. For nonfiction, I have "Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music" by Jan Swafford on my Kindle and have read most of it.

Rocky


----------



## Zofia

This week I will finish:

Chantal Delsol - Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World (fr)
Jordan B. Peterson - Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (eng)
C. G. Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections (de)


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

This one

plus this one


----------



## nenopro

Psycho-cybernetics - Maxwell maltz.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1448 yesterday afternoon I completed my third read of Jack Whyte's *The Skystone*, book one of his *Camulod* series. I'm now some pages into book two, *The Singing Sword*. The series is a telling of the Arthurian saga placed in a plausible historic setting. Book one begins several generations price to Arthur, in a still solidly Roman controlled Britain. Cracks in the Empire are beginning to show, but as yet almost no one notices them. The book's main characters are among those few, and implement plans to survive and thrive once the inevitable, as they see it, occurs. Book two begins with Britain still in Roman hands, though deterioration has begun in earnest. The books are well written. I like them quite a lot. They are my go-to fiction for Arthur in a historic setting.


----------



## Zofia

William Blake - Collected Poems (eng)


----------



## Templeton

Working my way through several books, at the moment, all very different but all fascinating.


----------



## Strange Magic

For those book lovers interested in reading and/or writing longer or more detailed reviews or summaries or descriptions of books, there is an active Book Chat group down in the Groups area of TalkClassical. My own contributions are on recent nonfiction--history, biography, science; others discuss other topics. There is also a Science Fiction group......


----------



## Zofia

Was given years membership (x2) for “Xmas”

Bought Rhetoric, Poetics and Logic - Aristotle (eng)

Look forward to listen to this later.


----------



## Rogerx

The Liar by Stephen Fry.


----------



## Zofia

Rogerx said:


> The Liar by Stephen Fry.


Fiction or Non-Fiction?


----------



## SixFootScowl

Autobiography by rock band Styper's frontman:


----------



## Zofia

Bought Mother LotR and Hobbit in Eng leather bound illustration versions cost a lot bought she will be so happy it was worth it. I used the money from my job plus I make things to sell online.

RIP new graphics card T_T


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Strange Magic said:


> For those book lovers interested in reading and/or writing longer or more detailed reviews or summaries or descriptions of books, there is an active Book Chat group down in the Groups area of TalkClassical. My own contributions are on recent nonfiction--history, biography, science; others discuss other topics. There is also a Science Fiction group......


Thank you! 
Yes I definitely do!


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Zofia said:


> William Blake - Collected Poems (eng)


Can't go wrong there.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Oldhoosierdude said:


> Physical book.
> View attachment 111144
> 
> 
> Ebook
> View attachment 111145


Finished both of these. The Chrysalids is an interesting post apocalyptic tale with kind of a cheesy, everything turns out great for us ending. Wyndham's books have been described as "cozy post apocalyptic" tales and that fits somewhat.

Zorba, hmm what to say about Zorba? A captivating and sometimes maddening book. A book that you have to keep in mind it is set in mid 20th century Greece and not in America. Ideals, laws and morals not what we have here and not of the 21st Century. The (SPOILER!) murder of the widow by the town and the Zorba desecration of the dead monk would not be viewed the same way today. And yes, I found the almost endless discussions of the same subjects over and over to be a bit much and quite contradictory (which is I think one of the points of the characters. For all of their talk and books they have no more answers than anyone else. And a major point that men simply do not understand women and never will.)

This book so captivated me that I ordered another edition of it and will read it post haste. This newer edition translates the work from the authors original Greek manuscript to English instead of the 1940's version translated to English from a French translation. This 2014 book is supposed to be more exact and complete than the other. Evidently there were not only translation issues but entire passages left out of the other publications.


----------



## Zofia

Currently can’t decide what to read for pleasure as I’m sick of opinions masquerading as fact. Sick of being moralised to from people with litte morals.

For school: The Euro and its Threat to the Future of Europe by Joseph Stiglitz 

(note i was not given the book by school but i am reading it for politics debate soon)


----------



## Red Terror

Reading Psalms and a book by Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Bwv 1080

Red Terror said:


> Reading Psalms and a book by Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian.


Perhaps you need one to get through the other?


----------



## starthrower




----------



## philoctetes

Bwv 1080 said:


> Perhaps you need one to get through the other?


McCarthy writes neo-biblical scriptures. BM is like El Topo in book form.

I haven't seen a novel I want to read in a long time. I have several still waiting for me to read. One is the Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch. Another is the jazz trilogy by Nathaniel Mackey. But now I'm just slogging through several books on 20th century American history that I already posted.


----------



## Blancrocher

Lampedusa, The Leopard

I can't believe I hadn't read this before--I finished it and immediately began rereading favorite passages from it. Very different in tone from the Visconti film. A fast favorite novel.


----------



## Zofia

*







Will re-read tonight

Love Norse









Love Banner Saga​*


----------



## Sloe

Blancrocher said:


> Lampedusa, The Leopard
> 
> I can't believe I hadn't read this before--I finished it and immediately began rereading favorite passages from it. Very different in tone from the Visconti film. A fast favorite novel.


I have read the book but not seen the film.


----------



## Guest

_The Haunting of Hill House_ by Shirley Jackson.


----------



## Haydn70

Rereading a great book: _In Defense of Elitism_ by William A. Henry III


----------



## Desafinado

Among other books:










Also have a few on Mesopotamia on the go.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

I have just finished Gerald Larner's biography of Maurice Ravel, in the Phaidon 20th Century Composers series:









A fascinating and attractively written profile of a complex man, with good analysis of his music and of the context in which major works were written.


----------



## Zofia

Tried to buy a text book but apparently they cannot ship it to Germany it is banned big oooff...

edit band > banned?


----------



## CnC Bartok

Beyond Mein Kampff, and anything by that idiot David Irving, can't think of any text books that'd get banned in Germany....


----------



## Zofia

CnC Bartok said:


> Beyond Mein Kampff, and anything by that idiot David Irving, can't think of any text books that'd get banned in Germany....


Mein Kampff is available if you have the reason to have it same with the table talks. I did my political exams last year on the NSDAP propaganda techniques and how those techniques are used by companies and political parties today eg American election. Had to get the ok from the school but I did and got top mark for it.

It is scary to see how much the USA borrow from NSDAP. Not politics (don't delete please) it is true even kidnap our scientists to work for the NASA after the war.

The book I am looking for is a text book on the EU it has letters of Walter Hallstein in it I need and cannot find the unedited version online.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Zofia said:


> did and got top mark for it.
> 
> It is scary to see how much the USA borrow from NSDAP. .


And how much the NSDAP borrowed from the USA (eugenics, the idea of lebensraum inspired by the wild west and Karl May books, etc)


----------



## Zofia

Bwv 1080 said:


> And how much the NSDAP borrowed from the USA (eugenics, the idea of lebensraum inspired by the wild west and Karl May books, etc)


Would be interesting to read if you ever want to DM some links would be most kind. I fear if it continues here...


----------



## Bwv 1080

Zofia said:


> Would be interesting to read if you ever want to DM some links would be most kind. I fear if it continues here...
> 
> View attachment 112934


Here are a couple of links

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/06/race.usa

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...er-americas-conquest-of-native-americans.html


----------



## SixFootScowl

Bwv 1080 said:


> And how much the NSDAP borrowed from the USA (eugenics, the idea of lebensraum inspired by the wild west and Karl May books, etc)


Also how Hitler got many ideas from segregationist laws in America. From a book review (I have not read this book):


> But while Jim Crow segregation was one aspect of American law that appealed to Nazi radicals, it was not the most consequential one. Rather, both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws-the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened, but too harsh.


More interesting is who in America promulgated all the anti-black laws, owned the slaves, and converted slavery from the plantation to the modern-day ghettos and barrios of our big cities. It was not America that did this but a specific group of Americans. Site rules prevent more being said.


----------



## DaveM

Site rules ordinarily prevent the subject matter in the posts going back to and including #4787. Therefore, I won’t respond to them, but was tempted to.


----------



## starthrower

Racist ideas in America? This man has written a very interesting history.
https://www.ibramxkendi.com/


----------



## SixFootScowl

DaveM said:


> Site rules ordinarily prevent the subject matter in the posts going back to and including #4787. Therefore, I won't respond to them, but was tempted to.


I don't know. Are those posts exhibiting prohibited political discussions or are they merely discussing history?


----------



## DaveM

Fritz Kobus said:


> I don't know. Are those posts exhibiting prohibited political discussions or are they merely discussing history?


Comments about what Nazism allegedly borrowed from America and vice-versa and pithy comments, without context, about post-war Germany/America and racism and slavery which present opinions/comments that can provoke responses? What could go wrong?


----------



## SixFootScowl

DaveM said:


> Comments about what Nazism allegedly borrowed from America and vice-versa and pithy comments, without context, about post-war Germany/America and racism and slavery which present opinions/comments that can provoke responses? What could go wrong?


You have a point, but does it yet violate any site rules?


----------



## CnC Bartok

Fritz Kobus said:


> You have a point, but does it yet violate any site rules?


I think it only violates site rules when Hitler and Wagner get mentioned in the same sentence.....:devil:


----------



## haydnguy

I doubt it violates site rules. Only violates the discussion in this thread.

*Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment*


----------



## Barbebleu

Just finished reading the penultimate book in the Bernie Gunther series by Philip Kerr - Greeks Bearing Gifts. Excellent as always.


----------



## Zofia

CnC Bartok said:


> I think it only violates site rules when Hitler and Wagner get mentioned in the same sentence.....:devil:


I do not know about site rules but doing so breaks Zofia's law and I will come for you...


----------



## eugeneonagain

Just finished: _Love, Sex & Tragedy: Why Classics Matters _by Simon Goldhill. Popular non-fiction about classics. A good read.

I'm now on _Christ Re-crucified _by Niko Kazantzakis. A book given to me by a neighbour to read, with a post-it note on the front reading: 'Not trying to convert you!' It's the second time I've had to restart it after getting sidetracked.


----------



## Zofia

eugeneonagain said:


> Just finished: _Love, Sex & Tragedy: Why Classics Matters _by Simon Goldhill. Popular non-fiction about classics. A good read.
> 
> I'm now on _Christ Re-crucified _by Niko Kazantzakis. A book given to me by a neighbour to read, with a post-it note on the front reading: 'Not trying to convert you!' It's the second time I've had to restart it after getting sidetracked.


Sounds interesting read









Got this free from kindle


----------



## Guest

Dante's Divine Comedy - the Robert M. Durling translation


----------



## jegreenwood

Barbebleu said:


> Just finished reading the penultimate book in the Bernie Gunther series by Philip Kerr - Greeks Bearing Gifts. Excellent as always.


Agreed. The only one I didn't care for - and I have read most of them - was "The Other Side of Silence." Shame there is ony one more.


----------



## jegreenwood

DrMike said:


> Dante's Divine Comedy - the Robert M. Durling translation


That's on my list. I read "The Inferno" decades ago. Now I want to read the whole thing. I bought the Mandelbaum translation, but I have several other translations of "The Inferno," including a collaboration by 20 contemporary (as of 1993) poets.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

In passing, it does amuse me how rarely a posting to this thread admits to having just read and thoroughly enjoyed a lowbrow junk novel!
That's not a criticism, just an observation.


----------



## Barbebleu

Europe's Tragedy - A History of the Thirty Years War by Peter Wilson. I may be some time!


----------



## Barbebleu

Pat Fairlea said:


> In passing, it does amuse me how rarely a posting to this thread admits to having just read and thoroughly enjoyed a lowbrow junk novel!
> That's not a criticism, just an observation.


I read them all when I was young. Every Mickey Spillane book, every Dennis Wheatley, you name the "lowbrow junk" genre and I have most likely read it and thoroughly enjoyed it too!

I've no idea what popular fiction gets read nowadays. If I did I'd be happy to give it a go. I still read Irvine Welsh which I suppose some would term lowbrow. One man's lowbrow junk, another man's high art.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Pat Fairlea said:


> In passing, it does amuse me how rarely a posting to this thread admits to having just read and thoroughly enjoyed a lowbrow junk novel!
> That's not a criticism, just an observation.


Speaking of which, I'm getting stuck into the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In the cuneiform first edition, obviously.


----------



## Barbebleu

Pat Fairlea said:


> Speaking of which, I'm getting stuck into the Epic of Gilgamesh.
> In the cuneiform first edition, obviously.


Clearly it's always better to read this sort of stuff in the original language. Less room for losing something in translation I imagine!!:lol:


----------



## Barbebleu

CnC Bartok said:


> Beyond Mein Kampff, and anything by that idiot David Irving, can't think of any text books that'd get banned in Germany....


You're being very kind by merely referring to Irving as an idiot. An insult to idiots the world over. I have a long list of epithets for him that would have me drummed out of this forum at the gallop!


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Rogerx




----------



## Guest

Pat Fairlea said:


> Speaking of which, I'm getting stuck into the Epic of Gilgamesh.
> In the cuneiform first edition, obviously.


I keep meaning to get a copy of Gilgamesh. 
I must do it before I'm much older.


----------



## jegreenwood

Pat Fairlea said:


> In passing, it does amuse me how rarely a posting to this thread admits to having just read and thoroughly enjoyed a lowbrow junk novel!
> That's not a criticism, just an observation.


Depends what you call lowbrow - I read tons of detective/suspense/thriller/spy novels. Reading one by Sara Paretsky now.

I hate Gillian Flynn, though.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

poco a poco said:


> I keep meaning to get a copy of Gilgamesh.
> I must do it before I'm much older.


*Spoiler alert*
There's a flood and everyone dies.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

jegreenwood said:


> Depends what you call lowbrow - I read tons of detective/suspense/thriller/spy novels. Reading one by Sara Paretsky now.
> 
> I hate Gillian Flynn, though.


Good call.
Because of my former career, some people assume that I will be an avid reader of Patricia Cornwell's novels. I'm not. The writing is clunky, she has a tin-ear for human dialogue, and her much-vaunted forensic knowledge doesn't seem to stop her making elementary technical and procedural blunders. 
Val McDermid, now, is quite a different matter!


----------



## Zofia

i think no matter what you read it is better than not reading


----------



## SixFootScowl

Zofia said:


> i think no matter what you read it is better than not reading


If anyone cannot figure out what to read, this is a great book that I read some 20 years ago and would like to read again (for those interested, here is an article on this book):


----------



## Gordontrek

The story of five Hollywood film directors (Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, George Stevens) who paused their careers to help the U.S. military make films during World War II. They made training films, propaganda films, directly documented the war on the front lines, anything the military needed them to do. I love the story of Frank Capra's _Why We Fight,_ and also the stories of William Wyler and George Stevens who actually put themselves in harm's way to document the war on the battlefield (or flying over it in Wyler's case).


----------



## Guest

Pat Fairlea said:


> Good call.
> Because of my former career, some people assume that I will be an avid reader of Patricia Cornwell's novels. I'm not. The writing is clunky, she has a tin-ear for human dialogue, and her much-vaunted forensic knowledge doesn't seem to stop her making elementary technical and procedural blunders.
> _Val McDermid, now, is quite a different matter!_


Amen! She is one of my favorite crime writers. Gritty without being nauseating.

I also agree about Cornwell. I read one of her novels and that was enough.


----------



## jegreenwood

Pat Fairlea said:


> Good call.
> Because of my former career, some people assume that I will be an avid reader of Patricia Cornwell's novels. I'm not. The writing is clunky, she has a tin-ear for human dialogue, and her much-vaunted forensic knowledge doesn't seem to stop her making elementary technical and procedural blunders.
> Val McDermid, now, is quite a different matter!


Re: Val McDermid - there was one novel in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series that upset me so much, it put me off serial killer novels for years. I read some of her other novels in the interim and am now carefully catching up with Tony and Carol.


----------



## senza sordino

I've just finished reading SPQR A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard. This took me a while, I started last spring before my trip to Italy last summer, but then I put it down and read a few novels. I picked it up again in January. It was really interesting. But what really struck me is she tells us about the history of Rome, but also, how we know the history of Rome.

Tonight I'll start reading A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.


----------



## bharbeke

I'm in the middle of Bad Blood by Carreyrou. It tells the tale of how and why Theranos went down. The feeling is a little like the movie All the President's Men, except with a biotech company instead of a presidential administration.


----------



## jenspen

jegreenwood said:


> Depends what you call lowbrow - I read tons of detective/suspense/thriller/spy novels. Reading one by Sara Paretsky now.
> 
> I hate Gillian Flynn, though.


I love mysteries but I went off Gillian Flynn. I liked the review that said Gillian Flynn reminded one of "that strange neighbourhood kid who is a little too fascinated by chopping earthworms in half or seeing what happens when you burn ants...".

I wonder if you've come across Kate Atkinson? Her Jackson Brodie mysteries have a Dickensian range of characters of great charm (or charmlessness). Plot twists and surprises at almost every turn of the page and lots of literary allusion, snarkiness, warmth and terror. Very funny at times. I'm re-reading one of her early novels - "Human Croquet" - at the moment.

I do have a number of books on the go usually - hard copy, Kindle, audiobook, depending where I am - but another that I'm reading with close attention is Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now."


----------



## TxllxT

The Dutch book 'Kneeling on a bed of violets' (2005) reads as if Maxim Gorky has gone Dutch. The author paints a Calvinist world of living (Vincent Van Gogh like), where the Biblical mount Sinai becomes a hill near Arnhem and the Biblical isle Patmos (where John was said to be living in exile writing The Apocalypse) becomes a floating piece of peat bog in the holm of the river Rhine. Poetical, true to life.

Translated into English in 2016:


----------



## Blancrocher

Richard Halpern, Eclipse of Action: Tragedy and Political Economy

Very impressive writing on the relationships between the economy and dramatic works of Aeschylus, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Beckett, & others.


----------



## KarlHeinz

S. Lagerlöf: Gösta Berling's Saga – A Swedish classic
V. Persichetti: 20th Century Harmony
W. Piston: Orchestration


----------



## Pat Fairlea

jenspen said:


> I love mysteries but I went off Gillian Flynn. I liked the review that said Gillian Flynn reminded one of "that strange neighbourhood kid who is a little too fascinated by chopping earthworms in half or seeing what happens when you burn ants...".
> 
> I wonder if you've come across Kate Atkinson? Her Jackson Brodie mysteries have a Dickensian range of characters of great charm (or charmlessness). Plot twists and surprises at almost every turn of the page and lots of literary allusion, snarkiness, warmth and terror. Very funny at times. I'm re-reading one of her early novels - "Human Croquet" - at the moment.
> 
> I do have a number of books on the go usually - hard copy, Kindle, audiobook, depending where I am - but another that I'm reading with close attention is Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now."


Oh yes, big fan of Kate Atkinson. Her plot lines multiply and twist around like a multiplying-twisty thing, but come to a satisfactory conclusion with loose ends all tied in. And she could teach P. Cornwell (and many others) a thing or two about how people actually talk to each other.

PS. If you enjoy Kate Atkinson, try Sophie Hannah.


----------



## jenspen

Pat Fairlea said:


> ..
> PS. If you enjoy Kate Atkinson, try Sophie Hannah.


Ta, the local library has some I notice.


----------



## Jacck

I am reading *The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman*. Awesome book, but not for everyone.


----------



## jegreenwood

Pat Fairlea said:


> Oh yes, big fan of Kate Atkinson. Her plot lines multiply and twist around like a multiplying-twisty thing, but come to a satisfactory conclusion with loose ends all tied in. And she could teach P. Cornwell (and many others) a thing or two about how people actually talk to each other.
> 
> PS. If you enjoy Kate Atkinson, try Sophie Hannah.


Got a signed copy of "Transcription" from Kate Atkinson last fall. I've read two of the Brodies, but "Life After Life" is my favorite. I read the last 100 pages sitting by my father's side while he was in hospice care, so that book has a resonance for me like no other.

I have mixed feelings about Sophie Hannah. I've read her two Poirots and two of her own. The premises and characterizations are interesting, but I've been slightly disappointed in the end. I'm not giving up on her, though.

Let me recommend Tana French.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I am currently listening to audio books of Ian Fleming's Bond series in order of publication. I listen while driving for work. I am at #5 Dr. No. I have to say that Casino Royale was pretty good. Live and let die was OK and Moonraker good. But Diamonds are forever and From Russia with love were quite dire. Dr. No is at least OK, meaning not as racist or sexist and no inane plot or dialogue.

I am beginning to wonder why I ever liked these books.


----------



## Rogerx

Nickname: 50 shades of gay


----------



## jegreenwood

Jacck said:


> I am reading *The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman*. Awesome book, but not for everyone.


A post-modern novel written in the 18th century.


----------



## Blancrocher

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I am currently listening to audio books of Ian Fleming's Bond series in order of publication. I listen while driving for work. I am at #5 Dr. No. I have to say that Casino Royale was pretty good. Live and let die was OK and Moonraker good. But Diamonds are forever and From Russia with love were quite dire. Dr. No is at least OK, meaning not as racist or sexist and no inane plot or dialogue.
> 
> I am beginning to wonder why I ever liked these books.


If you haven't heard them, you might want to check out the BBC's radio dramatizations of John le Carré's George Smiley novels. I found myself regretting my arrivals at my various destinations when I had those for my vehicular listening.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Written before he was elected. Gives the reasons why he would be elected. I am not very far in yet but noteworthy is that he is not beholden to the big GOP funding doners as he didn't need their money, so he does not have to please them, which is what hinders any Republican who gets in office.


----------



## Jacck

jegreenwood said:


> A post-modern novel written in the 18th century.


yes, the book was 2 centuries ahead of its time. It is full of brilliant philosophical humor. My favorite part was the The Damnation of Obadiah. I have never heard such an evil curse before :lol:
http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/tristram-shandy-damnation-of-obadiah.html
and the anti-travelogue in book 8 is hillarious too.


----------



## Larkenfield

Gordontrek said:


> The story of five Hollywood film directors (Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, George Stevens) who paused their careers to help the U.S. military make films during World War II. They made training films, propaganda films, directly documented the war on the front lines, anything the military needed them to do. I love the story of Frank Capra's _Why We Fight,_ and also the stories of William Wyler and George Stevens who actually put themselves in harm's way to document the war on the battlefield (or flying over it in Wyler's case).


In case anyone hasn't seen them, their films can be found on Netflix streaming by doing a search on each name. Also, anyone interested in the original D-Day radio broadcasts can find them at the Internet Archive. It's possible to hear how different and unified the country was at the height of its military power. It was a different America. The news was bipartisan with superb commentators who had risked their lives in real combat and spoke intelligently without all the modern day "uhs," "ums," and "you knows." What a relief to go back in time!


----------



## SixFootScowl

Awesome book!


> Fully revised and updated, this work covers all of BMW's consistently acclaimed machines, from the boxer twins of the 1920's to the exciting K and R series, and new concept designs for the next century. Filled with a complete BMW company history and detailed technical analysis of the machines.


----------



## StrE3ss

Start reading :


----------



## jegreenwood

I recently finished "A Gentleman in Moscow," a literate, near-fantasy entertainment about a Russian Count imprisoned in 1922 in the Metropol Hotel. Of course the cruelty of the Soviet regime can't be kept entirely outside the revolving door.

As a decided change of pace, I'm now reading "Native Son."


----------



## Bwv 1080

The author is a former Red Army officer who lost his father in the battle, so interesting perspective on a largely forgotten episode


----------



## DaveM

Reading the story of Ernest Shackleton's 1915 attempt to cross the Antarctic only to have his ship, Endurance, get trapped in ice 12+ feet thick to the point of being literally crushed.


----------



## SixFootScowl

DaveM said:


> Reading the story of Ernest Shackleton's 1915 attempt to cross the Antarctic only to have his ship, Endurance, get trapped in ice 12+ feet thick to the point of being literally crushed.


If you like that one, you have to read this one. I read it probably 25 years ago, but it is still vivid how they ate sled dogs to survive an Antartic winter alone with most of their provisions lost down a crevasse and got Vitiman A poisoning from sled dog liver (this happens from eating carnivore liver I am told). His partner went into dementia and finally died. There is a grisly scene of their last sled dog meal where a head was bobbing up and down in a boiling pot. Mawson was the only one to leave being rescued the next spring, emaciated and looking like he came out of a NAZI concentration camp. Gripping story!


----------



## SixFootScowl

^ Oops, misspelled vitamin.


----------



## Jacck

*Robert Hazen - The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet*


----------



## ldiat

21 st Century Handicapping.....by Dick Mitchell


----------



## LezLee

Jacck said:


> I am reading *The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman*. Awesome book, but not for everyone.


I'm ashamed to say (as a librarian) I never read Tristram Shandy. My sister lived for a while in Sutton-on-the-Forest where Laurence Sterne was once the vicar. Beautiful area. She never read it either!


----------



## Judith

My other passion is history and am currently reading "England. History of a Nation" written by David Ross. Starts with Neolithic through to recent times.


----------



## jegreenwood

I read a review of a new Jasper Fforde novel last week, and remembered I have had his "Something Rotten" in my bookcase for years. The first paragraph of the review pretty much captures my response to the three novels I've read.

"Reading Jasper Fforde is like being invited to a literary-themed dinner party. You know some things for sure: It's going to be long, it's going to get weird and you're going to have fun. By the end of the night, you will have consumed a great deal. You might not be full, because a lot of what was served was pretty fluffy. But the next morning, you don't regret having gone. And even if you don't feel the need to do it again immediately, you'll say yes the next time you're invited."

If I had to compare him to anyone, it might be Douglas Adams, but I've also seen comparisons with J.K. Rowling (the earlier novels), and Lewis Carroll. And just each of those authors has a unique voice, so does Fforde.

p.s. - For anyone intrigued, I would start with "The Eyre Affair" - the first novel in the Thursday Next (that's her name) series. That plot starts with the theft of the manuscript of "Martin Chuzzlewit," for reasons too horrifying to describe. And now the same person is after "Jane Eyre."


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

jegreenwood said:


> I read a review of a new Jasper Fforde novel last week, and remembered I have had his "Something Rotten" in my bookcase for years. The first paragraph of the review pretty much captures my response to the three novels I've read.
> 
> "Reading Jasper Fforde is like being invited to a literary-themed dinner party. You know some things for sure: It's going to be long, it's going to get weird and you're going to have fun. By the end of the night, you will have consumed a great deal. You might not be full, because a lot of what was served was pretty fluffy. But the next morning, you don't regret having gone. And even if you don't feel the need to do it again immediately, you'll say yes the next time you're invited."
> 
> If I had to compare him to anyone, it might be Douglas Adams, but I've also seen comparisons with J.K. Rowling (the earlier novels), and Lewis Carroll. And just each of those authors has a unique voice, so does Fforde.
> 
> p.s. - For anyone intrigued, I would start with "The Eyre Affair" - the first novel in the Thursday Next (that's her name) series. That plot starts with the theft of the manuscript of "Martin Chuzzlewit," for reasons too horrifying to describe. And now the same person is after "Jane Eyre."


Sounds interesting.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I attempted this one.

*Pure T trash.*

It was repetitious, gross, and a bit dull until I got to the part about the sadistic abuse of children in graphic detail. That was one too many for me, I quit right there. I didn't expect it to be a nice book because it is by and about drug addicts and addictions, but this one is too sick and disgusting. I could find little redeeming literary value to speak of. This is supposed to be largely autobiographical, in which case the author should have been arrested for participating in the abuse of children or at least for not reporting it.


----------



## Red Terror

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 113999
> 
> 
> I attempted this one.
> 
> *Pure T trash.*
> 
> It was repetitious, gross, and a bit dull until I got to the part about the sadistic abuse of children in graphic detail. That was one too many for me, I quit right there. I didn't expect it to be a nice book because it is by and about drug addicts and addictions, but this one is too sick and disgusting. I could find little redeeming literary value to speak of. This is supposed to be largely autobiographical, in which case the author should have been arrested for participating in the abuse of children or at least for not reporting it.


I thought this a masterpiece as a college freshman. Now? Couldn't care less.


----------



## Red Terror




----------



## Red Terror

Bwv 1080 said:


> Perhaps you need one to get through the other?


A great pairing, but the book of Psalms is the clear winner.


----------



## Guest




----------



## starthrower




----------



## Zofia

starthrower said:


>


I love this book so much.

I am looking for audible recording please I git many credits for Chirstmas and my Birthday.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Finished this one. Astoundingly good. Once I figured out why Faulkner was writing the way he did and the flow of that first part, I could see the genius of the work. I recommend reading the version with the authors appendix, which he intended to be read first. It clears up quite a lot.


----------



## Larkenfield

I refuse to read a book. It would only educate me. But I have read the John Cage Bible with its silent ineffable lettering. Apparently, the state of Genesis no longer exists.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Pat Fairlea

I have just finished 'Munich' by Robert Harris.
Excellent. A masterclass in narrative arc.


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> Finished this one. Astoundingly good. Once I figured out why Faulkner was writing the way he did and the flow of that first part, I could see the genius of the work. I recommend reading the version with the authors appendix, which he intended to be read first. It clears up quite a lot.
> 
> View attachment 114055


I need to read it again. (Last time was 40 years ago.)


----------



## Blancrocher

John T. Irwin, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Fiction: "An Almost Theatrical Innocence"


----------



## Anna Strobl

Mr & Mrs Bridge by Evan Connell


----------



## jegreenwood

Anna Strobl said:


> Mr & Mrs Bridge by Evan Connell


There's a mention of those books in the current New Yorker. As a representative of the path not taken in recent literature.


----------



## Zofia

*







Swords of Time - Sarah Allerding

ASIN: B07D3YS3B4​*
For the Kindle looks enjoyable light read look forward to starting tomorrow.


----------



## starthrower

Finally got hold of a copy of Bill Bruford's autobiography. He's a good writer and storyteller which makes this book a delightful read.


----------



## senza sordino

I just finish reading A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. I really enjoyed reading this. Not because I'm into all the violence. I liked the book because of the language. Burgess invented this slang language called Nadsat. The setting is a dystopian future where some Russian words have seeped into English. Nadsat is mostly spoken by the younger generation, the malchicks. Plus there was some Cockney rhyming slang. I could figure out the Nadsat words by context. And I know a few Russian words.

Written in first person. I printed a list of the new words I found online. The narrator used the word horrorshow a lot. It means good, from the Russian for good.

The original book has three sections with seven chapters each. The original American edition cut the final chapter. I read the original English version with the final chapter included. But the movie used the American edition.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## HistoryJoe

Pat Fairlea said:


> I have just finished 'Munich' by Robert Harris.
> Excellent. A masterclass in narrative arc.


Huh. Might need to check that out. I loved his Cicero trilogy and the one on the aquaduct repair guy in Pompeii right when the volcano's about to blow. Apparently he's Nick Hornby's brother-in-law which amuses me for some reason


----------



## Zofia

I plan to reread the A Song of Ice and Fire Saga starting tomorrow after church. I had planned to start today but was asked to cover a shift for someone at the Kaffeehaus.


----------



## Zofia

It begins *OwO
*


----------



## starthrower

I found a copy at B&N, even though I wasn't looking for this. But I wanted to read some Marx and Engels.


----------



## Zofia

starthrower said:


> View attachment 114489
> 
> 
> I found a copy at B&N, even though I wasn't looking for this. But I wanted to read some Marx and Engels.


While I understand the superficial appeal of Marxism I think it's fundamentally flawed for reasons I won't go into here. Especially in the Communist Manifesto. This is not a criticism of you ST I don't mind if you argree with me or Marx or anyone else. I did want to say if you want a proper read of M&E I can send you Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie in German with English translation side by side.

It is a free download so it is not piracy.

edit

I think it good to read regardless of ones on politic it is historic document. Wish to state again not a critique of ST.


----------



## StrangeHocusPocus

Zofia said:


> While I understand the superficial appeal of Marxism I think it's fundamentally flawed for reasons I won't go into here. Especially in the Communist Manifesto. This is not a criticism of you ST I don't mind if you argree with me or Marx or anyone else. I did want to say if you want a proper read of M&E I can send you Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie in German with English translation side by side.
> 
> It is a free download so it is not piracy.
> 
> edit
> 
> I think it good to read regardless of ones on politic it is historic document. Wish to state again not a critique of ST.


What your view on the current world situation with Communist countries having capitalist tendencies ??


----------



## eugeneonagain

StrangeHocusPocus said:


> What your view on the current world situation with Communist countries having capitalist tendencies ??


And capitalist countries having corporate socialist tendencies?

I, too, am all ears.


----------



## Rogerx

The Consolations of Philosophy book and TV series.
Much unhappiness comes from comparing yourself against other people and judging your own worth by their expectations.


----------



## StrangeHocusPocus

Huxley: The devil's disciple


----------



## SixFootScowl

StrangeHocusPocus said:


> Huxley: The devil's disciple


Oddly, there are two different covers for that book, one with a longer, more descriptive subtitle:


----------



## geralmar

1976. (AKA: Project Dracula). I'm halfway through and so far very strange for an "apocalyptic thriller". The protagonist is spending all his time in meetings.


----------



## starthrower

Zofia said:


> While I understand the superficial appeal of Marxism I think it's fundamentally flawed for reasons I won't go into here. Especially in the Communist Manifesto. This is not a criticism of you ST I don't mind if you argree with me or Marx or anyone else. I did want to say if you want a proper read of M&E I can send you Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie in German with English translation side by side.
> 
> It is a free download so it is not piracy.
> 
> edit
> 
> I think it good to read regardless of ones on politic it is historic document. Wish to state again not a critique of ST.


I have no romantic notions about Marxism or any other ism, I just enjoy reading the ideas of the great thinkers. I never got around to this earlier in life because I was always working to pay the bills. So now I sit around and read some history, philosophy, and science. I like the cheap B&N editions. They all come with excellent intoductions written by knowledgeable scholars and professors. Some needed background for an under read flunky like myself.


----------



## starthrower

eugeneonagain said:


> And capitalist countries having corporate socialist tendencies?
> 
> I, too, am all ears.


Tendencies? That's putting it mildly. Everyone knows this world revolves around money and who has most of it. So "workers of the world unite" or be crushed.


----------



## Vronsky

*Invisible Cities* by Italo Calvino
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9809.Invisible_Cities


----------



## Jacck

*Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong*
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/126606.Death_of_a_Red_Heroine


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

senza sordino said:


> I just finish reading A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. I really enjoyed reading this. Not because I'm into all the violence. I liked the book because of the language. Burgess invented this slang language called Nadsat. The setting is a dystopian future where some Russian words have seeped into English. Nadsat is mostly spoken by the younger generation, the malchicks. Plus there was some Cockney rhyming slang. I could figure out the Nadsat words by context. And I know a few Russian words.
> 
> Written in first person. I printed a list of the new words I found online. The narrator used the word horrorshow a lot. It means good, from the Russian for good.
> 
> The original book has three sections with seven chapters each. The original American edition cut the final chapter. I read the original English version with the final chapter included. But the movie used the American edition.


I did not know there was any cutting done. I'll have to look that up. It has been some time since I read this one. The wife and I watched the movie recently as she had never seen it. Her main comment was she didn't see the need for all of the unclothed females. I said, that's the price of art.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Guest




----------



## Vronsky

*A Cloud in Trousers & Other Poems* by Vladimir Mayakovsky
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...ating=1&utm_medium=api&utm_source=book_widget


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Rogerx said:


> The Consolations of Philosophy book and TV series.
> Much unhappiness comes from comparing yourself against other people and judging your own worth by their expectations.


Without comparing and competition there would be no betterment of the individual and no progress of the species. Just sayin'


----------



## JosefinaHW

SiegendesLicht said:


> Without comparing and competition there would be no betterment of the individual and no progress of the species. Just sayin'


Omg, My Dear Friend?!?!! You have extremely limited time on here when you log on here and this is what you choose to post?!??! Get with it Woman 
To post? All mature people know they are in a competition w themselves! What the hell anyone else is doing is a concern for the very young, immature, or the unenlightened! NOw tell me everything u think is brilliant about the opera Siegfried. Or go tell Hammerklavier everything that is brilliant about Shubert's lieder. Bear Hug. Jo


----------



## bharbeke

Humans are social, and of course we care what other people are doing. Our happiness and value should not be measured solely against what we see others achieve, but there is inspirational and aspirational value in trying to reach or clear a high bar set by another.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

JosefinaHW said:


> Omg, My Dear Friend?!?!! You have extremely limited time on here when you log on here and this is what you choose to post?!??! Get with it Woman
> To post? All mature people know they are in a competition w themselves! What the hell anyone else is doing is a concern for the very young, immature, or the unenlightened! NOw tell me everything u think is brilliant about the opera Siegfried. Or go tell Hammerklavier everything that is brilliant about Shubert's lieder. Bear Hug. Jo


The very reason I have limited time to post on here is that I am in the business of competing. I have a job I really, really love that takes a lot of my time. And after only 2 years in Germany I am making more than my hubby who went to school here and had every chance to make something of himself... and chose to sit on his lazy butt and tell me a bunch of lies about his oh-so-nice education and work instead.

Right now I can very much identify with Siegfried who was taught smithing by a lying dwarf and who soon overcame his teacher at his own art.

Sorry, I know this post does not exactly fit into the book topic. A huge bear hug back to you, Josefina :angel:


----------



## JosefinaHW

SiegendesLicht said:


> The very reason I have limited time to post on here is that I am in the business of competing. I have a job I really, really love that takes a lot of my time. And after only 2 years in Germany I am making more than my hubby who went to school here and had every chance to make something of himself... and chose to sit on his lazy butt and tell me a bunch of lies about his oh-so-nice education and work instead.
> 
> Right now I can very much identify with Siegfried who was taught smithing by a lying dwarf and who soon overcame his teacher at his own art.
> 
> Sorry, I know this post does not exactly fit into the book topic. A huge bear hug back to you, Josefina :angel:


Oh my. I am sorry to hear your domestic situation is whatever it is right now. Forget about stomping on MIme there is an utterly charming member on here who thinks that women have it so easier than men. Lol. Go have some fun w that one SL!

You know I was only teasing you w my original post here. I am thrilled u have the opportunity to travel so much. I just miss you. Too.


----------



## Blancrocher

I recently finished a good audiobook recording of Don Quixote (narrated by George Guidall; trans. Edith Grossman). As with previous readings, I found my attention wandering in the 2nd half of the 2nd book, but as always I enjoyed it. I'm going to read E.C. Riley's study, Cervantes' Theory of the Novel, shortly. Incidentally, I recently discovered that a former scholar of early modern Spain, Barry Ife, is now the Principal of the Guildhall School of Music and frequently publishes on D. Scarlatti. 

I'm getting sufficiently into Audiobooks that I've been considering a subscription service like Audible, but I've decided against it for now: I don't like this drm-protection stuff, so I'll just keep buying cds and making occasional trips to the library. I'd be interested if anyone who uses the service had advice.


----------



## Varick

Blancrocher said:


> I recently finished a good audiobook recording of Don Quixote (narrated by George Guidall; trans. Edith Grossman). As with previous readings, I found my attention wandering in the 2nd half of the 2nd book, but as always I enjoyed it. I'm going to read E.C. Riley's study, Cervantes' Theory of the Novel, shortly. Incidentally, I recently discovered that a former scholar of early modern Spain, Barry Ife, is now the Principal of the Guildhall School of Music and frequently publishes on D. Scarlatti.
> 
> I'm getting sufficiently into Audiobooks that I've been considering a subscription service like Audible, but I've decided against it for now: I don't like this drm-protection stuff, so I'll just keep buying cds and making occasional trips to the library. I'd be interested if anyone who uses the service had advice.


I have become a huge audiobook (via Audible) fan in the past 9 months or so. I have gone through 5 books and 4 historical lectures in that time period. I am driving about 2-3 hours a day and have been so busy. I probably wouldn't have gotten through ONE of those books or transcribed lectures yet in that same amount of time.

Now, I am a romantic when it comes to books. I still prefer them sitting in my hand, underlining words, sentences, passages, paragraphs and writing notes and thoughts in margins. However, time does not allow such luxuries right now in my life in abundance. So audiobooks it is. It's not just driving either. Sometimes when I'm grocery shopping, sitting having a cigar staring out at a nice scenic view when I stop on my motorcycle, and other times, when a book in hand just won't work.


----------



## Varick

Some of the recent ones on Audible I've listened to:




























On the second volume of this absolutely incredible, frightening, and immensely historically significant book. By far, one of the most important books in the 20th Century.



















The last two are lectures. I do believe Rufus Fears was one of the greatest historical lecturers of our time. RIP.

I would never have gotten through two of these if it wasn't for audible. That's another thing, if you are into lectures about myriad topics, then Audible has this immense series called "Great Courses" ranging from history to science to art to many other academic subjects. All (or almost all) are done by renowned college professors.

V


----------



## Jacck

I finished the Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong. Crime novels are not my favorite genre, but this one was very good.
I started with the *Liu Cixin* Chinese scifi trilogy *Remembrance of Earth's Past*


----------



## Jacck

Varick said:


> On the second volume of this absolutely incredible, frightening, and immensely historically significant book. By far, one of the most important books in the 20th Century.


yes, I read the Archipelago Gulag, but I finished just the 1st book of the trilogy, which is about the Stalinist show trials. Scary masochistic reading. And the current Russian regime endorses and rehabilitates Stalin and the KGB officer Putin is a descendant of this system. I really wished it to the ordinary Russian people, that they get rid of these scumbags

try also these books
https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471
https://www.amazon.com/Cannot-forgive-Escaped-Auschwitz-1997-10-19/dp/B01FIZ4VCE/
you are never going to forget them


----------



## Captainnumber36

I just finished "A Case of Identity" (A Sherlock Holmes Short Story) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was great, I love how the story focuses on being inside the mind of Holmes in a way rather than action based mystery; it focuses on explaining the logic and reasoning behind Holmes thinking process. 

I'm planning to read "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" by Poe tonight as well. Short stories are great! 

Edit: I ended up reading the Poe and found it interesting! It's such a detailed account, in prose, of Pfaall's adventure to the moon. Is it one of the first Science Fiction stories written?


----------



## Captainnumber36

I am working my way through two collections: one of Poe's works and one of Holmes' stories. I read "Mesmeric Revelation" by Poe last night and found it fascinating. These first few stories in the collection display Poe's sharp sense of science/philosophy. This story in particular focuses on theological issues and is quite thought provoking in doing so. I found some of my own ideas about God being replicated in Poe's dialogue.

One thing that I didn't like about these first few stories is something that made me love them at the same time; that it IS so based in science that it almost seems to fail to tell a story; they feel more about scientific ideas than being plot driven.

But, like I said, that is also what is attractive about them. I like hearing the characters think out loud. All in all, I enjoyed the story very much!


----------



## bharbeke

Star Wars: Queen's Shadow by E.K. Johnston - 4 out of 5 stars

This is a great look at Padme, her handmaidens, and the politics of both Naboo and the Galactic Senate.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> I am working my way through two collections: one of Poe's works and one of Holmes' stories.


If you like Poe, then you need to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's works.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


> If you like Poe, then you need to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's works.


I think you mentioned that earlier in the thread. I have read The Scarlet Letter and can see how their writing styles are similar!


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I read this one. I would give it 2.5 stars out of 5. A fast read, got rave reviews but I find it only adequate.

It has good things going for it but an equal number the other way around. I really dislike thinly disguised contrived literary devices for the purpose of impressing me with their deep meaning. This book has those.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Fritz Kobus said:


> If you like Poe, then you need to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's works.


I recently listened to the audio book of The House of the Seven Gables. I was only mildly impressed.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Current ebook

View attachment 115156


----------



## SixFootScowl

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I recently listened to the audio book of The House of the Seven Gables. I was only mildly impressed.


Perhaps it looses something in audiobook form. I do think our brains process things differently reading than listening. It has been perhaps 25 years since I read it, but I thought it was a great book.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Oldhoosierdude said:


> Current ebook
> 
> View attachment 115156


Once more........


----------



## SixFootScowl

^  Now that looks quite interesting.


----------



## Varick

Jacck said:


> yes, I read the Archipelago Gulag, but I finished just the 1st book of the trilogy, which is about the Stalinist show trials. Scary masochistic reading. And the current Russian regime endorses and rehabilitates Stalin and the KGB officer Putin is a descendant of this system. I really wished it to the ordinary Russian people, that they get rid of these scumbags
> 
> try also these books
> https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471
> https://www.amazon.com/Cannot-forgive-Escaped-Auschwitz-1997-10-19/dp/B01FIZ4VCE/
> you are never going to forget them


I will check out those books as well. Along those lines are:

"Man's Search For Meaning" by Victor Frankl (one of the most influential books of my life)
"Rape of Nanking"by Iris Chang
"Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning
"Eichmann in Jerusalim" by Hannah Arendt

These books will also never leave you.

V


----------



## Barbebleu

At the moment I am re-reading Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers. After forty odd years I am curious to find out if my impressions of it have altered. Basically, has age altered my appreciation of this fantastic work or will I find it less magical than I did when I was in my late twenties. Looking forward to finding out. I have to say that so far (a hundred pages in) I am enjoying it just as much as I did when I knew less about ancient Egypt than I do now, following holidays in Egypt and visiting Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. 

Generally do you all find that time alters ones perceptions regarding books you read in your formative years in comparison to revisiting those works with the knowledge and awareness that you have garnered?


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Fritz Kobus said:


> ^  Now that looks quite interesting.


It is, I'm 100+ pages in. A rather odd story but quite entertaining.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I refer to this book from time to time. I have found some gems.








Also this useful site 
https://neglectedbooks.com


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Blancrocher

Varick said:


> I have become a huge audiobook (via Audible) fan in the past 9 months or so. I have gone through 5 books and 4 historical lectures in that time period. I am driving about 2-3 hours a day and have been so busy. I probably wouldn't have gotten through ONE of those books or transcribed lectures yet in that same amount of time.
> 
> Now, I am a romantic when it comes to books. I still prefer them sitting in my hand, underlining words, sentences, passages, paragraphs and writing notes and thoughts in margins. However, time does not allow such luxuries right now in my life in abundance. So audiobooks it is. It's not just driving either. Sometimes when I'm grocery shopping, sitting having a cigar staring out at a nice scenic view when I stop on my motorcycle, and other times, when a book in hand just won't work.


I pulled the trigger. I'd been into audiobooks for a few months, having acquired a number of them on cd to while away increased driving time. I find I'm also making excuses to take long walks to hear them as well.

I used my first credit to get Heathcote Williams' reading of the Inferno. I'll probably skip this month's free "originals," but this will feel like an excellent deal anytime those appeal.


----------



## Blancrocher

As an aside, I've become interested in George Guidall, whose name keeps coming up when I do searches for audiobooks. I was admiring--and somewhat alarmed!--when I got to the statistic at the end of this excerpt from his promotional site:



> Widely recognized as the world's most acclaimed and most prolific narrator of audiobooks, George Guidall has brought a consistent artistry to his readings, delighting listeners for over 20 years. His narrations of classics like Crime and Punishment, Frankenstein, The Iliad, Don Quixote, and Les Miserables, along with many popular best sellers, have set a standard for excellence recognized throughout the audiobook industry. His recordings have garnered uniformly excellent reviews from Audiofile, Kliatt, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, The New York Times, and a variety of national newspapers and magazines. He has also received several Audie Awards-the industry's equivalent of an Oscar- and holds the record for receiving the most Earphone Awards for excellence in narration given by Audiofile Magazine which has named him one of the original "Golden Voices" in the audiobook industry. He has been honored by the Audio Publishers Association with a life-time achievement award for his record of more than 1,300 unabridged narrations.


I feel that this man must enjoy reading books aloud.


----------



## Phil loves classical

James Joyce's Ulysses. It's clever, but also it's nuts. I think it's akin to listening to Ferneyhough.


----------



## starthrower

Another dark chapter in my country's history of misguided activities and idiotic criminal blunders during the cold war era.

Here's the article that turned me on to this book.
https://ips-dc.org/the_cias_worst-k...nfirm_united_states_collaboration_with_nazis/


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

I'm slowly working my way through Jack Whyte's *Camulod Chronicles*, a telling of the Arthur saga placed in a historically plausible setting. At 2150 yesterday evening, 2 Apr 2019, I finished *The Saxon Shore*, officially book four. I read it fifth, inserting Whyte's *Uthur* between it and its official immediate predecessor, that being the best place for *Uthur* imo. I read the series before, all but its final volume. This time round I expect to remedy that.


----------



## tdc

The Chicken Qabalah by Lon Milo Duquette
The Classical Style by Charles Rosen


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Recently finished both of these. Two 21st Century publications I can recommend. On a scale of 5 I rate them 3.5 to 4. Meaning I really liked them but they are not 5 star material as say To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn(or many others!).


----------



## bharbeke

I liked the first Artemis Fowl book quite a bit. The digging dwarf and a couple other things were a bit gross or juvenile for my taste. The first two sequels were okay, and I have not felt compelled to read onward.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I also read non-fiction although I didn't do these cover to cover. My spouse is cooking challenged so I have usually handled these duties and quite enjoy it (however,don't let me near laundry). The only cookbooks you will ever need. Bittman has several renditions of the Everything cookbooks but this one is the most comprehensive. Brown has a great TV show on food network that I watch occasionally. I never had good scrambled eggs until I saw his program.


----------



## Tchaikov6

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.


----------



## senza sordino

Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson. I enjoyed reading this. A trip round Great Britain in the mid 1990s. It makes me feel rather homesick and nostalgic for my place of birth. In my estimation, the mid 1990s were nearing the end of this kind of travel, before the internet. Before Instagram, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber and the selfie. The mid 1990s were only 25 years ago, and already it's a different time, a place in history.

Next up to read The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler


----------



## Haabrann

Kim Leine - The Prophets of Eternal Fjord
First book in Leines 18th century Greenland trilogy, which won him the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Set in Danish colonial ruled Greenland, which hasn't gotten much, if any, literary treatment. Absorbing, though the next and latest book in the trilogy is supposed to be even better.


----------



## Rogerx




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## Guest




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## Varick

StrangeHocusPocus said:


> Huxley: The devil's disciple
> View attachment 114514


I have heard some good (albeit disturbing) things about this book. How do you like it?

V


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## SixFootScowl




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## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1359 by the bedroom clock this afternoon, 8 April 2019. I finished my second read of Jack Whyte's *The Fort at River's Bend*, book five of his *Camulod Chronicles*. (Or book four if you read *Uther* as a supplement rather than placing it between *The Eagles' Brood* and *The Saxon Shore*, as I do.) *Fort* occurs during Arthur's boyhood, ending as he is about to enter manhood.

I'll likely begin the next series entry, *The Sorcerer: Metamorphosis*, during supper.


----------



## schigolch




----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Jacck

I finished the Liu Cixin's Three-Body trilogy and now I started *Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look Inside North Korea
by Jang Jin-sung*
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20736640-dear-leader


----------



## Varick

Fritz Kobus said:


>





Fritz Kobus said:


>


Jeez Fritz, how fast do you read books??? Those are 2 days in a row. Reading just the cover doesn't count. 

V


----------



## DaveM

This is about the history of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Among other things, it explains how, as the U.S. withdrew from the gold standard in the 1960s, the country switched to what is generally called 'fiat money' or money where it is the legal tender, but is not based on any commodity or fixed entity. It would seem that such a move makes it easier for a country to artificially increase the money supply as needed. I was drawn to this book in order to further understand how it was that the Federal Reserve was able to funnel money into the economy during the 2008+ recession by buying up treasuries, corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities to the tune of 30-80 billion dollars a month over several years to a grand total of anywhere from 4-7 trillion dollars.

Off the top of my head, before reading the book, I was sure that the money was printed or created by the electronic equivalent, but found it hard to believe that such amounts were possible. And, in spite of all the articles on the internet that try to put a window dressing on it, that's exactly what happened: Massive money created out of nothing. Inevitably, with this sudden increase of the money supply, one would expect inflation simply because the money has less value so more of it is required to buy specific products. But, surprisingly, that hasn't happened to any great extent in the U.S.....yet.

Anyway, in my mind, the corollary to this is a 'new' perspective on the U.S. debt of 21 trillion dollars. Why does that not seem to be a subject on the minds of our politicians? After all, it's an incredible amount. Could it be that the dirty little secret is that, if say, China were to demand repayment of its trillions in loans (presumably treasuries), the Federal Reserve could simply create it out of nothing?


----------



## SixFootScowl

Varick said:


> Jeez Fritz, how fast do you read books??? Those are 2 days in a row. Reading just the cover doesn't count.
> 
> V


Am reading both, also slowly working my way thorough the BMW motorcycle book I posted earlier. At any given time I may be reading from several different books.


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## Captainnumber36

I'm reading H.G Wells The War of the Worlds right now. So far it's amazing, a page turner no doubt.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


> Am reading both, also slowly working my way thorough the BMW motorcycle book I posted earlier. At any given time I may be reading from several different books.


I'll have to go to the Library next time as the Half Price Books near me only has the scarlet letter by Hawthorne.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'll have to go to the Library next time as the Half Price Books near me only has *the scarlet letter* by Hawthorne.


That one is good too.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'm reading H.G Wells The War of the Worlds right now. So far it's amazing, a page turner no doubt.


I read that one sometime in the last six months. It is a classic. You might like The Day of the Triffids by Wyndham also.


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## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


> That one is good too.


I've read it, is the problem.


----------



## senza sordino

Has anyone read Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pinchon? Is it worth it? Is it weird? Is is a tough go? I don't mind some effort reading but I'm past tough reads that require taking notes, consulting dictionaries and academic analysis. 

I'm enjoying The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. I'm halfway through, I can't put it down. I'm considering The Day of the Locust by Nathanial West. Set in the same time period and location - LA in the late 1930s. Any other suggestions?


----------



## Jacck

I finished *Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea*
https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Leader-Escape-North-Korea/dp/1476766568
definitely worth reading, because it offers a good insight into the most evil regime on the planet, an orwellian stalinist dictatorship.

I started *Der König von Luxor by Philipp Vandenberg*
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7278067-der-k-nig-von-luxor
it is by a german author and describes the life of Howard Carter, the amateur archeologist, who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt.


----------



## Barbebleu

Philip Kerr - Metropolis. The last Bernie Gunther.


----------



## eugeneonagain

Just finished Zygmunt Bauman's _Thinking Sociologically._ Last night in bed. I dropped the book on my face several times because I was so tired.

Now I'm reading _Wuthering Heights. _I nice little, compact hardback copy with no printing or publishing date. Probably from the '50s, but clean as a whistle.


----------



## Varick

Fritz Kobus said:


> Am reading both, also slowly working my way thorough the BMW motorcycle book I posted earlier. At any given time I may be reading from several different books.


Good Man. I do the same thing.

V


----------



## SixFootScowl

Varick said:


> Good Man. I do the same thing.
> 
> V


Too many good books to just put them in a stack and read them sequentially, though sometimes I get one that is a can't-put-down book and will blow through it in a few days, putting all others aside.


----------



## jegreenwood

senza sordino said:


> Has anyone read Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pinchon? Is it worth it? Is it weird? Is is a tough go? I don't mind some effort reading but I'm past tough reads that require taking notes, consulting dictionaries and academic analysis.
> 
> I'm enjoying The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. I'm halfway through, I can't put it down. I'm considering The Day of the Locust by Nathanial West. Set in the same time period and location - LA in the late 1930s. Any other suggestions?


I read GR when it first came out and wrote my college honors thesis on it two years later. It's a weird and tough read and benefits from having one of the guidebooks by one's side.

And, of course, I love it.


----------



## Barbebleu

Fritz Kobus said:


> Too many good books to just put them in a stack and read them sequentially, though sometimes I get one that is a can't-put-down book and will blow through it in a few days, putting all others aside.


Exactly how I tend to read. I usually have half a dozen on the go but like you, if one grabs my attention I'll polish it off.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

senza sordino said:


> Has anyone read Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pinchon? Is it worth it? Is it weird? Is is a tough go? I don't mind some effort reading but I'm past tough reads that require taking notes, consulting dictionaries and academic analysis.
> 
> I'm enjoying The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. I'm halfway through, I can't put it down. I'm considering The Day of the Locust by Nathanial West. Set in the same time period and location - LA in the late 1930s. Any other suggestions?


Strangely, I have it on my unfinished list on Goodreads from a few years back. Meaning I attempted it and quit. I don't remember anything about it but I always give a book 75 to 100 pages before I hang up on it. I may try it again sometime.


----------



## senza sordino

jegreenwood said:


> I read GR when it first came out and wrote my college honors thesis on it two years later. It's a weird and tough read and benefits from having one of the guidebooks by one's side.
> 
> And, of course, I love it.





Oldhoosierdude said:


> Strangely, I have it on my unfinished list on Goodreads from a few years back. Meaning I attempted it and quit. I don't remember anything about it but I always give a book 75 to 100 pages before I hang up on it. I may try it again sometime.


Thank-you for your input. Gravity's Rainbow might be something worth reading, but I'm not willing to put that much effort into reading it. I'm not willing to read it with a guidebook. I like to read for pleasure, not punishment. Reading should be nice, not a chore.

I've never heard of Goodreads before. I've just looked at the website - interesting. Can you tell us anything more about it? What do you like about Goodreads?


----------



## bharbeke

I use Goodreads frequently. Like Amazon, there are plenty of user reviews, and there are discussion boards for individual books and groups of like-minded readers (Space Opera Fans is one that I have joined). I use it for a supplement to my spreadsheet for reading tracking. It can be a pathway to new reading discoveries, too.

Besides Goodreads, other book sites I enjoy are Book Riot, That Artsy Reader Girl, and Modern Mrs. Darcy (written by the host of the podcast What Should I Read Next?).


----------



## Guest




----------



## Bwv 1080

senza sordino said:


> Has anyone read Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pinchon? Is it worth it? Is it weird? Is is a tough go? I don't mind some effort reading but I'm past tough reads that require taking notes, consulting dictionaries and academic analysis.
> 
> I'm enjoying The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. I'm halfway through, I can't put it down. I'm considering The Day of the Locust by Nathanial West. Set in the same time period and location - LA in the late 1930s. Any other suggestions?


Yes but

Try the much shorter Crying of Lot 49 first and see if you dig the absurdist conspiracy vibe

GR is all dream logic, dont expect some deep message from it. If you like Joyce, then you might like Pynchon. Key thing is dont take it seriously - definitely a book where you can take from what you want and leave the rest, dont need to track down every obscure reference

Also, if you have a commute, the audiobook is quite good


----------



## Bwv 1080

DaveM said:


> View attachment 116002
> 
> 
> This is about the history of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Among other things, it explains how, as the U.S. withdrew from the gold standard in the 1960s, the country switched to what is generally called 'fiat money' or money where it is the legal tender, but is not based on any commodity or fixed entity. It would seem that such a move makes it easier for a country to artificially increase the money supply as needed. I was drawn to this book in order to further understand how it was that the Federal Reserve was able to funnel money into the economy during the 2008+ recession by buying up treasuries, corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities to the tune of 30-80 billion dollars a month over several years to a grand total of anywhere from 4-7 trillion dollars.
> 
> Off the top of my head, before reading the book, I was sure that the money was printed or created by the electronic equivalent, but found it hard to believe that such amounts were possible. And, in spite of all the articles on the internet that try to put a window dressing on it, that's exactly what happened: Massive money created out of nothing. Inevitably, with this sudden increase of the money supply, one would expect inflation simply because the money has less value so more of it is required to buy specific products. But, surprisingly, that hasn't happened to any great extent in the U.S.....yet.
> 
> Anyway, in my mind, the corollary to this is a 'new' perspective on the U.S. debt of 21 trillion dollars. Why does that not seem to be a subject on the minds of our politicians? After all, it's an incredible amount. Could it be that the dirty little secret is that, if say, China were to demand repayment of its trillions in loans (presumably treasuries), the Federal Reserve could simply create it out of nothing?


Read up on Modern Monetary Theory, not that I am an adherent, but it does get some things right


----------



## AnthonyAlcott

I am reading Boswell's seminal biography of the much neglected 18th century writer and critic Samuel Johnson:


----------



## SixFootScowl

"...the best in-depth account of racism I have ever read. The book has information that will surprise, if not amaze most readers." --Dr Felix Konotey-Ahulu, Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics, University of Cape Coast, Ghana.


----------



## Larkenfield

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, superbly suspenseful and brilliantly written:


----------



## jenspen

AnthonyAlcott said:


> I am reading Boswell's seminal biography of the much neglected 18th century writer and critic Samuel Johnson:
> 
> View attachment 116572


I wish you joy of it! Just a few years ago I read the 4 volume OUP edition edited by George Birkbeck Hill. Every last footnote! I was surprised at how readable it is. Boswell took notes at every meeting and did a detailed, gossipy, job of presenting Johnson's powerful intelligence, personality and wit. You also feel you come to know the colourful members of Johnson's Literary Club. It's an introduction to an age.

Having enjoyed Boswell's account of his and Johnson's tour to the Hebrides, I'm currently reading a book of travels by the literary hostess, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, Boswell's deadly rival and another of the interesting originals in Johnson's circle.


----------



## jenspen

As well as reading the late eighteenth century travels of Hester Piozzi I'm half way through "Origins: how the Earth made us" by Lewis Dartnell.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/23/origins-how-the-earth-made-us-lewis-dartnell

I'm going to come back as a geologist so this is just the book for me.

Also re-reading one of the many comic crime novels of the very reliable Donald E. Westlake - "Put a Lid on It" - about Presidential politics and crooks...


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## senza sordino

I just finished reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. I enjoyed this a lot. I don't know if I've seen the movie with Humphrey Bogart. While reading the book I try to imagine 1930s Los Angeles before the sprawl. There are still some long distances to drive, but there is a lot more empty space. Good story. Very vivid details in the book. Recommended.









Next on my reading list is a non fiction book
The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England Ian Mortimer. From the notes "History is not just something to be studied, it is also something to be lived" "Imagine you could travel back in time to the 14th Century. What would you see and hear and smell? Where would you stay? What are you going to eat? And how are you going to test to see if you are going down with the plague?"


----------



## Blancrocher

jenspen said:


> I wish you joy of it! Just a few years ago I read the 4 volume OUP edition edited by George Birkbeck Hill. Every last footnote! I was surprised at how readable it is. Boswell took notes at every meeting and did a detailed, gossipy, job of presenting Johnson's powerful intelligence, personality and wit. You also feel you come to know the colourful members of Johnson's Literary Club. It's an introduction to an age.
> 
> Having enjoyed Boswell's account of his and Johnson's tour to the Hebrides, I'm currently reading a book of travels by the literary hostess, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, Boswell's deadly rival and another of the interesting originals in Johnson's circle.


Interesting! Any good? (I assume you've read Boswell's journals, which are also very entertaining.)


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

The Broom of the System. David Foster Wallace.

If you like this kind of scattered, quirky, whimsical, but look there's a hidden and revealing meaning kind of writing, then this is for you. Intellectuals seem to love it. I'm not an intellectual. There are appealing aspects as the main character tries to negotiate three different and distinct plot lines. And it is the better written of this particular genre of fiction compared to some others I've read. In all though I am not impressed by novels that set out to impress me with the above mentioned issues.

It's middle of the road for me. I won't slam it simply because this isn't my kind of writing.


----------



## jenspen

Blancrocher said:


> Interesting! Any good? (I assume you've read Boswell's journals, which are also very entertaining.)


Haven't read Boswell's journals yet, thanks. Hester's account of her travels is personal and conversational. I enjoy her company once I've unravelled her syntax.


----------



## TxllxT

Never ever thought of such entertainment is possible to write down.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Has anyone heard of H.P. Lovecraft? I'm enjoying his work.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Captainnumber36 said:


> Has anyone heard of H.P. Lovecraft? I'm enjoying his work.


I've heard of him, but wouldn't know any titles even. Think is Sci Fi.


----------



## Flutter

Captainnumber36 said:


> Has anyone heard of H.P. Lovecraft? I'm enjoying his work.


Some of his work is really great, others are tedious. He was a unique writer though, that's for sure. His influence on cosmic horror (like Ridley Scott's Alien, as the most popular), art and film is undeniable.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Fritz Kobus said:


> I've heard of him, but wouldn't know any titles even. Think is Sci Fi.


More Horror/gothic literature.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Flutter said:


> Some of his work is really great, others are tedious. He was a unique writer though, that's for sure. His influence on cosmic horror (like Ridley Scott's Alien, as the most popular), art and film is undeniable.


I read "The Tomb" tonight and loved it. It flowed so well and the subject matter was so well described and eerie; made for a great story!


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Captainnumber36 said:


> Has anyone heard of H.P. Lovecraft? I'm enjoying his work.


Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl ftaghn! Never heard of him; I live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, mercifully untouched by obscene abominations, indescribable eldritch blasphemies, Cyclopean architecture, squat, shuffling, squamous and rugose monstrosities, or overwrought Johnsonian prose. Now let me curl up in a corner of my padded Arkham cell, and get the terrible screams out of my mind.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Philosophical black comedy thriller, in the line of Stevenson's _Wrong Box _and Chesterton's _Man Who Was Thursday_. Very loosely adapted into a terrific film with Diana Rigg and Oliver Reed.


----------



## Flutter

Captainnumber36 said:


> I read "The Tomb" tonight and loved it. It flowed so well and the subject matter was so well described and eerie; made for a great story!


I've got his complete works (although I've never been a "fan" or payed excessive attention to him). I'd say that my favorite of his stories would be "At The Mountains Of Madness", it's definitely an epic.


----------



## flamencosketches

I just started a book called The New Grove: Second Viennese School. Part of the New Grove Music Dictionary. Pretty good and interesting so far. 

Recently finished a book called Evening in the Palace of Reason about Bach and Frederick the Great. Highly recommend that one. 

Been a long time since I've read any fiction. I would like to get back into it.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

As stated before, I read Zorba the Greek, the first English translation not long ago. Then discovered this newer translation which came from the authors manuscripts directly to English instead of through an intermediary language. The translator has an interesting forword about his approach which I will leave for your discovery.

Having read both versions now (we at TC love versions) I can say that this newer one is far preferable to the other, which is good in itself. This one is easier to understand, flows better, and is more powerful.








This is one of the five best novels I have ever read.


----------



## Captainnumber36

I just finished part 1 of "A Study in Scarlet", a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I loved the entirety of part 1 but did not like that there was an entire part 2. I like to pretend there is no part 2, and that it ends right were part 1 does with Holmes catching the villain and leaving it to the lesser brains to ask him questions on how he figured it out.

I was pretty annoyed to find how part 2 was a whole other section of the story, I felt it was unnecessary. I didn't read it!


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished part 1 of "A Study in Scarlet", a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I loved the entirety of part 1 but did not like that there was an entire part 2. I like to pretend there is no part 2, and that it ends right were part 1 does with Holmes catching the villain and leaving it to the lesser brains to ask him questions on how he figured it out.
> 
> I was pretty annoyed to find how part 2 was a whole other section of the story, I felt it was unnecessary. I didn't read it!


I first read the Holmes stories in primary school; I skipped over the back stories of _Scarlet _and _The Valley of Fear_, and didn't read them until university. I did read the back story in _The Sign of Four_; Indian exoticism held more appeal than American religious tyrannies / secret societies!


----------



## Barbebleu

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished part 1 of "A Study in Scarlet", a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I loved the entirety of part 1 but did not like that there was an entire part 2. I like to pretend there is no part 2, and that it ends right were part 1 does with Holmes catching the villain and leaving it to the lesser brains to ask him questions on how he figured it out.
> 
> I was pretty annoyed to find how part 2 was a whole other section of the story, I felt it was unnecessary. I didn't read it!


I think you should read it. It won't take you long and it is interesting and the last part of it reverts back to part 1 if memory serves!


----------



## Kieran

I've gotten into Italo Calvino lately - finished Mr Palomar last week, and reading Invisible Cities now - alongside Casino Royale, which I was surprised to find was written in 1953...


----------



## jegreenwood

Barbebleu said:


> I think you should read it. It won't take you long and it is interesting and the last part of it reverts back to part 1 if memory serves!


I reread Part 1 on an airplane quite recently. Pretty sure you're right about the end of Part 2. I read that once years ago (same with Valley of Fear).

I'm going to hear Rachel Kushner read quite soon. I'll probably pick up her most recent novel. I was very impressed by The Flamethrowers.


----------



## Sonata

On my own:

*World War Z: Max Brooks
*









With my 9 year old son








*Everest Book 3: The Summit*
A very interesting series about teenagers selected for a Mt. Everest Expedition. Action packed and has some humor thrown in


----------



## Captainnumber36

Barbebleu said:


> I think you should read it. It won't take you long and it is interesting and the last part of it reverts back to part 1 if memory serves!


That's part of it, it is mostly unrelated.


----------



## Tristan

Reading these two that I just picked up at the library:

*Franny and Zooey* by J. D. Salinger

*Stoner* by John Williams


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Tristan said:


> Reading these two that I just picked up at the library:
> 
> *Franny and Zooey* by J. D. Salinger
> 
> *Stoner* by John Williams


I just started Stoner also.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Just finished the audio book Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. An excellent book about complexities of relationships. I felt that it falls a bit flat at the end, however.


----------



## Guest

Just finished Dante's Inferno. Shocked to say it took me so long to pick it up and read it. I relied heavily on the excellent footnotes in the Durling translation. I fully plan on reading the entirety of the Divine Comedy, but for now I am going to read Les Miserables. I picked it up in high school and read up until Hugo introduced Gavroche. With age and patience, I assume I shall be able to make it completely through this time. I'm going with the Donougher translation on this one.


----------



## Guest

Captainnumber36 said:


> I just finished part 1 of "A Study in Scarlet", a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I loved the entirety of part 1 but did not like that there was an entire part 2. I like to pretend there is no part 2, and that it ends right were part 1 does with Holmes catching the villain and leaving it to the lesser brains to ask him questions on how he figured it out.
> 
> I was pretty annoyed to find how part 2 was a whole other section of the story, I felt it was unnecessary. I didn't read it!


It was quite a bit piece on the Mormon religion.


----------



## jegreenwood

DrMike said:


> Just finished Dante's Inferno. Shocked to say it took me so long to pick it up and read it. I relied heavily on the excellent footnotes in the Durling translation. I fully plan on reading the entirety of the Divine Comedy, but for now I am going to read Les Miserables. I picked it up in high school and read up until Hugo introduced Gavroche. With age and patience, I assume I shall be able to make it completely through this time. I'm going with the Donougher translation on this one.


I read The Inferno decades ago, and I'm about to reread it (and this time the rest of The Divine Comedy, although maybe not all at once). I've picked up several translations over the years, but I'll be reading Mandelbaum with Pinsky's Inferno as a backup.


----------



## Judith

Reading a biography about Charlotte Bronte by Rebecca Fraser. Shows how a lot of her characters in the stories relates to the people she knew


----------



## Blancrocher

I'm soon going to listen to Viet Thanh Nguyen's _The Sympathizer_. I'd been meaning to read it for awhile, and noticed it was on sale for 70%-off on Audible.com. I'd appreciate it if anyone could mention other good books with that steep discount during the Mother's-day-week sale.

I've also been reading widely in the history (and jazz reviews!) of the late Eric Hobsbawm. I'm currently in the midst of the influential collection he edited with Terence Ranger, called _The Invention of Tradition_. A bunch of famous historians write about how various apparently old traditions are pretty recent.


----------



## starthrower

Just bought a copy of Karl Dietrich Bracher's The German Dictatorship : The Origins, Structure, And Effects Of National Socialism. A bold an erudite work of penetrating analysis and scholarship. 

I also bought a copy of the famous Shirer tome, The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. I've read some of this in the past but never owned a copy.

Both arrived in excellent condition from ABEbooks.com for 4 dollars each, free shipping.


----------



## Guest

Shirer's book is definitely one to read for an excellent overview of the Third Reich. John Toland's biography of Adolf Hitler is also very much worth reading in this particular area.


----------



## bharbeke

I finished reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. This is a fascinating book that looks at the history of scientific inquiry, the people involved, how different sections of science interrelate, and how much we still have to learn about everything.


----------



## JosefinaHW

Blancrocher said:


> I'm soon going to listen to Viet Thanh Nguyen's _The Sympathizer_. I'd been meaning to read it for awhile, and noticed it was on sale for 70%-off on Audible.com. I'd appreciate it if anyone could mention other good books with that steep discount during the Mother's-day-week sale.
> 
> I've also been reading widely in the history (and jazz reviews!) of the late Eric Hobsbawm. I'm currently in the midst of the influential collection he edited with Terence Ranger, called _The Invention of Tradition_. A bunch of famous historians write about how various apparently old traditions are pretty recent.


I did not see any restriction on what book you can choose, but you can only choose one book at that discount, so use it for the book you mentioned. There are so many books and courses on Audible. Going forward u might want to check out the many titles from THe Great Courses. IF you are looking to read the classics again there is a great "new" translation of Don Quixote. Gardiner's latest book on Bach is available


----------



## Kieran

Semi-whinge now:

I just finished Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. It was okay, but very dated, very plain in its language, very cardboard in its characterisations. It did include the horrible torture scene that was in the film (I know, the film included the scene that was in the book) which must have been strange and very violent for a 1953 book, but the whinge is this: I don't see anything in it that led to the great enduring franchise.

Here's the kicker: Raymond Chandler's 7 Phillip Marlowe books are masterpieces, not only of form, wit, characterisation, drama, psychology etc, they're thrillers as literature and vice versa, and they also propelled the noir genre of movies and books into the stratosphere, where it belongs. And yet...Eliot fricking Gould?

Okay, so Bogart played Marlowe and so did Robert Mitchum, maybe 30 years late - but how did such an ordinary, corny and formulaic book spawn such a cinematic beast, but the classic Chandler novels lay neglected by filmmakers? I dunno. Wrong forum, maybe, but I just finished the book, and I ain't seeing it.

Alongside Italo Calvini's beautiful Invisible Cities (which is so good, I re-read each chapter as soon as I finish it - they're short), I just started John Lawton's A Little White Death, the final book in his wonderful Inspector Troy sequence, chronologically...


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Kieran said:


> Semi-whinge now:
> 
> I just finished Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. It was okay, but very dated, very plain in its language, very cardboard in its characterisations. It did include the horrible torture scene that was in the film (I know, the film included the scene that was in the book) which must have been strange and very violent for a 1953 book, but the whinge is this: I don't see anything in it that led to the great enduring franchise.
> 
> Here's the kicker: Raymond Chandler's 7 Phillip Marlowe books are masterpieces, not only of form, wit, characterisation, drama, psychology etc, they're thrillers as literature and vice versa, and they also propelled the noir genre of movies and books into the stratosphere, where it belongs. And yet...Eliot fricking Gould?
> 
> Okay, so Bogart played Marlowe and so did Robert Mitchum, maybe 30 years late - but how did such an ordinary, corny and formulaic book spawn such a cinematic beast, but the classic Chandler novels lay neglected by filmmakers? I dunno. Wrong forum, maybe, but I just finished the book, and I ain't seeing it.
> 
> Alongside Italo Calvini's beautiful Invisible Cities (which is so good, I re-read each chapter as soon as I finish it - they're short), I just started John Lawton's A Little White Death, the final book in his wonderful Inspector Troy sequence, chronologically...


Agreed. I recently did audio books of the 007 series. They are dated to say the least. Some of the books are downright bad. While Chandler never wrote a stinker and outside of some dated terminology here and there they remain enduring Classics. 
You can't figure film people to have much interest in product quality. They produce what they think will sell. Which is basically the same 100 movie plots over and over.


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> Semi-whinge now:
> 
> I just finished Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. It was okay, but very dated, very plain in its language, very cardboard in its characterisations. It did include the horrible torture scene that was in the film (I know, the film included the scene that was in the book) which must have been strange and very violent for a 1953 book, but the whinge is this: I don't see anything in it that led to the great enduring franchise.
> 
> Here's the kicker: Raymond Chandler's 7 Phillip Marlowe books are masterpieces, not only of form, wit, characterisation, drama, psychology etc, they're thrillers as literature and vice versa, and they also propelled the noir genre of movies and books into the stratosphere, where it belongs. And yet...Eliot fricking Gould?
> 
> Okay, so Bogart played Marlowe and so did Robert Mitchum, maybe 30 years late - but how did such an ordinary, corny and formulaic book spawn such a cinematic beast, but the classic Chandler novels lay neglected by filmmakers? I dunno. Wrong forum, maybe, but I just finished the book, and I ain't seeing it.
> 
> Alongside Italo Calvini's beautiful Invisible Cities (which is so good, I re-read each chapter as soon as I finish it - they're short), I just started John Lawton's A Little White Death, the final book in his wonderful Inspector Troy sequence, chronologically...


The Bond books became popular when JFK said that he read them. And even then, it was the movies that secured legend (IMHO).


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Semi-whinge now:
> 
> I just finished Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. It was okay, but very dated, very plain in its language, very cardboard in its characterisations. It did include the horrible torture scene that was in the film (I know, the film included the scene that was in the book) which must have been strange and very violent for a 1953 book, but the whinge is this: I don't see anything in it that led to the great enduring franchise.
> 
> Here's the kicker: Raymond Chandler's 7 Phillip Marlowe books are masterpieces, not only of form, wit, characterisation, drama, psychology etc, they're thrillers as literature and vice versa, and they also propelled the noir genre of movies and books into the stratosphere, where it belongs. And yet...Eliot fricking Gould?
> 
> Okay, so Bogart played Marlowe and so did Robert Mitchum, maybe 30 years late - but how did such an ordinary, corny and formulaic book spawn such a cinematic beast, but the classic Chandler novels lay neglected by filmmakers? I dunno. Wrong forum, maybe, but I just finished the book, and I ain't seeing it.
> 
> Alongside Italo Calvini's beautiful Invisible Cities (which is so good, I re-read each chapter as soon as I finish it - they're short), I just started John Lawton's A Little White Death, the final book in his wonderful Inspector Troy sequence, chronologically...


Good books do not always make good movies, and vice versa. They are different art forms. Mystery novels frequently tend to be more complex than what can usually be conveyed in movie format, at least not without significantly cutting the source material. It can be done, but it is certainly less straightforward than a straightforward thriller. The Bond books may not be great literature, but as a visual spectacle, they tick many of the right boxes. Charismatic lead character, easy to follow plot line, etc. They were never going to be Oscar-worthy, but not all cinema need be.


----------



## philoctetes

Kieran said:


> Semi-whinge now:
> 
> I just finished Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. It was okay, but very dated, very plain in its language, very cardboard in its characterisations. It did include the horrible torture scene that was in the film (I know, the film included the scene that was in the book) which must have been strange and very violent for a 1953 book, but the whinge is this: I don't see anything in it that led to the great enduring franchise.
> 
> Here's the kicker: Raymond Chandler's 7 Phillip Marlowe books are masterpieces, not only of form, wit, characterisation, drama, psychology etc, they're thrillers as literature and vice versa, and they also propelled the noir genre of movies and books into the stratosphere, where it belongs. And yet...Eliot fricking Gould?
> 
> Okay, so Bogart played Marlowe and so did Robert Mitchum, maybe 30 years late - but how did such an ordinary, corny and formulaic book spawn such a cinematic beast, but the classic Chandler novels lay neglected by filmmakers? I dunno. Wrong forum, maybe, but I just finished the book, and I ain't seeing it.
> 
> Alongside Italo Calvini's beautiful Invisible Cities (which is so good, I re-read each chapter as soon as I finish it - they're short), I just started John Lawton's A Little White Death, the final book in his wonderful Inspector Troy sequence, chronologically...


I thought I'd read all the Marlowe novels, but apparently just the first four. Recently saw the Eliot Gould version and thought it was was pretty good take on the LA scene with a slight time shift by a decade or two. Agree that more Chandler on film would be a good thing, just like more Jim Thompson. These novels don't necessarily have to be filmed in their original time frame to be effective.

Calvino never surpassed Invisible Cities IMO, but everything else he wrote is a lot of fun. Mr Palomar comes close.


----------



## Kieran

philoctetes said:


> I thought I'd read all the Marlowe novels, but apparently just the first four. Recently saw the Eliot Gould version and thought it was was pretty good take on the LA scene with a slight time shift by a decade or two. Agree that more Chandler on film would be a good thing, just like more Jim Thompson. These novels don't necessarily have to be filmed in their original time frame to be effective.
> 
> Calvino never surpassed Invisible Cities IMO, but everything else he wrote is a lot of fun. Mr Palomar comes close.


Hard to know who could play Marlowe in movie nowadays - Josh Brolin might be good, but maybe a less well known actor might be better. I think they'd make a marvelous set of movies.

So you still have The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, and Playback? I envy you!



philoctetes said:


> Calvino never surpassed Invisible Cities IMO, but everything else he wrote is a lot of fun. Mr Palomar comes close.


I've read only Mr Palomar and am wondering where to go after Invisible Cities. Any recommendations? :tiphat:


----------



## philoctetes

Kieran said:


> Hard to know who could play Marlowe in movie nowadays - Josh Brolin might be good, but maybe a less well known actor might be better. I think they'd make a marvelous set of movies.
> 
> So you still have The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, and Playback? I envy you!
> 
> I've read only Mr Palomar and am wondering where to go after Invisible Cities. Any recommendations? :tiphat:


I've read most of his major works except a Winter's NIght and the Italian Folktales, neither held my interest for some reason... but those are two books that made him famous n the US.

The early novellas are all worthy, like Marcovaldo, The Baron, The Cloven Viscount, Argentine Ant, Difficult Loves, etc. Didn't care for Castle of Crossed Destinies much but it's a lavish publication... Cosmicomics and T Zero are very silly but occasionally profound - a strange mix.

Fascinating author and if you haven't read Borges you should go there too.


----------



## jegreenwood

philoctetes said:


> I've read most of his major works except a Winter's NIght and the Italian Folktales, neither held my interest for some reason... but those are two books that made him famous n the US.
> 
> The early novellas are all worthy, like Marcovaldo, The Baron, The Cloven Viscount, Argentine Ant, Difficult Loves, etc. Didn't care for Castle of Crossed Destinies much but it's a lavish publication... Cosmicomics and T Zero are very silly but occasionally profound - a strange mix.
> 
> Fascinating author and if you haven't read Borges you should go there too.


Agree on Borges.

If you'd like to hear Calvino reading from his own work, you can go here.


----------



## JosefinaHW

Blancrocher said:


> I'm soon going to listen to Viet Thanh Nguyen's _The Sympathizer_. I'd been meaning to read it for awhile, and noticed it was on sale for 70%-off on Audible.com. I'd appreciate it if anyone could mention other good books with that steep discount during the Mother's-day-week sale.
> 
> I've also been reading widely in the history (and jazz reviews!) of the late Eric Hobsbawm. I'm currently in the midst of the influential collection he edited with Terence Ranger, called _The Invention of Tradition_. A bunch of famous historians write about how various apparently old traditions are pretty recent.


@Blancrocher: An Update re/ Audible Sale. I just chatted with Audible customer support. According to the agent all books on the site are on sale. When you click on a particular title it will indicate whether the price is 50% off the retail price or 70% off the price.

I've been a member for years and have more books, periodicals and courses than I can count. It's almost impossible for me to recommend everything I've read and liked. Since Audible frequently has promotions where you could win $300/500 of the items in your wish list AND because they will notify you if an item in your wishlist is on sale, I suggest you start with your favorite Non-Fiction categories and classics (Sorry, I don't read any fiction outside the classics category) and add them either to your cart or wish list. Then after you've accumulated many titles purchase them. This is the BEST sale Audible has ever offered. I have no doubt that you will find hundreds of titles and then decide which of them based on your budget.

Sale is through 12 May 11:59 PM PDT.

If your have a few types of Non-Fiction categories that you love I would be happy to give you a list of what I've read, otherwise it really is almost endless.

Going forward in the future, visit the Audible site every week or month to check out the Pre-Order or New Releases.

THERE IS NO LIMIT ON THE NUMBER OF BOOKS YOU CAN PURCHASE AT THE DISCOUNT.

Best Wishes,

Josefina


----------



## brahmsgirl

*The Pale King* by David Foster Wallace.

SO. GOOD.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Kieran said:


> Semi-whinge now:
> 
> I just finished Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. It was okay, but very dated, very plain in its language, very cardboard in its characterisations. It did include the horrible torture scene that was in the film (I know, the film included the scene that was in the book) which must have been strange and very violent for a 1953 book, but the whinge is this: I don't see anything in it that led to the great enduring franchise.
> 
> Here's the kicker: Raymond Chandler's 7 Phillip Marlowe books are masterpieces, not only of form, wit, characterisation, drama, psychology etc, they're thrillers as literature and vice versa, and they also propelled the noir genre of movies and books into the stratosphere, where it belongs. And yet...Eliot fricking Gould?
> 
> Okay, so Bogart played Marlowe and so did Robert Mitchum, maybe 30 years late - but how did such an ordinary, corny and formulaic book spawn such a cinematic beast, but the classic Chandler novels lay neglected by filmmakers? I dunno. Wrong forum, maybe, but I just finished the book, and I ain't seeing it.
> 
> Alongside Italo Calvini's beautiful Invisible Cities (which is so good, I re-read each chapter as soon as I finish it - they're short), I just started John Lawton's A Little White Death, the final book in his wonderful Inspector Troy sequence, chronologically...


_Casino Royale _was Fleming's first book; he improved! _Casino _is rather slow, and has too much baccarat. Try _From Russia, With Love _(his masterpiece), _Dr. No _(Fu Manchu for the atomic age), or _On Her Majesty's Secret Service_ (the film is probably the most faithful adaptation).


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Candide in the idiom of Kai Lung; inventive and touching.


----------



## Guest




----------



## Barbebleu

Vietnam by Max Hastings. Outstanding.


----------



## Kieran

Dr. Shatterhand said:


> _Casino Royale _was Fleming's first book; he improved! _Casino _is rather slow, and has too much baccarat. Try _From Russia, With Love _(his masterpiece), _Dr. No _(Fu Manchu for the atomic age), or _On Her Majesty's Secret Service_ (the film is probably the most faithful adaptation).


I came here to issue a semi-mea culpa. Not a complete one yet though, because in looking for a Bond book to read, I researched a little, and websites I found all rated Casino Royale so highly, for instance here  and here, it was a little underwhelming, to be precise about it. But I'd ordered others from the library, and I'm reading Moonraker and the difference is immense. As you say, Casino Royale had too much baccarat, and was too slow. I have ordered On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which I'm looking forward to because I've never actually seen the film, and Live and Let Die, which I wish I'd received before Moonraker, given then chronological thingy about them.

But I'm very happy to report that so far I agree with you - he improved! Moonraker is a fine book, and so I'll order the others you mentioned too...

:tiphat:


----------



## Dim7

I got fascinated by the idea of time travel in the form of entirely self-consistent time loops, so I read Robert Heinlein's By His Bootstraps from here: https://archive.org/stream/Astounding_v28n02_1941-10#page/n7/mode/2up It's a short read, 40 or so pages. Fascinating, disturbing and hilarious at the same time.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Othello!


----------



## bharbeke

I've got about 50 pages left in A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. The writing in this book could be used in a master class. Not only does the prose sing, the characterization and wit are also superlative. If that's not enough to convince you, there are plenty of references to pieces by Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff sprinkled throughout the story.


----------



## tortkis

Dim7 said:


> I got fascinated by the idea of time travel in the form of entirely self-consistent time loops, so I read Robert Heinlein's By His Bootstraps from here: https://archive.org/stream/Astounding_v28n02_1941-10#page/n7/mode/2up It's a short read, 40 or so pages. Fascinating, disturbing and hilarious at the same time.


I read the story a long time ago and only vaguely remember the plot, so thank you for the link! It is hilarious, indeed. Loop is an interesting subject of fiction, philosophy, and music. It's amusing that one of the 20st century recording picked for the future humankind was Bolero and how "modern" music was received by them.

_The reaction exceeded his hopes. "Begin the Beguine" caused tears to stream down the face of the old chief. The first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Concerto Number One in B Flat Minor" practically stampeded them. They jerked. They held their heads and moaned. They shouted their applause. Wilson refrained from giving them the second movement, tapered them off instead with the compelling monotony of the "Bolero."_

The protagonist (so as Heinlein himself, I guess) thought "a piece of music had to be sensuous and compelling, rather than cerebral."


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Kieran said:


> I came here to issue a semi-mea culpa. Not a complete one yet though, because in looking for a Bond book to read, I researched a little, and websites I found all rated Casino Royale so highly, for instance here  and here, it was a little underwhelming, to be precise about it. But I'd ordered others from the library, and I'm reading Moonraker and the difference is immense. As you say, Casino Royale had too much baccarat, and was too slow. I have ordered On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which I'm looking forward to because I've never actually seen the film, and Live and Let Die, which I wish I'd received before Moonraker, given then chronological thingy about them.
> 
> But I'm very happy to report that so far I agree with you - he improved! Moonraker is a fine book, and so I'll order the others you mentioned too...
> 
> :tiphat:


Cheers! _Moonraker _is a lot like a 1950s British movie thriller; the Roger Moore film (great fun though it is) is probably the most extravagant of the Bond films, sending 007 into outer space.

_Live and Let Die_ is an entertaining thriller, but its racism dates it pretty badly.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Kieran

Dr. Shatterhand said:


> Cheers! _Moonraker _is a lot like a 1950s British movie thriller; the Roger Moore film (great fun though it is) is probably the most extravagant of the Bond films, sending 007 into outer space.
> 
> _Live and Let Die_ is an entertaining thriller, but its racism dates it pretty badly.


I'm reading Live and Let Die now and love it, but yeah, the racism is of its time, and happily not of ours. But it's a great atmospheric read, filled with menace, and it's tightly written, none of the dawdling that made CR hard to read. I left Moonraker to read after this, because at the beginning of Moonraker "the gold" that's part of the L&LD plot gets mentioned, so I figure, best to read them sequentially.

I saw L&LD the movie years ago, but most of the Roger Moore stuff is so quaint and camp nowadays. I actually could see Sean Connery doing great justice to this book.


----------



## JosefinaHW

Dr. Shatterhand said:


> Cheers! _Moonraker _is a lot like a 1950s British movie thriller; the Roger Moore film (great fun though it is) is probably the most extravagant of the Bond films, sending 007 into outer space.


Some of the earth scenery in the film is sumptuous and worth the film itself (besides some of the music):

First time that Chateaux de Vaux le Vicomte was filmed (at least filmed so beautifully):










Moonraker introduced me to the Vaux and I specifically went to France the first time to see the Vaux. Back then there was no shuttle service, webpage, events, the interior and the ground of the Vaux were still being restored. I was too young to rent a car then so I had to get there via taxi. You pass down a road lined with beautiful trees--don't ask me what kind they were....and then suddenly you see it! Swoon.........

Also, they filmed part of _Moonraker_ at the Igauzu Falls. At least in photos and film so much more wild and exciting than Niagra, but then I read that in reality the area was ruined by all kinds of smuggling--of course, they hid that in the film. But it's worth it to watch the film and see those water falls. Hmmmm. maybe they've cleaned it up...


----------



## jegreenwood

Starting "Black No More" by George S. Schuyler.


----------



## Minor Sixthist

Hamlet. But I'm also at an uncomfortable crossroads in the area of books: I haven't gotten hooked on anything I've started lately.

Devouring books was so much easier when I was younger.


----------



## TxllxT

Gripping story (written by George Bernanos who wrote also Les Dialogues des Carmélites, put on music by Francis Poulenc) about the indifference of people, set before World War I, but just as barren. True dialogues bring light into the greyishness.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Just started this. I'm going to read for the part of Duke (Senior) next month for a local production. I've always liked the Folgers editions of Shakespeare. Insightful explanations that don't get in the way.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## Rogerx

Fritz Kobus said:


> Oddly, there are two different covers for that book, one with a longer, more descriptive subtitle:


This is the one I am reading .


----------



## Tallisman

Oldhoosierdude said:


> Just started this. I'm going to read for the part of Duke (Senior) next month for a local production. I've always liked the Folgers editions of Shakespeare. Insightful explanations that don't get in the way.
> View attachment 118771


I've just started a Shakespeare marathon, and am currently on the Tempest. Good luck with your performance! Whenever I read Shakespeare I find myself trying to act out the parts in my head, trying different ways I might deliver them, which gives you an insight into how difficult acting really is. And when you see actors like Mark Rylance delivering the lines, you're stunned at how they _live_ the language, as if it arises naturally. Quite a skill.


----------



## jegreenwood

Tallisman said:


> I've just started a Shakespeare marathon, and am currently on the Tempest. Good luck with your performance! Whenever I read Shakespeare I find myself trying to act out the parts in my head, trying different ways I might deliver them, which gives you an insight into how difficult acting really is. And when you see actors like Mark Rylance delivering the lines, you're stunned at how they _live_ the language, as if it arises naturally. Quite a skill.


You need to find a copy of the DVD set "Playing Shakespeare." This was a BBC television series in the 1980s. John Barton, co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, gathered together some of the greatest Shakesperean actors of the time - from Ian McKellan to Patrick Stewart to Judi Dench and more - to look at the issues to be considered when performing Shakespeare on the stage. The series consisted mostly of scene work. I guess the best known episode arose from the fact that Stewart and David Suchet had each recently performed the role of Shylock. They each spoke about what they had in mind during various scenes and performed those scenes. The performances were very different.

There's a book too, which is worth reading if you can't find the DVD, but of course it's no replacement for seeing all these actors at work.

Edit - it looks like the episodes are on YouTube.


----------



## Guest

Wow, one of the grimmest and most depressing books I've read in a long time. His childhood was full of sexual abuse, which left him a badly damaged human being. Not for the faint of heart.


----------



## Jacck

*Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov - And Quiet Flows the Don*








one of the masterpieces of Russian literature awared with a Nobel Prize. It describes the life of Cossacks at the Don river during the Bolshevik revolution


----------



## Sonata

Tchaikov6 said:


> Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.


how did you like it? I have Krakauer's into Thin Air queued up soon.


----------



## Sonata

*Neil Gaiman: American Gods, 10th Anniversary* on audiobook. I'm really enjoying this so far.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I finished this one and would have to rate it a 4.75 on a 5 scale. I found it to bog a on the lengthy and frequent Talmud discussions. I enjoy stretching on things I am ignorant to, but a bit too many stretches here.

Other than that a fascinating and touching book about friendship. I was amazed at how enclosed was this Jewish society as depicted. The only non Jews are a few people mentioned in part 1 and women play almost no part. Wow. And an insightful look at the strict divisions even amongst the Jews themselves at a time in their history they should have United no matter what.

Strongly recommend.


----------



## bharbeke

Oldhoosierdude, since you like The Chosen, I would recommend another book by Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev. It's about a young man trying to find his way in life, even when his dreams are at odds with his family's.


----------



## znapschatz

My nominee is "*Ornament of the World*," by María Rosa Menocal. Published in 2002, it deals with a 500 year period in medieval Spain when Christians, Moslems and Jews formed a society of tolerance, creating a flourishing culture of art, science and learning, benefiting all until Christian monarchs finally brought it to an end. I found the narrative brilliant and positively absorbing, thrilling and inspiring. Not to be missed.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## vespertine

Easily a 4/5 - as good as the film, one of my childhood favourites.


----------



## Guest

Tucker Carlson, "Ship of Fools". Clever and funny. And he's nailing it.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Finished this. What to say about it? It's an easy and fast read and two of the stories completely lost me. Can't tell you what they were about.

He uses a stream of conscious writing with a twist on form. Lot's of writers do it now, it's real in. But saunders does it well. I would give it 3 out of 5 stars.


----------



## Minor Sixthist

Sonata said:


> how did you like it? I have Krakauer's into Thin Air queued up soon.


Not OP but... interesting read, IMO good writing that keeps you hooked, and it'll leave you either on board with him and his Thoreau-like thinking, or totally, abjectly, unsympathetically despising him for his arrogance - in my experience more people go with the latter.

Either way, worthwhile read. I think the ones that leave you kind of hating the main character have the potential for a special appeal. It's almost voyeuristic reading about the world of the characters you hate, at least if you end up getting to see their misfortune in the end, schadenfreude and all that... :devil:


----------



## SixFootScowl

Going to start this one tomorrow:


----------



## senza sordino

I just finished reading The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer. It's all about 14th Century England. What people ate. How people lived. What people did for work. What people did for entertainment. The Law. Their health. It was quite entertaining and interesting. It's not a history book. While the kings get mentioned it's all about how the masses lived. The basic premise is if you were to be transported back in time to the 1300s, here's your survival guide. I recommend it. 








I'm not sure what to read next, probably a couple of short stories before I begin a book about physics.


----------



## millionrainbows

Just found this used:


----------



## SixFootScowl

Fritz Kobus said:


> Going to start this one tomorrow:


Ok, I give up. I was lost by the end of Chapter 1 and by the end of chapter 2 I am dazed and confused. I'll skim through the rest in hopes of gleaning a bit of useful information, but frankly, I thought this was more the Music Theory for Simpletons, but it appears to require a high level of musical education to cut your way through it. It would be easier to learn Greek IMO.

Just supports my initial thought that unless one is a professional musician, music is meant to be enjoyed, not understood.


----------



## millionrainbows

Maybe this will help.


----------



## Guest

Fritz Kobus said:


> Ok, I give up. I was lost by the end of Chapter 1 and by the end of chapter 2 I am dazed and confused. I'll skim through the rest in hopes of gleaning a bit of useful information, but frankly, I thought this was more the Music Theory for Simpletons, but it appears to require a high level of musical education to cut your way through it. It would be easier to learn Greek IMO.
> 
> Just supports my initial thought that unless one is a professional musician, music is meant to be enjoyed, not understood.


I listened to a Great Courses series once on Music Theory - I think I kept up with the first 15 minutes, and then when they got into different scales, etc., I became hopelessly lost. Minor, major, thirds, etc. Like you, it was all Greek to me. I am left, as well, with deciding whether it sounds good to me - I can't engage in a discourse about the fine details that went into a piece of music. But that is fine with me. I started out just wanting to enjoy Classical Music more, and expanding my knowledge of various composers and their works. And I have accomplished that.


----------



## jenspen

When Words Fail: A Life with Music, War and Peace by Ed Vulliamy. He reflects on his life as a war correspondent "and how music - from Sarajevo to the Paris attacks - can reveal truths when words fail."









I'm two-thirds of the way through - I speed read the passages concerning his enthusiasms for the sorts of more popular music I don't have much interest in and I couldn't face a war correspondent's writing on Bosnia...

There is lots on Shostakovich and his position as a composer during Stalin's reign. Vulliamy records his interactions with survivors (of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra) and the famous performance of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony in August 1942

Details of Sept 11th 2001. As a resident of a nearby part of NY, Vulliamy witnessed the event and its aftermath at close quarters.

Music in Terezín (Theresienstadt) and the profoundly musicality of the mass-murderer Hans Frank.

Wagner and the intense positive and negative reactions to his music (not finished reading that yet).

I'm looking forward to the chapter on Schubert and a performance of Winterreise by Mark Padmore and (a real favourite of mine) Paul Lewis.


----------



## starthrower

A very interesting reference work which includes an introduction covering the sociopolitical history of Germany leading up to Wagner's time.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Meyerbeer Smith




----------



## agoukass

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman


----------



## Bwv 1080

How does it compare to Life and Fate?


----------



## Captainnumber36

I just read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I read it as a child as well, it never gets old, a classic!


----------



## Pat Fairlea

This.









For some reason, Hindemith's music puts me in mind of Lafferty's writing. No idea why.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Almost done with this one.


----------



## arnerich

Crime and Punishment and Plato's Republic


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 120306
> 
> 
> Almost done with this one.


Now I am done and would rate it a 4 out of 5. I is quite thought provoking and I see why it was required reading for so many high schoolers in the US.


----------



## SixFootScowl

This is Volume 2 which starts with the Reformation.


----------



## Blancrocher

Anna Burns - Milkman

Recently purchased this "daily deal" on Audible. Enjoyed the style of the story, and it had a good narrator.


----------



## jegreenwood

Been busy reading books on Boston terriers in anticipation . . .

Now going back to Chekhov's fiction. Haven't been there in decades, although I've probably seen and read more versions of "Uncle Vanya" than any other play.


----------



## CrunchyFr0g

Only 100 pages in but so far very interesting.


----------



## bharbeke

This may be of interest to classical music fans. The book I am reading is Symphonies & Scorpions by Gerald Elias. It tells about the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 2014 tour to China and Japan. The author has been a violinist, conductor, and composer, and he has fascinating stories to tell about the people working in the classical music business and the considerations that go into putting a big tour together. If you have read his mystery series that starts with Devil's Trill, know that the voice is similar but uses a little less profanity in this nonfiction account.


----------



## Silver Bunyip

The whole Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake in a single volume.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Pat Fairlea said:


> This.
> 
> View attachment 120222
> 
> 
> For some reason, Hindemith's music puts me in mind of Lafferty's writing. No idea why.


I like the sound of that - is there something uncategorisable about the work of both men, do you think?


----------



## CrunchyFr0g

Silver Bunyip said:


> The whole Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake in a single volume.


Wonderful stuff but I could never get into the third book.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I finished this one in a mix of audio book and book. A fascinating book. 13 separate stories all related to a music executive in a time period of the 70's to about 25 years from now. Stories are in an interesting mix of first person to third person narrative. Well done. Also not told chronologically which adds to the storytelling. I didn't realize it won the pulitzer until after I finished it. I can see why.


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 120798
> 
> 
> I finished this one in a mix of audio book and book. A fascinating book. 13 separate stories all related to a music executive in a time period of the 70's to about 25 years from now. Stories are in an interesting mix of first person to third person narrative. Well done. Also not told chronologically which adds to the storytelling. I didn't realize it won the pulitzer until after I finished it. I can see why.


I really liked it. And she's an author who doesn't repeat herself. Her next book was "Manhattan Beach," set mostly in the 1940s in Brooklyn. Completely different.


----------



## jenspen

Goethe's "Italian Journey" translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer. The travels of a great poet rendered into English by another great poet. 

I'm just over half way through and Goethe is in Sicily at the moment and is investigating the background of the famous charlatan Cagliostro. I'm reading "Italian Journey" in tandem with Michael Wolff's "Siege:Trump under Fire". I was pleasantly surprised by the elegance of Wolff's prose and there is a fascination in viewing the current White House from the safe distance of a hemisphere and many time zones. But despite my interest in and concern about US politics I am finding the President dull company. 

Goethe's company, on the other hand, pleases me very much indeed and I turn to the journal of his travels with relief.


----------



## Jacck

jenspen said:


> Goethe's "Italian Journey" translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer. The travels of a great poet rendered into English by another great poet.
> 
> I'm just over half way through and Goethe is in Sicily at the moment and is investigating the background of the famous charlatan Cagliostro. I'm reading "Italian Journey" in tandem with Michael Wolff's "Siege:Trump under Fire". I was pleasantly surprised by the elegance of Wolff's prose and there is a fascination in viewing the current White House from the safe distance of a hemisphere and many time zones. But despite my interest in and concern about US politics I am finding the President dull company.
> 
> Goethe's company, on the other hand, pleases me very much indeed and I turn to the journal of his travels with relief.


I am a big Goethe fan and I read this in my early twenties while traveling over Italy. The travel book is excellent indeed, but I assure you that the current Italy is not as nice as in Goethes time. For example Napoli (Naples) was discribed as the pearl at the sea etc. nowadays it is a just a horrible filthy city full of crime. The only good thing there is that you can climb Il Vesuvio


----------



## Jacck

The Zhuangzi by Master Zhuangzi


----------



## ECraigR

I was being disciplined and only reading one book at a time for awhile, but fell off that wagon. Currently reading John Berryman’s collected poems, Euripides’ Medea in the Greek, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Going to be starting Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King for a book club with a friend soon.


----------



## jegreenwood

Thoughts on "The Gold Bug Variations"?

I don't shy away from "difficult" novels, as long as the difficulty is not the author showing off.


----------



## millionrainbows

Pinhole Cameras by Chris Keeney.


----------



## Blancrocher

Samuel Richardson, Clarissa 

I read an abridgement of this million-word novel years ago, but an acquaintance recently advised me that it was "notoriously bad." I'm now listening to a Naxos recording of the whole book; all of the readers are excellent, and the novel is painfully absorbing. It's going to take me a while, however.


----------



## starthrower

This one's all about the music and it's very interesting. Starts from the beginning in Hoboken and goes right up through the 1990s.


----------



## jegreenwood

Blancrocher said:


> Samuel Richardson, Clarissa
> 
> I read an abridgement of this million-word novel years ago, but an acquaintance recently advised me that it was "notoriously bad." I'm now listening to a Naxos recording of the whole book; all of the readers are excellent, and the novel is painfully absorbing. It's going to take me a while, however.


You're making me feel guilty. In a play I'm writing (adapting a novel) Clarissa is mentioned in passing, with the usual critique of its length. But I have not read it. (And it's not high on my reading list.)


----------



## jegreenwood

starthrower said:


> View attachment 121182
> 
> 
> This one's all about the music and it's very interesting. Starts from the beginning in Hoboken and goes right up through the 1990s.


I borrowed from my library and skippped around in it. I didn't spend much time on the early years though. It's the Capitol albums I know best, followed by some of the Reprise albums. Found the discussions of the arrangements fascinating. I'm not sure if I would have liked reading it beginning to end.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Pynchon's take on the 80s







on the basis of this:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/10/25/the-best-book-on-mozart/


----------



## jegreenwood

Bwv 1080 said:


> View attachment 121192
> 
> Pynchon's take on the 80s
> View attachment 121193
> 
> on the basis of this:
> 
> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/10/25/the-best-book-on-mozart/


Can't get a more knowledgeable recommendation on Mozart than one from Charles Rosen.


----------



## Aleksandr Rachkofiev

I just compiled my reading list, and it's over 70 books long! At least I have long life ahead of me to read them (I hope).

Currently I'm working through Dostoevsky's best works (starting with Notes from Underground, White Nights, and Crime and Punishment), but I also have summer reading for next year in the form of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.

Additionally I'm reading Will Durant's the Story of Philosophy and preparing for Thomas Rawls' A Theory of Justice. To top off the political readings I'm skimming Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent and Sowell's Basic Economics.

In the science department I've just finished "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (a wonderful read I'd recommend to anyone who admires Feynman) and am just starting the first volume of the Feynman Lectures. I've got a LOT on my plate...

I'm definitely starting to learn the lesson in life that your to-do list never shrinks. For every item you check off, three are added. It's quite humbling but still rather irritating!


----------



## SixFootScowl

Aleksandr Rachkofiev said:


> In the science department I've just finished "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (a wonderful read I'd recommend to anyone who admires Feynman) and am just starting the first volume of the Feynman Lectures. I've got a LOT on my plate...


You also need to read the follow-up on Surely You're Joking, titled, "What do You Care What Other People Think." I tried the Lectures and it was way too deep for me. These were the actual class notes compiled, not the popular book on physics, which was difficult enough. I read that Cal-Tech professors would sit in in Feynman's lectures.


----------



## philoctetes

Fritz Kobus said:


> Ok, I give up. I was lost by the end of Chapter 1 and by the end of chapter 2 I am dazed and confused. I'll skim through the rest in hopes of gleaning a bit of useful information, but frankly, I thought this was more the Music Theory for Simpletons, but it appears to require a high level of musical education to cut your way through it. It would be easier to learn Greek IMO.
> 
> Just supports my initial thought that unless one is a professional musician, music is meant to be enjoyed, not understood.


I'm no professional and I think music is meant for both. I regret waiting until my 50s to get into theory. This is the best book I found to start with.










For a more comprehensive reference on notation and terminology, this one is not bad


----------



## Aleksandr Rachkofiev

Fritz Kobus said:


> You also need to read the follow-up on Surely You're Joking, titled, "What do You Care What Other People Think." I tried the Lectures and it was way too deep for me. These were the actual class notes compiled, not the popular book on physics, which was difficult enough. I read that Cal-Tech professors would sit in in Feynman's lectures.


I'll be sure to look into that. Sometimes I think I worship Feynman to an unhealthy degree...

The Feynman Lectures from what I've read (I'm halfway through Volume I, the reason I said just starting is because with physics, you sort of always feel you are just starting!) are utterly fantastic though, if you ever decide to give them another shot. They definitely seem daunting if your read them out of order, but I think if you start at the beginning it warms you up with basic concepts before going on to more obscure ones. The thing I find so great about them is that they explain a lot of things in ways you're just not used to hearing from a typical university/high school professor. They make physics beautiful. Lecture no.22 in the first volume, "algebra", I find particularly beautiful - it shows an intuitive derivation for Euler's Equation starting all the way back at fundamental principles of mathematics.

And the Cal-Tech thing I've read about too, which particularly excites me considering I'm hoping to apply there for an undergrad!


----------



## Jacck

Aleksandr Rachkofiev said:


> I'll be sure to look into that. Sometimes I think I worship Feynman to an unhealthy degree...
> 
> The Feynman Lectures from what I've read (I'm halfway through Volume I, the reason I said just starting is because with physics, you sort of always feel you are just starting!) are utterly fantastic though, if you ever decide to give them another shot. They definitely seem daunting if your read them out of order, but I think if you start at the beginning it warms you up with basic concepts before going on to more obscure ones. The thing I find so great about them is that they explain a lot of things in ways you're just not used to hearing from a typical university/high school professor. They make physics beautiful. Lecture no.22 in the first volume, "algebra", I find particularly beautiful - it shows an intuitive derivation for Euler's Equation starting all the way back at fundamental principles of mathematics.
> 
> And the Cal-Tech thing I've read about too, which particularly excites me considering I'm hoping to apply there for an undergrad!


I read the lectures before studying physics at university. While it was a stimulating and great reading and brought me to physics, I actually only fully got the lectures after I got a proper B.Sc. in physics. I would not even recommend the lectures to undergraduate physics students, because they are too chaotic. You get the most out of the lectures, if you had proper university physics courses in mechanics (both Newtonian and analytical), in electrodynamics and quantum mechanics etc. And you will not learn these things from Feynman. To properly learn and comprehend these things, you need to compute and solve countless problems. But after you learn these subjects from other more pedagogical sources and you already comprehend them, then Feynman's fresh approach and fresh insights full of gems are very enjoyable reading.

another excellent course of theoretical physics are the books by Lev Landau - Course of Theoretical Physics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_of_Theoretical_Physics
which was used at my university for graduate to postgraduate level theoretical physics

I would also recommend to watch these Walter Lewin lectures
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCliSRiiRVQuDfgxI_QN_Fmw/playlists
they are very feynmanesque. Walter Lewin was then fired because of some alledged sexual harassment (the US is beyond crazy in this regard)


----------



## jegreenwood

philoctetes said:


> I'm no professional and I think music is meant for both. I regret waiting until my 50s to get into theory. This is the best book I found to start with.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> For a more comprehensive reference on notation and terminology, this one is not bad


I took an intro to music theory classes back in the '80s. We started with the most rudimentary material - much of it I knew from playing an instrument fo a few years. I returned about 5 years ago to take more advanced classes with the same instructor. Now, according to him, I have the equivalent of a first year music student's understanding of basic diatonic theory. (I doubt it, myself, but I certainly know more than I used to.) I have now moved on to music analysis (with the same teacher). We'll be finishing up Mozart's K. 310 this afternoon.

My instructor does have a set of teaching materials for purchase if anyone is interested. It's decidely a one man project; there are more than a few typos. I sometimes wonder if I should offer to proofread it for him.


----------



## bharbeke

Aleksandr Rachkofiev said:


> I just compiled my reading list, and it's over 70 books long! At least I have long life ahead of me to read them (I hope).
> 
> Currently I'm working through Dostoevsky's best works (starting with Notes from Underground, White Nights, and Crime and Punishment), but I also have summer reading for next year in the form of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.
> 
> Additionally I'm reading Will Durant's the Story of Philosophy and preparing for Thomas Rawls' A Theory of Justice. To top off the political readings I'm skimming Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent and Sowell's Basic Economics.
> 
> In the science department I've just finished "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (a wonderful read I'd recommend to anyone who admires Feynman) and am just starting the first volume of the Feynman Lectures. I've got a LOT on my plate...
> 
> I'm definitely starting to learn the lesson in life that your to-do list never shrinks. For every item you check off, three are added. It's quite humbling but still rather irritating!


There's some deep truth in your post. I know that I will never get through all of my TBR list, but that also gives me the freedom to remove items from it based on changing taste or reading a short bit of the beginning. I know that there is always new publishing and rereading to carry me through if the TBR ever did hit zero.

I'm currently reading Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu, Ogre Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, and rereading Star Wars: Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## KenOC

I'm reading Steven Pinker's _Enlightenment Now_, which seems to be an endorsement of the values of the enlightenment in a world he sees slipping back toward chauvinism and unreason. I had previously read his _The Better Angels of our Nature_, which laid ouit (quite convincingly) the tremendous decline in the rates of all sorts of violence over the past few hundred years.

Like that book, this one seems quite optimistic. But I see that some critics fault his ignoring the seemingly inevitable disasters arising from population growth and environmental damage. Haven't got that far yet!


----------



## SixFootScowl

Jacck said:


> I read the lectures before studying physics at university. While it was a stimulating and great reading and brought me to physics, I actually only fully got the lectures after I got a proper B.Sc. in physics. I would not even recommend the lectures to undergraduate physics students, because they are too chaotic. You get the most out of the lectures, if you had proper university physics courses in mechanics (both Newtonian and analytical), in electrodynamics and quantum mechanics etc. And you will not learn these things from Feynman. To properly learn and comprehend these things, you need to compute and solve countless problems. But after you learn these subjects from other more pedagogical sources and you already comprehend them, then Feynman's fresh approach and fresh insights full of gems are very enjoyable reading.
> 
> another excellent course of theoretical physics are the books by Lev Landau - Course of Theoretical Physics
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_of_Theoretical_Physics
> which was used at my university for graduate to postgraduate level theoretical physics
> 
> I would also recommend to watch these Walter Lewin lectures
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCliSRiiRVQuDfgxI_QN_Fmw/playlists
> they are very feynmanesque. Walter Lewin was then fired because of some alledged sexual harassment (the US is beyond crazy in this regard)


The "easier" book to read is Feynman's "*Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher*."


----------



## Aleksandr Rachkofiev

Jacck said:


> I read the lectures before studying physics at university. While it was a stimulating and great reading and brought me to physics, I actually only fully got the lectures after I got a proper B.Sc. in physics. I would not even recommend the lectures to undergraduate physics students, because they are too chaotic. You get the most out of the lectures, if you had proper university physics courses in mechanics (both Newtonian and analytical), in electrodynamics and quantum mechanics etc. And you will not learn these things from Feynman. To properly learn and comprehend these things, you need to compute and solve countless problems. But after you learn these subjects from other more pedagogical sources and you already comprehend them, then Feynman's fresh approach and fresh insights full of gems are very enjoyable reading.
> 
> another excellent course of theoretical physics are the books by Lev Landau - Course of Theoretical Physics
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_of_Theoretical_Physics
> which was used at my university for graduate to postgraduate level theoretical physics
> 
> I would also recommend to watch these Walter Lewin lectures
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCliSRiiRVQuDfgxI_QN_Fmw/playlists
> they are very feynmanesque. Walter Lewin was then fired because of some alledged sexual harassment (the US is beyond crazy in this regard)


Thanks for the sources - I'll check them out. To be sure, I'm not relying on the Lectures to teach me these subjects, as I've already learned about them to a substantial degree. I haven't exactly gotten to learning about the Hamiltonian, but my knowledge of Classical Mechanics is I think pretty good (I've been through a bit of Resnick & Haliday, one of the more reliable mechanics textbooks, as well as taken some undergrad courses already). There is truth in your words though - I read the start of the Quantum Mechanics in Volume III just to see what it was like, and I was very confused, so I backed up a bit. I'm planning on learning E&M from conventional sources this summer and next year, and then diving into Volume II the year after, and saving Volume III for when I can really appreciate it. I think I can handle Volume I right now though.

Just curious, are you currently pursuing a career in physics? From various unreliable internet sources, I've heard things varying from "Research Physics has been a dead field ever since the Standard Model was accepted as the status quo - the lack of progress yet continued investment in String Theory shows us this" to "Physics is in a golden age right now, but most advancements are not approachable or marketable through Pop Science". Is there truth to any of this, or can you give me a better idea of what's going on? This may not be the place (actually it's probably not the place), but I'm interested in maybe going into research physics, so I'm going to ask it anyway


----------



## Jacck

Aleksandr Rachkofiev said:


> Thanks for the sources - I'll check them out. To be sure, I'm not relying on the Lectures to teach me these subjects, as I've already learned about them to a substantial degree. I haven't exactly gotten to learning about the Hamiltonian, but my knowledge of Classical Mechanics is I think pretty good (I've been through a bit of Resnick & Haliday, one of the more reliable mechanics textbooks, as well as taken some undergrad courses already). There is truth in your words though - I read the start of the Quantum Mechanics in Volume III just to see what it was like, and I was very confused, so I backed up a bit. I'm planning on learning E&M from conventional sources this summer and next year, and then diving into Volume II the year after, and saving Volume III for when I can really appreciate it. I think I can handle Volume I right now though.
> 
> Just curious, are you currently pursuing a career in physics? From various unreliable internet sources, I've heard things varying from "Research Physics has been a dead field ever since the Standard Model was accepted as the status quo - the lack of progress yet continued investment in String Theory shows us this" to "Physics is in a golden age right now, but most advancements are not approachable or marketable through Pop Science". Is there truth to any of this, or can you give me a better idea of what's going on? This may not be the place (actually it's probably not the place), but I'm interested in maybe going into research physics, so I'm going to ask it anyway


no, I am not persuing a career in physics, but in neuroscience (neuroimaging etc). But I followed these "string wars" with interest and it is still a hot topic. On one side, you have fanatical proponents of string theory, on the other side equally fanatical critics, there is a lot of emotion, even hate. You would not expect such hate and behavior from world's top intellectuals (the average IQ among string theorists is probably above 150). There is one Czech string theorist who has been especially vocal on the internet. Maybe you know him through his blogs. A quite heavy blow to string theory was given by the negative LHC results, when it failed to find confirmation for SUSY (supersymmetry). So my own impression (as an outsider) is that the top fundamental research is in a little bit of a crisis, or stagnation, a no one knows how to continue. It is best when you read arguments from both sides
Peter Woit is one of the most vocal critics of ST
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/talks/lisbontalk.pdf
Is a research career in physics worth it? I do not know. If you love physics, then do it. My impression is that string theory is a swamp of heavy mathematics and the most depressing prospect is that you can sink 30 years of your life into something that might later turn out to be a blind alley. And a research career is generally pretty poor choice. You might not believe the horror stories about a grad school, but they are all true 
http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt05/lt_2011_05_34_41.pdf


----------



## Guest

Aleksandr Rachkofiev said:


> Just curious, are you currently pursuing a career in physics? From various unreliable internet sources, I've heard things varying from "Research Physics has been a dead field ever since the Standard Model was accepted as the status quo - the lack of progress yet continued investment in String Theory shows us this" to "Physics is in a golden age right now, but most advancements are not approachable or marketable through Pop Science". Is there truth to any of this, or can you give me a better idea of what's going on? This may not be the place (actually it's probably not the place), but I'm interested in maybe going into research physics, so I'm going to ask it anyway


My background is in physics, and I spend many years as a physics researcher. I would never suggest anyone pursue a career in physics. Particle physics has become irrelevant. When it started the particles that make up the matter we actually encounter were being studied. It has now wandered into speculations that probably can never be tested, and at best make up little poems about how we imagine the universe began, etc. Some successfully game the system. Garret Lisi (surfer dude and his theory of everything) was able to parlay his brief celebrity into an "institute" on Maui which allows him to go wind surfing every day, despite never having done an honest days work in his life, as far as I am aware. The vital areas of physic are not fundamental particles, but complex system physics, statistical physics, biological physics, materials physics. The systems of funding for science in the U.S. are cruel and punishing to scientists. No rational person would willingly submit him or herself to them. Maybe it is different in other parts of the world.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Baron Scarpia said:


> arret Lisi (surfer dude and his theory of everything) was able to parlay his brief celebrity into an "institute" on Maui which allows him to go wind surfing every day, despite never having done an honest days work in his life, as far as I am aware.


You mean a Spirograph drawing does not unify quantum mechanics and general relativity? Way above my pay grade, but always struck me as too neat that the E8 thingy would somehow tie everything together


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> You mean a Spirograph drawing does not unify quantum mechanics and general relativity? Way above my pay grade, but always struck me as too neat that the E8 thingy would somehow tie everything together


Not my field, but I don't doubt there is some correspondence between the E8 thingy (I think that is actually the technical term) and the families of particles that have been found. But I don't think any predictive power has been demonstrated. The E8 thingy has its symmetry and the universe has its symmetry and you can line them up. The main value of the E8 thingy is that it convinced some sort of silicon valley VC guy to give surfer dude money for his "institute." It pays for a lot of surf board wax. If I had come up with the E8 thingy it would be paying for expensive electrostatic speakers.


----------



## Blancrocher

Halldor Laxness, Independent People

Highly absorbing novel by a Nobel Prize winner


----------



## Pat Fairlea

I just finished, and thoroughly enjoyed, 'A Gentleman in Moscow' by Amor Towles. It's a gentle novel, fascinating characters, with Moscow from the October Revolution to the 1950s as a setting.


----------



## bharbeke

Pat Fairlea said:


> I just finished, and thoroughly enjoyed, 'A Gentleman in Moscow' by Amor Towles. It's a gentle novel, fascinating characters, with Moscow from the October Revolution to the 1950s as a setting.


I'm glad you enjoyed that one, Pat! It was one of my favorites I have read this year.

I just finished reading Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. Once I got to know the characters, I wanted to keep reading more and more to see what happened to them and what secrets were brought to light. You get to see every side of human nature in this story. Recommended!


----------



## skywachr

Pat Fairlea said:


> I just finished, and thoroughly enjoyed, 'A Gentleman in Moscow' by Amor Towles. It's a gentle novel, fascinating characters, with Moscow from the October Revolution to the 1950s as a setting.


I really enjoyed A Gentleman In Moscow as well. I just finished his first book, Rules of Civility, and was able to see first hand the growth of his writing through the development of that book. Kind of slow at first, then intensifies and complicates wonderfully. Very satisfying and interesting to see his growth as a writer unfold in the course of one work.

I've just started Snow by Orhan Pamuk and and am much enjoying it so far.


----------



## TxllxT

*Joseph Roth - Radetzkymarsch (1932)*










The cover picture does not reflect the content of the book. Joseph Roth uses the family saga of the von Trotta's to paint out of the individual's fates the overall destiny of the Habsburg empire. Even 'family saga' is much to cute. It's about the stifling to death of family life under bureaucracy, clerk moralism etc. The first Trotta who received the nobility extension 'von' in front of his name immediately got estranged from his Slovenian background, exactly because he was suddenly transferred under the protection of Franz Joseph's grace. Roth shows in meticulous detail how the servants of the Habsburg state become soulless puppets unable to express fatherly love for the son or love from the son to the father. The way how Roth mixes humor with wry truth is fabulous.


----------



## jegreenwood

Pat Fairlea said:


> I just finished, and thoroughly enjoyed, 'A Gentleman in Moscow' by Amor Towles. It's a gentle novel, fascinating characters, with Moscow from the October Revolution to the 1950s as a setting.


I liked it too. I would describe it as an intelligent entertainment.

I'm about to leave for a short vacation. I have Keith Richards' "A Life" on my Kindle. (And as always, the complete Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes.)


----------



## Pat Fairlea

jegreenwood said:


> I liked it too. I would describe it as an intelligent entertainment.
> 
> I'm about to leave for a short vacation. I have Keith Richards' "A Life" on my Kindle. (And as always, the complete Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes.)


'Intelligent entertainment' is exactly right. The novel engaged and amused me whilst making me think. And sometimes that's all you need a book to do. I read quite a lot of Robert Harris for the same reason.


----------



## bharbeke

For those wanting some wild sci-fi food for thought, I liked Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu. It focuses on a scientist and his explorations into the subject. He does interact with the military a lot, but the story is always told from his point of view.


----------



## robin4

*The Complete Musician: An Integrated Approach to Theory, Analysis, and Listening 4th Edition*

by Steven G. Laitz (Author)

Steven G. Laitz is chair of the Music Theory and Analysis department at The Juilliard School and Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music. He serves as Director of the Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Center for Music Theory Pedagogy at the University of Oklahoma and Executive Editor of Music Theory Pedagogy Online.

Paperback: 960 pages

Publisher: Oxford University Press; 4 edition (November 20, 2015)

Beginning with music fundamentals, The Complete Musician covers all the topics necessary for a thorough understanding of undergraduate music theory by focusing on music in context. Rather than rote learning of concepts and memorizing terms, The Complete Musician emphasizes how theory informs the work of performers.

Composers respond not only to their instincts, experiences, and training in every work they write; they also follow certain ideals and models when appropriate, and modify them to fit their own personal vision. Theory is not a "theoretical" activity; it is a living one that responds to how music is composed and performed. Understanding how theory intersects with composition and performance is key to seeing its relevance to students' wider musical lives. The Complete Musician makes this connection.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The best book on the market. It has a superior balance of basic and complex concepts, terms, exercises, and examples." - Peter Susser, Columbia University

"I love teaching out of The Complete Musician." - Don Traut, University of Arizona

"The Complete Musician provides a more holistic approach to theory than other texts. This text will absolutely help students' performing abilities and how they approach and understand music." - Alex Nohai-Seaman, Suffolk County Community College

"This text is comprehensive, extremely thorough, and sophisticated." - Jeffrey Loeffert, Oklahoma State University


----------



## Blancrocher

Nibelungenlied (Burton Raffel)
The Saga of the Volsungs (Jesse Byock)
Prose Edda, Poetic Edda (various versions)
Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology


----------



## starthrower




----------



## SixFootScowl

Written in the 1870s.


----------



## Barbebleu

Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog. Powerful, riveting novel about America's war on drugs. Quite harrowing and very unputdownable! The first volume of his trilogy which continues with The Cartel and concludes with The Border.


----------



## calvinpv

Raymond Chandler's short story collection _The Simple Art of Murder_:









A collection of 8 stories from his days as a writer for pulp magazines plus his famous essay "The Simple Art of Murder" on the nature of detective fiction. I'm saving the essay for last and am currently halfway through the stories. Two of the stories ("Spanish Blood" and "I'll Be Waiting") I actually read several months ago but subsequently put the book down because it became clear that I was reading an unpolished Chandler who was still searching for his unique voice. I'm picking this book up again because I don't like leaving things unfinished, but after having read three more stories, my view hasn't changed. If you're new to Chandler (and shame on you if you are -- this guy's amazing ), I'd start with the novels, especially _The Big Sleep_, _Farewell My Lovely_, and _The Lady in the Lake_. Save these short stories for later.

One thing that's kind of bothering me about these stories is that they don't really take place in 'real time', so to speak. What I mean by that is that certain clues will be found or certain events will unfold in between chapters such that, when dialogue between characters resumes in the next chapter, the characters talk with an insider knowledge of what going on while me, the reader, has to infer this knowledge. Now, this isn't a bad thing in itself, but in these stories it happens a little too often at crucial moments. And this problem is compounded with Chandler's terse, yet slang-ridden, prose. If you read the novels, however, nearly every event unfolds in 'real time' and when they don't, it's very artfully done. And I think it's not a problem in the novels because 1. novels are longer and so more exposition is allowed and 2. the novels are in first person (famously so, in fact), forcing the reader to adopt the perspective of a detective in the middle of the action.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## TxllxT

The Seasick Whale by Ephraim Kishon

Nice relaxing Louis de Funès atmosphere from a different world of tourism with keen & witty observations.


----------



## bharbeke

Latest books read worthy of recommendation:

To Be or Not To Be by Ryan North
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien

I'm almost 1/3 through another cozy mystery, Wine and Punishment, and it's starting out well.


----------



## Blancrocher

Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel


----------



## Kieran

Went through a brief Graham Greene phase, read three of his magnificent works: The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, and The Honorary Consul. Superior prose and insight, with the thrills of great narratives. Humorous too. Still working through the James Bond books, really enjoying them.

Currently? The Sellout, by Paul Beatty. It's okay, but no more. I find books like this to be difficult to enjoy. Partly it's their unearned celebrity. Or maybe I should say, the noise of their celebrity. This one is supposed to compare to Swift, which piqued my interest. I give Beatty credit for saying it's not a comedic work, and it's not satire. I agree with this, and I don't mean that as a criticism. My criticism is that the book is filled with unrealistic characters, non sequiturs, and rambling passages of inane observations that only stall the book's progress, though in reality they're written to say something about the author. He got his plaudits. Mission accomplished. 

In a different way, it reminds me of a book I read last year, A Naked Singularity, by Sergio de la Pava, if memory serves. This had sub-Tarantino dialogue diversions that only bloated the work, but didn't serve it. A good editor would have found a great book in there, only 300 pages long, not 3000, or whatever it was...


----------



## Faramundo

Antoine Blondin, l'Europe Buissonnière.
About half way now, and I would rate it 5/5.
I've got this 1961 pocket edition, only 3 years younger than me.


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> Went through a brief Graham Greene phase, read three of his magnificent works: The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, and The Honorary Consul. Superior prose and insight, with the thrills of great narratives. Humorous too. Still working through the James Bond books, really enjoying them.
> 
> Currently? The Sellout, by Paul Beatty. It's okay, but no more. I find books like this to be difficult to enjoy. Partly it's their unearned celebrity. Or maybe I should say, the noise of their celebrity. This one is supposed to compare to Swift, which piqued my interest. I give Beatty credit for saying it's not a comedic work, and it's not satire. I agree with this, and I don't mean that as a criticism. My criticism is that the book is filled with unrealistic characters, non sequiturs, and rambling passages of inane observations that only stall the book's progress, though in reality they're written to say something about the author. He got his plaudits. Mission accomplished.
> 
> In a different way, it reminds me of a book I read last year, A Naked Singularity, by Sergio de la Pava, if memory serves. This had sub-Tarantino dialogue diversions that only bloated the work, but didn't serve it. A good editor would have found a great book in there, only 300 pages long, not 3000, or whatever it was...


A Naked Singularity came to me highly recommended by several people. I didn't agree.

I am close to finishing The Gold Bug Variations. Also a disappointment. The author seems happy to throw in half a dozen metaphors for every concept he wants to convey. And most of them involve big words, lots of molecular biology, a bit of musicology, a bit of information theory and a whole bunch of other stuff. Just to show how broad his knowledge is. All to support a rather silly soap opera plot, and his wonder about the miracle of life (in a biological sense). Not sure why I've continued reading it (600+ pages), except I rarely put down a serious work of literature.

I don't mind challenging reads. I've done Ulysses, In Search of Lost Time, all of Pynchon, etc. I've also done Godel, Escher, Bach, to which Gold Bug is oddly similar.

I should have spent the time listening to 30 versions of The Goldberg Variations.


----------



## KenOC

I'm re-reading, after quite a few years, _The Selfish Gene_ by Richard Dawkins. He has a bizarre way of looking at evolution, but it's hard to find fault with his logic! Aside from being interesting, the book is entertaining.


----------



## jegreenwood

KenOC said:


> I'm re-reading, after quite a few years, _The Selfish Gene_ by Richard Dawkins. He has a bizarre way of looking at evolution, but it's hard to find fault with his logic! Aside from being interesting, the book is entertaining.


After The Gold Bug Variations, I might never again read a book about evolution.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Treasure Island.


----------



## Faramundo

Like a fantastic opera on misery and blackness.


----------



## millionrainbows

Modernism, by Peter Gay


----------



## Captainnumber36

Peter Pan!


----------



## Captainnumber36

Tom Sawyer! (I've been doing audiobooks, they go fast!).


----------



## Pat Fairlea

I have just finished this one.
It won't affect how I feel about Debussy's music, but Mon Dieu that man was a veritable pain in the backside!


----------



## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> After The Gold Bug Variations, I might never again read a book about evolution.


Weren't you encouraging me to read that book? 

A good book with a biology/genetics theme is Mendel's Dwarf, by Simon Mawer.


----------



## Guest

Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward










Takes some time for the story to get off the ground, but in the end an engaging depiction of Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath among the rural poor.


----------



## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> Weren't you encouraging me to read that book?
> 
> A good book with a biology/genetics theme is Mendel's Dwarf, by Simon Mawer.


Before I got into it. It should have been tailor-made for this forum. Lots of time spent on Bach - trying to use the Goldberg variations as a metaphor for evolution, the way DNA works, etc. Or maybe evolution as a metaphor for the Goldberg variations.

Edit - A lot of critics raved about it when it was first published. And the author just won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I think one of the reasons I was so critical was that my expectations were very high. YMMV.


----------



## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Takes some time for the story to get off the ground, but in the end an engaging depiction of Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath among the rural poor.


Read that and liked it. Looking forward to reading the follow-up.


----------



## wkasimer

A couple of books related to US Supreme Court Justices:


----------



## Minor Sixthist

The Nicomachean Ethics, just this second, for one of my courses. And for a different course, the Odyssey, which I need to have done by Tuesday, and then it's onto Oedipus Rex, which is due NEXT Tuesday, then Sappho the next one, you get the picture... it's a book a week for this course 















It's okay, another one of my classes is a seminar on Shostakovich's symphonies, so when my nose isn't in a book at least it could be in a CD instead.

But seriously... renting this many books for all these classes is seriously expensive. I'm going to have to amp up my hours at my job cleaning the dorm bathrooms...


----------



## jegreenwood

Minor Sixthist said:


> The Nicomachean Ethics, just this second, for one of my courses. And for a different course, the Odyssey, which I need to have done by Tuesday, and then it's onto Oedipus Rex, which is due NEXT Tuesday, then Sappho the next one, you get the picture... it's a book a week for this course
> 
> View attachment 123604
> View attachment 123605
> 
> 
> It's okay, another one of my classes is a seminar on Shostakovich's symphonies, so when my nose isn't in a book at least it could be in a CD instead.
> 
> But seriously... renting this many books for all these classes is seriously expensive. I'm going to have to amp up my hours at my job cleaning the dorm bathrooms...


Just think of them as the Augean Stables.


----------



## Guest

Minor Sixthist said:


> The Nicomachean Ethics, just this second, for one of my courses. And for a different course, the Odyssey, which I need to have done by Tuesday, and then it's onto Oedipus Rex, which is due NEXT Tuesday, then Sappho the next one, you get the picture... it's a book a week for this course
> 
> View attachment 123604
> View attachment 123605
> 
> 
> It's okay, another one of my classes is a seminar on Shostakovich's symphonies, so when my nose isn't in a book at least it could be in a CD instead.
> 
> But seriously... renting this many books for all these classes is seriously expensive. I'm going to have to amp up my hours at my job cleaning the dorm bathrooms...


I really like that Fagles translation.


----------



## Guest

Started a collection of short stories by Emma Donoghue, Touchy Subjects










Her recent book is a best seller, "Room" but she got her start with more off-beat stuff. I got to know her work through her early book, Slammerkin.


----------



## TxllxT

Well written analysis of how 'religion' became 'culture' in Weimar and how 'culture' subsequently collapsed under barbarism (of you know what and who).


----------



## Varick

KenOC said:


> I'm reading Steven Pinker's _Enlightenment Now_, which seems to be an endorsement of the values of the enlightenment in a world he sees slipping back toward chauvinism and unreason. I had previously read his _The Better Angels of our Nature_, which laid ouit (quite convincingly) the tremendous decline in the rates of all sorts of violence over the past few hundred years.
> 
> Like that book, this one seems quite optimistic. But I see that some critics fault his ignoring the seemingly inevitable disasters arising from population growth and environmental damage. Haven't got that far yet!


I have "Better Angels" and "Enlightenment Now" on my list. I became a big Pinker fan after reading "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" which was absolutely fantastic. A book everyone should read IMO. I have watched/listened to many of his lectures. I don't always agree with his conclusions but he always gives food for thought and backs up his ideas and theories.

I don't fault him at all for ignoring "disasters" arising from population growth and environmental damage. For over 50 years every single person warning about both issues and the predictions of the results of those issues have been COMPLETELY wrong. They haven't even come close. I have read/listened to many "experts" on both these subjects and not one of them has even come close to any kind of prediction they have made.

So, as usual Pinker is rather astute in ignoring such traps of the fear mongering "the-sky-is-falling" crowd.

V


----------



## philoctetes

Just finished Chaos by Tom O'Neill. The author spent over 20 years on this book and doesn't quite resolve all evidence, as many of the subjects are now dead, but the shade he throws on Bugliosi and Helter Skelter is undeniable. He also illuminates the connections between Manson's time in SF a year before, his parole officer's constant negligence of his violations, the CIA's MKULTRA experiments with speed and LSD, and the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic where all of these factors crossed paths during the Summer of Love. 

Bugliosi would claim that Manson ordered the murders to start a race war. He threatened O'Neill when the latter's investigations dug up weaknesses in his theory. And while O'Neill may have run out of gas without *proving* his alternative arguments re Manson, he opens up such a can of worms that this book could easily have a sequel about the CIA's role in other historic unsolved or suspicious murder cases... the same man who ran LSD experiments for MKULTRA also had psychiatric oversight over Jack Ruby... best non-fiction I've read since Killers of the Flower Moon...


----------



## starthrower

Been meaning to get to this one for ages.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

A novel with more pros than cons, I would have to recommend it. Four out of Five.

Tartt is a master at characters and relationships. She is expert at drawing you into the narrator's, Theo's, world. Tremendous at showing you Theo's thinking and reasoning then subtly showing you that the reasoning and thinking is not accurate.

Pros for:
Engaging writing and the above mentioned
Her use of fine art and classical music
Captivating descriptions of grief and mourning
A sense of place that makes you see the surroundings
Sparing no detail
The boy doesn't get the girl, doesn't even come close.
Not taking the cheap way out

Cons for:
Over many pages about drug and alcohol use that sometimes seem to cast it in a good light.
A few too many political/social slams against what she doesn't like.


----------



## Minor Sixthist

DrMike said:


> I really like that Fagles translation.


I think it might be the best!!


----------



## Guest

Minor Sixthist said:


> I think it might be the best!!


I also recommend his translations of the Illiad and the Aeneid, if you haven't already read those. And his translations of Aeschylus' Oresteia, and Sophocles' Theban plays.


----------



## jegreenwood

DrMike said:


> I also recommend his translations of the Illiad and the Aeneid, if you haven't already read those. And his translations of Aeschylus' Oresteia, and Sophocles' Theban plays.


I read his Aeneid last year. I have to compare it to, but I thought it was good. For the Iliad and the Odyssey I have Robert Fitzgerald.


----------



## Blancrocher

I like the Fitzgerald and Fagles translations of the Aeneid, though nothing can replace Dryden's version for me. I'm somewhat surprised it's not more readily available, though I suppose 17th-century rhymed poetry is an acquired taste!


----------



## RockyIII

Last night I finished reading _The Day the Rabbi Left Town_ by Harry Kemelman and started reading _The Institute_, Stephen King's new book.


----------



## jegreenwood

RockyIII said:


> Last night I finished reading _The Day the Rabbi Left Town_ by Harry Kemelman and started reading _The Institute_, Stephen King's new book.


Wow! I haven't even thought about the "Rabbi" series in decades. I read a number of them as they were released.

Right now reading "Complete English Grammar Rules: Examples, Exceptions, Exercises, and Everything You Need to Master Proper Grammar (The Farlex Grammar Book Book 1)"

I also have the Farlax volume on punctuation.


----------



## Kieran

Volker Kutscher's sequence of detective novels set during 1920's and 30's Berlin, featuring Gereon rath. On my second one - Goldstein (it's the third in the sequence but the library hasn't gotten me #2 yet). Really enjoying them, they remind me a little of the Inspector Troy series of books by John Lawton, set in wartime and post-war England.

Also, read Against the Double Blackmail by Slavoj Zizek, which I enjoyed, his freewheeling insights are sharp, though his conclusions are informed by his Marxist predelictions, but he's a great thinker nonetheless. 

Also, recently finished The Overstory by Richard Powers, a tour de force novel starring Trees! A beauty of a book...


----------



## Jacck

*Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age*
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/827.The_Diamond_Age
I am reading a Czech translation, so need to post an English cover


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

This is a great book. Highly recommended.

Life wisdom from a dog:

"He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave."

"The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague."

"People are always worried about what's happening next. They often find it difficult to stand still, to occupy the now without worrying about the future. People are generally not satisfied with what they have; they are very concerned with what they are going to have."


----------



## musicrom

Just finished Sherman Alexie's _The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven_. It was a good book and I enjoyed it - Alexie is clearly a very talented author, entertaining to read and has a way with words.

I did feel a little awkward reading it though, considering the allegations against him. Kind of similar to listening to Wagner. How do you reconcile liking someone's work, who has also done or supported very bad things?


----------



## Jacck

musicrom said:


> Just finished Sherman Alexie's _The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven_. It was a good book and I enjoyed it - Alexie is clearly a very talented author, entertaining to read and has a way with words.
> 
> I did feel a little awkward reading it though, considering the allegations against him. Kind of similar to listening to Wagner. How do you reconcile liking someone's work, who has also done or supported very bad things?


he was likely the victim of some female stalker psychopath that could not get over their breakup, and so sent emails to his wife and smeared him with accusations
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4391069-Sherman-Alexie-Statement.html
and all the american institutions are doing all they can to distance themselves from him
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Alexie#Sexual_harassment_allegations
typical American hysteria. He was not sentenced by court, but an unfounded accusation by a women with ulterior motives is enough to ruin his career.


----------



## Jacck

*Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game*


----------



## EdwardBast

Rereading China Miéville's _Perdido Street Station_

Finally reading Jared Diamond's _Guns, Germs, and Steel_.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Dumas' _Joseph Balsamo_.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## Guest

Just finished _The Idiot_, by Elif Batuman.










A book with an almost non-existent plot, but which is an excuse for wry and ironic observations about a host of characters encountered by the narrator, first at Harvard College, then in Hungarian villages where she agrees to teach English over the summer. The narrator is obsessed with a romantic interest, Ivan, who is intelligent but emotionally immature. The interactions with peripheral characters are the substance of the book.


----------



## Guest

Not reading, but rather listening to this audiobook:







Really interesting look at the first U.S. pioneers to what was then the Old Northwest - the territory won from the British in the wake of the Revolutionary War that would go on to become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I lived for 5 years in Ohio, and it is really interesting to learn about how those cities and towns I lived around got their starts, and how funny it is how once important cities become less so over time. One of the earliest U.S. cities established in Ohio - Marrietta - which was very important when primary transportation was down the Ohio river from Pittsburg, is now not even on a major city.


----------



## Guest

DrMike said:


> Not reading, but rather listening to this audiobook:
> View attachment 125082
> 
> Really interesting look at the first U.S. pioneers to what was then the Old Northwest - the territory won from the British in the wake of the Revolutionary War that would go on to become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I lived for 5 years in Ohio, and it is really interesting to learn about how those cities and towns I lived around got their starts, and how funny it is how once important cities become less so over time. One of the earliest U.S. cities established in Ohio - Marrietta - which was very important when primary transportation was down the Ohio river from Pittsburg, is now not even on a major city.


Lots of people have spoken about the benefits of audio books; that you can listen while you are driving and doing much else besides. It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. But the only downside I see is that you're not coming across unusual words that you can focus on and try to come to terms with, and probably reach for that dictionary. Then use it yourself.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Christabel said:


> Lots of people have spoken about the benefits of audio books; that you can listen while you are driving and doing much else besides. It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. But the only downside I see is that you're not coming across unusual words that you can focus on and try to come to terms with, and probably reach for that dictionary. Then use it yourself.


I drive a fair amount for work and listen to audio books often. I have noticed that issue you mention. The other issues are, you aren't listening to music and you have to stop listening to the book and actually do your job.

Right now I'm listening to this borrowed as ebook and audio book from the library. I listen during the day and find my place in the ebook at night and read. A little clumsy but works.









A fairly standard dystopian tale which seems to borrow heavily from Octavia Butler's classic parable novels. Most interesting are the two main characters and their development.


----------



## Haabrann

Snorri Sturluson - Heimskringla.
The norse sagas about Norwegian kings. Reading it for the third or fourth time, but I've never gotten completely through, there's always been about 20-30% left.

Again, I'm struck by the similarities to Ellis' American Psycho, or vice versa. We're talking about graphic, detailed and drawn-out descriptions of _extreme _violence, broken by long, drawn-out descriptions of how splendid, stout, well dressed, rich and excellent in all tings the perpetrators are.

Great stuff.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> Lots of people have spoken about the benefits of audio books; that you can listen while you are driving and doing much else besides. It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. But the only downside I see is that you're not coming across unusual words that you can focus on and try to come to terms with, and probably reach for that dictionary. Then use it yourself.


I don't have a huge love for audiobooks - just saw this at the library and I like the author, so I thought I would try it. I have two major issues: 1) listening to a book, I find at times my mind will wander and I'll have to skip back and catch what I zoned out during; 2) this book, in particular (and many of the history books I enjoy) mentions lots of places, and geography, and if I had the book, I would likely be flipping to the maps frequently to give myself a frame of reference - I don't have that with listening to the audiobook. I think I would do better with fiction.

Still, it allows me to learn more while doing other activities. Maybe I will come to enjoy it more. I used to listen to courses from the Great Courses, and enjoyed them a lot.


----------



## Guest

I've only listened to audio books when doing cross-country car trips. It is perfect for that, anything else you might listen to will quickly become boring. I've only listened to fiction. Getting distracted and losing the thread of the story is an occasional problem, but that can happen to me reading a book as well. 

Once I listened to Homer's Odyssey, and I guess an audio recording would be the most "authentic" listening experience (except no lyre).


----------



## senza sordino

I just finished reading Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein. I liked it, mostly. I read it once before, back in the early 80s. I couldn't remember anything about it, so I read it again. I don't remember my reaction when I read it all those years ago. This reading was mostly enjoyable. I enjoyed the start and the end, but I did find the book a bit long. And I read the edited version, not the original. Heinlein first wrote a longer book but his publishers told him to take some stuff out, so he did. When he died the original book at its original length was published. I didn't read that longer version. And I found the shorter version too long!










I'm not sure what I'll be reading next.


----------



## Haabrann

Used to read a lot of science fiction in my youth. Favourites used to be Ray Bradbury and Stanislaw Lem.

It still happens that I pick up a book. Of modern writers, a favourite hands down is scottish Iain M. Banks, and his ''Culture'' series, which can be read in any order.

They are political, in the sense that they describe an utopian post-scarcity society that is basically end-of-history communism. Being norwegian, they read like scandinavian social democracy on stereoids.

Utopia has been reached, tech is insanely advanced, the ''Culture'' is a civilization, or rather a ''culture'' in the mid/upper strata of intergalactic civilizations. The books are about how the ''Culture'' relates to these other civilizations, both less and more advanced.

I recommend this series highly. Best approach may be to just read the extensive wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture


----------



## Guest

"*Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Regime 1657-1785*, Downing A. Thomas


----------



## jegreenwood

Having recently finished a grammar book, I am now reading the instructor's version of a math SAT prep book. For several years, I've volunteered to help public school students in NYC prepare for their SATs. In the past, I've taught reading and writing, but this year I'm also teaching 'rithmetic. It's embarrassing to discover how little I remember (albeit from 50 years ago). I was actually a good math student, scoring 800 on my math SAT. But trigonometry and even some algebra looks like a foreign language now. In algebra, I can generally get the right answer (if I'm not careless), but I don't know how to teach it. As for trig . . . HELP!


----------



## Rogerx




----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Warning! Spoilers!

I read her other Pulitzer prize book, The Goldfinch and generally liked it, although it has a lot of holes in it. This one is 100% better written.

Excellent character driven novel. Falls down a bit in the last third, with characters doing little but running back and forth to each others apartments and asking where the others are.. And an enormous amount of drinking and drug use. But it concludes well, although not too surprising.

Amazing how she builds the characters. Four of these students committed or helped commit two murders and one, the narrator was in on one of the murders. Only one character did the actual killing, although details are uncertain on the first murder as to who did what. And she leaves a subtle door open in that first murder that animals could have been involved. Very nicely cloaked and well done. But in the second killing of their classmate, there is no doubt that all five planned the act and were present. And through all of this we see revealed that none of these student feel any significant remorse or guilt. They carry on with their oblivious, secluded and destructive lives much as they were doing before. They see the grief of the dead student, their friends, family and they are not touched. They see the grief of the other students . The narrator displays almost everyone's grief and mourning as suspect and somehow phony. The other perpetrators remain neutral to it all. It's a narcissistic bunch and expertly portrayed.


----------



## TxllxT

Fascinating reading when you want to know where the notion / concept of 'people' is originating from. This making of the people as one acting agent is uniquely West Semitic (Ugarit, Hebrew). The people as one acting agent form the foundation of Western democracy, of Western belief in democracy.


----------



## Tristan

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 125782
> 
> 
> Warning! Spoilers!
> 
> I read her other Pulitzer prize book, The Goldfinch and generally liked it, although it has a lot of holes in it. This one is 100% better written.
> 
> Excellent character driven novel. Falls down a bit in the last third, with characters doing little but running back and forth to each others apartments and asking where the others are.. And an enormous amount of drinking and drug use. But it concludes well, although not too surprising.
> 
> Amazing how she builds the characters. Four of these students committed or helped commit two murders and one, the narrator was in on one of the murders. Only one character did the actual killing, although details are uncertain on the first murder as to who did what. And she leaves a subtle door open in that first murder that animals could have been involved. Very nicely cloaked and well done. But in the second killing of their classmate, there is no doubt that all five planned the act and were present. And through all of this we see revealed that none of these student feel any significant remorse or guilt. They carry on with their oblivious, secluded and destructive lives much as they were doing before. They see the grief of the dead student, their friends, family and they are not touched. They see the grief of the other students . The narrator displays almost everyone's grief and mourning as suspect and somehow phony. The other perpetrators remain neutral to it all. It's a narcissistic bunch and expertly portrayed.


I loved this book; I'm a fan of the "campus novel".

I do agree, though: a lot of drinking and drug use. That is something that Tartt likes to write about; "The Goldfinch" is full of it too!

But yes, the insensitivity of these characters is just astounding.


----------



## Guest

Recently read _Salvage the Bones_, by Jesmyn Ward, which culminated in a description of Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath among the rural poor. Just today finished reading, _Their Eyes were Watching God_, by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was an African American writer of the early 20th century and the 1937 novel describes rural life in the Southern United States. It describes the central character's search for identity and love in a landscape including a typical southern town, a Florida settlement founded by African Americans, and Florida cane fields. Like Salvage the Bones, it culminates in a hurricane, its devastating consequences, and its failure to extinguish hope. I don't hesitate to call it a masterpiece.










(It can be had for $0.99 in Kindle Edition.)


----------



## jegreenwood

Just started James Baldwin's "Go Tell it on the Mountain."

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" is on my list.


----------



## eljr




----------



## Guest

Tristan said:


> I'm a fan of the "campus novel".


Ever read Private citizens by Tony Tulatemutti? Sort of a post-campus novel about four recent Stanford grads.


----------



## Bwv 1080

John Dos Passos -_ Adventures of a Young Man_

story of an American volunteer in the Republican armies of the Spanish civil war who becomes disillusioned with the Stalinist repression and violence. Mirrors John's own experience with the murder of his friend, the communist José Robles who was executed on Stalin's orders as part of a purge with a cover story that he was a spy. John stood up for Jose and earned the enmity of the Left - he got 'cancelled' in modern lingo and it essentially ruined his literary career. Too bad as Dos Passos was by far the best American writer of that generation


----------



## Guest

Hmmm, never read anything by Dos Passos.


----------



## Kieran

All roads eventually lead back to Raymond Chandler: reading *Farewell My Lovely* for maybe about the umpteenth time, multiplied. Alongside I have a Philip K Dick book, *The Simulacra*, which I haven't yet begun, and Borges, *Fictions*, which I can't wait to devour...


----------



## Guest

"The Madness of Crowds", Douglas Murray.


----------



## Tristan

Kieran said:


> Borges, *Fictions*, which I can't wait to devour...


Borges is one of my all-time favorites. I re-read _Ficciones_ a couple months ago.


----------



## Kieran

Christabel said:


> "The Madness of Crowds", Douglas Murray.


I love Douglas Murray, how is this book?


----------



## Kieran

Tristan said:


> Borges is one of my all-time favorites. I re-read _Ficciones_ a couple months ago.


Yeah, I read a little about this book, but haven't started it yet. Looking forward to seeing what he's like. What attracts you to his writing?


----------



## Guest

_We Have Always Lived in the Castle_, Shirley Jackson.










Wow, a short, intense read. A Gothic thriller/mystery from a writer with a vividly morbid imagination.


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> I love Douglas Murray, how is this book?


Written with his usual aplomb, prescience and skill. He talks about it in several U-Tube interviews too, if you're interested in knowing about its contents. An attempt to push back on mob-driven PC drivel.


----------



## Kieran

Christabel said:


> Written with his usual aplomb, prescience and skill. He talks about it in several U-Tube interviews too, if you're interested in knowing about its contents. An attempt to push back on mob-driven PC drivel.


Yeah, I've seen the YouTube vids, been aware of him for a long time - Douglas is like a spear!


----------



## Bwv 1080

Baron Scarpia said:


> _We Have Always Lived in the Castle_, Shirley Jackson.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Wow, a short, intense read. A Gothic thriller/mystery from a writer with a vividly morbid imagination.


Saw the 2018 movie, cool story


----------



## Bwv 1080

Kieran said:


> Yeah, I read a little about this book, but haven't started it yet. Looking forward to seeing what he's like. What attracts you to his writing?


You can find the answers to everything you ever wanted to know, if you search long enough here


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Saw the 2018 movie, cool story


I didn't know there was a film. I looked at the wikipedia page, and it appears there are some significant plot deviations between the film and the book.


----------



## Kieran

Bwv 1080 said:


> You can find the answers to everything you ever wanted to know, if you search long enough here


You're bloody correct!


----------



## DaveM

For those interested in the history of some of the most potentially dangerous hacking beginning several years ago to the present that reads like thriller, get the book (available also on Audible) Sandworm, just released a few days ago. It also provides a concise history of Ukraine related to Russia, particularly interesting given the subject in present-day American election-related politics. I can't put it down. It will hit the best-seller lists pretty quickly.


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Yeah, I've seen the YouTube vids, been aware of him for a long time - Douglas is like a spear!


He's going after 'progressive' pearl-clutchers who project that it's the conservatives who are clutching the pearls! Delicious irony. And a gay man interrogating identity politics!! He has been summarily ejected from his minority box because of 'identity betrayal'.

You might be interested in this; it's wonderful stuff!! Long live Douglas Murray.


----------



## jegreenwood

Bwv 1080 said:


> Saw the 2018 movie, cool story


Have you seen the 1960 adaptation of Jackson's novel "The Haunting?"


----------



## Tristan

Kieran said:


> Yeah, I read a little about this book, but haven't started it yet. Looking forward to seeing what he's like. What attracts you to his writing?


His short stories are like concise thought experiments (but with a narrative to make it interesting). They're puzzles and enigmas and beg to be read multiple times.


----------



## Varick

Very tough read. Very dense. Not a "snuggle up with a good book" kind of book. It's a constant circling around the center, and non linear books like that are easy to lose sight of the center. He doesn't, but there is so much in here that it takes a long time to get back to the center which is "Meaning." But a good book and a fascinating journey.










In the middle of this one now. First thing I've read by C.S. Lewis. The "Screwtape Letters" are next. Someone told me it was an excellent book. He was a very deep thinker about a great many subjects. Enjoyable.

V


----------



## Guest

I absolutely believe "Maps of Meaning" is hard graft. It's difficult enough listening to the lectures!! In many ways Peterson is a modern C.S. Lewis - but I'm sure you already know that.


----------



## Guest

Varick said:


> Very tough read. Very dense. Not a "snuggle up with a good book" kind of book. It's a constant circling around the center, and non linear books like that are easy to lose sight of the center. He doesn't, but there is so much in here that it takes a long time to get back to the center which is "Meaning." But a good book and a fascinating journey.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In the middle of this one now. First thing I've read by C.S. Lewis. The "Screwtape Letters" are next. Someone told me it was an excellent book. He was a very deep thinker about a great many subjects. Enjoyable.
> 
> V


The Screwtape Letters are great. Highly recommended. I'd also recommend Mere Christianity.


----------



## Rogerx




----------



## Blancrocher

Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio (Trans. Geoffrey Brock; NYRB Classics)


----------



## SixFootScowl

Bwv 1080 said:


> You can find the answers to everything you ever wanted to know, if you search long enough here


All it gives me is gibberish, a mix of characters with no apparent organization. What am I missing?


----------



## Bwv 1080

Fritz Kobus said:


> All it gives me is gibberish, a mix of characters with no apparent organization. What am I missing?


Tied to the Borges short story here:

https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf


----------



## Blancrocher

Lewis Carroll, _Alice in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking Glass_


----------



## Jacck

I bought a hardbound edition of the Dostoyevsky's work The Adolescent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raw_Youth
and I am reading it on page 200. This is the only major work by Dostoyevsky that I haven't read yet. I also read most of his works as a teenager, so it is interesting reading him being 20 years older. And to get into the correct mood of imperial Russia, I am listening to Tchaikovsky's symphonies


----------



## elgar's ghost

Seutonius - _The Twelve Ceasars_.

Covers nearly two hundred years from Julius Caesar (born 100 b.c.) to Domitian (murdered a.d. 96). Understood to contain a certain amount of sensationalism - it was written during the earlier part of Hadrian's reign and so may have been a result of some state-sponsored vilification of the more unsavoury aspects of the pre-Antonine era. Irrespective of how truthful it actually is it's still a good read, although the early chapters on Julius Caesar are lost.

The front cover depicts the emperor Vespasian (r. 69-79) with his younger son Domitian (r. 81-96).


----------



## DaveM

Just out 2 days ago: _Crime in Progress:_ Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump.


----------



## Open Book

Just finished "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert

I was into classics in my teens and twenties, but this is the first one I've read in so long. It's been sitting in my bookcase annoying me for years so I finally picked it up and read it.

It's the story of a young woman in 19th France who is unhappy with her middle class life married to a dull doctor. She longs for excitement, luxury, and the arts and gets into the wrong ruinous activities with the wrong people. Not explicit but shockingly realistic, and what an ending.


----------



## Blancrocher

Maxim Gorky, _My Childhood_


----------



## Templeton

The autobiography of Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. Whatever one's political views, he was a truly remarkable man and this is a fascinating read. Particularly appropriate during current times.


----------



## Dim7

"Blindsight" by Peter Watts
The whole thing available here https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I always post after reading. This is my latest read and I quite liked it. I strongly recommend.


----------



## Blancrocher

Yiyun Li, _Dear Friend_


----------



## philoctetes

With a 7 page index almost all names... like a vacuum cleaner with a VERY large dirtbag


----------



## Blancrocher

Lu Xun, The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China (trans. Julia Lovell)


----------



## mikeh375

I've just started this...quite heavy going but interesting. Here's a review...https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691090474/music-and-the-ineffable


----------



## Bwv 1080

New book on the Soviet 1941 winter counteroffensive, which the author argues, rather than the first German defeat, was a resounding disaster for the Red Army. According to Stahel, the German defeat actually occurred at Smolensk during the summer when Soviet resistance, attrition and logistics guaranteed the inability to quickly destroy the USSR and doomed Germany into a war of attrition and material that it could not hope to win. Stahel is a modern historian who rejects the 'clean' Wehrmacht myth and details army and officer corps' complicity in the mass killings of Jews and other civilians on the Eastern Front.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

SPOILERS 
Here's one I attempted to read. Lasted 100 pages and put it in the giveaway stack.

Yeah, it su ks. An expat white privileged, fat, far left, hater whining about everything he sees, hears, smells, tastes, everyone he meets and everywhere he goes. All couched in semi witty sarcasm. He pretty much dislikes his family and all of America. He is SOMETIMES funny but most of the time overwhelming with non stop berating of all things. Correction, he did like a pizza once, imagine that. He hates Hannibal, MO and the Mark Twain home and Oxford, MS and the Faulkner home and says he has never read past three pages of Faulkner, which I have no trouble believing. Not sure he has the faculty to understand it.

Some reviews on Goodreads say he writes in a derogatory way about Hispanics but I didn't see that in the 100 pages I read.
So there you go. Might be just what you are looking for. Or not.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness.
About 1/3 way through. So far so definitely good.


----------



## Blancrocher

Stephen King, Salem's Lot


----------



## Judith

You might fall out with me lol, but the book I'm reading is "The Iron Lady", The Story of Margaret Thatcher.
It's her life story and tells of her upbringing which gives an understanding of why she was that way.

Loved her or hated her, she existed and was prominent in politics!


----------



## Blancrocher

Catullus, The Complete Poetry (trans. David Mulroy) 

Probably prefer Guy Lee for a complete translation, but Mulroy's was readable. As a non-specialist, I enjoyed the defense of the standard identification of Lesbia in the introduction.


----------



## Blancrocher

Dante, Inferno (Ciardi)


----------



## SixFootScowl

Excruciatingly detailed work. Highly recommended. Not cheap online, but I got it on library loan.


----------



## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> Hmmm, never read anything by Dos Passos.


Manhattan Transfer, Don Passos

This book depicts the tapestry of life in New York about 100 years ago. The lives of a large cohort of characters, ranging from the destitute to the obscenely rich, are depicted, sometimes in a fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness fashion. A great book and a window into another time.


----------



## bz3

Bwv 1080 said:


> John Dos Passos -_ Adventures of a Young Man_
> 
> story of an American volunteer in the Republican armies of the Spanish civil war who becomes disillusioned with the Stalinist repression and violence. Mirrors John's own experience with the murder of his friend, the communist José Robles who was executed on Stalin's orders as part of a purge with a cover story that he was a spy. John stood up for Jose and earned the enmity of the Left - he got 'cancelled' in modern lingo and it essentially ruined his literary career. Too bad as Dos Passos was by far the best American writer of that generation


As a Faulkner fan I wouldn't go as far as you in my opinion but I always tell people to try the USA Trilogy by Dos Passos (or any single novel, they needn't be read in order; I prefer The Big Money) if they are interested in literary modernism but don't want to go overboard with the experimentation. Very underrated American novelist.

Currently reading: Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence.


----------



## Blancrocher

Adalbert Stifter, _Rock Crystal_

Novella about a mountain crossing.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

bz3 said:


> Currently reading: Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence.


I read this in the past year. Tell us what you think when finished.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Just finished Ray Bradbury's 'The Illustrated Man'.
Brilliant. Was there ever a story-teller to match Bradbury? Whatever the genre he wrote in, he holds the attention, drives the narrative forward, and still fits in passages of superb lyrical prose.


----------



## Open Book

A few weeks after "Madame Bovary" I read another classic, "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I read this in 8th grade when we needed the help of an English teacher to get through the prose, beautiful though it is. I did OK with that this time but reject its message. It is the story of a woman and a man in Puritan colonial New England punished (in different ways) for their illicit affair that produced a child. It's hard to imagine living in a society so intolerant and I am not sure whose side the author is on in regard to the main characters' suffering.


----------



## Guest

I read this in college and thought I'd re-read it. It manages to be funny and devastating at the same time.


----------



## Roger Knox

88keys said:


> I read this in college and thought I'd re-read it. It manages to be funny and devastating at the same time.[QUOTE}
> 
> I don't think you'd be able to write _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ now, the privacy legislation and lawsuits would prevent it. Kesey's satire of institutional life still hits the mark sometimes.


----------



## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> A few weeks after "Madame Bovary" I read another classic, "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I read this in 8th grade when we needed the help of an English teacher to get through the prose, beautiful though it is. I did OK with that this time but reject its message. It is the story of a woman and a man in Puritan colonial New England punished (in different ways) for their illicit affair that produced a child. It's hard to imagine living in a society so intolerant and I am not sure whose side the author is on in regard to the main characters' suffering.


Wait till you get to "The Crucible" and the Salem witch trials.

I read "The Scarlet Letter" several decades ago. Honestly, Hawthorne is not a favorite of mine, but I must differ from you. My copy of the book is an old one, having belonged to my mother. The editorial introduction (not The Custom House) is from 1921 and written by William Lyon Phelps. In it, he compares the novel to "Madame Bovary," which I read even longer ago. However the below quote reflects my recollections.

"It is instructive by contrast to compare Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" with Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." Both men were equally deliberate artists. In "Madame Bovary" we have a picture of degeneration ending in despair. Life has no solutions. In "The Scarlet Letter" we have sin and its consequences, illumined at last by the light of heaven. Flaubert has nothing but scorn for his characters, whereas Hawthorne treats of all of his people with dignity. He did not show the sympathy with his characters that we find in Dickens and Thackeray, but he was deeply moved by their fate.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Fritz Kobus said:


> Excruciatingly detailed work. Highly recommended. Not cheap online, but I got it on library loan.


Above is way too detailed and rather technical. I am getting something out of it, but only about 10%. My music major pianist friend with two music degrees and a grand piano in his living room is planning to read it, but for me he recommended and I just ordered from the library, this one which is far more suitable to a music theory dunce such as me.  I still plan to go through the one above, but mostly skimming while being alert to the good stuff.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

As many pros as cons. A dysfunctional bunch of whiny, upper middle class, white privilege, far left snobs involved in a plot borrowed from an 80's Christmas movie of the week. Dad is dying and Mom wants her disturbed adult children for one last dysfunctional family Christmas. There isn't one single likable character in this book. Everyone is exhausting for the reader. Insanely selfish and cruel people. Franzen, a bit of an elitist snob himself, is great at portraying these individuals. He is not a concise writer, he thoroughly explores all details of everything and everyone he describes. It does get a bit ponderous at times. He is also amusing and insightful at times. In all he is a fine writer whom I will probably never read again.


----------



## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> Wait till you get to "The Crucible" and the Salem witch trials.
> 
> I read "The Scarlet Letter" several decades ago. Honestly, Hawthorne is not a favorite of mine, but I must differ from you. My copy of the book is an old one, having belonged to my mother. The editorial introduction (not The Custom House) is from 1921 and written by William Lyon Phelps. In it, he compares the novel to "Madame Bovary," which I read even longer ago. However the below quote reflects my recollections.
> 
> "It is instructive by contrast to compare Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" with Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." Both men were equally deliberate artists. In "Madame Bovary" we have a picture of degeneration ending in despair. Life has no solutions. In "The Scarlet Letter" we have sin and its consequences, illumined at last by the light of heaven. Flaubert has nothing but scorn for his characters, whereas Hawthorne treats of all of his people with dignity. He did not show the sympathy with his characters that we find in Dickens and Thackeray, but he was deeply moved by their fate.


"illumined at last by the light of heaven"

I'm not sure about this. I don't know what to make of Hawthorne's beliefs. A few times he contrasts the Puritan age with the "modern" age he lived in. He seems almost rational about religion rather than fanatical and superstitious like the Puritans, but the child's qualities and some events in the novel can be seen as supernatural. I got the distinct impression he was saying that Hester and her lover couldn't hope to be together even in the afterlife -- that their union was sinful now and forever though they had paid their dues to society. He could see as we do today that Hester's lover was a far better match for her than her elderly, antisocial, and vindictive husband but I don't think he sanctions their union.

I'd love to read some criticism of this novel, thanks. I can't remember what conclusions we came to in my 8th grade class when I first read it.


----------



## Guest

bz3 said:


> As a Faulkner fan I wouldn't go as far as you in my opinion but I always tell people to try the USA Trilogy by Dos Passos (or any single novel, they needn't be read in order; I prefer The Big Money) if they are interested in literary modernism but don't want to go overboard with the experimentation. Very underrated American novelist.


According to my "research" (reading a wikipedia page) the book I read, "Manhattan Transfer" is a sort of precursor to the USA Trilogy Would you characterize the books of the trilogy as on another level from "Manhattan Transfer" (presuming you are familiar with it).?

(I'm also a huge Faulkner fan.)


----------



## Barbebleu

Blancrocher said:


> Stephen King, Salem's Lot


When I first read this my wife had to keep asking me why I was talking to a book. Apparently I was saying things out loud like 'Don't open that door ', 'don't go in there' etc. A genuinely scary story.


----------



## Bwv 1080

bz3 said:


> As a Faulkner fan I wouldn't go as far as you in my opinion but I always tell people to try the USA Trilogy by Dos Passos (or any single novel, they needn't be read in order; I prefer The Big Money) if they are interested in literary modernism but don't want to go overboard with the experimentation. Very underrated American novelist.
> 
> Currently reading: Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence.


I would like Faulkner better if it wasnt all in Mississippi  Like how Dos Passos moves around the country


----------



## philoctetes

Had a crave to revisit some 80s sci-fi from Joanna Russ so I chose We Who are About To... dunked it in one day and now that crave is gone... but it was a good choice. The narrator's "choices" are controversial to say the least, becoming the last survivor of her "lost in space" party though she never really wants to survive... the reprint includes a forward by Samuel Delany, author of Dhalgren.

I love Faulkner and Lawrence but Dos Passos never really got me off...


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## Bwv 1080

Some light holiday reading, the new 'definitive' biography


----------



## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> Wait till you get to "The Crucible" and the Salem witch trials.
> 
> I read "The Scarlet Letter" several decades ago. Honestly, Hawthorne is not a favorite of mine, but I must differ from you. My copy of the book is an old one, having belonged to my mother. The editorial introduction (not The Custom House) is from 1921 and written by William Lyon Phelps. In it, he compares the novel to "Madame Bovary," which I read even longer ago. However the below quote reflects my recollections.
> 
> "It is instructive by contrast to compare Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" with Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." Both men were equally deliberate artists. In "Madame Bovary" we have a picture of degeneration ending in despair. Life has no solutions. In "The Scarlet Letter" we have sin and its consequences, illumined at last by the light of heaven. Flaubert has nothing but scorn for his characters, whereas Hawthorne treats of all of his people with dignity. He did not show the sympathy with his characters that we find in Dickens and Thackeray, but he was deeply moved by their fate.


I read _The Scarlet Letter_ in school, then read it again as an adult. I was amazed at the richness of the book when I read it the second time, and how little I understood in when I read it as an adolescent, even being lectured about it by my English teacher. That second reading was a long time ago, but I remember being impressed with Hawthorne's deep sympathy for his characters.

My favorite Hawthorne novel is, I think, _The House of the Seven Gables_.


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> I would like Faulkner better if it wasnt all in Mississippi  Like how Dos Passos moves around the country


_A Fable_ takes place in France. _Absalom, Absalom_ takes place in Massachusetts. (Well, they sit around in Massachusetts and talk about Mississippi.)


----------



## philoctetes

Yeah Absalom is one of the good ones too. What's wrong with Mississippi?

For me, the so-called Snopes Trilogy is the heart of the Mississippi stuff, but it doesn't quite hold up in quality all the way through. The Mansion would later become the seed for "Who Shot J.R?" or so it's been said... those "dynasty" shows owe a little to Faulkner. 

Plus As I Lay Dying has a structure often imitated by others. Jim Thompson seems to have been influenced by Faulkner in a few of his novels. For a great collection of stories, Go Down Moses is hard to beat.

House of the Seven Gables... almost Poe-ish without being too supernatural...


----------



## Bwv 1080

philoctetes said:


> Yeah Absalom is one of the good ones too. What's wrong with Mississippi?


Have you ever been there? Do you need to ask?


----------



## Open Book

What's the most accessible Faulkner novel for someone who has never read him?


----------



## Bwv 1080

Open Book said:


> What's the most accessible Faulkner novel for someone who has never read him?


Light in August


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Light in August


Great suggestion. I'd also mention_ Intruder in the Dust_ or _The Hamlet_ (first book of the Snopes Trilogy).


----------



## bz3

Bwv 1080 said:


> Have you ever been there? Do you need to ask?


It's a lovely state. I suspect most people who think otherwise have never been or have been only to Jackson. It remains the closest to what life used to be like in this country - ie mostly rural and small towns. I suspect that turn off quite a number of cosmopolitans but I do enjoy the land of the pines.


----------



## bz3

Bwv 1080 said:


> Some light holiday reading, the new 'definitive' biography


Did it supplant Kershaw's volumes? I have those lying around but WWII isn't a primary interest of mine. I read Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' and while it was very readable there was far too much of the author in the non-fiction. Perhaps we're still not far enough removed from that great tragedy to get a good account aimed at laymen that isn't overly emotional. Perhaps such a volume exists but I'm not a history buff and don't spend a lot of time reading non-fiction from the 20th century.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Yes, more information available -Goebbell’s diaries for one. Kershaw isn’t over 20 years old now


----------



## jegreenwood

Bwv 1080 said:


> Light in August


That was the first one I read. I college I think. I should reread it.

Now reading "A Severed Head." My introduction to Iris Murdoch (other than the movie "Iris"). Pretty much an intellectual, laugh-out-loud sex farce.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

** spoiler alert ** I managed 11 chapters. From the contived character and place names to the banal conversations and head scratching logic of the people he introduces, this one is not worth the effort. I saw little substance and a generally light hearted, politically correct narrative that reads like a novel written for teenagers.


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 128184
> 
> 
> ** spoiler alert ** I managed 11 chapters. From the contived character and place names to the banal conversations and head scratching logic of the people he introduces, this one is not worth the effort. I saw little substance and a generally light hearted, politically correct narrative that reads like a novel written for teenagers.


I was not especially impressed, but I did finish it. I tend to finish every novel I start. Eternally hopeful or OCD - probably both. The most recent exception is "A Little Life." I should have put it down before the halfway point, but OCD - certainly not hopefulness - kept me going that far.


----------



## SixFootScowl

*Review here*.


----------



## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> I was not especially impressed, but I did finish it. I tend to finish every novel I start.


I rarely abandon a novel. "Infinite Jest" is a rare recent exception.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Baron Scarpia said:


> I rarely abandon a novel. "Infinite Jest" is a rare recent exception.


You aren't alone on that one.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I am about to embark on this one which I have never read. Wish me luck.


----------



## Guest

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I am about to embark on this one which I have never read. Wish me luck.
> View attachment 128216


That is a tough one but worth the effort. Lots of details of fishing technology that can seem dry, but are in some sense the underpinning of the story. There is a moment when Melville asks himself if man will ever run out of whales to hunt. I won't tell you the conclusion.


----------



## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> I rarely abandon a novel. "Infinite Jest" is a rare recent exception.


Made it through that one. Hated jumping back and forth between the text and the end notes, but I liked the book.


----------



## Blancrocher

Anna Kavan, _Ice_

"Slipstream" novel set in a post-apocalyptic world. Reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's _The Road_, except with a non-linear time scheme, unreliable stream-of-consciousness, and-so far as I can tell-a vague pastiche of a plot. Liked it, though it could have been shorter.


----------



## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> Made it through that one. Hated jumping back and forth between the text and the end notes, but I liked the book.


That author of "Infinite Jest" uses too much obscure vocabulary for me. I spend more time looking up words than reading him, and his writing style is difficult as it is. I wouldn't want to try his novels, but I did enjoy some of his essays, which flow more easily. Especially one about being on a cruise ship when you're not a fan of cruises.


----------



## Red Terror

It's a well written bio but it has nothing new to offer. If you read Kershaw's two volume Hitler, you've read them all.

It is rather strange that the Führer is still as popular/infamous as ever.



Bwv 1080 said:


> Some light holiday reading, the new 'definitive' biography


----------



## bz3

Red Terror said:


> It's a well written bio but it has nothing new to offer. If you read Kershaw's two volume Hitler, you've read them all.
> 
> It is rather strange that the Führer is still as popular/infamous as ever.


Probably the most important 20th century political figure casts a long shadow. Plus he's become the ultimate slur in the collapse of the global neoliberal project - even moreso than the 'communist' slur. The internet finished off the dish with a heavy dash of Godwin's law. He lives in all our minds now.


----------



## Rogerx




----------



## Guest

I was given a gift card to a bookstore, so I actually bought some books (rather than downloads for my Kindle). I went with a couple of biographies I've read great things about.

First, "Churchill: Walking With Destiny" by Andrew Roberts. This is the one I'm planning on reading first. I've heard it highly praised, and I have yet to read a biography of this giant of the 20th century.








Second, "Grant," by Ron Chernow. Another historical figure I have admired but have yet to read a biography. I have the Kindle version of his memoirs which I have always meant to read, but decided I'd start with Chernow's tome on the man.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

While waiting for Moby Dick to be delivered, I reread this in two days. It has been several years since the last reading and I previously had the standard paperback issued in the US. I heard about this edition and I recommend it or a non US edition as they have the final chapter that was left out of the standard US distributions. This edition has the final chapter, which I consider essential to the story. Burgess explains the missing chapter and how that all came about in his prologue. Warning however, missing in this edition is the glossary that is usually present. You can find the terminology Burgess created online in several places. You get used to the usual words quickly and I found that I seldom referred to the definitions.


----------



## Kivimees

The author provides no pretense that I will ever be cured from the siren ringing in my ears that hampers my ability to enjoy listening to music (or even to sleep properly), but gives hopeful reassurance that I will one day be able to cope with the phantom noise.


----------



## Blancrocher

Pushkin, _The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin_ (Trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky)


----------



## Captainnumber36

I finally read the original Dicken's version of A Christmas Carol and found it great.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Does anyone else have issues with perverse language in literature but not mind it in film (to a certain degree)? I think it has something with showcasing command of the English language.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Captainnumber36 said:


> Does anyone else have issues with perverse language in literature but not mind it in film (to a certain degree)? I think it has something with showcasing command of the English language.


I think profanity in today's writing often gets overused.


----------



## Guest

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I think profanity in today's writing often gets overused.


I think in society in general it gets overused. I think it has now become like verbal tics - er, um, and, etc. - that are now unconsciously thrown in at random. And it isn't helping the language. I was at the grocery store with my kids, and 2 guys stocking shelves were letting fly with the profanities at will, with numerous customers around, including children. And they added nothing to the content, meaning, or even tone of the conversation.


----------



## gurthbruins

I'm reading the novel 'Sweet Caress' by William Boyd. It's the first time I try this author. I'm more than halfway through this rather long book but I think I will be reading more of this author. I like his style of writing very much. 
Waiting for me, after that, is the novel 'Incidents in the Rue Laugier' by Anita Brookner. I read my first novel by her about 6 months ago. By now I've read about 6. She is one of my favourite writers. My main favourites are Anthony Trollope, Arnold Bennett and Thomas Hardy.


----------



## jegreenwood

Bwv 1080 said:


> Light in August


You inspired a rereading.


----------



## bz3

jegreenwood said:


> You inspired a rereading.


It's the weakest of his 4 big novels (A, A!, TSATF, and AILD being the other 3) IMO. Still great and I agree it's the most accessible of those 4 but its racially charged plot always felt thin and exploitative (salacious?) to me. Especially since I believe it was Faulkner's longest novel it just felt like a lot to say a little.


----------



## Barbebleu

I got some Amazon vouchers at Christmas so I treated myself to Donald Mitchell's three books, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years, The Wunderhorn Years and Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death. That should keep me off the streets for a while. :lol:


----------



## Open Book

gurthbruins said:


> Waiting for me, after that, is the novel 'Incidents in the Rue Laugier' by Anita Brookner. I read my first novel by her about 6 months ago. By now I've read about 6. She is one of my favourite writers. My main favourites are Anthony Trollope, Arnold Bennett and Thomas Hardy.


Brookner is one of those writers who who writes the same novel over and over (similar lead character of an introverted woman writer who does not have a conventional life of marriage and family of her own; autobiographical? and in what decade are they set, seems like the 50's). But I'm not tired of it yet. Her best book so far for me is "Latecomers", which breaks that mold and is her most joyful work. "Dolly" is also excellent. My least favorite was "Look at Me".


----------



## jegreenwood

bz3 said:


> It's the weakest of his 4 big novels (A, A!, TSATF, and AILD being the other 3) IMO. Still great and I agree it's the most accessible of those 4 but its racially charged plot always felt thin and exploitative (salacious?) to me. Especially since I believe it was Faulkner's longest novel it just felt like a lot to say a little.


I've read the other three as well, but LIA was the first, so that's how I'll start my re-cycle. My alternative would be "Go Down Moses," which I have not read.

I've actually switched for the moment. I bought several play collection recently, but had not opened them. I read the first of Richard Nelson's Apple Family plays and the first of Horton Foote's Orphan Home Cycle. I preferred the Foote, so I may continue with another one or two. (There are nine in all.)


----------



## David Phillips

I'm reading 'Barnaby Rudge'. One of the least popular of Dickens' novels - the only British TV adaptation was broadcast in 1960 - it's an interesting historical view of the Gordon Riots of 1780. It's also very funny with some choice Dickens' characters. Perhaps the Protestant v. Catholic subject matter keeps it from the screen.


----------



## Red Terror




----------



## Red Terror

bz3 said:


> Probably the most important 20th century political figure casts a long shadow. Plus he's become the ultimate slur in the collapse of the global neoliberal project - even moreso than the 'communist' slur. The internet finished off the dish with a heavy dash of Godwin's law. He lives in all our minds now.


Well said. It seems the Führer has fortuitously achieved immortality.


----------



## Blancrocher

George Eliot, Middlemarch - enjoyed rereading this.


----------



## TxllxT

*Dostoevsky: the Brothers Karamazov*










"(...............) Speak, all the same, is
there a God, or not? Only, be serious. I want you to be serious now."
"No, there is no God."
"Alyosha, is there a God?"
"There is."
"Ivan, and is there immortality of some sort, just a little, just a tiny bit?"
"There is no immortality either."
"None at all?"
"None at all."
"There's absolute nothingness then. Perhaps there is just something?
Anything is better than nothing!"
"Alyosha, is there immortality?"
"God and immortality?"
"God and immortality. In God is immortality."
"H'm! It's more likely Ivan's right. Good Lord!

What a humor! We've progressed toward the passage where Fyodor Pavlovitch is drunkenly telling about Alyosha's mother, who was seized by an epileptic attack. All of a sudden Alyosha gets the very same seizures. Here Dostoevsky writes about Alyosha's 'Burning eyes'. This reminds me of the most famous painting of the Hermitage Museum:










These staring eyes in the background who are looking at the beholder belong IMO to the homely 'obedient' brother. When you come in the Hermitage from afar, you can feel those burning eyes staring at you, as if they are telling: we know each other, don't we?


----------



## Jacck

^^^ I do not know the paining. Is it depicting the 4 Karamazov brothers? If I remember the book correctly (I read it 20 years ago), the 4 brothers are symbolic for different aspects of the human soul. Ivan is reason, Dimitrij passions, Alyosha spirituality and Smerdyakov the dark side. I should re-read it.
I was in St. Petersburg once and although we visited the Winter Palace, we were not in the Hermitage Museum, though I heard it is impressive.


----------



## Guest

Orient Express, by Graham Green. The story of a group of passengers who happen to be riding the same train, and who interact in various ways. A perfectly conceived and told story, featuring a wealthy Jewish merchant, a leftist revolutionary fugitive, a chorus girl, a priest, a petty thief fleeing a murder, a lesbian reporter and her female secretary/companion. It takes place between the great wars. Some characterizations seem inappropriate and stereotypical, but it is a window into a different age. An excellent book.


----------



## TxllxT

Jacck said:


> ^^^ I do not know the paining. Is it depicting the 4 Karamazov brothers? If I remember the book correctly (I read it 20 years ago), the 4 brothers are symbolic for different aspects of the human soul. Ivan is reason, Dimitrij passions, Alyosha spirituality and Smerdyakov the dark side. I should re-read it.
> I was in St. Petersburg once and although we visited the Winter Palace, we were not in the Hermitage Museum, though I heard it is impressive.


LOL It's a cut out from 'the Prodigal Son' by Rembrandt:










The woman in the back on the left must be Grushenka. The hands of the Father are different: one is a woman's hand, the other a man's.... But why should Dostoevsky not have seen his novel characters here?


----------



## haydnguy

I don't know if anyone has read the 3 volumes by Alan Walker of Franz Liszt. I read the 1st book (The Virtuoso Years) which was about his childhood, personal life, and the years he was touring and playing piano at various venues. The book ends when he decides to end his career as a traveling performer and concentrate on his composing. Volume 2 begins with Liszt moving to Weimar and beginning his life as a composer. That's where I am in Volume 2 at the moment.

These are very readable but detailed books on Liszt's life. A commitment of time to read them.


----------



## Captainnumber36

A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


----------



## Blancrocher

Sylvia Plath, _The Bell Jar_


----------



## starthrower

I'm reading a compilation of essays by one of my old favorites, George Orwell. I like to reread this stuff every couple of years. This particular edition is titled All Art Is Propaganda by Mariner Books.


----------



## Strange Magic

*Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath: Who Was Right; Who Wrong?*

The following is but the most recent example of the sorts of discussion and review of books that can be found in the Book Chat Group downstairs. We welcome anyone interested in such discussion to visit Book Chat, read about the books reviewed there, and submit their own somewhat more extended contributions....

"Finished reading a detailed account of Pearl Harbor, written in 1985 by the chief navy intelligence officer there during the attack and the rest of WWII. "And I Was There" by Rear Admiral Edwin Layton was written to defend the reputations of Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the Navy and Army commanders there who were fingered by higher-ups to take the fall for the Japanese surprise attack upon Pearl. Layton, the author, faults largely Admiral Richmond Turner, Navy Director of War Plans, for bungling the delivery of proper intelligence to Pearl, then joining with Army Chief of Staff Marshall, Navy Secretary Knox, and Chief of Naval Operations Stark to lay off blame onto Kimmel and Short, ruining their careers and reputations and forcing their retirement. Layton recounts how he personally called out Turner at the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay after Turner bellowed that Kimmel should have been hung, and the two came to blows and had to be separated by their shipboard host. Wikipedia, in its entry on Turner, notes that several books besides Layton's now have been written about Pearl, fingering Turner as the chief bungler of the then-existing intelligence. While most everyone suspected that war with Japan was immanent, all signs pointed to either an attack on Soviet Russia or south (most likely) toward Southeast Asia and/or the Philippines, and thus Pearl received no inkling that it was either just as directly in the line of fire or that an attack upon it might probably come from the north, as it did. Layton claims that if Washington shared with Pearl all that it knew of Japanese military and diplomatic secret information traffic, there would have been a chance to at least clear the harbor and airfields of target ships and aircraft. Dense, detailed, but fascinating book. More than you wanted to know about the unending task of breaking Japanese codes, but it's all there.

The second half of the book details the gathering of enough information from code-breaking of Japanese radio traffic to be able to determine that, six months after Pearl, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto was planning a massive strike on Midway and then the rest of the Hawai'ian chain, and so the US was able to secretly intercept the advance Japanese carrier force and thus won the Battle of Midway. Layton paints, though, an ugly picture of fierce infighting between the rival intelligence groups in Washington vs. Pearl over, first, the reality of the Japanese thrust; second, its target; and third, its timing. Washington got it all wrong--and resented Pearl for getting it right, with unfortunate consequences later for the Pearl group--careers cut short, reputations sullied. A very bad case of personal animosity and vendetta fed by incompetence but empowered by rank. Author Layton names names, and the archives declassified just before and triggering his writing the book corroborated his accusations. He and the Pearl intelligence team were fortunate (as was the country) for having Admiral Nimitz, in charge of the entire Pacific Fleet and headquartered at Pearl, entirely confident in their work and willing to act upon their findings rather than those of Washington. They were also lucky in that Yamamoto had a huge invasion fleet of battleships, cruisers, submarines, and other surface units that no one knew about, following up behind his carriers but about a day behind. As luck had it, the weakened but victorious US carrier force at first decided to push west to follow up on the retreating remnants of the Japanese carrier force, but then thought better of it. Had they pushed west with vigor, they would have run straight into the massive Japanese invasion fleet and been decimated. This before the Japanese themselves decided after the loss of their carriers to also reverse the course of the invasion fleet."


----------



## Blancrocher

Yasunari Kawabata, _Snow Country_

Extremely well written, though maybe not as eventful as I'd like


----------



## jegreenwood

jegreenwood said:


> I've read the other three as well, but LIA was the first, so that's how I'll start my re-cycle. My alternative would be "Go Down Moses," which I have not read.
> 
> I've actually switched for the moment. I bought several play collection recently, but had not opened them. I read the first of Richard Nelson's Apple Family plays and the first of Horton Foote's Orphan Home Cycle. I preferred the Foote, so I may continue with another one or two. (There are nine in all.)


Started "Go Down, Moses." The current Vintage edition. And might I say, Faulkner is difficult enough without printing errors.


----------



## Roger Knox

*A Secular Age* (2007) by philosopher Charles Taylor. It probes the decline of belief in God in the West from 1500-2000 from a philosophical/anthropological standpoint. Long and repetitive sometimes, yet readable and very interesting. I'm reading it with a group of 3 others which helps.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Blancrocher said:


> George Eliot, Middlemarch - enjoyed rereading this.


I'm tackling this for the first time. I will say that I like Eliot's style better than Austen's, but _boy_, is it dense! Brilliantly witty, observational, and erudite writing; but you really do have to absorb every word. Still, after reading Henry James's _The Ambassadors_ last month, I don't think I can call any book difficult.


----------



## Ras

> TxllxT
> "(...............) Speak, all the same, is
> there a God, or not? Only, be serious. I want you to be serious now."
> "No, there is no God."
> "Alyosha, is there a God?"
> "There is."
> "Ivan, and is there immortality of some sort, just a little, just a tiny bit?"
> "There is no immortality either."
> "None at all?"
> "None at all."
> "There's absolute nothingness then. Perhaps there is just something?
> Anything is better than nothing!"
> "Alyosha, is there immortality?"
> "God and immortality?"
> "God and immortality. In God is immortality."
> "H'm! It's more likely Ivan's right. Good Lord!


*Hello there TxllxT!*

That is just hilarious! LOL! 
Can you please tell me which chapter of "The Brothers Karamasov" that quote is from? It's probably been 25 years since I read it, so I'm clueless as to where I can find it and would like to read that passage in it's context without having to read through 1000 pages.


Code:


[QUOTE][/QUOTE]


----------



## TxllxT

Ras said:


> *Hello there TxllxT!*
> 
> That is just hilarious! LOL!
> Can you please tell me which chapter of "The Brothers Karamasov" that quote is from? It's probably been 25 years since I read it, so I'm clueless as to where I can find it and would like to read that passage in it's context without having to read through 1000 pages.
> 
> 
> Code:


You can find it in book III The Sensualists, Chapter 8 Over the Brandy.


----------



## Iota

Allegro Con Brio said:


> [George Eliot, Middlemarch] ... Brilliantly witty, observational, and erudite writing; but you really do have to absorb every word.


Wholeheartedly concur. An extraordinary book.


----------



## Iota

The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Am reading this after it seems most of the rest of the Western world. So far an engaging and deftly told tale.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Iota said:


> Wholeheartedly concur. An extraordinary book.


"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." Has to be one of my favorite things I've read in any book lately.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Captainnumber36 said:


> A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


I finished this, and am going to start "The Sign of Four" which is part of the same book.


----------



## Iota

Allegro Con Brio said:


> "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." Has to be one of my favorite things I've read in any book lately.


Indeed lovely, thanks for quoting. I found myself wanting to memorise whole paragraphs when reading it, much as one would a few lines of poetry. So many passages in the whole book where I felt compelled to stop and just behold the prose, or marvel at the power of some insight.


----------



## Forsooth

** Nevermind... **


----------



## Blancrocher

T.S. Eliot, _Collected Poems_

Interesting rereading these in the light of revelations from his recently released letters.


----------



## Taplow

1.








Around the World in 80 Words

As a linguist, I find this a silly piece of fluff, but light and entertaining enough to have on my bedside table to dip into before I doze off.

2.








Tsurumoku dokushinryou

An even sillier piece of fluff, but extremely funny if you understand the aspects of Japanese culture that are being stereotyped and poked fun at. Also an opportunity for me to practice and keep up with my reading ability.

Nothing musical or enlightening at this present point in time. Not while my life is in turmoil.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Just finished 'Pure' by Andrew Miller. Brilliant. A novel based around the clearance of Les Innocents cemetery in Paris in the 1780s. OK, MrsPat has a specific research interest in decaying corpses and the Les Innocents clearance was one of the first serious pieces of research in that field, so I may be biased. However, it's superbly written and peopled by fascinating characters.


----------



## jegreenwood

Taking a break from "Go Down, Moses."

Now reading "The Round House" by Louise Erdrich. Haven't read anything by her since "Love Medicine." Shame on me.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Iota said:


> The Secret History, Donna Tartt
> 
> Am reading this after it seems most of the rest of the Western world. So far an engaging and deftly told tale.


I quite enjoyed it. I had my usual nit picks but overall I thought it was superior to The Goldfinch.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Captainnumber36 said:


> Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn.


On my read soon list. I see there is a Norton Critical Edition of this. I always get a lot from those.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Oldhoosierdude said:


> On my read soon list. I see there is a Norton Critical Edition of this. I always get a lot from those.


Of course, those Norton editions are the cream of the crop of criticism, and make for invaluable reading companions. But Barnes and Noble Classics editions are my go-to...very cheap ($15 max), great annotations with explanatory footnotes and in-depth endnotes' and excellent, long introductions with consistently illuminating commentary. I buy them a lot, if just to play a part in keeping physical bookstores open. Even B&N is facing its imminent downfall (although there will always be your local family-owned used bookstore, where treasures abound for those with patience).


----------



## starthrower

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

My wife brought this one with her from California. I've had it on my to read list for a couple years now.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Forsooth said:


> ** Nevermind... **


Ah yes, good book.


----------



## Jacck

*Hermann Hesse - The Glass Bead Game *
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16634.The_Glass_Bead_Game


----------



## jegreenwood

Double post. Oops.


----------



## jegreenwood

Finished "The Round House" by Louise Erdrich. My first takeaway - what a great book to teach in high school. True, the plot is initiated by a rape (disclosed in the first 10 pages), but there is no graphic description. And these days with a rape a week on Law and Order SVU (and plenty on other shows), I wouldn't think that would be necessarily prohibitive.

And after that - wow. Subjects include the effect of rape on the victim and her family, Native and white culture and spirituality, and the legal problems confronted by the Native community. But to my mind the core of the book is about the meaning of justice - and revenge - and the coming of age of a 13 year old boy. The story is told by the boy, but later, when he is in his 30s.

Although much of the plot centers around the attempts to identify and catch the rapist, it's not quite a mystery, nor a traditional suspense novel. But the plot and characters grab you from the outset. 

It's also a pretty easy read.


----------



## Blancrocher

Reread Charlotte Bronte's _Villette_. Enjoyed it-though I still can't make up my mind about the ending.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Of course, those Norton editions are the cream of the crop of criticism, and make for invaluable reading companions. But Barnes and Noble Classics editions are my go-to...very cheap ($15 max), great annotations with explanatory footnotes and in-depth endnotes' and excellent, long introductions with consistently illuminating commentary. I buy them a lot, if just to play a part in keeping physical bookstores open. Even B&N is facing its imminent downfall (although there will always be your local family-owned used bookstore, where treasures abound for those with patience).


I did not know that about the B&N editions. I'm not married to the Norton. I have a BN close, I'll give it a look.


----------



## Potiphera




----------



## MohammadAabrun

"Untimely Meditations"
by Friedrich *Nietzsche*

He is a noble art critic.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Finished Moby Dick. Started this, about 30 chapters in.


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 129551
> 
> 
> Finished Moby Dick. Started this, about 30 chapters in.


The only Dickens novel I've read twice. (I've read 10 in all.)


----------



## danj

I just finished the Count of Monte Cristo a while ago (Robin Buss version).

It was long but it was best book I have ever read.


----------



## Blancrocher

Leo Tolstoy, _War and Peace_ (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)

First rereading in over ten years. Expected to be less impressed than previously with the historical reflections, but I was engrossed beginning to end.


----------



## starthrower

The Wagner Compendium by Barry Milington

More of a browse than a straight read through for which it wasn't designed. But very well researched.


----------



## Andrew Kenneth

A sci-fi book about a star situated 8 light years from earth going supernova.
When the resulting radiation hits earth everybody's DNA is damaged severely .
Only the young (13 year old and younger) are capable of regenerating their damaged DNA.
In 10-12 months all adults die and only the children survive to carry on civilisation.


----------



## Blancrocher

Philippe Claudel, _Brodeck's Report_

First-person narration about wartime memories. Didn't care for it.


----------



## Red Terror




----------



## Blancrocher

Ernest Hemingway, _A Farewell to Arms_

Reread this one, I think for the first time since high school. Enjoyed it the second time. I think I'll seek out the remaining books I haven't read by the author.


----------



## Alinde

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I'm tackling this for the first time. I will say that I like Eliot's style better than Austen's, but _boy_, is it dense! Brilliantly witty, observational, and erudite writing; but you really do have to absorb every word. Still, after reading Henry James's _The Ambassadors_ last month, I don't think I can call any book difficult.


George Eliot is wonderfully interesting but the early pages of "Middlemarch" are heavy going and I got stuck a couple of times. But after reading Henry James's "Italian Hours" as I currently am, I agree with you. He got worse over time, I met with this from 1899 tonight:

_
Perhaps the simplest rendering of a scene into the depths of which there are 
good grounds of discretion for not sinking would be just this emphasis on the 
value of the unexpected for such occasions-with due qualification, naturally, of 
its degree. 
_


----------



## Blancrocher

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess


----------



## Jacck

*James P. Hogan - Inherit the Stars *
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776489.Inherit_the_Stars










the book is the first in a trilogy. I finished it and started the second book. Hogan is a British author and his hard scifi style reminded me of A.C. Clarke


----------



## philoctetes

Could be titled "Advanced Probability with Gaming Applications" from quantum coins to Black-Scholes theory, geeks only


----------



## jegreenwood

Alinde said:


> George Eliot is wonderfully interesting but the early pages of "Middlemarch" are heavy going and I got stuck a couple of times. But after reading Henry James's "Italian Hours" as I currently am, I agree with you. He got worse over time, I met with this from 1899 tonight:
> 
> _
> Perhaps the simplest rendering of a scene into the depths of which there are
> good grounds of discretion for not sinking would be just this emphasis on the
> value of the unexpected for such occasions-with due qualification, naturally, of
> its degree.
> _


I'm working on a play where one character equates James's style with the tax code.


----------



## Blancrocher

For anyone looking for an amusing parody of Henry James, I'd recommend "The Mote in the Middle Distance" by Max Beerbohm.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14667/14667-h/14667-h.htm


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Alinde said:


> George Eliot is wonderfully interesting but the early pages of "Middlemarch" are heavy going and I got stuck a couple of times. But after reading Henry James's "Italian Hours" as I currently am, I agree with you. He got worse over time, I met with this from 1899 tonight:
> 
> _
> Perhaps the simplest rendering of a scene into the depths of which there are
> good grounds of discretion for not sinking would be just this emphasis on the
> value of the unexpected for such occasions-with due qualification, naturally, of
> its degree.
> _


I'm about 3/4 of the way through _Middlemarch_, and it will probably be one of my 5 favorite novels when it's all said and done. James and Eliot are two examples for me of novelists of a caliber we will never again see in these current times as long as our modern society is obsessed with efficiency, profit, and convenience. The art of the novel has become a soulless business centered around the almighty dollar. These artists constructed every sentence painstakingly, savored every possible word choice so as to choose the most befitting, and built their plots and characters delicately and convincingly. They take effort and dedication to read, but the payoff makes you realize that these are _real_ novels with real meat, real meaning, and real craftsmanship. Much of what we have today seems severely watered-down in comparison. That being said, it makes it all the more satisfying and fulfilling to discover a truly wonderful contemporary novel- Leif Enger's _Peace Like a River_ and Anthony Doerr's _All the Light We Cannot See_ are two standout examples.


----------



## jegreenwood

I've read _Middlemarch _and several other novels by Eliot and _The Ambassadors_, _The Wings of the Dove_ and several other novels by James.

I've also read a lot of contemporary fiction, and I've found many novels of a very high calibre. For something [nearly?] as difficult as late Henry James, try Marlon James's _A Brief History of Seven Killings_, although the difficulty is of a radically different nature. Or you can tackle _Infinite Jest_. Ian McEwan's _Atonement _and Kate Atkinson's _Life After Life_ both blew me away. I'm looking forward to reading more Rachel Cusk, Jesmyn Ward, and Pat Barker, as well as Hilary Mantel's concluding novel in the _Wolf Hall_ trilogy.

These are just a few memorable books and authors that spring to mind.


----------



## HenryPenfold

Jacck said:


> *James P. Hogan - Inherit the Stars *
> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776489.Inherit_the_Stars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> the book is the first in a trilogy. I finished it and started the second book. Hogan is a British author and his hard scifi style reminded me of A.C. Clarke


I'm so envious of people who can enjoy science fiction, it looks so entertaining. But I just can't get on with it. I wish I could.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

jegreenwood said:


> I've read _Middlemarch _and several other novels by Eliot and _The Ambassadors_, _The Wings of the Dove_ and several other novels by James.
> 
> I've also read a lot of contemporary fiction, and I've found many novels of a very high calibre. For something [nearly?] as difficult as late Henry James, try Marlon James's _A Brief History of Seven Killings_, although the difficulty is of a radically different nature. Or you can tackle _Infinite Jest_. Ian McEwan's _Atonement _and Kate Atkinson's _Life After Life_ both blew me away. I'm looking forward to reading more Rachel Cusk, Jesmyn Ward, and Pat Barker, as well as Hilary Mantel's concluding novel in the _Wolf Hall_ trilogy.
> 
> These are just a few memorable books and authors that spring to mind.


Oh yes, I do love discovering great contemporary fiction. I do think though, that just like classical music, it's a good idea to familiarize oneself with the established canon before doing deeper exploration- something I feel I am very much still in the process of doing. Thanks for those recommendations! It's interesting- I really like this list of the 100 greatest novels- it has 9 novels written since 1980: Roth's _American Pastoral_, McEwan's _Atonement_, Dick's _Valis_, Lethem's _The Fortress of Solitude_, Gibson's _Neuromancer_, Wallace's _Infinite Jest_, Franzen's _The Corrections_, Amis's _Money_, and weirdly enough, Rowling's _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_. Any opinions on whether any of those will become long-term "classics" and are worthy members of the canon? I would also love to get into Cormac McCarthy.


----------



## jegreenwood

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Oh yes, I do love discovering great contemporary fiction. I do think though, that just like classical music, it's a good idea to familiarize oneself with the established canon before doing deeper exploration- something I feel I am very much still in the process of doing. Thanks for those recommendations! It's interesting- I really like this list of the 100 greatest novels- it has 9 novels written since 1980: Roth's _American Pastoral_, McEwan's _Atonement_, Dick's _Valis_, Lethem's _The Fortress of Solitude_, Gibson's _Neuromancer_, Wallace's _Infinite Jest_, Franzen's _The Corrections_, Amis's _Money_, and weirdly enough, Rowling's _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_. Any opinions on whether any of those will become long-term "classics" and are worthy members of the canon? I would also love to get into Cormac McCarthy.


Of the ones you list, I've read:

_American Pastoral_ - quite possibly the best of the 10 Roth novels I've read.

_Atonement _- as noted above, this is McEwan's masterpiece (to date). Not so much my words, as I haven't read them all, but his wife's as per an interview I attended where he described her response. (She didn't actually say "masterpiece.")

_Infinite Jest_ - along with Pynchon's _Against the Day_ and DeLillo's _Underworld_, the three great mega-novels post-1980. I'd say start with _Underworld_, which at a mere 827 pages is the shortest. The first chapter has been released as a stand alone novella. And by the way, it's the only DeLillo novel that I really loved. It's also the least post-modern of the three.

_The Corrections_ - I enjoyed Franzen's last three novels, but I cannot rank his work with that of the others on this list.

_Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_ - Yeah, I read it and the six that followed. Mostly on sick days. Great children's literature.

Cormac McCarthy - I've read three. Didn't care for _The Road_, which I felt was his attempt to broaden his audience and make some money. _Blood Meridian_ is probably the most violent novel I've ever read, _All the Pretty Horses,_ less so. His syntax is a challenge, but worth it.

I've read novels by Lethem and Amis, but not the ones listed. In both cases, I thought the ones I read were good, but I was not knocked off my feet. Was _Beloved _on the list? It certainly should have been.

Obviously, all opinions are simply mine (except for that of Mrs. McEwan.  )

Edit - maybe I should have substituted (or added) Pynchon's _Mason and Dixon_ to the post-modern novel list.


----------



## Jacck

HenryPenfold said:


> I'm so envious of people who can enjoy science fiction, it looks so entertaining. But I just can't get on with it. I wish I could.


I have a similar issue with crime fiction. During the last decade the "scandinavian noir" crime fiction became popular (Stieg Larsson and similar authors). I find pretty much all of it mediocre and boring.


----------



## jegreenwood

Jacck said:


> I have a similar issue with crime fiction. During the last decade the "scandinavian noir" crime fiction became popular (Stieg Larsson and similar authors). I find pretty much all of it mediocre and boring.


I read a number of the Harry Hole novels as well as a few books from other Scandinavian authors. At some point I just didn't want to go to those dark places any more. Same goes for Val McDermid/Tony Hill series. (I finally dipped back into that series and am debating whether to try the TV series on Acorn.) But there are great detective novels around. I am looking forward to the most recent Kate Atkinson/Jackson Brodie novel, which I have out on loan from the library. Tana French is very good, although I didn't care so much for her most recent novel. I also enjoyed the Dagliesh, Rebus and Inspector Banks books among many others.


----------



## Blancrocher

HenryPenfold said:


> I'm so envious of people who can enjoy science fiction, it looks so entertaining. But I just can't get on with it. I wish I could.


With fiction that is more interesting for plot than style, I generally prefer to experience it through an audio reading or dramatization.


----------



## Jacck

jegreenwood said:


> I read a number of the Harry Hole novels as well as a few books from other Scandinavian authors. At some point I just didn't want to go to those dark places any more. Same goes for Val McDermid/Tony Hill series. (I finally dipped back into that series and am debating whether to try the TV series on Acorn.) But there are great detective novels around. I am looking forward to the most recent Kate Atkinson/Jackson Brodie novel, which I have out on loan from the library. Tana French is very good, although I didn't care so much for her most recent novel. I also enjoyed the Dagliesh, Rebus and Inspector Banks books among many others.


I have likely an issue with the whole detective genre. I find it very schematic, predictable and full of clichés. The scandinavian authors just dramatically increased the level of brutality to add a shock value. The last two detective books I read were The Alienist by Caleb Carr and The Crimson Rivers by Jean-Christophe Grangé


----------



## SixFootScowl

HenryPenfold said:


> I'm so envious of people who can enjoy science fiction, it looks so entertaining. But I just can't get on with it. I wish I could.


Well, if nothing else, you can enjoy (and even collect) the cover art. Pretty cool artwork.


----------



## Blancrocher

Charles Dickens, _A Tale of Two Cities_


----------



## Iota

jegreenwood said:


> Cormac McCarthy - I've read three. Didn't care for _The Road_, which I felt was his attempt to broaden his audience and make some money.


I liked _The Road _very much. Despite the narrative taking some tense turns at moments, it seemed to have the stillness of a painting to me, quietly conjuring up great feeling and intimacy. Unforgettable I thought. I've only read one other Cormac McCarthy, _Suttree_, which also left a strong impression, but it's been a while.



Jacck said:


> I have a similar issue with crime fiction. During the last decade the "scandinavian noir" crime fiction became popular (Stieg Larsson and similar authors). I find pretty much all of it mediocre and boring.


I found _The Yiddish Policemen's Union _by Michael Chabon, a whodunnit amongst many other things, an extraordinary novel. The language at times breathtakingly evocative, a wickedly dry humour, and characters that radiate off the page .. some of many virtues that spring to mind. The only thing I didn't like about it was the title, though factually correct, it somehow doesn't evoke the book's nature.


----------



## pianozach

A Warning, by Anonymous

The introduction alone is worth the purchase price.


----------



## Captainnumber36

Skipping around poems and short stories by Poe. I got a complete collection!


----------



## jegreenwood

Iota said:


> I liked _The Road _very much. Despite the narrative taking some tense turns at moments, it seemed to have the stillness of a painting to me, quietly conjuring up great feeling and intimacy. Unforgettable I thought. I've only read one other Cormac McCarthy, _Suttree_, which also left a strong impression, but it's been a while.
> 
> I found _The Yiddish Policemen's Union _by Michael Chabon, a whodunnit amongst many other things, an extraordinary novel. The language at times breathtakingly evocative, a wickedly dry humour, and characters that radiate off the page .. some of many virtues that spring to mind. The only thing I didn't like about it was the title, though factually correct, it somehow doesn't evoke the book's nature.


Just goes to show you - I've read several novels by Chabon, and that's the only one I didn't care for. 

I preferred "Telegraph Avenue," maybe because of the record store.


----------



## Iota

jegreenwood said:


> Just goes to show you - I've read several novels by Chabon, and that's the only one I didn't care for.
> 
> I preferred "Telegraph Avenue," maybe because of the record store.


Ha, we do seem to be on very different roads, the person who originally put me on to it, said she'd found none of the other Chabon books she'd read anywhere near as good YPU. And as she'd got it so right the first time, I was happy to take that on faith. But as you've mentioned it now, will see if I can get a glance at Telegraph Avenue.


----------



## philoctetes

I've read 5 of Cormac McCarthy's novels, maybe more. There is the Appalachian (early) McCarthy and the Southwestern (later) McCarthy. I guess Suttree was a detour through the Southeast but haven't read that. 

But I read The Road and it was absolutely lightweight. It never revolted me like the others did. A big lure of McCarthy is how he depicts extreme violence in neo-Biblical prose as Faulkner might have translated the Old Testament. The Road was neither extreme nor did it have that signature style so it seemed more like a tossed-off script for the screen or even the stage.

Next in lightweight-ness would be the Cowboy Trilogy or whatever it's called, but it made him very famous and sold lots of books. Definitely stronger stuff than The Road, while introducing a whiff of perfume and sentimentality that I hadn't seen before.

The strong stuff is Blood Meridian, Outer Dark, The Orchard Keeper, among those I have read.


----------



## Blancrocher

William Doyle, _The French Revolution-A Very Short Introduction_


----------



## Alinde

jegreenwood said:


> ... But there are great detective novels around. I am looking forward to the most recent Kate Atkinson/Jackson Brodie novel, which I have out on loan from the library. /QUOTE]
> 
> I love to be mystified and Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodies are my current favourites in that line - wry, dark, sardonic, humane, amusing and clever. Just when you think the pace is slackening - all hell breaks loose!


----------



## jegreenwood

Alinde said:


> jegreenwood said:
> 
> 
> 
> ... But there are great detective novels around. I am looking forward to the most recent Kate Atkinson/Jackson Brodie novel, which I have out on loan from the library. /QUOTE]
> 
> I love to be mystified and Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodies are my current favourites in that line - wry, dark, sardonic, humane, amusing and clever. Just when you think the pace is slackening - all hell breaks loose!
> 
> 
> 
> They are the work of a first rate novelist who finds the form of detective fiction useful in exploring her themes. Fun too.
> 
> But I admire most of all her non-mystery (kind of science fiction/definitely historical novel) _Life After Life_.
Click to expand...


----------



## Blancrocher

Alexandre Dumas, _The Count of Monte Cristo_ (trans. David Coward)


----------



## poetic

I am reading the Holy Qur'an


----------



## Helgi

Iota said:


> I liked _The Road _very much. Despite the narrative taking some tense turns at moments, it seemed to have the stillness of a painting to me, quietly conjuring up great feeling and intimacy. Unforgettable I thought. Unforgettable I thought. I've only read one other Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, which also left a strong impression, but it's been a while.


I loved The Road - definitely not lightweight in my opinion, even if it's not as dense and uncompromising as some of his other books. "The stillness of a painting" is a good way of describing the impression I had of it as well.

Blood Meridian left a stronger impression, but then I don't think any other novel I've read has left a stronger impression than that thing did.


----------



## Helgi

I'm currently reading:










How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, by Jenny Odell.

More academic than I expected but all the better for it.


----------



## jegreenwood

Finished "The Bear" in "Go Down, Moses." What language!! Two shorter chapters/stories to go.


----------



## Jacck

I finished the Giants Trilogy and have really enjoyed it, especially the third book. And now I started the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. I read about a third of the first book and I am enjoying it a lot. Simmons has both literary talent and great fantasy (it is my first book by him). I do not know why I avoided Simmons for so long.


----------



## philoctetes

jegreenwood said:


> Finished "The Bear" in "Go Down, Moses." What language!! Two shorter chapters/stories to go.


Forget the bear, that stuff about Tomey's Turl had me rereading those final pages about 50 times. One of my favorite Faulkner books.

Got a copy of Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life for a gift and started with a story about a mathematician who discovers a fundamental contradiction about numbers and becomes suicidal. Boring. The one that was adapted for Arrival is just a bit better but based on popular human language theories, as if the aliens are like human children. If this is the best in current sci-fi count me out.


----------



## aleazk

Sartre's "Nausea". It was interesting, I felt identified with the protagonist, but ultimately disappointed and bored. Yes, all of what he says about the nature of existence is true to some extent and I even felt those things personally before even reading it. But he doesn't propose any way out, any salvation. It's just a dark abyss, ideal for getting even more depressed. I used to like that stuff, but now I realize it's at most mediocre, since it's just telling me what I already know but without any further elaboration. I expect more from a philosopher than just the destruction of the will to live... and I don't even like life that much!

Besides, it's false if taken like that. In Camus' essay The myth of sisyphus, he says that the feeling of the absurdity of life comes from the clash of our innate desire to know and the apparent mystery of the nature of reality. That's true. But the way out for that is precisely Science*, which these authors olympically ignore.

*of course, we don't know if it will ever answer everything, but at least tries, rather than rejoicing in the abyss.


----------



## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> Finished "The Bear" in "Go Down, Moses." What language!! Two shorter chapters/stories to go.


I'm a big fan of Faulkner, but never could make head nor tail of "The Bear."


----------



## Guest

Mansfield Park, Jane Austin. Her most innovative novel, in which a play within the novel sews the seeds of the family's undoing. Ultimately found myself uninterested in the mores and customs of English landed aristocracy. The poor relation, Fanny, becomes the hero of the story due to her submissiveness, desire to be useful to her superiors and deferential character. I found her insufferable, and thought that the supposedly subversive "Miss Crawford" was the most interesting and attractive character in the book.

What I mainly learned there are authors such as Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Faulkner, Hawthorne, Morrison, Attwood who give me great pleasure from re-reading, but Austin is not in this category.


----------



## aleazk

Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil". Absolutely stunning poetry.


----------



## Blancrocher

Suetonius, _The Lives of the Caesars_

As always, the reign of Vespasian came as something of a relief.


----------



## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> I'm a big fan of Faulkner, but never could make head nor tail of "The Bear."


The Internet was my friend. I found a plot summary, and maybe more important, a family tree. The family tree was necessary for me in following _Go Down, Moses_ overall. And several of the references in "The Bear" are to events that occur in other chapters/stories.

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~sfr/FAULKNER/09gdmgen.html


----------



## LarryShone

I'm working through the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, near the end of book 3, *Life, the Universe and Everything*.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith

Blancrocher said:


> Suetonius, _The Lives of the Caesars_
> 
> As always, the reign of Vespasian came as something of a relief.


Maybe, but then there's Domitian!

And Vespasian was an excellent administrator, and put the empire back on an even keel after the excesses of Nero and the 68/69 civil war - but was he as memorable as Caligula?


----------



## jegreenwood

Reading Chernow's biography of Grant. It's long. I'll probably read through the Civil War section and put it down for a while. But after Faulkner, it's nice to return to a more straightforward writing style.


----------



## Rogerx




----------



## elgar's ghost

Dr. Shatterhand said:


> Maybe, but then there's Domitian!
> 
> And Vespasian was an excellent administrator, and put the empire back on an even keel after the excesses of Nero and the 68/69 civil war - but was he as memorable as Caligula?


At least what we read of Vespasian is wholly believable - Caligula may have been vile but when reading Seutonius' account I wonder how much of it was a case of never letting the truth get in the way of a good story. By the time _The Lives_ was written it's possible that there were very few reliable sources of information relating to Caligula's excesses, and there was certainly no-one still alive by then to give any verbal testimony. Such a pity that the chapters relating to Caligula's reign are lost from Tacitus' _Annals_ - even though the _Annals_ was also written much later I get the impression that Tacitus' more comprehensive and certainly less 'tabloidy' writing style might have been more reliable in giving any real ideas as to what Caligula was specifically capable of.


----------



## bharbeke

jegreenwood said:


> Reading Chernow's biography of Grant. It's long. I'll probably read through the Civil War section and put it down for a while. But after Faulkner, it's nice to return to a more straightforward writing style.


Have you looked at the Grant biography by Brands? I enjoyed that one a lot and felt it gave a good picture of both the man and the nation of the time.


----------



## jegreenwood

bharbeke said:


> Have you looked at the Grant biography by Brands? I enjoyed that one a lot and felt it gave a good picture of both the man and the nation of the time.


No. I don't read that much biography, and Chernow gets all the attention (especially after "Hamilton).


----------



## SixFootScowl

www.amazon.com/dp/0924722088/


> Practically everyone in the western world has heard of the man called St. Patrick. But hardly anyone knows anything about him. About the only two things that more people 'know' about Patrick is that he was Irish and Roman Catholic. In truth, he was neither. He was British, and he belonged to the autonomous Celtic church. Although Patrick is the most famous person of his age, the real man has been buried in a cloud of myths.


----------



## Guest

Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told, Tom Phelan










A novel telling the story of two deaths that took place in an Irish village in 1951. The tale is recounted by three people who meet in a sunroom, more than 50 years later, consisting of the coroner who presided at the inquests at the time, his wife, and a man who was a boy in the village at the time and witnessed part of the aftermath of the first death. It turns out that both deaths were homicides, and the village overlooked the circumstances of the deaths because they brought justice to the victims, in a larger sense.


----------



## Barbebleu

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovich. Number four in the Rivers of London series.


----------



## Kieran

A wonderful book by Eric Ambler - *Journey Into Fear*. Written in 1940, as the war began to spread, this is a superior thriller chase story, a man being hunted and he has no idea why...


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> A wonderful book by Eric Ambler - *Journey Into Fear*. Written in 1940, as the war began to spread, this is a superior thriller chase story, a man being hunted and he has no idea why...


I read a bunch of his novels in my teens (i.e. a LONG time ago). I focused on the earlier novels, which my dad recommended over the later, post WWII ones.

Have you read anything by Alan Furst?


----------



## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> I read a bunch of his novels in my teens (i.e. a LONG time ago). I focused on the earlier novels, which my dad recommended over the later, post WWII ones.
> 
> Have you read anything by Alan Furst?


I haven't! I must admit, I've never heard of him, but I'd never heard of Ambler until recently. I'll check him out, thanks! Is he from the mid-20th century?

Currently reading 1599, the book about Shakespeare by James Shapiro. Really enjoying this. Will read his book Contested Will next week, about the hullabaloo over who wrote Shakespeare's work...


----------



## starthrower

A good read if you want a straightforward, no nonsense account of the Stones in the 60s. His sexual conquests notwithstanding. I abandoned Keef's autobiography fairly quickly due to the fact that page after page of his accounts of hiding his drugs from ******* cops in the south got pretty boring. I'll get back to it eventually but I'm sure I'll be skipping around. On the other hand, Wyman comes across as a sober, disciplined individual who meticulously documented his experiences with the band by keeping diaries and scrapbooks, so his recollections are more likely to be believed by discerning readers.


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> I haven't! I must admit, I've never heard of him, but I'd never heard of Ambler until recently. I'll check him out, thanks! Is he from the mid-20th century?
> 
> Currently reading 1599, the book about Shakespeare by James Shapiro. Really enjoying this. Will read his book Contested Will next week, about the hullabaloo over who wrote Shakespeare's work...


I was given a copy of Shapiro's "1606: The Year of Lear" - signed I think - which I'm ashamed to say I haven't read.

Furst is still with us. But most of his novels are set before or during WWII. I haven't read him in a long time. I'm planning to taking a hiatus from Chernow's "Grant" after Appomattox. I may turn to a Furst novel.


----------



## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> I was given a copy of Shapiro's "1606: The Year of Lear" - signed I think - which I'm ashamed to say I haven't read.
> 
> Furst is still with us. But most of his novels are set before or during WWII. I haven't read him in a long time. I'm planning to taking a hiatus from Chernow's "Grant" after Appomattox. I may turn to a Furst novel.


I see several of Fursts book are available in the public library, Polish Officer, Under Occupation, Night Soldier, A Hero in France, kind of excited just reading the titles! Any recommendations?

1599 is very good, gives a lot of history of the time, but also contemporary reports of Shakespeare too, including the oft-quoted accusation/praise that he was "honey-tongued Shakespeare." The same author also wrote Contested Will, which investigates the modern idea that he wasn't author of the plays. I'm hoping to get that Wednesday, if the whole country isn't in lockdown...

EDIT: by the way, have you ever read any Raymond Chandler?


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> I see several of Fursts book are available in the public library, Polish Officer, Under Occupation, Night Soldier, A Hero in France, kind of excited just reading the titles! Any recommendations?
> 
> 1599 is very good, gives a lot of history of the time, but also contemporary reports of Shakespeare too, including the oft-quoted accusation/praise that he was "honey-tongued Shakespeare." The same author also wrote Contested Will, which investigates the modern idea that he wasn't author of the plays. I'm hoping to get that Wednesday, if the whole country isn't in lockdown...
> 
> EDIT: by the way, have you ever read any Raymond Chandler?


"The Big Sleep" several times. I have the next two, all 3 included in a single volume. I did read "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett last year.

I haven't read any of the Fursts you mentioned. I just downloaded "Foreign Correspondent" from my library.


----------



## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> "The Big Sleep" several times. I have the next two, all 3 included in a single volume. I did read "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett last year.
> 
> I haven't read any of the Fursts you mentioned. I just downloaded "Foreign Correspondent" from my library.


All the Chandler novels are classics of their type. I only discovered his books a few years ago and have read them all several times. And I'm watching the clock, I really want to start reading them again! :lol:

If you put it up to me, I'd probably choose The Lady in the Lake as my favourite, or Farewell, My Lovely, but it would seem disloyal to the rest of them.

Public libraries are shut here now because the You Know What, so I'm gonna have to wait to get my Fursts, and the Shakespeare book Contested Will...


----------



## SixFootScowl

Kieran said:


> All the Chandler novels are classics of their type. I only discovered his books a few years ago and have read them all several times. And I'm watching the clock, I really want to start reading them again! :lol:
> 
> If you put it up to me, I'd probably choose The Lady in the Lake as my favourite, or Farewell, My Lovely, but it would seem disloyal to the rest of them.
> 
> Public libraries are shut here now because the You Know What, so I'm gonna have to wait to get my Fursts, and the Shakespeare book Contested Will...


Maybe if this lasts long enough they will start a carry out, that is, you order the books online and they fetch the books and bring them to the door. Kind of like the restaurant closed but still having carry out.


----------



## philoctetes

Another one on the stack... gonna have more time for reading I spose... should be an education as well.... did not read the prequels


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> All the Chandler novels are classics of their type. I only discovered his books a few years ago and have read them all several times. And I'm watching the clock, I really want to start reading them again! :lol:
> 
> If you put it up to me, I'd probably choose The Lady in the Lake as my favourite, or Farewell, My Lovely, but it would seem disloyal to the rest of them.
> 
> Public libraries are shut here now because the You Know What, so I'm gonna have to wait to get my Fursts, and the Shakespeare book Contested Will...


In NYC we can "borrow" e-books. Some of them can be read with Kindle; others require other readers (e.g. Adobe Cloud Reader). Very convenient when travelling and when the physical libraries are closed.


----------



## jegreenwood

philoctetes said:


> Another one on the stack... gonna have more time for reading I spose... should be an education as well.... did not read the prequels


Not sure prequel is the proper word as they were actually written first. 

And although I haven't read the newest, I have read the first two, and my guess is that there is an advantage to reading them in order. A lot of nobles to keep track of - not to mention Queens and Queen-wannabees.

Was supposed to attend a reading by her last night. Of course it was canceled.


----------



## Jacck

I finished the Hyperion Cantos. The first book in the cycle of 4 books was amazing, maybe in my TOP10 of scifi books. The second one was weaker, and the last two were pretty average, the quality declined.

Now reading.
*De Tranquillitate Animi by Lucius Annaeus Seneca*


----------



## philoctetes

jegreenwood said:


> Not sure prequel is the proper word as they were actually written first.


I had to look up the word to confirm this and dang you are correct... so what's the word I want?

Here is a list for "opposite of sequel"

antecedent
causation
cause
occasion
reason
beginning
commencement
foundation
initiation
introduction
opening
origin
original
prelude
prequel
source
start
causality
root
precursor
loss
question
prologUS
parent
ingrowth
exterior
anticlimax
exteriority
outside
basis
preface
foreword
stimulus
hindrance
inception
worthlessness
disadvantage
unimportance
handicap
rise
base
prologueUK
germ
resource
truth

Word salad! I don't like any of them.. no more than two syllables should be necessary... "previous volumes" will do for now...


----------



## philoctetes

btw if you like Chandler check out Jim Thompson


----------



## jegreenwood

philoctetes said:


> btw if you like Chandler check out Jim Thompson


I should. I also picked up James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet recently. I only know the movie, "L.A. Confidential, which was quite good.


----------



## philoctetes

Ross MacDonald too... almost adept as Chandler when it comes to plot twisting...


----------



## bz3

jegreenwood said:


> I should. I also picked up James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet recently. I only know the movie, "L.A. Confidential, which was quite good.


American Tabloid is not to be missed if you like those. I am not of the Kennedy assassination generation but, for my money, that book is rivaled only by DeLillo's Libra in terms of novels that deal with that sordid business.


----------



## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> In NYC we can "borrow" e-books. Some of them can be read with Kindle; others require other readers (e.g. Adobe Cloud Reader). Very convenient when travelling and when the physical libraries are closed.


Do you know, I never got the knack of reading books that way? can read articles etc, but books, I just don't feel...right. Stupid really, but it's a matter of habit, maybe. My relationship with books was formed by the smell and thickness and feel of the book, as well as the contents. I think that might be it...


----------



## Kieran

bz3 said:


> American Tabloid is not to be missed if you like those. I am not of the Kennedy assassination generation but, for my money, that book is rivaled only by DeLillo's Libra in terms of novels that deal with that sordid business.


Fantastuc book, and The Cold Six Thousand that follows it is great too. Haven't read the third in that particular trilogy yet...


----------



## Kieran

philoctetes said:


> btw if you like Chandler check out Jim Thompson


Yeah, I read a few of his that I really enjoyed, especially The Killer Inside Me...


----------



## jegreenwood

philoctetes said:


> Ross MacDonald too... almost adept as Chandler when it comes to plot twisting...


Read a lot of McDonald's books when I was younger. Read (reread?) one recently and enjoyed it.

Slightly off-topic, I finally broke down and got Amazon Prime (on the assumption I'll be doing more purchasing from them as stores close in NYC). Watching the first season of Bosch. I've read most of the novels, although I don't know how closely the series follows the books.


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> Do you know, I never got the knack of reading books that way? can read articles etc, but books, I just don't feel...right. Stupid really, but it's a matter of habit, maybe. My relationship with books was formed by the smell and thickness and feel of the book, as well as the contents. I think that might be it...


I e-read the books I would otherwise dispose of after finishing them. And sometimes more serious stuff when travelling or stuck at home like now (NYC precaution - no symptoms).


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I don't usually call a book a five star novel. But I consider this one. Astoundingly good writing. I was unfamiliar with the author until I saw this in a used bookstore and thought it interesting.

Fascinating characters. Involving story line. I was done reading in a few days. A real can't put down for me, which is due to the writing quality. I look forward to more of his work. I saw an interview recently with a well know classical pianist praising his novel Saturday and comparing its structure to Bach's Goldberg Variations, that sounds promising.


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I don't usually call a book a five star novel. But I consider this one. Astoundingly good writing. I was unfamiliar with the author until I saw this in a used bookstore and thought it interesting.
> 
> Fascinating characters. Involving story line. I was done reading in a few days. A real can't put down for me, which is due to the writing quality. I look forward to more of his work. I saw an interview recently with a well know classical pianist praising his novel Saturday and comparing its structure to Bach's Goldberg Variations, that sounds promising.
> 
> View attachment 132136


Was the pianist Angela Hewitt? McEwan asked for her advice on music matters for a later novel, "The Childrens Act." And the surgeon in "Saturday" decides to listen to her Goldbergs instead of Gould's while operating.

I've read those along with several others. Nothing tops "Atonement," but many of the others are worthwhile. The earliest novels (e.g. "The Cement Garden") can be rather perverse.

Come to think of it, I believe I saw McEwan and Hewitt live in dialog.

https://www.nyc-arts.org/events/0/t...th-ian-mcewan-angela-hewitt-and-russell-braun


----------



## Border Collie

philoctetes said:


> btw if you like Chandler check out Jim Thompson


And Dashiell Hammett. Please dont forget Dash.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

jegreenwood said:


> Was the pianist Angela Hewitt? McEwan asked for her advice on music matters for a later novel, "The Childrens Act." And the surgeon in "Saturday" decides to listen to her Goldbergs instead of Gould's while operating.
> 
> I've read those along with several others. Nothing tops "Atonement," but many of the others are worthwhile. The earliest novels (e.g. "The Cement Garden") can be rather perverse.
> 
> Come to think of it, I believe I saw McEwan and Hewitt live in dialog.
> 
> https://www.nyc-arts.org/events/0/t...th-ian-mcewan-angela-hewitt-and-russell-braun


I can't exactly remember. I was thinking Hewitt or Simone Dinnerstein.

On the strength of Atonement I read on Chesil Beach in one day. Very short work. It was good, not the depth of Atonement but still quite worth the read.


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I can't exactly remember. I was thinking Hewitt or Simone Dinnerstein.
> 
> On the strength of Atonement I read on Chesil Beach in one day. Very short work. It was good, not the depth of Atonement but still quite worth the read.


Haven't read that one. I guess my second favorite is "Saturday."


----------



## TxllxT

We're nearing the end of the novel (inside or outside quarantaine reading a book together aloud may count among the best of possible cultural experiences) and Dmitri is confessing his secret. What is a peculiar fact in Dostoevsky's famous novel: the almost deadly blow that Dmitri has given to the servant Grigory (who had raised him as a real father) is being treated as if Russia is still living in the era of serfdom. Grigory's near death is being treated much lighter than the murder of his official father. It seems that Dostoevsky still wrote with the mindset of Grigory being a serf, whose life is less valuable... Also the whole play of Dmitri, that he's a man of honor becomes a hoax. A pity that the plot weakens in this way, because in this novel Dostoevsky at times seems a better writer than both Maxim Gorky and Joseph Roth.


----------



## jegreenwood

As the 2 people who follow me closely on this Forum  know I have a connection with the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd St. Y. I just got an e-blast about a new podcast:

"Read By features newly commissioned readings by prominent writer-friends of the Center—recorded in their homes straight to listeners'. The intimate, informal series kicks off tonight with a reading by James Shapiro, who was originally scheduled to appear at 92Y for a live event this evening. Over the next several weeks, you'll hear Billy Collins, Jonathan Franzen, Rachel Cusk, George Saunders, Ann Patchett, Gary Shteyngart, Colm Tóibín, Lauren Groff and Elif Batuman, among many others, each reading works that have had a lasting personal effect on them.

"New recordings will be posted on 92Y's Archives website Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8 pm—at which time the literary work chosen by the writer will be revealed. In addition to the recordings, the site will feature short pieces by each of the writers about the works they have chosen to read. You'll also be able to download it wherever you download podcasts."


----------



## Sad Al

aleazk said:


> Sartre's "Nausea". It was interesting, I felt identified with the protagonist, but ultimately disappointed and bored. Yes, all of what he says about the nature of existence is true to some extent and I even felt those things personally before even reading it. But he doesn't propose any way out, any salvation. It's just a dark abyss, ideal for getting even more depressed. I used to like that stuff, but now I realize it's at most mediocre, since it's just telling me what I already know but without any further elaboration. I expect more from a philosopher than just the destruction of the will to live... and I don't even like life that much!
> 
> Besides, it's false if taken like that. In Camus' essay The myth of sisyphus, he says that the feeling of the absurdity of life comes from the clash of our innate desire to know and the apparent mystery of the nature of reality. That's true. But the way out for that is precisely Science*, which these authors olympically ignore.
> 
> *of course, we don't know if it will ever answer everything, but at least tries, rather than rejoicing in the abyss.


But there is no way out. If you get old, you die at 70 or so. Then you disappear. There is life after death, but it's not for you.


----------



## philoctetes

Sad Al said:


> But there is no way out. If you get old, you die at 70 or so. Then you disappear. There is life after death, but it's not for you.


And when you realize that, ya look for other things to do (or read) with your precious time...


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday. Chesterton is one of my favorite writers, equally capable of entertaining and challenging you. The Father Brown stories are a constant source of pleasure for me. This little novel should be essential reading for anyone who loves spy/suspense stories and/or philosophical fiction.


----------



## Guest

The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje, started before the Coronavirus hogged the horizon.










This is a great book. It starts somewhat slowly, describing thee young boys traveling by ship from Ceylon to England, where they will attend boarding school. They meet at the "cat's table," the least prestigious dining table on the ship. The book describes their adventures on the ship, interacting with a broad cast of characters, and relates these experiences to their later lives. The three boys explore the physical reality of the ship, and the reality of the adult relationships surrounding them that they only later come to understand. A central mystery of the story involves a prisoner held on the ship, his relationship with others on board, and his attempt to escape. There are flash forwards to the characters in the story interacting decades later, as adults, and coming to terms with what they witnessed on that formative voyage. It also contrasts the culture of Ceylon with that of the West and deals with the issues faced by immigrants. Just a wonderful read. A book that can be grasped upon first reading, and richly reward re-reading, I expect.


----------



## bz3

jegreenwood said:


> As the 2 people who follow me closely on this Forum  know I have a connection with the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd St. Y. I just got an e-blast about a new podcast:
> 
> "Read By features newly commissioned readings by prominent writer-friends of the Center-recorded in their homes straight to listeners'. The intimate, informal series kicks off tonight with a reading by James Shapiro, who was originally scheduled to appear at 92Y for a live event this evening. Over the next several weeks, you'll hear Billy Collins, Jonathan Franzen, Rachel Cusk, George Saunders, Ann Patchett, Gary Shteyngart, Colm Tóibín, Lauren Groff and Elif Batuman, among many others, each reading works that have had a lasting personal effect on them.
> 
> "New recordings will be posted on 92Y's Archives website Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8 pm-at which time the literary work chosen by the writer will be revealed. In addition to the recordings, the site will feature short pieces by each of the writers about the works they have chosen to read. You'll also be able to download it wherever you download podcasts."


Despite not liking any of those authors listed, and outright hating a couple (Franzen, Toibin), this sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing.


----------



## Sad Al

Apollinaire's The Eleven Thousand Rods is the only book that I really like. I agree with Picasso and consider it a masterpiece. I also like Iznogoud which I read every day. Philip K. Dick's short stories are also very good. Kalervo Palsa's cartoon book about a retired necrophiliac is as good as The Eleven Thousand Rods, or better, but it's only available in Finnish, although you can read it with a dictionary.

Apollinaire's The Eleven Thousand Rods is more current than ever because the good poet died of the Spanish flu.

I am a fan of René Goscinny and I like nihilistic cartoons and I have an idea that could make a cartoonist rich. If you can draw cartoons, and if you are fond of gallows humor, let's discuss my idea.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Just started. Interesting.


----------



## Varick

Baron Scarpia said:


> That is a tough one but worth the effort. Lots of details of fishing technology that can seem dry, but are in some sense the underpinning of the story. There is a moment when Melville asks himself if man will ever run out of whales to hunt. I won't tell you the conclusion.


Yes I remember reading that and going "Ha!!" out loud.

V


----------



## Varick

starthrower said:


> Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
> 
> My wife brought this one with her from California. I've had it on my to read list for a couple years now.


Please let us know how it is. It's on my Amazon wish list. Thank you.

V


----------



## Varick

MohammadAabrun said:


> "Untimely Meditations"
> by Friedrich *Nietzsche*
> 
> He is a noble art critic.
> 
> View attachment 129527


He's a noble everything critic. Brilliant mind and one of the most misunderstood to this day.

V


----------



## Varick

poetic said:


> I am reading the Holy Qur'an


Do you read Arabic? Many Arab Muslims I have read and know have said no interpretation is nearly as accurate as the original in Arabic. I'll never know because I doubt I'll become fluent in Arabic before I die. However, I have read and still read interpretations, translations, and philosophies on the Quran and Islam.

V


----------



## Varick

TxllxT said:


> We're nearing the end of the novel (inside or outside quarantaine reading a book together aloud may count among the best of possible cultural experiences) and Dmitri is confessing his secret. What is a peculiar fact in Dostoevsky's famous novel: the almost deadly blow that Dmitri has given to the servant Grigory (who had raised him as a real father) is being treated as if Russia is still living in the era of serfdom. Grigory's near death is being treated much lighter than the murder of his official father. It seems that Dostoevsky still wrote with the mindset of Grigory being a serf, whose life is less valuable... Also the whole play of Dmitri, that he's a man of honor becomes a hoax. A pity that the plot weakens in this way, *because in this novel Dostoevsky at times seems a better writer than both Maxim Gorky and Joseph Roth*.


As he is in Crime and Punishment as well. I believe Dostoevsky was one of the most profound writers of all time. His deep exploration and understanding into the human heart and soul is powerful and poignant. Without consciously trying, I believe he is one of the greatest philosophers of our time.

V


----------



## Varick

Ignore this post.


----------



## Varick

I don't get on here as often anymore. Here is what I've read since my last books I posted:
























The Sub title is so accurate. It was truly a holocaust. Frighteningly powerful!

















V


----------



## Barbebleu

Varick said:


> Ignore this post.


Consider it ignored. :tiphat:


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Warning Spoilers. 
A good post apocalyptic book. She weaves a good narrative and resists the all to common urge to nearty tie up the characters one to another. Interesting development of plot and character. Plausible depiction of a world with 99% of the population wiped out. That is, plausible with only a few of my nit picky observations. If only 1% of the people survive, why are there so many people left? She shows us far more people than reality would dictate. Also she states at one point that 20 or so years after the plague it is a rarity to find an unlooted property. 1%of the population would be hard pressed to loot everything even in 20 years, or so I would think. But these are minor and possibly I misunderstood, I didn't go back and look.


----------



## Helgi

It just occurred to me that now would be a good time to re-read Don DeLillo


----------



## Kieran

Helgi said:


> It just occurred to me that now would be a good time to re-read Don DeLillo


Which book would you start with? I've only read _Zero K_, which impressed me greatly, but would love to read Libra, after discovering it James Ellroy's classic,_ American Tabloid..._


----------



## Helgi

Libra is the only book of his I've yet to read.

Hard to say where to start! I love every one of them. Maybe try Point Omega next and work your way backwards? 

One of my favourites is The Names.


----------



## Open Book

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 132576
> 
> Warning Spoilers.
> A good post apocalyptic book. She weaves a good narrative and resists the all to common urge to nearty tie up the characters one to another. Interesting development of plot and character. Plausible depiction of a world with 99% of the population wiped out. That is, plausible with only a few of my nit picky observations. If only 1% of the people survive, why are there so many people left? She shows us far more people than reality would dictate. Also she states at one point that 20 or so years after the plague it is a rarity to find an unlooted property. 1%of the population would be hard pressed to loot everything even in 20 years, or so I would think. But these are minor and possibly I misunderstood, I didn't go back and look.


These aren't really spoilers. This is like the description on the book jacket that you read to decide whether or not to buy the book. It reveals only enough to be intriguing. You might have sold me.


----------



## Kieran

The Musical Companion (1934), edited by A.L. Bacharach...


----------



## Jacobi Calthorpe

200 years together, unofficial English translation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. About the subversive elements responsible for the Russian revolution. No wonder it's his only work not to be translated into English. I wonder why no publishing house thought it worthy....


----------



## Jacobi Calthorpe

200 years together, unofficial English translation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. About the subversive elements responsible for the Russian revolution.


----------



## Kieran

Jacobi Calthorpe said:


> 200 years together, unofficial English translation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. About the subversive elements responsible for the Russian revolution. No wonder it's his only work not to be translated into English. I wonder why no publishing house thought it worthy....


What does the book refer to, the rise of communism in the late 1800's?


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> Which book would you start with? I've only read _Zero K_, which impressed me greatly, but would love to read Libra, after discovering it James Ellroy's classic,_ American Tabloid..._


I've read a lot of DeLillo (mostly his early novels before I gave up on him). I should like him a lot but the only novel that really grabbed me was "Underworld" - which I loved. The first chapter of "Underworld" was published independently as a novella, "Pafko at the Wall," and it's a tour de force - if you know something about American baseball.

("White Noise" wasn't bad.)


----------



## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> Finished "The Round House" by Louise Erdrich. My first takeaway - what a great book to teach in high school. True, the plot is initiated by a rape (disclosed in the first 10 pages), but there is no graphic description. And these days with a rape a week on Law and Order SVU (and plenty on other shows), I wouldn't think that would be necessarily prohibitive.
> 
> And after that - wow. Subjects include the effect of rape on the victim and her family, Native and white culture and spirituality, and the legal problems confronted by the Native community. But to my mind the core of the book is about the meaning of justice - and revenge - and the coming of age of a 13 year old boy. The story is told by the boy, but later, when he is in his 30s.
> 
> Although much of the plot centers around the attempts to identify and catch the rapist, it's not quite a mystery, nor a traditional suspense novel. But the plot and characters grab you from the outset.
> 
> It's also a pretty easy read.


I just finished it. Believe it or not I had a tough time with this at first. I couldn't get into the rhythm. There were too many characters for my crummy memory, the main character's friends and relations. I was a bit skeptical of the author's depiction of the 13 year old boy foursome -- lots of authors are less convincing with characters not of their age and gender.

But the introduction of Linda and her story of being a White adopted by Indians, changed everything. Then the scene with the boys breaking into ex-marine Father Travis's house was equally remarkable, priceless. Sonja had a strong effect, too. Suddenly this felt like a great book, I got it, and now that I'm done I'm rereading passages of it.

I agree it would be a fine choice for high school students. They would appreciate the humor as well as the themes.

Have you read any of Erdrich's other books and how do they compare?


----------



## Blancrocher

Dostoevsky, _Demons_ (Trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky)

One of the funniest novels I've read - didn't know Dostoevsky had it in him.


----------



## starthrower

Interesting read for modern jazz fans.


----------



## SixFootScowl

starthrower said:


> Interesting read for modern jazz fans.


Clever cover design too with the stack of LP sleeves.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Duluth I wanted to like but didn't. Midnight bored me. AndThe Bridge is a classic I have read before and will again.


----------



## Caesura

I've been reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas for a while and I plan to finish it before the summer.


----------



## Blancrocher

David Quint, Cervantes's Novel of Modern Times

Attempt to show the unity of _Don Quixote_ despite its apparently digressive character.


----------



## senza sordino

I just finished reading

A Short History of the Railroad by Christian Wolmar. This was interesting. It's a series of short articles / chapters. Each chapter describes one topic: The first railroad, Transcontinental Railway, Pullman Experience, Financial failures, Tunneling, Going Electric, Wartime, phasing out of steam, Maglev etc. Not a lot of detail in each, but instead it's a survey course of the history of railroads. Interesting. I bought the book at the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento last summer.










I am now reading Watership Down by Richard Adams


----------



## Blancrocher

Fernando de Rojas, _Celestina_ (Trans. Peter Bush)

Amusing--and somewhat alarming--title character.


----------



## Guest

It's excellent so far.


----------



## sstucky

On music: Toscanini by Harvey Sachs, and Dangerous Melodies by Jonathan Rosenberg. Other: The Realness of Things Past by Greg Anderson. In progress: Britain’s War Volume 2 by Daniel Todman.


----------



## Guest

I haven't been listening to music recently, but I've been reading more. Most recently book completed has been _Bruno's Dream_, by Iris Mordoch. Bruno is an elderly man dying of the old age, obsessed with spiders, his stamp collection and his past. His dream is more or less his view of life, or perhaps the hallucination he has at the end of the novel. Most of the action involves the characters that revolve around him, including his son, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, nurse, housekeeper, and some others. A general theme of Murdoch's fiction is that intense feelings of love can be felt by and for people who are not young, attractive, or appropriate mates. The intensity of desire and love overrules all else. A fine book.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

My audio book for this week was The Hobbit and I am really glad I listened. A delightful book and I generally shy away from fantasy wizard books. I first read this in Jr. High like we all did at that time. It was a big deal. I believe I read it again as a young adult. My opinion is that it still holds up for me. I consider it a classic so much that I bought a copy for my granddaughter who has been reading the Harry Potter books. I recommend it. The audio book is wonderfully narrated and I found it on YouTube.


----------



## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> I just finished it. Believe it or not I had a tough time with this at first. I couldn't get into the rhythm. There were too many characters for my crummy memory, the main character's friends and relations. I was a bit skeptical of the author's depiction of the 13 year old boy foursome -- lots of authors are less convincing with characters not of their age and gender.
> 
> But the introduction of Linda and her story of being a White adopted by Indians, changed everything. Then the scene with the boys breaking into ex-marine Father Travis's house was equally remarkable, priceless. Sonja had a strong effect, too. Suddenly this felt like a great book, I got it, and now that I'm done I'm rereading passages of it.
> 
> I agree it would be a fine choice for high school students. They would appreciate the humor as well as the themes.
> 
> Have you read any of Erdrich's other books and how do they compare?


The first one - "Love Medicine" - when it came out decades ago (1980s I think). I did like it and planned on reading more. But it slipped my mind for a while, and then there were several, so I couldn't choose. "The Round House" is the middle book in a loose trilogy, so I will probably continue with books 1 and 3. I have read that "The Round House" is even better if you've read Book 1, "The Plague of Doves."


----------



## jegreenwood

I haven't been much in the mood for "serious" literature during the virus outbreak, so I've been reading and streaming mysteries. I just dipped my toe back in with a collection of short stories by Katherine Anne Porter.

I discovered Iris Murdoch at the beginning of the year. I have a couple more by her that I might try. Not "Bruno's Dream" though.


----------



## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> The first one - "Love Medicine" - when it came out decades ago (1980s I think). I did like it and planned on reading more. But it slipped my mind for a while, and then there were several, so I couldn't choose. "The Round House" is the middle book in a loose trilogy, so I will probably continue with books 1 and 3. I have read that "The Round House" is even better if you've read Book 1, "The Plague of Doves."


I found out about the trilogy, too, and I'm about to read it myself. The third novel is LaRose. Not sure if the narrative for that one precedes Doves but I'll probably start with the one that was written first.


----------



## Ariasexta

This is a good thread, keep it up folks:

I love English literature, now reading Vanity fair, Pickwick Papers, Sherlock Holmes, William Faulkner, Alice Monroe, Ernst Hemmingway. 

French: Souvenirs Dormants(Patrick Modiano), L` etrange voyage de Monseiur Daldry(Marc Levy)

In China, Nobel winners books ensure the sales, so it is quite easy to get nobel books besides popular classics like Vanity fair and Charles Dickens works. Recently finnished: Phantom of the opera by Gaston Leroux(English cersion), Ourika(French), Oliver Twist, Anne of Green Gables(Lucy Montgomery). 

I have a personal library of budget bindings of literary books, all of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeares, 80% of William Faulkner(one of my favorite writers ever), many books by Hemmingway and Steinbeck. There are also some french, spanish, german books. Literature is another big love besides music. But I am tended to regard literature as a part of music. 

Anne of Green Gables is a very joyful book, it can bring ytou back to some childhood memories, everybody should read it. Charles Dickens is a great writer, very masterful stroytelling, he can make a triviality a joy to read. William Faulkner, a royal baroque composer born in modern time to be a writer. Hemmingway, very stoic style in writing, but everything is not superfluous in the book. 

Patrick Modiano, a modern Jane Austen, a lot of nuances, soft, gracious, heart-warming. 

Steinbeck, like a modern George Eliot, wordy but still a joy to read. 

I can also read german and russian. But I can not buy any russian books, not available. Doestoevsky is the one to read completely in any language. I do not like fantasy literature, but the western serious lit is an eye opener.


----------



## Kieran

I’ve been reading Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits, which is an extraordinarily beautifully written book, it flows with great ease, great thoughts and images. The characters are solid, and it’s the second of her books I’ve read recently which I just never want to put down.

A teensy quibble, but I suspect this is an example of magic realism, of some sort, and though it has fantastic elements, it suffers from other so-called magic realism faults, which is that they seem also at times to be hopelessly soppy and sentimental. It doesn’t kill it though! I like this book...


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> I've been reading Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits, which is an extraordinarily beautifully written book, it flows with great ease, great thoughts and images. The characters are solid, and it's the second of her books I've read recently which I just never want to put down.
> 
> A teensy quibble, but I suspect this is an example of magic realism, of some sort, and though it has fantastic elements, it suffers from other so-called magic realism faults, which is that they seem also at times to be hopelessly soppy and sentimental. It doesn't kill it though! I like this book...


interesting

it sounds fascinating and a prod to self expansion of imagination

sadly, i was born void of the ability to suspend disbelief so i generally read rather dry, to most, science based books. My reading "hobby" is centered around neuropsychology. Most find it rather boring yet some find it stimulative when in conversation.

such is life


----------



## Flamme

Still ''The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire'', christian period, so much intrigues and power games between the elites...The Gibbons english is so rich and ornamental, I imagine a guy talking like that in his or our era...


----------



## Kieran

Flamme said:


> Still ''The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire'', christian period, so much intrigues and power games between the elites...The Gibbons english is so rich and ornamental, I imagine a guy talking like that in his or our era...


It's a dramatic tale, isn't it? The great Roman Empire, collapsing for whatever cause, it's almost become a moral fable. Gibbons was a beautiful writer...


----------



## Flamme

It is a pretty accurate historical work...He cites many authors and sources for his claims...And he is very impartial, gives praise where its due and criticize if he finds it suitable...


----------



## TxllxT

Did anyone read this book by Frank Furedi?


----------



## Blancrocher

Fernando Pessoa, _The Book of Disquiet_

Strange book, stranger author.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

To lower the tone, somewhat, I have just finished three of Wodehouse's 'Jeeves and Wooster' novels. It doesn't really matter which three, because similar plot lines and narrative arcs recur. None the less, they are enjoyable in an undemanding way. Puts me in mind of Mendelssohn?


----------



## Open Book

Funny to me that in a thread about books, the essence of which is words and text, how many splashy graphics get pasted here.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Open Book said:


> Funny to me that in a thread about books, the essence of which is words and text, how many splashy graphics get pasted here.


I see book covers.


----------



## Open Book

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I see book covers.


You can't judge a book by its cover.


----------



## AClockworkOrange

It's been a long time since I have sat and read a novel or even a short story. I'm trying to get back but I'm not sure where to start. Sci Fi? Classic Literature such as Bronte, Dickens etc? Non-Fiction? I need to find something accessible without re-reading something I shave read multiple times.

In the past I have read mainly Sci Fi and non-fiction. Before my extended break from reading, I wanted to broaden my horizons and explore the classics - for example, Sherlock Holmes is particularly high on my list.

I have dipped my toe into reading with some poetry - some of William Blake's works from Songsof Innocence & Experience and various works by assorted German Poets (German/English texts sode by side) from an anthology. The former was one of the few poets I enjoyed reading at school and the latter inspired after listening to Lieder.

My reading backlog is such I don't need to buy any more books for the foreseeable future.

Until I decide where to start I terms of fiction, I think I'll start reading with some non-fiction in*Klemperer On Music - Shavings from a Musicians Workbench*.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Open Book said:


> You can't judge a book by its cover.


Deep man, deep.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Can't believe I've not read this.


----------



## Open Book

............................................


----------



## Open Book

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 134093
> 
> 
> Can't believe I've not read this.


Why can't you believe it?


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Open Book said:


> Why can't you believe it?


Whoa dude, It is like the universe is telling me to read it.

Hey, cool cat tell us what you read.


----------



## jegreenwood

AClockworkOrange said:


> It's been a long time since I have sat and read a novel or even a short story. I'm trying to get back but I'm not sure where to start. Sci Fi? Classic Literature such as Bronte, Dickens etc? Non-Fiction? I need to find something accessible without re-reading something I shave read multiple times.
> 
> In the past I have read mainly Sci Fi and non-fiction. Before my extended break from reading, I wanted to broaden my horizons and explore the classics - for example, Sherlock Holmes is particularly high on my list.
> 
> I have dipped my toe into reading with some poetry - some of William Blake's works from Songsof Innocence & Experience and various works by assorted German Poets (German/English texts sode by side) from an anthology. The former was one of the few poets I enjoyed reading at school and the latter inspired after listening to Lieder.
> 
> My reading backlog is such I don't need to buy any more books for the foreseeable future.
> 
> Until I decide where to start I terms of fiction, I think I'll start reading with some non-fiction in*Klemperer On Music - Shavings from a Musicians Workbench*.


Well there's always Anthony Burgess - perhaps you've heard of him. 

Dickens may be the greatest story-teller in the history of the novel. So many good ones to choose from, but I guess the people's choice would be "David Copperfield."

Upon reflection, it seems to me that many of the best story-tellers today are British. Favorites include Kazuo Ishiguro ("Never Let me Go"), Kate Atkinson ("Life After Life"), David Mitchell ("Cloud Atlas" - a tougher read), and maybe the most popular Ian McEwan ("Atonement"). From Japan, add Haruki Murakami ("Kafka on the Shore").

As it happens, most of the modern novels I've mentioned have a sci fi or fantasy element, although none of them would be considered Sci Fi or Fantasy.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Dostoevsky - The Idiot. Reading stuff like this is my main source of pleasure besides listening to music. Crime and Punishment is essential to read first for anyone new to him, though - much less dense style and less complicaed plot.


----------



## Listenerris

Hello everyone. Please tell me what I could be read at any of art of a novel about pioneers photography. Or about people who lived at that time and made memoirs. Or anything else is the same thematic.


----------



## Blancrocher

Ian Watt, _Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe_


----------



## Kieran

Began Wolf Hall last night, and only 12 pages in, I already love it. A friend generously sent me the trilogy of books, so that's a perfect gift for the quarantine...


----------



## starthrower

Doubt: A History


----------



## Tristan

*The Language Instinct* by Steven Pinker

*The Glass Bead Game* by Hermann Hesse


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

I'm trying really hard, but somehow I find it harder to motivate myself to read since the shutdown. But I'm trying to read these:
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson








And The Smallest Minority by Kevin Williamson


----------



## Blancrocher

Mark Wrigglesworth, _The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters_


----------



## senza sordino

Blancrocher said:


> Mark Wrigglesworth, _The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters_


This book is in my Amazonian shopping cart. I haven't hit "buy" yet because it is a hard cover, and I don't particularly like reading hard cover books simply because they are too heavy. I usually read in bed holding the book up. Is this a hard cover or soft cover or ebook? And how is the book, is it interesting, is it well written, is it worth buying?


----------



## senza sordino

I have just finished Watership Down by Richard Adams









I thought this book was fantastic. I wish I had read it years ago. But then again...............if you read this book when you are thirteen it's a book about rabbits, but if you read this book as a fifty four year old, it's a book about Star Wars (the first film in 1977), The Wizard of Oz, Virgil's Aeneid, Homer's Odyssey, the Cold War and a police state, anthropology and mythology. The life of these rabbits is, I imagine, how life was for prehistoric human civilization. And Richard Adams describes the flora with great detail, how herbivore creatures living close to the land have to live, they have to know their flora. I couldn't put this book down, and I read it in record time (for me).

Is his sequel worth reading? Tales from Watership Down?

I have now started reading Dune, by Frank Herbert


----------



## Blancrocher

senza sordino said:


> This book is in my Amazonian shopping cart. I haven't hit "buy" yet because it is a hard cover, and I don't particularly like reading hard cover books simply because they are too heavy. I usually read in bed holding the book up. Is this a hard cover or soft cover or ebook? And how is the book, is it interesting, is it well written, is it worth buying?


I'm reading an ebook, but it seems the soft cover is available. I'm enjoying it, though I won't reread it--it's plainly written and somewhat weirdly argumentative. The kind of thing I'd take out of the library if any were open.


----------



## Flamme

E boox hurt my eyes and mind...


----------



## Guest

_The Nightmare_ by Lars Kepler.


----------



## pianozach

senza sordino said:


> I have just finished Watership Down by Richard Adams
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have now started reading Dune, by Frank Herbert


Two absolutely great books.

*Dune* is *intellectual* reading, and Herbert's writing style precludes the novel being made into any sort of accurate film. There is far too much 'in their head' stuff, so much fascinating description, and all attempts to adapt it into the cinematic and TV world have been embarrassing failures. Herbert's concepts, philosophies, attention to detail, and technologies are far better in your own head. There's also a new film of it, with a release date of December 2020, although it's likely that will be pushed back because of the effect of the pandemic on the film industry, from theaters being closed, to cancelled shooting schedules.

Herbert also wrote five sequels, of which I think I got through the first two or three. Or four. It's been a while.

I have only one complaint about the book (and its sequels): Some of the character names did not lend themselves to easy understanding of their pronunciations. I hate that. I get hung up on that sort of thing while reading . . . it's like having random hiccups (I read fairly fast, and it's like running a marathon with occasional doors in the course).


----------



## jegreenwood

Brian Greene - "Until the End of Time"


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I have read the introduction so far. Plan to get into it this weekend.


----------



## cwarchc

This is written by an old colleague of mine
An amusing look at the cold war through an individual perspective


----------



## TxllxT

*András Schiff - Music Comes Out of Silence (2020)*










Wonderful pianist, wonderful memoir.


----------



## senza sordino

Blancrocher said:


> I'm reading an ebook, but it seems the soft cover is available. I'm enjoying it, though I won't reread it--it's plainly written and somewhat weirdly argumentative. The kind of thing I'd take out of the library if any were open.


Any recommendations for an ereader?

Kindle seems like the obvious choice, but here in Canada, you cannot check out books on a Kindle.

I don't like reading books on my ipad mini, the screen has glare, so I read traditional paperback books. (On my ipad I read newspaper articles and this forum, Youtube, Sudoku, surfing the web etc.) I don't read hardcover books because they are too heavy, and if you look back a few posts you'll see I'm reading Dune. This is a big book and I'm finding this a bit difficult because I read in bed holding the book up. I'm thinking an ereader would be easier and lighter in weight.

Does Kindle support any graphics, or is it only text? If I were to buy a travel guide, such as a Rick Steves books, would the city maps be on the Kindle?

How many books can be kept on the Kindle?

Do you have to buy the recharging cable seperately?

If you buy a book on Amazon, is it stored in the cloud somehow? So if you read the book and then delete it, and then want to re read it, it is still available to download for free? Once an ebook is bought on Amazon, is it forever?


----------



## Open Book

.....................................................................................................


----------



## Open Book

Pat Fairlea said:


> Oh yes, big fan of Kate Atkinson. Her plot lines multiply and twist around like a multiplying-twisty thing, but come to a satisfactory conclusion with loose ends all tied in. And she could teach P. Cornwell (and many others) a thing or two about how people actually talk to each other.
> 
> PS. If you enjoy Kate Atkinson, try Sophie Hannah.


I was reading descriptions of Kate Atkinson's books because I'm looking for a new writer of mystery/psychological thrillers. It sounds like there are supernatural or fantasy elements in them, like "Shakespearean time warps". Is that characteristic of her writing? This seems to be at odds with a mystery, which should be rooted in reality or I would think there would be no suspense.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I just finished this one. I recommend it. You could call it a character study or studies with a secondary plot line, be patient, your questions along the way are answered at the end.


----------



## atsizat

Yesterday's low and high in my location:

19.3°C and 35.9°C


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I recently tackled Dostoevsky's _The Idiot_, which certainly gave me a cerebral jolt. With Russian writers you can't go in looking for surface polish...but the probing of the human condition is so profound. Highly recommended for those who can put up with exterior deficiencies to dig deep into relevant ideas (though I would say start with _Crime and Punishment_, which is a more formally perfect and philosophically linear novel in addition to being a gripping thriller). Now I'm reading Annie Dillard's _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_, which must be the most beautiful nature-inspired book I've ever read. Wonderful reflections on the good life in a time where life doesn't always seem the best.


----------



## flamencosketches

That Schiff memoir looks great. I'm going to have to check it out.

I'm almost finished with Hermann Hesse's _Narcissus & Goldmund_. What a beautiful novel. I find it really gripping and relatable. It's good to be getting back to novels after several years of reading nothing but nonfiction.


----------



## Flamme

I read that when I was 19, 20...Next Siddharta...


----------



## Sad Al

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. It's great


----------



## Barbebleu

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> I'm trying really hard, but somehow I find it harder to motivate myself to read since the shutdown. But I'm trying to read these:
> Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
> View attachment 134363
> 
> 
> And The Smallest Minority by Kevin Williamson
> View attachment 134364


Battle Cry of Freedom is superb. I read it when I was really into American Civil War history. Good stuff.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

pianozach said:


> Two absolutely great books.
> 
> *Dune* is *intellectual* reading, and Herbert's writing style precludes the novel being made into any sort of accurate film. There is far too much 'in their head' stuff, so much fascinating description, and all attempts to adapt it into the cinematic and TV world have been embarrassing failures. Herbert's concepts, philosophies, attention to detail, and technologies are far better in your own head. There's also a new film of it, with a release date of December 2020, although it's likely that will be pushed back because of the effect of the pandemic on the film industry, from theaters being closed, to cancelled shooting schedules.
> 
> Herbert also wrote five sequels, of which I think I got through the first two or three. Or four. It's been a while.
> 
> I have only one complaint about the book (and its sequels): Some of the character names did not lend themselves to easy understanding of their pronunciations. I hate that. I get hung up on that sort of thing while reading . . . it's like having random hiccups (I read fairly fast, and it's like running a marathon with occasional doors in the course).


I read the entire Frank Herbert Dune canon - they are good, but they get weird, really weird. But once you understand the underlying philosophy that binds them all together, it starts to make sense. I read the "prequels" put together by his son and Kevin Anderson, claiming to be true to notes of Frank's for an unwritten 7th book, as well as their 2-book writing of what they claim is Frank's unfinished 7th. I don't buy it. Frank was very nebulous in his writing, and never really fully answered anything, leaving a lot to your imagination. Their formulation seems extremely improbable, but still entertaining. Weirdest thing in them, though . . . Jews are still around however many thousands of years into our future they are.


----------



## flamencosketches

Flamme said:


> I read that when I was 19, 20...Next Siddharta...


Nice, I read Demian and Siddhartha in high school, but somehow never got around to this one. I think it's the best of them so far.


----------



## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> I was reading descriptions of Kate Atkinson's books because I'm looking for a new writer of mystery/psychological thrillers. It sounds like there are supernatural or fantasy elements in them, like "Shakespearean time warps". Is that characteristic of her writing? This seems to be at odds with a mystery, which should be rooted in reality or I would think there would be no suspense.


Depends on the book. Her detective novels featuring Jackson Brodie have none of that. I haven't read all of her books, but I assume you are referring to "Life After Life," which has a time warp structure. It's a brilliant book, but it's not a detective novel. Nor is it fantasy. The time warp is a story telling device. A bit like "Groundhog Day." Or perhaps "Groundhog Life" as the character keeps getting reborn.


----------



## jegreenwood

Read the first 100 pages of "A Confederacy of Dunces." Put it down. Started "The Dain Curse" by Dashiell Hammett.


----------



## Flamme

Sad Al said:


> Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. It's great


Planning 2 buy it...


----------



## starthrower

A sensation at the time of its release in 1974, although I don't remember hearing about it back then.


----------



## Kieran

Finished Wolf Hall, now on the first sequel, Bringing Out The Bodies, and it's fairly exceptional...


----------



## jegreenwood

starthrower said:


> View attachment 136543
> 
> 
> A sensation at the time of its release in 1974, although I don't remember hearing about it back then.


I liked it back then. Let us know how it reads 50 years later.


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> Finished Wolf Hall, now on the first sequel, Bringing Out The Bodies, and it's fairly exceptional...


The third one got weaker reviews, and it's somewhat longer. Interested in your opinion when you get to it.


----------



## Iota

starthrower said:


> View attachment 136543
> 
> 
> A sensation at the time of its release in 1974, although I don't remember hearing about it back then.


I do remember the very hip status of that book in the 70's (I was a young teen when it came out) and that everyone seemed to know it and be talking about it. And until today I could have sworn I'd read it, but seeing it here I realise I can't recall a thing about it, so am now wondering if I ever did. : /

Another book I came upon a bit later that had also acquired a cool reputation in my neck of the woods anyway, was Jonathan Seagull by Richard Bach, which I certainly did read, but like so many things where one experiences the hype before the thing itself, I was somewhat underwhelmed. I have no idea what I'd make of it now.

Am currently reading Talking it Over by Julian Barnes (very slowly, other things taking precedence) which I'm enjoying. He certainly knows how to write and knows it, and I can imagine his style might rub some up the wrong way, but I'm finding it very engaging.


----------



## starthrower

jegreenwood said:


> I liked it back then. Let us know how it reads 50 years later.


I was a kid around the same time as Pirsig's son so reading this makes me wish I had a father like that.


----------



## Barbebleu

Hitler by Volker Ullrich (vol 1)
Where The Bodies Are Buried by Christopher Brookmyre 
The Black Prince by Michael Jon


----------



## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> The third one got weaker reviews, and it's somewhat longer. Interested in your opinion when you get to it.


I'm about 90 pages away from it and I'm hurtling fairly fast now. I read an interesting article about why special authors seem to bloat their works more, as they become more famous, kinda like how some film directors have forgotten how to be brief, and think every film they make must be epic. But they're not epic, they're just long. The thing is, apparently editors become more daunted and don't tell big name authors to trim as much as they would you or me. But also, I suppose, publishers know that a big name author will sell anyway.

Have you read any of these Wolf Hall books?


----------



## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> I'm about 90 pages away from it and I'm hurtling fairly fast now. I read an interesting article about why special authors seem to bloat their works more, as they become more famous, kinda like how some film directors have forgotten how to be brief, and think every film they make must be epic. But they're not epic, they're just long. The thing is, apparently editors become more daunted and don't tell big name authors to trim as much as they would you or me. But also, I suppose, publishers know that a big name author will sell anyway.
> 
> Have you read any of these Wolf Hall books?


The first two. Thought they were very good.


----------



## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> The first two. Thought they were very good.


Second one seems a pacier read to me, maybe because I'm used to the style, or else there's more narrative, but both suck me in, and the character of Cromwell is very fascinating. It's a horrible tale though, in parts. The deviousness and deceit and scheming - "Machiavellian" is maybe not a sufficient description of it.


----------



## senza sordino

I have finished reading Dune, by Frank Herbert. I enjoyed it. I thought I would read some other books for now, and then go back to re-read Dune. And once re-read I would continue with the next in the series Dune Messiah. I know there are things I missed when I read Dune. And reading background information online, I saw that Frank Herbert had written the book with many layers, with the intention that a reader might find something new upon re-reading.

I have only re-read three other books in my life. I have kept a list of all the books I have read going back to 1979, when I was fourteen.

I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig in 2004. I didn't get it.

Now I am reading The Perfectionists, How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World, by Simon Winchester. I really like his writing style. I read The Map that Changed the World, by Simon Winchester also, in 2003. I should read a few more of his books. They're interesting and well written.


----------



## Kieran

senza sordino said:


> I have kept a list of all the books I have read going back to 1979, when I was fourteen.


Really? That's incredible. How many books is it?


----------



## senza sordino

Kieran said:


> Really? That's incredible. How many books is it?


About 250 books. I'm not a prolific reader. That's an average of 6 to 7 books a year, which sounds about right later in my life. In that list there are some short stories too. While stuck at home right now, I am reading a bit more. But in normal times 6 or 7 a year sounds about right.

I also get non-fiction books from the library and read what I want to learn, perhaps not the entire book. So this doesn't count toward my list.

My goal is always twelve books a year, one a month. Which rarely happens. But let's see what happens this year during the pandemic. Fiction and non-fiction count toward my list, but I have to read the entire book.


----------



## Kieran

senza sordino said:


> About 250 books. I'm not a prolific reader. That's an average of 6 to 7 books a year, which sounds about right later in my life. In that list there are some short stories too. While stuck at home right now, I am reading a bit more. But in normal times 6 or 7 a year sounds about right.
> 
> I also get non-fiction books from the library and read what I want to learn, perhaps not the entire book. So this doesn't count toward my list.
> 
> My goal is always twelve books a year, one a month. Which rarely happens. But let's see what happens this year during the pandemic. Fiction and non-fiction count toward my list, but I have to read the entire book.


Very good! I wish I'd done something like that. I read a lot, fiction, non fiction, some literature, some hardboiled detective stuff, some history books, mainly the ancient world. Like you, i find the library to be a great resource, I rarely buy books now unless I know I'm going to reread them many times...


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Kieran said:


> Very good! I wish I'd done something like that. I read a lot, fiction, non fiction, some literature, some hardboiled detective stuff, some history books, mainly the ancient world. Like you, I find the library to be a great resource, I rarely buy books now unless I know I'm going to reread them many times...


I'm the way about collecting books that most people here are about collecting CDs. It just never stops. Regardless of whether it's something I'll routinely revisit, I just love the visual and mental association of having my shelves packed with knowledge of all varieties. I know I _should_ use the library for most things, but I guess I'm just a possessive person. Literary and classic fiction, theology, history, philosophy and a dash of contemporary fiction are my fortes, but I'm a nondiscriminatory collector (unlike my reading preferences).


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Kieran said:


> Very good! I wish I'd done something like that. I read a lot, fiction, non fiction, some literature, some hardboiled detective stuff, some history books, mainly the ancient world. Like you, i find the library to be a great resource, I rarely buy books now unless I know I'm going to reread them many times...


I buy books but either resell them or give them away when done. I only keep a spare few that I will reread.


----------



## Kieran

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I'm the way about collecting books that most people here are about collecting CDs. It just never stops. Regardless of whether it's something I'll routinely revisit, I just love the visual and mental association of having my shelves packed with knowledge of all varieties. I know I _should_ use the library for most things, but I guess I'm just a possessive person. *Literary and classic fiction, theology, history, philosophy and a dash of contemporary fiction are my fortes*, but I'm a nondiscriminatory collector (unlike my reading preferences).


See, for this, I'd buy. Because I know I'll reread, or read at my leisure. Classic novels, history books etc, I'm gonna buy, general reading, like I got into Graham Greene last year, I know they're considered classics - and they are classic books - but I know I'll read them once, so I was glad the library had them...


----------



## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> The first one - "Love Medicine" - when it came out decades ago (1980s I think). I did like it and planned on reading more. But it slipped my mind for a while, and then there were several, so I couldn't choose. "The Round House" is the middle book in a loose trilogy, so I will probably continue with books 1 and 3. I have read that "The Round House" is even better if you've read Book 1, "The Plague of Doves."


Having started with "Roundhouse", I just finished "Plague of Doves" and "LaRose" from the trilogy. All three books begin with an act of violence. In "Doves" it was a lynching in the past. In "LaRose", it's a tragic accidental shooting. Both books combine scenes from the past (ancestors in the 1800's, mythological ones) as well as contemporary. A heavy theme is the mixing of Indian and white bloodlines; some of the lynchers' descendants go to school with their victims' descendants.

"Doves" is kind of loose, like a collection of short stories. "LaRose" is really great due to the strong characters of various ages from two families who are affected by loss. Josette and Show, who were mere names in "The Round House", are main characters here and I loved them.

I hope more of Erdrich's books continue with these characters and flesh out more of them.


----------



## Tristan

I've been re-reading _*The Magus*_ by John Fowles. I was thinking of re-reading _*The Ebony Tower*_ next.

I don't often like to re-read because there are so many new titles I'm interested in, but these I read when I was still in high school and I feel I can get more out of them now.


----------



## bz3

senza sordino said:


> About 250 books. I'm not a prolific reader. That's an average of 6 to 7 books a year, which sounds about right later in my life. In that list there are some short stories too. While stuck at home right now, I am reading a bit more. But in normal times 6 or 7 a year sounds about right.
> 
> I also get non-fiction books from the library and read what I want to learn, perhaps not the entire book. So this doesn't count toward my list.
> 
> My goal is always twelve books a year, one a month. Which rarely happens. But let's see what happens this year during the pandemic. Fiction and non-fiction count toward my list, but I have to read the entire book.


That's pretty cool. Do you mind posting like the last 25 or 50 or whatever you feel like? I'm just curious, I wish I'd recorded all the books I read. I own probably 50% of the books I've read in the last 20 years so I guess that's something.


----------



## senza sordino

bz3 said:


> That's pretty cool. Do you mind posting like the last 25 or 50 or whatever you feel like? I'm just curious, I wish I'd recorded all the books I read. I own probably 50% of the books I've read in the last 20 years so I guess that's something.


I put one hundred of the books I've read into Goodreads. This took several weeks. I used the snipping tool to take an image. You are in luck because I have to work at home, so all of my technology is at home to do this.

I don't have an electronic file with a list to give you a list, I have kept an old fashioned notebook for years. And now in the past year, I put 100 of the books read into Goodreads. With the Goodreads website, you don't have to write out the entire name of the book and author, you can grab an image to put into the list.

I own very few of the books I've read. I have a friend who volunteers for a charity book sale. I give my read books away.

Top left is the most recent book. Back in time is left to right down the page, bottom of the page is 2009.


----------



## jegreenwood

Tristan said:


> I've been re-reading _*The Magus*_ by John Fowles. I was thinking of re-reading _*The Ebony Tower*_ next.
> 
> I don't often like to re-read because there are so many new titles I'm interested in, but these I read when I was still in high school and I feel I can get more out of them now.


I read both of them while in college (early 70s) as well as most of Fowles' other novels up through "Daniel Martin." How do they hold up?

Have you read "Possession" by A.S. Byatt? And "Mating" by Norman Rush also reminded me of Fowles.


----------



## bz3

Best on that list: The Big Sleep or the Jungle Book.

Worst on that list: I'll keep it to myself so as not to start a food fight.


----------



## Tristan

jegreenwood said:


> I read both of them while in college (early 70s) as well as most of Fowles' other novels up through "Daniel Martin." How do they hold up?
> 
> Have you read "Possession" by A.S. Byatt? And "Mating" by Norman Rush also reminded me of Fowles.


Nothing beats the first reading, but I remember finding The Magus hard to follow, especially with some of the literary allusions, and I'm understanding it and appreciating it more now than I did the first time I read it. (I also recently saw the 1997 movie "The Game", which apparently Fowles felt must've been influenced by The Magus).

I haven't read those others, but I will check them out!


----------



## flamencosketches

starthrower said:


> View attachment 136543
> 
> 
> A sensation at the time of its release in 1974, although I don't remember hearing about it back then.


I read this in high school and it really blew my mind wide open. I would like to read it again and see if I get as much out of it this time.

I just finished the Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse. Loved it, certain stories in particular. The last one seemed to be a story about my life.


----------



## starthrower

flamencosketches said:


> I read this in high school and it really blew my mind wide open. I would like to read it again and see if I get as much out of it this time.


I'm not very far into it but I like it already. I was sad to read that Persig's son Chris was murdered in a mugging at age 23.


----------



## flamencosketches

starthrower said:


> I'm not very far into it but I like it already. I was sad to read that Persig's son Chris was murdered in a mugging at age 23.


I know, it's tragic. Right outside of a Zen meditation center if I'm not mistaken.


----------



## Flamme

Still the romans...So much wisdom can be gained by looking into (ancient) past of humanity...


----------



## Andrew Kenneth

"Of Ants and Dinosaurs"

Cixin Liu's latest novel set in the Cretaceus era.


----------



## Judith

Just started reading 

Stephen Hough
Rough Ideas

Comprises of short essays about his thoughts, mostly music but other subjects also. 
Humerous, funny but just looks at life through his eyes


----------



## Open Book

Andrew Kenneth said:


> "Of Ants and Dinosaurs"
> 
> Cixin Liu's latest novel set in the Cretaceus era.


Is it good? Doesn't seem popular.
Amazon U.S. has a single one-star review. Amazon U.K. has three reviews.


----------



## Judith

Judith said:


> Just started reading
> 
> Stephen Hough
> Rough Ideas
> 
> Comprises of short essays about his thoughts, mostly music but other subjects also.
> Humerous, funny but just looks at life through his eyes


Apologies. Just realised typo and can't edit


----------



## Guest




----------



## jegreenwood

Fugal said:


>


Big fan of his. I've read most of the Bosch novels, and I've watched the first three seasons on HBO.

This novel got a great review in tomorrow's NY Times.


----------



## Kieran

I'm on page 580 of The Mirror and the Light, the final part of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, and I'm ripping through the pages. Her three books maybe one of the most staggering series of novels I've read. Only 300 pages to go, and the detail and beauty and brilliance of the book is on a par with the first two...


----------



## Guest

"*Discrimination and Disparities*" (rev.) Dr. Thomas Sowell.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Franz Kafka - The Trial. I think this may be one of the most perfect books ever written. And one of the funniest. One thing I've noticed as I make my way through the "Western canon" of literature is that scholarly criticism utterly ignores the humorous comic elements that make them appealing to the average reader. I mean, _Madame Bovary_ and _Moby-Dick_ made me guffaw almost constantly.


----------



## Kieran

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Franz Kafka - The Trial. I think this may be one of the most perfect books ever written. And one of the funniest. One thing I've noticed as I make my way through the "Western canon" of literature is that scholarly criticism utterly ignores the humorous comic elements that make them appealing to the average reader. I mean, _Madame Bovary_ and _Moby-Dick_ made me guffaw almost constantly.


Don Quixote will too, if you haven't read it. I hadn't imagined that the hero being beaten up could be so funny I cried. I read a great translation of that book, by Edith Grossman. Well, "great" as in, I have no other translation to compare it too, and I don't speak Spanish, but you get the gist...


----------



## Andrew Kenneth

Open Book said:


> Is it good? Doesn't seem popular.
> Amazon U.S. has a single one-star review. Amazon U.K. has three reviews.


 Well, I could not put down the book.
It reminded me of some of his short stories from "The Wandering Earth".


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Franz Kafka - The Trial. I think this may be one of the most perfect books ever written. And one of the funniest. One thing I've noticed as I make my way through the "Western canon" of literature is that scholarly criticism utterly ignores the humorous comic elements that make them appealing to the average reader. I mean, _Madame Bovary_ and _Moby-Dick_ made me guffaw almost constantly.


Happens to be my next read.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

My goodreads review. Warning, contains spoilers.

The Story of edgar sawtelle.

Pros.

Beautiful writing at times.

Writing that draws you into Edgar and his world.

Engaging descriptions.

Interesting subject matter.

Main character is well developed.

Henry and Almondine are interesting and engaging characters.

Strong dialog.

Points to the author for not going the usual way writing about a teenager. He doesn't have a filthy mouth and he isn't sex possessed.

Points again that there is almost no obscenity and you don't notice it. Very usual in fiction of today.

Although I didn't care for the ending, I give credit that it is a gutsy choice to end it this way.

Cons.

Sometimes Overly descriptive, bogs down the narrative.

More detail than you ever want to know about dog breeding theory and dog training .

Uses foreshadowing at times which comes across amateurish.

Way too much, and I mean way too much, reliance on dreams, an overused and tiring story ploy used too often in today's fiction.

Disappointing story after the father dies. It becomes a murder mystery with clairvoyants and ghosts. The boy attacks his mother and causes the death of a friend, also rejects his lifelong dog companion, way out of his established character. Total departure from the first half of the book.

The ending pretty much ruins it. After all of this hard work and suffering and hope and personal struggle and revelation, the message is: it's all for nothing. Death, ruin and disaster happens anyway.


----------



## Snazzy

...................................................


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Snazzy said:


> ...................................................
> View attachment 137785


Definitely on my short list of life-changing books


----------



## TxllxT

Snazzy said:


> ...................................................
> View attachment 137785


The Confessions of St Augustine may be described as 'sacred texts', but Augustine's life IMO doesn't deserve the epithet 'sacred'. At a certain moment in his life he dumped his slave concubine wife and slave son (Abraham did recognize Ismael, the son he begot from Hagar, as a legitimate son, but Augustine did disown the only son he had got), and just showed himself to be as pagan and opportunistic as his fellow Romans.


----------



## starthrower

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins 

I'm really enjoying this one. I'm learning a lot and the writing is very good.


----------



## Kieran

Just finished the third book of Hilary Mantel's exceptional Wolf Hall trilogy, and it gripped me throughout. Her detail and eye for character is on a high level throughout. The three books weigh in at more than 2000 pages, but they never once flagged. She has created an extraordinary figure in her depiction of Thomas Cromwell, but every other character comes alive in vivid ways too.

She won the Booker Prize for the first two - this one is the best of the three. It would be something if she got the nod again...


----------



## sstucky

Just finished Volume X of the old Cambridge Ancient History (1934) and started on XI (1936). Only one to go after that: XII (1939) takes it up to Constantine. Also the Andrew Roberts Churchill biography, and Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile, also on WSC in WWII.


----------



## Sonata

Currently re-reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I plan to get through the whole series this time. I read it five or six years ago, but only the first book. When I am done with that I intend to read Les Miserables.


----------



## Tristan

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Franz Kafka - The Trial. I think this may be one of the most perfect books ever written. And one of the funniest. One thing I've noticed as I make my way through the "Western canon" of literature is that scholarly criticism utterly ignores the humorous comic elements that make them appealing to the average reader. I mean, _Madame Bovary_ and _Moby-Dick_ made me guffaw almost constantly.


"The Trial" is one of my favorites and this post makes me want to re-read it (I do remember finding it humorous in its absurdity).


----------



## Flamme

U should try more from him brah...The trial is only a small segment of everything hes done...If u can find his Diary...That will make yaour head spin and tell u more what kind of person he was!!!


----------



## Kieran

Reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, almost finished, then will segue into The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which comes recommended by a pal..


----------



## Rogerx

Just arrived.


----------



## That Guy Mick

The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

Do "In God We Trust," the Declaration of Independence, and other historical "evidence" prove that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Are the Ten Commandments the basis for American law? A constitutional attorney dives into the debate about religion's role in America's founding.


----------



## SixFootScowl

A timely topic given this year's plandemic.


----------



## TxllxT

*Dead Souls - Nicolai Vailievich Gogol*










After Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov' we turned to another Russian classic: Dead Souls by Gogol. From Dostoevsky it is known that his novels seem to contain Nostradamus-like prophecies, foreseeing the rise of communism/anarchism for example (specifically in the novel 'The Demons'). But also Nicolai Gogol's satiric 'Dead Souls' is so often referring to 'epidemics', 'black death' and so on, that our ears turned suspiciously red: Did Gogol foresee Covid-19? At least his satiric criticism of the pre-1861 Serf (Russian version of slavery) owning society is well aware of the ruptures that are caused by epidemics. Gogol's rendering of dialogue is very true to life, brimming with absurdist humor and pettiness, just as if it is happening in our days. Surprisingly Gogol doesn't ever refer to Biblical knowledge, faith or church, while in real he was said to be a mystic.

Gogol as Corona Nostradamus: "In particular did the Director of the Medical Department turn pale at the thought that possibly the new Governor-General would surmise the term "dead folk" to connote patients in the local hospitals who, for want of proper preventative measures, had died of sporadic fever. Indeed, might it not be that Chichikov was neither more nor less than an emissary of the said Governor-General, sent to conduct a secret inquiry? Accordingly he (the Director of the Medical Department) communicated this last supposition to the President of the Council, who, though at first inclined to ejaculate "Rubbish!" suddenly turned pale on propounding to himself the theory. "What if the souls purchased by Chichikov should REALLY be dead ones?"-a terrible thought considering that he, the President, had permitted their transferment to be registered, and had himself acted as Plushkin's representative! What if these things should reach the Governor-General's ears? He mentioned the matter to one friend and another, and they, in their turn, went white to the lips, for panic spreads faster and is even more destructive, than the dreaded black death."


----------



## Bwv 1080

SixFootScowl said:


> A timely topic given this year's plandemic.


You are reading ******** from an HIV denialist?


----------



## Bwv 1080

Just started History of Henry Edmunds Esq. by William Thackeray


----------



## flamencosketches

I started Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks earlier in the week and I can't put it down. So far, so good. Mann was a brilliant writer and this is thus far, probably, the easiest read of his yet, much less opaque than the likes of Doctor Faustus (which I'm about halfway through and likely will not finish anytime soon) and even less so than Death in Venice (which I really enjoyed). It's been years since I've finished a novel of this breadth, so we'll see if I make it this time, but so far, I'm pretty well on track. 

Feels great to be getting back into reading fiction, which is something I can't say I've done with any regularity since early in college or so.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Dickens feels like a good bet for these troubled times, so I decided to tackle _Bleak House_. Certainly some great stuff in it, but parts of it just _drag_ (which I didn't think was a problem in _Great Expectations_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_).



flamencosketches said:


> I started Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks earlier in the week and I can't put it down. So far, so good. Mann was a brilliant writer and this is thus far, probably, the easiest read of his yet, much less opaque than the likes of Doctor Faustus (which I'm about halfway through and likely will not finish anytime soon) and even less so than Death in Venice (which I really enjoyed). It's been years since I've finished a novel of this breadth, so we'll see if I make it this time, but so far, I'm pretty well on track.


I've been wanting to get into Mann for quite some time now; I've heard so many great things about _The Magic Mountain_ but for some reason can't seem to find a copy at a decent price. Long, dense philosophical novels can be a mixed bag for me but Mann piques my interest.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Bwv 1080 said:


> You are reading ******** from an HIV denialist?


The author makes a good case that HIV has never been proved to be a virus, and that the symptoms can be explained by other factors such as drug abuse. Use of a loaded term like "denialist" is demeaning, like saying the author is a idiot and there is nothing to debate, but have you read his book? If so, have you looked up the voluminous citations given to support his position?


----------



## Bwv 1080

SixFootScowl said:


> The author makes a good case that HIV has never been proved to be a virus, and that the symptoms can be explained by other factors such as drug abuse. Use of a loaded term like "denialist" is demeaning, like saying the author is a idiot and there is nothing to debate, but have you read his book? If so, have you looked up the voluminous citations given to support his position?


...this is established science -and you promote some quack here then go on to call the current COVID-19 disaster a 'plandemic'? ...These quacks are the worst sort of scum ...


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> ...this is established science -and you promote some quack here then go on to call the current COVID-19 disaster a 'plandemic'? ...These quacks are the worst sort of scum ...


...and you should ask yourself why you can't recognize that you are reading a book written by an imbecile, or worse?


----------



## flamencosketches

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Dickens feels like a good bet for these troubled times, so I decided to tackle _Bleak House_. Certainly some great stuff in it, but parts of it just _drag_ (which I didn't think was a problem in _Great Expectations_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_).
> 
> I've been wanting to get into Mann for quite some time now; I've heard so many great things about _The Magic Mountain_ but for some reason can't seem to find a copy at a decent price. Long, dense philosophical novels can be a mixed bag for me but Mann piques my interest.


Get Death in Venice with other short stories (I would highly recommend David Luke's translation, which also includes Tonio Kröger, which I really enjoyed). I am sure you'll find a cheap copy more readily than the Magic Mountain, and it is a brilliant, short read that will help you get into his style more readily than one of the lengthy tomes. I've totally fallen in love with his style on account of the short fiction, and now that I have, it turns out Buddenbrooks (a much longer book) is a real page turner. You will find some parallels with our times in Death in Venice (about an epidemic, among other things) which I guess is a plus.


----------



## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> ...and you should ask yourself why you can't recognize that you are reading a book written by an imbecile, or worse?


I should perhaps be more temperate, but I know people who research HIV, the novel Corona virus, etc, people who have dedicated their lives to advancing knowledge and helping people overcome illness. It is galling to see them painted as criminals by people profit from the dissemination of idiotic and mean spirited conspiracy theories which are not only useless, but cause great harm.


----------



## Sonata

I am working through the entire collection of Terry Pratchett Discworld novels (and several of his other books besides). I have read about thirteen of the forty.....or maybe it's fourteen. Not reading them in any particular order, just whatever strikes me at the time. I am currently reading *Making Money*

Also reading Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series, currently on book #2, *Well of Ascension*


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Rogerx said:


> Just arrived.


I bought it as well, but for Kindle, so it got to me instantaneously.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

SixFootScowl said:


> The author makes a good case that HIV has never been proved to be a virus, and that the symptoms can be explained by other factors such as drug abuse. Use of a loaded term like "denialist" is demeaning, like saying the author is a idiot and there is nothing to debate, but have you read his book? If so, have you looked up the voluminous citations given to support his position?


Umm, back when I was an undergraduate and thought I would go into science, I worked in a lab that studied HIV. We had vials of the stuff. We could infect cells with it. It fits every test that Koch established in his germ theory of disease. I don't really think there is any credible evidence that HIV is not a virus. They have sequenced it. You can see electron microscopic images of the viral particles. At this point, saying it is not a virus (or I'm guessing you mean that AIDS is not caused by HIV - the name of the virus) is kind of like saying water is not wet. I really don't know how you could prove any further that it is. Sure - there are other things that can cause immunodeficiencies and make you more prone to opportunistic infections - just because that is true does not exclude the fact that there is a very specific virus that causes a very specific immunodeficiency that we call AIDS.


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## Guest

"*Life at the Bottom*", Theodore Dalrymple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Dickens feels like a good bet for these troubled times, so I decided to tackle _Bleak House_. Certainly some great stuff in it, but parts of it just _drag_ (which I didn't think was a problem in _Great Expectations_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_).


I love A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. I also really enjoyed David Copperfield. I have tried to tackle Bleak House many times - I've heard it rewards readers greatly - but it is a tough one to start. One of these days I'll really buckle down and read it all.


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## perempe

Started Dan Brown's Origin a week ago after finishing The Lost Symbol. The final third of The Lost Symbol was only average. I red The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons years ago.


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## flamencosketches

Re: Dickens, I've only read Oliver Twist, as a child, but I did really enjoy it. My brother once got me a copy of Little Dorrit for Christmas but I never did finish it and now it's missing. The only Dickens on my shelf today is Hard Times, which I have yet to even start, but suspect I will get around to it later in the year. What are some of the other good Dickenses worth reading? Preferably something with a good content-to-filler ratio (not necessarily on the shorter side).


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

flamencosketches said:


> Re: Dickens, I've only read Oliver Twist, as a child, but I did really enjoy it. My brother once got me a copy of Little Dorrit for Christmas but I never did finish it and now it's missing. The only Dickens on my shelf today is Hard Times, which I have yet to even start, but suspect I will get around to it later in the year. What are some of the other good Dickenses worth reading? Preferably something with a good content-to-filler ratio (not necessarily on the shorter side).


A Tale of Two Cities is wonderful, and very little filler. The same for Great Expectations.


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## Allegro Con Brio

^Yup, exactly what I'd recommend. I got hooked when I read _Tale of Two Cities_ in high school; it's an incredibly dramatic thriller and such a well-structured novel. To this day it's definitely in my top 10 favorite books of all time. _Great Expectations_ might be a little more slow-moving, but it is thematically rich and might be his most mature novel.


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## Guest

Rogerx said:


> Just arrived.


I have some curiosity about what's in that book, and I don't doubt the accuracy of it, but I don't like the idea of putting money into the pocket of that weasel. If he was witnessing such serious and numerous crimes and outrages why did he do nothing about it and refuse the request to publicly testify. He was an opportunist who thought he could use the chaos of the Trump administration to accomplish his personal policy objectives, and failed. And he wouldn't testify because he didn't want to spoil demand for his book.


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## jegreenwood

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Dickens feels like a good bet for these troubled times, so I decided to tackle _Bleak House_. Certainly some great stuff in it, but parts of it just _drag_ (which I didn't think was a problem in _Great Expectations_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_).


Funny, "Bleak House" is the only Dickens novel I've read twice, and I've read most of them.



Allegro Con Brio said:


> I've been wanting to get into Mann for quite some time now; I've heard so many great things about _The Magic Mountain_ but for some reason can't seem to find a copy at a decent price. Long, dense philosophical novels can be a mixed bag for me but Mann piques my interest.


My biggest problem with Mann - and I've read "Buddenbrooks," "The Magic Mountain," "Doctor Faustus," and some shorter fiction - was (I suspect) the translation. All were translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter, and the language felt very forced. Maybe this is true in the original, but my guess is no. Are newer translations available?

Of the big books, I think "Buddenbrooks" is the place to start. Unless you love Schoenberg.


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## Flamme

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Umm, back when I was an undergraduate and thought I would go into science, I worked in a lab that studied HIV. We had vials of the stuff. We could infect cells with it. It fits every test that Koch established in his germ theory of disease. I don't really think there is any credible evidence that HIV is not a virus. They have sequenced it. You can see electron microscopic images of the viral particles. At this point, saying it is not a virus (or I'm guessing you mean that AIDS is not caused by HIV - the name of the virus) is kind of like saying water is not wet. I really don't know how you could prove any further that it is. Sure - there are other things that can cause immunodeficiencies and make you more prone to opportunistic infections - just because that is true does not exclude the fact that there is a very specific virus that causes a very specific immunodeficiency that we call AIDS.


Umm I dont have the exact scientific data but I can say with certainty that 1 of my family members who, unlike me, was a very promiscuous man caught it from a woman he slept with...He was one of those guys who worked in police, a detective, regularly exercised and worked out in times when it wasnt a common practice and when he suddenly died we were told it was a cancer but later found out the truth...He was basically a a good and honest, worldly, with style, man and then I started to think about gods ''choices'' when he picks ppl who die young...He was only 43 when he died...My life would look so much different if he stayed alive and probably lives of my mother, father and sister...I cant ''love'' a god who takes good and hard working ppl and leaves well, we all see who


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## flamencosketches

jegreenwood said:


> Funny, "Bleak House" is the only Dickens novel I've read twice, and I've read most of them.
> 
> My biggest problem with Mann - and I've read "Buddenbrooks," "The Magic Mountain," "Doctor Faustus," and some shorter fiction - was (I suspect) the translation. All were translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter, and the language felt very forced. Maybe this is true in the original, but my guess is no. Are newer translations available?
> 
> Of the big books, I think "Buddenbrooks" is the place to start. Unless you love Schoenberg.


Buddenbrooks is absolutely phenomenal so far, I can't put it down. There are so many scenes where I'm just awestruck at the pure humanity of it all. It's often absolutely hilarious (in a totally understated, dry way) & crushingly sad simultaneously. I am invested in almost every character, something that, I find, rarely happens in big family-saga books like this. It's a much easier read than Faustus, if I haven't mentioned that already-coming from a Schoenberg fan 

As for the translation, it seems John E. Woods, the one I'm reading, seems to have done an excellent job, done in the 1990s I believe. The language is vibrant and alive. But still, man, I wish I could read German for this. Re: Lowe-Porter, I've heard nothing but bad things about her work w/ Mann, it seems most other translators think very poorly of her execution.

I'm certain I'll read The Magic Mountain before too much time transpires. I'm hooked...

Thanks for the Dickens recs, everyone. Looks like Great Expectations will likely be the place to start, which I may have known already


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

Flamme said:


> Umm I dont have the exact scientific data but I can say with certainty that 1 of my family members who, unlike me, was a very promiscuous man caught it from a woman he slept with...He was one of those guys who worked in police, a detective, regularly exercised and worked out in times when it wasnt a common practice and when he suddenly died we were told it was a cancer but later found out the truth...He was basically a a good and honest, worldly, with style, man and then I started to think about gods ''choices'' when he picks ppl who die young...He was only 43 when he died...My life would look so much different if he stayed alive and probably lives of my mother, father and sister...I cant ''love'' a god who takes good and hard working ppl and leaves well, we all see who


What? I'm not sure how that relates to what I typed.


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## danj

One of the most bewildering falls of graces of this precious billionaire princess and her startup. Very enjoyable thus far.


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## Oldhoosierdude

A short read


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## jegreenwood

flamencosketches said:


> Re: Dickens, I've only read Oliver Twist, as a child, but I did really enjoy it. My brother once got me a copy of Little Dorrit for Christmas but I never did finish it and now it's missing. The only Dickens on my shelf today is Hard Times, which I have yet to even start, but suspect I will get around to it later in the year. What are some of the other good Dickenses worth reading? Preferably something with a good content-to-filler ratio (not necessarily on the shorter side).


Dickens' work evolved over time. While his criticism of England's lack of social justice (maybe there's a better term) can be found in all his books (not sure about "The Pickwick Papers" as I never read it), it grows darker in the later works. The comedy grows darker. Also the earlier books have more melodramatic plots. Of the early works, my favorite is "Nicholas Nickleby." I'm sure I'm influenced by the 8 1/2 hour stage adaptation by the Royal Shakespeare Company I saw in the early 80's. "David Copperfield" is another high point from about midway in his career. Lots of great comedy, but with a more serious tone overall - it's his most autobiographical. "Bleak House" was the next novel, but it marks the beginning of his final period - it is much darker than the earlier works. I think it is better than "Little Dorritt" and "Our Mutual Friend," which cam after. The other late book I liked was "Great Expectations." As for "A Tale of Two Cities" - I read it in high school and need to read it again; I never read "Hard Times," even though it was assigned in college.


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## Allegro Con Brio

The spontaneous combustion scene in _Bleak House_ is one of the most chilling, yet darkly humorous things I've read lately. There are parts where his narrative mastery effortlessly carries the novel along, but there's such an overwhelming gallery of characters (even more than in _War and Peace_, it seems, and yes, I read that whole thing - it's essential for humanity) that I start to get frustrated in the long chapters that don't seem to have anything to do with the main plot lines. Remember that Dickens wrote a lot of these long tomes as serial novels, with a chapter or two being released every week in a periodical, and if he had the chance to revise everything as a whole, things might have turned out a bit differently and maybe more concise.


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## jegreenwood

flamencosketches said:


> Buddenbrooks is absolutely phenomenal so far, I can't put it down. There are so many scenes where I'm just awestruck at the pure humanity of it all. It's often absolutely hilarious (in a totally understated, dry way) & crushingly sad simultaneously. I am invested in almost every character, something that, I find, rarely happens in big family-saga books like this. It's a much easier read than Faustus, if I haven't mentioned that already-coming from a Schoenberg fan
> 
> As for the translation, it seems John E. Woods, the one I'm reading, seems to have done an excellent job, done in the 1990s I believe. The language is vibrant and alive. But still, man, I wish I could read German for this. Re: Lowe-Porter, I've heard nothing but bad things about her work w/ Mann, it seems most other translators think very poorly of her execution.
> 
> I'm certain I'll read The Magic Mountain before too much time transpires. I'm hooked...
> 
> Thanks for the Dickens recs, everyone. Looks like Great Expectations will likely be the place to start, which I may have known already


Alas, when I read them, Lowe-Porter was the only translation available (to my knowledge).

More details:

http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/books/Buddenbrooks-translations.html


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## flamencosketches

jegreenwood said:


> Alas, when I read them, Lowe-Porter was the only translation available (to my knowledge).
> 
> More details:
> 
> http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/books/Buddenbrooks-translations.html


This article brings up a point that's relevant to where I'm at in the story: the character of Alois Permaneder, who talks like a caricature of a country bumpkin from the American south, was just introduced. Knowing nothing of the realities of the Bavarian dialect of the German language, I nonetheless found this dialog very odd. He comes off as a cartoon character, and I'm unsure how I'm expected to take this seriously.

This oddity notwithstanding, I've noticed no problems with his work. There are many masterful, organic passages that come off so well in English, I can only imagine how poignant they must have been in the original German.


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## senza sordino

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Dickens feels like a good bet for these troubled times, so I decided to tackle _Bleak House_. Certainly some great stuff in it, but parts of it just _drag_ (which I didn't think was a problem in _Great Expectations_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_).


I read Bleak House more than thirty years ago, I can't remember anything about it. I read Olivier Twist in high school. We were to choose a novel to read - my teacher was impressed I chose this. I chose it because I loved the musical, only to find out there is a lot more story in the book. I read Great Expectations many years ago. I read David Copperfield seven years ago. This has to be my favorite of all Dickens' books I've read and the one I would reread.

Thread duty:

I am slowly making my way through Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I'm finding it to be a challenging and slow read. It's not boring, though. It's dense, and full of characters. And the narration plays with time. I have found that it takes my full concentration, awake in the morning reading. As opposed to how I usually read - at bedtime as I drift away...


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## TxllxT

flamencosketches said:


> Buddenbrooks is absolutely phenomenal so far, I can't put it down. There are so many scenes where I'm just awestruck at the pure humanity of it all. It's often absolutely hilarious (in a totally understated, dry way) & crushingly sad simultaneously. I am invested in almost every character, something that, I find, rarely happens in big family-saga books like this. It's a much easier read than Faustus, if I haven't mentioned that already-coming from a Schoenberg fan
> 
> As for the translation, it seems John E. Woods, the one I'm reading, seems to have done an excellent job, done in the 1990s I believe. The language is vibrant and alive. But still, man, I wish I could read German for this. Re: Lowe-Porter, I've heard nothing but bad things about her work w/ Mann, it seems most other translators think very poorly of her execution.
> 
> I'm certain I'll read The Magic Mountain before too much time transpires. I'm hooked...
> 
> Thanks for the Dickens recs, everyone. Looks like Great Expectations will likely be the place to start, which I may have known already


Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks is based on a family chronicle, while The Magic Mountain and so on are purely fictitious. We liked Buddenbrooks the best, because there the 'Leitmotiv' (Mann took that over from Richard Wagner) is not so overly present. At a certain point we really got fed up with the slamming of the dinner room door by the 'Kirghisian eyed' woman, because of the insensitive following of the wagnerian Leitmotiv religion in the narrative. In Buddenbrooks there is the confessional 'I'm just an uneducated silly goose' from the main female character often repeated (showing already the Leitmotiv texture in Thomas Mann's storytelling), but we kept smiling and feeling pity with her ordeal.


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## Flamme

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> What? I'm not sure how that relates to what I typed.


That. Im saying I think its a Virus. But how it came 2 be is another issue. Clearer now?


----------



## Kieran

"Contested Will", by James Shapiro - the battle for Shakespeare's very soul: who wrote the plays? So far, I know what team I'm on...


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## Red Terror

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I have read the introduction so far. Plan to get into it this weekend.
> View attachment 135034


Ooh, he's a bad monk, isn't he?


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## Red Terror

TxllxT said:


> The Confessions of St Augustine may be described as 'sacred texts', but Augustine's life IMO doesn't deserve the epithet 'sacred'. At a certain moment in his life he dumped his slave concubine wife and slave son (Abraham did recognize Ismael, the son he begot from Hagar, as a legitimate son, but Augustine did disown the only son he had got), and just showed himself to be as pagan and opportunistic as his fellow Romans.


What sacred texts? The only sacred texts in Christianity are the Gospels.

FYI: Apart from Christ, you'll be hard-pressed to find an apostle or martyr who wasn't himself a sinner.

God always choses the worst people for the job.


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## Guest

Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner










This is the edition I own, a hardcover trade edition from about 50 years ago, reproduced photographically from the original 1936 Edition. (I have a more recent "corrected" version but I like the feel of this one.)

I'm a great admirer of Faulkner and I feel this is his best book. I read it years ago and decided I would re-read it someday when I would have have to savor it. I have realized that day will never come. It doesn't disappoint, even high expectations.

The basic story is centered on Thomas Sutpen, born poor in the West Virginia, descends to Virginia proper as a boy when his family falls on hard times. Sutpen decides to become rich, goes to the West Indies, some time later arrived in Mississippi with a group of slaves, establishes a large plantation and marries a respectable girl from town. He has two children, Judith and Henry. The main action occurs immediately before and after the Civil War. Henry's college friend Bon becomes engaged to Judith, Henry and Bon join a regiment organized at their college. When they return, defeated, Bon is the finally to marry Judith. Henry kills Bon at the gate of the plantation house and disappears. Shortly later, Sutpen himself is killed by an itinerate man who lives in an abandoned fishing camp on the grounds of the plantation.

The other focus of the story is Quentin Compson, who in 1910 is summoned to the house of Miss Rosa, Thomas Sutpen's sister-in-law, a bitter old woman who feels compelled to tell him her side of the story. He returns home and his father tells him other accounts of the story, much of which comes from Quentin's grandfather, a lawyer in town, and Miss Rosa's father, one of Sutpen's only friends. Later Quentin returns to college at Harvard, receives a letter from his father with news of Miss Rosa's death and discusses the story at length with his roommate Shreve, who is from Edmonton, Alberta Canada. The book consists of relentless telling and retelling of the same story from different points of view, each time with addition and often contradictory details. The readers task is the reconstruct events and motivations from the myriad contradictory narratives.

It is one of the great novel in any language.


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## Guest

senza sordino said:


> Thread duty:
> 
> I am slowly making my way through Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I'm finding it to be a challenging and slow read. It's not boring, though. It's dense, and full of characters. And the narration plays with time. I have found that it takes my full concentration, awake in the morning reading. As opposed to how I usually read - at bedtime as I drift away...


I find Rushdie an uneven writer and Midnight's Children, with it's magical element, is probably my least favorite. I think my favorite books by Rushdie are _The Moor's Last Sigh_ and _Shalimar the Clown_.


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## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> A Tale of Two Cities is wonderful, and very little filler. The same for Great Expectations.


"Great Expectations" is a perennial favourite. I haven't read "A Tale of Two Cities". Some of the lines in GE are absolutely hilarious and side-splitting. As time wore on Dickens became dour and depressing and his prose increasingly dense and impenetrable. All the more mysterious, then, that he should abruptly punctuate that aesthetic with the ever-agreeable and immediately accessible "Great Expectations".

"Dombey and Son". That's a wonderful novel too. You don't hear it discussed very much but it's a poignant tale which belies the title. I'm breaking off reading a political book to go and find one magnificently rendered passage from "Dombey and Son": be so good as to wait until I return with it!! (Shades of Mozart's letters!)

It's an excellent example of Dickens' lyrical and poetic prose, with cadential falls: Dickens had the composer's ear and the cinematographer's eye! These miraculous lines occur on the first page of the novel, when Dombey first finds out that he's going to be a father:

"The house will once again, Mrs. Dombey", said Mr. Dombey, "be not only in name but in fact Dombey and Son; Dom-bey and Son!". The words had such a softening influence that he appended a term of endearment to Mrs. Dombey's name (though not without some hesitation, as being a man but little used to that form of address): and said, "Mrs. Dombey, my-my dear..................And again he said "Dom-bey and Son" in exactly the same tone as before.

Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in the orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre. Common abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to them. AD had no concern with 'anno Domini', but stood for 'anno Dombie - and Son".

"


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## Guest

_The Plague _(Albert Camus)

A must read for anyone who wants to philosophise about the human condition, especially during a pandemic.

It's interesting to compare the two translations I've got: one in the Penguin paperback I bought back in 1978ish; the other, a Kindle download from Penguin from 2002. You wouldn't think that French could be reinterpreted so differently.


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## flamencosketches

MacLeod said:


> _The Plague _(Albert Camus)
> 
> A must read for anyone who wants to philosophise about the human condition, especially during a pandemic.
> 
> It's interesting to compare the two translations I've got: one in the Penguin paperback I bought back in 1978ish; the other, a Kindle download from Penguin from 2002. You wouldn't think that French could be reinterpreted so differently.


That was a devastating read for me. Then again, I read it when I was about 15. Maybe I could stomach it a little better now. :lol:

I have been slowly working through Camus's L'Étranger in French. His language is quite accessible to me, a non-native speaker.

As for Buddenbrooks, I'm burning through it. I think I'm coming up on page 600 and I started one week ago. Can't remember the last time I've read such a lengthy novel so quickly. Anyway, it's absolutely phenomenal. One of the greatest novels I've ever read, surely.


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## Allegro Con Brio

Baron Scarpia said:


> Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner


This is certainly a masterpiece, but it's one of the few books that I had to give up on for the time being after the first 70 pages or so. The extremely long sentence structures, linguistic wizardry, and odd plot structure made the reading experience a chore for me. Yet Faulkner achieves a sort of magical, haunting dream-like atmosphere through this style of narrative. I will have to revisit it after a while. I do know and love _The Sound and the Fury_, which I didn't think was nearly as difficult as everyone says it is.


----------



## Guest

Allegro Con Brio said:


> This is certainly a masterpiece, but it's one of the few books that I had to give up on for the time being after the first 70 pages or so. The extremely long sentence structures, linguistic wizardry, and odd plot structure made the reading experience a chore for me. Yet Faulkner achieves a sort of magical, haunting dream-like atmosphere through this style of narrative. I will have to revisit it after a while. I do know and love _The Sound and the Fury_, which I didn't think was nearly as difficult as everyone says it is.


There are the passages with extremely long, complex sentences which are like poems in themselves. I think this is what is described as "stream of consciousness" writing. It is necessary to accept that this is not "prose" as it is normally defined. I have learned to take a breath, so to speak, slow down and try to grasp the music of it. It is not like a long Henry James sentence, which can ultimately be mapped out and understood as an extremely extended but proper sentence. I've concluded that sometimes the person talking genuinely looses the thread of his or her thought mid sentence and that is the point. Most of that stuff is in the first half of the book when Miss Rosa or Quentin's father is the effective narrator. The second half of the book, taking place between Quentin and Shreve at Harvard, contains more transparent narrative structure.


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## flamencosketches

I never got into Faulkner. I've tried Sound & the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August and can't say any of them really clicked with me. What am I doing wrong?


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## Guest

flamencosketches said:


> I never got into Faulkner. I've tried Sound & the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August and can't say any of them really clicked with me. What am I doing wrong?


Nothing wrong. You've read a selection of his highly regarded works. Maybe it's just not your thing, or maybe you'll develop a taste for it later.


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## Bwv 1080

Faulkner's no doubt a great writer, but who wants to spend that much time in Mississippi?


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## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Faulkner's no doubt a great writer, but who wants to spend that much time in Mississippi?


Half of Absalom, Absalom is two guy's sitting in a room in Massachusetts (talking about Mississippi). Just saying.


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## flamencosketches

It's all the worse being that I was born and raised and still live in the south and am deeply fascinated by southern culture. I'm going to give his work another chance soon being that it's been a few years since I've tried anything. Maybe I'll try Absalom. I've just heard that Faulkner was deeply influenced by Thomas Mann and Buddenbrooks in particular, and with how much I loved and how much I got out of that book, maybe something will "click" with me in Faulkner this time.

Speaking of Buddenbrooks, the ending was devastating. *Spoiler alert*; sorry but I have to talk about it-I'll avoid using names. Somehow, of all the many deaths of beloved characters in the story, the last one hit harder than ever. I think what it was is that the author spent some 50 pages putting the reader directly in the character's mind, and then the next chapter is a very brief, _very_ detached account of his final illness, and before you know it 6 months have passed since his death. I found it really crushing. All in all, wow, what an extraordinarily beautiful story-definitely one of the greatest novels I've ever read. I burned through it, too-731 pages in just over a week.


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## flamencosketches

I'm trying to decide what to read next; I'm definitely sticking with my fiction kick for now. I ordered _The Magic Mountain_ but I think I want to take a break from Mann and read something else in the meantime...

I want to read something by Haruki Murakami. I read his book that consists of conversations with Seiji Ozawa last year and found it quite charming, and now I want to read some of his prose. Is there a book that is considered the best place to start?


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

flamencosketches said:


> I'm trying to decide what to read next; I'm definitely sticking with my fiction kick for now. I ordered _The Magic Mountain_ but I think I want to take a break from Mann and read something else in the meantime...
> 
> I want to read something by Haruki Murakami. I read his book that consists of conversations with Seiji Ozawa last year and found it quite charming, and now I want to read some of his prose. Is there a book that is considered the best place to start?


I would be interested in this also.


----------



## jegreenwood

flamencosketches said:


> I'm trying to decide what to read next; I'm definitely sticking with my fiction kick for now. I ordered _The Magic Mountain_ but I think I want to take a break from Mann and read something else in the meantime...
> 
> I want to read something by Haruki Murakami. I read his book that consists of conversations with Seiji Ozawa last year and found it quite charming, and now I want to read some of his prose. Is there a book that is considered the best place to start?


Faulkner - I read "Go Down Moses" earlier this year. A novel made up of seven interconnected stories (so you actually feel like you 're finishing something when you reach page 30  ). The centerpiece is "The Bear," (a novella really) which (IMHO) ranks with his best work. The book, overall, is not as difficult as some of his more famous novels. The trick is to print out one of the online family trees of the McCaslin family and keep it by your side.

I've liked the three novels I've read by Murakami: "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle," "Kafka on the Shore," and "1Q84." I would not start with the last, which is quite long, until you've decided Murakami is for you.

Edit - neither of the other Murakamis is short, but "1Q84" is over 900 pages. He has written shorter works, but my sense is that the first two are the most highly regarded overall.


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## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> Faulkner - I read "Go Down Moses" earlier this year. A novel made up of seven interconnected stories (so you actually feel like you 're finishing something when you reach page 30  ). The centerpiece is "The Bear," (a novella really) which (IMHO) ranks with his best work. The book, overall, is not as difficult as some of his more famous novels. The trick is to print out one of the online family trees of the McCaslin family and keep it by your side.


I remember _The Bear_ as being completely unintelligible when I read _Go Down Moses_ decades ago. Time for a revisit.

It was critical to have the genealogy at the end of Absalom, Absalom to refer to, and I routinely keep character lists when reading any Faulkner. Do you have a link to a good McCaslin genealogy?


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## Guest

flamencosketches said:


> It's all the worse being that I was born and raised and still live in the south and am deeply fascinated by southern culture. I'm going to give his work another chance soon being that it's been a few years since I've tried anything. Maybe I'll try Absalom. I've just heard that Faulkner was deeply influenced by Thomas Mann and Buddenbrooks in particular, and with how much I loved and how much I got out of that book, maybe something will "click" with me in Faulkner this time.


Oddly, I'm not particularly fascinated by (U.S.) Southern culture. I think what attracts me to Faulkner is the intensity of the characters and the fact that the "unimportant" characters are so vivid. Well, and his use of language (when I can understand it).


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## SanAntone

I usually read several books at the same time, reading a chapter from each and cycle through them - right now, and for the last month I've been reading these:

Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford (Jones, Loyal)
Duke Ellington's America (Cohen, Harvey G.)
Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)
Southern Music/American Music (Bill Malone)
Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (Goff Jr., James R.)
Lonesome Melodies: The Lives and Music of the Stanley Brothers (Johnson, David W.)
Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians (Guralnick, Peter)

I am a huge *Faulkner* fan and have read all his books, most more than once. But I haven't read any this year; no doubt I will.


----------



## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> I remember _The Bear_ as being completely unintelligible when I read _Go Down Moses_ decades ago. Time for a revisit.
> 
> It was critical to have the genealogy at the end of Absalom, Absalom to refer to, and I routinely keep character lists when reading any Faulkner. Do you have a link to a good McCaslin genealogy?


I used this.

It's worth noting that I read all of "Go Down Moses." There are some references in "The Bear" to people and events in earlier stories/chapters,


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## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> I used this.
> 
> It's worth noting that I read all of "Go Down Moses." There are some references in "The Bear" to people and events in earlier stories/chapters,


Thanks, I'll make a note of it. It has been decades, but I do remember reading The Bear in the context of Go Down Moses. Time for a revisit of that book, I think.


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## flamencosketches

Please, someone inform me if I'm breaking any rules by asking this. But are there any good forums similar to this one but with a focus on literary fiction rather than classical music? I might like to explore one in light of my reignited love for reading fiction.


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## Allegro Con Brio

flamencosketches said:


> Please, someone inform me if I'm breaking any rules by asking this. But are there any good forums similar to this one but with a focus on literary fiction rather than classical music? I might like to explore one in light of my reignited love for reading fiction.


I've wondered the same thing, and have tried searching the web, but there doesn't seem to be much out there in that regard. The only one I've come across with a literature focus is this one which appears to be pretty close to a dead forum. (mods, please feel free to take down the link if it violates any rules, but I believe we're only prohibited from linking to competitive forums, and this obviously is not a direct competitor to TC).


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## Guest

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/forum.php?


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## flamencosketches

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I've wondered the same thing, and have tried searching the web, but there doesn't seem to be much out there in that regard. The only one I've come across with a literature focus is this one which appears to be pretty close to a dead forum. (mods, please feel free to take down the link if it violates any rules, but I believe we're only prohibited from linking to competitive forums, and this obviously is not a direct competitor to TC).


Hmm, figures. Literature is such a manifold curiosity that it seems that one general-purpose forum would hardly be sufficient for such a wide variety of discussion topics. Perhaps the world is better off without a literature-specific forum. :lol:


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## Oldhoosierdude

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I've wondered the same thing, and have tried searching the web, but there doesn't seem to be much out there in that regard. The only one I've come across with a literature focus is this one which appears to be pretty close to a dead forum. (mods, please feel free to take down the link if it violates any rules, but I believe we're only prohibited from linking to competitive forums, and this obviously is not a direct competitor to TC).


Sure there is. Goodreads has quite a number of discussion groups for about any tyoe, style, genre of literature. Wish I had more time to participate.


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## flamencosketches

Oldhoosierdude said:


> Sure there is. Goodreads has quite a number of discussion groups for about any tyoe, style, genre of literature. Wish I had more time to participate.


Good reads is more of a social media type of site than a forum though. I've tried to get into it but I find it's not really my style.


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## Allegro Con Brio

I use Goodreads to rate and review books, but don’t use it for any of the social media features, almost none of which is used for “serious” literature.


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## Allegro Con Brio

On topic of what I'm reading right now: Graham Greene, _Brighton Rock_. Actually finished this yesterday. A short, nailbiting, psychological thriller with theological themes. The other Greene novel I've read, _The Power and the Glory_, absolutely blew me away and this is a very worthy novel as well. Thematically rich, very well-written. The main character is one of the most chilling literary portrayals I've read lately. Highly recommended despite a few flaws.


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## Guest

I have to confess, my reading is largely determined by the $1.99 Kindle deals I find on Amazon. Mostly schlock goes on sale, but if you patrol you will find great works of literature. (There is a site called BookBub which will send you an email if a book on your list of favorite authors goes on sale.) I've got a few Graham Green Books that way.


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## Guest

Allegro Con Brio said:


> On topic of what I'm reading right now: Graham Greene, _Brighton Rock_. Actually finished this yesterday. A short, nailbiting, psychological thriller with theological themes. The other Greene novel I've read, _The Power and the Glory_, absolutely blew me away and this is a very worthy novel as well. Thematically rich, very well-written. The main character is one of the most chilling literary portrayals I've read lately. Highly recommended despite a few flaws.


I only saw the film "Brighton Rock" on TV within the last week, as it happens. Richard Attenborough was the evil central character.


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## Sieglinde

_Taiko_ by Yoshikawa Eiji. I've read his _Musashi_ series as a kid, and I recently learned this one existed (and it was published in my language) so I bought it all. It's 3 rather big volumes, I'd say it's about the length of Les Mis. Fortunately it's a lot more to the point 

It's about the life and times of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and dude's got Speech 100 as well as some seriously brilliant strategy ideas. Plus it paints an epic tableau about the late Sengoku period, which could briefly be summed up as "civil war cluster****". Oda Nobunaga, dramatic bitch extraordinaire with the personality of a baritone, aims to unite Japan. Hideyoshi (a sensible bass if I've ever seen one) is one of his right-hand men. (Tokugawa Iejasu, the third member of this kinda-triumvirate, is more of a supporting character for now - I'm about 2/3 way in.) Unfortunately for Nobunaga, there is a traitor (definitely another baritone, which is never good news) who is about to turn on him...


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## Kieran

Allegro Con Brio said:


> On topic of what I'm reading right now: Graham Greene, _Brighton Rock_. Actually finished this yesterday. A short, nailbiting, psychological thriller with theological themes. The other Greene novel I've read, _The Power and the Glory_, absolutely blew me away and this is a very worthy novel as well. Thematically rich, very well-written. The main character is one of the most chilling literary portrayals I've read lately. Highly recommended despite a few flaws.


You will for sure enjoy The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana and The Honorary Consul, so. Greene is one of the great writers, went on a binge of his stuff last year...


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## flamencosketches

Allegro Con Brio said:


> On topic of what I'm reading right now: Graham Greene, _Brighton Rock_. Actually finished this yesterday. A short, nailbiting, psychological thriller with theological themes. The other Greene novel I've read, _The Power and the Glory_, absolutely blew me away and this is a very worthy novel as well. Thematically rich, very well-written. The main character is one of the most chilling literary portrayals I've read lately. Highly recommended despite a few flaws.


I picked that up at the bookstore yesterday but ultimately put it back. Your enthusiastic recommendation is making me reconsider though. I think it was only about 2 dollars anyway, maybe I'll have to go back for it. I read the Power & the Glory back in high school but it didn't leave much of an impression at the time


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## Allegro Con Brio

flamencosketches said:


> I picked that up at the bookstore yesterday but ultimately put it back. Your enthusiastic recommendation is making me reconsider though. I think it was only about 2 dollars anyway, maybe I'll have to go back for it. I read the Power & the Glory back in high school but it didn't leave much of an impression at the time


I wouldn't say it's an absolute must-read - I think Greene could have done a bit more with the concept and been a little less overtly moralistic - but still a very psychologically compelling read.


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## bz3

Baron Scarpia said:


> I have to confess, my reading is largely determined by the $1.99 Kindle deals I find on Amazon. Mostly schlock goes on sale, but if you patrol you will find great works of literature. (There is a site called BookBub which will send you an email if a book on your list of favorite authors goes on sale.) I've got a few Graham Green Books that way.


There are good places online to retrieve free ereader copies of great literature. If it's in the public domain I see no reason to give Jeff Bezos even more of your money just so you can read something that is free anyway.


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## bz3

SanAntone said:


> I usually read several books at the same time, reading a chapter from each and cycle through them - right now, and for the last month I've been reading these:
> 
> Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford (Jones, Loyal)
> Duke Ellington's America (Cohen, Harvey G.)
> Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)
> Southern Music/American Music (Bill Malone)
> Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (Goff Jr., James R.)
> Lonesome Melodies: The Lives and Music of the Stanley Brothers (Johnson, David W.)
> Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians (Guralnick, Peter)
> 
> I am a huge *Faulkner* fan and have read all his books, most more than once. But I haven't read any this year; no doubt I will.


My nonfiction reading rarely touches on non-classical music but some of those look interesting. Would you recommend the gospel book to someone without much knowledge of the subject?


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## Oldhoosierdude

Several posts back I directed some to Goodreads discussion groups. There are a few thousand. I have participated in a few and simply do not have the time to do much with it.

https://www.goodreads.com/group

Here's a lively one. Catching up on Classics. I participated for a while. It has over 8k members with someone always around to talk to. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/40148-catching-up-on-classics-and-lots-more


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## Oldhoosierdude

While I'm plugging Goodreads, I'll mention the unbelievable amount of lists you can find. Lists like this one have directed me to some great reads (and some stinkers).

Unappreciated books list:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/471.Best_Unappreciated_Books


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## Guest

bz3 said:


> There are good places online to retrieve free ereader copies of great literature. If it's in the public domain I see no reason to give Jeff Bezos even more of your money just so you can read something that is free anyway.


I'm not talking about public domain books and I'm well aware of Project Gutenberg, which I've used frequently. I'm talking about current literature which usually sells for $10 to $12, but which is made available for $1.99 for a short time as part of a promotion. I've picked up books by Margaret Attwood, Jesmyn Ward, Michael Ondaatje, Zadie Smith, Graham Greene, Khaled Husseini, etc.


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## vincula

I'm reading and learning. We usually talk about his famous cousin...









Regards,

Vincula


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## senza sordino

Allegro Con Brio said:


> On topic of what I'm reading right now: Graham Greene, _Brighton Rock_. Actually finished this yesterday. A short, nailbiting, psychological thriller with theological themes. The other Greene novel I've read, _The Power and the Glory_, absolutely blew me away and this is a very worthy novel as well. Thematically rich, very well-written. The main character is one of the most chilling literary portrayals I've read lately. Highly recommended despite a few flaws.





Kieran said:


> You will for sure enjoy The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana and The Honorary Consul, so. Greene is one of the great writers, went on a binge of his stuff last year...


Of books by Graham Greene, I have read _Brighton Rock_, _Our Man in Havana_ and _The Quiet American_. I have enjoyed them all, he's a terrific writer with terrific stories. I will look for more of his books to read in the future.



Allegro Con Brio said:


> I use Goodreads to rate and review books, but don't use it for any of the social media features, almost none of which is used for "serious" literature.


I have only used Goodreads to list what I've read over the years. And I use it to look for other books to read in the future. I haven't used the social media features. I share what I read here, not on Goodreads.

I'm still making my way through Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I can say it is getting easier to read as I get further into the story. On wikipedia there is a list of all the characters in the book. I printed this list, and I keep it with me for reference. I've been reading this book in the morning. I often read in bed at night, as I fall asleep, but I have found this book requires all my powers of concentration. But that's me, your millage may vary.


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## starthrower

I'm reading Bulfinch's Mythology which combines all three of his books into one 800 page volume. I find this stuff pretty fascinating and very helpful in understanding the references in classic literature. But keeping all of these Greek and Roman Gods and their doings straight can be quite a chore.


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## jegreenwood

"Farewell, My Lovely"


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## Oldhoosierdude

Just finished this with my audiobook - physical book hybrid reading. It's a character book. Meaning plot is secondary. Fascinating characters. 








Currently this one. Which I am quite enjoying. 








I listen to the audio when driving for work. Then pick up where I left off with the physical book later.

Both of these are public domain and available from librevox audio for the audio book.

Above average writing but be aware it reflects early 20th century mindsets. The English caste system mentality is there.


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## flamencosketches

I just finished Beckett's Waiting for Godot, for the first time. Definitely one of the oddest things I've ever read. I suppose I need to see it in performance to get all there is to get out of it. I suppose this is a favorite of some here...? It seems to have garnered some extremely lofty praise over the years.


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## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> "Farewell, My Lovely"


What did you think of it?


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## jegreenwood

flamencosketches said:


> I just finished Beckett's Waiting for Godot, for the first time. Definitely one of the oddest things I've ever read. I suppose I need to see it in performance to get all there is to get out of it. I suppose this is a favorite of some here...? It seems to have garnered some extremely lofty praise over the years.


As some critic said, "It's a play where nothing happens - twice." It's the signature play of the so-called Theatre of the Absurd, which started (notwithstanding the Wikipedia statement) in the early 1950s. And most of the critics back then didn't have the slightest idea what it was about.

A lot of the humor was inspired by Laurel and Hardy. And it's not as funny on the page.

I've seen it several times (and read it several times) The most recent production I attended starred Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart. "X-Men" fans attended by the 1000's. 

I couldn't get tickets for a small production from the 1980's starring Robin Williams and Steve Martin and directed by Mike Nichols.

Here's a film (for TV) version featuring members of the original New York production. Zero Mostel substitutes for Bert Lahr.


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## Kieran

jegreenwood said:


> A lot of the humor was inspired by Laurel and Hardy. And it's not as funny on the page.


There could have been a remarkable version of that, with Laurel and Hardy...


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## Guest

Just finished "The Antagonist" by Lynne Coady.

The basic idea is that a man discovers that a college friend has written a novel, when he reads it he recognizes himself in one of the characters. He is angry at what he considers an unfair and dismissive portrayal. The novel is in the form of a series of emails that the man writes to the author, which begin as angry rebukes but eventually coalesce into a retelling of the story that the author got wrong.

A good book.


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## jegreenwood

Kieran said:


> What did you think of it?


Liked it a lot. Chandler's prose style puts almost every other detective writer to shame.


----------



## Roger Knox

I'm in a small church group that is reading and discussing Charles Taylor's _A Secular Age_ (2007). I may have mentioned it before on this thread. Anyway, now we're nearly through this 800-page work by a philosopher of religion, about the decline of religious faith in the West over the past 500 years. We have held to our vows to finish this book anyway! It is complex, maddening at times, very insightful at other times. If you're interested in the topic there are plentiful materials on the internet summarizing the main points, and an abridged version exists under a different title.


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## flamencosketches

I've just started Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Enjoying it so far, but we'll see if I finish it... I'm having a hard time finishing books these past few weeks.


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## Barbebleu

Ian Rankin - Even Dogs In The Wild. An excellent Rebus tale. Number 20 of 22.


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## jegreenwood

Barbebleu said:


> Ian Rankin - Even Dogs In The Wild. An excellent Rebus tale. Number 20 of 22.


Read almost all of the books in the series. Also streamed the TV series, which was disappointing - IIRC they reduced the 300-400 page novels to 60 minutes.


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## Barbebleu

jegreenwood said:


> Read almost all of the books in the series. Also streamed the TV series, which was disappointing - IIRC they reduced the 300-400 page novels to 60 minutes.


When I finish this one I'll only have the latest two to read. Oh, and the Rebus short stories which I only just found out about!


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## Oldhoosierdude

flamencosketches said:


> I've just started Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Enjoying it so far, but we'll see if I finish it... I'm having a hard time finishing books these past few weeks.


I liked this one. Worth finishing.


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## Oldhoosierdude

Try this one. I didn't think I would like it from the description but that description does not do it justice. The book is far more in depth. I don't often laugh when reading but this had a few places where I was LOL out loud. The librivox audiobook is free 
https://librivox.org/the-enchanted-april-by-elizabeth-von-arnim/
And ebook free a number of places, 








I give it 4 out of 5 stars.


----------



## Ich muss Caligari werden

Begun several weeks ago and continuing today after chores. Julien Green, 'the American in Paris,' whose works I've read many of, sometimes twice. None of his _Journaux_, however, for which he is most famous - :tiphat:. This one's new to me; sure would like to see the 1953 film based on it:


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## Guest

A Victorian murder mystery. Very good so far.


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## jegreenwood

Finished "Le Cid" by Corneille - pretty good
Now reading "Andromache" by Racine - so far, excellent. And a wonderful translation (in rhymed couplets) by Richard Wilbur.


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## cwarchc

One of the grandparents of the dystopian novels


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## senza sordino

I finally finished Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I enjoyed about 2/3 to 3/4 of the book. It was a long and difficult read, it took me five weeks. I was reading quite a lot every morning, especially this previous week or so. The novel is divided into three books, and once I got to the end of book 2, I had enough. These books are not evenly divided, so I had about 1/4 of the entire novel left. But I was close to the end and I couldn't give up at that point. 








The book is interesting, and I am not going to dissuade anyone from reading it. But if you do, just be prepared for some work ahead. There are many characters, some have different names, changed names, nicknames, aliases etc. It's written in the first person, but sometimes the narrator refers to himself in the third person.

To finish the book over the past week, I stepped up the reading just to get it over with, but I feel as if I had to put my life on hold to finish. Not the best way to finish a book, I know. I haven't listened to as much music, house chores were put off, and some morning bike rides were put off. Now I am finished I can get on with my life. My next few books will be much simpler. I've also got some magazine articles to catch up with.

I have already started this non fiction book. Close to the Edge How Yes's Masterpiece Defined Prog Rock by Will Romano, a music journalist. Detailed events leading up to the recording of this song. An easy read, but there are some grammatical errors and clunky grammar. Not particularly well written. But if you like Yes, this book is not bad.









My next novel will be Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne. It'll be interesting to read this because during my Master's degree 18 years ago, I wrote an extended essay about the history of Geologic thought and Geology education. I know something about what Geologists knew in the nineteenth century. I know this book is science fiction / fantasy, but the starting point for Jules Verne was what we knew in the nineteenth century.


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## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Faulkner's no doubt a great writer, but who wants to spend that much time in Mississippi?


I read a piece from Faulkner's Collected Stories called "Pennsylvania Station" that takes place in New York. A vagrant scheming to avoid getting the bum's rush from the station master tells his story to another vagrant It's sort of like Faulkner channeling Don Passos.


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## Allegro Con Brio

*Joseph Conrad - Nostromo*

This is a brilliant novel. Conrad was surely intrepid for his time in critiquing imperalism and colonialism the way he did, but his analysis penetrates deeper than that into the heart of human greed and motivation. That coupled with his darkly humorous style and very precise prose makes this a delight. It almost reminds me of a nonfiction book in the way he presents the events. _Heart of Darkness_ is certainly a great book but it overshadows Conrad's other work to an unhealthy degree, I think. And this guy didn't learn English until he was in his twenties!!


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## Guest

Allegro Con Brio said:


> *Joseph Conrad - Nostromo*
> 
> This is a brilliant novel. Conrad was surely intrepid for his time in critiquing imperalism and colonialism the way he did, but his analysis penetrates deeper than that into the heart of human greed and motivation. That coupled with his darkly humorous style and very precise prose makes this a delight. It almost reminds me of a nonfiction book in the way he presents the events. _Heart of Darkness_ is certainly a great book but it overshadows Conrad's other work to an unhealthy degree, I think. And this guy didn't learn English until he was in his twenties!!


A great book, and Conrad is a great favorite of mine. Have you read _Victory_? Another favorite of mine is _The Secret Agent_. I've read and enjoyed all of his major works.


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## EdwardBast

flamencosketches said:


> I've just started Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Enjoying it so far, but we'll see if I finish it... I'm having a hard time finishing books these past few weeks.


I think it's an excellent if grotesque satire on romantic love and obsession - many others think it's a straight love story.


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## Oldhoosierdude

EdwardBast said:


> I think it's an excellent if grotesque satire on romantic love and obsession - many others think it's a straight love story.


Quite true. Much more than that.


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## annaw

I'm currently reading Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship_. I'm still quite in the beginning but I can say that this is immensely beautifully written book. There's a lot of insight into the protagonist's thoughts and it's interesting how protagonist's own ideas are projected onto other characters. Partly it almost feels as if the other characters are just part of him, representations of his own ideas. Also, Goethe was quite a genius at describing and depicting human behaviour and writing beautiful narratives.

The length of Goethe's sentences is crazy! I'm reading an Estonian translation and the sentences are mad long. I suppose the original German with all those compound words and articles might be even more extreme...


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## SanAntone

Bwv 1080 said:


> Faulkner's no doubt a great writer, but who wants to spend that much time in Mississippi?


Oh, I do.  I am from the South (Louisiana, neighboring Mississippi) and his treatment of dialog and characterizations are endlessly fascinating and entertaining. I also like enormously his creation of the linked families and stories across several novels and stories. Faulkner is easily among my top three authors.


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## EdwardBast

annaw said:


> I'm currently reading Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship_. I'm still quite in the beginning but I can say that this is immensely beautifully written book. There's a lot of insight into the protagonist's thoughts and it's interesting how protagonist's own ideas are projected onto other characters. Partly it almost feels as if the other characters are just part of him, representations of his own ideas. Also, Goethe was quite a genius at describing and depicting human behaviour and writing beautiful narratives.
> 
> The length of Goethe's sentences is crazy! I'm reading an Estonian translation and the sentences are mad long. I suppose the original German with all those compound words and articles might be even more extreme...


I read that (English translation) as background research for a music history unit I taught comparing the Mignon lieder of Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf. I quite enjoyed the novel. If I were choosing a whimsical epigram for Mignon's story it would be "Born under a bad sign."

Edit: Oh, I guess if you are near the beginning you might not have met Mignon yet. That novel and the poetry it contains inspired a lot of good songs.


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## annaw

EdwardBast said:


> I read that (English translation) as background research for a music history unit I taught comparing the Mignon lieder of Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf. I quite enjoyed the novel. If I were choosing a whimsical epigram for Mignon's story it would be "Born under a bad sign."
> 
> Edit: Oh, I guess if you are near the beginning you might not have met Mignon yet. That novel and the poetry it contains inspired a lot of good songs.


Yes! It's influence on music and was among the reasons why I started reading it .


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## jegreenwood

This week's NY Times Book Review has a guide to Scandinavian mysteries/thrillers. I picked "I'm Traveling Alone," a novel by Samuel Bjork, which apparently has a puzzle element. Fifty pages in, and I'm enjoying it.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Scotland certainly endured her fair share of very dark and turbulent times, and not all England's fault either! Back in the day aspiring to the Scottish crown was an invitation to be murdered, and a king was just as likely to be bumped off by a member of his own family as he was to fall in battle. For a country with such a distant and often murky past there is only so much that can be squeezed into 288 pages but Richard Oram provides an entertaining potted history which is fast-paced rather than hasty, although understandably there is comparatively less said about the earlier periods when Scotland was a patchwork of competing kingdoms and lordships rather than a country in its own right.


----------



## bz3

Currently reading Thielemann's My Life with Wagner. As far as I can recall it's the first book written by a conductor that I've read. Fairly good so far, very breezy but lots of interesting thoughts on conducting. I haven't gotten into his deep dives on Wagner's works themselves yet.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I'll catch up on a some from the last few months.
















The Song of the Lark is the middle and lesser known volume of Cather's plains trilogy of books. She won awards an accolades for the other two. This one, not so much and deservedly so. It is the weakest of the three by a long shot. The first two thirds of the book are classic Cather and quite engaging. The last third of the book falls down considerably. The writing style changes a bit to more of a casual narrative (things like "Now we see our two friends meeting for dinner."), and she does a fair amount of foreshadowing which wasn't in the earlier parts of the book. The main character contradicts all of the earlier development for her and becomes an intolerant whiner. Plus, racism creeps in. In all, it is a book about the development of an opera singer, so may be of interest to some.

Riceyman Steps is an interesting read. It is a character novel, centering on three people and their interactions. By far the most engaging character is the housekeeper. A good read all the way around.


----------



## En Passant

Currently reading "The Fellowship of the Ring" with the Children they never cease to amaze me. Their reading skill is far beyond their peers.

For my personal reading I just finished *"The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin"* by Jonathan Phillips. I cannot recommend this book enough not only is it satisfying on an academic level, it is also a highly entertaining read. It's not dry like most books on the subject.









8.5 out of 10​


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## Barbebleu

elgars ghost said:


> Scotland certainly endured her fair share of very dark and turbulent times, and not all England's fault either! Back in the day aspiring to the Scottish crown was an invitation to be murdered, and a king was just as likely to be bumped off by a member of his own family as he was to fall in battle. For a country with such a distant and often murky past there is only so much that can be squeezed into 288 pages but Richard Oram provides an entertaining potted history which is fast-paced rather than hasty, although understandably there is comparatively less said about the earlier periods when Scotland was a patchwork of competing kingdoms and lordships rather than a country in its own right.


I might need to give this a go. To my eternal shame I know very little about the history of my own country's monarchy.


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## En Passant

Barbebleu said:


> I might need to give this a go. To my eternal shame I know very little about the history of my own country's monarchy.


Another Scot, I've seen so many here. We must be over represented per capita? :lol:


----------



## elgar's ghost

Barbebleu said:


> I might need to give this a go. To my eternal shame I know very little about the history of my own country's monarchy.


It's a white-knuckle ride a lot of the time - a really entertaining and informative read. One thing which surprised me was the relative lack of actual Scottish blood which flowed through her monarchs' veins from James II (r. 1437-60) onwards. James II was half-English (which meant that, as a great-grandson of Edward III, he was obviously of French extraction as well) and from that time on no 'new' Scottish blood was introduced. By the time we get to the 18th century Bonny Prince Charlie had no more Scottish blood in him than the Hanoverian king he attempted to dislodge, George II.


----------



## En Passant

elgars ghost said:


> It's a white-knuckle ride a lot of the time - a really entertaining and informative read. One thing which surprised me was the relative lack of actual Scottish blood which flowed through her monarchs' veins from James II (r. 1437-60) onwards. James II was half-English (which meant that, as a great-grandson of Edward III, he was obviously of French extraction as well) and from that time on no 'new' Scottish blood was introduced. By the time we get to the 18th century Bonny Prince Charlie had no more Scottish blood in him than the Hanoverian king he attempted to dislodge, George II.


Europe has always been ruled by what we'd call the "Germanic" peoples *@Elgar*. Even the Normans were not "French" per say. However there is less genetic diversity in Europe (if you exclude African/Asian immigrants) than their is in the rest of the world.

So to me it's more of a caste system than one people ruling another. This was then cemented by gradual cultural shifts between the ruling elite and the common classes. A friend of mime has studied this extensively. If you're interested I can forward her thesis to you.


----------



## Bwv 1080

En Passant said:


> Europe has always been ruled by what we'd call the "Germanic" peoples *@Elgar*. Even the Normans were not "French" per say. However there is less genetic diversity in Europe (if you exclude African/Asian immigrants) than their is in the rest of the world.
> 
> So to me it's more of a caste system than one people ruling another. This was then cemented by gradual cultural shifts between the ruling elite and the common classes. A friend of mime has studied this extensively. If you're interested I can forward her thesis to you.


And the Franks were a Germanic tribe long before the Normans


----------



## En Passant

Bwv 1080 said:


> And the Franks were a Germanic tribe long before the Normans


True but I meant to separate the West Germans from the East/North Germans that went on to found most of the European monarchies. Including marrying into the French houses eventually.


----------



## elgar's ghost

En Passant said:


> Europe has always been ruled by what we'd call the "Germanic" peoples *@Elgar*. Even the Normans were not "French" per say. However there is less genetic diversity in Europe (if you exclude African/Asian immigrants) than their is in the rest of the world.
> 
> So to me it's more of a caste system than one people ruling another. This was then cemented by gradual cultural shifts between the ruling elite and the common classes. A friend of mime has studied this extensively. _If you're interested I can forward her thesis to you_.


And in Scotland's case, the Bruce (de Brus) line was Norman, I believe.

Many thanks, but I don't know if you can send attachments on the private message facility on this site - if you can, then yes, I'd be interested in reading it. If not then I'll have to pass, unfortunately.


----------



## En Passant

elgars ghost said:


> And in Scotland's case, the Bruce (de Brus) line was Norman, I believe.
> 
> Many thanks, but I don't know if you can send attachments on the private message facility on this site - if you can, then yes, I'd be interested in reading it. If not then I'll have to pass, unfortunately.


It may be on her website so I could possibly just post the link publicly for everyone who is interested. If not I will ask her about possibly uploading it.

You are correct about the Bruce. They were indeed Normans and the Normans were originally Norsemen (what we'd call Vikings).

French was more so than Latin the lingua franca of Scotland, England and Ireland before the reformation.

Latin was mainly used for matters of Church and State. Sorry to derail the thread, I'll be sure to get a copy of that book thanks @*Elgar*.


----------



## Strange Magic

I just finished a wonderful book, _How the Irish Saved Civilization_ by Thomas Cahill. Cahill is a marvelous writer, with a perfect balance between erudition and a light, effortless style. He details Irish and ecclesiastical history from the waning years of the Roman Empire through the conversion of the Irish and their subsequent reseeding of the tattered remains of Western Civilization back into Europe throughout the Dark Ages. I think--though Cahill does not say so--that a trigger for the book was his reading Kenneth Clark's _Civilization_, especially Clark's opening chapter, The Skin of our Teeth, where Clark (another master stylist) points out that a few scattered islands at the edge of the world--Iona, Lindisfarne--and a few other places--held what was left of Classic culture west of fallen Rome. Cahill quotes approvingly from Clark several times in getting his own book started. That era ended when the re-energized Roman church finally dominated and replaced the Irish church in the British Isles, and the Vikings began their depredations.


----------



## En Passant

Strange Magic said:


> I just finished a wonderful book, _How the Irish Saved Civilization_ by Thomas Cahill.


I've also read this great book, I'm glad you enjoyed it Magic.


----------



## Strange Magic

En Passant said:


> I've also read this great book, I'm glad you enjoyed it Magic.


I did indeed. All Scots should read Arthur Herman's _How the Scots Invented the Modern World_. Cahill's book on the Irish was Herman's trigger for his wonderful book. Any true Scot's ego will inflate like a piper's bag as he or she absorbs just how amazing the Scottish Enlightenment was.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Scots_Invented_the_Modern_World

A gem from the Cahill book: Cahill quotes Freud as saying the Irish were the only people who could not be helped by psychoanalysis. This reminded me of the old saw that God invented whiskey so that the Irish would not rule the world.


----------



## Strange Magic

Just a reminder that more book talk can be found in the Groups on the Book Chat Forum.

https://www.talkclassical.com/groups/book-chat.html


----------



## En Passant

Strange Magic said:


> I did indeed. All Scots should read Arthur Herman's _How the Scots Invented the Modern World_. Cahill's book on the Irish was Herman's trigger for his wonderful book. Any true Scot's ego will inflate like a piper's bag as he or she absorbs just how amazing the Scottish Enlightenment was.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Scots_Invented_the_Modern_World
> 
> A gem from the Cahill book: Cahill quotes Freud as saying the Irish were the only people who could not be helped by psychoanalysis. This reminded me of the old saw that God invented whiskey so that the Irish would not rule the world.





Strange Magic said:


> Just a reminder that more book talk can be found in the Groups on the Book Chat Forum.
> 
> https://www.talkclassical.com/groups/book-chat.html


Grazie Magic


----------



## Guest

Just finished _The Plague_ by Albert Camus.

It seems obvious that Camus uses Plague as a metaphor for war, but my interest was sparked by parallels with our current pandemic situation which, though it does not rise the the level of plagues of older times, has involved similar reactions (lockdowns, shelter at home, hospitals swamped with dying patients). I found it an interesting and insightful book, a story which is an allegory for Camus' philosophical thoughts, which revolve around the ideas of absurdity and exile.

I think the observation that resonated most clearly with me was that people experiencing existential fear and suffering disappointingly must resort to uttering the most apparently trite and commonplace expressions to describe it. I have found this to be the case.


----------



## jegreenwood

Just started _The Mars Room_ by Rachel Kushner.


----------



## Blancrocher

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

2nd book I've read by Chabon, the first being The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I was disinclined to start a long book by the author since the 1st one didn't really go anywhere, but I enjoyed this one start to finish.


----------



## jegreenwood

Blancrocher said:


> Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
> 
> 2nd book I've read by Chabon, the first being The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I was disinclined to start a long book by the author since the 1st one didn't really go anywhere, but I enjoyed this one start to finish.


Yiddish Policemen is the only Chabon book I didn't care for. (I've read four). Favorites were Kavalier and Clay and Telegraph Avenue, the latter, in part, because several of the main characters owned a record store.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

This one I don't recommend. I confess to skimming the last half of it. [

ATTACH=CONFIG]141235[/ATTACH]


----------



## bharbeke

Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl was a great reading experience. She knows how to captivate the mind with words.


----------



## vincula

Revisiting this classic in an attempt to digest Thomas Picketty's _Capital & Ideology_ thick brick.









Regards,

Vincula


----------



## Ad Astra

*Arrian - Alexander the Great: The Anabasis and the Indica*


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Just started this. It's massive so may take some time and I will no don't read other things in between breaks .

Here's the blurb on Goodreads

"Peter Matthiessen's great American epic-Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone-was conceived as one vast mysterious novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into three books. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original vision.

Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.

Shadow Country traverses strange landscapes and frontier hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color, including the black and Indian inheritors of the archaic racism that, as Watson's wife observed, "still casts its shadow over the nation." " .


----------



## flamencosketches

vincula said:


> Revisiting this classic in an attempt to digest Thomas Picketty's _Capital & Ideology_ thick brick.
> 
> View attachment 141303
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Vincula


Don't know anything about the Picketty connection but I'm reading The Waste Land & other poems by Eliot as well. Great stuff!

Also just started Jan Swafford's Brahms bio. So far, so good! A very erudite and detailed tome.


----------



## senza sordino

I have finished Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne and The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. I enjoyed Journey to the Centre of the Earth a lot, it was an easy read and quite entertaining. I found The Secret Agent a tougher and less enjoyable read. I was expecting more, but that's probably due to my 21st Century expectations; the book was written more than 100 years ago and in the meantime we've had James Bond and MI-6 and MI-5.

I'm now starting to read Mythos by Stephen Fry. I've always been intrigued by Greek mythology but I've never managed to finish a history book on The Ancient Greeks nor have I read The Iliad or The Odyssey. This book is apparently a more modern telling of the myths.


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 141376
> 
> 
> Just started this. It's massive so may take some time and I will no don't read other things in between breaks .
> 
> Here's the blurb on Goodreads
> 
> "Peter Matthiessen's great American epic-Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone-was conceived as one vast mysterious novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into three books. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original vision.
> 
> Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.
> 
> Shadow Country traverses strange landscapes and frontier hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color, including the black and Indian inheritors of the archaic racism that, as Watson's wife observed, "still casts its shadow over the nation." " .


It's an undertaking. I read it a number of years back. Thought it was well done, but didn't fall in love with it. Remember - it started as three novels, so you can read 1/3 and say you finished something.


----------



## En Passant

senza sordino said:


> I have finished Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne and The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. I enjoyed Journey to the Centre of the Earth a lot, it was an easy read and quite entertaining. I found The Secret Agent a tougher and less enjoyable read. I was expecting more, but that's probably due to my 21st Century expectations; the book was written more than 100 years ago and in the meantime we've had James Bond and MI-6 and MI-5.
> 
> I'm now starting to read Mythos by Stephen Fry. I've always been intrigued by Greek mythology but I've never managed to finish a history book on The Ancient Greeks nor have I read The Iliad or The Odyssey. This book is apparently a more modern telling of the myths.


Let me know if you like this please.


----------



## flamencosketches

I'm reading Jan Swafford's erudite Brahms bio. What can I say so far except that it's incredible, highly detailed, very enjoyable. Unless this changes over the course of the book, I can safely recommend it to anyone who loves Brahms or otherwise wants to better understand this enigmatic composer. I'll likely also read Swafford's Beethoven and Ives bios later on, so impressed am I with this one. I understand he's written a book on Mozart to be published in the fall as well. That one may have to come first.


----------



## TxllxT

flamencosketches said:


> I'm reading Jan Swafford's erudite Brahms bio. What can I say so far except that it's incredible, highly detailed, very enjoyable. Unless this changes over the course of the book, I can safely recommend it to anyone who loves Brahms or otherwise wants to better understand this enigmatic composer. I'll likely also read Swafford's Beethoven and Ives bios later on, so impressed am I with this one. I understand he's written a book on Mozart to be published in the fall as well. That one may have to come first.


Do you know this book by Jan Swafford (2017)?


----------



## flamencosketches

TxllxT said:


> Do you know this book by Jan Swafford (2017)?


No, but I have read his Vintage Guide to Classical. This book appears to cover a relatively similar subject matter, which may be for a target demographic that I don't quite belong to (total newcomers to classical music). Do you think it's worth a read?


----------



## elgar's ghost

_Plague, Pox and Pestilence: Disease in History_, edited by Dr. Kenneth Kiple. Potted histories of most (but not all) of the infamous nasties from down the centuries - bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, typhoid, bilharzia, scrofula, scurvy...


----------



## TxllxT

flamencosketches said:


> No, but I have read his Vintage Guide to Classical. This book appears to cover a relatively similar subject matter, which may be for a target demographic that I don't quite belong to (total newcomers to classical music). Do you think it's worth a read?


Depends. When you've become a Jan Swafford fan, it's a must-read of course


----------



## Varick

Ariasexta said:


> I have a personal library of budget bindings of literary books, all of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeares, 80% of William Faulkner(one of my favorite writers ever), many books by Hemmingway and *Steinbeck*. There are also some french, spanish, german books. Literature is another big love besides music. But I am tended to regard literature as a part of music.
> 
> *Steinbeck*, like a modern George Eliot, wordy but still a joy to read.


I am going to have to bite the bullet and read some Steinbeck again. I read him in my teens and my mid 20's and I found his writing as dry and boring as the landscapes he describes and writes about. I found the Grapes of Wrath one of the most boring books I ever read in my life. Maybe 25 years later with many different perspectives on life, I will finally find what other's love about him.



Ariasexta said:


> Doestoevsky is the one to read completely in any language.


 Couldn't agree more. One of the most brilliant writers of all time IMO.


----------



## Varick

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I'm the way about collecting books that most people here are about collecting CDs. It just never stops. Regardless of whether it's something I'll routinely revisit, I just love the visual and mental association of having my shelves packed with knowledge of all varieties. I know I _should_ use the library for most things, but I guess I'm just a possessive person. Literary and classic fiction, theology, history, philosophy and a dash of contemporary fiction are my fortes, but I'm a nondiscriminatory collector (unlike my reading preferences).


I find absolutely NOTHING wrong with wanting to maintain and build a personal library. It is an absolute joy as long as one has enough room. My wife used to ask (but now has finally understood that the answer will ALWAYS be the same), "Why don't you get rid of some of these books?" The first time she asked that I was absolutely incredulous that 1. Why anyone would ask such a question because 2. Isn't it such an OBVIOUS answer? Books are wonderful, libraries are wonderful. They are an instant reference of knowledge and wisdom collected through the years of one's life. They also look beautiful in a home. They are a statement of an eagerness and desire for knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live.

No, nothing wrong with collecting books at all!

V


----------



## Varick

These were the last two books I read. Both were fantastic

















And I just started this and am absolutely riveted. One of the most fascinating books I have ever read (so far). The entire history of this creature has influenced mankind more than almost anything else. It is the cause of approx 1/2 of every human death in the history of humans. I can't wait to get back into every time I stop.









V


----------



## flamencosketches

TxllxT said:


> Depends. When you've become a Jan Swafford fan, it's a must-read of course


I'll have to check it out then. Thanks for alerting me to it.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady. James's novels are so rich and involving that he makes almost everyone else seem like amateurs. Some may find his writing too dense but it just absolutely envelops me. Sheer literary bliss. Reading _The Ambassadors_ last year almost killed me, and I almost gave up at several points but once I hit a certain point I realized it was one of the most beautiful, perceptive books I'd ever read. But _Portrait_ is much less opaque and experimental, more George Eliot-like and less heading toward the impressionistic modernism of his late works.


----------



## jegreenwood

^ Agree entirely. I did put down _The Ambassadors_ on my first try, but finished it on my second. More recently I read another late one, T_he Wings of the Dove_, but this time I knew what to expect. I have read several earlier novels and novellas, most recently T_he Bostonians_.


----------



## Open Book

Pat Fairlea said:


> Oh yes, big fan of Kate Atkinson. Her plot lines multiply and twist around like a multiplying-twisty thing, but come to a satisfactory conclusion with loose ends all tied in. And she could teach P. Cornwell (and many others) a thing or two about how people actually talk to each other.
> 
> PS. If you enjoy Kate Atkinson, try Sophie Hannah.


I just finished "Case Histories" by Atkinson and found it lacking as a detective/mystery/psychological thriller novel. Her detective does almost nothing to solve the crimes, he's passive, things just happen to him. He has ridiculously inappropriate relationships with his clients. He undergoes a major life change by the end of the book and we have only just met him for the first time. The initial promise that the three case histories are interconnected proves to be exaggerated.

I think this is Atkinson's earliest work, and if she gets better, I'd give her one more chance. Her writing style does have merits and some of her characters are well drawn.


----------



## Open Book

jenspen said:


> I love mysteries but I went off Gillian Flynn. I liked the review that said Gillian Flynn reminded one of "that strange neighbourhood kid who is a little too fascinated by chopping earthworms in half or seeing what happens when you burn ants...".
> 
> I wonder if you've come across Kate Atkinson? Her Jackson Brodie mysteries have a Dickensian range of characters of great charm (or charmlessness). Plot twists and surprises at almost every turn of the page and lots of literary allusion, snarkiness, warmth and terror. Very funny at times. I'm re-reading one of her early novels - "Human Croquet" - at the moment.


Flynn's main characters are 30-something women who are damaged in some way by their childhood experiences and are old enough to know they have few prospects. They are not great people and there is little redemption for them or almost anyone else in her novels. But these heroines fight to survive, so I admire them.

Flynn has an intense style where every sentence packs a punch by itself. Her characters are well described and ring true. She doesn't flinch from cruelties but I would hardly say she is overly fascinated by them. Her stories take place primarily in Missouri and have a brand of creepiness peculiar to the rural midwestern U.S. There is plenty of humor to lighten things.

"Gone Girl", due to its plot and its he-said, she-said narrative is unlike anything else I have read and deserves its acclaim. But my favorite was "Dark Places" in which a member of a hapless poor family gets a second chance to figure out the mystery of their murder in their farmhouse, an event she survived as a child and that has defined her life. Beautifully drawn characters in the messed-up protagonist, her persevering mother, white trash father, and sullen teenage brother who was jailed for the murders.

I just wish Flynn would write more books.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Civil War Soldiers: In the Heart of Clark Co., Wisconsin. 
My grandmother's great grandfather is in this book:


----------



## Guest

Varick said:


> I am going to have to bite the bullet and read some Steinbeck again. I read him in my teens and my mid 20's and I found his writing *as dry and boring as the landscapes he describes and writes about*...


 Have you ever _seen_ the landscapes he writes about?


----------



## Guest

I just finished this superb and thought-provoking sci-fi novel









and I just started this historical fiction novel:


----------



## senza sordino

senza sordino said:


> I'm now starting to read Mythos by Stephen Fry. I've always been intrigued by Greek mythology but I've never managed to finish a history book on The Ancient Greeks nor have I read The Iliad or The Odyssey. This book is apparently a more modern telling of the myths.





En Passant said:


> Let me know if you like this please.


I am thoroughly enjoying Mythos by Stephen Fry. I have just read how the Sahara Desert was formed, and how the Peacock got all of its "eyes" on its plumage. And I learned about Pandora's jar (box is a 17th Century mistranslation according to Fry.) I have heard of most of the deities, but I had no idea of how they were all related. There is a family tree at the start to which I constantly refer because it's hard to remember everyone and how they're related. Stephen Fry has recommended this website https://www.theoi.com/. There is a lot of information here. I'm only halfway through the book, and I can already highly recommend it.


----------



## starthrower

A fascinating history of this great orchestra.


----------



## flamencosketches

Just started Richard Matheson's _I Am Legend_. I don't typically go for horror/genre fic like this but it's really good so far. I find the main character relatable. He spends his days alone in his house-fortress listening to classical LPs, reading, drinking, smoking, and killing vampires. :lol:


----------



## Strange Magic

I Am Legend: Made into a great flick with Charlton Heston and Anthony Zerbe: The Omega Man. Matheson also wrote The Incredible Shrinking Man, also made into a film. A tiny man armed with a needle fighting a spider.


----------



## Strange Magic

I just finished Leo Damrosch's _The Club_, about Samuel Johnson and his circle of marvelous friends who gathered for dining, drink, and talk at a London tavern. Fabulous book! I review it Downstairs in the Groups in the Book Chat Forum.


----------



## Guest

I have just ordered this book:

*Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - And Why This Harms Everybody*, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (Pitchstone Publishing).


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I did finish this. First two parts were excellent. The last part was the longest and of least quality. Although interesting first person insights into the Watson mind. But the writing seemed forced and cliched at times. The first two books for a great job presenting Watson as a possibly exaggerated and maybe misunderstood criminal legend who may have been unjustly killed by a panicked mob of frightened neighbors. The last book dispels that gradually. That development is well done. I'm glad I read it but won't repeat it.


----------



## Strange Magic

flamencosketches said:


> Just started Richard Matheson's _I Am Legend_. I don't typically go for horror/genre fic like this but it's really good so far. I find the main character relatable. He spends his days alone in his house-fortress listening to classical LPs, reading, drinking, smoking, and killing vampires. :lol:


You might also enjoy South African author Stuart Cloete's novella _The Blast_ about a post-apocalypse Manhattan and a man living alone fighting mutated beasts, until some Native Americans come by.......


----------



## Tristan

*The Metaphysical Club* by Louis Menand

A good history of philosophy in late 19th/early 20th century America.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady. James's novels are so rich and involving that he makes almost everyone else seem like amateurs. Some may find his writing too dense but it just absolutely envelops me. Sheer literary bliss. Reading _The Ambassadors_ last year almost killed me, and I almost gave up at several points but once I hit a certain point I realized it was one of the most beautiful, perceptive books I'd ever read. But _Portrait_ is much less opaque and experimental, more George Eliot-like and less heading toward the impressionistic modernism of his late works.


Well, I finished that about as quickly as I've ever finished a novel of that size and absolutely loved it. Dare I say that James almost eked teardrops out of me at the end? A stunning reflection on youth, ambition, dreams, and reality with incredible psychological insight and lots of humor too!

But I need a bit of a break from "heavier" reading before I head off to college in a few weeks and will be devoting all my time to such stuff, so I'm reading a classic of comedic literature: *Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome*. Silly, goofy satire is just what the doctor ordered.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Just finished. I liked this one. 4 out of five stars. For the most part the writing seems effortless. I know it most likely was not but it reads that way. Wonderful phrasing, pacing, wording. Convincing dialogue and character.

A pleasure to read with only a few humble criticism from the likes of me. Names mostly: Katherine Kontent, a woman named Generous, a man named Tinker and a few more. Contrived, hidden meaning names strike me wrong. Don't care for it in a novel. A might bit predictable ending forcast in the first chapter if paying attention. The good writing makes up for the drawbacks.

Recommended.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

A way through this often overlooked work. Mc Cullers is known for another classic novel. This short book is nearly it's rival


----------



## Kieran

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 142565
> 
> 
> Just finished. I liked this one. 4 out of five stars. For the most part the writing seems effortless. I know it most likely was not but it reads that way. Wonderful phrasing, pacing, wording. Convincing dialogue and character.
> 
> A pleasure to read with only a few humble criticism from the likes of me. Names mostly: Katherine Kontent, a woman named Generous, a man named Tinker and a few more. Contrived, hidden meaning names strike me wrong. Don't care for it in a novel. A might bit predictable ending forcast in the first chapter if paying attention. The good writing makes up for the drawbacks.
> 
> Recommended.


Coincidentally, I started this recently and am thoroughly enjoying it. You might also love his book, A Gentleman in Moscow, which is a fabulous book. I like his style, love the characters of his books...


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

^I read _A Gentleman in Moscow_ a couple months ago. A delightful throwback read, entertaining but with plenty of substance.


----------



## Guest

I, too, am reading _Hamnet_. The scenes of his mother's grief are incredibly wrenching.


----------



## Ich muss Caligari werden

Enjoying this so far, Lyanda Lynn Haupt's *Mozart's Starling*: clever, resourceful, authoritative, inventive and avian-affectionate. The author had her own starling in the course of writing this book; _Carmen_, it was named, preferred Bach and bluegrass to Mozart despite Haupt's concerted effort to get her interested in the latter.


----------



## Open Book

Ich muss Caligari werden said:


> Enjoying this so far, Lyanda Lynn Haupt's *Mozart's Starling*: clever, resourceful, authoritative, inventive and avian-affectionate. The author had her own starling in the course of writing this book; _Carmen_, it was named, preferred Bach and bluegrass to Mozart despite Haupt's concerted effort to get her interested in the latter.


I read this years ago. The starling sang a theme used in one of Mozart's piano concerti, and the book implies Mozart could have heard it from the bird rather than vice versa.


----------



## Guest

I just started _Sisters_.


----------



## Guest

Wonderfully entertaining!


----------



## jegreenwood

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 142565
> 
> 
> Just finished. I liked this one. 4 out of five stars. For the most part the writing seems effortless. I know it most likely was not but it reads that way. Wonderful phrasing, pacing, wording. Convincing dialogue and character.
> 
> A pleasure to read with only a few humble criticism from the likes of me. Names mostly: Katherine Kontent, a woman named Generous, a man named Tinker and a few more. Contrived, hidden meaning names strike me wrong. Don't care for it in a novel. A might bit predictable ending forcast in the first chapter if paying attention. The good writing makes up for the drawbacks.
> 
> Recommended.


Have you read his _A Gentleman in Moscow_? Very enjoyable.

Edit - Allegro's description nails it.

Just finished _The Nickel Boys_ by Colson Whitehead. Satisfactory, but nowhere near as good as _The Underground Railroad_. Surprised it won him a second Pulitzer.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Almost finished. Recommended.


----------



## annaw

Goethe's _Faust_ at the moment. It's actually not even pure reading, because I have to study it as its part of my coursework. This makes working through it a rather intense activity. Nevertheless, _Faust_ is for sure an extremely thought-provoking and genius work which seems to have grown on me since I last read it, though. I still have a disturbing sensation that I, despite all my effort, cannot understand most of the ideas Goethe has hidden between the lines.


----------



## Ich muss Caligari werden

A children's picture book; I have never outgrown my need for or interest in them. Just grateful they still exist in these digital times.


----------



## schigolch




----------



## Bwv 1080

You know, the more I read about this guy the less I like him


----------



## TxllxT

The Dutch author Pieter Waterdrinker lives in St Petersburg. With the novel 'Poubelle' (2016) he made a breakthrough in the Dutch literary arena. The novel describes Russia's & Amsterdam's anarchy with a blunt and boring overdose of unremittant loo & prostitutes visiting, but maintains nevertheless a high entertainment level. Amsterdam's woke 'big city' culture is portrayed as being quite narrow-mindedly provincial from Russia's grand perspective.


----------



## Guest

It's certainly off to a grisly start.


----------



## SanAntone

*The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*

View attachment 143108


*Henry David Thoreau, a life - Laura Dassow Walls
*
View attachment 143107


*Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 - Mark Twain*

View attachment 143106


----------



## senza sordino

Bwv 1080 said:


> You know, the more I read about this guy the less I like him


Something I heard on television once:

One good thing about this guy is that he did kill Hitler.


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

The more I read about Sapiens, the less I care about them.


----------



## Judith

Just started "Tchaikovsky The Man Revealed" by John Suchet. Loving it. A question. Indicated that he was gulping unboiled water but was not bothered about cholera. Could it be that he had other conditions such as diabetes and that he was desperate to quench a thirst?


----------



## elgar's ghost

Simon Sebag Montefiore - _The Court of the Red Tsar_.

Riveting if often grim 600+ page psychodrama about Josef Stalin and his masterful manipulation of his Politburo 'colleagues' and their families. If you always thought that NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria was the baddest of eggs then read about his predecessor Nikolai 'poison dwarf' Yezhov. In fact, no politician or functionary emerges with any real credit, as the micro-managing Stalin demanded not just ruthlessness in implementing his iron will over every aspect of running the Soviet Union but also oversaw a toxic hothouse environment in which many of his overworked and stressed-out underlings surreptitiously undermined each other in order to remain in favour, if only for the present. Very few came through unscathed, and had the increasingly unstable Stalin lived a few years longer it probably would have been curtains for nearly everyone else as well. Hypocrisy, decadence, greed, incompetence, fear and evil - it's all here.


----------



## Bwv 1080

elgars ghost said:


> Simon Sebag Montefiore - _The Court of the Red Tsar_.
> 
> Riveting if often grim 600+ page psychodrama about Josef Stalin and his masterful manipulation of his Politburo 'colleagues' and their families. If you always thought that NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria was the baddest of eggs then read about his predecessor Nikolai 'poison dwarf' Yezhov. In fact, no politician or functionary emerges with any real credit, as the micro-managing Stalin demanded not just ruthlessness in implementing his iron will over every aspect of running the Soviet Union but also oversaw a toxic hothouse environment in which many of his overworked and stressed-out underlings surreptitiously undermined each other in order to remain in favour, if only for the present. Very few came through unscathed, and had the increasingly unstable Stalin lived a few years longer it probably would have been curtains for nearly everyone else as well. Hypocrisy, decadence, greed, incompetence, fear and evil - it's all here.


Waiting for the third Kotkin book myself, the second, which covers the 30s, echoes everything above. One of the more interesting tidbits is that one of the execution lists Stalin drew up was a purge of the Chinese Communist Party, which was heavily infiltrated by the NKVD, with Mao's name on it. A big 'what if' there


----------



## Guest

Oldhoosierdude said:


> A way through this often overlooked work. Mc Cullers is known for another classic novel. This short book is nearly it's rival
> 
> View attachment 142567


McCullers was a unique American genius.


----------



## Jacck

elgars ghost said:


> Simon Sebag Montefiore - _The Court of the Red Tsar_.
> 
> Riveting if often grim 600+ page psychodrama about Josef Stalin and his masterful manipulation of his Politburo 'colleagues' and their families.* If you always thought that NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria was the baddest of eggs then read about his predecessor Nikolai 'poison dwarf' Yezhov.* In fact, no politician or functionary emerges with any real credit, as the micro-managing Stalin demanded not just ruthlessness in implementing his iron will over every aspect of running the Soviet Union but also oversaw a toxic hothouse environment in which many of his overworked and stressed-out underlings surreptitiously undermined each other in order to remain in favour, if only for the present. Very few came through unscathed, and had the increasingly unstable Stalin lived a few years longer it probably would have been curtains for nearly everyone else as well. Hypocrisy, decadence, greed, incompetence, fear and evil - it's all here.


(google translate from Czech)

"The following text will serve all those who want to orient themselves very quickly and effectively in the history of the USSR. As soon as Lenin died, it turned out that the second man in the party, Comrade Trotsky, was a traitor. So Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bucharin and Stalin have overthrown Trotsky and banished him from the USSR. But a few years later it was discovered that Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin were also enemies and traitors, and so the brave Genrich Yagoda shot them, and a little later Yezhov shot Yagoda, who was a foreign agent. The it was discovered that Yezhov was not a comrade, but a vulgar traitor and a foreign agent, so Beria shot him, and after Stalin's death everyone understood that Beria was also a traitor, so Zhukov overthrew and shot Beria, but Khrushchev soon realized that Zhukov was an enemy and a conspirator. And a little later it turned out that even Stalin was an enemy, a pest and a traitor, and with him a large part of the Politburo, so Stalin was thrown out of the mausoleum and honorary party leaders led by Khrushchev dispersed the Politburo and Shepilov. Some years later it was impossible not to see that Khrushchev was an apportunist, a bad man, and and an enemy of the peoople. So Brezhnev sent him to retirement. As soon as Brezhnev died, it was discovered that he was a senile, a pest and an obstacle to development. Then came two more seniles, whose names no one remembers, because died very fast. A young and energetic Gorbachev came to power. And it was found that the whole country was full of traitors and enemies. And then the USSR disintegrated and Gorbachev was discovered to be an enemy and a traitor. "

there are no good figures in the USSR regime, there are only different shades of evil. Khrushchev was no doubt less evil than Stalin


----------



## Alinde

"Danubia: a personal history of Habsburg Europe" - "Another damn'd thick, square book" from the lively pen of Simon Winder. 

This is the second of his idiosyncratic tours around what became of the empire of Charlemagne as it divided into three - "Germania" (which I've just finished for the second time), "Lotharingia" (to be read) and "Danubia". From a review in "The Times" I gather that Danubia "contains a great deal of Haydn".


----------



## sdtom

Sounds like a good book/series to read.


----------



## Tristan

Finally reading a book on classical music:

*The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century* by Alex Ross


----------



## SixFootScowl

Goes good with *this CD.
*


----------



## Roger Knox

_A__h___s: A Theory_, by Aaron James, a philosophy professor at the University of California at Irvine. I'm reading the original version. Very well written and comprehensible -- you don't have to agree with it all. Has prompted me to look in the mirror at times ... EEK! The book has since been updated to focus on the POTUS, but I'll pass on that.

"Focus on the POTUS" -- isn't that a song?


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Here are two recently completed.

Life of Pi is much more than shipwrecked boy befriends tiger story. There is a lot behind this book. SPOILER: the movie leads to the notion that the boy tells the tiger story in preference to another much more horrible true story he tells later(but not 100%). The book leans the opposite way and does it quite well. A good read.








Barbara Pym is described as a 20th century Jane Austen. However I got much more out of Pym's writing that I ever did from Austen's. This is a fine book, expertly written. Pym's personal story as a writer is compelling also. I will probably read another Pym novel sometime in the future. Although looking at synopsis of her novels, the story lines are all similar (just like Austen!). Yes, it is British romance, something I am not normally drawn to. However it is a bit more than that as far as character development and between the words motivations. Also some of her novels have gay's which of course Austen never did. Anyone who likes well crafted fiction should read one of Pym's novels and this is her most famous.


----------



## Open Book

Oldhoosierdude said:


> Barbara Pym is described as a 20th century Jane Austen. However I got much more out of Pym's writing that I ever did from Austen's. This is a fine book, expertly written. Pym's personal story as a writer is compelling also. I will probably read another Pym novel sometime in the future. Although looking at synopsis of her novels, the story lines are all similar (just like Austen!). Yes, it is British romance, something I am not normally drawn to. However it is a bit more than that as far as character development and between the words motivations. Also some of her novels have gay's which of course Austen never did. Anyone who likes well crafted fiction should read one of Pym's novels and this is her most famous.


What drew you to Pym's book if British romance isn't something you usually read?

I was equally (pleasantly) surprised the time I met a man who could appreciate Alice Munro. A fine writer but she writes about the world of women and girls and most men aren't interested in that.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

Open Book said:


> What drew you to Pym's book if British romance isn't something you usually read?
> 
> I was equally (pleasantly) surprised the time I met a man who could appreciate Alice Munro. A fine writer but she writes about the world of women and girls and most men aren't interested in that.


It was recommended to me.


----------



## Ich muss Caligari werden

Just finishing-up British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh's _Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon_ (2017). The title is a double entendre relating both to hospital admissions and his remarkably candid - surprisingly personal - observations on his own life, medical care, euthanasia and other topics. Compassionate and compelling.


----------



## jegreenwood

Good day to return to this:


----------



## Ariasexta

Captain Courageous, a very challenging read for people of non-native English user, as far as I can understand, a very interesting story, fun to read.

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, a bit funny, a bit sad, a very rewarding novel. 

Souvenirs Dormants by Patrick Modiano, a subtle modern romance, a probe into the minds of modern people of different lifestyles. 

Vendetta by Balzac, a short story, very fun to read. I really like Balzac.


----------



## annaw

So, I finally have a week-long break. Started reading Sartre's "No Exit" today. It's a wonderful existentialist play which most perfectly describes Sartre's famous "hell is other people". I really like the way Sartre writes. There is a certain amount of the 20th century's European grotesqueness which is mixed with his very vivid, philosophical writing. Based on the often absurd situations where his characters end up, you can kind of sense that Sartre was not simply a writer but also a philosopher. Some really thought-provoking reading, accompanied by Debussy and Ravel.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Volume I, Swann's Way, of Proust's massive _In Search of Lost Time_. No, I don't expect to complete the entire seven-volume novel anytime soon, but this is one of the most hypnotic and ecstatic reading experiences to be had.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Flamme

A birthday present. Very refreshing.


----------



## Jacck

A Still Forest Pool: The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah


----------



## starthrower

Just getting into this one. Nabokov was a man with a lot on his mind.


----------



## Barbebleu

The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Orlando Figes - _A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924_.

OF does reiterate numerous points throughout but as the book is an 800 page behemoth this actually does this reader a favour as they serve as useful _aides-mémoire_ at critical junctures. Riveting stuff, and somewhat staggering how as recent as the early 20th century a monarch like Nicholas II could continue to be so ostrich-like despite frequent opportunities to compromise. Had he and the court met the more liberal elements in parliament anything like halfway after 1905 it's possible the Bolsheviks would have had far less of a platform in 1917 with which to spearhead the uprising that would result in so much misery and cruelty in the years which followed.


----------



## starthrower

elgars ghost said:


> Orlando Figes - _A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924_.
> 
> OF does reiterate numerous points throughout but as the book is an 800 page behemoth this actually does this reader a favour as they serve as useful _aides-mémoire_ at critical junctures. Riveting stuff, and somewhat staggering how as recent as the early 20th century a monarch like Nicholas II could continue to be so ostrich-like despite frequent opportunities to compromise. Had he and the court met the more liberal elements in parliament anything like halfway after 1905 it's possible the Bolsheviks would have had far less of a platform in 1917 with which to spearhead the uprising that would result in so much misery and cruelty in the years which followed.


I was reading about this book last week at the Fivebooks.com site. Seems like one of the better single volume histories to pick up.


----------



## elgar's ghost

starthrower said:


> I was reading about this book last week at the Fivebooks.com site. Seems like one of the better single volume histories to pick up.


I like Figes' style. He also wrote an excellent book about Russian culture through the ages called _Natasha's Dance_.


----------



## Barbebleu

elgars ghost said:


> I like Figes' style. He also wrote an excellent book about Russian culture through the ages called _Natasha's Dance_.


I've read Natasha's Dance. I loved it. Now I suppose I'll have to read A People's Tragedy!:lol:


----------



## Guest

John Grisham's newest novel, _A Time for Mercy_. It's excellent so far.


----------



## Varick

Baron Scarpia said:


> Have you ever _seen_ the landscapes he writes about?


I was mainly referring to Grapes of Wrath. I have seen the Midwest & Texas in drought, so in that sense, yes.

V


----------



## Gothos

Not your typical generals and battles history.
The American Civil War from an angle I hadn't really considered before.
Enjoying it immensely.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

True belief in Christ is nothing like we have all been taught.


----------



## jegreenwood

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Volume I, Swann's Way, of Proust's massive _In Search of Lost Time_. No, I don't expect to complete the entire seven-volume novel anytime soon, but this is one of the most hypnotic and ecstatic reading experiences to be had.


I read it (the whole thing) over 30 years.


----------



## senza sordino

I finished reading Heroes by Stephen Fry. This is his interpretation of the Greek heroes: Herakles, Perseus, Jason and the Argonauts, Bellerophon riding Pegasus, Atalanta, and Theseus. I really enjoyed this. It's very easy to read and very entertaining. Recommended.









Then I read the second book in the series by John Scalzi, The Ghost Brigades. This too was entertaining. It's science fiction, set far into the future with lots of future technology. 









I'm currently reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I've read this before, but back in 1981. I was 15 or 16 when I read it last. It's time for a re-read.


----------



## Sonata

"Carpe Jugulum" 
My favorite author Terry Pratchett's send up of the vampire lit genre. Good fun so far. I can always count on Terry to make me smile


----------



## TxllxT

senza sordino said:


> I finished reading Heroes by Stephen Fry. This is his interpretation of the Greek heroes: Herakles, Perseus, Jason and the Argonauts, Bellerophon riding Pegasus, Atalanta, and Theseus. I really enjoyed this. It's very easy to read and very entertaining. Recommended.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Then I read the second book in the series by John Scalzi, The Ghost Brigades. This too was entertaining. It's science fiction, set far into the future with lots of future technology.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm currently reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I've read this before, but back in 1981. I was 15 or 16 when I read it last. It's time for a re-read.


You know the other one by Stephen Fry?


----------



## senza sordino

TxllxT said:


> You know the other one by Stephen Fry?


Yes, I do. I'm looking forward to reading Troy. It has only just been released, and I will read it soon. I don't like reading hardcovers, they're too heavy to read in bed. I'll wait until it's in paperback. And I might be getting a Kindle for Christmas / birthday, so I might be reading this book before the new year.

And I read somewhere that Stephen Fry will write a fourth book on Greek mythology and Greek legends. Would the fourth book be The Odyssey?


----------



## elgar's ghost

^
^

I have _Paperweight_, an early book by Stephen Fry which is essentially a compendium of anecdotes and articles originally written for radio and newspapers/magazines. He namechecks my home town - apart from Tom Sharpe's _Blott on the Landscape_ it's the only humorous book I know which has done so.


----------



## jegreenwood

"A Hologram for the King" by Dave Eggars


----------



## annaw

“Death in Venice” Thomas Mann

I’ve read only about 10 pages but I’m already awestruck by the beauty of Mann’s writing. In some ways he writes like a 20th century Goethe - long, beautiful sentences, which despite their length are mostly perfectly comprehensible. I also don’t mind his Wagnerism and his use of literary leitmotifs. Mann truly wrote with style!


----------



## starthrower

This Scottish historian who became a writer after suffering permanent injuries in the first world war did a lot of digging and research to uncover much of the sordid history presented here. He wrote a half dozen other volumes on British, and European history that may be of interest. The preface of Europe And The Jews was written by Walter Kaufmann.


----------



## Richard8655

Goes well with classical music.


----------



## Tristan

*The Music of Time* by Julian Barnes









Novelistic account of Shostakovich's life since the infamous Pravda article.


----------



## thejewk

Just started Rostislav Dubinsky's Stormy Applause. Gone in with high hopes and I think I am going to be quite disappointed. It is written in really puerile dialogue form for most of the first five chapters, give no interesting information regarding any of the people involved, and feels more like a fictional and episodical recreation of key moments of life under the Soviet system. I was hoping for at least a little exploration of the period in a less superficial manner, as well as some aesthetic considerations, but ho hum. 

At least it'll be quick to read. 

Other than that, I'm reading volume four of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.


----------



## Georgegreece

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Volume I, Swann's Way, of Proust's massive _In Search of Lost Time_. No, I don't expect to complete the entire seven-volume novel anytime soon, but this is one of the most hypnotic and ecstatic reading experiences to be had.


Just finished this book. Took me quite a while. It's not an easy book to read after a long hard day but it worts the effort. It is full of long(sometimes boring) sentences that put my childhood under a microscope. I remembered events, feelings and thoughts about certain people that i thought i had forgotten.

I won't throw myself into the next volume immediately. I need a small break. 
I am currently reading the short stories from The Dubliners by James Joyce.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Georgegreece said:


> Just finished this book. Took me quite a while. It's not an easy book to read after a long hard day but it worts the effort. It is full of long(sometimes boring) sentences that put my childhood under a microscope. I remembered events, feelings and thoughts about certain people that i thought i had forgotten.


Everyone raves about "Swann in Love" being one of the greatest highlights of the whole cycle, but I _really_ found it rather tedious and tough-going. I much prefer the first-person sections about memory and childhood. I've put it aside for a while

For now, I decided to go with a long read that is generally lighter - Larry McMurtry's classic Western _Lonesome Dove_.


----------



## thejewk

I never got on with Proust. I made it most of the way through the first book before admitting to myself that there just wasn't enough to keep me interested. I find it odd that some of my favourite authors like Beckett and Joyce got so much out of him, but I am left completely cold. 

Maybe I'll try again in a decade and find what I missed last time.


----------



## Barbebleu

Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Anthony Beevor. Tragic tale brilliantly told. It tied in with a very fine but harrowing documentary in three parts that I watched on BBC 4 recently.


----------



## Rogerx

The Sutherland/ Bonynge story / house


----------



## Barbebleu

annaw said:


> "Death in Venice" Thomas Mann
> 
> I've read only about 10 pages but I'm already awestruck by the beauty of Mann's writing. In some ways he writes like a 20th century Goethe - long, beautiful sentences, which despite their length are mostly perfectly comprehensible. I also don't mind his Wagnerism and his use of literary leitmotifs. Mann truly wrote with style!


I read all of Thomas Mann's works when I was in my twenties. I was deeply into German literature then. Mann, Hesse, Döblin, Böll usw. My favourite Mann books would be The Magic Mountain, Felix Krull, Doktor Faustus, Buddenbrooks and Joseph and his Brothers. Faustus is particularly enjoyable because of its musical theme. They are all good though. I would love to read them all again but regrettably life is too short and there is so much still to be read!


----------



## SixFootScowl

Rogerx said:


> The Sutherland/ Bonynge story / house


Very good you have a copy. I just looked and there are no reasonably priced copies on ebay or Amazon. Enjoy!


----------



## Guest

I'm thoroughly enjoying this one:


----------



## Ich muss Caligari werden

Somerset Maugham's _Christmas Holiday _, seasonally appropriate and one of just a few of his novels I've yet to read. Recommendable, if you haven't read it, is his _Of Human Bondage_, a masterful study of obsessional love and its addictive qualities. I've read it 3x, would like to again, something of an addiction in itself, I suppose, but the days are growing short...


----------



## Guest

This is off to an excellent start.


----------



## Judith

Recently became fascinated with women's suffrage movement at the beginning of 20th century (e.g Emmeline Pankhurst). Studied a course about them so now reading a book called

Rise up Women
Diane Atkinson

which is their story


----------



## vincula

Currently reading this book. A nice gift to place under the tree.'









Regards,

Vincula


----------



## SanAntone

*Melville: His World and Work*

View attachment 147439


*Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography*

View attachment 147440


*Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind*


----------



## Barbebleu

SanAntone said:


> *Melville: His World and Work*
> 
> View attachment 147439
> 
> 
> *Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography*
> 
> View attachment 147440
> 
> 
> *Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind*
> 
> View attachment 147441


I quite fancy the Whitman.


----------



## Ad Astra

*R.I.P. John le Carré *

(1931 - 2020)​


----------



## Barbebleu

John Le Carre - A Delicate Truth. Excellent. Sad to hear of his passing.


----------



## thejewk

Finished Stormy Applause by Dubinsky of the Borodin Quartet, which was much better than my first impressions of it, but was sadly lacking much in the way of comment on the music, and I've unfortunately read much of the commentary on his experiences in the Soviet system second hand already. I also don't believe half if what is in it regarding his fellow musicians to be honest, and I find the claims that he is reporting conversations as they happened 30-40 years after they occurred frankly comical.

I've just started Swafford's Beethoven book, which is promising, and I have a history of Alexander the Great on pause.


----------



## Ingélou

I'm wondering what effect the covid restrictions have had on people's reading. In my husband's case, it's made him start a series of classic nineteenth century novels, such as he's avoided all his life. So worthy! And of course, I'm pleased - we can at last have proper literary discussions together (speaking as a retired English teacher). :tiphat:

In my case, I've regressed - just finished the boxed set of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series.


----------



## senza sordino

Ingélou said:


> *I'm wondering what effect the covid restrictions have had on people's reading.* In my husband's case, it's made him start a series of classic nineteenth century novels, such as he's avoided all his life. So worthy! And of course, I'm pleased - we can at last have proper literary discussions together (speaking as a retired English teacher). :tiphat:
> 
> In my case, I've regressed - just finished the boxed set of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series.


This is the first year in many years that I have read more than twelve books in one year. I always have a modest goal of one book a month, but I often don't quite manage this. This year I have. Right now I'm reading my fourteenth book: The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. I too am regressing.


----------



## TxllxT

*Leon Uris - Exodus*










When I was 15, this was the first book in English that I read. Now my wife is reading it in Dutch aloud to us both. It's a great pastime, reading a book together in lockdown!


----------



## Guest

"*Discrimination and Disparities*", Thomas Sowell, 2018.


----------



## Guest

Ingélou said:


> I'm wondering what effect the covid restrictions have had on people's reading. In my husband's case, it's made him start a series of classic nineteenth century novels, such as he's avoided all his life. So worthy! And of course, I'm pleased - we can at last have proper literary discussions together (speaking as a retired English teacher). :tiphat:
> 
> In my case, I've regressed - just finished the boxed set of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series.


Recently I had the great pleasure of re-reading Eliot's "Middlemarch"; the last time was in 1988. I'm trying to get the spouse engaged in 19th century literature and had him start "Great Expectations" because 'you cannot leave this planet without a knowledge on the page of Dickens'. He got to the second chapter and turned up his nose - not finding it laugh-aloud funny as I did...."Quick!! Somebody else's pork pie!!"


----------



## jegreenwood

Ingélou said:


> I'm wondering what effect the covid restrictions have had on people's reading. In my husband's case, it's made him start a series of classic nineteenth century novels, such as he's avoided all his life. So worthy! And of course, I'm pleased - we can at last have proper literary discussions together (speaking as a retired English teacher). :tiphat:
> 
> In my case, I've regressed - just finished the boxed set of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series.


I'm afraid I'm finding it harder to read, especially fiction. Currently reading Swafford's biography of Beethoven.

(I am doing some writing though.)


----------



## Open Book

Someone should start a thread just for discussion of Swafford's Beethoven. Several people on talkclassical are reading it right now.


----------



## Ich muss Caligari werden

Ingélou said:


> I'm wondering what effect the covid restrictions have had on people's reading. In my husband's case, it's made him start a series of classic nineteenth century novels, such as he's avoided all his life. So worthy! And of course, I'm pleased - we can at last have proper literary discussions together (speaking as a retired English teacher). :tiphat:
> 
> In my case, I've regressed - just finished the boxed set of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series.


Definitely not a regression; it's decompression. (Though I much prefer the L.M. Boston _Green Knowe_ series).


----------



## Ich muss Caligari werden

I finished Somerset Maugham's _Christmas Holiday_ last evening. I found the socio-political arguments therein tedious and at times repetitious, though certainly relevant to the story which is most compelling. The last page is, well, as the French say (the novel takes place for the most part in Paris) _bouleversant_.

Next up for my reading glasses (if not my eyes) : Paul Kalanithi's _When Breath Becomes Air_, autobiography of a multi-talented neurosurgeon who's diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer.


----------



## WNvXXT

Just finished C. J. Box' Joe Picket series.

Death Without Company (Walt Longmire #2) by Craig Johnson


----------



## annaw

I read Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" recently and I absolutely loved it. I've never read anything like that before.

After that, I decided I'd read "Flags in the Dust", which was one of Faulkner's earlier works where he doesn't use the stream of consciousness yet. I'm still quite in the beginning but I can say that Faulkner's prose is fantastic!


----------



## senza sordino

I've been given an Amazon Kindle for my birthday / Christmas. I am very pleased with this. I am currently reading A Promised Land, by Obama. I don't like reading enormous hardcover books because they are too heavy, but now I am able to read this book, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I have also purchased Testaments by Margaret Atwood. I'll start this soon. Now that I have a Kindle I will be reading more new books. I also have on my "to read" list The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. The description sounds intriguing:



> Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?


----------



## jegreenwood

I read _Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, _ and _Doctor Faustus_ decades ago. I found all three suffered from poor translation. On this thread I read a number of reports that the new translations are much better. I just ordered _The Magic Mountain_, which I found the most frustrating the first time through.


----------



## Taplow

Thomas Hughes: _Tom Brown's School Days_










The classic, first published in 1856. I'm not much of a fiction reader, really, but after this I think I'll dive into the first of George McDonald Fraser's Flashman Papers novels.


----------



## starthrower

I got turned onto both of these reading Maria Popova's excellent Brain Pickings blog. She is one of the most well read and intelligent writers doing this sort of thing. Here's her piece on the Einstein - Freud correspondence. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/06/why-war-einstein-freud/


----------



## jegreenwood

Has anyone here read _The Man Without Qualities_? What did you think?


----------



## Jacck

jegreenwood said:


> I read _Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, _ and _Doctor Faustus_ decades ago. I found all three suffered from poor translation. On this thread I read a number of reports that the new translations are much better. I just ordered _The Magic Mountain_, which I found the most frustrating the first time through.


I read the Magic Mountain a couple of years ago in a good translation and it is definitely a great book (possibly in my TOP10). It is multilayered and symbolic and poetic, but it can also be a bit heavy with too much German brooding and philosophising (especially the dialogues with the Jesuit). My favorite chapter was how Hans Castorp got lost in the mountains during his trip



jegreenwood said:


> Has anyone here read _The Man Without Qualities_? What did you think?


I read it and enjoyed it, although like the Magic Mountain, it is at times unnecessarily heavy with long sentences and too much philosophising. I understood the book as an exploration and search into a new ethics (system of values), on which the crumbling Austrian empire could be based. Musil deconstructs all the existing ethics, but he fails to convincingly present a new one, although he hints at mystics at some places.


----------



## Ariasexta

It is quite interesting to read serious literature, enlightening beyond meaure, aesthetics, inspiration, sentiments, philosophy, aphorisms, quotes, wittiness, fun, everything you need is there minus the sound. I have a modest collection(14 books) of Balzac in French from Folio series, paper bound, ordered and delivered this year from France in spite of the danger of contagion.


----------



## joen_cph

Ingélou said:


> I'm wondering what effect the covid restrictions have had on people's reading. In my husband's case, it's made him start a series of classic nineteenth century novels, such as he's avoided all his life. So worthy! And of course, I'm pleased - we can at last have proper literary discussions together (speaking as a retired English teacher). :tiphat:
> 
> In my case, I've regressed - just finished the boxed set of *Enid Blyton*'s Malory Towers series.


This made me remember her "_Famous Five_" series, targeted a children/tweens audience, that was extremely popular in my country in the 70s, I read a good deal of them, in Danish. They even had a reprint with new translations here, resulting in success as well, around 2005 and 2013.

There's of course a Wiki article; among other things, she considered becoming a pianist, via the Guildhall School of Music, and it turns out that she is the world's fourth-most translated author ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Blyton


----------



## SanAntone

annaw said:


> I read Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" recently and I absolutely loved it. I've never read anything like that before.
> 
> After that, I decided I'd read "Flags in the Dust", which was one of Faulkner's earlier works where he doesn't use the stream of consciousness yet. I'm still quite in the beginning but I can say that Faulkner's prose is fantastic!


I am glad you are reading Faulkner, one of my favorite writers. TSatF is an early book (1929), and he never went back to stream of consciousness writing. Flags in the Dust first came out as Sartoris (1929), severely edited by the publisher, and against Faulkner's wishes. He had two earlier books, before Sartoris, Soldier's Pay (1926) and Mosquitoes (1927), but which are not Mississippi books.

Flags in the Dust was eventually published in its original form in 1973, and Sartoris was deleted. I have a copy of it and it is a fine book, but Flags is better.

I like Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! as well as the Snopes trilogy, and re-read his books often.


----------



## SanAntone

TD

I am reading this book, _Why Dylan Matters_ (Richard F. Thomas) and in the process also going back and reading *Homer*, *Virgil*, *Ovid* and other Roman and Greek classics since the book focuses on Dylan's late recordings and the intertextuality at work involving those texts, as well as others.


----------



## annaw

SanAntone said:


> I am glad you are reading Faulkner, one of my favorite writers. TSatF is an early book (1929), and he never went back to stream of consciousness writing. Flags in the Dust first came out as Sartoris (1929), severely edited by the publisher, and against Faulkner's wishes. He had two earlier books, before Sartoris, Soldier's Pay (1926) and Mosquitoes (1927), but which are not Mississippi books.
> 
> Flags in the Dust was eventually published in its original form in 1973, and Sartoris was deleted. I have a copy of it and it is a fine book, but Flags is better.
> 
> I like Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! as well as the Snopes trilogy, and re-read his books often.


I became interested in Faulkner thanks to someone (maybe it was you, actually) writing about "Absalom, Absalom!" in this thread. I've been really enjoying Faulkner's writing. His style is truly unique and interesting, which makes his otherwise heavy writing somehow refreshing. I also love how effectively Faulkner manages to demonstrate the absurdity of the human mind (he did that particularly well in TSatF).

I have "Absalom, Absalom!" currently on my table, waiting to be read. I'm going to read it first in my native language and then in English because Faulkner's vocabulary is surprisingly difficult for me to understand (Faulkner must have been like a walking thesaurus with a Southern accent). Although I feel extremely comfortable communicating in English, I have dictionary almost constantly open when I read Faulkner in English :lol:. But Faulkner's writing has really been worth that effort and I'm thankful for whoever wrote about "Absalom, Absalom!" in this thread some time ago.


----------



## Strange Magic

A Wonderful Book About Science at the Edge of Certainty: Kermit Pattison's _Fossil Men, The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind_. See my review in the Groups in Book Chat or in Talk Science.


----------



## HenryPenfold

Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliett 

Finding it a bit slow. I'm half-way through and Tony hasn't even been mentioned yet.


----------



## DaveM

Inspired to read this since George Blake just passed away at 98 in Russia, lauded by Putin as a national hero:


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

My favorite things I read this year:

Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilych
Eliot - Middlemarch
Conrad - Nostromo
James - The Portrait of a Lady
Dostoevsky - The Idiot
Shusako Endo - Silence
Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Shakespeare - The Tempest, Othello, Love’s Labour’s Lost
Sara Baume - Spill Simmer Falter Wither (a very recent novel by an extremely talented young writer, highly recommended)
Lots of poetry and short fiction 

And music-related:
Alex Ross - The Rest is Noise
Harold C. Schonberg - The Lives of the Great Composers
John Eliot Gardiner - Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven
James R. Gaines - Evening in the Palace of Reason


----------



## Ad Astra

More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth & Belief - Bernardo Kastrup


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## Guest

Very detailed and informative.


----------



## flamencosketches

I was reading nonstop all December and read some great books, mostly short. Some highlights include a few by Haruki Murakami: _Men Without Women_, _Norwegian Wood_, _Hear the Wind Sing_, and _Pinball, 1973_. He's a new discovery for me, though I have read his longform Ozawa interview book called Absolutely On Music, which I also enjoyed. I find much to relate to in Murakami and I find him an interesting writer.

Outside of that, I read the first few Sherlock Holmes novels and some of the short stories, for the first time; all good fun reading, nothing too serious. I reread some great books: _The Great Gatsby_, _The Catcher in the Rye_, neither of which I had read since high school or early college. I read a few great plays by Henrik Ibsen: _Hedda Gabler_ and _The Master Builder_, both of which were absolutely phenomenal.

Most recently, I've started Honoré de Balzac's _Père Goriot_, which I'm about halfway through. So far, so good.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

I surprised myself by completing forty-five novel-length books during 2020. I suspect I'll never come close to that total again, let alone surpass it, this lifetime. The vast majority were Fantasy, a few non-fiction. I even read several 'classics', rare for me. I have a two-way tie for Best Re-read of the Year: Guy Gavriel Kay's "The Lions of Al-Rassan" (fantasy) and Bruce Catton's three-volume "The Army of the Potomac" (non-fiction, chronicling the Union's premier army during the US civil War). I ended up picking "The Witcher" series (fantasy) as Best Initial Read(s) of the Year, though I'm not as fond of it as many young BookTubers seem to be. Unlike some years, I had no great dissapointments, so no 2020 Worst Read of the Year. I'm currently reading "The Breaking of Northwall", first book of Paul O. Williams' "Pebar Cycle". I don't yet know if I'll continue on with Pelbar or start digging into a too-high iniital read TBR stack.


----------



## Ad Astra

Fazioli said:


> Very detailed and informative.


Loved it!

As for me just here looking for new books.


----------



## Barbebleu

Four Princes by John Julius Norwich. Rather good history book about four contemporary powerful rulers. Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V and Suleiman the Magnificent.


----------



## senza sordino

ToneDeaf&Senile said:


> I surprised myself by completing forty-five novel-length books during 2020. I suspect I'll never come close to that total again, let alone surpass it, this lifetime. The vast majority were Fantasy, a few non-fiction. I even read several 'classics', rare for me. I have a two-way tie for Best Re-read of the Year: Guy Gavriel Kay's "The Lions of Al-Rassan" (fantasy) and Bruce Catton's three-volume "The Army of the Potomac" (non-fiction, chronicling the Union's premier army during the US Civil War). I ended up picking "The Witcher" series (fantasy) as Best Initial Read(s) of the Year, though I'm not as fond of it as many young BookTubers seem to be. Unlike some years, I had no great disappointments, so no 2020 Worst Read of the Year. I'm currently reading "The Breaking of Northwall", the first book of Paul O. Williams' "Pebar Cycle". I don't yet know if I'll continue on with Pelbar or start digging into a too-high initial read TBR stack.


Good for you for reading forty-five novel-length books, that's impressive. I don't know any of the books or authors you mentioned.

I read a mere fourteen books, not quite a record for me, but it's been years since I read that many. I usually set a goal of reading twelve books a year, and never meet that goal. In 2020 I surpassed that goal by two books. My favorites were Watership Down by Richard Adams and the two Stephen Fry Greek mythology books: Mythos and Heroes.

I'm currently reading A Promised Land by Obama, on my new Kindle. It's a lot easier holding a Kindle than a 700 plus page hardcover book. Now that I have a Kindle, I'll probably read some more new hardcover books.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## HenryPenfold

Just finished Roget's Thesaurus. I thought it was rubbish, dross, garbage, refuse, pointless, superfluous, redundant .....


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 2035 last night, 13 Jan 2021, I completed a fourth read of Paul O. Williams' The Breaking of Northwall, book one of his Pelbar Cycle. It's another of those sagas set long after 'our' civilization was utterly destroyed due to nuclear conflict. Remnants of survivors exist as hostile tribes (for lack of a better term). Book one's chief protagonist belongs to a peaceful, woman-run, tribe who remain safely isolated within their several well-built fortress-cities. Through his many adventures/misadventures, he manages to instill a fledgling union with several formerly adversarial tribes, capped at book's end by those tribes coming together to defeat a new, cruel, technologically advanced enemy bend on capturing Northwall, one of the Pelbar strongholds. The book is overall well done, with an especially strong closing battle.

My originally intent was to not continue the series but instead move on to something in my initial-read TBR pile. I'm reevaluating that.



senza sordino said:


> Good for you for reading forty-five novel-length books, that's impressive. I don't know any of the books or authors you mentioned.
> 
> I read a mere fourteen books, not quite a record for me, but it's been years since I read that many. I usually set a goal of reading twelve books a year, and never meet that goal. In 2020 I surpassed that goal by two books. My favorites were Watership Down by Richard Adams and the two Stephen Fry Greek mythology books: Mythos and Heroes.
> 
> I'm currently reading A Promised Land by Obama, on my new Kindle. It's a lot easier holding a Kindle than a 700 plus page hardcover book. Now that I have a Kindle, I'll probably read some more new hardcover books.


I'm passing familiar with Watership Down. I believe I read it on-borrow from a friend decades ago. Those books on Greek mythology sound appealing, both subject matter and author (who is known to me, but not as a writer).

The Kay (Al Rassan) is a strong recommendation from me if you enjoy well written fantasy. To be fair, Kay's books or more 'historic fiction (well researched) with supernatural elements thrown in' than pure modern fantasy. Except his first publication, *Fionavar Tapestry*, a Tolkienesque epic fantasy. *Al Rassan* is the better choice to sample, IMO. If you don't care for that, you probably won't enjoy the rest of Kay's output.


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## Musicaterina

Jörg Zink: Psalmen und Gebete der Bibel (engl.: Psalms and Prayers of the Bible)

Jörg Zink was a German Lutheran theologian who lived from 1922 till 2016. Beside a lot of books about the Christian faith he wrote also a German translation of the bible, the so-called Jörg-Zink-Bibel. It contains the whole new Testament and important parts of the old Testament.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Started watching "The Watch" recently, and it piqued my interest enough to try out some of Pratchett's Discworld universe.


----------



## senza sordino

I have just finished A Promised Land, by Obama. I really enjoyed this, I learned a lot. It is very well written and very detailed. It skims over his early life and political career. The majority of the book is the first campaign and first term. The book ends with the raid on bin Laden. Volume 2 will deal with the second term. Of course, it is biased, it's written from Obama's point of view. It's long, over 700 pages, but it wasn't tedious.

I will now begin reading Testaments by Margeret Atwood, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale.

I also have Bleak House, by Charles Dickens on my Kindle. And I just purchased The Stories of English by David Crystal, about the history of the English language.

Plenty to read, but I'm not going anywhere, other than work every day.


----------



## ArtMusic

_Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune Serving the Emperor, 1788-1791_ by Christoph Wolff (Author, Harvard University) is an excellent book. It shows it was likely that Mozart's fortune was going to change had he lived for a little longer as his art was establishing and maturing to new heights.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 2105 yesterday evening, 21 Jan 2021, I concluded a fourth reading of Paul O. Williams The Ends of the Circle, book two of his Pelbar Cycle. A fine series entry. This one focuses on two new main protagonists, a husband/wife team, separated early on due to family strife. The book centers on their separate physical journeys until, at the end, they reunite. It's more complicated than that, of course.

I suppose I ought to mention that this is a science-fiction series, rather than fantasy. It takes place in the US, or rather what was the US until nuclear catastrophe over a thousand years before the series begins destroyed our technologically advanced society and reduced population to isolated small clumps of people, who, when the books begin, live a pre-industrial lifestyle. Yeah, it's been done before, and since. It's done quite well here. It's a series I recommend, especially if you can find it used for pocket change.

I need to set Peldar aside and begin whistling down my initial-read TBR list. Will it happen? We shall see.


----------



## Ad Astra

*An Inquiry into the Good* by *Kitaro Nishida*​


----------



## flamencosketches

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. It's an easy read. Written like a screenplay, with tons of dialogue, which means that having seen the movie several times, I can't help but play back scenes from the movie in my head as I read. I reckon it's detracting from the experience of actually appreciating McCarthy's prose, but what can you do. I should have read the book first.


----------



## Ad Astra

flamencosketches said:


> I'm about 2/3 of the way through Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. It's an easy read. Written like a screenplay, with tons of dialogue, which means that having seen the movie several times, I can't help but play back scenes from the movie in my head as I read. I reckon it's detracting from the experience of actually appreciating McCarthy's prose, but what can you do. I should have read the book first.


I read the book first but when back to it after I'd seen the movie. I had the same issue but eventually got over it. I tend to avoid novel adaptations until I've read the original now.


----------



## flamencosketches

Ad Astra said:


> I read the book first but when back to it after I'd seen the movie. I had the same issue but eventually got over it. I tend to avoid novel adaptations until I've read the original now.


I tend to read the book first whenever possible too for that reason. It's especially problematic with this book just due to the very cinematic nature of the book. If I'm not mistaken, McCarthy originally envisioned it as a screenplay before turning it into a novel, and it shows. In any case, there are events in the book that were cut for the film, so it's worth reading from that standpoint as well. I like McCarthy. I'm going to try and read more of his works. The only other one I've read was The Road, about 10 years ago.


----------



## Ad Astra

I believe you are right about the screenplay. As for his books I've read four of them the others being The Road, Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses. In all honesty I like his books but I wouldn't buy them or go out my way to read them. I bought them cheap from a charity and then I returned them. *I'd recommend Blood Meridian of the two remaining books. *


----------



## Pat Fairlea

'Invasion of the Unsinkable Plastic Ducks' by Christopher Brookmyre.

Seriously, it's really good.


----------



## Roger Knox

jegreenwood said:


> I read _Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, _ and _Doctor Faustus_ decades ago. I found all three suffered from poor translation. On this thread I read a number of reports that the new translations are much better. I just ordered _The Magic Mountain_, which I found the most frustrating the first time through.


That's interesting. At one point my German was good enough to read Mann's novella _Tonio Kröger_ in the original and I was amazed at how artistic, even poetic Mann's writing was in the original. _Doctor Faustus_ bowled me over despite the poor translation.


----------



## Ad Astra

Roger Knox said:


> That's interesting. At one point my German was good enough to read Mann's novella _Tonio Kröger_ in the original and I was amazed at how artistic, even poetic Mann's writing was in the original. _Doctor Faustus_ bowled me over despite the poor translation.


One of my favourite writers I do feel something I lost in the translation but it is still worth reading even in English.


----------



## jegreenwood

Roger Knox said:


> That's interesting. At one point my German was good enough to read Mann's novella _Tonio Kröger_ in the original and I was amazed at how artistic, even poetic Mann's writing was in the original. _Doctor Faustus_ bowled me over despite the poor translation.


I am not saying that the translations ruined the novels. But they left me unable to assess Mann as a stylist.

In any event (and influenced by Swafford's biography of Beethoven) I am instead going back to Goethe. I just finished "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and plan to take up "Faust" next.


----------



## vincula

Currently revisiting this great novel after many years.









Regards,

Vincula


----------



## Conrad2

After I watched the film Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, I wanted to read the book on which the film was based on. 







So far, the first few chapters are very interesting, and I hoped that it will remain the same as, or surpassed the beginning, as I continue reading this book.

- Solaris written by Stanisław Lem.


----------



## Ad Astra

Conrad2 said:


> After I watched the film Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, I wanted to read the book on which the film was based on.
> View attachment 149570


My all time number 1 favourite director. 

Welcome to the forum I hope you stay.


----------



## Conrad2

Same, He is one of my favorites directors. 
Thank you for welcoming me to the forum!


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern

Roger Knox said:


> That's interesting. At one point my German was good enough to read Mann's novella _Tonio Kröger_ in the original and I was amazed at how artistic, even poetic Mann's writing was in the original. _Doctor Faustus_ bowled me over despite the poor translation.


Someone told me one time that there's a lot of humor in Mann's writing gets lost in translation. I haven't read him myself besides starting _Tod in Venedig_ once then getting sidetracked.


----------



## jegreenwood

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> Someone told me one time that there's a lot of humor in Mann's writing gets lost in translation. I haven't read him myself besides starting _Tod in Venedig_ once then getting sidetracked.


I certainly don't recall very much humor. I hope the new translations will help in that regard.


----------



## Ad Astra

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> Someone told me one time that there's a lot of humor in Mann's writing gets lost in translation. I haven't read him myself besides starting _Tod in Venedig_ once then getting sidetracked.


It's true and I think with any novel written outside your time and culture there is humour that would only be funny to people living at that time in that culture. Mann's humour certainly transcends this but it has to read in the original language.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Conrad2 said:


> After I watched the film Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, I wanted to read the book on which the film was based on.
> View attachment 149570
> 
> So far, the first few chapters are very interesting, and I hoped that it will remain the same as, or surpassed the beginning, as I continue reading this book.
> 
> - Solaris written by Stanisław Lem.


Have you read other Lem? One of his few 'serious' SF books, the others being more satirical / literary. The Cyberiad has to be one of my all-time favorite works in any genre

https://web.archive.org/web/2016013...vels/the-cyberiad/146-how-the-world-was-saved


----------



## annaw

I’m still on a Faulkner binge.

I started reading “Absalom, Absalom!”. It was all fun and games until the fourth chapter, which I still haven’t managed to finish, and which I probably have to partly read again. Faulkner just goes crazy there - I felt my brain cells giving up one by one when I was reading it :lol:. But it’s paradoxically rewarding when I do understand what he’s writing about.


----------



## bz3

I'm reading Demons by Dostoevsky. Oddly, I feel I am also living it.


----------



## Flamme

Thats intense...


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## jegreenwood

bz3 said:


> I'm reading Demons by Dostoevsky. Oddly, I feel I am also living it.


I read it after 9/11.

I read Conrad's "The Secret Agent" after the London tube bombing.


----------



## bz3

jegreenwood said:


> I read it after 9/11.
> 
> I read Conrad's "The Secret Agent" after the London tube bombing.


I read Crime and Punishment after taking out my neighbor's trash can. Uh-oh guys...


----------



## Gothos

Very entertaining thus far.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 0417 this morning, 30 Jan 2021, I concluded a third read of Paul O. Williams *The Dome in the Forest*, book three of his *Pelbar Cycle*. This entry sees new antagonists in the form of survivors of earth's 'time of fire' who have been shut away in a controlled environment, retaining much advanced technology/knowledge. When that sheltered domicile at last begins to crumble they rejoin the outside world, a not altogether seamless merging. (These isolated people are of course descendants of those original survivors, not original survivors with extended lifespans.)

(Had he made me his antagonist, the book would be titled *The Dumb in the Forest*.)

As with each series entry, I now debate continuing on or tackling a large initial-read TBR stack.


----------



## HenryPenfold

'Daring To Excel' The Story Of The National Youth Orchestra Of Great Britain - Ruth Railton (1992)


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## LarryShone

*Zoo Quest for a Dragon* by David Attenborough, first edition 1957


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## senza sordino

I just finished The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. I couldn't put it down, and read it in one week - that's fast for me. She creates a very chilling world. It's a part dystopian world and also a part spy thriller. I recommend it. It's written in first person, from the perspective of three different women, testimonies. 









The next book for me to read is The Stories of English, by David Crystal. It is about the history of the English language.


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## flamencosketches

WNvXXT said:


> [ goodreads ]


I read about the Hartford circus fire a few months ago on Wikipedia and ever since I've been wanting to read a book about it. I'll have to check this out.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Dostoevsky - _The Brothers Karamazov._ Yup, it's all that it's said to be. Required reading for humanity.


----------



## Jacck

Abdul Alhazred - Necronomicon


----------



## flamencosketches

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Dostoevsky - _The Brothers Karamazov._ Yup, it's all that it's said to be. Required reading for humanity.


I can't condone the concept of "required reading for humanity" but I would agree that that's a great book. Been a long time since I've read it though. I'm probably due for a reread sometime this year...


----------



## Bwv 1080

Jacck said:


> Abdul Alhazred - Necronomicon


How do you keep the human skin cover properly moisturized on your copy? Tried a number of different lotions on mine, but must be all those years it lay undiscovered in the desert - keeps drying out


----------



## Gothos

I like detective/mystery stories if they have an unusual setting.
(Brother Cadfael comes to mind.)
This series is about a detective on the Navajo Tribal Police and how he has to deal
with cases that sometimes involve tribal rituals.All set on a reservation that is spread out
over 4 states.Always interesting.


----------



## jegreenwood

Gothos said:


> View attachment 150111
> 
> 
> I like detective/mystery stories if they have an unusual setting.
> (Brother Cadfael comes to mind.)
> This series is about a detective on the Navajo Tribal Police and how he has to deal
> with cases that sometimes involve tribal rituals.All set on a reservation that is spread out
> over 4 states.Always interesting.


Don't know why I haven't gone back to that series for many years.

While waiting for Amazon to send me a newer translation of "Faust", I read Seamus Heaney's translation of "Beowulf." Then my library notified me that my reserved copy of Robert Galbraith's (J.K. Rowling's) 820 page (!) mystery, "Troubled Blood", was available. Reading that now.

Grammar question - I've been taught that a comma comes before the quotation mark at the end of quote. Is that also true for book titles? It looks unnatural to me. Oddly putting a period before the close quote seems right.


----------



## Roger Knox

jegreenwood said:


> While waiting for Amazon to send me a newer translation of "Faust", I read Seamus Heaney's translation of "Beowulf."


I liked Heaney's _Beowolf_ skilful verse translation. Its been quite a while since I read it. There is a sensibility at the borderline of Germanic mythology/Christianity that sticks with me somehow, wherever it turns up.

I've never read _Faust_ but would be interested to know of your experience with it.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

flamencosketches said:


> I can't condone the concept of "required reading for humanity" but I would agree that that's a great book. Been a long time since I've read it though. I'm probably due for a reread sometime this year...


I began reading it last year (2020), but stopped dead in my tracks during a scene in which one of the book's more disreputable characters acted just as I used to during my misspent early life. (As opposed to my misspent old age.) With similar self-justification. It simply hit too close to home. I hope to pick it up again before all is said and done. The portion I managed to complete convince me that it is indeed worthy of its reputation.


----------



## Roger Knox

Ad Astra said:


> It's true and I think with any novel written outside your time and culture there is humour that would only be funny to people living at that time in that culture. Mann's humour certainly transcends this but it has to read in the original language.


_The Confessions of Felix Krull_ is funny (if rather dark) even in English. I do wish that Thomas Mann had finished it, but maybe he couldn't decide how to wind up with the scoundrel.


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## Gothos

One of the funniest writers in the English language IMHO.


----------



## Strange Magic

*Another Wonderful, Recent Book on Paleoanthropology*

Just finished Meave Leakey's _The Sediments of time_, her combination autobiography, record of fieldwork, and broad overview of the state of the study of fossil hominin materials and the course of our evolution over the past several million years. Great book, and a fit companion to Kermit Pattison's _Fossil Men_. I review Leakey's book at length in the Groups in Book Chat and Talk Science.


----------



## Alinde

Selected Letters of Mme de Sévigné. 

I'm recording a nineteenth century translation into English but so far, so good. I'm enjoying the court gossip and historical resonance in the letters I've read so far. They have a playful whimsy and a deft irony that put me in mind of the equally clever Jane Austen.

Of course, I haven't yet read the letters on which the author's fame most solidly rests - those to her daughter. I'm a slow reader.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 2155 yesterday evening, 07 Nov 2021, I concluded a fourth read of Paul O. Williams *The Fall of the Shell*, book four of his *Pelbar Cycle*. This one focus mainly on the separate adventures of two youngish brothers, and the disintegration of the Pelbar city which is their home. For a while I felt this the weakest thus far, a bit to same-old same-old. By its end it had redeemed itself.

As always this series, I now debate continuing on or taking a break for something different.


----------



## HenryPenfold

3 books on the go at the moment

Malcolm Arnold: Rogue Genius - Anthony Meredith & Paul Harris
Daring To Excel: The Story Of The National Youth Orchestra Of Great Britain - Ruth Railton
Icarus Fallen - Chantal Delsol (English translation by Robin Dick)


----------



## jegreenwood

Finished _Faust Part 1_. After comparing three translations, I selected David Luke's (from 1987). At times awkward, at times somewhat colloquial, but always comprehensible. And let's face it - it's tough to translate 4600 lines of rhyming verse (unless you're Richard Wilbur translating Moliere).

The play was written over 30+ years, and that shows. Much of the first half (after the Prologues) seems to be an advance on _Young Werther_ but not by that much. But then Mephistopheles shows up, and the play changes tone entirely. (I should note that the play is a compound of pieces written at various time, not in sequence.). The devil really does get the best lines. And the second half does have a powerful dramatic drive.

Worth reading, for sure, but as Goethe waited 24 years to publish Part 2, I'll turn to something else for a while.

It was interesting to read "Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel" in context.


----------



## Roger Knox

jegreenwood said:


> Finished _Faust Part 1_. After comparing three translations, I selected David Luke's (from 1987). At times awkward, at times somewhat colloquial, but always comprehensible. And let's face it - it's tough to translate 4600 lines of rhyming verse (unless you're Richard Wilbur translating Moliere). ... Worth reading, for sure, but as Goethe waited 24 years to publish Part 2, I'll turn to something else for a while.


Congratulations!:tiphat: That's quite an achievement.

I can certainly identify with wanting now to take a break or maybe a long "intermission" between Parts 1 and 2.


----------



## Jacck

jegreenwood said:


> Finished _Faust Part 1_. After comparing three translations, I selected David Luke's (from 1987). At times awkward, at times somewhat colloquial, but always comprehensible. And let's face it - it's tough to translate 4600 lines of rhyming verse (unless you're Richard Wilbur translating Moliere).


I am fortunate enough that there is a brilliant Czech translation of Faust and also that I can speak German well enough to be able to read it in the original. Faust is definitely a masterpiece. Goethe had been writing it for his whole life, starting as young man and ending as an old man, and it definitely shows. The second Faust book is very different from the first one. There was too much Greek mythology for my taste. But the ending is great. But you can listen to Mahler 8 to hear it 

and my favorite Faust movie is the a French movie La Beauté du diable by René Clair


----------



## vincula

Enjoying this book right now. Recommended









Regards,

Vincula


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1148 this morning I finished a fourth read of Paul O. Williams' *An Ambush of Shadows*, book five of his *Pelbar Cycle*. Having more time to devote to reading due to periodic power outages that kept me off the computer, I'm now some pages into book six, *The Song of the Axe*.


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## jegreenwood

_Rubbernecker_ by Belinda Bauer. I had never heard of her until I read a review of her latest in the Crime column of this Sunday's New York Times Book Review. I'm 100 pages in and quite enjoying it. The protagonist has Asperger's Syndrome, which brings to mind _The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time_.

Anyone else read anything by Bauer?


----------



## SanAntone

*Bach's Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work *
by Christoph Wolff

View attachment 150830


*Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989* 
by Tim Rutherford-Johnson

View attachment 150831


----------



## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern

I just finished up All's Quiet on the Western Front. A really horrifying and emotionally draining read. I think it was the first of it's kind to portray war in its raw, evil, unromanticized form, if I'm not mistaken.


----------



## Wilhelm Theophilus

Here I stand

A life of Martin Luther

by Roland H. Bainton


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## flamencosketches

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> I just finished up All's Quiet on the Western Front. A really horrifying and emotionally draining read. I think it was the first of it's kind to portray war in its raw, evil, unromanticized form, if I'm not mistaken.


Been meaning to read this. I suppose I'll pick up a copy next time I'm at a used bookstore. They always have about 50 copies of that book.

Currently reading James Baldwin's _Giovanni's Room_. So far so good.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1259 this afternoon, 17 Feb 2021, I concluded a fourth read of Paul O. Williams' *The Song of the Axe*, book six of *The Pelbar Cycle*. I'm already decently into the seventh and final book, *An Ambush of Shadows*.


----------



## Varick

A great book for anyone interested in discussing politics with anyone else, particularly with those whom you disagree. It gives you a great understanding of why many people believe certain things often, because of noble and good intentions, regardless of political bent. Short, but packed with great insights.

V


----------



## bz3

Varick said:


> View attachment 151082
> 
> 
> A great book for anyone interested in discussing politics with anyone else, particularly with those whom you disagree. It gives you a great understanding of why many people believe certain things often, because of noble and good intentions, regardless of political bent. Short, but packed with great insights.
> 
> V


Ever since becoming familiar with the obscurantist descriptions in international relations theory that rely on random and exclusive dichotomies I've been sort of skeptical of Hegelian explanations for sociological phenomena. The guy who wrote this appears to be a libertarian, or at least in the employ of the contemptible Cato (I dallied enough in think tank work to sour to the taste). Are you, by chance, a libertarian?

The heavily categorical mode of thought described above I do think appeals to a person with a certain style of thinking. I think it tends to overlap with libertarianism by its nature, but also with conservatism. I am one such (recovering) type of thinker. The heavy emotionalism and insistently whiggish nature of what passes as 'mainstream political thought' today might as well be written in some long-dead ancient language for many of us.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1300 today, 20 Feb 2021, I concluded a fourth read of the seventh and final book in Paul O. Williams' *Pelbar Cycle*, *The Sword of Forbearance*. Having last read the series during 2005, I recalled little of each book prior to this reading. With this last entry, I recalled absolutely nothing. I knew who the chief antagonists would be, but that can be figured out without having previously read book seven. Wait. While typing this it dawns on me that I did indeed remember one thing about the book: during its epilogue a character featured in an earlier volume, but absent this volume, reappears, and the gist of what then transpires.

It's a fine series and an easy recommendation. I'm glad to have given it another read. I hope to do so again in another 5-10 years, at my age less and less a given.


----------



## Varick

bz3 said:


> Ever since becoming familiar with the obscurantist descriptions in international relations theory that rely on random and exclusive dichotomies I've been sort of skeptical of Hegelian explanations for sociological phenomena. The guy who wrote this appears to be a libertarian, or at least in the employ of the contemptible Cato (I dallied enough in think tank work to sour to the taste). Are you, by chance, a libertarian?


No, I am not a libertarian. Like all modes of political thought it lacks, particularly when it comes to the hard core/purist model of libertarianism. And like most modes of political thought, there are good ideas in it as well.



bz3 said:


> The heavily categorical mode of thought described above I do think appeals to a person with a certain style of thinking. I think it tends to overlap with libertarianism by its nature, but also with conservatism. I am one such (recovering) type of thinker. The heavy emotionalism and insistently whiggish nature of what passes as 'mainstream political thought' today might as well be written in some long-dead ancient language for many of us.


This book take a more psychological/philosophical look at what drives the three basic modes of political ideology and how it motivates most of us to lean heavily towards one of these three categories. Obviously most people are an amalgamation of all three and they can overlap in many areas, but the book heavily stresses how to see another's perspective and to listen to how one shapes an argument. How to see the human, personal, and valid motivations that shape one's ideology and perspective.

It is a book that tries to unite from a perspective of listening and understanding each other. Not dividing which is exactly what "mainstream political thought" does these days the way it is framed.

V


----------



## senza sordino

I posted a couple of weeks ago that I have started to read The Stories of English, by David Crystal. I put it down temporarily because it has come to my attention that my knowledge of the pre-Norman invasion of England is woefully lacking. I don't know much about the history of the dark ages of England. So I have decided to tackle this problem by reading Britain after Rome by Robin Fleming. I will then return to reading The Stories of English.

From what I did read of The Stories of English is that we don't have a lot of old English writing samples. There were approximately three million words written during a four-hundred year span from 600 to 1000 CE. To put that in perspective, Dickens wrote about four million words.



















In the meantime, I read this delightful book on my Kindle last weekend. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig. It's about a woman who tries to commit suicide and while at the point of passing over she encounters the Midnight Library, an infinite library of alternate lives. If she had made different choices at different moments in her life, then her life would have been radically different. In the book, she gets to try on hundreds of different lives. As the book progresses her book of regrets slowly disappears. It's essentially the same story as It's a Wonderful Life.

I had forgotten all about a decision I had made immediately after I graduated from university. I wrote the application to the LSE (London School of Economics), and I got a professor to write me a letter of recommendation. I had relatives in London I could have lived with. This was when tuition wasn't prohibitive. I never sent in the application. Why not? How would my life have been different if I had made that one different decision? And of course, there are hundreds of other decisions I could have made differently.


----------



## WNvXXT

Walt Longmire #12


----------



## Kieran

Been guzzling a spate of Fred Vargas cop thriller books, they're well written, a tad overthought but that's forgivable given the great characters and stories...


----------



## Andrew Kenneth

"The left hand of darkness" (1969) by Ursula Le Guin


----------



## Caesura

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (abridged version that I’m borrowing from school)


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

A change of pace for me. At 1242 this afternoon, 23 Feb 2021, I concluded an initial read of Gil Culkin's *The Mississippi Wrestling Territory, The Untold Story*. It's one of two "pro-wrestling" books I bought my brother as Christmas gifts this past holiday season. He read them immediately, then loaned them to me. I have a passing interest in the territorial / kayfabe wrestling era, having attended local matches with my parents during my youth, and watching my share of kayfabe wrestling on TV. The modern product holds no interest for me.

As to the book, it's a good read if you are interested in the subject, as I am, not being familiar with the Mississippi territory. As literature, it leaves much to be desired, as the author himself states. Entirely self-written and published.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Kieran said:


> Been guzzling a spate of Fred Vargas cop thriller books, they're well written, a tad overthought but that's forgivable given the great characters and stories...


Fred Vargas worked in the same research field as me until she discovered it was more fun to write novels. Good for Fred!


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## Guest




----------



## Ingélou

Andrew Lycett's biography of Kipling - very readable. I love 'Kim' and some of the well-known poems, but haven't read much Kipling otherwise. However, I met my husband of 47 years at Burwash, near Bateman's, Kipling's home, and during our courtship, he often read to me from the Barrack Room Ballads.


----------



## flamencosketches

Yukio Mishima's _Confessions of a Mask_. A very strange and dark book, but an enjoyable read from a psychological perspective.


----------



## WNvXXT

Walt Longmire #13


----------



## Guest

Good advice regardless of how long one has played.


----------



## starthrower

The Histories by Herodotus, B&N edition


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## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1524 this afternoon, 25 Feb 2021, I concluded an initial read of *Living the Dream, Memphis Wrestling, The Randy Hales Story*. This is the second of two books I gave my brother this past Christmas, lent me after he finished them. My own history with Memphis area wrestling goes back a long way, having attended live 'cards' with my parents as a lad during the late 1950s. (Not in Memphis itself, but a non Tennessee town that sometimes hosted wrestling cards.) As to the book, it was an okay read.

Not sure what I'll tackle next. I've a book on order from Amazon I definitely want to read ASAP. But it's just now receiving its first paperback printing. I ordered it only this morning. It'll not get it until Mar 3 or 4.


----------



## Ariasexta

Paulo Coelho: The Valkyries 

Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays(English Version, Penguin Classics)


----------



## Gothos

I enjoy reading about American history.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1733 this afternoon, not long after supper, I concluded and initial read of Bernard Cornwell's *The Pale Horseman*, book two of his *Saxon* series, historical fiction set in England during the time of King Alfred "The Great" and the Danish invasion. These books inspired *The Last Kingdom* TV series, which I have not seen. I'll start in on book three, *Lords of the North*, by bedtime.


----------



## Varick

I just started reading about this guy.









Fascinating!

V


----------



## Conrad2

Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu
View attachment 151655

A gifted book. Currently on the 2nd chapter.


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## flamencosketches

ToneDeaf&Senile said:


> At 1733 this afternoon, not long after supper, I concluded and initial read of Bernard Cornwell's *The Pale Horseman*, book two of his *Saxon* series, historical fiction set in England during the time of King Alfred "The Great" and the Danish invasion. These books inspired *The Last Kingdom* TV series, which I have not seen. I'll start in on book three, *Lords of the North*, by bedtime.


You've gotta watch The Last Kingdom! My girlfriend and I watched it all the way through twice last year, it's awesome, with the caveat that there is lots of gratuitous violence and sex, so if you are averse to those things, perhaps stay away. I've been meaning to check out the books.

Just started Fyodor Dostoevsky's _The Brothers Karamazov_. A few weeks ago I made the decision that I would read this book cover to cover in the month of March. At almost 800 pages (long pages at that, with lots of text), I'm not sure how long it will take me to complete, but so far so good. I've read this book once maybe 10 years ago so it's good getting back to it with a bit more life experience under my belt.

Yesterday I finished Leo Tolstoy's _The Death of Ivan Ilyich_ which I absolutely loved. Another reread, but it made a much, much bigger impression on me this time compared to the first time I read it, during college. I guess I found it a whole lot more relatable now, again, with a bit more life experience under my belt. A harrowing read.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Thomas Hardy, _Tess of the d'Urbervilles_. One of those novels that is almost technically flawless, with achingly gorgeous prose, but whose subject matter is not for the faint-hearted. 19th century Realism at its most poetically raw.


----------



## WNvXXT

A fast enjoyable read. The background on medical training / schools back then was fascinating, as was how he followed the researchers as they worked on a serum or vaccine. The U.S. went from almost last to the world's best medical doctors / facilities. Back then, medical school entry did not require a degree.

Interesting that one of the observed side effects of those who got the worst cases of that 1918 flu and survived sometimes suffered from brain effects / post flu neurological disorders. And the effects on Woodrow Wilson at the peace talks after he got sick.

It's really amazing what is known after the fact - and how people thought they knew what was going on at the time didn't have a clue. Makes me think how the current situation will eventually go down in history once the 20/20 hindsight kicks in.

[ goodreads ]


----------



## starthrower

750 pages of them. I've barely made a dent but I'm enjoying it so far.


----------



## vincula

I'm having a blast reading this book so far. A real achievement.









Regards,

Vincula


----------



## WNvXXT

Wayward Pines #2 - Blake Crouch trilogy.

_Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it's called the present._


----------



## Strange Magic

_Atomic Spy: The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs_, by Nancy Thorndike Greenspan. A riveting biography of a central figure in 20th-century physics, war, and espionage. A full review in the Groups in Book Chat.


----------



## Barbebleu

James Shapiro - 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear.


----------



## jegreenwood

Barbebleu said:


> James Shapiro - 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear.


Started that a few months ago, but couldn't get into it. My reading tastes this past year have been unpredictable. Let me know if I should revisit.

Now rereading _The Magic Mountain_. The new translation makes a huge difference.


----------



## Barbebleu

Barbebleu said:


> James Shapiro - 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear.


I'm not sure. I've invested so much time to it I'm loathe to stop. It is a bit of a plod in places but interesting in others. I'll probably persevere because I've enjoyed his other essays into Shakespeare's world.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Sophocles - _Antigone_, _Oedipus the King_ and _Oedipus at Colonus_

A recent listen to Stravinsky's opera _Oedipus Rex_ re-ignited the interest.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I was assigned the first few cantos of the _Divine Comedy_ for one of my courses, but I loved it so much I decided to plow onward, slowly but surely, one canto or so at a time. The material is so rich in style, philosophy, content, etc. that one can't take in too much at a time anyway. Only bummer is the Longfellow translation that I have is pretty murky and old-fashioned.


----------



## HenryPenfold

vincula said:


> I'm having a blast reading this book so far. A real achievement.
> 
> View attachment 151959
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Vincula


I bought that on my Kindle a few years ago and I still haven't started it.


----------



## senza sordino

I just finished reading Hamlet from this edition.









It was easier than I thought it would be to read. It took me about the same amount of time to read as to stage the play. I know I missed some of the metaphors and imagery and I had to use the footnotes. I haven't read Shakespeare since I was in high school, and then I found it bewildering. I've been watching Upstart Crow on Britbox and thought perhaps I should try reading some Shakespeare.

I already knew the basic outline of the story, so that helped. I am currently watching a 1980 BBC production of Hamlet with Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart on Britbox. I will read Othello sometime in the near future.

This edition updates the spelling in modern American English, which I sometimes find a bit strange. I would find it hard to read in the original spelling, but in my mind's eye, I feel it should be in modern English spelling. Here, in Canada, our spelling is some combination of American and English spelling.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## Ingélou

I am just rereading Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede, a book about nuns. We sent for a copy over the internet after I told Taggart about it. I first read it when we were in a holiday cottage and it was one of the books they'd left behind - that was in 1996. I couldn't put it down. I'm a Catholic convert and it's so rare to find readable fiction about church life that is neither bitter nor gooey. It's just been reprinted as a Virago Modern Classic which shows that it's been judged as saying something worthwhile about women - their (our) mentality and their relationship with other women. 

I am not so absolutely smitten as the first time but that is because I don't read as much now as I did - the internet takes up a lot of time, so does my fiddle practice, scrabble with Taggart, and watching stuff on our computer. At present we're watching an old BBC dramatisation of The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is fabulous. 

However, I'm still enjoying In This House of Brede and getting a lot out of it.


----------



## jegreenwood

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I was assigned the first few cantos of the _Divine Comedy_ for one of my courses, but I loved it so much I decided to plow onward, slowly but surely, one canto or so at a time. The material is so rich in style, philosophy, content, etc. that one can't take in too much at a time anyway. Only bummer is the Longfellow translation that I have is pretty murky and old-fashioned.


I reread _Inferno_ last year, skipping back and forth between translations by Mandelbaum and Pinsky, with an occasional peek at the collaborative translation assembled by Daniel Halpern. Better than I recalled. I keep saying I'll move on to _Purgatory_. Maybe after the pandemic.


----------



## Roger Knox

senza sordino said:


> I just finished reading Hamlet from this edition.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It was easier than I thought it would be to read. It took me about the same amount of time to read as to stage the play. I know I missed some of the metaphors and imagery and I had to use the footnotes. I haven't read Shakespeare since I was in high school, and then I found it bewildering. I've been watching Upstart Crow on Britbox and thought perhaps I should try reading some Shakespeare.
> 
> I already knew the basic outline of the story, so that helped. I am currently watching a 1980 BBC production of Hamlet with Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart on Britbox. I will read Othello sometime in the near future.
> 
> This edition updates the spelling in modern American English, which I sometimes find a bit strange. I would find it hard to read in the original spelling, but in my mind's eye, I feel it should be in modern English spelling. Here, in Canada, our spelling is some combination of American and English spelling.


That's exciting! I read Hamlet a long time ago and still remember that being a great experience. Same with Macbeth which we read in high school.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## jegreenwood

WNvXXT - Just finished Larsen's book on Churchill.


----------



## WNvXXT

jegreenwood said:


> WNvXXT - Just finished Larsen's book on Churchill.


I need to read that one. Started Isaac's Storm right after his Lusitania book Dead Wake. Both great reads.


----------



## flamencosketches

Rereading Oscar Wilde's _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. Great book, and such an easy read.


----------



## Barbebleu

Dead Head, the third book in the Sweetpea saga by CJ Skuse. Just as good as the first two.


----------



## WNvXXT

Another Blake Crouch trilogy: Desert Places (Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite #1), Blake Crouch 2004.


----------



## Ingélou

I'm reading Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy for the third time, and enjoying it as much as ever. I love learning about Indian life and I also think it's very funny (as well as serious & gripping as the book goes on). Taggart has read and enjoyed it for the first time, and we are looking forward to watching the dvd series (after we've finished our current watch of The Woman in White). 

That's been the good side of lockdown - Taggart turning literary and following up my suggestions for novels to read, and then finding BBC dramatised versions for us to watch together.


----------



## Red Terror

After being disappointed with Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, I decided to give this infamous classic a read. Thus far, I've not been let down.


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu


Wow. I enjoyed reading this book. Funny and tragic. Highly recommended.

Now reading _The Man Without Qualities_ by Robert Musil on my kindle. Starting with Volume 1.










^A picture of the hardback edition.


----------



## SanAntone

Just finished (again) the complete stories of *Flannery O'Connor*, and am now re-reading the stories of *Eudora Welty*.

I am also reading _Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It_ compiled and edited by *Nat Hentoff*.

I throw in a story by *Hemingway* and *Faulkner *here and there.


----------



## WNvXXT

Scanned through a bit of the goodreads synopsis and still didn't really know what to expect. His level of detail is what makes his books compelling I think. The dovetailing of the two stories is superbly executed.

Before this, I've read three of his books: Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Issac's storm, and The Splendid and the Vile - and imho this is the best so far. My best read so far this year.

I have In the Garden of Beasts, and The Devil in the White City lined up to read later. Now a known to me quantity, I'd probably preorder (almost) anything new he put out.


----------



## jegreenwood

SanAntone said:


> Just finished (again) the complete stories of *Flannery O'Connor*, and am now re-reading the stories of *Eudora Welty*.
> 
> I am also reading _Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It_ compiled and edited by *Nat Hentoff*.
> 
> I throw in a story by *Hemingway* and *Faulkner *here and there.


I loved O'Connor when I read her years ago. Had dreams about adapting her stories as radio plays.

I read a volume of Welty but it didn't take. I still have her collected stories. I should try again.


----------



## jegreenwood

For baseball fans, Audible will be releasing this week a reading of DeLillo’s “Pafko at the Wall,” read by Tony Shahloub, Zachary Levi, and Billy Crudup (each playing multiple characters). I attended the live performance, and it was great.


----------



## jegreenwood

Conrad2 said:


> Wow. I enjoyed reading this book. Funny and tragic. Highly recommended.
> 
> Now reading _The Man Without Qualities_ by Robert Musil on my kindle. Starting with Volume 1.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^A picture of the hardback edition.


That's on my list. One very fat paperback. Decided to reread "The Magic Mountain" first.


----------



## annaw

Ahhh, I finished Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying". You start the novel thinking it’s about a family who goes on a journey to bury their member, but then it turns out to be an almost Shakespearean tragedy... And the ending was the most brilliant and tragic thing in the whole book - truly the climax of the novels dark humour and irony. 

I should probably order more Faulkner while I read French existentialists for my literature course - Sartre's "Nausea" and Camus's “The Stranger", to be more specific. I hate it when I know that I lack the necessary knowledge to understand the ideas in a book (looking at you, Sartre) but, oh well, I guess I just have to accept that.


----------



## Highwayman

senza sordino said:


> ... I've been watching Upstart Crow ...


I feel like I should watch this show as a great admirer of David Mitchell (the comedian) and of Shakespeare of course. However, its humble Imdb rate made me hesitate. I wouldn`t expect it to be as good as the better series of Blackadder but I would at least expect it to have some qualities akin to the first season of Blackadder to be entertained in an agreeable level. In these circumstances, would you recommend it to me?


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Honoré de Balzac, _Le Pére Goriot_ (my Penguin Classics translation says "Old Goriot," but I prefer "Father Goriot"). My first dip into the kaleidoscopic world of Balzac's _La comédie humaine._ I have no intention of actually reading all 90+ novels in this series throughout my life, but I can say that this one deserves its reputation; it was instrumental in the development of what we nowadays would consider the "crime novel." The writing is so engaging and intelligent.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

Since my last posting here, I've read *Lords of the North*, book three of Bernard Cornwell's *Saxon Tales*, and am now in the midst of *The Tower of Fools*, by Andrzej Sapkowski, he of *Witcher* fame. *Tower* is a slow read for me. Not sure why. It holds my interest well enough while reading. As an added bonus of sorts, I enjoy its tie-ins to the world of (the video game) *Kingdom Come Deliverance*, *Tower* taking place, as best I can tells, several decades afterward. There is of course no direct link. But anyone who has played the game any length of time will recognize people, places and events alluded to in both game and book.


----------



## senza sordino

Highwayman said:


> I feel like I should watch this show as a great admirer of David Mitchell (the comedian) and of Shakespeare of course. However, its humble Imdb rate made me hesitate. I wouldn`t expect it to be as good as the better series of Blackadder but I would at least expect it to have some qualities akin to the first season of Blackadder to be entertained in an agreeable level. In these circumstances, would you recommend it to me?


I recently finished watching all twenty-one episodes. I watched these on Britbox, a streaming service available here in North America. I really enjoyed watching this series. I found it very funny, very entertaining and I learned a bit about Shakespeare's life. Each episode focuses on one play, and the events in Shakespeare's life that influence the play. And often, there are contemporary events today that are referenced obliquely - Brexit, rail replacement service, the pandemic, political correctness, women's rights, etc.

I will watch this series again sometime in the future, perhaps after reading some Shakespeare.

I recommend it, but I'm an ex-pat. I love watching a lot of British telly.


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## calvinpv

I keep forgetting about the community forum. I need to check it more often.

Raymond Chandler's essay *The Simple Art of Murder* (I read it in paperback, but you can read it online here)
Ross Macdonald: *The Galton Case*

The Chandler essay, written for the Atlantic Monthly in 1944, is a pretty devastating, funny as hell, takedown of the deduction style mystery novel that you see in Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie. Chandler's basic problem with them is that they're pretty unrealistic because they require you to suspend your knowledge and awareness of how murders actually take place in the real world (which is ironic because these detective stories pride themselves on engaging the intellect). In the world of Sherlock Holmes, the murder is pre-meditated long beforehand, flawlessly executed (with a bit of help from deus ex machinas plot devices), leaving behind a carefully selected set of clues that are assembled together by a detective who always happens to be available free of charge. For Chandler, the real world works a bit differently: crimes are often spur-of-the-moment crimes of passion that are carelessly done and are committed in a world just as violent as the criminal and are solved by a law enforcement with a dirty past of its own. Therefore, for Chandler, a good crime novel shouldn't be asking "Who done it?" in isolation but should also be asking "Why was it done?", "What could've led someone down a path of violence?", "Which institutions created the conditions for such a violent act?". Overall, I think he makes a pretty good case for the "hardboiled" style of crime fiction, which Chandler himself is one of the masters of.

The Galton Case is the first Ross Macdonald book I've read. The prose is just as smooth as Chandler's, though maybe a tad more formal and a little less witty. But Macdonald introduces explicit ethical conflicts between a sort of deontological obligation to follow the Law and a moral realism of what is intuitively the right thing to do that the Law forbids. These conflicts are only suggested in Chandler, where Chandler's Philip Marlowe character sometimes seems a little too ethically pure (which is certainly an admirable trait to have, but is quite difficult to accomplish). Macdonald also introduces some watered-down Freudian psychology to explain motivations, especially the motivations of children/young adults, which apparently is semi-autobiographical considering what happened to his daughter. I have no idea if this is a pattern in all of his novels, but it's interesting seeing the differences between Chandler and Macdonald when everything I've read about them tends to highlight their similarities.


----------



## calvinpv

annaw said:


> Ahhh, I finished Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying". You start the novel thinking it's about a family who goes on a journey to bury their member, but then it turns out to be an almost Shakespearean tragedy... And the ending was the most brilliant and tragic thing in the whole book - truly the climax of the novels dark humour and irony.
> 
> I should probably order more Faulkner while I read French existentialists for my literature course - Sartre's "Nausea" and Camus's "The Stranger", to be more specific. I hate it when I know that I lack the necessary knowledge to understand the ideas in a book (looking at you, Sartre) but, oh well, I guess I just have to accept that.


I probably recommending it because I'm currently on a hardboiled fiction kick (see my post above), but you should read James M. Cain's *The Postman Always Rings Twice*. Apparently Camus read it and used it as as source of inspiration for The Stranger. I have no idea how true this fact is, but I read them both back-to-back a couple years ago just to test the theory out, and there were some striking similarities, at least at first glance.


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## Jacck

Schismatrix Plus
by Bruce Sterling










a really visionary scifi, the main topic is transhumanism and the different paths it could take in the coming centuries


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## Jacck

ToneDeaf&Senile said:


> Since my last posting here, I've read *Lords of the North*, book three of Bernard Cornwell's *Saxon Tales*, and am now in the midst of *The Tower of Fools*, by Andrzej Sapkowski, he of *Witcher* fame. *Tower* is a slow read for me. Not sure why. It holds my interest well enough while reading. As an added bonus of sorts, I enjoy its tie-ins to the world of (the video game) *Kingdom Come Deliverance*, *Tower* taking place, as best I can tells, several decades afterward. There is of course no direct link. But anyone who has played the game any length of time will recognize people, places and events alluded to in both game and book.


I read the Witcher series long before it became known in the west (thanks to the video games), during the 1990's. I was in high school then and remember having enjoyed them. I dont know how I would rate it if I read it now. 
Better then Sapkowski for historical fiction could be Sienkiewicz (Nobel Prize for literature)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/877376.With_Fire_and_Sword


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## Guest

This is shaping up to be quite a nasty bit of work. From _Good Reads_: "Celeste Ng's enthralling dissection of suburbia meets Shirley Jackson's creeping dread in this propulsive literary noir, when a sudden tragedy exposes the depths of deception and damage in a Long Island suburb-pitting neighbor against neighbor and putting one family in terrible danger."


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## flamencosketches

I just finished Raymond Carver's _What We Talk About When We Talk About Love_










I really loved it. Carver's writing is very incisive, and there's a lot more warmth to it than I was expecting. Can't wait to read more of his work.


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## atsizat

I ain't in a habit of reading books.


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## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1230 today, 4 Apr 2021, I concluded an initial read of Andrzej Sapkowski's *The Tower of Fools*, book one of his *Hussite Trilogy*. It was a slow read for me. Not sure why. I like it well enough. In fact, it falls within a sub-genre I'm particularly fond of, a cross between historical fiction and fantasy with 'naturalistic' magical elements. Somewhat along the lines of what Guy Gavriel Kay produces, though with different emphasis. Added allure, for me, comes from *Tower* being set in the same general location as *Kingdom Come Deliverance*, book and game being only a few decades apart. I'll definitely buy book two when it premieres later this year.










I'm not quite sure what I'll dig into next. Likely a return to Cornwell's Saga Tales series.


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## WNvXXT

Joe Pickett #21


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## senza sordino

I have just finished reading The Perfect Spy by John le Carre. I gave it two out of five stars on Goodreads. I found its prose too tortuous and overly dense and complicated. It wasn't an easy read. The story was interesting, but the method of telling that story wasn't. And there is a nearly continuous switching of perspective. Looking at the reviews on Goodreads, it seems as if people who didn't like it came to the same conclusion I did. But there are equally as many people who loved it. Your mileage may vary. 









I picked up the le Carre book when I was half done with Britain After Rome. I am now resuming this non-fiction book. It's fascinating. The author spends more time describing the life and times of the so-called dark ages and less time listing the Kings and rulers of the seven or so Kingdoms.


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## Chilham

410-878 is an interesting time in Britain. A fascinating mixture of history and folklore. I've lined-up some reading on the Kingdom of Kent at that time (my neck of the woods).


----------



## Captainnumber36

I just finished reading A Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and loved it. It actually really creeped me out and made me fear what I myself am capable of doing, or even other folks.


Anyone else read it?


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## SixFootScowl

atsizat said:


> I ain't in a habit of reading books.


Maybe you could pick up a volume of short stories as a starting point.


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## Conrad2

SixFootScowl said:


> Maybe you could pick up a volume of short stories as a starting point.


I second that suggestion. Perhaps you may like "A Madman's Diary" by Lu Xun, which is a metaphorical short story about the decay of Chinese language after the Qing dynasty. I find the writing to be engaging and the premise to be intriguing. One of the best short stories I have read. It doesn't require a lot of prior knowledge of Chinese history to appreciate it.

Here's the link:  Selected Stories of Lu Hsun

Note: some of the terminology are different from other versions due to different phonetic system, but it shouldn't distract you from the story, unless you have a heavy (almost academic) interest in Chinese history and culture.

If you like the story after reading it and want to read more stories from the author, I suggest reading "The True Story of Ah Q" which is longer but is worthwhile once you "get into it".


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## WNvXXT

Turned into a great read. Another non-fiction writer to add to my list. Learned about the origins of the geology that caused the eruption, and the man whose theories were discounted and years after his death, they turned out to be true. One of many facts and personalities throughout this amazing story that add to it's readability.

I initially started reading the kindle ebook, but on a whim I got the hardcover and found the kindle was severely shortchanging the reader on illustrations; maps, diagrams, drawings - so I finished the last 2/3 with an old fashioned book.

[ goodreads ]


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## jegreenwood

After a break with several detective novels (not worth mentioning) I am back to the last third of _The Magic Mountain_.


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## jegreenwood

After a break with several detective novels (not worth mentioning) I am back to the last third of _The Magic Mountain_.

I wish I had read calvinpv's post before I chose the detective novels. I picked up a Ross McDonald last year after not having read one in 50 years (at which time I read a number of them). It was around then that he was being lionized. I remember an especially glowing review in the NY Times (June 1, 1969 - I checked). But I didn't think they would hold up. I was wrong.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

After starting it last summer and reluctantly putting it aside after finding it a bit impenetratable, I've taken up Faulkner's _Absalom, Absalom!_ again. Wow, how perceptions change. I'm totally hooked. Positively rich writing, just lyrical and opulent and magnetic. A haunting, wistful tale told by one of the finest literary psychologists and prose stylists of the century. The impossibly long sentences take a while to get into, however, and are probably the most significant barrier to understanding the novel.


----------



## annaw

Allegro Con Brio said:


> After starting it last summer and reluctantly putting it aside after finding it a bit impenetratable, I've taken up Faulkner's _Absalom, Absalom!_ again. Wow, how perceptions change. I'm totally hooked. Positively rich writing, just lyrical and opulent and magnetic. A haunting, wistful tale told by one of the finest literary psychologists and prose stylists of the century. The impossibly long sentences take a while to get into, however, and are probably the most significant barrier to understanding the novel.


I also finished it, and it was utterly wonderful! The character development is simply marvellous.

I finished Sartre's "Nausea" and, while I do not agree with a lot of Sartre's philosophy, it was so elegantly and vividly written. Really an amazing book.


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## Barbebleu

Halfway through Joe Hill’s Horns. I knew his work through his graphic novel output but if his other novels are like Horns they will be on my reading list quick-smart. Of course he has good writing genes but that doesn’t always follow!:lol:


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## WNvXXT

At first, I thought who would put themselves and their family into this situation. Then in the first few pages it became clear. I usually skip synopsis as they contain loads of spoilers.

[ goodreads ]


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## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 0429 this morning, 9 Apr 2021, I concluded an initial read of Bernard Cornwell's *Saxon Tales: Sword Song*. I later read the included promo excerpt from Cornwell's *Agincourt*, which I finished at 0856. I found *Sword Song* compelling reading, a faster read than Sapkowski's *Tower of Fools*. I will begin the next *Saxon Tales* volume, *The Burning Land*, later today. It being the last unread Cornwell book in my possession, I need to order the next few *Saxon Tales* off Amazon, along with the one-volume (?) *Agincourt*.


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## Conrad2

Taking a short break from fiction books.

_They Thought They Were Free_ by Milton Mayer


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## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 2247 yesterday evening, 12 April 2021, I concluded an initial read of Bernard Cromwell's *Saxon Tales: The Burning Land*. Another fine series entry. I found its immediately predecessor more consistently engrossing. This entry, for me, sags a bit during a portion of its first half, until King Alfred's daughter reenters the picture. From that point on, it's totally absorbing. I won't receive my next batch of Cornwell novels until Friday. As a stopgap, I have tentatively decided on a reread of Parke Godwin's take on the Robin Hood legends, *Sherwood*, last read April/May 1995.


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## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]

About 3/4 through - another great one by Simon Winchester. This may turn out to be better than Krakatoa.


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## WNvXXT




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## SanAntone

Just finished:

_Being Prez: The Life and Music of Lester Young_

View attachment 153981


Continuing with:

_Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia_

View attachment 153982


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## Dorsetmike

Currently re-reading From Here to Eternity, first read it in 1961 I'm finding it still an enjoyable read.


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## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Taking a short break from fiction books.
> 
> _They Thought They Were Free_ by Milton Mayer


A interesting book. Reflects recurrent events that seems in be happening in the United States right now. A bit dated with some old assumptions and bias, but overall an informative book.



Conrad2 said:


> Now reading _The Man Without Qualities_ by Robert Musil on my kindle. Starting with Volume 1.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^A picture of the hardback edition.


Still making my way through this book. About 3/4 way through with volume 1. A challenging read, but I enjoyed reading the fables and anecdotes, and exploring the ideas that the book lay forth. Thought provoking so far, but requires commitment.


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## jegreenwood

Finishing up “The Magic Mountain.” I read a chapter yesterday, “Fullness of Harmony,” which dealt the installation of a “high-end” gramophone in the sanatorium, and the reaction of the protagonist, Hans, to it and the music, including his five favorite pieces. For anyone interested, except for the last several pages it could be read as a standalone. The last several pages contain, I suppose, a strange sort of spoiler, and you may wish to stop when the narrator turns to Hans’ favorite work.


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## Jacck

jegreenwood said:


> Finishing up "The Magic Mountain." I read a chapter yesterday, "Fullness of Harmony," which dealt the installation of a "high-end" gramophone in the sanatorium, and the reaction of the protagonist, Hans, to it and the music, including his five favorite pieces. For anyone interested, except for the last several pages it could be read as a standalone. The last several pages contain, I suppose, a strange sort of spoiler, and you may wish to stop when the narrator turns to Hans' favorite work.


one of the most memorable chapters. I read the book 5 years ago and the two stand out chapters that I remember are how Hans got lost in the mountains (that was overall my most favorite chapter and the high point of the book imho), and then this chapter about the gramophone, and then the philosophical debates with the Jesuit and Madame Chauchat, and the doctor in the sanatorium. I remember that after I read the book, I watched the German 2 part movie from 1982


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## Open Book

jegreenwood said:


> Finishing up "The Magic Mountain." I read a chapter yesterday, "Fullness of Harmony," which dealt the installation of a "high-end" gramophone in the sanatorium, and the reaction of the protagonist, Hans, to it and the music, including his five favorite pieces. For anyone interested, except for the last several pages it could be read as a standalone. The last several pages contain, I suppose, a strange sort of spoiler, and you may wish to stop when the narrator turns to Hans' favorite work.


Is there a particular translation you said is preferable?


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## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> Is there a particular translation you said is preferable?


Very much so. The John E. Woods translation.


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## jegreenwood

Jacck said:


> one of the most memorable chapters. I read the book 5 years ago and the two stand out chapters that I remember are how Hans got lost in the mountains (that was overall my most favorite chapter and the high point of the book imho), and then this chapter about the gramophone, and then the philosophical debates with the Jesuit and Madame Chauchat, and the doctor in the sanatorium. I remember that after I read the book, I watched the German 2 part movie from 1982


Agreed. I'd add "Walpurgis Night" (helps that I'd just finished 'Faust Part 1") and the one just after his being lost in the mountains, which I can't describe without a spoiler.


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## jegreenwood

And now I close the book. Rereading “The Magic Mountain” was extremely rewarding.


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## Roger Knox

jegreenwood said:


> And now I close the book. Rereading "The Magic Mountain" was extremely rewarding.


Your reading I find interesting -- what are a few of your favourites in music?


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## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## flamencosketches

I'm planning on reading _The Magic Mountain_ in June. Don't ask why, just seems like the right time for that book. I read a couple of Mann's books last year and they really changed my life. Glad to see people enjoying it here.

I'm between books right now. I started rereading Jack Kerouac's _On the Road_ for the fiftieth time, but I don't know whether I'll finish it. I recently finished Anthony Bourdain's _Kitchen Confidential_ which was an illuminating read.


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## Rogerx

Shuggie Bain: Douglas Stuart: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 
Stunning....


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## jegreenwood

Roger Knox said:


> Your reading I find interesting -- what are a few of your favourites in music?


I don't read that many books on music. In fact not that much non-fiction overall. I read Swafford's biography of Beethoven last year; however I preferred his book on Brahms. And I liked Mann's "Doctor Faustus." But I'll bet the new translation is worth my time.

In fact I probably spend more time following the scores of chamber music than reading about it.

I long for the days of LP back covers. That's where my education began.


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## jegreenwood

flamencosketches said:


> I'm planning on reading _The Magic Mountain_ in June. Don't ask why, just seems like the right time for that book. I read a couple of Mann's books last year and they really changed my life. Glad to see people enjoying it here.
> 
> I'm between books right now. I started rereading Jack Kerouac's _On the Road_ for the fiftieth time, but I don't know whether I'll finish it. I recently finished Anthony Bourdain's _Kitchen Confidential_ which was an illuminating read.


While the circumstances are by no means identical, TMM does have a certain resonance in pandemic times.


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## WNvXXT

Really like this (new to me) author. Reading:


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## Jacck

jegreenwood said:


> While the circumstances are by no means identical, TMM does have a certain resonance in pandemic times.


I found the book quite symbolic and allegorical. Mann as the intellectual finds retreat high up in the mountains (above the common people) and tries to find cure for an affliction in a sanatorium. The affliction is likely symbol for the disease of the spirit that has plagued all of Europe at that time. I also found the various characters symbolic for various aspects of existence. Great about this book is that it can be read on many different levels.


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## senza sordino

A couple of pages back I mentioned this book. I have just finished reading Britain After Rome The Fall and Rise 400 to 1070 by Robin Fleming. This was really interesting, less time devoted to Kings, alliances, enemies, and battles and more time to the lives of the people who lived during the so-called dark ages. Most of what we know doesn't come from written records, there are few. It comes from archeology, mostly graves. Bioarchaeology. I must say this book was rather dense and not an easy read, simply because of the level of detail and amount of information. It's a period of history I knew little. Now I know a bit more. 









I'm not sure what to read next. I've more than sixty books in my "want to read section" of Goodreads. I'm not looking for recommendations here, I'm just stating that I'm spoiled for choice. My dilemma is that I've just finished reading two rather difficult books, I want to read something a little easier. I downloaded Bleak House on my kindle for free. And I have lined up Othello, Henry V, and The Merchant of Venice. A Tale of Two Cities. And Sense and Sensibility. Oryx and Crake. But I'll probably find something with a little less work involved as my next book.

I've been reading more since the start of the pandemic and listening to less music. I can't read while music is playing in the background. For me, it's one or the other.


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## Barbebleu

Jacck said:


> I found the book quite symbolic and allegorical. Mann as the intellectual finds retreat high up in the mountains (above the common people) and tries to find cure for an affliction in a sanatorium. The affliction is likely symbol for the disease of the spirit that has plagued all of Europe at that time. I also found the various characters symbolic for various aspects of existence. Great about this book is that it can be read on many different levels.


I read all Mann's novels when I was in my twenties. I enjoyed them then but I feel with the acquired wisdom (hopefully) and knowledge of the last fifty years I feel that I would gain a lot from rereading them. However, at seventy two I'm not sure I want to devote the time and effort to such an undertaking. I gave them all away when I'd finished reading them but I recently picked up Doctor Faustus, Felix Krull and Joseph and His Brothers so I might just do them although I would like to reread MM, Buddenbrooks and Tonio Kröger. Ah me, so many books, so little time.

At the moment I'm reading Don Winslow's cracking detective novel, The Force. A real gritty read and very hard hitting.


----------



## Jacck

Barbebleu said:


> I read all Mann's novels when I was in my twenties. I enjoyed them then but I feel with the acquired wisdom (hopefully) and knowledge of the last fifty years I feel that I would gain a lot from rereading them. However, at seventy two I'm not sure I want to devote the time and effort to such an undertaking. I gave them all away when I'd finished reading them but I recently picked up Doctor Faustus, Felix Krull and Joseph and His Brothers so I might just do them although I would like to reread MM, Buddenbrooks and Tonio Kröger. Ah me, so many books, so little time.


I read just Magic Mountain and Death in Venice from Mann. I hope to read the rest when I am retired at 72  But I have a similar experience with Dostoyevsky. I read most of his works in my teens and twenties, and I would really try to reread the Brothers Karamazov with the acquired wisdom of my older self


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## TxllxT

The life in a home for elderly is described with typical Amsterdam humour by a mystery author called 'Hendrik Groen'.


----------



## Barbebleu

Jacck said:


> I read just Magic Mountain and Death in Venice from Mann. I hope to read the rest when I am retired at 72  But I have a similar experience with Dostoyevsky. I read most of his works in my teens and twenties, and I would really try to reread the Brothers Karamazov with the acquired wisdom of my older self


I tended to binge read like a madman when I was single so I devoured all the German authors like Hesse, Wedekind, Grass, Böll and Döblin. Then I moved onto the Russians - Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Sholokhov, Gogol and Pasternak et al. Would that I had the time to reread them all now. When you are young and have the time and inclination you could do worse than read classic European literature.


----------



## jegreenwood

Barbebleu said:


> I read all Mann's novels when I was in my twenties. I enjoyed them then but I feel with the acquired wisdom (hopefully) and knowledge of the last fifty years I feel that I would gain a lot from rereading them. However, at seventy two I'm not sure I want to devote the time and effort to such an undertaking. I gave them all away when I'd finished reading them but I recently picked up Doctor Faustus, Felix Krull and Joseph and His Brothers so I might just do them although I would like to reread MM, Buddenbrooks and Tonio Kröger. Ah me, so many books, so little time.
> 
> At the moment I'm reading Don Winslow's cracking detective novel, The Force. A real gritty read and very hard hitting.


Which translation did you use? (Mazel tov if you read them German.). If you didn't read the John E. Woods translation of TMM, a reread is definitely in order. I believe he's also done "Budenbrooks" and "Doctor Faustus." Maybe some of the novellas as well.


----------



## Barbebleu

jegreenwood said:


> Which translation did you use? (Mazel tov if you read them German.). If you didn't read the John E. Woods translation of TMM, a reread is definitely in order. I believe he's also done "Budenbrooks" and "Doctor Faustus." Maybe some of the novellas as well.


I can't remember. It would be whoever was doing the Penguin translations in the fifties or sixties. I found them easy to read at the time but I have no one to compare them with.


----------



## jegreenwood

Barbebleu said:


> I can't remember. It would be whoever was doing the Penguin translations in the fifties or sixties. I found them easy to read at the time but I have no one to compare them with.


The Woods translation came out in the 90's. Prior to this reading of TMM, I had used the H.T. Lowe-Porter translations, which were the only authorized one, at least in the U.S. These led me to conclude that Mann was an interesting author with a very clumsy style. After this reading of TMM, my opinion has definitely changed for the better. A lot of this relates to the tone of the narration.


----------



## Barbebleu

jegreenwood said:


> The Woods translation came out in the 90's. Prior to this reading of TMM, I had used the H.T. Lowe-Porter translations, which were the only authorized one, at least in the U.S. These led me to conclude that Mann was an interesting author with a very clumsy style. After this reading of TMM, my opinion has definitely changed for the better. A lot of this relates to the tone of the narration.


You are right. It was Lowe-Porter. I may give the Woods a go at some point if I ever get the time.


----------



## Jacck

Mann's style was not clumsy, his language is quite rich. But I believe he must be a headache to translate to other languages. He wrote extremly long and disjointed sentences, even for a German. Here is an example of just one sentence from Zauberberg. To complicate it further, the German language sometimes places verbs at the end of a sentence

„Und jenseits des Wegknies, zwischen Abhang und Bergwand, zwischen den rostig gefärbten Fichten, durch deren Zweige Sonnenlichter fielen, trug es sich zu und begab sich wunderbar, daß Hans Castorp, links von Joachim, die liebliche Kranke überholte, daß er mit männlichen Tritten an ihr vorüberging, und in dem Augenblick, da er sich rechts neben ihr befand, mit einer hutlosen Verneigung und einem mit halber Stimme gesprochenen 'Guten Morgen' sie ehrerbietig (wieso eigentlich: ehrerbietig) begrüßte und Antwort von ihr empfing: mit freundlicher, nicht weiter erstaunter Kopfneigung dankte sie, sagte auch ihrerseits guten Morgen in seiner Sprache, wobei ihre Augen lächelten, - und das alles war etwas anderes, etwas gründlich und beseligend anderes als der Blick auf seinen Stiefel, es war ein Glücksfall und eine Wendung der Dinge zum Guten und Allerbesten, ganz beispielloser Art und fast die Fassungskraft überschreitend; es war die Erlösung.“


----------



## Conrad2

I think translators should deserve more recognition. The task of maintaining the author original meaning in a different language is a very difficult task. Too often we praise the authors, but neglect the translators who allow us to read their work. Glad to see more interest in translation.


----------



## jegreenwood

Lowe-Porter's translation has received a fair share of criticism. I agree with most of what the New York Times Book Review has to say:

"All the characters in Thomas Mann's masterpiece THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN (Knopf, $35) come considerably closer to speaking English in John E. Woods's version than they did in its predecessor, by H. T. Lowe-Porter, first published by Knopf in 1927. Lowe-Porter's apology -- "better . . . an English version . . . done ill than not done at all" -- was exaggerated, but his vocabulary was wholly Victorian, and he missed Mann's voice. Mr. Woods makes Mann talk much as we do, if always more intelligently, and he captures the irony and humor in all but a few passages. "

What I disagree with is the reviewer calling Lowe-Porter "him." The H.T. stands for Helen Tracy.


----------



## Clloydster

I find I mostly like reading biographies and history these days. Haven't had much use for fiction in a while. I will pick up just about any book by David McCullough - really liked his books on John Adams and Truman. Right now reading his book on the Panama Canal.


----------



## Open Book

The talk about translations has meaning for me as I am now reading "The Brothers Karamazov" in the translation by Constance Garnett. I read this decades ago but I am more critical now, wondering if a more up-to-date translation wouldn't be an improvement. Garnett's was done around 1910 and feels old-fashioned.


----------



## jegreenwood

Open Book said:


> The talk about translations has meaning for me as I am now reading "The Brothers Karamazov" in the translation by Constance Garnett. I read this decades ago but I am more critical now, wondering if a more up-to-date translation wouldn't be an improvement. Garnett's was done around 1910 and feels old-fashioned.


The last Dostoyevsky (and the last Tolstoy) I read were translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky. They seemed to be the "in" translators for quite a while. Not sure if there are newer translators.

My impression of Garnett was formed by reading Christopher Durang and Albert Innaurato's play "The Idiots Karamazov." Of course Garnett later morphs into Miss Havisham. The part was first performed at Yale by a student- Meryl Streep.


----------



## calvinpv

James M. Cain: *Mildred Pierce*

I'm currently going through a hard-boiled fiction phase -- specifically, reading works _not_ by Hammett or Chandler, as those are the only two hard-boiled authors I really know -- and decided to read this classic. I've read Cain's _The Postman Always Rings Twice_ and _Double Indemnity_ a couple years ago and loved them, but at the time I thought there was something different about his writing that didn't sit well with the "hard-boiled" label. But having finished _Mildred Pierce_ and reading around on the internet, I think it's better to call his novels "noir fiction". In _Mildred Pierce_, there's none of the crime that you see in, say, _The Big Sleep_ or _The Maltese Falcon_ (though there's a lot of emotional/psychological violence). Actually, the plot is a typical "rags to riches" story. And yet, there's nothing uplifting about the story. Every institution is corrupt and every character is petty, vindictive and predatory -- including the main protagonist Mildred, which is what ultimately distinguishes noir fiction from hard-boiled crime.

When I finished the book, too many reviews I read on Amazon and Goodreads kept portraying Mildred as a tragic heroine who had to make some tough, bitter choices to get a decent shot at life. But sorry, I didn't see that at all. You have to read between the lines, because Cain has some subtle prose, but I found Mildred to be a loathsome character who has no remorse at all from the people she constantly ripped off (the best way to describe her is she's a class A petite-bourgeoise: think of all the negative connotations that go with that label and that's literally Mildred). While there were moments when I was cheering for her, most of the time I genuinely hated her and wanted to see another character cut her down to size and make her humble and compassionate for others -- and I think this is exactly the response Cain wanted to evoke out of readers. Granted, this is the first piece of real noir fiction I've read so I don't want to generalize too much, but I think noir fiction is trying to challenge the idea that you have to root for the protagonist in their adventures from beginning to end and that we should allow for fiction that leaves a bitter taste in our mouth.

That's not to say, of course, that Mildred's the only bad guy in the novel. The story would actually be pretty unbelievable if the cruelty was only flowing in one direction. So what Cain brilliantly does is, before allowing Mildred's behavior to outgrow its own believability, he'll all of a sudden insert these out-of-nowhere acts of cruelty by other characters against Mildred or these random acts of God that upend Mildred's position in life (when these acts of God happen, Cain's prose becomes somewhat comical, as if he's underlining the absurdity of it all). This makes the novel more realistic, since, after all, even bad guys can sometimes be the victims of other bad actions. The most interesting example of this is the downright psychopathic behavior of Mildred's unusually precocious, musically gifted, daughter Veda, who is a sort of distilled, crystallized version of Mildred combined with the condescending paternalism of an aristocrat (my using the terms "aristocrat" and "petite-bourgeoise" should indicate that issues of wealth and status are very important in the book). Veda's cruel actions serve, not as a foil, but as a mirror for Mildred to hold up and look at so that she can see her own, albeit lesser, cruelty and pettiness. The best parts of the novel, in my opinion, are when Veda's actions simultaneously traumatize Mildred and yet accurately point out Mildred's weaknesses, creating an irresolvable deadlock for the reader where you are unable to say who's in the right and who's in the wrong. But there are interesting dynamics between Mildred and the other characters as well.

I hope I didn't spoil anything (I think I just covered what's on the back of the book), but this is one of the best novels I've read in while. Despite its surface appearances, this is not an ordinary novel. It's a fascinating, penetrating psychological portrait of a personality type that we've undoubtedly encountered in our everyday lives. Highly recommended.

Next up in my hard-boiled/noir journey, I'm undecided between Patricia Highsmith's _Strangers on a Train_, Jim Thompson's _The Killer Inside Me_, Gillian Flynn's _Gone Girl_ or rereading Stieg Larsson's _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_. And maybe I'll go watch a couple of those early film noirs from the 40s.


----------



## Jacck

Conrad2 said:


> I think translators should deserve more recognition. The task of maintaining the author original meaning in a different language is a very difficult task. Too often we praise the authors, but neglect the translators who allow us to read their work. Glad to see more interest in translation.


it depends heavily on the literary work. Some authors have easy language, so the translation is comparatibly easy (most of the crime fiction, fantasy literature etc belongs here). Other authors like Mann have convoluted, complex way of saying things, so the translation is hard. And poetry in verses is probably the hardest.


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv - have you read any Ross MacDonald? Highly recommended. Library of America includes three volumes of his work. His detective's name is Lew Archer.


----------



## jegreenwood

Jacck said:


> it depends heavily on the literary work. Some authors have easy language, so the translation is comparatibly easy (most of the crime fiction, fantasy literature etc belongs here). Other authors like Mann have convoluted, complex way of saying things, so the translation is hard. *And poetry in verses is probably the hardest.*


You often need another poet.


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## calvinpv

jegreenwood said:


> calvinpv - have you read any Ross MacDonald? Highly recommended. Library of America includes three volumes of his work. His detective's name is Lew Archer.


I read _The Galton Case_ a few weeks ago, which I liked. I'm not sure which of his works are considered the best -- I see different answers depending on which online ranked list I read. I think I'm gonna check out _The Chill_ and _The Drowning Pool_ next, simply because the titles sound interesting. But first, I think I want to check out Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith before returning to MacDonald.


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## Open Book

I checked this entire thread and every mention of Patricia Highsmith has been to recommend "Strangers on a Train".

Her "Ripley" series is far better. I became a big fan of those novels. I started "Strangers" with eager anticipation. What a disappointment, I couldn't get into it. Like a different author wrote it. The opposite of Ripley, unappealing characters, awkward writing.


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## SixFootScowl

Conrad2 said:


> Taking a short break from fiction books.
> 
> _They Thought They Were Free_ by Milton Mayer


 Timely. Very timely.


----------



## Conrad2

Jacck said:


> it depends heavily on the literary work. Some authors have easy language, so the translation is comparatibly easy (most of the crime fiction, fantasy literature etc belongs here). Other authors like Mann have convoluted, complex way of saying things, so the translation is hard. And poetry in verses is probably the hardest.


Different genre, author's prose, original language, and intended translated language have varried level of difficulty for translators. That I recognize. But I don't necessary think that appreciating the translator efforts should be dependent on the type of literary work as regardless they did spend time translating the works for our reading and currently, at least for some readers, are not recognized for their labor. Therefore, I don't prescribe to the practice of judging the translator for the type of work they choose to translate. I, personally, appreciate them based on how well they have done their task.

Anyway that is my thoughts on this topic.

For a more challenging task for translators, try translating one of the Henian period poems, while retaining the "correct" language and poem nuance.


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> I read _The Galton Case_ a few weeks ago, which I liked. I'm not sure which of his works are considered the best -- I see different answers depending on which online ranked list I read. I think I'm gonna check out _The Chill_ and _The Drowning Pool_ next, simply because the titles sound interesting. But first, I think I want to check out Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith before returning to MacDonald.


_The Drowning Pool_ was turned into a movie starring Paul Newman as Archer - I mean Harper. Paul was coming off a string of successes for movies whose title began with 'H', so he changed the name of the detective. The first movie in the series (of two) was simply called _Harper_, but I can't remember which novel it was based upon.


----------



## jegreenwood

Conrad2 said:


> Different genre, author's prose, original language, and intended translated language have varried level of difficulty for translators. That I recognize. But I don't necessary think that appreciating the translator efforts should be dependent on the type of literary work as regardless they did spend time translating the works for our reading and currently, at least for some readers, are not recognized for their labor. Therefore, I don't prescribe to the practice of judging the translator for the type of work they choose to translate. I, personally, appreciate them based on how well they have done their task.
> 
> Anyway that is my thoughts on this topic.
> 
> For a more challenging task for translators, try translating one of the Henian period poems, while retaining the "correct" language and poem nuance.


You might want to take a look at the group translation of _The Inferno_ assembled by Richard Halpern. Twenty renowned poets each with a different approach.


----------



## Conrad2

jegreenwood said:


> You might want to take a look at the group translation of _The Inferno_ assembled by Richard Halpern. Twenty renowned poets each with a different approach.


That seems interesting. Added to my TBR list. I tried reading _The Inferno_ before but it didn't really connect with me. Perhaps this version is more suitable for me.


----------



## jegreenwood

I’ve had a used copy of “The Cosgrove Report” on my bookshelf for decades. Can’t recall what/who caused me to buy it. Seems to be a fictional take on the murder of Lincoln and the fate of Booth. Has anyone here read it?


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 0813 this morning, 24 Apr 2021, I concluded an initial read of yet another Bernard Cornwell novel, the standalone *Agincourt*. I enjoyed it. I'll now either return to his *Saxon Tales* series or resume Parke Godwin's take on the Robin Hood legend; *Sherwood*.


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## calvinpv

In terms of plot, this novel is so outrageously over the top that it's easy to dismiss the book at first. Flynn's _Sharp Objects_ is definitely the better novel at establishing a believable, yet sinister, murder mystery with good pacing. Though _Gone Girl_, like _Sharp Objects_, has a perverse and creepy ending, and once you accept the mystery for what it is, it becomes part of the novel's charm.

But the more I read, the more I realized that Flynn has an incredible gift for character development and descriptive writing, and that's what you should be reading for. All three of her novels are told in the first person, as either an interior monologue or as a series of diary entries, and let's just say you come away from her novels with a sense of "too much information", like that feeling of ickiness you get when you learn something a little too personal about a friend or family member. Her characters are shrewd, wickedly funny, deceitful, jealous, paranoid, depressed, self-deprecating, and sexually charged. _Literally_ every single sentence adds a new layer of complexity to the characters' inner psychologies, and you realize that much of the novel revolves around reconciling the tensions in these inner thoughts as much as reconciling the clues in the mystery. Moreover, Flynn sets up these psychological tensions in such a way so as to reveal the very thin line separating certain pairs of opposites: love and hate, fidelity and betrayal, crime and punishment, public and private, authenticity and role-playing, domination and submissiveness, reality and perceptions of reality (specifically our perceptions through social media); some of these pairs get tinged with questions of sexual relations and desires.

I'd probably recommend _Sharp Objects_ over this first, but _Gone Girl_ is still a great piece of noir fiction.


----------



## Alinde

*The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention*
by Guy Deutscher

I was given this book years ago but never got far because, to me, the writer's style lacked flow, was surprisingly heavy and dense.

But I am getting over that hurdle this time round because I realise that English is not the author's native tongue and that he is offering powerful insights into the development of languages.

BTW. If you enjoy the subject and listen to podcasts let me recommend *The History of English *podcast - which began in 2011 and so far has taken its listeners to episode 146 in which it's 1492 and Columbus is encountering a native American dialect...

https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/

No fancy effects, just a clever, youngish lawyer in North Carolina providing meticulously researched, professionally produced and engaging content on the history of English. His style is not at all dense!


----------



## Open Book

calvinpv said:


> _Literally_ every single sentence adds a new layer of complexity to the characters' inner psychologies


Every sentence hits you with intensity.



calvinpv said:


> I'd probably recommend _Sharp Objects_ over this first, but _Gone Girl_ is still a great piece of noir fiction.


I recommend "Gone Girl" if anyone's not going to read any other of her books because it's the biggest hit, the one everyone talked most about, and maybe the most original. But I'd rank her novels "Dark Places" > "Gone Girl" > "Sharp Objects". I really rooted for the main character of "Dark Places" and I didn't see the ending coming until the author wanted me to.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Most recent reading:


----------



## Ingélou

South Riding by Winifred Holtby - published posthumously in 1936. It's the third time of reading and I'm enjoying it, but possibly more aware of the way she describes working class characters, having a bit of a laugh at their expense, slumming. But it's lovely to be reading about Yorkshire and I'm finally back in Yorkshire again.


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## calvinpv

Open Book said:


> Every sentence hits you with intensity.


I was going to quote a sample of the text in my previous post to illustrate this point, but given how much profanity and dirty sex talk there is, I'd probably get permanently banned on TC. :lol: But "every sentence" is not an exaggeration, and you're right about "intensity". The writing is very complex in its ideas but it's not subtle in its expression; it's very in-your-face, like Flynn is daring you to accept the outrageous stuff she just wrote. A couple times per page, I had to pause for a few seconds to digest what I just read. And also to appreciate some of the one-liners that were genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. _Gone Girl_ might be the funniest of the three novels.



> I recommend "Gone Girl" if anyone's not going to read any other of her books because it's the biggest hit, the one everyone talked most about, and maybe the most original. But I'd rank her novels "Dark Places" > "Gone Girl" > "Sharp Objects". I really rooted for the main character of "Dark Places" and I didn't see the ending coming until the author wanted me to.


You're right about _Gone Girl_ being the most original and that it ought to be read first (but seriously, anyone who's reading this: just read all three books). But interesting that we have opposite rankings. I personally saw the ending of _Dark Places_ coming a mile away, from maybe the two-thirds mark onwards. And I felt the characters were self-deprecating in their speech to the point of parody, at times they just felt a little too one-dimensional. But don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it. For me, the only thing that's holding _Gone Girl_ back is the under-developed relationship between Amy and her parents beyond the "Amazing Amy" angle. I feel like there was a lot of potential there that Flynn left on the table. But I guess that's just a minor point. In _Sharp Objects_, nothing felt redundant or under-explored and for me, _that's_ the novel I could not foresee the ending.


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## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


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## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> I was going to quote a sample of the text in my previous post to illustrate this point, but given how much profanity and dirty sex talk there is, I'd probably get permanently banned on TC. :lol: But "every sentence" is not an exaggeration, and you're right about "intensity". The writing is very complex in its ideas but it's not subtle in its expression; it's very in-your-face, like Flynn is daring you to accept the outrageous stuff she just wrote. A couple times per page, I had to pause for a few seconds to digest what I just read. And also to appreciate some of the one-liners that were genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. _Gone Girl_ might be the funniest of the three novels.
> 
> You're right about _Gone Girl_ being the most original and that it ought to be read first (but seriously, anyone who's reading this: just read all three books). But interesting that we have opposite rankings. I personally saw the ending of _Dark Places_ coming a mile away, from maybe the two-thirds mark onwards. And I felt the characters were self-deprecating in their speech to the point of parody, at times they just felt a little too one-dimensional. But don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it. For me, the only thing that's holding _Gone Girl_ back is the under-developed relationship between Amy and her parents beyond the "Amazing Amy" angle. I feel like there was a lot of potential there that Flynn left on the table. But I guess that's just a minor point. In _Sharp Objects_, nothing felt redundant or under-explored and for me, _that's_ the novel I could not foresee the ending.


Count me as a contrarian - started two of her books - didn't finish either. I'll take "Fates and Furies" over "Gone Girl" any day.


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## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Conrad2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Now reading _The Man Without Qualities_ by Robert Musil on my kindle. Starting with Volume 1.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^A picture of the hardback edition.
> 
> 
> 
> Still making my way through this book. About 3/4 way through with volume 1. A challenging read, but I enjoyed reading the fables and anecdotes, and exploring the ideas that the book lay forth. Thought provoking so far, but requires commitment.
Click to expand...

After an erratic reading pace, I close the book. What a intriguing work with insightful exposition. I can see myself returning to this book in the future. I will read the 2nd volume when I have the "stamina" to do so.

Now, reading an anthology of Tang dyansty era poem. The book is _The Jade Mountain_ translated by Witter Bynner.










I found an online copy of the work which is from the University of Virginia which has ten other poem from different sources. _ The Jade Mountain_ is a translation of the Three Hundred Tang Poems collection.

I have a soft heart for classical Chinese poems where from a "static" rhyme scheme emerges a emotional crisp, lyrical, chasmic, and precise image which create a state of "foreverness" rarely found in Western prose in my limited knowledge opinion.

Chinese poems are difficult to translate owning to its allusive nature, but I will make do with what I have.

Here's one of my favorite love poem dating back from the Song Dynasty.

"Phoenix Hairpin" by Lu You:



> Pink soft hands, yellow rippling wine,
> The town is filled with Spring, willows by palace walls.
> The east wind is biting, happiness is thin,
> heart full of sorrow, so many years apart.
> 
> Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!
> 
> Spring is as of old; the person is empty and thin.
> Traces of tears show through the sheer silk.
> Peach blossoms falling, glimmering pond freezing,
> The huge oath remains, the brocade book is hard to hold.
> 
> Don't, Don't, Don't!


What do you think about the poem?


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## WNvXXT




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## Barbebleu

Alex Ross - Listen To This. Absolutely brilliant book by one of the most interesting writers on music today. One of those books that make you immediately want to listen to whatever piece of music he is talking about. Can’t recommend it highly enough particularly for those entrenched in ‘classical’ music.


----------



## WNvXXT

[ goodreads ]


----------



## advokat

Episodios Nacionales


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Michael Kennedy's biography of Benjamin Britten. Fascinating, enjoyable reading.

But don't worry, I'll be back on the junk novels shortly.


----------



## BeatriceB

Howards End by E. M. Forster.


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## WNvXXT




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## SixFootScowl




----------



## Barbebleu

In the Reign of King John: A Year in the Life of Plantagenet England by Dan Jones. Interesting book focussing on the year 1215. I’m quite enjoying it.


----------



## Ingélou

Barbebleu said:


> In the Reign of King John: A Year in the Life of Plantagenet England by Dan Jones. Interesting book focussing on the year 1215. I'm quite enjoying it.


 Serendipity - I was just talking with my husband last night about King John and how bad he actually was, and wondered aloud whether there were any readable biographical books on the man, and the universe heard my query. 
Thanks, Barbebleu! :tiphat:


----------



## Barbebleu

So far it doesn’t paint him in a very good light. He had a pretty poor reputation and it would seem to be well deserved.


----------



## EdwardBast

I'm now reading John Crowley's _Aegypt Cycle_. Last week I found the four volumes, _The Solitudes_, _Love and Sleep_, _Daemonomania_, and _Endless Things_, used. I'm most of the way through the first novel. For those who don't know Crowley, his best known work is his fantasy masterpiece (it's a peculiar sort of fairy tale set in New York), _Little, Big_. That one I've read twice. Crowley's work is impossible to briefly summarize in a way that makes sense and does it justice, so I won't try.


----------



## Judith

Reading a book that is set in my hometown of Leeds Yorkshire at beginning of last century and written by local author Chris Nickson. It is a series of books about a superintendent in a police station. Called "The Molten City" . Love it because I'm passionate about Leeds history (as well as classical music) and describes the city so well.


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## elgar's ghost

_Gulag: A History_ by Anne Applebaum. Grim, but absorbing. The book is imaginatively diced into smaller sub-chapters which outline each aspect of prison/slave camp life. As the book was researched during the 1990s it contains testimonies from ex-Gulag inmates who were incarcerated as early as the 1930s. Applebaum also had the benefit of access to certain archives which had only recently been totally off-limits. I read this book and others about the Tsarist/Soviet eras and wonder if there has been any other nation which had managed to self-harm so much over the previous five centuries.


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## Barbebleu

This looks interesting. Have you read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago or any of Orlando Figes’s stuff like Natasha’s Dance or A People’s Tragedy. I agree with your last sentence btw.


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## elgar's ghost

Barbebleu said:


> This looks interesting. Have you read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago or any of Orlando Figes's stuff like Natasha's Dance or A People's Tragedy. I agree with your last sentence btw.


I've read _A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ and _Cancer Ward_ by Solzhenitsyn, but not _The Gulag Archipelago_. When I was young I remember the fuss made over _The Gulag Archipelago_ when it was published as this was the still the era of the cold war - I imagine prior to that few in the West had any real idea of what the _Gulag_ was all about, let alone the Soviet judicial and political systems which had combined to fine-tune the concept. In the last 20-odd years I've also read Figes (_A People's Tragedy_ and _Natasha's Dance_), Beevor (_Stalingrad_), Sebag Montefiore (_In the Court of the Red Tsar_), Hoskins (_Russia and the Russians_) and numerous others.


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## elgar's ghost

Barbebleu said:


> So far it doesn't paint him in a very good light. He had a pretty poor reputation and it would seem to be well deserved.


Forget _Robin Hood_ and _Ivanhoe_ - John's elder brother Richard the Lionheart was hardly better from what I've read. In fact, the Plantagenets were a fairly unsavoury bunch on the whole, even allowing for the spirit of the age. King John is interred only about seven miles from where I live - almost a neighbour!


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## Barbebleu

elgars ghost said:


> I've read _A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ and _Cancer Ward_ by Solzhenitsyn, but not _The Gulag Archipelago_. When I was young I remember the fuss made over _The Gulag Archipelago_ when it was published as this was the still the era of the cold war - I imagine prior to that few in the West had any real idea of what the _Gulag_ was all about, let alone the Soviet judicial and political systems which had combined to fine-tune the concept. In the last 20-odd years I've also read Figes (_A People's Tragedy_ and _Natasha's Dance_), Beevor (_Stalingrad_), Sebag Montefiore (_In the Court of the Red Tsar_), Hoskins (_Russia and the Russians_) and numerous others.


Have you been looking through my bookshelves?:lol:


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## Barbebleu

elgars ghost said:


> Forget _Robin Hood_ and _Ivanhoe_ - John's elder brother Richard the Lionheart was hardly better from what I've read. In fact, the Plantagenets were a fairly unsavoury bunch on the whole, even allowing for the spirit of the age. King John is interred only about seven miles from where I live - almost a neighbour!


John and Richard - the Ronnie and Reggie of their day!:lol:


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## Ingélou

elgars ghost said:


> Forget _Robin Hood_ and _Ivanhoe_ - John's elder brother Richard the Lionheart was hardly better from what I've read. In fact, the Plantagenets were a fairly unsavoury bunch on the whole, even allowing for the spirit of the age. King John is interred only about seven miles from where I live - almost a neighbour!


Worcester Cathedral - I've seen his tomb. Traditionally he died of eating too many peaches with new ale - one of the 'surfeits' mentioned in that glorious book 1066 and All That. 

Yes, I've read that Richard wasn't much cop as a ruler - after all, he was hardly ever home! Still, the legend of his minstrel Blondel touring the castle prisons of Europe to find his master is alluring - it was in one of the Readers that I had in junior school & I was very taken by it.


----------



## Barbebleu

I’m a big fan of the period of English history from about the 12th century to the early 17th century finishing with James VI and I. The Wars of the Roses period in particular I find endlessly interesting.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Ingélou said:


> Worcester Cathedral - I've seen his tomb.


It's a grand place, isn't it? The gardens around the back which nearly back onto the river are also nice to wander through or sit down in.


----------



## Ingélou

elgars ghost said:


> It's a grand place, isn't it? The gardens around the back which nearly back onto the river are also nice to wander through or sit down in.


A lovely town altogether. We looked round when we were on holiday at Great Malvern some 30 years ago. I hope we get a chance to visit that neck of the woods again in the next few years.

I see that Dan Jones has also written books on The Plantagenets & The Wars of The Roses. Taggart has ordered a second-hand copy of the book on King John, so if we like it, we may move on to his other books. Thanks, Barbebleu.


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## jegreenwood

Ingélou said:


> Serendipity - I was just talking with my husband last night about King John and how bad he actually was, and wondered aloud whether there were any readable biographical books on the man, and the universe heard my query.
> Thanks, Barbebleu! :tiphat:


Don't forget Shakespeare.


----------



## Ingélou

jegreenwood said:


> Don't forget Shakespeare.


Nah - his sources weren't so good and his history was usually Tudor propaganda.


----------



## starthrower

I'm waiting to start Narcissus and Goldmund by Hesse as soon as it arrives in the mail. Speaking of British history, the only volumes I have are the first two of A History of The English Speaking Peoples by Churchill. If you Brits can recommend some other authors I'd be interested in reading more. Thanks!


----------



## SanAntone

*Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans* 
Freddi Williams Evans

View attachment 154928


*New Orleans Style*
Bill Russell

View attachment 154929


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## Alinde

I could no longer resist the siren call of Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens: a brief history of humankind". I've been reading books and articles on and around the subject for years (we humans are the most interesting of topics!) and more evidence is being literally unearthed all the time, new techniques are sending dates reeling back even further than those in this 2011 publication.

I'm finding the book lucid and very entertaining. It will be my holiday reading from next week.


----------



## mikeh375

Having being fascinated by the objectivity/subjectivity threads, I've just read and thoroughly enjoyed this....


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## WNvXXT




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## jegreenwood

Started the new Ishiguro novel, “Klara and the Sun.”


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## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1650, chewing my last bite of apple at the tail end of supper, I concluded an initial read of Richard H. Harwell's *The Confederate Reader*. This 1957 book was given to me by my parents as a Christmas present back in 1989. I only now got around to reading it. I was a big US Civil War buff early on, but by the time I received this had moved on to other things Thus the delay.

It's about what you'd expect it to be, a collection of writings by southern and southern sympathetic eyewitnesses providing first or secondhand accounts of those times. I found it a bland read for the most part, being familiar with the gist of what is presented from my 'buff' days. The section titled "A Pleas for the Reliable Gentleman" threw me for a loop at first. I totally misconstrued the title's meaning, causing what followed to make no sense. I had to read the article's first two pages three times before I caught on. Once I did, it became and remains my favorite part of the book.

I've not yet decided what to take up next.


----------



## SixFootScowl

ToneDeaf&Senile said:


> At 1650, chewing my last bite of apple at the tail end of supper, I concluded an initial read of Richard H. Harwell's *The Confederate Reader*. This 1957 book was given to me by my parents as a Christmas present back in 1989. I only now got around to reading it. I was a big US Civil War buff early on, but by the time I received this had moved on to other things Thus the delay.
> 
> It's about what you'd expect it to be, a collection of writings by southern and southern sympathetic eyewitnesses providing first or secondhand accounts of those times. I found it a bland read for the most part, being familiar with the gist of what is presented from my 'buff' days. The section titled "A Pleas for the Reliable Gentleman" threw me for a loop at first. I totally misconstrued the title's meaning, causing what followed to make no sense. I had to read the article's first two pages three times before I caught on. Once I did, it became and remains my favorite part of the book.
> 
> I've not yet decided what to take up next.


Glad you posted this because it led me to remember the book that I read about 25 years ago that I was trying to remember but just could not:

"The Civil War Reader: The Union Reader, the Confederate Reader"


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## Listenerris

Currently, I'm reading a compilation of stories written by Fyodor Dostoevsky; who, if is as good of a writer as the current story I'm reading, "The Double," suggest, might be my favorite author. "The Double" is REALLY something else, and I WHOLE HEARTEDLY suggest it to anybody with an appreciation for psychology and classic novels. 

From my point of view, this is not a very good book. I tried to read it, but somehow it doesn't capture to my interest. The"Idiot ","Notes from the Underground" is better.


----------



## Listenerris

Edmond-Dantes said:


> WELL! I'm surprised that a cultured and intelligent bunch of individuals like yourselves haven't already made a "What books are you Reading" thread.  Well, since we don't have one, I suppose I'll start it off.
> 
> --Non Music Books--
> Currently, I'm reading a compilation of stories written by Fyodor Dostoevsky; who, if is as good of a writer as the current story I'm reading, "The Double," suggest, might be my favorite author. "The Double" is REALLY something else, and I WHOLE HEARTEDLY suggest it to anybody with an appreciation for psychology and classic novels. Here is an excerpt from the third chapter of the story that I have picked out. The main character is on his way to a party and decided on a whim to stop off at the doctors office.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Though Mr. Golyadkin pronounced this with the utmost
> distinctness and clearness, weighing his words with a
> self-confident air and reckoning on their probable effect, yet
> meanwhile he looked at Krestyan Ivanovitch with anxiety,
> with great anxiety, with extreme anxiety. Now he was all
> eyes: and timidly waited for the doctor's answer with irritable
> and agonized impatience. But to the perplexity and complete
> amazement of our hero, Krestyan Ivanovitch only muttered
> something to himself; then he moved his armchair up to the
> table, and rather drily though politely announced something
> to the effect that his time was precious, and that he did not
> quite understand; that he was ready, however, to attend to
> him as far as he was able, but he wold not go into anything
> further that did not concern him. At this point he took the
> pen, drew a piece of paper towards him, cut out of it the
> usual long strip, and announced that he would immediately
> prescribe what was necessary.
> "No, it's not necessary, Krestyan Ivanovitch! No, that's
> not necessary at all!" said Mr. Golyadkin, getting up from his
> seat, and clutching Krestyan Ivanovitch's right hand. "That
> isn't what's wanted, Krestyan Ivanovitch."
> And, while he said this, a queer change came over him.
> His grey eyes gleamed strangely, his lips began to quiver, all
> the muscles, all the features of his face began moving and
> working. He was trembling all over. After stopping the
> doctor's hand, Mr. Golyadkin followed his first movement by
> standing motionless, as though he had no confidence in
> himself and were waiting for some inspiration for further
> action.
> Then followed a rather strange scene.
> Somewhat perplexed, Krestyan Ivanovitch seemed for a
> moment rooted to his chair and gazed open-eyed in
> bewilderment at Mr. Golyadkin, who looked at him in
> exactly the same way. At last Krestyan Ivanovitch stood up,
> gently holding the lining of Mr. Golyadkin's coat. For some
> seconds they both stood like that, motionless, with their eyes
> fixed on each other. Then, however, in an extraordinarily
> strange way came Mr. Golyadkin's second movement. His
> lips trembled, his chin began twitching, and our hero quite
> unexpectedly burst into tears. Sobbing, shaking his head and
> striking himself on the chest with his right hand, while with
> his left clutching the lining of the doctor's coat, he tried to
> say something and to make some explanation but could not
> utter a word.
> At last Krestyan Ivanovitch recovered from his
> amazement.
> "Come, calm yourself!" he brought out at last, trying to
> make Mr. Golyadkin sit down in an armchair.
> "I have enemies, Krestyan Ivanovitch, I have enemies; I
> have malignant enemies who have sworn to ruin me . . ." Mr
> Golyadkin answered in a frightened whisper.
> "Come, come, why enemies? you mustn't talk about
> enemies! You really mustn't. Sit down, sit down," Krestyan
> Ivanovitch went on, getting Mr. Golyadkin once and for all
> into the armchair.
> Mr. Golyadkin sat down at last, still keeping his eyes fixed
> on the doctor. With an extremely displeased air, Krestyan
> Ivanovitch strode from one end of the room to another. A
> long silence followed.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> As this book is an old one and the copyright has since expired, you can read it here.
> http://www.kiosek.com/dostoevsky/library/thedouble.txt
> 
> If you'd rather read it on paperback, you can buy the small compilation I'm reading at barns and noble for 5$.
> ISBN: 978-1-59308-037-2
> 
> --MUSIC RELATED BOOKS--
> I have just perchased the wonderful recommendation from Jtech81 and am reading it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PS: You all don't need to write a book on the books you're reading like I've done, I just HAD to share how great "The Double" is. ^-^;;;;


From my point of view, this is not a very good book. I tried to read it, but somehow it doesn't capture to my interest. The"Idiot ","Notes from the Underground" is better.


----------



## Flamme

Poes tales again...Beautiful language.


----------



## Sonata

I have not done much reading for myself this year; unusual since I am a major bookworm. But I coached my son's book trivia quizbowl team from December-February so that time was devoted to middle-grade books. Since then, my mind has shifted to more active pursuits; returning to my piano playing for the first time in about a year. Also gearing up for outdoor sports; hiking and soon hopefully kayaking

That said, I am in the middle of reading The Hobbit to my son, and we'll move on to Lord of the Rings once we finish


----------



## WNvXXT

The Terror by Dan Simons.


----------



## SanAntone

*Music: A Subversive History* 
by Ted Gioia

View attachment 155048




> Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs.
> 
> Gioia tells a four-thousand-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval. He shows how outcasts, immigrants, slaves, and others at the margins of society have repeatedly served as trailblazers of musical expression, reinventing our most cherished songs from ancient times all the way to the jazz, reggae, and hip-hop sounds of the current day.


----------



## Flamme

I get surprsied time and gtime again at Poes ingenuity and hoiw he is soo much more than ''raven'' or ''pit and the pendulum''...He is one of the few authors I've read in my childhood who still give me that warm and fuzzy feeling inside!


----------



## Sonata

WNvXXT said:


> The Terror by Dan Simons.


Cool, I have a couple of his audiobooks. I haven't listened yet but they sound promising!


----------



## starthrower

Started this one a couple days ago.


----------



## jegreenwood

Finished “Klara and the Sun.” I was slightly disappointed with the first half (compared with Ishiguro’s other work), but the second half made up for it (including making me re-evaluate the first half). One reviewer described it as a parable, and there is that element, but not one that reveals a succinct moral message.


----------



## jegreenwood

Now reading David Busch’s guide to the Nikon Z-50 in anticipation of my first true vacation with the camera. I bought it a year ago for a fall trip that didn’t happen (now rescheduled for this September - fingers crossed).


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Now, reading an anthology of Tang dynasty era poem. The book is _The Jade Mountain_ translated by Witter Bynner.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I found an online copy of the work which is from the University of Virginia which has ten other poem from different sources. _ The Jade Mountain_ is a translation of the Three Hundred Tang Poems collection.


Now I close the book.

Now reading Tim O'Brien's _The Things They Carried_.


----------



## Flamme

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/POE/kingpest.html


----------



## SanAntone

Conrad2 said:


> Now I close the book.
> 
> Now reading Tim O'Brien's _The Things They Carried_.


The title story is one of the most powerful reading experiences I've ever had. Masterful.


----------



## consuono

To be followed at some point by


----------



## flamencosketches

starthrower said:


> View attachment 155060
> 
> 
> Started this one a couple days ago.


Book changed my life. I read it last year during the lockdowns and such.

@Listenerris, I read _The Double_ back in March, shortly after finishing _Karamazov_, and I agree, it didn't do much for me.

Edit: I haven't been around much, but here are some good recent reads:


----------



## jegreenwood

Conrad2 said:


> Now I close the book.
> 
> Now reading Tim O'Brien's _The Things They Carried_.


Great book.I also liked "Going After Cacciatore."

Darn that spell checker - Cacciato.


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Now reading Tim O'Brien's _The Things They Carried_.


Now I close the book. Rarely do I read such a heartbreaking and exceptional novel. *Highly recommended*.

Now reading Robertson Davies' _Fifth Business_, the 1st installment of The Deptford Trilogy.









An aside:
My nephew introduce me to one of those quirky tests that the youth are so found of. I took the literature test and this is a picture of my result:








Apparently, according to the test, I like the Modernism, Postmodernism, Magic Realism, and Expressionist genre the most. I was expecting that my taste leans toward the contemporary period, but it didn't register my fondness of romantic period and classical books. Also, the test linear scale kind of make my test appear somewhat extreme. Best take my result with a grain of salt. 
Here is the link to the literature test if you're interested. It's about 70 question long and is on a linear scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.


----------



## jegreenwood

_Blood Meridian_ may be the most violent novel I've ever read. It's great, but be warned.

I've read the first two volumes of _The Deptford Trilogy_. I liked them both, but never got fully caught up in them. Davies (once an actor) was supposed to be a great reader of his own work. Not sure if any of his readings are on the web.


----------



## Tristan

*Narcissus and Goldmund* by Hermann Hesse


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Now reading Robertson Davies' _Fifth Business_, the 1st installment of The Deptford Trilogy.


Now I close the book. Well crafted. Simple, yet captivating. Recommended. Perhaps, at a later date, I will read the second installment.

Now reading, Tim O'Brien's _In the Lake of the Woods_.


----------



## SanAntone

jegreenwood said:


> _Blood Meridian_ may be the most violent novel I've ever read. It's great, but be warned.


My favorite recent novel. *Cormac McCarthy* is my favorite author, all of his books are very much worth reading, IMO. Although I was very disappointed in the film version of _All the Pretty Horses_, part of a trilogy that brought McCarthy his greatest success and fame, and although very good in any event, not his best books, IMO.


----------



## senza sordino

I read Fifth Business by Robertson Davies back in 1988 in a first-year university English class. (I was able to take my first-year English class in my last year of university because I was a science major.)

I went onto read the other two books to complete the Deptford Trilogy. I do remember enjoying these books. If I recall correctly, at the time I got the sense that Roberston Davies had figured out all the plot in his head before he wrote it all down - he didn't discover the plot as he wrote.

Last weekend I read Othello, by Mr. Shakespeare. If you recall a few pages back here I read Hamlet, after watching all three seasons of Upstart Crow. Shakespeare is easier to read than I remembered it to be in high school. Back then it was bewildering and very difficult to comprehend. I know I don't get all the references or understand every line, but the story is comprehensible. And most importantly I found it interesting to read.

I also watched Othello with Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh. And I watched a three lecture analysis from The Great Courses about Othello. A modern interpretation of Iago is that he's a repressed homosexual in love with Othello, and since he can't have him, no one will.










I might read try to read a Shakespeare play once every month or two, possibly a comedy next.

I am currently reading How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. The main character is over four hundred years old. I'm enjoying this book, it's a simple read. A couple of months ago I read another of Haig's books The Midnight Library. How to Stop Time is in development as a movie, with Benedict Cumberbatch. I seem to have a lot in common with the author - a fascination with one's own past, reinventing oneself, and how life would have turned out differently if one had made different choices in life. Though the author is also obsessed with suicide - I am not.


----------



## flamencosketches

SanAntone said:


> My favorite recent novel. *Cormac McCarthy* is my favorite author, all of his books are very much worth reading, IMO. Although I was very disappointed in the film version of _All the Pretty Horses_, part of a trilogy that brought McCarthy his greatest success and fame, and although very good in any event, not his best books, IMO.


I love McCarthy, and it's not at all surprising that you are drawn to him-his work seems right up your alley from what I know about you! I think I've read the better part of his books now but still have a handful to read: _The Orchard Keeper, Suttree, The Crossing,_ and _Cities of the Plain_. _Blood Meridian_ was certainly one of the best of them, and probably his darkest.

Personally, I loved _All the Pretty Horses_, though it is somewhat of an exception among his work.


----------



## calvinpv

The previous book I read -- Gillian Flynn's _Gone Girl_ -- has, shall we say, an uninhibited, candid prose that vaguely reminded me of Stephen King, and then I remembered that I had one of his books unread in my growing pile of unread books, so I decided to read it. I'd say _Needful Things_ is okay, not my favorite of his. It has an interesting premise, and there's some great writing in it, but it gets bogged down by backstory that often goes nowhere, too many characters, a lack of suspense (he'll sometimes straight up tell you what'll happen next, and it's annoying), and some repetitive themes that you can find in his other books, as good as those themes may be. But I can't say he's bad or overrated, because he does exhibit occasional flashes of brilliance.










Now this is an interesting horror story -- definitely recommended. This is the first book by McDowell I've read, but will definitely check out more. The characters are extremely peculiar and eccentric in their habits and are quite memorable. There's also a real vivid sense of location that leaves a strong imprint on your mind afterwards. Not just because the location is vivid in itself -- it is -- but also because the location is integral to the horror that takes place. The book wouldn't be nearly as creepy if McDowell didn't invest time into this aspect. The only downside to the book was that it could've been longer. Next time I get around to McDowell, I'll probably check out _Gilded Needles_, _Cold Moon over Babylon_, and _Blackwater_.

And now for my next book, something completely different ...


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Now reading, Tim O'Brien's _In the Lake of the Woods_.


Now I close the book. This might be my favorite book from this author. Tragic. *Highly recommended*.

Now reading Tan Twan Eng's _The Garden of Evening Mists_.


----------



## Craveoon

Happy to have found this thread, but less happy to find it dormant. Anyways, I've been reading quite a few books, and sorry, I do no have illustrations for all of them.







Almost down with it, and as with every Murakami book, it is mind-boggling. An amazing, tender, relatable read. Beautifully etched characters with simple yet completed feelings.
Next, I've started reading A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks. The beginning has been beautiful and it has been a page-turner so far. I expect to finish within this weekend, perhaps.







Just started with this yesterday night.
And lastly, I've been island hopping chapters from Robert Stam's Film Theory: An Introduction. An enlightening read covering some rudimentary and essential aspects.


----------



## Ariasexta

David Hume: The Essential Philosophical Works. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature.

Michel Montaigne: The Complete Essays. Penguin Classics(English Version).

Both very bricky books, gotta takes 1-2 years to finish both.


----------



## jegreenwood

Craveoon said:


> Happy to have found this thread, but less happy to find it dormant. . . .


Not sure how you define dormant. This is a classical music forum, yet this non-music thread has over 400 pages. I post here frequently, and the last post (not mine) was only three days ago.

I've read three Murakamis including _1Q84_ and liked all of them. I've also read _The Double_, but it was back in college, which was 50 years ago. Gearing up for _Black Leopard, Red Wolf_, but I may finish the Rachel Cusk trilogy first. And there's always time for a good mystery or thriller.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## jegreenwood

Just finished _Transit_ by Rachel Cusk. Second in a trilogy. Looking forward to reading the third, but not right away. Going to tackle _Black Leopard Red Wolf_ next.


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Now reading Tan Twan Eng's _The Garden of Evening Mists_.


Now I close the book. A board scope narrative on conflict in human nature. Recommend.

Now reading Robertson Davies' _The Manticore_, the 2nd installment of the Deptford Trilogy.


----------



## WNvXXT

All Clear #1


----------



## Chopin Fangirl

.


----------



## Chopin Fangirl

.


----------



## jegreenwood

Chopin Fangirl said:


> I wanted to read GEB! I borrowed it from the library a while back but promptly gave up after just flipping through it. The thing's insane! I'm going to try again when I'm better at math haha!


GEB - Godel Escher Bach? Yeah, that takes work, but it's worth it.


----------



## starthrower

Anybody here a fan of this excellent site? I love the in depth conversations on the five book choices for a multitude of subjects.
https://fivebooks.com/


----------



## bharbeke

I figured this would be as good a place as any to mention that the Mozart biography by Swafford is around $2 on US Amazon right now for the Kindle. That sure beats the $45 list price!

Thread duty: I am reading The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke.


----------



## WNvXXT

Just started...


----------



## Celloman

I'm in the middle of a concise and fascinating biography about Mozart. It sheds some much-needed light on the complicated relationship he had with his father.


----------



## annaw

I've been simultaneously reading two drastically different books.

First one of them is *Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus"*, which I've been wanting to read for a long time. I really cannot pretend that I can understand all of it, and I wouldn't be overly surprised if half of Mann's intentions and meanings go simply above my head due to my lack of knowledge about music theory and, possibly, Adorno. But as Mann writes himself: "Might this be considered the most intensive and proud, perhaps even the most beneficial type of learning - anticipatory learning, learning that leaps vast stretches of ignorance?" I have a suspicion he knew how humbling reading his books can be. Anyway, for the time being, I will simply enjoy his stunning prose which I still think is a bit like exaggerated-Goethe-style.

The second book I'm reading is very different, a lot easier to understand, but very enjoyable - *Elisabeth Gaskell's "North and South"*. I think it's a huge disservice to Gaskell to call this simply an industrial remake of Austen. It was one of the reasons I've put off reading the book for so long, and now that I'm almost finished with it, I can say that I understand why one would be tempted to make such a comparison, but I also find it ungrounded. Dickens's influence on Gaskell seems to be rather clear, and Gaskell's social critique is a lot more explicit and central to the novel than Austen's is to hers.


----------



## elgar's ghost

A riveting account of a two-tiered psychodrama, that of the simmering tensions and machinations within Berry Gordy's Motown recording empire (with particular emphasis on under-pressure flagship act The Supremes and the events which resulted in the eventual firing of group co-founder Florence Ballard) set amongst the powder keg atmosphere of urban deprivation, industrial unrest and political discontent which was increasing in intensity in Detroit itself during 1967.


----------



## jegreenwood

annaw said:


> I've been simultaneously reading two drastically different books.
> 
> First one of them is *Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus"*, which I've been wanting to read for a long time. I really cannot pretend that I can understand all of it, and I wouldn't be overly surprised if half of Mann's intentions and meanings go simply above my head due to my lack of knowledge about music theory and, possibly, Adorno. But as Mann writes himself: "Might this be considered the most intensive and proud, perhaps even the most beneficial type of learning - anticipatory learning, learning that leaps vast stretches of ignorance?" I have a suspicion he knew how humbling reading his books can be. Anyway, for the time being, I will simply enjoy his stunning prose which I still think is a bit like exaggerated-Goethe-style.
> 
> The second book I'm reading is very different, a lot easier to understand, but very enjoyable - *Elisabeth Gaskell's "North and South"*. I think it's a huge disservice to Gaskell to call this simply an industrial remake of Austen. It was one of the reasons I've put off reading the book for so long, and now that I'm almost finished with it, I can say that I understand why one would be tempted to make such a comparison, but I also find it ungrounded. Dickens's influence on Gaskell seems to be rather clear, and Gaskell's social critique is a lot more explicit and central to the novel than Austen's is to hers.


I read _Doctor Faustus_ some time (decades) back. It was the Lowe-Porter translation, which meant it felt like a slog. As I've mentioned, I read the Woods translation of _The Magic Mountain_ earlier this year. That was a huge improvement over the Lowe-Porter version. I have the Woods translation of_Doctor Faustus_ on my "to reread at some time" list.

_North and South_ has been on my "to read" list for some time. I haven't done a big Victorian novel in some time. So - maybe next . . .


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1338 this afternoon I concluded an initial read of Raymond Feist's *At the Gates of Darkness*, second and final book of his *Demonwar Saga*. Considering what happened in book one, I fully expected *Darkness* to be, well, dark and tragic. It is not. However, anticipation of tragedy, and the unfolding of events during which tragedy might well have occurred, kept the book suspenseful and entertaining. In the end, it seems primarily a setup for what is to come next series.

A glimpse of that series is provided following *Darkness*' close, in the form of what looks to be the opening pages of *Chaoswar Saga: A Kingdom Besieged*. Here Feist tricks me to thinking I witness something that, as the chapter progresses, morphs into something both unexpected and revealing. Something that convinces me that *Chaoswar Saga* is a must-read. I'd do so anyway, it being the last of Feist's *Midkemia* books. Or so I believe, book three being titled *Magicians End*. (No *Chaoswar* spoilers please.)


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Tristan

Just began:

*1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus* by Charles C. Mann

and

*Vertigo* by W. G. Sebald


----------



## jegreenwood

Tristan said:


> Just began:
> 
> *1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus* by Charles C. Mann
> 
> and
> 
> *Vertigo* by W. G. Sebald


I revisited Sebald recently. I had read _The Emigrants_ a number of years ago, but for some reason it didn't take. But after seeing several discussions of his influence, I decided to try again and read _The Rings of Saturn_, which I liked a lot. I mentioned recently that I had read _Transit_ by Rachel Cusk. The Sebald influence was clearly present.


----------



## annaw

starthrower said:


> Anybody here a fan of this excellent site? I love the in depth conversations on the five book choices for a multitude of subjects.
> https://fivebooks.com/


Thank you so much for sharing! Looks really insightful!


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

annaw said:


> First one of them is *Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus"*, which I've been wanting to read for a long time. I really cannot pretend that I can understand all of it, and I wouldn't be overly surprised if half of Mann's intentions and meanings go simply above my head due to my lack of knowledge about music theory and, possibly, Adorno. But as Mann writes himself: "Might this be considered the most intensive and proud, perhaps even the most beneficial type of learning - anticipatory learning, learning that leaps vast stretches of ignorance?" I have a suspicion he knew how humbling reading his books can be. Anyway, for the time being, I will simply enjoy his stunning prose which I still think is a bit like exaggerated-Goethe-style.


I just picked this up (the Woods translation) on my latest used bookstore haul. The musical subject made it irresistable to me, but I wonder if I should read Goethe's original first?

Recent reading:

For school: Hume - Enquiry into Human Nature, Voltaire - Candide
For pleasure: Willa Cather - _My Antonia_ (I love Cather's layed-back, understated examinations of American pioneer life)
Music: Herbert Lindenberger - _Opera: The Extravagant Art._ A really fascinating look at the art form of opera from the perspective of an English professor.


----------



## annaw

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I just picked this up (the Woods translation) on my latest used bookstore haul. The musical subject made it irresistable to me, but I wonder if I should read Goethe's original first?
> 
> Recent reading:
> 
> For school: Hume - Enquiry into Human Nature, Voltaire - Candide
> For pleasure: Willa Cather - _My Antonia_ (I love Cather's layed-back, understated examinations of American pioneer life)
> Music: Herbert Lindenberger - _Opera: The Extravagant Art._ A really fascinating look at the art form of opera from the perspective of an English professor.


I think it is definitely useful to read the original (and it's a stunning work in itself!) because there seem to be some pretty explicit connections between the two (the whole concept of entering into a pact with the devil, for example).

I've read only the first part of Goethe's original, and now I'm myself wondering whether I should read the 2nd part as well. I think the first one gave already a pretty good, straightforward understanding of Faust's character, which is probably useful for understanding Leverkühn's. However, I think there's some serious philosophical development in the 2nd part of Goethe's _Faust_, which I'm not all that well acquainted with. I might read it before continuing with Mann.


----------



## WNvXXT

starthrower said:


> Anybody here a fan of this excellent site? I love the in depth conversations on the five book choices for a multitude of subjects.
> https://fivebooks.com/


Great site - Thanks.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Tristan said:


> Just began:
> 
> *1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus* by Charles C. Mann
> 
> and
> 
> *Vertigo* by W. G. Sebald


1491 is a great, great book - something every educated person should read, along with Guns Germs & Steel

Vertigo is another one of those great books I started and never finished, and embarrassingly I had never heard of Stendahl. So so,e time after I quit Vertigo, I picked up Charterhouse of Parma, read about a third of it and put it down as well.

Emigrants is a great book, as is After Nature, but Austerlitz is the masterpiece - one of the best books on the Holocaust


----------



## jegreenwood

annaw said:


> I think it is definitely useful to read the original (and it's a stunning work in itself!) because there seem to be some pretty explicit connections between the two (the whole concept of entering into a pact with the devil, for example).
> 
> I've read only the first part of Goethe's original, and now I'm myself wondering whether I should read the 2nd part as well. I think the first one gave already a pretty good, straightforward understanding of Faust's character, which is probably useful for understanding Leverkühn's. However, I think there's some serious philosophical development in the 2nd part of Goethe's _Faust_, which I'm not all that well acquainted with. I might read it before continuing with Mann.


I read _Faust Part I_ shortly before re-reading _The Magic Mountain_ (both earlier this year). _TMM_ also draws on _Faust_.


----------



## WNvXXT

To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel #2)


----------



## Ariasexta

Ivan Bunin 








The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories

Recommended, need some patience, good stories.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Full unabridged, 29 hour audiobook dropped on Bloomsday (June 16), giving it a go, combined with the print book. Read Ulysses twice, never been able to penetrate much of FW, but now about an hour in


----------



## Roger Knox

Chopin Fangirl said:


> I'm technically reading "Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times" by Alan Walker and ze scandalous "Lucrezia Floriani" by George Sand, but I am not a very good reader nor a very diligent or disciplined one, so I'm kind-of on a reading hiatus.
> 
> But about the books:
> 
> The biography is awesome! It has wonderful details about not just Chopin's life but also his interactions with music... full with snippets of sheet music and occasional photographs. Just amazing.


Alan Walker's biography of Chopin is a long book and a rewarding one. But I found Chopin's life tough to contemplate, so please don't feel undisciplined about taking breaks from it or sticking to certain sections of particular interest! I think it's a book for the ages, one to come back to. Early on Alan Walker was a music analyst and critic, and his writing about the music including the printed examples is excellent. Lucreziani Floriani sounds like a good find and George Sand must have been an incredible woman.


----------



## Art Rock

The Queen's Gambit: a 1983 American novel by Walter Tevis, about the fictional female chess prodigy Beth Harmon (best known from the 2020 Netflix miniseries of the same name).

I did not see the series, but I found the novel disappointing, and the chess passages (a major theme obviously throughout the novel) at times unconvincing or even blatantly unbelievable.


----------



## MrNobody

The Gospel according to Matthew while listening to St Matthew Passion conducted by Mengelberg. I have the remastered Japanese audiophile version, it is great, its 1939 sound is better than most of 1950s sound.


----------



## jegreenwood

Bwv 1080 said:


> Full unabridged, 29 hour audiobook dropped on Bloomsday (June 16), giving it a go, combined with the print book. Read Ulysses twice, never been able to penetrate much of FW, but now about an hour in


Good luck!! I started it just out of college (45 years ago). I got through about 50 pages (guidebook in hand) at which point I said to myself, "I could finish this in a year, but do I want to?" The answer, I decided, was "no".

On the other hand, my college roommate at Harvard won the Bowdoin Prize (Est. 1791) for his essay on "Finnegans Wake."


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## That Guy Mick

Hi Greenwood,
Finnegan's Wake inspired a very popular folk song. My favorite recording is performed by the Clancy Brother's:


----------



## jegreenwood

That Guy Mick said:


> Hi Greenwood,
> Finnegan's Wake inspired a very popular folk song. My favorite recording is performed by the Clancy Brother's:


The song is sung at the beginning of the audiobook. But according to Wikipedia, the song was actually an inspiration for the book! There's a well-known (apocryphal?) story about Beckett taking dictation from Joyce when someone knocked on the door. Joyce responded, "Come in." When Beckett read back the dictation, it included those words. Joyce paused for a moment and then said, "Let it stand."


----------



## Bwv 1080

jegreenwood said:


> Good luck!! I started it just out of college (45 years ago). I got through about 50 pages (guidebook in hand) at which point I said to myself, "I could finish this in a year, but do I want to?" The answer, I decided, was "no".
> 
> On the other hand, my college roommate at Harvard won the Bowdoin Prize (Est. 1791) for his essay on "Finnegans Wake."


My strategy is to not try and analyze or fully understand the book. I am not going to read analysis or other guides. I have read broad synopsis and know basically what to expect - dream logic, the nighttime subconscious of HCE and ALP and the collective unconscious of Ireland, that HCE was some kind of perv and the guilt haunts his dreams, etc. I will read/listen as long as it holds my interest and am not going to worry about understanding every bit of what I'm reading.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Pushkin - Eugene Onegin, the Charles Johnston translation. It takes some heck of a translator to preserve the amazing, meticulous construction of the verse while still preserving most of the meaning, and it seems like that’s what Johnston does. The story is everything glorious about Russian literature, and Pushkin’s style is unmatched for grace, wit, and beauty.


----------



## Clloydster

D-Day by Stephen Ambrose.


----------



## starthrower

My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

starthrower said:


> My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass


I know some people hate the phrase, but I think Douglass's "Narrative of the Life" is as close to being "required reading for humanity" as possible. It had a profound impact on my understanding of American history and my appreciation for the "strength of the human spirit" when I read it in high school.


----------



## starthrower

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I know some people hate the phrase, but I think Douglass's "Narrative of the Life" is as close to being "required reading for humanity" as possible. It had a profound impact on my understanding of American history and my appreciation for the "strength of the human spirit" when I read it in high school.


I can never get enough of Douglass, and James Baldwin. Reading Douglass's speeches is such a powerful experience. His fierce intelligence and conviction in articulating the monstrous crimes and injustices of slavery and holding those accountable who were bent on defending them leaves me spellbound.


----------



## TxllxT

*Carlos Ruiz Zafón*


----------



## jegreenwood

After a break reading the Richard Thompson memoir, which showed up from the library, I've returned to Marlon James' _Black Leopard Red Wolf_. Several critics described it as a challenging read (and James' prior novel, _A Brief History of Seven Killings_, was quite challenging for me), but after I adjusted to the author's style for this book, which involves a quest in a mythical African world, I do not find it to be so. It's a collection of fantastic tales. I'm only at the 25% mark (of 600 pages), but so far, so good.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## starthrower

jegreenwood said:


> After a break reading the Richard Thompson memoir, which showed up from the library, I've returned to Marlon James' _Black Leopard Red Wolf_. Several critics described it as a challenging read (and James' prior novel, _A Brief History of Seven Killings_, was quite challenging for me), but after I adjusted to the author's style for this book, which involves a quest in a mythical African world, I do not find it to be so. It's a collection of fantastic tales. I'm only at the 25% mark (of 600 pages), but so far, so good.


How interesting is the Thompson memoir? I'm a long time fan but didn't rush out to get the book.


----------



## WNvXXT

Crazy Horse and Custer, Stephen E. Ambrose 1975


----------



## Guest




----------



## jegreenwood

starthrower said:


> How interesting is the Thompson memoir? I'm a long time fan but didn't rush out to get the book.


It focuses on his time with Fairport Convention. Linda only shows up in the last third, and Richard barely touches on their first three albums.

He does touch on the creative process, for instance describing the inspiration foo Beeswing (which comes from this period).


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## annaw

Currently reading Dickens's _Oliver Twist_. Superb writing!

I'm evidently using my vacation time really-really efficiently: I'm at the moment sitting on a stack of heavy science books, underneath which is my new copy of Dostoevsky's _Crime and Punishment_. I noticed it had slightly warped pages (probably humidity) only after buying it and experienced a very OCD moment . I hope this "book press" will fix it. Anyway, _The Brothers Karamazov_ is one of the greatest books I've ever read so my hopes are high.


----------



## strawa

Nation and Classical Music: from Handel to Copland (in the original title), by Anthony D. Smith and Matthew Riley.


----------



## Bwv 1080

SixFootScowl said:


>


So the Earth is only 6000 years old after all?


----------



## Bwv 1080

Finished two chapters of Finnegans wake, had to read/listen to them twice but starting to get the hang of the language, following just enough of it to sort of figure out what is going on. This excellent video by Anthony Burgess really helped


----------



## Flamme

Out-standing!


----------



## HenryPenfold

Bwv 1080 said:


> Full unabridged, 29 hour audiobook dropped on Bloomsday (June 16), giving it a go, combined with the print book. Read Ulysses twice, never been able to penetrate much of FW, but now about an hour in


Gonna get this as an audiobook. Read Ulysses twice, last time about 18 years ago. Never tried Finnegans Wake. I subscribe to Amazon Audible and have two titles per month, so I'll give it a go.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Bwv 1080 said:


> So the Earth is only 6000 years old after all?


Certainly not a whole lot more than that.


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Now reading Robertson Davies' _The Manticore_, the 2nd installment of the Deptford Trilogy.


It took longer than anticipated as I was busy. Interesting. Really enjoyed the Jungian framing. Recommended.

Now reading _The Corrections_ by Jonathan Franzen.


----------



## Roger Knox

jegreenwood said:


> Good luck!! I started it just out of college (45 years ago). I got through about 50 pages (guidebook in hand) at which point I said to myself, "I could finish this in a year, but do I want to?" The answer, I decided, was "no".
> 
> On the other hand, my college roommate at Harvard won the Bowdoin Prize (Est. 1791) for his essay on "Finnegans Wake."


_"agenbite of inwit"_

has a certain nip to it ... the phrase has stuck with me for 50 years. Maybe it's time to read some more.


----------



## SixFootScowl

A fun read about pioneer life in the early-mid 1800s in my neck of the woods. The homestead was less than 10 miles from where I live.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

Just finished the novel 'The Woodcock' by my friend Richard Smyth. 







It's really very good. Unusual setting, engaging characters and a lively narrative that bowls along. And the writing style is elegant and just quirky enough to hold the attention. It's Richard's first novel, and an impressive start. Recommended.


----------



## WNvXXT

Stasiland, Anna Funder 2003


----------



## starthrower

A strange coincidence to be reading this one and see the news this week about Donald Rumsfeld and the creepy story about him purchasing and living in the 200 year old house where Frederick Douglass was whipped and beaten by a notorious slave breaker. Ugh!


----------



## WNvXXT

Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire, America's Deadliest Rock Concert, John Barylick 2012

quote

_The non-sprinklered model tracked the fire's progress approximately as seen in Brian Butler's video, with temperatures exceeding 1,000 C (1830F) in the dance floor area and 500C (930F) in the main bar area in less than two minutes._


----------



## calvinpv

Not as good as his book _The Elementals_ and not really a horror novel per se so much as a tale of revenge between haves and have nots with some blood and gore thrown in. And the pacing of the novel was a little uneven, with the backstory clogging up the beginning and the revenge part of the book coming on you a little too quickly. But it is an early novel by McDowell, so he's still working out some kinks in his writing (his 6-part serial novel _Blackwater_ is supposed to be a great work of horror, which I'll get to soon).

But two things that stuck out for me were: 1. McDowell has a very keen sense of family dynamics and how the weight of tradition and upholding honor can paralyze a family into fulfilling certain personal and societal roles that may be detrimental to the family's cohesion -- very similar to Faulkner, though Faulkner expresses these themes more lyrically and with an added psychological dimension (both McDowell and Faulkner hail from the South). This is pretty explicit in both this novel and in _The Elementals_. 2. The way McDowell describes certain characters' mannerisms, physical appearances and dress reminds me a lot of that Tim Burton movie from the '90s, The Nightmare Before Christmas. McDowell was involved with that movie, and you can sort of see a faint connection between the two sets of characters, even though the plots are completely different.










I'm only two chapters in. This book is ambitious, despite its short length (150 pages). Not as difficult as _Gravity's Rainbow_ -- a couple years ago, I had to quit that book 20 pages in, I'm simply not ready for it -- but _Crying of Lot 49_ is still deceptively tricky. I've been taking my sweet time reading this, savoring every word along the way. And you kind of have to: it's littered with culture references from the 1930s-1960s, so I'm constantly looking things up. But these references aren't casually mentioned to set the mood; instead, they form, along with the other elements of the book, a network of cryptic, esoteric meanings that are better understood in relationship to each other and are less understood by any external background knowledge of the time period that you may bring to the table. Though background knowledge certainly doesn't hurt. Notions of "esotericism" and "revelation" are also underlying themes of the plot, which makes me think this way of conveying meaning and moving the plot forward is intentional; I think Pynchon is trying to get us to identify with the main character, who's undergoing a similar journey of her own. I now get why there's such a cult following around Pynchon the man, as well as his books, because some of these esoteric connections can only be made with knowledge of his personal life and knowledge of his own interior thoughts when writing the book -- which are hard to come by given he's a recluse. Overall, great book so far.










The second time I'm reading _Walden_, first time being 10 years ago in high school when too many of the work's subtleties passed over my head. I'm currently about 40% through, reading a few pages at a time. Maybe I'll say more when I'm done reading it, but _Walden_ is simply an incredible, transformative work of philosophy. It's by no means easy to read: there's a lot of formal argumentation disguised as allegory, metaphor, satire, and lots and lots of puns, and you gotta sift through it all to see the broader picture. And lots of invective; Thoreau pulls no punches against his fellow Americans, and his solution to the most fundamental question in ethics -- "What constitutes a good human life?" -- is very radical. _Walden_ was written to make you feel uncomfortable about yourself and the life you currently live.

And as an aside, there are many passages that anticipate by 100 years the thinking of contemporary composers like John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer. The book might be interesting to you in that regard, if nothing else.


----------



## Ingélou

Rereading Pride & Prejudice - enjoyment never fails.


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> . . . .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm only two chapters in. This book is ambitious, despite its short length (150 pages). Not as difficult as _Gravity's Rainbow_ -- a couple years ago, I had to quit that book 20 pages in, I'm simply not ready for it -- but _Crying of Lot 49_ is still deceptively tricky. I've been taking my sweet time reading this, savoring every word along the way. And you kind of have to: it's littered with culture references from the 1930s-1960s, so I'm constantly looking things up. But these references aren't casually mentioned to set the mood; instead, they form, along with the other elements of the book, a network of cryptic, esoteric meanings that are better understood in relationship to each other and are less understood by any external background knowledge of the time period that you may bring to the table. Though background knowledge certainly doesn't hurt. Notions of "esotericism" and "revelation" are also underlying themes of the plot, which makes me think this way of conveying meaning and moving the plot forward is intentional; I think Pynchon is trying to get us to identify with the main character, who's undergoing a similar journey of her own. I now get why there's such a cult following around Pynchon the man, as well as his books, because some of these esoteric connections can only be made with knowledge of his personal life and knowledge of his own interior thoughts when writing the book -- which are hard to come by given he's a recluse. Overall, great book so far.
> . . . .


Let us know what you think when you're finished. I wrote my college honors thesis on Pynchon in 1975. At that time there were only three novels to deal with and not very much critical analysis - nobody really knew what the hell _Gravity's Rainbow_ was about. I read _Crying_ a number of times back then and several times since. There are aspects I still can't get my head around fully.

Pynchon has disparaged _Crying_, but I think he does himself a disservice.


----------



## Vidar

Reading one of Modesitt's Imager series, current book is Antiagon Fire.


----------



## calvinpv

jegreenwood said:


> Let us know what you think when you're finished. I wrote my college honors thesis on Pynchon in 1975. At that time there were only three novels to deal with and not very much critical analysis - nobody really knew what the hell _Gravity's Rainbow_ was about. I read _Crying_ a number of times back then and several times since. There are aspects I still can't get my head around fully.
> 
> Pynchon has disparaged _Crying_, but I think he does himself a disservice.


So you wrote a thesis on Pynchon and as you say in an earlier post, your roommate wrote on Joyce. You guys must've had some pretty interesting dorm room conversations. My mom's college boyfriend was also, apparently, a huge Pynchon fan (this was late 70s - early 80s). She's told me a couple times that he would always carry around a copy of Gravity's Rainbow, it was like a Bible to him. I don't know your experience with Pynchon, but I feel like he really speaks to a certain generation that witnessed up close the Sixties Counterculture movement and what it stood for. I'm only 30 pages into _Crying_, but I can already tell that Pynchon was pretty disturbed by the mass consumerism and the false hopes and dreams of the Fifties and also by the Cold War. Though the plot so far, at least at the surface level, is more comic and humorous. The main characters so far are all neurotic. Oedipa is paranoid though she seems to get off on being watched, Mucho is a depressed nihilist and is able to see humanity's potential for destruction (the description of his job as a used car salesman is brilliant), and Metzger might have an Oedipal complex, though that remains to be seen. And all the minor characters are all sexually charged. The real wild card so far is the dead Pierce Inverarity.


----------



## Bwv 1080

calvinpv said:


> So you wrote a thesis on Pynchon and as you say in an earlier post, your roommate wrote on Joyce. You guys must've had some pretty interesting dorm room conversations. My mom's college boyfriend was also, apparently, a huge Pynchon fan (this was late 70s - early 80s). She's told me a couple times that he would always carry around a copy of Gravity's Rainbow, it was like a Bible to him. I don't know your experience with Pynchon, but I feel like he really speaks to a certain generation that witnessed up close the Sixties Counterculture movement and what it stood for. I'm only 30 pages into _Crying_, but I can already tell that Pynchon was pretty disturbed by the mass consumerism and the false hopes and dreams of the Fifties and also by the Cold War. Though the plot so far, at least at the surface level, is more comic and humorous. The main characters so far are all neurotic. Oedipa is paranoid though she seems to get off on being watched, Mucho is a depressed nihilist and is able to see humanity's potential for destruction (the description of his job as a used car salesman is brilliant), and Metzger might have an Oedipal complex, though that remains to be seen. And all the minor characters are all sexually charged. The real wild card so far is the dead Pierce Inverarity.


reread GR a couple years ago after having read it in college. Having read Vinland, M&D & Against the Day sort of thought it would be clearer - but no - it was even more bizarre than I remembered.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## jegreenwood

Bwv 1080 said:


> reread GR a couple years ago after having read it in college. Having read Vinland, M&D & Against the Day sort of thought it would be clearer - but no - it was even more bizarre than I remembered.


I've read GR twice since 1975, the second time with a guidebook by my side. I feel fairly comfortable with Parts I-III, but I still struggle with Part IV.

By the way, AFAIK, I was the first person to mention the connection between William Pynchon and William Slothrop. And for those familiar with GR or V., there's an op ed piece in today's NY Times about the Herero genocide, which the Germans finally acknowledged this past May. Another thing I discovered involved the Malta episode in V., which Pynchon stated had only been documented in one report. I found that report in the NYPL research branch. It was in a binder, randomly mixed with other reports. The only other one in English described the Herero massacre.

I don't plan on rereading GR again, but I do want to reread "Mason & Dixon" and "Against the Day." I read them both on publication, but there's more guidance available now.

As for my roommate, he didn't really care for Pynchon. He also says that he finally broke through on "Finnegans Wake" after listening to this:


----------



## Bwv 1080

jegreenwood said:


> I've read GR twice since 1975, the second time with a guidebook by my side. I feel fairly comfortable with Parts I-III, but I still struggle with Part IV.


Yes, part IV is where it really gets into dream logic and does not really have an analog in the later pynchon books I have read



> By the way, AFAIK, I was the first person to mention the connection between William Pynchon and William Slothrop. And for those familiar with GR or V., there's an op ed piece in today's NY Times about the Herero genocide, which the Germans finally acknowledged this past May. Another thing I discovered involved the Malta episode in V., which Pynchon stated had only been documented in one report. I found that report in the NYPL research branch. It was in a binder, randomly mixed with other reports. The only other one in English described the Herero massacre.


Cool, its easy to forget how hard it would have been pre-Internet for Pynchon to get his seemingly encyclopedic knowledge



> As for my roommate, he didn't really care for Pynchon. He also says that he finally broke through on "Finnegans Wake" after listening to this:


Yes, heard that a few years ago, which convinced me to wait and try the book if and when an unabridged audiobook came out


----------



## MrNobody

I am about to read Wuthering Heights, is it too difficult to read in English which is not my first language. I hear it is a masterpiece


----------



## Bwv 1080

MrNobody said:


> I am about to read Wuthering Heights, is it too difficult to read in English which is not my first language. I hear it is a masterpiece


There is the semaphore version


----------



## MrNobody

Bwv 1080 said:


> There is the semaphore version


That also sounds too difficult for me, and I have read that the plot is complex which is not my cup of tea.
Isn't there any Wuthering Heights for Dummies ?


----------



## jegreenwood

MrNobody said:


> That also sounds too difficult for me, and I have read that the plot is complex which is not my cup of tea.
> Isn't there any Wuthering Heights for Dummies ?


Would something like this help?

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/wuthering/


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Now reading _The Corrections_ by Jonathan Franzen.


I close the book. Very sharp. I didn't really enjoyed Denise Lambert POV, but on the whole the book is excellent. Recommended.

Now reading _A Theory of Justice_ by Johns Rawls.


----------



## jegreenwood

Conrad2 said:


> I close the book. Very sharp. I didn't really enjoyed Denise Lambert POV, but on the whole the book is excellent. Recommended.
> 
> Now reading _A Theory of Justice_ by Johns Rawls.


I took his course at Harvard the year the book came out. I've been meaning to reread it.


----------



## Ingélou

MrNobody said:


> I am about to read Wuthering Heights, is it too difficult to read in English which is not my first language. I hear it is a masterpiece


One of the characters, Joseph, speaks in Yorkshire dialect. You may find his speeches difficult to understand - I do, and I grew up in Yorkshire! However, every time you come across him, you need only know that he is extremely religious and disapproves of everyone and everything. Skip his speeches and move on. 

Is it a 'masterpiece'? The opening is eery & gripping, and the setting is wonderful - however, I was fondest of it myself in my twenties. In my maturity I find it almost ridiculously melodramatic.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Malx

Conrad2 said:


> It took longer than anticipated as I was busy. Interesting. Really enjoyed the *Jungian framing*. Recommended.
> 
> Now reading _The Corrections_ by Jonathan Franzen.


I am awaiting new glasses and I fully appreciate now why I need them - I read the enboldened phrase above as 'Jungian farming'!


----------



## MrNobody

This, because I think I could write something like this, but no publisher would publish the result.


----------



## Conrad2

jegreenwood said:


> I took his course at Harvard the year the book came out. I've been meaning to reread it.


What class did you take, and what was your impression of him and his teaching? I am interested in reading your experience and insight.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## jegreenwood

Conrad2 said:


> What class did you take, and what was your impression of him and his teaching? I am interested in reading your experience and insight.


It was an introduction to ethics lecture course, and this was 50 years ago. We did not use his book, which I believe came out several months after the course. I don't remember him being a compelling lecturer, but to be honest, I was a freshman and not a very studious student at the time. I have read the earlier version of the book since, and find him to be a fascinating thinker but a lousy stylist. I bought the revised version a while ago, and it looks like his writing had improved (or maybe he had a better editor).


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

^Funny enough, I actually just read a substantial portion of that for my college ethics course. I agree, fascinating thinking, and it’s easy to see how it has become highly influential in American politics.


----------



## TxllxT

*Charles Lewinsky*










We exchanged Záfon for the huge epos 'Melnitz' by the Swiss Jewish writer Charles Lewinsky. We didn't like the blackface drag-devil with burned paper smell and didn't feel any suspense anymore into Záfon's story although we liked the bookish atmosphere of Barcelona. 
It seems that Charles Lewinsky's works haven't been translated into English yet.


----------



## Celloman

I'm reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Call me Ishmael.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## starthrower

I had to get this one after reading the United States compilation of essays.


----------



## starthrower

More Gore Vidal! His prose has a flair and brilliance that makes it a pleasure to read. Early America, and ancient Greece and Rome are my major areas of interest so I picked up both Burr, and Julian.


----------



## Bwv 1080

starthrower said:


> More Gore Vidal! His prose has a flair and brilliance that makes it a pleasure to read. Early America, and ancient Greece and Rome are my major areas of interest so I picked up both Burr, and Julian.


There is also


----------



## starthrower

Bwv 1080 said:


> There is also


Sounds fascinating! I'll have to get to it eventually.


----------



## SanAntone

Re-re-re-reading two favorite books.

View attachment 157537


View attachment 157538


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## jegreenwood

Starting _A Swim in a Pond in the Rain_ by George Saunders. A collection of Russian short stories, together with an analysis by the Man Booker prize-winning author.


----------



## HenryPenfold

This is a very gripping read. I have just bought it, influenced by going through a bit of a Ring-obsession this week, and I don't know why I didn't buy it when it first came out. Very much a 360º multi-perspective survey.


----------



## MrNobody

The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka which was first published in 1915. Why read anything else


----------



## annaw

Finished Dickens's _Oliver Twist_. I struggled with it for some time but it became thoroughly rewarding the moment I started sympathising with the characters. Now I'm excited to continue with Dostoevsky's _Crime and Punishment_. I've been really looking forward to reading it; I loved _The Brothers Karamazov_.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Been reading some dramas lately; a category I've previously somewhat neglected outside of Shakespeare. The Bard's _Merry Wives of Windsor_ (very far from his best but still very good) and Sophocles's _Electra_, both in preparation for listening to the operas by Verdi and Strauss based off of them; but also Eugene O'Neill's _Long Day's Journey into Night_ and Ibsen's _Hedda Gabler_, both of which left me sitting in contemplation for several minutes after, pondering the depth of the characters and the complexity of the themes.


----------



## jegreenwood

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Been reading some dramas lately; a category I've previously somewhat neglected outside of Shakespeare. The Bard's _Merry Wives of Windsor_ (very far from his best but still very good) and Sophocles's _Electra_, both in preparation for listening to the operas by Verdi and Strauss based off of them; but also Eugene O'Neill's _Long Day's Journey into Night_ and Ibsen's _Hedda Gabler_, both of which left me sitting in contemplation for several minutes after, pondering the depth of the characters and the complexity of the themes.


Might I recommend some Chekhov next? _Three Sisters_ and _The Cherry Orchard_ are probably his best, but in many ways, my favorite is _Uncle Vanya_. I think I've seen it performed more often than any other play. It's amazing how many major English language playwrights have tried their hand at translations. The most recent translation I saw was by Annie Baker. I should check out Brian Friel's version, as several of his best plays have a Chekhovian quality.

It's been filmed several times. There's a film of the famous 1962 stage production with Lawrence Olivier. The quality of the performances makes up for the technical limitations.

By the way, I saw Olivier on stage once - as James Tyrone.


----------



## 59540

I love this text because it's "old school" (from the 1960s), back in the time when you had to do graphing by hand:


----------



## jegreenwood

dissident said:


> I love this text because it's "old school" (from the 1960s), back in the time when you had to do graphing by hand:
> View attachment 157769


So it's old school modern?

Reading Brian Greene's _The Fabric of the Cosmos_.


----------



## 59540

jegreenwood said:


> So it's old school modern?
> 
> Reading Brian Greene's _The Fabric of the Cosmos_.


I guess it was modern for its time, like the Modern Jazz Quartet. :lol:

That Greene book is great, btw.


----------



## WNvXXT




----------



## jegreenwood

dissident said:


> I guess it was modern for its time, like the Modern Jazz Quartet. :lol:
> 
> That Greene book is great, btw.


Love MJQ.

Finished the first several chapters of the Greene book. Clearest explanation of the Special and General Rules of Relativity I've come across. (On a conceptual level. I didn't bother with the footnotes, though.)

That evening, I watched _Tenet_ for the first time. Makes Einstein seem like middle school science.


----------



## SanAntone

I am finishing _Blood Meridian_ and started these two:

On the Road (Kerouac)

View attachment 157796


Selected Stories (Carver)

View attachment 157797


----------



## Taplow

Biography of an inspirational character. The author has an obvious respect for her subject, but only a few chapters in, it seems a little light on substance.


----------



## WNvXXT

introduction quotes:

_In terms of single events causing major loss of life, it surpassed the First World War (17 million dead), the Second World War (60 million dead) and possibly both put together. It was the greatest tidal wave of death since the Black Death, perhaps in the whole of human history.

...

Most of the death occurred in the thirteen weeks between mid-September and mid-December 1918._


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Ingélou

Clare Tomalin, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
We picked it up from a charity shop.










I've read other biographies by this author, and this one is just as readable and informative as the others.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS - I got Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall from the same charity shop, but just couldn't stand the present tense narrative. It annoyed me so much that after a few pages and flicking through the book reading snippets, I returned it to the charity bag. I feel that life is too short to curl up intentionally on a bed of nails.

It cheered me up a bit to find that I'm not alone in disliking this device. 
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2010/sep/18/philip-pullman-author-present-tense


----------



## SixFootScowl

Ingélou said:


> Clare Tomalin, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
> We picked it up from a charity shop.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've read other biographies by this author, and this one is just as readable and informative as the others.
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> PS - I got Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall from the same charity shop, but just couldn't stand the present tense narrative. It annoyed me so much that after a few pages and flicking through the book reading snippets, I returned it to the charity bag. I feel that life is too short to curl up intentionally on a bed of nails.
> 
> It cheered me up a bit to find that I'm not alone in disliking this device.
> https://www.theguardian.com/global/2010/sep/18/philip-pullman-author-present-tense


That is always the downside to any biography having to finish the book with the subject person's finish. Death no fun.  Maybe can stop reading before the last chapter. It really brought me down reading the death part of a Beethoven biography.


----------



## Ingélou

I wouldn't want to miss the death part out. It's sad, but I always hope to read that they died well, and to get some lessons for my own demise - which I hope is still quite a long way off, of course!


----------



## SixFootScowl

Ingélou said:


> I wouldn't want to miss the death part out. It's sad, but I always hope to read that they died well, and to get some lessons for my own demise - which I hope is still quite a long way off, of course!


Makes sense to be prepared, but my father-in-law apparently was over prepared. He had a book on death and dying and mentioned to us that he was ready to go anytime. Within a couple of years he went. I don't know if I want to get THAT prepared! :lol:


----------



## Barbebleu

Benjamin Britten by Humphrey Carpenter. Only a couple of chapters in but I like Carpenter’s writing style. I read this when it was first published nearly thirty years ago. Can’t remember a word so this will be an enjoyable read.


----------



## Barbebleu

Ingélou said:


> I wouldn't want to miss the death part out. It's sad, but I always hope to read that they died well, and to get some lessons for my own demise - which I hope is still quite a long way off, of course!


Death - nature's way of telling you to slow down!

When I was about sixteen I decided that I was going to live forever. So far, so good!:lol:


----------



## 59540

Sort of in the style of Brian Greene's books. Very interesting.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Cormac McCarthy, _Blood Meridian_. McCarthy is undoubtedly a Great American Writer, though I'm not always the greatest fan of his run-on style. It's pivotal to be familiar with some of the key works of Western literature before reading this novel - Dante, Milton, Melville, Homer, the Bible - because McCarthy uses them as reference points, weaving themes and concepts from them into his great theological drama of horror and suffering. A hypnotic and magnetic read. And yes, it is violent, but if you are familiar with the Old Testament and the _Iliad_, you'll realize the parallels. However, I think it seems so much more disturbing here because it is all so senseless and random.


----------



## starthrower

A fascinating read! The book's first half includes a number of essays discussing the quartets from different vantage points including the audiences for these works, performance history in the 19th century, societal and cultural significance, and finally a player's perspective. The second half is dedicated to a discussion and brief analysis of each quartet. Although Beethoven received meager financial remuneration or public acclaim for his late masterworks, his preoccupation with the quartet in his later years produced up to 650 pages of sketches for the Op.131 quartet, alone! "Beethoven seems to have created these last quartets without any listener in mind but himself."


----------



## Musicaterina

Some Italian sports books, among them Luigi Ceragioli: GAG (=gambe, addome, glutei; in English: legs, abs, butt)









I have already tried some of the exercises, but at the moment I only can practise limitedly because of my peroneal tendon rupture


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> I close the book. Very sharp. I didn't really enjoyed Denise Lambert POV, but on the whole the book is excellent. Recommended.
> 
> Now reading _A Theory of Justice_ by John Rawls.


Been busy with "life" and finished this book a couple days ago. Took me some time to wrap my head around this book as I'm not familiar with Kantianism, but it was worth the struggle. His idea was quite interesting, but manage to leave many questions unanswered. Not a "light" read, but it was intriguing.

Now rereading the Odyssey.


----------



## Jay

_The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War_, by Louis Menand; very erudite, but the almost-total absence of post-War jazz is a real head-scratcher of an omission.


----------



## Barbebleu

The Confessions of Aleister Crowley - An Autohagiography. My third time of reading and I still find it engrossing and fascinating. He was not a dull man!


----------



## SanAntone

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Cormac McCarthy, _Blood Meridian_. McCarthy is undoubtedly a Great American Writer, though I'm not always the greatest fan of his run-on style. It's pivotal to be familiar with some of the key works of Western literature before reading this novel - Dante, Milton, Melville, Homer, the Bible - because McCarthy uses them as reference points, weaving themes and concepts from them into his great theological drama of horror and suffering. A hypnotic and magnetic read. And yes, it is violent, but if you are familiar with the Old Testament and the _Iliad_, you'll realize the parallels. However, I think it seems so much more disturbing here because it is all so senseless and random.


I just read that recently, and am about to finish _Suttree_. I have a book which references the actual events which McCarthy based _Blood Meridian_ on. Most of the main characters were based on real people (not the kid, McCarthy often uses a kid as the protagonist), although in some cases were composites.

McCarthy is among my top three writers.

I also just finished _Light in August_ by *Faulkner*, another among my Top Three.

Next up, _Desolation Angels_, *Kerouac*.


----------



## TxllxT

Next to 'Melnitz' by Charles Lewinsky I'm reading:










The way Robert Hughes describes how Romans in the good old days threw out the terracotta pot filled with faeces (all of it) out of the windows on the streets of Rome during the night is infecting one's imagination. The night watch men wore special leather caps quilted with fillings because of this Roman habit.


----------



## Alinde

I've almost finished a re-read of Marcia Bjornerud's "Reading the Rocks: the autobiography of the Earth" and I realise why I was so keen to re-read it - Bjornerud is not just a scientist who can write well, she delivers exceptionally imaginative and elegant prose. I googled her and shouldn't really have been surprised to discover that she's written for the New Yorker.

I'm delighted to discover that her second book has recently been published.


----------



## Guest

I finally finished _As I Lay Dying_, by William Faulkner (actually some time ago).

I find it a great book. William Faulkner himself characterized the book as a _tour de force_ in narration, and I think that is a frank assessment.

It is the story of Addie, who lies on her death bed, as her family around her prepares for her burial (including her son Cash noisily fashioning her casket within earshot outside her window). She is intent on being buried with her people in Jefferson, an arduous journey away (in the aftermath of a strong storm) and her husband makes great hay of being determined to carry this out. It often seems like he is using this as a pretext to serve his own whims. The story is told alternately by the various participants, including her children, her husband, and various people who encounter the burial procession.

I think the point of this book, and a general theme in Faulkner's work, is that we think of ourselves are rational, but we are actually beholden to our own prejudices, obsessions, and emotional limitations. In this work, the distortion of reality by the various participants is exaggerated to a perhaps absurd level. But the effect is there isn "ordinary" people. Faulkner's genius is to illustrate that, and to tell a great, captivating story.


----------



## starthrower

I'm reading Gary Burton's autobiography, Learning To Listen. He was quite a wiz kid with perfect pitch and sharp reading skills who played with several greats even before he became famous. A very intersting read for jazz fans.


----------



## jegreenwood

_House of the Rising Sun_ by James Lee Burke. Part of the Holland family series. Set before and after the turn of the 20th century.


----------



## SanAntone

_Green Hills of Africa_ - *Hemingway* (about half way through)

_The 42nd Parallel _ - *John Dos Passos* (just starting)

Will begin after I finish these other two:

_Winesburg, Ohio_ - *Anderson*

_The Unvanquished_ - *Faulkner*


----------



## Bwv 1080

SanAntone said:


> _The 42nd Parallel _ - *John Dos Passos* (just starting)


The whole trilogy is great


----------



## Bwv 1080

Made it about halfway through Finnegans Wake before I lost interest, really did like Book 1. Book 2 started to throw in too many characters and references.

Now onto non-fiction - a very well written account of a Tobago / Jamaica planter family in the 18th & 19th century and the overall 
picture of slavery in the UK


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Made it about halfway through Finnegans Wake before I lost interest, really did like Book 1. Book 2 started to throw in too many characters and references.


I've have a similar experience with Joyce's Ulysses. The beginning is so intensely interesting, then it spirals out of control. After 20 years of intermittent reading I am about 1/3 of the way through....


----------



## annaw

I'm back reading Faulkner. I simply cannot get enough. Now reading _Light in August_. So far, I love it!


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Flannery O'Connor, _The Violent Bear it Away_. O'Connor is one of my very favorite writers, and her early death is one of the most regrettable losses in the history of literature. Annaw, if you haven't read any of her work, I'd highly recommend her - the themes and settings are very Faulknerian, but with much tighter prose and more of a religious/theological emphasis.

Also Roger Scruton, _The Soul of the World_. A controversial thinker and brilliant writer whose ideas are always stimulating and challenging.


----------



## annaw

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Flannery O'Connor, _The Violent Bear it Away_. O'Connor is one of my very favorite writers, and her early death is one of the most regrettable losses in the history of literature. Annaw, if you haven't read any of her work, I'd highly recommend her - the themes and settings are very Faulknerian, but with much tighter prose and more of a religious/theological emphasis.
> 
> Also Roger Scruton, _The Soul of the World_. A controversial thinker and brilliant writer whose ideas are always stimulating and challenging.


Yeah, I'm planning to dive deeper into Southern gothic literature in the future. Those books weren't very accessible in Estonia - now I've got more hope. What amazes me about Faulkner is that despite the fact that I'm European and the closest I've gotten to American South is Saint Louis, his writing still manages to touch me deeper than a lot of literature written in Europe. Truly spectacular.


----------



## SanAntone

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Flannery O'Connor, _The Violent Bear it Away_. O'Connor is one of my very favorite writers, and her early death is one of the most regrettable losses in the history of literature. Annaw, if you haven't read any of her work, I'd highly recommend her - the themes and settings are very Faulknerian, but with much tighter prose and more of a religious/theological emphasis.
> 
> Also Roger Scruton, _The Soul of the World_. A controversial thinker and brilliant writer whose ideas are always stimulating and challenging.


Another of my favorites. Over the course of last and this year I re-read her complete short story collection. I also watched an excellent documentary about her life and work produced for PBS American Masters.


----------



## Eramire156

It has quite some time since I visited this corner of TC, I'm currently reading the* Assassin's Cloak* a wonderful anthology, * The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the friends who shaped an age*, currently taking a break from Boswell life of Johnson and finally just started * Beowulf*


----------



## Guest

_How it All Began_, by Penelope Lively.










This is "literary fiction," but on the light side. At the beginning of the story an older lady is mugged and has to stay with her daughter during her recuperation of some months. The novel centers how the effects of this event propagates outward and significantly effects the lives of people who don't even know her.

The narrative technique bears some superficial similarity to William Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_, with the story told by different characters. However in this case, it is like different cameras viewing different parts of the same scene from different angles. We don't have the dramatic differences of interpretation by the various characters. A pleasant read, not earth-shattering.

I came across this book by Book Bub, a service that notifies you of deep discounts on ebooks from a list of your favorite authors. I think Lively is on my list because I liked another of her novels, _The Photograph_.


----------



## Barbebleu

Ian Rankin/William McIlvanney - The Dark Remains. Excellent. The father of tartan noir (McIlvanney) and his natural heir (Rankin) combine to give us the case that made Jack Laidlaw.


----------



## HenryPenfold

Ring Resounding: The Recording Of Der Ring Dea Nibelungen - John Culshaw


----------



## Jay

_The People, No! A Brief History of Anti-Populism_, Thomas Frank

Engaging history of populism--left and right--in America from the 1890s to the present, with particular focus on the "elite" reaction to it.


----------



## jegreenwood

Eramire156 said:


> It has quite some time since I visited this corner of TC, I'm currently reading the* Assassin's Cloak* a wonderful anthology, * The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the friends who shaped an age*, currently taking a break from Boswell life of Johnson and finally just started * Beowulf*
> 
> View attachment 158995
> 
> 
> View attachment 158997
> 
> 
> View attachment 158996


Read that Beowulf earlier this year. Now reading _The Aspern Papers_. James writing in first person is a lot easier going than - say - _The Ambassadors_.


----------



## Kivimees

The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig:









Some stories are better than others, but the best are very good indeed.


----------



## Ingélou

I've just finished rereading Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, getting ready for watching the older BBC series on DVD. I always enjoy it - as I'm a Catholic, the subject matter interests me, and we are very familiar with Castle Howard, the estate where this series was filmed. However, the style is too rococo for me, although I accept that it suits the book's theme.


----------



## SanAntone

*Hemingway*: _Death in the Afternoon_










After the _Green Hills of Africa_, I thought I'd read Hemingway's great non-fiction account of Spanish bullfighting.

Wiki had this to say about it:



> Hemingway became a bullfighting aficionado after seeing the Pamplona fiesta in the 1920s, which he wrote about in The Sun Also Rises. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway explores the metaphysics of bullfighting-the ritualized, almost religious practice-that he considered analogous to the writer's search for meaning and the essence of life. In bullfighting, he found the elemental nature of life and death. *Marianne Wiggins* has written of Death in the Afternoon: "Read it for the writing, for the way it's told... He'll make you like it [bullfighting]... You read enough and long enough, he'll make you love it, he's relentless".
> 
> In his writings on Spain, Hemingway was influenced by the Spanish master *Pío Baroja*. When Hemingway won the Nobel Prize, he traveled to see Baroja, then on his death bed, specifically to tell him he thought Baroja deserved the prize more than he.
> 
> Death in the Afternoon was published by Scribner's on 23 September 1932 to a first edition print run of approximately 10,000 copies.


----------



## Eramire156

Kivimees said:


> The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig:
> 
> View attachment 159045
> 
> 
> Some stories are better than others, but the best are very good indeed.


Love, Mendel the bibliophile, it is story I reread often, I need to pickup the Pushkin Press edition of the collected novellas.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

I finished the last of Raymond Feist's *Midkemia, Chaoswars, Book 3, Magician's End*, yesterday afternoon. I've read individual entries since almost the very beginnings of my fascination with the fantasy genre during the mid 1980s. This last volume was a fitting terminus. I shall miss the series. I'm sorely tempted to return to the beginning and re-read the initial series, but probably ought to tackle my ever-growing initial-read TBR pile instead.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Baron Scarpia said:


> I've have a similar experience with Joyce's Ulysses. The beginning is so intensely interesting, then it spirals out of control. After 20 years of intermittent reading I am about 1/3 of the way through....


My copy of _Ulysses_ fits nicely over a crack which I have on one of my window sills.


----------



## JohnP

elgars ghost said:


> My copy of _Ulysses_ fits nicely over a crack which I have on one of my window sills.


To this wonderful solution I can only add: glue it down.


----------



## JohnP

Jess Walter. Beautiful Ruins.

It's a social satire of Hollywood culture and my third Walter novel. I'm also easing my through of collection of his short stories, We Live in Water. The man can write.


----------



## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> _How it All Began_, by Penelope Lively.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is "literary fiction," but on the light side. At the beginning of the story an older lady is mugged and has to stay with her daughter during her recuperation of some months. The novel centers how the effects of this event propagates outward and significantly effects the lives of people who don't even know her.
> 
> The narrative technique bears some superficial similarity to William Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_, with the story told by different characters. However in this case, it is like different cameras viewing different parts of the same scene from different angles. We don't have the dramatic differences of interpretation by the various characters. A pleasant read, not earth-shattering.
> 
> I came across this book by Book Bub, a service that notifies you of deep discounts on ebooks from a list of your favorite authors. I think Lively is on my list because I liked another of her novels, _The Photograph_.


I read _Moon Tiger_ quite a while back. I'll check this out.


Barbebleu said:


> Ian Rankin/William McIlvanney - The Dark Remains. Excellent. The father of tartan noir (McIlvanney) and his natural heir (Rankin) combine to give us the case that made Jack Laidlaw.


I'll definitely check this out. I think I've read all the Rebus books.

Just finished _The Aspern Papers_. As good as any novella I can recall. And a great introduction to Henry James.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

After finishing Feist's *Chaoswar: Magician's End*, I immediately returned to the very beginning and re-read (for the sixth time) *Magician: Apprentice*. I have tentitively begun *Magician: Master*, but might set it aside and return to my initial-read TBR pile. I certainly do not intend to re-read the entirety of Feist's Midkemia books at this time.

Oh yeah, I bough a Kindle on sale. Haven't done anything with it beyond downloading a free ebook.


----------



## Bwv 1080




----------



## Barbebleu

In A House of Lies - Ian Rankin. The last but one of the Rebus books. Excellent as always. Rebus in retirement is just as good as Rebus the detective.


----------



## SixFootScowl

From the kids' section at the library. Wife was rooting around in this series at the library and I started scanning titles. Could not resist this one. Learned some things I did not know (or remember) from when I read up on Dylan some years ago.


----------



## Ingélou

I'm rereading Peter Martin's biography of James Boswell. 
What an exasperating, lovable, sex-mad, religious, melancholy, flamboyant, fascinating creature of extremes the man was. I have never behaved like him, but I've often thought and felt what he did.

This biography is very thorough and readable and I'm enjoying it all tremendously - it also helps my knowledge of eighteenth-century Scotland, which is the home and time span of my favourite music.


----------



## SanAntone

_The Big Sleep _
by *Raymond Chandler *


----------



## FrankE

_Becoming Hitler_ by Thomas Weber.
I finally got round to read it after watching a film Valkyrie film a few weeks ago. Bought the book a few years back after a panel discussion with Professor Weber and Sophie von Bechtolsheim, the granddaughter of Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.
Nothing really about music. I just recall a friend asked about Wagner and occult influences when they were fielding questions.
Heavy going as I only like STEMM textbooks, manuals and reference books not books about people, fiction, biographies. I'd hoped to have finished it before last week and not be reading it over the holidays.


----------



## Bwv 1080

FrankE said:


> _Becoming Hitler_ by Thomas Weber.
> I finally got round to read it after watching a film Valkyrie film a few weeks ago. Bought the book a few years back after a panel discussion with Professor Weber and Sophie von Bechtolsheim, the granddaughter of Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.
> Nothing really about music. I just recall a friend asked about Wagner and occult influences when they were fielding questions.
> Heavy going as I only like STEMM textbooks, manuals and reference books not books about people, fiction, biographies. I'd hoped to have finished it before last week and not be reading it over the holidays.


You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him. (RIP Norm McDonald)

Read the Vollker bio last year, may take a look at that


----------



## SanAntone

I had no idea Norm McDonald had died. Sad news.


----------



## Conrad2

Conrad2 said:


> Now rereading the Odyssey.


Now I close the book. The ending felt more abrupt then I remember. Still a timeless classic mediation on glory, home, and among other things.

Now reading _If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho_ translated by Anne Carson.










The book was recommended by a friend. This would be a new experience for me, reading a text that is snippets almost all the way through. Not sure if I will enjoy this book, but I won't know if I don't give it a try.


----------



## eljr

Just did a preorder of this title:










Last book I read,


----------



## jegreenwood

eljr said:


> . . . .
> Last book I read,


Surprised they haven't taken that out of circulation.

(From a New Yorker who voted for him twice.)


----------



## starthrower

jegreenwood said:


> Surprised they haven't taken that out of circulation.
> 
> (From a New Yorker who voted for him twice.)


I doubt his book will need any help fading in to obscurity. I'm happy we now have a new governor from Western NY who isn't bought and paid for by Wall St interests.


----------



## eljr

jegreenwood said:


> Surprised they haven't taken that out of circulation.
> 
> (From a New Yorker who voted for him twice.)


Why? The guys was aces.

Don't let the media think for you.


----------



## SanAntone

_Cover Her Face_: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery
by *P.D. James*










Alternating with _Death in the Afternoon_ by *Hemingway* (nearing the end) and

_Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung: A Companion_ 
by *Barry Millington*


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Malx

HenryPenfold said:


> Ring Resounding: The Recording Of Der Ring Dea Nibelungen - John Culshaw


Crikey, you've reminded me I got this for Christmas a couple of years back and as I was ill at the time someone put it away safe for me. I had completely forgotten - I'm off to interrogate my better half.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Mostly fiction/drama lately:

Shelley - _Frankenstein_. One of the pivotal works of the 19th century.
Stendhal - _The Red and the Black_, translated by Margaret Shaw - A bit dry and tedious, but a well-crafted plot and a nice look into French social conditions after Napoleon.
Shakespeare - _Henry IV, Part I_
Chekhov - _The Cherry Orchard_
Aesychlus - _Prometheus Bound_, Euripides - _Medea_


----------



## Ariasexta

Been focusing on Dickens and Shakespeare recently, while stacking some volumes of Gogol and Dostoevsky beside the desk. I always praise russian writers, although their politics has always been an odorous Frankenstein like chicoms.


----------



## starthrower

I've been reading a 1986 paperback edition of Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker which is a great read but the small print is giving me a headache. I just ordered a used copy of a later edition so I'll continue when it arrives.

BTW, does anyone here frequent any reader's or book forums that are fairly active? I'd appreciate some suggestions. Thanks!


----------



## Barbebleu

Dan Jones: Powers and Thrones; A New History of the Middle Ages. Excellent stuff. While reading the chapters on the crusades and Bernard of Clairvaux’s preaching of the second crusade, the place he preached in, Vezelay, rang a bell. Then I realised I had actually been to the abbey at Vezelay. My brother lives in Burgundy and during one of my visits to him he took me on a sightseeing trip of the area, mostly the excellent vineyards, but he slipped Vezelay in for lunch and a look round the abbey. It is of course one of the main starting points for the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, which I knew, but I wasn’t aware that it had such importance vis a vis the crusades. If I’d known that I would have paid more attention!


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Guest

Blukowski's Post Office










Has a literary feel, but Blukowski luxuriates in his own crudity and dissipation.


----------



## Guest

Malx said:


> Crikey, you've reminded me I got this for Christmas a couple of years back and as I was ill at the time someone put it away safe for me. I had completely forgotten - I'm off to interrogate my better half.


Culshaw's book contains fascinating details of the recording process, but it also can be self serving and takes some cheap shots at his competitors. Best enjoyed with a grain of salt. 

There's also a video made during the recording of Gotterdamerung which is fascinating to watch.


----------



## Rogerx

On pre order


----------



## jegreenwood

Rogerx said:


> On pre order


Sounds like quite a read. The late night hosts had a great deal to say about Trump's colonoscopy. This was my favorite.

"The doctors said the hardest thing about giving Trump a colonoscopy was getting the camera around Mike Pence's nose." - JIMMY KIMMEL

(Quoted in The NY Times. Moderators - feel free to delete if too political.)


----------



## jegreenwood

Can’t quite decide what to read, so staying with short stories for a while. Right now - Katherine Anne Porter, whom I haven’t read since high school.


----------



## RobertJTh

Gregor Piatigorsky's autobiography, titled "Cellist".
A really engrossing and fun read, Piatogorsky was a master raconteur, specially in the first part of the book which covers his early years spent in poverty in Russia, Poland and Germany.
At one time he remembers being a little kid, employed at some shady night club, and the conductor of the orchestra had him playing the cello turned around facing the wall in order to spare him the sight of the scantly dressed ladies on the stage.


----------



## Barbebleu

Baron Scarpia said:


> Culshaw's book contains fascinating details of the recording process, but it also can be self serving and takes some cheap shots at his competitors. Best enjoyed with a grain of salt.
> 
> There's also a video made during the recording of Gotterdamerung which is fascinating to watch.


That would be The Golden Ring. Excellent documentary with some great footage.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Guess Im a masochist, 900+ fictional memoir of former Einsatzgruppen officer



> I am not trying to say I am not guilty of this or that. I am guilty, you're not, fine. But you should be able to admit to yourselves that you might also have done what I did. With less zeal, perhaps, but perhaps also with less despair, in any case one way or another. I think I am allowed to conclude, as a fact established by modern history, that everyone, or nearly everyone, in a given set of circumstances, does what he is told to do; and, pardon me, but there's not much chance that you're the exception, any more than I was. If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also nobody comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you're not a better person. Because if you have the arrogance to think you are, that's just where the danger begins. We like to contrast the State, totalitarian or not, with the ordinary man, that insect or trembling reed. But then we forget that the State is made up of individuals, all more or less ordinary, each one with his life, his story, the sequence of accidents that led him one day to end up on the right side of the gun or the sheet of paper while others ended up on the wrong side. This path is very rarely the result of any choice, or even of personal predilection. The victims, in the vast majority of cases, were not tortured or killed because they were good any more than their executioners tormented them because they were evil. It would be a little naïve to think that way; allow me to suggest you spend a little time in a bureaucracy


https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/b...nes-by-jonathan-littell/9781551993645/excerpt


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## SixFootScowl




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## HenryPenfold

Malx said:


> Crikey, you've reminded me I got this for Christmas a couple of years back and as I was ill at the time someone put it away safe for me. I had completely forgotten - I'm off to interrogate my better half.


It's a very fascinating read and rather unexpectedly, Culshaw makes some uncanny predictions regarding the nature and direction of travel of recorded music.


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## Jay

_Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire_, Kurt Anderson

This is decidedly _not_ the American history they teach in the schools. The extent to which this country was settled, established, and exploited by flaming wack-jobs, mountebanks, cretins, con artists, religious nuts, and generally magical thinking is astounding! And, of course, it continues today.....


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## SanAntone

I'm back on a mystery jag - reading Ellis Peters' first _Felse Investigations_ novel. She wrote the Brother Cadfael series which I enjoyed. I'm also reading some hard-boiled America stuff, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Tony Hillerman, Craig Johnson (Longmire), some John Le Carre, and Ruth Rendell, PD James, Agatha Christie.

I love these books, and enjoy reading them so much more than watching the filmed adaptations.

To break it up I am also reading _Wagner Without Fear_ - an excellent book for both experienced fans as well as newcomers to this composer.


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## Red Terror

Rogerx said:


> On pre order


The problem with these type of books is that they are inevitably bias. Objective truth is hard to come by in our day.


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## SixFootScowl




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## Tristan

Red Terror said:


> The problem with these type of books is that they are inevitably bias. Objective truth is hard to come by in our day.


Well, yeah, all political books have some kind of agenda. And it's not any different in "our day". Just look at any political work from the early 20th century--extremely biased and full of value judgments.

Anyway, I'm reading:

*The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857* by William Dalrymple


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## Red Terror

Tristan said:


> Well, yeah, all political books have some kind of agenda. And it's not any different in "our day". Just look at any political work from the early 20th century--extremely biased and full of value judgments.
> 
> Anyway, I'm reading:
> 
> *The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857* by William Dalrymple


History is cyclical. The disregard for scientific and/or objective data in our day-unless it furthers one's agenda-isn't an isolated incident. But it is evident that we are now in a segment of the cycle where things deteriorate. We now make our own truths and silence those who go against the zeitgeist; the spirit of the age.


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## Tristan

Red Terror said:


> History is cyclical. The disregard for scientific and/or objective data in our day-unless it furthers one's agenda-isn't an isolated incident. But it is evident that we are now in a segment of the cycle where things deteriorate. We now make our own truths and silence those who go against the zeitgeist; the spirit of the age.


Hmm. I don't really think it's cyclical. I mean history certainly is, but this issue specifically I think is more timeless. It may have gotten worse in recent decades with the internet and the proliferation of easily accessible information, so it's easier to wall ourselves off into echo chambers where we only encounter information that confirms our biases. People have always ignored information that doesn't further their agenda; that's human nature. If it supports your agenda, it's true/fact, if it goes against it, it's fake/lies/propaganda/BS.


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## starthrower

Who would expect scientific objectivity in a spill the beans political memoir? And the subtitle is "What I saw at the Trump White House. It's someone's point of view. There's nothing objective about it. What I find strange about all this attention on Trump is that I don't find him interesting in the least. He's a manipulator and a narcissist. But millions of Americans believing he's good for the country? That's the real story. The masses providing energy for the vampire. It keeps his batteries charged.


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## SixFootScowl




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## Guest

Very good so far.


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## SanAntone

Just got these on my Kindle

*Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music*










*The Cambridge Companion to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen*


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## Guest

Finished Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach.










A novel centering on Annie Kerrigan and her father Eddie. Eddie was a former vaudeville performer who became a stock broker during the roaring 20's, who was left as a low-paid bag man for a local mobster. He switches loyalty to a mob-connect night club owner and has to disappear to escape a mob hit. After her father's disappearance Annie goes to work in the Brooklyn Navy yard, where she works as a diver, and becomes involved with he night club owner, who she had met years before when accompanying her father to a meeting with him.

An interesting and engaging book, although the plot points sometimes don't seem to make sense.


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## MAS

*Dune*, and *The Count of Monte Cristo* the last of which is to compare with two films, one of which is the French six-hour miniseries, which is still not faithful to the book. *Unacceptable *!


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## jegreenwood

Baron Scarpia said:


> Finished Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A novel centering on Annie Kerrigan and her father Eddie. Eddie was a former vaudeville performer who became a stock broker during the roaring 20's, who was left as a low-paid bag man for a local mobster. He switches loyalty to a mob-connect night club owner and has to disappear to escape a mob hit. After her father's disappearance Annie goes to work in the Brooklyn Navy yard, where she works as a diver, and becomes involved with he night club owner, who she had met years before when accompanying her father to a meeting with him.
> 
> An interesting and engaging book, although the plot points sometimes don't seem to make sense.


I loved it. Had a chance to meet the author and get some copies signed. I gave those to some of the students in an NYC volunteer SAT prep program.


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## jegreenwood

_The Body Scout_ by Lincoln Michel. A comic dystopian science fiction whodunit about baseball and NYC.


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## ToneDeaf&Senile

At 1347 this afternoon, 23 Oct 2021, I concluded an initial read of Ellie Midwood's *The Violinist of Auschwitz*. Based on the true story of violinist Alma Rose, chronicling her stay in the death camp, it looks to be one of a number of like-themed books by Ms Midwood. There is at least one further book on Rose, which was made into a movie. According to Midwood, its author's credibility is highly suspect, and contested by other survivors of the Auschwitz female orchestra, which Rose directed. Be that as it may, I found it quite gripping, if at times understandably unsettling. At its Kindle price of $1.99 (as of late Oct 2021), it's a very strong recommendation. (Admittedly, Rose being a musician, I'm possibly more susceptible to being drawn into her story than might otherwise be the case. But still . . .)


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## jegreenwood

ToneDeaf&Senile said:


> At 1347 this afternoon, 23 Oct 2021, I concluded an initial read of Ellie Midwood's *The Violinist of Auschwitz*. Based on the true story of violinist Alma Rose, chronicling her stay in the death camp, it looks to be one of a number of like-themed books by Ms Midwood. There is at least one further book on Rose, which was made into a movie. According to Midwood, its author's credibility is highly suspect, and contested by other survivors of the Auschwitz female orchestra, which Rose directed. Be that as it may, I found it quite gripping, if at times understandably unsettling. At its Kindle price of $1.99 (as of late Oct 2021), it's a very strong recommendation. (Admittedly, Rose being a musician, I'm possibly more susceptible to being drawn into her story than might otherwise be the case. But still . . .)


The movie was _Playing for Time_, written by Arthur Miller based on the autobiography of Fania Fenelon. It won a bunch of awards, despite the casting of Vanessa Redgrave, a pro-Palestinian, as Fenelon. Jane Alexander played Rose.


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## Kivimees

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)

It's a bit challenging. Much of the dialogue is written phonetically; I need to say this aloud in order to understand it. Quite a few unfamiliar words as well.


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## elgar's ghost

Not so much books but magazines. I was a collector of _Mojo_ music magazine for a number of years and managed to hang onto nearly all of them. Currently perusing the earliest one I have - no.5 from April 1994.


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## Judith

Just started one about the Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris. Researching local history of Leeds UK from medieval times and feel that reading the book will give me some background around that period.

History is my other passion as well as classical music!


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## ToneDeaf&Senile

Yesterday, visiting Amazon's Kindle Store, I was quite surprised to see Jan Swafford's *Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph*, Kindle edition, reduced to $3.99US! I've read and adore the book. However, mine is a hardback copy. Hardbacks have become very uncomfortable for me to hold while lying on the sofa, which is where I do almost the totality for my reading. (This was not yet the case when a younger me first read the book some years ago.) Considering the price (as of late Oct 2021) and that I'm contemplating a re-read within the next year or two, I took the plunge.Be that as it may, I felt I ought to mention it here for those who might not own a copy, or like me, look to supplement their printed copy with a more convenient edition. (The hardback is a chunkster.)


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## calvinpv

Some books I've read recently:

Arthur Conan Doyle: *A Study in Scarlet*, *The Sign of the Four*, *The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes*, *The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes*

Finally getting around to reading these stories. About halfway through the complete works. I must say though, it becomes painfully obvious as you're reading just how simple and unsophisticated these stories are in comparison to later crime fiction. And how lopsided and clunky they're written -- half of any given story is just the client laying out all known facts to Sherlock, leaving 2-3 pages for actual detective work. That said, I do like a couple of the short stories in full, like "The Blue Carbuncle", "The Silver Blaze", and "The Naval Treaty". And the next story to read is supposed to be his best, _The Hound of the Baskervilles_.

Lee Child: *Killing Floor*, *Die Trying*, *Tripwire*, *Running Blind*

Now these are great crime novels. They may be written for a mass market audience, like the novels by John Grisham or James Patterson, but don't be fooled, these are exceptionally written. The prose is buttery smooth, mockingly witty, and wickedly perceptive like Raymond Chandler -- in fact, the pen name "Lee Child" was chosen so that James Dover Grant's books can be placed in between Chandler and Agatha Christie in the bookstores. That's the type of stature Lee Child wants to achieve, and I think he's done it. Yes, there's also two mediocre movies starring Tom Cruise, but don't judge the books by the movies. They're very different.

The main character, Jack Reacher, is an ex-military policeman who grew up abroad on military bases and who now drifts on Greyhound buses to sightsee America for the first time and to run away from yet to be named personal demons. Reacher doesn't seek out the crime, the crime stumbles into him. A bit of a Philip Marlowe type, but for the 21st century. These books can be classified as "crime" but, so far at least (the above titles are the first four in a 25+ series), none of the novels can sit comfortably in any sub-genre (whodunit, locked-room mystery, thriller, hard-boiled, noir, ...), there's a lot cross-genre mixing. And some subtle and occasionally not-so-subtle parody poking fun at traditional crime genre stereotypes. For example, I'm pretty sure _Die Trying_ is one giant spoof on the American machismo elements you see in detective fiction because some of the Herculean feats Jack Reacher accomplishes are so outrageously improbable that I can't help but think this is some cosmic joke set up by Lee Child. You also see a bit of this in _Killing Floor_ and _Running Blind_. _Tripwire_ might be the most traditional book so far.

I highly recommend starting with the first novel _Killing Floor_, if these sound interesting to you.

Michael McDowell: *Blackwater*

This book had the potential to be a great horror novel. But there are just enough stumbling blocks to make the book merely "good". Still worth reading. But just "good". I prefer McDowell's _The Elementals_ and even _Gilded Needles_ a lot more.



















A poignant love story wrapped in a shell of existentialist horror, metaphysics, myth, and academic literary + film criticism (as well as parody of said criticism). The book's surface story -- and the story that awkwardly classifies _House of Leaves_ as horror fiction -- is about Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalist Will Navidson and his family moving into a house that is much larger on the inside than on the outside.

By itself, that story would be more original than the stale horrors of vampires and witches. But there's a lot more to it than that. For one thing, as you learn in the opening few pages, the story is completely made up. Not just made up from our real-world standpoint, but also from the standpoint of the fictitious "editor" Johnny Truant within the book as well. _House of Leaves_ is a work of metafiction, meaning the book recognizes itself as fiction, forcing the real-world reader to examine and analyze the elements of a book that are supposed to distinguish it as "fiction" as opposed to "real". In _House of Leaves_ there are really three stories, all fake from our perspective, but all possessing differing degrees of reality relative to each other. There's a documentary film at the core of it called "The Navidson Record" about the horror mentioned above. That documentary is a fabrication of a character named Zampanò. The second story is Zampanò's "academic" commentary on this fabricated documentary. And the third story is Johnny Truant's own commentary on Zampanò's commentary, which Johnny found after Zampanò's death. Despite Johnny's story superficially being the closest to "reality", all three layers in fact influence one another, raising issues concerning authorship, issues concerning accuracy and reliability of evidence, testimony, memory, and personal experience, and issues concerning unity of narrative.

As for the story itself, it quickly morphs from a simple horror story into a larger discussion of philosophy, science, mythology, and religion. I don't want to spoil the contents except to say there are often long digressions from the core story centered on Will Navidson. These digressions not only offer interpretative frameworks for what's happening with Navidson, but are interesting in their own right. And not terribly difficult to follow either. There's certainly some parody of literary criticism in this book, but in other ways, it's also a defense of it, and these digressions almost read like a crash course introduction into how to interpret a work of fiction.

The last thing to point out is that as the themes of the book develop, they start to "infect" the physical layout of the book itself. Footnotes give way to a labyrinth of footnotes; you will have to read upside-down and diagonally; words and syllables will be missing; at one point, you will even have to use a mirror to read backwards. I'd post some pictures of some sample pages, but I don't know if that's allowed. I'll just say there are some truly bizarre looking pages.

Note: There are a number of different editions to the book, each with slightly different notational markings and color schemes. I have no idea which is authoritative, but I'd say on the whole, hardback copies give a "fuller" experience than paperback versions. Also, considering you will be flipping back and forth between chapters, a hardback might be better for durability. Also, considering the bizarre typographical layout, I'd be wary of an e-reader version, though I could be wrong.

Note 2: One of the appendices of the book (yes, there are appendices) was subsequently published as _The Whalestoe Letters_, which sort of implies you can read those letters before you read the rest of _House of Leaves_. Which I don't think is a bad idea, since those letters form a key part of the novel.


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## jegreenwood

Just starting _Black Mischief_ by Evelyn Waugh. Back in 1965 when the film version of _The Loved One_ was released, I read the novel. I was 13 (and American). I hadn't the slightest idea what was going on. It took me 50 years to return to Waugh - rereading _The Loved One_. This time I thought it was pretty funny. So, now time for a second. The two are included in an Everyman volume, which contains four short novels.

Arriving today (published yesterday) from Amazon is Gary Shteyngart's _Our Counntry Friends_, which has received a lot of favorable press, including a rave in The NY Times. It's been described as the first great pandemic novel. I've liked the two books of his read in the past, so I'm looking forward to this.

And by the way, I've read all the Lee Child novels. They start to repeat themselves, but not for a long while. But the last Reacher book was written by his brother (as I recall). It's the first one I would describe as a failure.


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## TxllxT

*Andersen by Charles Lewinsky*










After a disappointing reading of Lewinsky's first novel about a French village Courtillion we started with his 2017 novel 'Andersen'. The beginning reminds one of Kafka's Metamorphosis with the enormous difference that 'Andersen' is brimming with humour (humour is not the first association one gets while immersing into Kafka's novels). The main character is rationally musing about the possibility that he has died (he doesn't feel his limbs nor experience his own breathing - instead he feels pleasant darkness and waves). Slowly and surely the story of Andersen is being created out of a nothing ('dead') that has hilarious consequences.


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## Pat Fairlea

Currently reading Christopher Brookmyre's 'One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night'. It is classic Brookmyre: moody, violent, elegantly written and hilarious. He is not an author for the faint-hearted, but if you can live with a fair sprinkling of obscenities in dialogue and violence delivered with imagination and relish, then he is hugely enjoyable.


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## Kivimees

The Palace of Dreams (Pallati i ëndrrave) by Ismail Kadare









Very good book!

The version I'm reading is an English translation of a French translation of the Albanian original, but the text doesn't seem to suffer.


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## Roger Knox

A History of Philosophy by A.C. Grayling (2019). A readable and interesting account. Now that I've gotten a sense of the Sophists, Nihilists, Cynics, Skeptics, Pyrrhonians, etc., and have firmly rejected both the thought and the lifestyle of Diogenes, look out.

I'll be better able to spot appearances of their ideas in modern dress on the pages of TalkClassical.


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## calvinpv

jegreenwood said:


> And by the way, I've read all the Lee Child novels. They start to repeat themselves, but not for a long while. But the last Reacher book was written by his brother (as I recall). It's the first one I would describe as a failure.


I guess it's good then that I have a ways to go before they get repetitive. I think my plan is to wait several months before binging on 3-4 at once, rinse and repeat, just so they don't get stale.

I read somewhere Lee Child is passing the baton to his brother and is co-authoring the next few books with him as a transition. But it sounds like it's not getting off to a good start.


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## calvinpv

Roger Knox said:


> A History of Philosophy by A.C. Grayling (2019). A readable and interesting account. Now that I've gotten a sense of the Sophists, Nihilists, Cynics, Skeptics, Pyrrhonians, etc., and have firmly rejected both the thought and the lifestyle of Diogenes, look out.
> 
> I'll be better able to spot appearances of their ideas in modern dress on the pages of TalkClassical.


It's been a couple years since I read these thinkers in college, so I don't remember the details, but I wouldn't dismiss them outright. I think these schools of thought frustrate a lot readers because readers will conflate a lack of concrete positions with the concrete position of "anything goes". But really these philosophers were trying to offer up counterexamples and demonstrate that the seemingly airtight positions of the Platonists, Aristotelians, Eleatics, Atomists/Epicureans, Stoics, etc. can be poked full of holes. And their counterexamples often boil down to showing how linguistic truth -- truth that follows from the manipulation of logical syntax -- is not the same as truth in the world -- the object being discussed actually existing. The Platonist, Stoics, etc. sometimes conflated these two notions.

Here's an example: the Stoics believed that the "nature" of the conditional is such that if you hold the conditional to be true and you accept the antecedent, you must accept the consequent. This is the form of a modus ponens argument, which they believe to be a valid argument form. The Stoics also believed in the principle of bivalence: every proposition is either true of false.

Therefore, the following argument is valid under Stoic philosophy (argument offered by Cicero, who's sometimes classified as an Academic Skeptic):

Premise 1: If you say that it is now light and you speak the truth, then it is light.
Premise 2: You say that it is now light and you speak the truth.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is now light

But now, what about this argument, which is a variation of the Liar's Paradox:

Premise 1: If you say you are lying and you speak the truth, then you are lying.
Premise 2: You say you are lying and you speak the truth.
Conclusion: Therefore, you are lying.

The problem? By the rule of Conjunction Elimination (which the Stoics also accept), we get a second conclusion from premise two: Therefore, you are speaking the truth. Thus, we get a contradiction between the two conclusions, and the Stoics reject this argument as "inexplicable" (Cicero's term). But wait! They can't reject it because that would mean modus ponens is an invalid argument form. And by accepting the principle of bivalence, the Stoics have to accept one of these two absurdities (i.e. accept the contradiction or accept modus ponens as invalid), no other option is available. If I remember correctly, the Skeptic solution is to reject the principle of bivalence from the beginning.

I don't want to say the Skeptics' positions are correct -- I'm not sure what I believe, and rejecting the principle of bivalence is a very controversial position, even today -- but when formulated correctly, they are definitely thought provoking.


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## starthrower

^^^
Thought provoking, Calvin! I haven't seen Grayling's book. I have Copelston's first volume which is fascinating and enlightening for the general reader.


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## calvinpv

starthrower said:


> ^^^
> Thought provoking, Calvin! I haven't seen Grayling's book. I have Copelston's first volume which is fascinating and enlightening for the general reader.


I haven't read either Grayling or Copelston, but if you're interested in primary sources, I'd recommend two books:
Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings by Brad Inwood and Lloyd Gerson
The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources, with Philosophical Commentary by A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley

These books cover the Epicureans, Stoics, and the Academic/Pyrrhonian Skeptics, who all lived around the same time. The first book has more primary sources than the second, but the second has very informative commentary by two scholars in the field, and I'd imagine their translations are better. The counterexample in my above post was from the first book.

Warning: by "primary sources", I mean the very few fragments that have survived over 2000 years + the commentaries by Late Antiquity writers living 200-300 years after, commentaries that reference earlier texts now lost, commentaries which are sometimes biased in their own right and engage in strawman arguments, commentaries that may falsely attribute a position or argument to the wrong philosopher, etc. It can be frustrating to read sometimes because you're playing archaeologist piecing together the past as much as playing philosopher evaluating arguments. But it's also exhilarating. One thing you'll realize when reading these fragments is that the only reason Plato and Aristotle are considered the greatest ancient philosophers is because their texts survived relatively intact. Of course, Plato and Aristotle are great, but had the works of Epicurus, Chrysippus, Posidonius, Sextus Empiricus, Carneades survived as well, it's possible the entire history of Western philosophy would've turned out completely different.

The Stoics in particular were a force to be reckoned with. Everyone remembers their ethics through the works of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. But they also invented propositional logic, their philosophy of mind is strikingly modern, their cosmology anticipates Spinoza's pantheism, and alongside the Epicureans they were some of the first to debate free will vs. determinism.


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## starthrower

I'll keep those in mind for the next time I hit my two favorite used book stores. Thanks!


----------



## Blancrocher

Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin

I'd read a couple Zola novels in the past, but they hadn't left much of an impression. I enjoyed this one, which describes a murder and its psychological consequences. I think it was intended to be as gloomy as I remember his other novels being, but for me the book had numerous comic elements, especially toward the end--so I may have liked it because I misread it lol.


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## Pat Fairlea

I have just finished this one:









And thoroughly enjoyed it, possibly because I came to it with no real preconceptions about Modest Petrovich beyond the fact that he wrote some highly original music and drank too much. Whether those two facts are directly associated, I'll leave to others.


----------



## Rogerx

The Reckoning Our Nations Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal by Mary L Trump


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## Rogerx




----------



## Roger Knox

Eric Hoffer, _The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements_. Originally published in 1951 in the wake of the Second World War, the author's insights on the nature of fanaticism still apply now.


----------



## Guest

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson.

A literary ghost story, but I didn't find it as attractive as the other Shirley Jackson works I've read, which focused on dark humor and social commentary.


----------



## Blancrocher

Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Enjoyed the sensitive portrayal of the life of a family. First read of this author--intend to look for more.


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## Roger Knox

calvinpv said:


> The Stoics in particular were a force to be reckoned with.


I've read about philosophy but never taken a course in it. The Stoics were not on my list of questionable philosophies. As for the ones in Grayling's book that were -- Sophists, Nihilists, Cynics, Skeptics, Pyrrhonians -- it's just that the ideas they put forth don't ring true for me, and I'm probably being more cautious as a senior.


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## calvinpv

This is supposedly the "first modern psychological thriller", but in reality, it's so much more than that. It's a commentary on the eternal battle between individual creation and oppressive conformity, between Eros and Thanatos, between love of life and love of death, between caring for others and caring for oneself, between living in reality and living in your narcissistic fantasies, and between the search for truth and the quest for dominating authority -- a battle that gets amplified in a modern consumerist society like ours (this was written in the early sixties, but these themes are still relevant today). These themes get filtered and distilled into the psychological dimension, as it is the story -- really, a psychological portrait -- of a civil servant who kidnaps, or "collects", a young female art student to satisfy his urges. In his spare time, he likes to collect butterflies, which is the perfect symbol for everything wrong with this man.

The first part of the story is told in first person from the guy's perspective; not only does he narrate events for you but he also reveals his own thought processes and rationalizations, and you come away from the book with genuine feelings of discomfort and disgust. For the simple reason that he reminds us of people we've met in our life who match his personality; we've all met a Mr. Clegg or two, and we know that deep down, these are very, very dangerous people if given the opportunity. What separates _The Collector_ from a book like _The Silence of the Lambs_ and puts the former into the realm of high literary fiction is that Thomas Harris particularizes and contextualizes the neurosis to a certain time and place and to certain environmental conditions. This allows Harris to get away with exaggerating and stereotyping the neurosis to the point of being unbelievable (though _The Silence of the Lambs_ is still a good book). John Fowles, on the other hand, is speaking of a neurotic behavior that plagues much of modern society and is very believable.

I highly recommend this book, especially with its surprise, macabre ending. It doesn't have the dopamine rush of other books of its type. But it's a slow burner whose profundity will hit you like a brick wall days after the fact, which to me is a sign of a great novel. And it's not even supposed to be Fowles's best work -- he also wrote _The Magus_ and _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, which are considered 20th century literary masterpieces.


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> This is supposedly the "first modern psychological thriller", but in reality, it's so much more than that. It's a commentary on the eternal battle between individual creation and oppressive conformity, between Eros and Thanatos, between love of life and love of death, between caring for others and caring for oneself, between living in reality and living in your narcissistic fantasies, and between the search for truth and the quest for dominating authority -- a battle that gets amplified in a modern consumerist society like ours (this was written in the early sixties, but these themes are still relevant today). These themes get filtered and distilled into the psychological dimension, as it is the story -- really, a psychological portrait -- of a civil servant who kidnaps, or "collects", a young female art student to satisfy his urges. In his spare time, he likes to collect butterflies, which is the perfect symbol for everything wrong with this man.
> 
> The first part of the story is told in first person from the guy's perspective; not only does he narrate events for you but he also reveals his own thought processes and rationalizations, and you come away from the book with genuine feelings of discomfort and disgust. For the simple reason that he reminds us of people we've met in our life who match his personality; we've all met a Mr. Clegg or two, and we know that deep down, these are very, very dangerous people if given the opportunity. What separates _The Collector_ from a book like _The Silence of the Lambs_ and puts the former into the realm of high literary fiction is that Thomas Harris particularizes and contextualizes the neurosis to a certain time and place and to certain environmental conditions. This allows Harris to get away with exaggerating and stereotyping the neurosis to the point of being unbelievable (though _The Silence of the Lambs_ is still a good book). John Fowles, on the other hand, is speaking of a neurotic behavior that plagues much of modern society and is very believable.
> 
> I highly recommend this book, especially with its surprise, macabre ending. It doesn't have the dopamine rush of other books of its type. But it's a slow burner whose profundity will hit you like a brick wall days after the fact, which to me is a sign of a great novel. And it's not even supposed to be Fowles's best work -- he also wrote _The Magus_ and _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, which are considered 20th century literary masterpieces.


I read all three back in the 70s (plus at least one more Fowles novel). I think I was most captivated by _The Magus_. I've considered re-reading it but have yet to do so.


----------



## Barbebleu

The Burgundians: The Vanished Empire by Bart van Loos. Superb history book about lost kingdoms and wild and crazy monarchs.


----------



## calvinpv

jegreenwood said:


> I read all three back in the 70s (plus at least one more Fowles novel). I think I was most captivated by _The Magus_. I've considered re-reading it but have yet to do so.


Based on book descriptions, my hunch is I'm going to like _The Magus_ best as well. I'm currently going through a brief spell of Agatha Christie mysteries, but after I'm planning on reading _The Magus_, _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, _Daniel Martin_, and _Mantissa_.

Did you read the original or revised version of the _The Magus_? The revised version came out in '77 and is supposed to be substantially better than the '65 original.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Barbebleu said:


> The Burgundians: The Vanished Empire by Bart van Loos. Superb history book about lost kingdoms and wild and crazy monarchs.


Cool, have that on my Amazon wish list


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> Based on book descriptions, my hunch is I'm going to like _The Magus_ best as well. I'm currently going through a brief spell of Agatha Christie mysteries, but after I'm planning on reading _The Magus_, _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, _Daniel Martin_, and _Mantissa_.
> 
> Did you read the original or revised version of the _The Magus_? The revised version came out in '77 and is supposed to be substantially better than the '65 original.


The original. My college roommate and I each read the (600 page?) novel in three days. I've also read _Daniel Martin_. Oddly, that's the only one that remains on my bookshelf 40 years later.

Which Christie?


----------



## jegreenwood

Having reread _The Magic Mountain_ earlier this year, I'm now reading _The Magician_, Colm Toibin's semi-fictional story of Mann's life.


----------



## calvinpv

jegreenwood said:


> The original. My college roommate and I each read the (600 page?) novel in three days. I've also read _Daniel Martin_. Oddly, that's the only one that remains on my bookshelf 40 years later.
> 
> Which Christie?




So far I've read:
_Murder on the Orient Express_ (Even though I haven't seen the film adaptations, I already knew how it would end before going into the book. Yet, I was still pleasantly surprised by Poirot's deductive reasoning.)
_And Then There Were None_ (Considered Christie's best work, but I was a little disappointed by the ending.)
_The ABC Murders_ (This book seems to foreshadow a lot of late 20th century crime fiction.)

I just started _Death on the Nile_, and I also plan to read _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ before starting on John Fowles. Are there any other major Christie novels I'm missing? The five I mentioned seem to be her biggest ones.


----------



## 96 Keys




----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> So far I've read:
> _Murder on the Orient Express_ (Even though I haven't seen the film adaptations, I already knew how it would end before going into the book. Yet, I was still pleasantly surprised by Poirot's deductive reasoning.)
> _And Then There Were None_ (Considered Christie's best work, but I was a little disappointed by the ending.)
> _The ABC Murders_ (This book seems to foreshadow a lot of late 20th century crime fiction.)
> 
> I just started _Death on the Nile_, and I also plan to read _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ before starting on John Fowles. Are there any other major Christie novels I'm missing? The five I mentioned seem to be her biggest ones.


I agree, although she wrote a lot of good ones.. If you play bridge, you have to read _Cards on the Table_.

I loved _And Then There Were None._ Christie said it was the hardest to write. And speaking of foreshadowing, there must be hundreds of mysteries and films that use the same technique of knocking off a group of people one by one. But I don't know of any that preceded the Christie novel.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Haven't updated my reading here in a while; here's some of my recent fictional reads:

Camus - The Plague: It just seemed appropriate. The speculative descriptions of life in quarantine are scarily accurate.
Wells - The Island of Doctor Moreau: Possibly the weirdest book I've ever read, but one of the most relevant and profound.
Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: Short, powerful, and incredibly important.
Forster - Howards End: One of the finest, most subtle, and most sumptuous novels I've read this year.
Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: Black humor at its finest.
Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day: Quite overhyped IMO, quite simple and predictable though effectively written.


----------



## calvinpv

***Spoilers*** below for those who haven't read _And Then There Were None_



jegreenwood said:


> I agree, although she wrote a lot of good ones.. If you play bridge, you have to read _Cards on the Table_


I can't play bridge, but I will keep that in mind, thanks. I am considering _The Mysterious Affair at Styles_, but I don't know if, being an early Christie, it's less polished.



> I loved _And Then There Were None._ Christie said it was the hardest to write. And speaking of foreshadowing, there must be hundreds of mysteries and films that use the same technique of knocking off a group of people one by one. But I don't know of any that preceded the Christie novel.


I just didn't like that one of the "victims" was the killer. It felt random, there was no build-up, hardly any evidence for this decision by Christie in the early pages of the book. Also, maybe this is weird of me to obsess on, but when a group of characters are all equally suspect, to then choose one out of the lot feels ... asymmetrical and arbitrary. It would be more interesting if every suspect was culpable (like in _Murder on the Orient Express_) or if none of them were. For example, at one point in _And Then There Were None_, I was suspecting that every victim was getting knocked off by the next victim, meaning the owner of the mansion sent out letters to the ten assigning them all to one killing as blackmail over the guilty secrets in their pasts (with no one being aware of anyone else's assignment). I think Christie should've followed through on that idea because, with every killer being different and each having different motives and methods, no consistent evidence trail would ever develop.


----------



## vincula

Currently revisiting the works of *Zygmunt Bauman*. Vital portrayal of our time(s).









Regards,

Vincula


----------



## SanAntone

A deep dive into two subjects dear to my heart, and doing research for some articles I'm planning.

_Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George"_
James Lapine

_On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide_
Ethan Mordden

_Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical_
Robert L. McLaughlin

_Stephen Sondheim: A Life_
Meryle Secrest

_Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions_
Mark Eden Horowitz

_Why the Beach Boys Matter_
Tom Smucker

_Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson_
Peter Ames Carlin

_The Beach Boys On CD Volume 2_: 1970 - 1984
Andrew Hickey

_The Beach Boys on CD Volume 3_ - 1985-2015
Andrew Hickey

_Smile: The Official Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece_
Domenic Priore, Brian Wilson, Parks

_The Beach Boys' Smile_ (33 1/3)
Luis Sanchez

_Wouldn't It Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds_
Charles L. Granata, Tony Asher


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> ***Spoilers*** below for those who haven't read _And Then There Were None_
> 
> I can't play bridge, but I will keep that in mind, thanks. I am considering _The Mysterious Affair at Styles_, but I don't know if, being an early Christie, it's less polished.
> 
> I just didn't like that one of the "victims" was the killer. It felt random, there was no build-up, hardly any evidence for this decision by Christie in the early pages of the book. Also, maybe this is weird of me to obsess on, but when a group of characters are all equally suspect, to then choose one out of the lot feels ... asymmetrical and arbitrary. It would be more interesting if every suspect was culpable (like in _Murder on the Orient Express_) or if none of them were. For example, at one point in _And Then There Were None_, I was suspecting that every victim was getting knocked off by the next victim, meaning the owner of the mansion sent out letters to the ten assigning them all to one killing as blackmail over the guilty secrets in their pasts (with no one being aware of anyone else's assignment). I think Christie should've followed through on that idea because, with every killer being different and each having different motives and methods, no consistent evidence trail would ever develop.


I probably read _And Then There Were None_ when I was in my early teens, so I don't remember a specific reaction. A few years later, when I was about 20, I directed a middle school production of the stage version. The kids loved it.


----------



## Dmitriyevich

Oscar Wilde's Salome:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.37907


----------



## Snowbrain

I've been on a Shostakovich journey for the past few months so I've been reading books related to his life and music, as follows:

Volkov, Testimony, the Memoirs of DSCH
Barnes, The Noise of Time
Johnson, How Shostakovich Changed My Mind
MacDonald, The New Shostakovich
Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (reader be warned...)
The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Taylor, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered
Masullo, Shostakovich 24 Preludes and Fugues
Lesser, Music for Silenced Voices: The Shostakovich and His 15 String Quartets
Ho and Feofanov, Shostakovich Reconsidered
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
Hamrick Brown, A Shostakovich Casebook


----------



## Ariasexta

What just happened? suddenly my access to this site becomes fast and normal? 

-Trying to read Vanity Fairs, a very long book.
-Having finished 1/3 of Pickwick Papers so far. 

I prefer novels of non-fantasy literary works, not a fan of modern political literature like Tom Clancy or sci-fi literature like Asimov, even less the Lord of Rings kind of thing.


----------



## Alinde

I've been drifting off to sleep to an excellent Librivox recording (by John Greenman) of Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" and loving it.

I'm proof-listening a Librivox recording of Arthur Young's "Travels in France" - it's 1789 at the moment and Young, though not a rivetting writer, seems to have had great social gifts as he's mixing with some of the main actors and is following events closely. His Wikipedia entry describes him as "an eye-witness to the French Revolution from the perspective of one who was welcomed into the company of the highest levels of the French nobility (including the King and Queen) at the time of the fall of the Bastille in 1789."

But on my own account I'm re-reading John Keay's "China: a history" and supplementing the text with a number of excellent podcasts. I'm still in the Han Dynasty and have been enjoying the adventures of Zhang Qian the great explorer and being grateful to the historian Sima Qian. It's satisfying to feel a little less ignorant about this great power to our [Australia's] North.


----------



## jegreenwood

Sometimes it's the little things.

I've started Colson Whitehead's _Harlem Shuffle_. I have a signed hardcover. But the binding is too stiff; I can't open the book far enough to read comfortably without the risk of cracking it.


----------



## ToneDeaf&Senile

In my 70s, I'm just now getting around to an initial read of the fourteen L. Frank Baum "Oz" books. They can be had dirt-cheap as e-books, maybe free. I chose to pay a couple of bucks for a set that incluses all the original artwork. Just past the halfway point, I find them easy, enjoyable reads, some entries more than others.

Not long ago I discovered the author Christian Cameron, who writes historical/military fiction, and am quite taken with the two Cameron series I'm reading through. Those who enjoy Bernard Cornwell's *The Last Kingdom* series will feel at home with Cameron, as the two are quite similar. Cameron has an advantage (for us readers) in that, as the less well known, his output can be had as e-books for less than what one shell's out for Cornwell.


----------



## HenryPenfold

Grand Opera - The Story Of The Met
Charles Affron Mirella Jona Affron

I picked up a used hard back copy on Amazon UK a couple of weeks ago. The Met Saturday broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 have a special place in my heart and memory. I can't remember when they stopped relaying them, but I know it was for me, another nail in Radio 3's coffin .....

A saw a couple of relays at my local cinema before the pandemic, including a superb Akhnaten.


----------



## Eramire156

In mail the other day..
* The Landmark Xenophon's Anabasis*, I'm interested ancient Greek and Roman history, the landmark are supplemented with a ton of maps and annotations to the text.


----------



## Guest

Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood.










This is Atwood's second novel, published around 1970.

A woman returns to her childhood home on a remote island in a lake in Quebec after, having been notified that her father has gone missing there. She is accompanied by Joe, her lover, and a married couple. In the remote setting, without the distractions of modern life, things start coming to the surface, literally and figuratively. Her friends' marriage seems to unravel and her relationship with Joe, which she can't fully commit to, seems to come undone. And of course they are stranded there.

The story is secondary to themes of isolation, feminism, Canadian nationalism. The themes that Atwood would make more explicit in later dystopia fiction is expressed here in a more subtle context.

I found the book very interesting and worthwhile.


----------



## Bwv 1080

No spoilers please 










Explores how and why the Nazi regime held on as long as it did after the war was lost in the summer of 44


----------



## Ingélou

Dan Jones - The Plantagenets

Vividly told and very readable. I'm enjoying it. We found out about Dan Jones from this thread, so many thanks!


----------



## Ingélou

Have just started Dan Jones 'The Hollow Crown' and finding it even more readable and enjoyable.


----------



## thejewk

I've just started a (so far) superb and massive book called Music in the Age of the Renaissance by Leeman Perkins in the hopes of getting to grips with this fascinating period of musical history, and to learn a thing or two about modes and some of the wonderful polyphonic vocal works that have shot up in my esteem recently.

I'm also reading Gardiner's Bach book in the bath each evening and greatly enjoying it.


----------



## Blancrocher

Louis Menand, _The Metaphysical Club_ and _The Free World_.

Entertaining intellectual and cultural histories, largely through capsule biographies of famous individuals and the groups they moved in. Enjoyed some of the demographic analysis of pop music trends in the latter volume.


----------



## jegreenwood

jegreenwood said:


> Sometimes it's the little things.
> 
> I've started Colson Whitehead's _Harlem Shuffle_. I have a signed hardcover. But the binding is too stiff; I can't open the book far enough to read comfortably without the risk of cracking it.


I made it through without breaking the spine, and it was worth it. Superficially much lighter in tone than his last two, but there's stuff going on under the surface.


----------



## TxllxT

*Amos Oz - Judas*










There is a lot of bad weather, rain, snow and cold wind in this novel that takes you into the heart of Jerusalem in 1959. The pace of untwisting the very twisted plot is quite pedestrian or wheel-chair like if you wish, but this doesn't matter to us. Amos Oz is a great writer. His characters are being revealed true to life. But it seems as if they do not live in a world that surrounds them from all sides. Instead they are simply living in dialogues, in words - as if there exists no world outside - only dialogue, spoken word. Fascinating. We are just at the beginning and still don't know what will happen to the person mentioned in the title.


----------



## SixFootScowl

jegreenwood said:


> Sometimes it's the little things.
> 
> I've started Colson Whitehead's _*Harlem Shuffle*_. I have a signed hardcover. But the binding is too stiff; I can't open the book far enough to read comfortably without the risk of cracking it.





jegreenwood said:


> *I made it through without breaking the spine*, and it was worth it. Superficially much lighter in tone than his last two, but there's stuff going on under the surface.


I didn't fully read your post and had images of you almost breaking your spine dancing the *Harlem Shuffle*.


----------



## Blancrocher

Stanley Crouch, Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker

Enjoyed the book, knowing little of Parker's life beforehand


----------



## starthrower

I'm in between right now but I think my next book is going to be JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass.


----------



## SanAntone

Blancrocher said:


> Stanley Crouch, Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
> 
> Enjoyed the book, knowing little of Parker's life beforehand


I think that is an excellent book and only wish he had been able to write, or complete, the second volume. IMO Stanley Crouch is one of the most important commentators on Jazz, and American culture in general. Second only to Albert Murray, and in some specific areas, better.


----------



## calvinpv

A collection of 10 stories. They explore the standard big ticket items like love, loss, despair, anxiety, jealousy, nostalgia, mind, body, war, patriotism, class, work, etc. I thought there was great descriptions of characters and settings, some of them quite humorous. Decent pacing. There was an interesting mix of interior monologue and standard narration, often occurring simultaneously, although this mixture didn't really serve a thematic or aesthetic purpose except maybe in the first story. But there was still something about the stories that just didn't quite hit the mark for me. As if the author was striving for a realistic portrayal of contemporary American life and contemporary American issues, but the realism ended up stilted, a bit stereotyped. Of all the stories, the only one I genuinely liked was "Escape from Spiderhead". The others were just okay, with the occasional good moment here and there. George Saunders is considered a major contemporary short story author, so I must be missing something.


----------



## calvinpv

Also finished a bout of Agatha Christie. I think I'd rank the ones I've read as:

1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Great story, even better dialogue, some of it pretty funny, and a pretty shocking ending that somehow works, unlike the the last item in this list.)
2. Death on the Nile (Most intricate murder story of the five listed here.)
3. Murder on the Orient Express (I already knew how it would end before going into the book. Yet, I was still pleasantly surprised by how Poirot reasoned his way to the end.)
4. The ABC Murders (This book foreshadows aspects of late 20th century crime fiction.)
5. And Then There Were None (Considered Christie's best work, but I didn't care for the twist ending, it didn't make a whole lot of sense.)


----------



## Ariasexta

Finishing The Sign of Four, I am amazed of the historical accuracies of the story, for no spoiler, not to describe here. Detective stories are about a lot of elements wonderfully meshing togather, like a luxury sandwich. Modern mystery thrillers like Stephen King are also good for reading, so is Dean Koontz, the horror and mystery often are sisters of modern psyche, or the most faithful stalkers of mankind through history.


----------



## Ariasexta

Other best writers I am reading togather:

Sir Walter Scott, G.K Chesterton`s Father Brown stories, Edgar Allen Poe.


----------



## Varick

Bwv 1080 said:


> Guess Im a masochist, 900+ fictional memoir of former Einsatzgruppen officer
> 
> _I am not trying to say I am not guilty of this or that. I am guilty, you're not, fine. But you should be able to admit to yourselves that you might also have done what I did. With less zeal, perhaps, but perhaps also with less despair, in any case one way or another. I think I am allowed to conclude, as a fact established by modern history, that everyone, or nearly everyone, in a given set of circumstances, does what he is told to do; and, pardon me, but there's not much chance that you're the exception, any more than I was. If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also nobody comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you're not a better person. Because if you have the arrogance to think you are, that's just where the danger begins. We like to contrast the State, totalitarian or not, with the ordinary man, that insect or trembling reed. But then we forget that the State is made up of individuals, all more or less ordinary, each one with his life, his story, the sequence of accidents that led him one day to end up on the right side of the gun or the sheet of paper while others ended up on the wrong side. This path is very rarely the result of any choice, or even of personal predilection. The victims, in the vast majority of cases, were not tortured or killed because they were good any more than their executioners tormented them because they were evil. It would be a little naïve to think that way; allow me to suggest you spend a little time in a bureaucracy
> _
> https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/b...nes-by-jonathan-littell/9781551993645/excerpt


If you ever want a non fiction account of a harrowing story of a Polish Police Department and what they had to do under Nazi rule, I highly sugges "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning. It really makes one think about how you'd react in the same set of circumstances.

We read read horrific moments in history in the perspective as the victim of atrocities. We should read them as the perpetrators of the atrocities. And if you ever say to yourself, "I could never do that" then that might be the first clue that you don't know much about yourself.

V


----------



## Kivimees

A few years ago, I read Italo Calvino's _If on a winter's night a traveler_ and was gobsmacked.

I am now reading _Cosmicomics_ and am being no less entertained, although the two books are entirely different.


----------



## jegreenwood

Varick said:


> If you ever want a non fiction account of a harrowing story of a Polish Police Department and what they had to do under Nazi rule, I highly sugges "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning. It really makes one think about how you'd react in the same set of circumstances.
> 
> We read read horrific moments in history in the perspective as the victim of atrocities. We should read them as the perpetrators of the atrocities. And if you ever say to yourself, "I could never do that" then that might be the first clue that you don't know much about yourself.
> 
> V


For fiction try the Bernie Gunther mysteries. Set in Nazi era Germany and post WWII (various countries).

Now starting the fifth book in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next Series, Titled _First Among Sequels_.


----------



## Oldhoosierdude

I have always found Traditional fundamentalist and orthodox teachings on Heaven to be contradictory and confusing. This book gives a clear and biblical perspective.


----------



## Rogerx

*Nobody in Town (novel)
*
Nobody in the City is the second novel by writer Philip Huff and was published in 2012. The story is about the friendship between three members of a student fraternity. It somewhat resembles an autobiography, with the main character Philip Hofman as the writer's alter ego.[1]


----------



## SixFootScowl

Oldhoosierdude said:


> View attachment 162382
> 
> 
> I have always found Traditional fundamentalist and orthodox teachings on Heaven to be contradictory and confusing. This book gives a clear and biblical perspective.


I read that book a few years ago. Great book!

And for some clarity on end times, check this one out that I just finished.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

A novel
"Who's Afraid of Beowulf" by Tom Holt.

Typical Holt quasi-historical fantasy with lots of good humour in it and some lovely in-jokes for those with a bit of medieval history knowledge. Recommended.


----------



## Tristan

Currently reading:

*Crossroads *by Jonathan Franzen

*The Unconsoled* by Kazuo Ishiguro

*The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone* by Edward Dolnick


----------



## jegreenwood

Tristan said:


> Currently reading:
> 
> *Crossroads *by Jonathan Franzen
> 
> *The Unconsoled* by Kazuo Ishiguro
> 
> *The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone* by Edward Dolnick


I'm a fan of both Ishiguro and Franzen, but haven't read either of those.


----------



## SanAntone

_America's Musical Life: A History_ by _Richard Crawford_


----------



## Ariasexta

History of Mathematics








Victor J. Katz

Very interesting read, simple to understand would tell you the foundamental ideas and history of mathematics. From here it can provide more scientifical insights into whatever topic you want to discuss.


----------



## jegreenwood

The NY Times announced the winner of its readers' poll of the best book in the past 125 years (celebrating the anniversary of its Book Review). Only one book per author was included among the 25 finalists. The top 5 were


_To Kill a Mockingbird
[*]The Fellowship of the Ring.
[*]1984
[*]One Hundred Years of Solitude
[*]Beloved_

I would have given odds that _Mockingbird_ would win. It. has an almost magical reputation in the U.S. My three votes of the 25 finalists (of which I had read 19 and started two others, which I didn't care for) were _1984, Lolita_, and _Catch 22_ (which I wish I had switched to _The Grapes of Wrath_. I also considered _The Handmaid's Tale._)

The Times gave no criteria for judgment. My choices were three books that not only had literary merit, but also had an impact on the general public. On a purely literary basis, I would have chosen Proust, but he didn't make the top 25. _Ulysses _did, though, as did _Infinite Jest_.

I don't believe a single volume of non-fiction or poetry made the top 25.


----------



## Guest

jegreenwood said:


> The NY Times announced the winner of its readers' poll of the best book in the past 125 years (celebrating the anniversary of its Book Review). Only one book per author was included among the 25 finalists. The top 5 were
> 
> 
> _To Kill a Mockingbird
> [*]The Fellowship of the Ring.
> [*]1984
> [*]One Hundred Years of Solitude
> [*]Beloved_
> 
> I would have given odds that _Mockingbird_ would win. It. has an almost magical reputation in the U.S. My three votes of the 25 finalists (of which I had read 19 and started two others, which I didn't care for) were _1984, Lolita_, and _Catch 22_ (which I wish I had switched to _The Grapes of Wrath_. I also considered _The Handmaid's Tale._)
> 
> The Times gave no criteria for judgment. My choices were three books that not only had literary merit, but also had an impact on the general public. On a purely literary basis, I would have chosen Proust, but he didn't make the top 25. _Ulysses _did, though, as did _Infinite Jest_.
> 
> I don't believe a single volume of non-fiction or poetry made the top 25.


This is very interesting. I taught "Mockingbird" book and film for high school and regard the film as one of the greatest masterpieces of cinema - so "Mockingbird" wins on both counts!

I don't care for the fantasy genre so Number 2 doesn't interest. These days I read non-fiction; Douglas Murray, Niall Ferguson, Steven Pinker et al.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

jegreenwood said:


> The NY Times announced the winner of its readers' poll of the best book in the past 125 years (celebrating the anniversary of its Book Review). Only one book per author was included among the 25 finalists. The top 5 were
> 
> 
> _To Kill a Mockingbird
> [*]The Fellowship of the Ring.
> [*]1984
> [*]One Hundred Years of Solitude
> [*]Beloved_
> 
> I would have given odds that _Mockingbird_ would win. It. has an almost magical reputation in the U.S. My three votes of the 25 finalists (of which I had read 19 and started two others, which I didn't care for) were _1984, Lolita_, and _Catch 22_ (which I wish I had switched to _The Grapes of Wrath_. I also considered _The Handmaid's Tale._)
> 
> The Times gave no criteria for judgment. My choices were three books that not only had literary merit, but also had an impact on the general public. On a purely literary basis, I would have chosen Proust, but he didn't make the top 25. _Ulysses _did, though, as did _Infinite Jest_.
> 
> I don't believe a single volume of non-fiction or poetry made the top 25.


Isn't the perpetual divide between the critics and the public fascinating? _To Kill a Mockingbird_ is an excellent story, full of attractive humor and pathos, and I loved it when I read it in high school, but now I find it to be pretty maudlin, much more of a great young-adult novel than a work of high aesthetic merit. "The Fellowship of the Ring" is only the first part of Tolkien's novel, and shouldn't have been classified as a separate book. I agree with Orwell and Garcia Marquez; the former perhaps the most thematically important book of the century and the latter one of the most lush, rich, and imaginative. I have not read _Beloved_, but it is on my list.

My personal list from the past 125 years would be:

1. _Absalom, Absalom!_
2. _To the Lighthouse_
3. _In Search of Lost Time_
4. _One Hundred Years of Solitude_
5. _The Ambassadors_

...with honorable mentions to O'Connor, Kafka, Conrad, Greene, Orwell, Camus, Tolkien, McCarthy, Forster, and several others.


----------



## Tristan

Yeah, I'm not terribly interested in ranking books so much, though I do enjoy looking at lists of what people consider to be books worth reading. Those five books from the NYT poll are all books I've read and would rate highly, but placing them at the top of a list of "great books" is another task altogether and I don't know if I could do it. I could certainly make a list of my personal favorite books from the last 125 years, but they would all have to be books I've read and the fact is that there are many I have yet to read (so how could I create a finished list?) In the end, the importance of such lists is more about recommendations. I get ideas from these lists, even if I don't necessarily agree that they all belong on the list (and of course there will always be books missing).


----------



## jegreenwood

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Isn't the perpetual divide between the critics and the public fascinating? _To Kill a Mockingbird_ is an excellent story, full of attractive humor and pathos, and I loved it when I read it in high school, but now I find it to be pretty maudlin, much more of a great young-adult novel than a work of high aesthetic merit. "The Fellowship of the Ring" is only the first part of Tolkien's novel, and shouldn't have been classified as a separate book. I agree with Orwell and Garcia Marquez; the former perhaps the most thematically important book of the century and the latter one of the most lush, rich, and imaginative. I have not read _Beloved_, but it is on my list.
> 
> My personal list from the past 125 years would be:
> 
> 1. _Absalom, Absalom!_
> 2. _To the Lighthouse_
> 3. _In Search of Lost Time_
> 4. _One Hundred Years of Solitude_
> 5. _The Ambassadors_
> 
> ...with honorable mentions to O'Connor, Kafka, Conrad, Greene, Orwell, Camus, Tolkien, McCarthy, Forster, and several others.


Of the authors of the five books you listed, only Garcia Marquez made the list of finalists.


----------



## eljr

I am reviewing a book I read about 10 years ago, at present.










It destroys many myths about genius and prodigies.


----------



## calvinpv

Speaking of polls and rankings, I recently found these websites by Ted Gioia, who's known for his writings on jazz. Except these sites focus on various strands of late 20th century literature, with reading lists and rankings as well as a mini essay for each novel listed explaining why they are significant for their respective genre. A lot of these books should be familiar, but a lot are not. I've only read a handful of the works, but I'm finding myself returning to these sites quite often lately, in order to look up a book to read or to read a review of a novel I just finished or have read in the past. What do you guys think? Do you think he's overrating any of the novels? Do you think he left any masterpieces off the lists?

http://www.thenewcanon.com/ (a list of the most important fiction since 1985, according to Ted Gioia; this list seems to be an ongoing work in progress)

http://fractiousfiction.com/ (a list of postmodern, "fragmented" novels; there's an essay explaining what he means by "fragmented")

http://www.conceptualfiction.com/ (a list of magical realist, sci-fi, and horror fiction)

http://www.postmodernmystery.com/ (url should make this self-explanatory)

http://www.greatbooksguide.com/ (a list of Ted Gioia's favorite works of all time)


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> Speaking of polls and rankings, I recently found these websites by Ted Gioia, who's known for his writings on jazz. Except these sites focus on various strands of late 20th century literature, with reading lists and rankings as well as a mini essay for each novel listed explaining why they are significant for their respective genre. A lot of these books should be familiar, but a lot are not. I've only read a handful of the works, but I'm finding myself returning to these sites quite often lately, in order to look up a book to read or to read a review of a novel I just finished or have read in the past. What do you guys think? Do you think he's overrating any of the novels? Do you think he left any masterpieces off the lists?
> 
> http://www.thenewcanon.com/ (a list of the most important fiction since 1985, according to Ted Gioia; this list seems to be an ongoing work in progress)
> 
> http://fractiousfiction.com/ (a list of postmodern, "fragmented" novels; there's an essay explaining what he means by "fragmented")
> 
> http://www.conceptualfiction.com/ (a list of magical realist, sci-fi, and horror fiction)
> 
> http://www.postmodernmystery.com/ (url should make this self-explanatory)
> 
> http://www.greatbooksguide.com/ (a list of Ted Gioia's favorite works of all time)


Happy to say I've read 38 and 2/3 of the books on The New Canon (two parts of _The New York Trilogy_). It's a good list in my opinion. There are some that I wouldn't rank as highly as he did, but none that I threw down at the halfway point. Gioia's brother, Dana, is a poet and a literary critic. He ran the National Endowment for the Arts for a number of years.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## starthrower

I read a good chunk of this classic several years ago but I'm starting over from the beginning.


----------



## HenryPenfold

decided not to publicise a book that I regret buying and reading


----------



## Sonata

Reading: Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Listening on audiobooks: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. Read by Michael York


----------



## Guest

Faulkner, Mosquitoes.

This is an early Faulkner novel, his second published, which predates his focus on the weight of history on Southern culture.

It is a novel that satirizes artistic culture in New Orleans. A wealthy widow plans a four day yachting excursion, inviting members of the New Orleans artistic community - a painter, a sculptor, a novelist, two poets, a literary critic, as well as a friend who is a hanger-on to the artistic community. Also invited is the widow's neice and nephew. The morning of the departure, the niece invites a perfect stranger, a girl she met "downtown" who brings along her boyfriend.

The novel satirizes the hypocrisy and foolishness of the artists, who spend their time getting drunk, lusting and scheming after the young, attractive "non-artistic" passengers.

I enjoyed the book a lot.

Having finished the novel I realize I made a big mistake. I read a Kindle Edition without realizing that passages removed by the publisher because they were too sexually explicit for 1927 sensibilities were restored in the print version I also have. Now I am debating whether I should read it again.


----------



## LarryShone

Belgarath the Sourcerer by David and Leigh Eddings. Its a bit of a hefty tome.


----------



## SanAntone

Baron Scarpia said:


> Faulkner, Mosquitoes.
> 
> This is an early Faulkner novel, his second published, which predates his focus on the weight of history on Southern culture.
> 
> I enjoyed the book a lot.
> 
> Having finished the novel I realize I made a big mistake. I read a Kindle Edition without realizing that passages removed by the publisher because they were too sexually explicit for 1927 sensibilities were restored in the print version I also have. Now I am debating whether I should read it again.


It is interesting to read both editions, IMO, to get an idea of the difference - but I always read the Library of Congress editions first since that is their forte, i.e. restoring the texts to the original. It is crucial for some authors, Faulkner being one, Raymond Carver another, in order to read their original vision prior to an editor or publisher getting in the way because of non-literary or personal reasons.

However, I did go out of my way to acquire a first edition copy of _Sartoris_ (which has been OOP for decades) in order to read that edition which is more concise and really a very different book from _Flags in the Dust_.


----------



## Rogerx

Saw the movie , perhaps the wrong way, let's see.


----------



## Bwv 1080

fascinating book and a great break from the gee-whiz ******** that constitutes most science writing, this book is a dark, semifictionalized account of selceted scientific and mathematical discoveries and both the benefits and the costs extracted from the discoverers and the world at large - beginning with the leap from the first synthetic pigment, Prussian Blue to its link with the discovery and history of cyanide, then circles back to Fritz Haber, at once the architect of chemical warfare, the man to whom a majority of the people living today owe their existence and well being, and the inventor of the gas that the Nazis used to exterminated his family after he died.


----------



## jegreenwood

Finished _A Prayer for Owen Meany_. It may have been a finalist in The NY Times best book semi-final, but it didn't do much for me. It needed to be cut in half. It might have been better as a novella.

But in the course of the book, the narrator mentions a number of other novelists. So, I may pick up something by Robertson Davies or even _Far From the Madding Crowd_, the only one of the "Big Five" Thomas Hardy novels I haven't read.


----------



## senza sordino

One More Croissant for the Road, by Felicity Cloake









I'm nearly finished. The author cycles around France sampling all of the delicious regional dishes. She is very witty, and it shows in her writing. She includes recipes. It's been a very enjoyable read. I bought the paperback for my father, and I got it on a Kindle for myself.


----------



## cwarchc

We moved, in August, to the area this book is about
A real "wild" border country


----------



## jegreenwood

jegreenwood said:


> Finished _A Prayer for Owen Meany_. It may have been a finalist in The NY Times best book semi-final, but it didn't do much for me. It needed to be cut in half. It might have been better as a novella.
> 
> But in the course of the book, the narrator mentions a number of other novelists. So, I may pick up something by Robertson Davies or even _Far From the Madding Crowd_, the only one of the "Big Five" Thomas Hardy novels I haven't read.


Decided on _World of Wonders_, the third volume in Davies' _The Deptford Trilogy_. So far, so good.


----------



## Flamme

Its quite good actually.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## Captainnumber36

E.T.A. Hoffman - "The Devil's Elixir"

Just got it as an e-book from my library. I Plan to get started with it tonight, and put a big dent in it tomorrow.


----------



## SanAntone

_Song and Dance Man III_: The Art of Bob Dylan (2002)
by *Michael Gray*










Mine, the same edition but an earlier printing has a different cover (much preferred) - but the book is probably the best serious study of Dylan's songs available. Not the work of a "Dylanologist" but a true scholar: "Serious Dylan criticism... intricate analyses... monumental." - Sunday Times, London.

Time to re-read it, or rather to read it from start to finish since I've just used it for a reference book in the past.


----------



## senza sordino

The third in the series:

Troy by Stephen Fry. A modern retelling of The Iliad.









I read the first two in the series in the summer of 2020: Mythos and Heroes. I presume Stephen Fry is writing the fourth book in the series right now: The Odyssey.

I find the Greek myths endlessly fascinating. I read Circe, by Madeline Miller last summer. And I'll read her other book Song for Achilles soon. And I'll read some other retellings also. I haven't read The Iliad nor The Odyssey. I have these two on my bookshelf and I'll read them sometime soon as well.

Other books to consider reading:
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton
Penelopiad by Margeret Atwood

...and I will take other suggestions.


----------



## starthrower

Getting ready to start this one.


----------



## elgar's ghost

_The Decameron_. Not from beginning to end - just dipping in at random like I would with Icelandic sagas or _Arabian Nights_.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Just finished and would recommend












> Kempowski's novel represents one of the culminating achievements of that postwar German self-reckoning, that political and literary renegotiation of the past that has produced important work by Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, W. G. Sebald, and, lately, Erpenbeck herself. We know that such reckoning required a delicate calculus, "beyond all political affiliation." Sebald, in the lectures on the Allied bombing of German cities that he delivered in 1997 (later published under the title "On the Natural History of Destruction"), argued that the "national humiliation felt by millions in the last years of the war" was the reason that "no one, to the present day, has written the great German epic of the wartime and postwar periods." A little less than a decade later, but too late for poor Sebald, Walter Kempowski beautifully proved him wrong.
> -James Wood, The New Yorker


https://www.nyrb.com/products/all-for-nothing?variant=52446673799


----------



## jegreenwood

senza sordino said:


> The third in the series:
> 
> Troy by Stephen Fry. A modern retelling of The Iliad.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I read the first two in the series in the summer of 2020: Mythos and Heroes. I presume Stephen Fry is writing the fourth book in the series right now: The Odyssey.
> 
> I find the Greek myths endlessly fascinating. I read Circe, by Madeline Miller last summer. And I'll read her other book Song for Achilles soon. And I'll read some other retellings also. I haven't read The Iliad nor The Odyssey. I have these two on my bookshelf and I'll read them sometime soon as well.
> 
> Other books to consider reading:
> Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
> A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
> Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton
> Penelopiad by Margeret Atwood
> 
> ...and I will take other suggestions.


How about some of the plays? For instance each of the three great tragedians took on the Agamemnon/Electra/Orestes myths. And more modern playwrights have tackled them as well. A number of great contemporary writers (Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Anne Carson spring to mind) have done translations.


----------



## calvinpv

senza sordino said:


> The third in the series:
> 
> Troy by Stephen Fry. A modern retelling of The Iliad.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I read the first two in the series in the summer of 2020: Mythos and Heroes. I presume Stephen Fry is writing the fourth book in the series right now: The Odyssey.
> 
> I find the Greek myths endlessly fascinating. I read Circe, by Madeline Miller last summer. And I'll read her other book Song for Achilles soon. And I'll read some other retellings also. I haven't read The Iliad nor The Odyssey. I have these two on my bookshelf and I'll read them sometime soon as well.
> 
> Other books to consider reading:
> Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
> A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
> Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton
> Penelopiad by Margeret Atwood
> 
> ...and I will take other suggestions.


I haven't read anything related to Greek mythology other than Longus's _Daphnis and Chloe_, which is an adorable little coming of age story, but the other great texts that I'm aware of, besides Homer and the tragedians, are:
Hesiod's _Theogeny_, _Work and Days_
Apollonius of Rhodes's _Argonautica_
Ovid's _Metamorphoses_
Virgil's _Aeneid_
Pseudo-Apollodorus's _Bibliotheca_ (not an actual story, but one of the largest surviving reference books on the Greek myths from the ancient world)

For modern works, one of the great works of literary modernism is Hermann Broch's _The Death of Virgil_. I started to read it a few years ago, but had to put it down because it presupposes you having read Virgil's _Aeneid_, and it's a philosophically dense and lyrically rich book, in the same vein as fellow German-speaking modernists Thomas Mann and Robert Musil.


----------



## senza sordino

jegreenwood said:


> How about some of the plays? For instance each of the three great tragedians took on the Agamemnon/Electra/Orestes myths. And more modern playwrights have tackled them as well. A number of great contemporary writers (Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Anne Carson spring to mind) have done translations.





calvinpv said:


> I haven't read anything related to Greek mythology other than Longus's _Daphnis and Chloe_, which is an adorable little coming of age story, but the other great texts that I'm aware of, besides Homer and the tragedians, are:
> Hesiod's _Theogeny_, _Work and Days_
> Apollonius of Rhodes's _Argonautica_
> Ovid's _Metamorphoses_
> Virgil's _Aeneid_
> Pseudo-Apollodorus's _Bibliotheca_ (not an actual story, but one of the largest surviving reference books on the Greek myths from the ancient world)
> 
> For modern works, one of the great works of literary modernism is Hermann Broch's _The Death of Virgil_. I started to read it a few years ago, but had to put it down because it presupposes you having read Virgil's _Aeneid_, and it's a philosophically dense and lyrically rich book, in the same vein as fellow German-speaking modernists Thomas Mann and Robert Musil.


Thank you for these suggestions. Reading some Greek plays seems rather daunting for me, I'm not a literary scholar. I just like reading stories. But after a few more books perhaps I'll give them a go. Later this year, a retelling of Electra, by Jennifer Saint will be published. I saw my local professional opera company perform Strauss' Electra some years ago - fantastic.


----------



## jegreenwood

senza sordino said:


> Thank you for these suggestions. Reading some Greek plays seems rather daunting for me, I'm not a literary scholar. I just like reading stories. But after a few more books perhaps I'll give them a go. Later this year, a retelling of Electra, by Jennifer Saint will be published. I saw my local professional opera company perform Strauss' Electra some years ago - fantastic.







I've seen Zoe Caldwell, Diana Rigg and Fiona Shaw do _Medea _and it is one of the powerful experiences I've ever had in the theater. Give it 90 minutes. By the way, the guy is Jason of Jason and the Argonauts fame.


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## SanAntone

*Kerouac*










*Dylan*










Two favorites.


----------



## Ingélou

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I've just read the posts above, and it seems I'm on trend, but actually I just got it out of our local library and didn't know about it before.
An excellent read, though the ending was always going to be tricky and I didn't find it wholly successful. Wonderful epic and vivid descriptions, with convincing details of religion and etiquette of the day.


----------



## Manxfeeder

SanAntone said:


> *Kerouac*


Yesterday I reread Big Sur. I bought it at City Lights Bookstore last time I was in San Francisco, which is where the book begins. It's interesting to know the places he refers to (at least the ones that are left). I was disappointed that there was a landslide, so I couldn't go up the Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur.


----------



## geralmar

1940

I suppose leisure reading for sadists; depressing for everyone else. (I place myself in the latter group). It's sobering to find the small, almost inconspicuous head note titled, "Boiling and Frying"-- more appropriate for a cookbook than social history. I was particularly surprised learning that the savage torture involving starving rats and a heated metal bowl was practiced not in China but in Holland. Finally, given that the publication year is 1940 It's sad to speculate what the update would read like.


----------



## senza sordino

I am now reading Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller









I thoroughly enjoyed Troy by Stephen Fry. I'll read The Iliad sometime later this year. Stephen Fry's book begins the story before the abduction of Helen, before the judgement of Paris, etc, and, unlike The Iliad, Troy includes the story of the Trojan Horse.

There is an entire genre of retellings and character expansion of Greek myths, and what I didn't know until recently, there are also retellings and character expansion novels of Shakespeare plays. I might start tackling these later also. So much to read, so little time!

And I have just discovered the author Roger Lancelyn Green. He's written retellings of Greek tales, Robin Hood, Norse mythology, etc. He was an Inkling, along with Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I haven't read any of his books yet, but I might. They're in my "to read" list on Goodreads.


----------



## calvinpv

On a whim, I decided to set a small reading project for myself: American classics written between 1950-1952. Why those years? Because I initially set out to read _The Catcher in the Rye_ and then realized, while rummaging through my book shelf, that I just happen to have seven novels from those years on my bookshelf that I either haven't read yet or haven't read in some time. So the ones I plan to read are:

Ernest Hemingway's _Across the River and into the Trees_ (1950)
J.D. Salinger's _The Catcher in the Rye_ (1951) (2nd reading)
Patricia Highsmith's _Strangers on a Train_ (1951)
Herman Wouk's _The Caine Mutiny_ (1951) (2nd reading)
Jim Thompson's _The Killer Inside Me_ (1952)
Kurt Vonnegut's _Player Piano_ (1952)
John Steinbeck's _East of Eden_ (1952)

After each one, I'll try and write a brief post, just so I can collect my thoughts together into one place. I suspect that novels from the fifties had very particular themes that you don't really see in novels from other decades, which is another reason why I want to read these together. Themes of an existentialist nature, like authenticity, alienation, anxiety, indifference, the metaphysics of life and death, man vs. machine, as well as more concrete themes like nuclear annihilation and postwar consumerism. Maybe I'm wrong, but I guess I'll find out.










I decided to reread this novel when it was referenced and talked about by the character Miranda in John Fowles's _The Collector_, a novel that has haunted me for the last few months since I read it last fall. Last time I read _The Catcher in the Rye_ was junior year of high school in 2010. While I knew of the censorship the book undergone over the years, I always thought that was in the distant Cold War past. But I'm now 100% convinced I read a censored version even in 2010, because I don't remember the profanity on literally every other line, the sex gossip, the making fun of Catholics, and the anti-war sentiments (interestingly, I do remember a lot of the homophobic stuff in my high school version). It's a shame that school systems are still polarized by this book and feel a need to censor because I think even the unsavory bits are structurally necessary to deliver the core message of the book.

This book is often described as a coming-of-age story - it was described that way in my 11th grade English class --, but I'm not sure that it is one, now having read it a second time. Coming-of-age stories imply the main character evolving into some more enlightened individual with the passing of time, for example, developing a sense of one's place in the world or acquiring an understanding of the responsibilities of adulthood. But that doesn't happen here.

For one thing, many of the adults in the novel act just as childish as the children they're supposed to be overseeing. Childish in the sense of having a naïve and superficial understanding of life (the taxi driver not knowing where the ducks and fish in Central Park go in the winter), in the sense of exhibiting cruel, petty behavior (the older students killing James Castle at the boys academy), in the sense of taking advantage of others (the lift operator Maurice, possibly Mr. Antolini), in the sense of living a life through cliches and empty advice (movie actors, the women in the bar, the school headmasters, Mr. Spencer, maybe Carl Luce), etc.

But also, Holden Caulfield himself falls prey to these habits. Holden is a classic case of an unreliable narrator. He has an unusual ability to perceive that something is profoundly wrong with the world around him - although, given his young age, he is unable to articulate his thoughts very well --, but at the same time, he is unable to overcome these challenges and merely repeats the same mistakes as the adults around him. Holden complains about the "phoniness" of actors, yet he imagines himself as having been heroically shot in the stomach, just like in the movies. He worries about Jane Gallagher getting raped, yet he hits on women not interested. He complains about pseudo-intellectualism, yet his own conversations are nothing to write home about. He's grated by useless banter, yet he feels uneasy from silence. And his own thoughts of heading out west to start a new life are about as cliched as you can get. And so on. If there's any sense of "growing up" or "character development" from Holden, it's that he realizes at the end of the novel that his own actions and beliefs have unintended consequences, even if they derive from noble intent. But nothing more. He certainly doesn't internalize Mr. Antolini's own advice, the only advice Holden receives that's not completely useless, although it's not perfect either.

I think Salinger's underlying message is profoundly pessimistic, albeit one that's distilled through the lens of a sixteen-year-old. It's in the same vein as the existentialists like Sartre and Camus. Essentially, we are on our own, there is no guiding light or higher power to save us or give us purpose. For Salinger, society is a case of the blind leading the blind with bad habits getting handed down to successive generations and no one really knowing what they truly want in life (other than brief moments of pleasure). Whether this is too extreme of a position from Salinger, I don't know, but it does make you think.

I recommend everyone who read this book in high school to go back and read it again. It's just as much a novel for adults as it is for children. Perhaps even more so.

On the wiki page for the novel, I found a link to a PDF article on the history of the book's censorship. One thing the article touches on that I wholeheartedly agree with is that there is very little in the way of a manifesto in the novel of how to conduct one's life. In other words, people on both sides of the aisle over the years -- those repelled by the book such as many Catholics and those inspired by it such as John Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman -- were essentially projecting what they wanted to see into the book to advance their cause (with the one exception being the debate over profanity use, which of course can't be denied is in there). The book is more descriptive than prescriptive.

Stephen J. Whitfield (1997): Cherished and Cursed: Towards a Social History of The Catcher in the Rye


----------



## jegreenwood

Reading _Our Country Friends_ by Gary Shteyngart. About a group of people gathering on an estate in the Hudson Valley. They arrive during the earliest days of the pandemic. Not sure how long they end up staying.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Walker Percy, _The Moviegoer_. Stunningly written, and an uncompromisingly intense dive into spiritual angst and longing. Also embarking on a reread of Thoreau's _Walden_, partially for class but also for my own enjoyment. Finding it much more delightful than when I first read it several years ago, though Thoreau's insufferably egotistical attitude is a bit unattractive. Other recent reads include the first part of _Don Quixote_, selected essays by R.W. Emerson, and G.K. Chesterton's _The Everlasting Man_.


----------



## SanAntone

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Walker Percy, _The Moviegoer_. Stunningly written, and an uncompromisingly intense dive into spiritual angst and longing. Also embarking on a reread of Thoreau's _Walden_, partially for class but also for my own enjoyment. Finding it much more delightful than when I first read it several years ago, though Thoreau's insufferably egotistical attitude is a bit unattractive. Other recent reads include the first part of _Don Quixote_, selected essays by R.W. Emerson, and G.K. Chesterton's _The Everlasting Man_.


I _love_ Walker Percy. The Last Gentleman, Love in the Ruins and, of course, The Moviegoer. I am also a huge fan of Henry David Thoreau, whom I consider very prescient thinker and someone to read RIGHT NOW.


----------



## SanAntone

calvinpv said:


> On a whim, I decided to set a small reading project for myself: American classics written between 1950-1952. Why those years? Because I initially set out to read _The Catcher in the Rye_ and then realized, while rummaging through my book shelf, that I just happen to have seven novels from those years on my bookshelf that I either haven't read yet or haven't read in some time. So the ones I plan to read are:
> 
> Ernest Hemingway's _Across the River and into the Trees_ (1950)
> J.D. Salinger's _The Catcher in the Rye_ (1951) (2nd reading)


Two of my favorite writers. In fact, I started a thread (still under moderator review) about "who's favorite writers" and need to edit my first post to include Salinger. I am watching the Ken Burns documentary on Hemingway tonight - good film.


----------



## SanAntone

Manxfeeder said:


> Yesterday I reread Big Sur. I bought it at City Lights Bookstore last time I was in San Francisco, which is where the book begins. It's interesting to know the places he refers to (at least the ones that are left). I was disappointed that there was a landslide, so I couldn't go up the Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur.
> View attachment 163712


I lived in San Francisco for six weeks in 1977 and was staying in a cheap hotel in North Beach/Chinatown not far from City Lights. I went there often and bought a number of books. Great place.


----------



## SixFootScowl

> In the summer of 1944, Denis Avey was being held in a British POW labour camp, E715, near Auschwitz III. He had heard of the brutality meted out to the prisoners there and he was determined to witness what he could.
> 
> He hatched a plan to swap places with a Jewish inmate and smuggled himself into his sector of the camp. He spent the night there on two occasions and experienced at first-hand the cruelty of a place where slave workers, had been sentenced to death through labor.
> 
> Astonishingly, he survived to witness the aftermath of the Death March where thousands of prisoners were murdered by the Nazis as the Soviet Army advanced. After his own long trek right across central Europe he was repatriated to Britain.


----------



## Ariasexta

1-The Dictionary of English Grammars(a chinese compilation), not very exhaustive in terms of the rich colloquial usages one might encounter in real life. But it is still interesting to study it as a kind of foundamental knowledge. 

2-Super Science(大科技-01A.2022). A chinese monthly magazin, this is the January issue. Here we have columns about UFOs, Dark matter and the difficulties in developping drugs(not vaccines) for various pandemics, using faeces as a source of biochemical agents to deal with various chronical illnesses.


----------



## Ariasexta

geralmar said:


> 1940
> 
> I suppose leisure reading for sadists; depressing for everyone else. (I place myself in the latter group). It's sobering to find the small, almost inconspicuous head note titled, "Boiling and Frying"-- more appropriate for a cookbook than social history. I was particularly surprised learning that the savage torture involving starving rats and a heated metal bowl was practiced not in China but in Holland. Finally, given that the publication year is 1940 It's sad to speculate what the update would read like.


Gotta be sweating in my bladder.


----------



## senza sordino

I finished reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I only gave it three out of five stars on Goodreads (and Amazon). I read it on my Kindle, so it prompts me for a review when I finish a Kindle book. I had the same problem as Ingelou, the ending is problematic. It's a vivid read, and perhaps successfully explains Achilles' rage killing Hector. But the ending was an issue for me.

And now, for something completely different: Inside Out A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason (drummer).


----------



## Pat Fairlea

I'm re-reading Amor Towles 'A Gentleman in Moscow'. A charming, rich and touching story, written with elegance and a well-judged lightness of touch. Some readers might find it lacking in narrative drive, but for me the quality of the writing carries it along. It is a gentle story, beautifully told.


----------



## HerbertNorman

I'm reading "Inside , Outside" from Herman Wouk . I'd read most of his well known works , but this one failed in this list.


----------



## Bwv 1080

> First published in 1956, Zama is now universally recognized as one of the masterpieces of modern Argentinean and Spanish-language literature.
> 
> Written in a style that is both precise and sumptuous, Zama takes place in the last decade of the eighteenth century and describes the solitary, suspended existence of Don Diego de Zama, a highly placed servant of the Spanish crown who has been posted to Asunción, the capital of remote Paraguay. Eaten up by pride, lust, petty grudges, and paranoid fantasies, Don Diego does as little as he possibly can while plotting an eventual transfer to Buenos Aires, where everything about his hopeless existence will, he is confident, be miraculously transformed and made good.
> 
> Don Diego's slow, nightmarish slide into the abyss is not just a tale of one man's perdition but an exploration of existential, and very American, loneliness. Zama's stark, dreamlike prose and spare imagery make every word appear to emerge from an ocean of things left unsaid.


Tried to watch the movie after reading the book and was disappointed. Would highly recommend the book though


----------



## jegreenwood

_Here Comes the Sun_ by Nicole Dennis-Benn. Unlike the message in the Beatles song, everything is not alright among the mostly impoverished Jamaicans living by the the resorts on Montego Bay.


----------



## starthrower




----------



## NoCoPilot

I just finished "A Series of Fortunate Events" by Sean B. Carroll. It's about how the history of catastrophes on Earth led to the emergence of higher organisms, and how without the stress of those catastrophes life would still be at a single cell level.

It combines insights from four of the best books I've ever read:

"Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod, about how the origin of life, and the evolution of life, are driven by chance not design

"Wonderful Life" by Stephen Jay Gould, about the explosion of life forms during the Cambrian era as evidenced by the Burgess shale. No new families of life have emerged since, just whittling away at ones that did

"Endless Forms Most Beautiful" by the same Sean B. Carroll, which explains how the 90% of our DNA that was thought of as "junk DNA" actually encodes for the development of embryos, and tiny mutations in this DNA can lead to entirely new body styles. The so-called "Cambrian explosion" was a period of intense mutation in junk DNA

"Rare Earth" by Peter Ward & David Brownlee. Describes the incredibly chaotic history of Earth, and the multiple mass extinctions it caused, and the winnowing of life forms and unlikely survival of not-the-fittest but the luckiest.


----------



## That Guy Mick

Will Durant's The Age of Napoleon: The Story of Civilization, Volume XI. It begins with the French Revolution which unsurprisingly occurred in France and thus appropriately titled. It can be said that I would not spit on the *** of this Revolution if its guts were on fire, which they were in fact.


----------



## That Guy Mick

In the light of current events, there is much to be said for the intellectual abilities and culture of the single celled organisms though I am guessing the culinary prowess and drink tended to be lacking. They certainly did not know good surround sound.


----------



## That Guy Mick

jegreenwood said:


> _Here Comes the Sun_ by Nicole Dennis-Benn. Unlike the message in the Beatles song, everything is not alright among the mostly impoverished Jamaicans living by the the resorts on Montego Bay.


And then Jamaican Gold was discovered...


----------



## That Guy Mick

geralmar said:


> 1940
> 
> I suppose leisure reading for sadists; depressing for everyone else. (I place myself in the latter group). It's sobering to find the small, almost inconspicuous head note titled, "Boiling and Frying"-- more appropriate for a cookbook than social history. I was particularly surprised learning that the savage torture involving starving rats and a heated metal bowl was practiced not in China but in Holland. Finally, given that the publication year is 1940 It's sad to speculate what the update would read like.


It was too painful for me to read, but not as much as the detail in Tolstoy's The Hunchback of Notre Dame for a school reading class.


----------



## That Guy Mick

calvinpv said:


> On a whim, I decided to set a small reading project for myself: American classics written between 1950-1952. Why those years? Because I initially set out to read _The Catcher in the Rye_ and then realized, while rummaging through my book shelf, that I just happen to have seven novels from those years on my bookshelf that I either haven't read yet or haven't read in some time. So the ones I plan to read are:
> 
> Ernest Hemingway's _Across the River and into the Trees_ (1950)
> J.D. Salinger's _The Catcher in the Rye_ (1951) (2nd reading)
> Patricia Highsmith's _Strangers on a Train_ (1951)
> Herman Wouk's _The Caine Mutiny_ (1951) (2nd reading)
> Jim Thompson's _The Killer Inside Me_ (1952)
> Kurt Vonnegut's _Player Piano_ (1952)
> John Steinbeck's _East of Eden_ (1952)
> 
> After each one, I'll try and write a brief post, just so I can collect my thoughts together into one place. I suspect that novels from the fifties had very particular themes that you don't really see in novels from other decades, which is another reason why I want to read these together. Themes of an existentialist nature, like authenticity, alienation, anxiety, indifference, the metaphysics of life and death, man vs. machine, as well as more concrete themes like nuclear annihilation and postwar consumerism. Maybe I'm wrong, but I guess I'll find out.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I decided to reread this novel when it was referenced and talked about by the character Miranda in John Fowles's _The Collector_, a novel that has haunted me for the last few months since I read it last fall. Last time I read _The Catcher in the Rye_ was junior year of high school in 2010. While I knew of the censorship the book undergone over the years, I always thought that was in the distant Cold War past. But I'm now 100% convinced I read a censored version even in 2010, because I don't remember the profanity on literally every other line, the sex gossip, the making fun of Catholics, and the anti-war sentiments (interestingly, I do remember a lot of the homophobic stuff in my high school version). It's a shame that school systems are still polarized by this book and feel a need to censor because I think even the unsavory bits are structurally necessary to deliver the core message of the book.
> 
> This book is often described as a coming-of-age story - it was described that way in my 11th grade English class --, but I'm not sure that it is one, now having read it a second time. Coming-of-age stories imply the main character evolving into some more enlightened individual with the passing of time, for example, developing a sense of one's place in the world or acquiring an understanding of the responsibilities of adulthood. But that doesn't happen here.
> 
> For one thing, many of the adults in the novel act just as childish as the children they're supposed to be overseeing. Childish in the sense of having a naïve and superficial understanding of life (the taxi driver not knowing where the ducks and fish in Central Park go in the winter), in the sense of exhibiting cruel, petty behavior (the older students killing James Castle at the boys academy), in the sense of taking advantage of others (the lift operator Maurice, possibly Mr. Antolini), in the sense of living a life through cliches and empty advice (movie actors, the women in the bar, the school headmasters, Mr. Spencer, maybe Carl Luce), etc.
> 
> But also, Holden Caulfield himself falls prey to these habits. Holden is a classic case of an unreliable narrator. He has an unusual ability to perceive that something is profoundly wrong with the world around him - although, given his young age, he is unable to articulate his thoughts very well --, but at the same time, he is unable to overcome these challenges and merely repeats the same mistakes as the adults around him. Holden complains about the "phoniness" of actors, yet he imagines himself as having been heroically shot in the stomach, just like in the movies. He worries about Jane Gallagher getting raped, yet he hits on women not interested. He complains about pseudo-intellectualism, yet his own conversations are nothing to write home about. He's grated by useless banter, yet he feels uneasy from silence. And his own thoughts of heading out west to start a new life are about as cliched as you can get. And so on. If there's any sense of "growing up" or "character development" from Holden, it's that he realizes at the end of the novel that his own actions and beliefs have unintended consequences, even if they derive from noble intent. But nothing more. He certainly doesn't internalize Mr. Antolini's own advice, the only advice Holden receives that's not completely useless, although it's not perfect either.
> 
> I think Salinger's underlying message is profoundly pessimistic, albeit one that's distilled through the lens of a sixteen-year-old. It's in the same vein as the existentialists like Sartre and Camus. Essentially, we are on our own, there is no guiding light or higher power to save us or give us purpose. For Salinger, society is a case of the blind leading the blind with bad habits getting handed down to successive generations and no one really knowing what they truly want in life (other than brief moments of pleasure). Whether this is too extreme of a position from Salinger, I don't know, but it does make you think.
> 
> I recommend everyone who read this book in high school to go back and read it again. It's just as much a novel for adults as it is for children. Perhaps even more so.
> 
> On the wiki page for the novel, I found a link to a PDF article on the history of the book's censorship. One thing the article touches on that I wholeheartedly agree with is that there is very little in the way of a manifesto in the novel of how to conduct one's life. In other words, people on both sides of the aisle over the years -- those repelled by the book such as many Catholics and those inspired by it such as John Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman -- were essentially projecting what they wanted to see into the book to advance their cause (with the one exception being the debate over profanity use, which of course can't be denied is in there). The book is more descriptive than prescriptive.
> 
> Stephen J. Whitfield (1997): Cherished and Cursed: Towards a Social History of The Catcher in the Rye


Several of these are available in the Blu-ray format with Gregory Peck and James Dean. As the saying goes, "Don't judge a book by its movie."


----------



## NoCoPilot

That Guy Mick said:


> In the light of current events, there is much to be said for the intellectual abilities and culture of the single celled organisms though I am guessing the culinary prowess and drink tended to be lacking. They certainly did not know good surround sound.


If their single cell is an ear, they don't need surround sound.


----------



## That Guy Mick

Two ears are not required to hear surround sound. Nor does a person six ears to hear 5.1 surround sound. etc. etc. etc.


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> On a whim, I decided to set a small reading project for myself: American classics written between 1950-1952. Why those years? Because I initially set out to read _The Catcher in the Rye_ and then realized, while rummaging through my book shelf, that I just happen to have seven novels from those years on my bookshelf that I either haven't read yet or haven't read in some time. So the ones I plan to read are:
> 
> Ernest Hemingway's _Across the River and into the Trees_ (1950)
> J.D. Salinger's _The Catcher in the Rye_ (1951) (2nd reading)
> Patricia Highsmith's _Strangers on a Train_ (1951)
> Herman Wouk's _The Caine Mutiny_ (1951) (2nd reading)
> Jim Thompson's _The Killer Inside Me_ (1952)
> Kurt Vonnegut's _Player Piano_ (1952)
> John Steinbeck's _East of Eden_ (1952)
> 
> . . . .


You might consider adding Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_ (1952).


----------



## NoCoPilot

And Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" (begun 1953). It perfectly captures the post-WWII zeitgeist of America, and the 1953-4 hysteria over "communist infiltration."


----------



## calvinpv

SanAntone said:


> Two of my favorite writers. In fact, I started a thread (still under moderator review) about "who's favorite writers" and need to edit my first post to include Salinger. I am watching the Ken Burns documentary on Hemingway tonight - good film.


I'd be curious to know what are your favorite Hemingway novels/short stories. I've only read _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ a few years ago, and I'm now about to finish _Across the River and into the Trees_ (about 30 pages left), and I must say, I prefer _Across the River_ by a country mile over _For Whom the Bell Tolls_, even though every single online list I've seen of "Hemingway's best" ranks it near the bottom.


----------



## calvinpv

jegreenwood said:


> You might consider adding Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_ (1952).





NoCoPilot said:


> And Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" (begun 1953). It perfectly captures the post-WWII zeitgeist of America, and the 1953-4 hysteria over "communist infiltration."


The reason I chose those seven is because I happen to have seven books on my shelves within that short time frame. Which is really another way of saying that I have some unread books on my shelves that I want to read before purchasing some others and this is a "thematic" way, so to speak, of partially remedying that situation (I'm sure I'm not the only one who buys books faster than I can get through them, usually in bulk at a used book store a dollar per book). But I'm aware of the other great novels of this time period. If, after going through these seven books, I want to continue further, I will definitely consider the two you guys mention as well as:

Ray Bradbury's _The Martian Chronicles_ (1950)
Isaac Asimov's _Foundation_ trilogy (1950-1952)
Ray Bradbury's _The Illustrated Man_ (1951)
Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_ (1952)
Ernest Hemingway _The Old Man and the Sea_ (1952)
James Baldwin's _Go Tell it on the Mountain_ (1953)
Ray Bradbury's _Fahrenheit 451_ (1953)
Arthur Miller's _The Crucible_ (1953)
J.D. Salinger's _Nine Stories_ (1953)
Joseph Heller's _Catch 22_ (1953-1961)
Richard Matheson's _I Am Legend_ (1954)
Patricia Highsmith's _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ (1955)
Vladimir Nabokov's _Lolita_ (1955)
various stories by Flannery O'Connor


----------



## elgar's ghost

geralmar said:


> 1940
> 
> I suppose leisure reading for sadists; depressing for everyone else. (I place myself in the latter group). It's sobering to find the small, almost inconspicuous head note titled, "Boiling and Frying"-- more appropriate for a cookbook than social history. I was particularly surprised learning that the savage torture involving starving rats and a heated metal bowl was practiced not in China but in Holland. Finally, given that the publication year is 1940 It's sad to speculate what the update would read like.


I have the book below (originally released 2001) - perhaps it might be indelicate calling it a 'pot boiler'. Terrible joke aside, this book includes more modern methods of torture, including the Dubai Special Branch's 'House of Fun', a team who, back in the 70s and 80s, specialised in breaking their prisoners by playing ultra-loud disco music, usually accompanied by an equally mind-melting light-and-strobe show.


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> The reason I chose those seven is because I happen to have seven books on my shelves within that short time frame. Which is really another way of saying that I have some unread books on my shelves that I want to read before purchasing some others and this is a "thematic" way, so to speak, of partially remedying that situation (I'm sure I'm not the only one who buys books faster than I can get through them, usually in bulk at a used book store a dollar per book). But I'm aware of the other great novels of this time period. If, after going through these seven books, I want to continue further, I will definitely consider the two you guys mention as well as:
> 
> Ray Bradbury's _The Martian Chronicles_ (1950)
> Isaac Asimov's _Foundation_ trilogy (1950-1952)
> Ray Bradbury's _The Illustrated Man_ (1951)
> Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_ (1952)
> Ernest Hemingway _The Old Man and the Sea_ (1952)
> James Baldwin's _Go Tell it on the Mountain_ (1953)
> Ray Bradbury's _Fahrenheit 451_ (1953)
> Arthur Miller's _The Crucible_ (1953)
> J.D. Salinger's _Nine Stories_ (1953)
> Joseph Heller's _Catch 22_ (1953-1961)
> Richard Matheson's _I Am Legend_ (1954)
> Patricia Highsmith's _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ (1955)
> Vladimir Nabokov's _Lolita_ (1955)
> various stories by Flannery O'Connor


You could conclude with the first American post-modern doorstop - _The Recognitions_ by William Gaddis (1955)


----------



## SanAntone

calvinpv said:


> I'd be curious to know what are your favorite Hemingway novels/short stories. I've only read _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ a few years ago, and I'm now about to finish _Across the River and into the Trees_ (about 30 pages left), and I must say, I prefer _Across the River_ by a country mile over _For Whom the Bell Tolls_, even though every single online list I've seen of "Hemingway's best" ranks it near the bottom.


The Sun Also Rises (novel)
A Farewell to Arms (novel)
The Old Man and the Sea (novel)
I need to re-read For Whom the Bell Tolls and the later novels but haven't read any of the posthumous books.

Death in the Afternoon (non-fiction)
Green Hills of Africa (non-fiction)
A Moveable Feast (non-fiction)

I like many of his short stories, but can't always remember the titles. I've got the complete stories and just read one or two every now and then. But some that stick out in my memory are:

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro"
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"
"In Another Country"
"The Killers"
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"
"Up in Michigan"
"The End of Something"
"My Old Man"


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I decided to read short-stories to think of other things that hangs up my mind (or to think of nothing but the story I'm reading). So I found this:


----------



## jegreenwood

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I decided to read short-stories to think of other things that hangs up my mind (or to think of nothing but the story I'm reading). So I found this:
> View attachment 164541


She is wonderful. I must have read more than 50 stories by her over the years. Also try William Trevor. Deborah Eisenberg is another favorite, but she is very American.


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## calvinpv

jegreenwood said:


> You could conclude with the first American post-modern doorstop - _The Recognitions_ by William Gaddis (1955)


Thanks for the recommendation. I just looked it up on Amazon, and I didn't even have to scroll down to the page count to know it's a doorstop. I just had to look at the list of further recommendations: _Gravity's Rainbow_, _Ulysses_, _2666_, _Infinite Jest_, and _Underworld_. :lol:


----------



## calvinpv

Just finished the Hemingway. This book was quite a revelation for me in kindling a newfound admiration for Hemingway's writing. I read _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ a few years ago, but I found it to be incredibly simple and just dismissed him as overrated (reinforced by disparaging comments I heard of him in school). But in reality, I was approaching him the wrong way, and I just needed a bit of maturing to do. His writing is deceptively difficult.

First off, his style. Putting aside the fact that I'm mentioning this only because TC is a music forum, but there is something positively musical in the way he writes. Sentences are built up in the same way a musical phrase is built up from smaller motivic elements, the motifs in this case being individual words or short clauses that are linked up using conjunctions (Hemingway is notorious for using very little punctuation and excessive use of the conjunction "and"). These short motifs come and go according to the needs of the plot, but when they recur, they appear in exactly the same or nearly the same way as before. The task of the reader is to use this formal structuring to understand the underlying content by analyzing why certain motifs are linked to together at any one time. Hemingway never explicitly states the themes or the major plot points; you have to infer them from the structure (what he called his "iceberg theory of omission").

Some other interesting musical parallels. The characters Richard and Renata often ask each other to clarify what the other has said. Usually this wish is expressed in the form of "Say it again"/"Say it one more time", which serves as the language equivalent of a repeat sign in music. Other times, due to the language barrier between the Italian-speaking Renata and the English-speaking Richard, a definition of a word or colloquialism is asked for before proceeding, serving as development and commentary of a single motif while other developments are put on pause. These forms of repetition and isolated development act as points of emphasis, signaling to the reader that these moments are important.

Beyond that, there is tight contrapuntal relationships between the two "voices" (Richard and Renata), where an idea will cross-pollinate from one character to the other and take on a new life. Sometimes, this cross-pollination is instantaneous - a word or expression will be repeated verbatim in the next line by the other person - other times, it will be delayed by several pages, especially by Renata, who frequently calls back to something Richard said in an earlier conversation.

Finally, there is a main subject that anchors all other subjects, that subject being "love" and its fullest expression being "You are my last and only and true love" or some slight variation thereof. Its full expression recurs periodically - almost rhythmically so - and each time it appears, it gains some new inflection and connotation from its close proximity to the other motifs, which have been undergoing their own development. The journey the reader takes in unpacking the form of the work is the journey Richard takes in unpacking the true meaning of "love" for Renata. Content and form have become one.

As for the story itself, again, since content and form are one, the journey the reader takes in deciphering the prose is analogous to the journey Richard takes in deciphering and coming to terms with his own past in the face of his own inevitable death. There are, technically speaking, two stories: the frame story, where Richard is duck hunting on his last day alive (he has a terminal heart condition), and the story within the story, of Richard reminiscing the two days prior to duck hunting, when he sees his love Renata for the last time; the latter story occupies about 95% of the page space.

In coming to terms with the mistakes of his past, Richard has to reconcile some internal conflicts that are simmering below the threshold of consciousness. Reconciliation takes place either in conversation with Renata or when Richard talks to a portrait of her; in either case, he's given a space to make his conflicts intelligible through speech, and while Hemingway's iceberg technique is certainly in effect the whole novel, we also certainly get, as the novel progresses, what could be called direct statements of the conflicts. As Renata puts it in a question to Richard, "Don't you see you need to tell me things to purge your bitterness?" Although it's questionable if he even accomplishes reconciliation by the end of the story: when he's outside the city of Venice (mostly in the frame story), or when he's reminded of the outside world, his character regresses into "bitterness" or "roughness". But it can certainly be said that within Venice, a city which possesses a magical hold over his mind, he's at least trying to become a better person.

Interestingly enough, the entry into Venice is marked by crossing the Piave river and observing a sailboat through the trees. This is where Richard really begins to feel a final spark of rejuvenation. But the title of the novel is also derived from the final words uttered by Civil War general Stonewall Jackson. Venice, therefore, is a symbol in the novel for both rejuvenation and departure, for birth and death. It is a site of conflict for Richard.

The conflicts are tightly connected, and reconciliation of one does not necessarily entail reconciliation of another; in fact, the others may become even more intractable. This is because, like Richard, Renata has her own conflicts to work through (although we only get small glimpses as to what they are, such as her father's death), and what Richard needs may not be what Renata needs. There is a conflict between love and "having fun", between sexual conquest and platonic companionship, between being "gentle" and being "rough", between living in the moment and confronting the past, between accepting orders and doing what's right, between accepting the other person and being offended by them, between preserving what was and accepting what is to come, between keeping promises and setting unrealistic expectations, etc. The conflicts are manifold and proliferating, although most rise to the surface for only a few lines; you have to catch them quickly before they pass by your field of vision. While the novel is a particularly vivid snapshot of Richard's last few days of living, you always get the sense that there is much more that Richard wanted to get off his chest.

Finally, there is a very strong autobiographical dimension to the novel. Like Richard, Hemingway was a volunteer for the Italian Army in WWI and was on the front line for the Normandy invasion and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. Like Richard, Hemingway suffered a lot of physical and mental trauma that would ultimately kill him. Both fell in love in Venice with a woman 30 years their junior, and they each had three prior divorces. Both resided at the Gritti Palace Hotel and dined at Harry's Bar. And I believe both even violated the Geneva Convention on illegal combatants (I know Hemingway did, and I believe Richard as well, but I'm struggling to find it in the book).

This novel is almost always near the bottom of any "Hemingway's best" reading list, but I don't get why, because I enjoyed it a lot. Highly recommended.


----------



## Ariasexta

> Finally, there is a very strong autobiographical dimension to the novel. Like Richard, Hemingway was a volunteer for the Italian Army in WWI and was on the front line for the Normandy invasion and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. Like Richard, Hemingway suffered a lot of physical and mental trauma that would ultimately kill him. Both fell in love in Venice with a woman 30 years their junior, and they each had three prior divorces. Both resided at the Gritti Palace Hotel and dined at Harry's Bar. And I believe both even violated the Geneva Convention on illegal combatants (I know Hemingway did, and I believe Richard as well, but I'm struggling to find it in the book).


Hemingway is an iconic writer for both his persona and his works, his life itself worthy of a movie and a novel. War trauma is not a joke, no winners here.


----------



## Ariasexta

In my quest for a mode of thinking independent of empirical science, I must pick up this book:








Nichomachean Ethics
Aristotle.
Penguin Classics.

While dialectical and empirical processes are central protocols of science, what can be the protocol of a way of thinking that is as practical and idiosyncratic to free-thinking? it is happinese. I might call it as Nichomachism(free thinking for happiness), borrowing from this Greek term for happiness. Have not finished the book yet, I guess I might have a lot to add to Aristotle`s work for today`s practice.


----------



## Ariasexta

I am sorry, the Greek word for happiness is not Nicomachean, but Eudaimonia.


----------



## jegreenwood

_10:04_ by Ben Lerner. The title comes from the minute that lightning struck the clock tower in _Back to the Future_. It is, however, a serious novel. It's set in NYC in 2012-13 and brings back memories. As it is about our perceptions of the past and future, I guess that is fitting.


----------



## senza sordino

I read King Lear by Shakespeare last week. I found it quite challenging. I didn't really know the story before I began, only that King Lear has three daughters. I had to re-read the first act because I missed several important key plot points. 









And looking through the vast internet doing some research on King Lear and came across this book: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. I am now reading this on my Kindle. It's a modern retelling of the King Lear story. An Iowan farmer has three daughters and gives the land to two of them. This book won the Pulitzer prize in 1992. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm only about one-quarter of the way through. 









Larry Cook = King Lear
Ginny Cook Smith = Goneril
Rose Cook Lewis = Regan
Caroline Cook Rasmussen = Cordelia
Frank Rasmussen = King of France
Ty Smith = Duke of Albany
Pete Lewis = Duke of Cornwall
Jess Clark = Edmund
Harold Clark = Earl of Gloucester
Loren Clark = Edgar
Ken La Salle = Kent
Marv Carson = The Fool


----------



## SixFootScowl




----------



## jegreenwood

senza sordino said:


> I read King Lear by Shakespeare last week. I found it quite challenging. I didn't really know the story before I began, only that King Lear has three daughters. I had to re-read the first act because I missed several important key plot points.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And looking through the vast internet doing some research on King Lear and came across this book: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. I am now reading this on my Kindle. It's a modern retelling of the King Lear story. An Iowan farmer has three daughters and gives the land to two of them. This book won the Pulitzer prize in 1992. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm only about one-quarter of the way through.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Larry Cook = King Lear
> Ginny Cook Smith = Goneril
> Rose Cook Lewis = Regan
> Caroline Cook Rasmussen = Cordelia
> Frank Rasmussen = King of France
> Ty Smith = Duke of Albany
> Pete Lewis = Duke of Cornwall
> Jess Clark = Edmund
> Harold Clark = Earl of Gloucester
> Loren Clark = Edgar
> Ken La Salle = Kent
> Marv Carson = The Fool


Quite a few years ago I attended a reading by Jane Smiley. She began by stating she would read from a work in progress but offered no information about it. The book was _A Thousand Acres_. The reading was in a large hall. It was fascinating to hear that "ah - I get it" response as different audience members recognized the source.


----------



## calvinpv

I'm not sure what to make of this book.

On the one hand, it has all the elements of classic noir fiction. The novel takes place from the two murderers' perspectives and so is less a "whodunnit" and more a psychological study of the vacillating thoughts and emotions one has in the face of a killing another person. Think _Crime and Punishment_ but in the era of golden-age Hollywood, country clubs, and cheap oil. From the very first page, feelings of guilt, disavowal, ecstasy, castration, jealousy, resentment, paranoia, fraternity, indifference, boredom, agency, alienation, etc. are tightly wound in the minds of Guy Haines and Charles Bruno, so much so that each sentence in the novel is like a metaphorical onion layer of the mind that one has to peel back slowly in order to not disturb the fragile meanings of the other "layers". After all, knots of contradictions abound in these two characters' minds, especially Guy's, so that a delicate reading of the novel requires not only that you reconcile the seemingly discordant "onion layers" (a sort of compromised reading where you find a middle ground interpretation of the facts), but also that you occasionally take the contradictions at face value and as unsolvable. Despite its short length, this is a book you have to read slowly, you can't breeze through it like with other crime novels.

And as Patricia Highsmith is at pains to remind us, these contradictions are only a reflection of the contradictions within ourselves. Yes, you should feel disgusted at how Guy and Bruno think and behave - part of what makes noir fiction so subversive is that it evokes disgust of the main characters/narrators, upending the halo effect readers traditionally impart onto them --, but Highsmith is asking us to turn that moral finger pointing onto ourselves, to be disgusted at our own emotional and moral volatility. There are several moments in the book where these sort of breaking-the-4th-wall interjections disrupt the psychological continuity of Guy and Bruno's thoughts and seem to be directed straight at the reader as a warning; here's a particularly good one:



> In his mind, the side of the scale that bore his guilt was hopelessly weighted, beyond the scale's measure, yet into the other side he continually threw the equally hopeless featherweight of self-defense. He had committed the crime in self-defense, he reasoned. But he vacillated in completely believing this. If he believed in the full complement of evil in himself, he had to believe also in a natural compulsion to express it. He found himself wondering, therefore, from time to time, if he might have enjoyed his crime in some way, derived some primal satisfaction from it - how else could one really explain in mankind the continued toleration of wars, the perennial enthusiasm for wars when they came, if not for some primal pleasure in killing? - and because the capacity to wonder came so often, he accepted it as true that he had.


So why, then, am I not entirely sure of this book's merit? Because there are a couple of crucial moments in the novel where Guy's actions, despite everything I wrote above, receive little to no psychological justification and thus seem inexplicable to the reader. It was, frankly, frustrating, and I wanted to tell Guy what a moron he was for some of the decisions he made. Interestingly, you never experience frustration with Bruno, even though some of his decisions are extremely careless, and I think it's because Highsmith establishes from the start that Bruno is a bit of a psycho. Inexplicable decisions "come with the territory" for Bruno, so to speak.

But if you put these defects to the side and, in fact, try and fold these inexplicable moments into the moral dilemmas Highsmith is exploring, then you can curb your frustration. There are also a few places that needed some editing and fleshing out, but I'll chalk that up to this being Highsmith's first novel.

I haven't gotten around yet to watching the Hitchcock adaptation, so don't know how they compare. I've seen some snippets of it on youtube and it looks a bit sanitized compared to the book. Charles Bruno has to be one of the more memorable antagonists in all of noir fiction because of his outrageous behavior. But he comes off a bit pedestrian in some of the movie clips.


----------



## Kivimees

Reading again Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday. It seems sadly appropriate.


----------



## Alinde

Stan Grant's "With the Falling of the Dusk".

Grant is a Wiradjuri man who, as a boy, was a demon reader and who, against all the odds facing a young man of his background and time, became an outstanding journalist. I bought this book because I'm trying to educate myself about China and he was a frontline reporter for CNN in China, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I was more than informed, I was fascinated. And horrified.

Grant examines his experiences in the context of history and through the lens of the political philosophy of which he is an obsessive student. (Actually, I don't mind if he never mentions Hegel again). His predictions of the future for liberal democracy and the post WWII peace are ....sobering, and they've slowed me down but I think I'll finish the book.http:////www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460758038/with-the-falling-of-the-dusk/


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## 59540

Here and there in the old Hughes edition of Milton's Complete Poetry and Major Prose. Still the best and most accessible edition of Milton I've come across.


----------



## 59540

_The Cloud of Unknowing _in the original Middle English (edited by Patrick Gallacher)


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## jegreenwood

_Serenade: A Balanchine Story _by Toni Bentley

The author, who danced in the NYCB corps during Balanchine’s last years, brings together her passion for Balanchine, her commentary on his role in the history of ballet, her life as a dancer, a history of _Serenade _(which underwent many changes between its first performance in 1934 and Balanchine’s death in 1983), and an almost step-by-step analysis of the ballet.


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## Pat Fairlea

Currently reading Erebus, by Michael Palin.
It's a meticulously researched biography of a dumpy little ship that was at the heart of mid-19th century exploration of both Poles. Palin is a fine writer: the text flows, technical when it needs to be and conversational when that helps the story along. A good read.


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## calvinpv

Taking a little detour from my 50s American literature journey to read some lighter stuff. Although the above was published in 1957, but I wasn't initially planning on reading it.

This is a collection of short stories brought together and turned into little vignettes chronicling the major events of "Summer 1928" as experienced by the main characters Douglas and Tom Spaulding. The first and last vignettes mark the first and last days of summer, respectively, and are also marked by the first and last pressings of dandelions into dandelion wine. And in between, a series of strange and fanciful happenings that serve as lessons on the passing of time and growing older. Some of the events are quite humorous; others are melancholic. One of my favorites is about the "Happiness Machine", which anticipates the philosopher Robert Nozick's experience machine thought experiment by about 20 years. This is essentially a coming of age story for Douglas and Tom (who are 12 and 10 years old, respectively), as they get their first taste of experiencing the world through the lens of an adult. But the two most fundamental themes in the book concern the paradoxes latent in memory and experience. Bradbury's position is that to experience the full vitality and richness of the world around us requires us to accept that it will come to an end at some point and to accept death as a natural built-in process. Conversely, to preserve an experience in memory past the lifespan of the experience itself only ruins its vitality and completeness and, in fact, makes us feel remorseful and melancholic of its disappearance. While I don't entirely agree with this position, I do think he puts these core themes to good use in creating an entertaining story. Overall, a good book.


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## calvinpv

A superbly written book. Probably my new favorite horror novel. This is no literary lightweight, since it's as much a psychological drama between characters competing for supremacy and autonomy as it is an indulgence into the occult, possibly even more so. The introduction to the edition above (which is very good, by the way) says that _The Haunting of Hill House_ should be compared to Henry James's _The Turn of the Screw_, which also blends psychological surrealism with the supernatural, rather than to any generic haunted house story. This story was published in 1959, when Freudian psychoanalysis, behavioralism, and Gestalt psychology were still the predominant theories of the mind, so when reading the book, you have think about things like the vicissitudes of intentions and desires, the subtle changes in behaviors and thoughts according to a person's surroundings, and the ability to identify as an individual self living in the moment. I have no idea how much Jackson thought about these issues, but the psychological dimension is front and center, and some passages are pretty difficult to parse because a lot is happening below the surface of the text. There's also a strong surrealist element that really makes this book quite eerie. The term "dream logic" is really appropriate here, in the most literal sense of the term. The narrative is driven forward by a robust formalism, or "logic", in that behaviors, actions, and events are always duplications, echoes, reversals, double reversals, antecedents, and consequents of one another. There is no such thing as an extraneous, un-premeditated element to the book. None whatsoever. And yet, you can't really put a name to the logic except that it's "dream-like" and reminiscent of the deepest recesses of the mind. If you're into stories with tight-knit logical structures, structures that nevertheless incorporate the irrational into themselves, you'll absolutely love this book.


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## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> A superbly written book. Probably my new favorite horror novel. This is no literary lightweight, since it's as much a psychological drama between characters competing for supremacy and autonomy as it is an indulgence into the occult, possibly even more so. The introduction to the edition above (which is very good, by the way) says that _The Haunting of Hill House_ should be compared to Henry James's _The Turn of the Screw_, which also blends psychological surrealism with the supernatural, rather than to any generic haunted house story. This story was published in 1959, when Freudian psychoanalysis, behavioralism, and Gestalt psychology were still the predominant theories of the mind, so when reading the book, you have think about things like the vicissitudes of intentions and desires, the subtle changes in behaviors and thoughts according to a person's surroundings, and the ability to identify as an individual self living in the moment. I have no idea how much Jackson thought about these issues, but the psychological dimension is front and center, and some passages are pretty difficult to parse because a lot is happening below the surface of the text. There's also a strong surrealist element that really makes this book quite eerie. The term "dream logic" is really appropriate here, in the most literal sense of the term. The narrative is driven forward by a robust formalism, or "logic", in that behaviors, actions, and events are always duplications, echoes, reversals, double reversals, antecedents, and consequents of one another. There is no such thing as an extraneous, un-premeditated element to the book. None whatsoever. And yet, you can't really put a name to the logic except that it's "dream-like" and reminiscent of the deepest recesses of the mind. If you're into stories with tight-knit logical structures, structures that nevertheless incorporate the irrational into themselves, you'll absolutely love this book.


I am unlikely to ever read this, as I was so scared by the 1960 film adaptation. I have read several other works by Jackson including _The Lottery,_ which was also frightening.


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## SixFootScowl




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## Ingélou

Tolstoy - A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett.

From our local library - good reviews and I'm finding it fascinating, which is probably why another reader has reserved it. It's due back next Friday so I'll have to crack on because Taggart wants to read it too. No problem there, though - he's a Book-Reading Machine.


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## Red Terror

Lately it’s been difficult for me to even pick up a book. My mind’s prime focus has been work. Hopefully things will wind down soon.


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## Ingélou

Red Terror said:


> Lately it’s been difficult for me to even pick up a book. My mind’s prime focus has been work. Hopefully things will wind down soon.


I've had periods of turmoil when I couldn't settle to read a book - but perhaps you simply meant that you haven't the time?


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## calvinpv

jegreenwood said:


> I am unlikely to ever read this, as I was so scared by the 1960 film adaptation. I have read several other works by Jackson including _The Lottery,_ which was also frightening.


I just watched The Haunting. It's pretty good as far as adaptations go, but the book is even scarier. The film left out a few creepy scenes (one of the scenes left out is probably the most disturbing event in the book, though I won't spoil it) as well as streamlined the dynamic relationship between Eleanor and Theodora, which is actually pretty complex. The film also slightly changed the ending and a few other things here and there. But I do think the essences of Eleanor and Theodora's personalities were nicely captured. Julie Harris and Claire Bloom played those two characters very well.

I do think the book is worth reading, if you have the chance. What makes it so powerful, as far as horror novels go, is that by the end of the book you still have no idea what's really going on. There's this hazy, dreamy veil shrouding all the events in the book, preventing the reader from coming to a sense of narrative closure. Your head is constantly spinning in circles trying to weigh contradictory pieces of evidence as to the mystery of the house, never able to arrive at a satisfactory explanation, although you can certainly try. Which to me is the real horror: not the house itself, but Shirley Jackson taking away the reader's omniscient interpretive powers to understand the house. The only other horror story I've experienced this is Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, also a great book.

As far as her other works, I've purchased a collection of short stories which includes The Lottery. And I also bought We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is considered her masterpiece. I'll be getting to those soon.


----------



## jegreenwood

calvinpv said:


> I just watched The Haunting. It's pretty good as far as adaptations go, but the book is even scarier. The film left out a few creepy scenes (one of the scenes left out is probably the most disturbing event in the book, though I won't spoil it) as well as streamlined the dynamic relationship between Eleanor and Theodora, which is actually pretty complex. The film also slightly changed the ending and a few other things here and there. But I do think the essences of Eleanor and Theodora's personalities were nicely captured. Julie Harris and Claire Bloom played those two characters very well.
> 
> I do think the book is worth reading, if you have the chance. What makes it so powerful, as far as horror novels go, is that by the end of the book you still have no idea what's really going on. There's this hazy, dreamy veil shrouding all the events in the book, preventing the reader from coming to a sense of narrative closure. Your head is constantly spinning in circles trying to weigh contradictory pieces of evidence as to the mystery of the house, never able to arrive at a satisfactory explanation, although you can certainly try. Which to me is the real horror: not the house itself, but Shirley Jackson taking away the reader's omniscient interpretive powers to understand the house. The only other horror story I've experienced this is Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, also a great book.
> 
> As far as her other works, I've purchased a collection of short stories which includes The Lottery. And I also bought We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is considered her masterpiece. I'll be getting to those soon.


I did read _We Have Always Lived in the Castle, _but I suspect I was too young (no older than 15) to appreciate it. Trivia - _Castle _was turned into a stage play, but it flopped. You know it flopped, because the poster is on Zero Mostel's wall in the original _Producers._ Every poster on that wall was a from flop.


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## Bachtoven 1




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## realdealblues

Started re-reading *The Holy Bible* cover to cover back at the beginning of April. I've been trying to read a different translation each year or two. 

Reading the New International Version (Anglicized) this year.

I generally read one book a day although some of the longer books I will take two-three days and some of the smaller books I will read a couple a day. 

Finished the _Old Testament_ a few days ago and read the book of Matthew yesterday and Mark today. I should finish it up in the next 2 weeks. The _New Testament_ is always a breeze to get through after spending just over a month on the _Old Testament_.


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## calvinpv

This book reminds me a lot of Franz Kafka’s works, but it also draws on the French Surrealist movement Topor was associated with. This is my first foray into proper Surrealist fiction, which I feel like makes up a large, but subterranean, thread of 20th-century French literature. I initially read the book because it's advertised as horror fiction on the Valencourt Books website (an excellent publishing co. dedicated to re-issuing lesser known horror), but "horror" isn't really the best way to describe it, and frankly, I'm kind of glad it's not, because the book exposed me to Surrealism which I've always been sort of interested in (for example, I find Surrealist paintings like Giorgio de Chirico's _The Disquieting Muses_ fascinating).

Anyways, _The Tenant_ is an absurdist story about a man’s descent into paranoia and madness when he moves into a new apartment and has increasingly strange encounters with his neighbors. Tragic and comic sentiments are often uttered in the same breath, and deep philosophical questioning is often juxtaposed side-by-side with bestial behavior. It explores themes relating to estrangement vs belonging and the complex interactions between the two as well as the ridiculousness inherent to both.

And there are many wonderfully vivid scenes that illustrate these tensions, one of my favorites being when the main character Trelkovsky looks out his window across the courtyard into the public toilet across the way, which he has a perfect view of. He’s able to see everyone do their business in there, but occasionally he observes his neighbors enter the toilet, stand still for several minutes doing nothing, and then leave. He suspects them being part of a secret society and is “disturbed” to the point where it would’ve been a “relief” to see them use the toilet and defecate. But if you think about it, none of us really know what goes on in any given public stall; for all we know, standing around is normal. It’s this paradoxical suspension of what we consider to be normal and abnormal etiquette that makes this scene quite funny.

A brief essay on Topor can be found here. There’s a biographical dimension to the novel as well: when Topor was a child, his landlady would constantly pester him to find out the whereabouts of his hidden Jewish father so that she could turn him in to the Vichy regime to be sent to a concentration camp. No doubt this scarred him for life.


----------



## progmatist

Dickens' David Copperfield. Still waiting for the part where he makes the Statue of Liberty disappear.


----------



## Ludwig Schon

I love Dickens. Living along the Thames in Greenwich… Our Mutual Friend is my personal favourite of mine…


----------



## elgar's ghost

Great book for occasionally dipping into.


----------



## Strange Magic

Just finished _The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann_ by Ananyo Bhattacharya. John von Neumann, longtime fixture of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, was likely one of the brightest humans to inhabit this planet. His work in logic, mathematics, the computer and computing, artificial intelligence, living organisms at the most basic levels (genes, DNA precursors), game theory, and self-replicating machines explored territories and opened up fields of research that are actively pursued at the cutting edge of science, philosophy, and engineering.

Von Neumann was part of the extrordinary group of Hungarian Jewish scientists and mathematicians who fled Europe after the Nazis seized power in Germany--Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, Theodore von Karman. These men drained Germany of much serious talent by their leaving, and greatly aided the US to help win WWII.

Why didn't von Neumann win a Nobel Prize, some might ask. The answer is that von Neumann's incredible career did not specialize in the Nobel areas of physics and chemistry--he was all over so many other topics. Ideas constantly bubbled up inside of his head and he would immediately begin frantic work on them, publishing the the authoritative book on game theory with Oskar Morgenstern and acting as the catalyst for dozens of other researchers.

Many scientists and mathematicians affirm that von Neumann was the brightest person they ever met. The only serious competitor was Enrico Fermi, the physicist who is the subject of another fine biography, _ The Last Man Who Knew Everything, _though the author of that book hastens to add _In Physics._


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## Klavierman




----------



## starthrower

Thanks for the review, Magic! I'm always interested to know what you're reading.


----------



## realdealblues

Just finished The Bible today...

Starting *"The Art Of Living"* by _Thích Nhất Hạnh







_


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## SixFootScowl

50 cents at a library book sale, hard to put down.


----------



## Dulova Harps On

Just finished Gordon S Wood's The Radicalism Of The American Revolution and am now starting Reynard The Fox by Anne Louise Avery.


----------



## realdealblues

I just finished Thich Nhat Hanh's "The Art Of Living".

Starting *"The Qur'an"* a new translation from _M.A.S. Abdel Haleem. _
I read the Qur'an once probably 20 years ago but it was a very old translation and have been interested in reading a modern translation.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

progmatist said:


> Dickens' David Copperfield. Still waiting for the part where he makes the Statue of Liberty disappear.


Just recently read this myself (first time since I was about 10). I think it's a stone-cold masterpiece. There wasn't a moment or single thing about that novel I didn't enjoy or wasn't impressed with (that in itself is impressive given how long it is). Dickens's prose is effortlessly beautiful and he balances the narrative so well between different styles and subjects, never overdoing or underdoing anything. As much as I can appreciate many of the technical modernist wizards I often feel like they're trying to too hard to impress literary critics/professors. Dickens is really the proof that immense technical talent can be in the service of good, fun, engaging stories that aren't brain-dead superficial, but aren't so demandingly esoteric that only a handful of people can even read them.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Just finished Nabokov's Lolita (so now I can finally watch the last Kubrick film I haven't seen). Here's what I wrote to my friend about it (first post = first email; second was after I finished it yesterday):


> ...most controversial works from decades past tend to feel tame by today's standards, but I can totally understand why Lolita caused a stir, and it doesn't make one feel much less squeamish today. It's basically the most beautiful book ever written about hebephilia. It would probably be intolerably gross if Nabokov didn't have a way of making the language dance and sing across the page like poetry. It's hard to describe just how odd it is to read him describe the attraction to a 12-year old's body in a way that it basically splits your brain in two between being repulsed and being attracted yourself just because of how beautifully it's written. Like, here's a pretty illustrative example (all you need to know is that they're playing on the sofa: Lolita's eating an apple, she shows him something in a magazine, and now she's trying to get it back by climbing on him and he's keeping it away from her playfully):
> 
> 
> 
> "By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managed to attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to her guileless limbs. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden’s attention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for the success of the trick. Talking fast, lagging behind my own breath, catching up with it, mimicking a sudden toothache to explain the breaks in my patter—and all the while keeping a maniac’s inner eye on my distant golden goal, I cautiously increased the magic friction that was doing away, in an illusional, if not factual, sense, with the physically irremovable, but psychologically very friable texture of the material divide (pajamas and robe) between the weight of two sunburnt legs, resting athwart my lap, and the hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion. Having, in the course of my patter, hit upon something nicely mechanical, I recited, garbling them slightly, the words of a foolish song that was then popular—O my Carmen, my little Carmen, something, something, those something nights, and the stars, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen; I kept repeating this automatic stuff and holding her under its special spell (spell because of the garbling), and all the while I was mortally afraid that some act of God might interrupt me, might remove the golden load in the sensation of which all my being seemed concentrated, and this anxiety forced me to work, for the first minute or so, more hastily than was consensual with deliberately modulated enjoyment. The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled, and the bars, and the barmen, were presently taken over by her; her voice stole and corrected the tune I had been mutilating. She was musical and apple-sweet. Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa—and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty—between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock."
> 
> "Under my glancing finger tips I felt the minute hairs bristle ever so slightly along her shins. I lost myself in the pungent but healthy heat which like summer haze hung about little Haze (*Haze is her last name). Let her stay, let her stay … As she strained to chuck the core of her abolished apple into the fender, her young weight, her shameless innocent shanks and round bottom, shifted in my tense, tortured, surreptitiously laboring lap; and all of a sudden a mysterious change came over my senses. I entered a plane of being where nothing mattered, save the infusion of joy brewed within my body. What had begun as a delicious distension of my innermost roots became a glowing tingle which now had reached that state of absolute security, confidence and reliance not found elsewhere in conscious life. With the deep hot sweetness thus established and well on its way to the ultimate convulsion, I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. Lolita had been safely solipsized. The implied sun pulsated in the supplied poplars; we were fantastically and divinely alone; I watched her, rosy, gold-dusted, beyond the veil of my controlled delight, unaware of it, alien to it, and the sun was on her lips, and her lips were apparently still forming the words of the Carmenbarmen ditty that no longer reached my consciousness. Everything was now ready. The nerves of pleasure had been laid bare. The corpuscles of Krause were entering the phase of frenzy. The least pressure would suffice to set all paradise loose. I had ceased to be Humbert the Hound, the sad-eyed degenerate cur clasping the boot that would presently kick him away. I was above the tribulations of ridicule, beyond the possibilities of retribution. In my self-made seraglio, I was a radiant and robust Turk, deliberately, in the full consciousness of his freedom, postponing the moment of actually enjoying the youngest and frailest of his slaves. Suspended on the brink of that voluptuous abyss (a nicety of physiological equipoise comparable to certain techniques in the arts) I kept repeating chance words after her— barmen, alarmin’, my charmin’, my carmen, ahmen, ahahamen—as one talking and laughing in his sleep while my happy hand crept up her sunny leg as far as the shadow of decency allowed. The day before she had collided with the heavy chest in the hall and—“Look, look!”—I gasped —“look what you’ve done, what you’ve done to yourself, ah, look”; for there was, I swear, a yellowish-violet bruise on her lovely nymphet thigh which my huge hairy hand massaged and slowly enveloped—and because of her very perfunctory underthings, there seemed to be nothing to prevent my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin—just as you might tickle and caress a giggling child—just that—and: “Oh it’s nothing at all,” she cried with a sudden shrill note in her voice, and she wiggled, and squirmed, and threw her head back, and her teeth rested on her glistening underlip as she half-turned away, and my moaning mouth, gentlemen of the jury, almost reached her bare neck, while I crushed out against her left buttock the last throb of the longest ecstasy man or monster had ever known."
> 
> 
> 
> In one sense... gross... in another sense, probably the most beautiful erotic passage I've ever read in any work of literature ever.
Click to expand...




> Second half was quite different than the first. Lolita's mother dies and HH becomes her guardian, and they go on a kind of impressionistic road trip with almost zero erotic content. The main through-thread is how HH's idolization of Lolita transforms into an ennui-infused monotony of taking care of her and slowly becoming bat-**** crazy paranoid about their relationship and losing her... at one point it's quite funny as he becomes convinced they're being followed by a guy that keeps switching cars, and he starts "noticing" his handwriting signature everywhere they stay at with the names being references to literary and characters and such to mock him.
> 
> As weird as it sounds the second half is strangely sad, not because HH loses Lolita, but because you slowly realize just what a miserable human being he is without her. Not "miserable" as in "morally" (though that too), but miserable in that he basically hates everyone and everything but her. His obsession with her is the thing that both keeps him vaguely tethered to reality, but also ultimately makes him break from reality (he's a consistently unreliable narrator too). It's also quite ironic that his idolization of her goes hand-in-hand with his refusal/inability to see her has a human being and care about her feelings/thoughts/states of mind, which is what drives her away.
> 
> It's definitely a fascinating novel. The combination of Nabokov's poetic, rapturously rhapsodic prose; the impressionistic style of narrative; the erudition of the allusions and references (another novel with bits of text from other languages; here it's mostly French); the moral repugnancy of the narrator and his unreliable (but ultimately melancholic), but complex and nuanced (especially in the level of detailed awareness), narration; the Wenders-meets-Antonioni road-trip-of-ennui tonality... it's just a completely unique thing. I can totally understand why this is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. Definitely interested in reading more Nabokov after this.


----------



## OCEANE

Finished this book recently


----------



## OCEANE

Reading now


----------



## jegreenwood

Anthony Kenny - _A New History of Philosophy._ I expect to read this over time. I also bought Bertrand Russell's _A History of Philosophy_ for compare and contrast purposes.


----------



## Chilham

Long been a fan of Hitchens' spoken word. Seeing what he has to say in his writing.


----------



## senza sordino

I've just finished reading Beyond the Trees by Adam Shoalts. It's a true adventure he took in 2017. He canoed and trekked east several thousand kilometers from the Yukon to Hudson Bay. It took him four months. He met almost no one. He had to paddle upstream, portage, he poled when he couldn't paddle upstream until he finally crossed the continental divide and he could paddle downstream. All the time battling black flies, muskox, wolves, grizzlies, and other animals. He had three resupplies flown in. (He did take a satellite phone.) 

The book was fascinating and well written. He knows his flora and fauna. But after a while, it did become a bit repetitive, and monotonous. The book could have been 150 pages instead of 250 pages. I don't know but it seems to me that marketing dictates this, not the story. People used to write and have shorter published works, but everything now appears to be a big hardcover book of hundreds of pages. 

I read it because we're planning a driving trip north this summer. We're going to drive the Alaska Highway and Klondike Highway as far north as Dawson City (64 degrees north), just 150 miles short of the Arctic Circle. Our trip will not require any portaging.


----------



## calvinpv

_Carrie_ is Stephen King’s first published novel from 1974. It's the book that catapulted him into international fame with the Brian de Palma film adaptation and the book that inaugurated a new era of writing horror. A horror defined less by supernatural strangeness and psychological dissolution as ends in themselves and defined more by what those things can do when in contact with the human body. It’s less an intellectual horror and more a visceral, tactile horror that wreaks havoc on our physical limitations. King seems to understand (correctly, in my opinion) that, at the end of the day, we are afraid of these hypothetical ghosts and monsters because of their potential ability to maim and kill us. Nothing more. However, King doesn’t go so far in the opposite direction and turn blood and gore into a lustful sightseeing tour like many B-rated slasher films. Even in his later stuff, he still has one foot in the door of the old school of horror in exploring the epistemological and moral implications of it all, and there are some pretty profound core themes running through many of his works, although his laid-back and mass-market style of writing sometimes prevents him from exploring those themes in great detail.

As for this book, this has to be one of King’s most salacious: the descriptions of violence are some of his most graphic, underage sex is present, and the starting impetus for the entire sequence of events in the book is Carrie’s first menstrual cycle and the extreme harassment she receives from her high school classmates. I believe this book was even banned in some schools until recently. _Carrie_ also possesses many of the hallmark traits of King’s later novels, such as the presence of a latent telepathy and sixth sense in many of his protagonists, the vivid use of sensory imagery to convey notions of good and evil, and the grounding of the horror in family trauma. This book also avoids some things I don’t like in King, such as long, pointless digressions and overly sloppy interior monologues. _Carrie_ is very tightly written and edited.

Granted, I’ve only read 10 or so Stephen King books, but I’d say this is my favorite of his after _The Shining_ and _Misery_. Those two are in a class of their own, but _Carrie_ is still a very good horror book.


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## julide

Villette. This one casts a terrifying spell on my psyche. Charlotte Bronte needs to be acknowledged as the great modernist that she was.


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## Bwv 1080

nearly halfway through this fascinating, but hard to describe book. Not a difficult read, other than in some of the subject matter - the many plots center around the killings of women in Juarez in the 90s and 00s (the city was moved to a fictional locale in Sonora in the book)


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## jegreenwood

Bwv 1080 said:


> nearly halfway through this fascinating, but hard to describe book. Not a difficult read, other than in some of the subject matter - the many plots center around the killings of women in Juarez in the 90s and 00s (the city was moved to a fictional locale in Sonora in the book)


I have that on my shelf. I read _The Savage Detectives _several years ago, which I did like.


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## HenryPenfold

Douglas Murray's latest treatise.

A powerful voice of reason in the new 'dark-ages' and a clarion call to wake up and push-back on wokesters.


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## starthrower

Slaughterhouse Five: Kurt Vonnegut


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## Bwv 1080

So it goes…


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## julide

Bwv 1080 said:


> nearly halfway through this fascinating, but hard to describe book. Not a difficult read, other than in some of the subject matter - the many plots center around the killings of women in Juarez in the 90s and 00s (the city was moved to a fictional locale in Sonora in the book)


I haven't read a single translated work that wasn't easy to read. I'm looking forward to reading bolano.


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## starthrower

Bwv 1080 said:


> So it goes…


The life and times of Yon Yonson.


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## leonsm




----------



## Strange Magic

I have completed Alan Gross’ thought-provoking book The Scientific Sublime. Those such as myself who have been engaged in the Profundity thread may find the book fruitful.

The book is a mixed bag, seemingly written by three separate authors. The first chapter is an excellent synopsis of the thinking about the sublime by such as Longinus through Burke, Blair, Kant, Adam Smith, the English Romantic poets, others. While Gross does not distinguish, as I do, a gradation of the sublime with the profound as either a maximum endpoint of sublimity or as something discrete beyond sublimity, It is clear from his text that his thinking is the same. Gross quotes Joseph Priestley: “The sublime of science consists in general and comprehensive theorems, which, by means of very great and extensive consequences, presents the idea of vastness to the mind…and the sciences of natural philosophy and astronomy, exhibit the noblest fields of the sublime that the mind of man was ever introduced to.” He quotes Adam Smith as follows: “It is in the abstruser sciences…that the greatest and most admired exertions of human reason have been displayed. But the utility of those sciences… is not very obvious, and to prove it, requires a discussion which is not always very easily comprehended.” Smith goes on to describe the bodily and mental sensations that accompany seeing a first eclipse of the sun: staring, rolling of the eyes, suspension of breath, swelling of the heart, and wondering what sort of thing the eclipse could be. What could this possibly be like?

This is only one of several Smith quotes on the sublime, taken from his History of Astronomy. Who knew that old Adam Smith could be so deeply moved by the sublime as to write so well about it? This first chapter of Gross’ book would make a fine stand-alone essay.

The middle of the book and by far its largest section are 11 brief essays on 10 quite well-known scientist-authors who have worked at the edges of their fields and strived to engage educated lay readers in their work, sometimes in discussion about the nature of science. A Who’s Who of luminaries beginning with Richard Feynman and ending with E.O. Wilson. This is a mixed bag in that Gross pays deference to several of the scientists, such as the two named, but, as a non-scientist himself, chooses to offer, sometimes as his own, opinions of various scientist critics questioning the findings/conclusions of said essayed scientists. But overall, very well worth reading indeed. One can pick up new material from Gross’ summaries of the scientists’ major interests.

The third section and final chapter is IMO a strange defense of religion in the face of science that disavows much of what religion has to offer. Interesting reading, though following the preceding material, seems to have been parachuted in from a passing airplane.

The book makes clear what science and scientists hold to be profound questions, methodologies for exploring such questions, and answers about both the trans-human world and certain aspects of the human condition such as ethics, consciousness, and the origins of language. Were I Gross (no, not that gross), I would have included a well-known geologist to illustrate just how plate tectonics theory profoundly cut through and bound together a dog’s breakfast of seemingly unrelated facts and phenomena to display a vast brownian movement of crustal plates gliding toward, away, and alongside one another–a profound answer to a profound set of questions. Highly recommended.


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## realdealblues

Finished reading _"The Qur'an"_ last Thursday and didn't really have any time over the weekend to read so started trying to decide on what I wanted to read next.

Decided to start *"Old Path White Clouds"* by _Thích Nhất Hạnh







_


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## OCEANE

The novel mentions some common classical music pieces and this is of course not the theme. It's about life with music and life of music.


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## advokat

Was published this April. Should be made a required reading. Kindle edition is available. The author is a well-established Norwegian academic.


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## starthrower

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek


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## Dulova Harps On




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## Dulova Harps On

Just finished Between The Woods And The Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor. And very enjoyable it was too.


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## Barbebleu

jegreenwood said:


> I did read _We Have Always Lived in the Castle, _but I suspect I was too young (no older than 15) to appreciate it. Trivia - _Castle _was turned into a stage play, but it flopped. You know it flopped, because the poster is on Zero Mostel's wall in the original _Producers._ Every poster on that wall was a from flop.


That’s a great spot. I’ll have to watch The Producers again (no hardship) and catch that little nugget. Cheers for that.


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## Blancrocher

Francoise Sagan, Bonjour tristesse (in English) - quick read, enjoyed it.


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## Barbebleu

The Quaker - Liam McIlvanney. Great crime novel from the son of the late, great William McIlvanney, author of the Laidlaw Trilogy.


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## Blancrocher

Anita Brookner, Hotel du lac

First novel by the author


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## SanAntone

Civil War: A Narrative
Shelby Foote


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## calvinpv

I’m aware of this story's stature among fans of sci-fi and horror. It’s definitely a book you should read if you’re into these genres. And yet … there’s something about that ending that doesn’t sit well with me. Assessed on its own terms, the ending is fine, and in fact, it’s rather brilliant in its ability to shock and disturb. But the ending relies on a crucial conceptual distinction that is never really explained but is only vaguely discussed. Which tells me either Matheson made this surprise ending at the last minute and retroactively shoehorned some lame signposts into the earlier parts of the novel. Or he engaged in a sleight of hand to shift our attention away from the distinction until it was convenient as a plot device. I know “crucial conceptual distinction” makes my complaint sound overly pedantic, especially when we’re talking about fiction, but what makes _I Am Legend_ so famous is that the main character Robert Neville uses the scientific method to make sense of a plague rooted in traditional folklore. The ability to think clearly and analytically is a sort of journey Neville undergoes, fine-tuning the skill along the way. So for ambiguity to still remain at the end almost feels like contradiction between the book’s intentions and outcomes. Overall, though, I still think it’s a good book.

The edition above also included 10 short stories: “Buried Talents”, “The Near Departed”, “Prey”, “Witch War”, “Dance of the Dead”, “Dress of the White Silk”, “Mad House”, “The Funeral”, “From Shadowed Places”, “Person to Person”. I’d say with the exception of the last one, they’re nothing to write home about.










Hell House possesses the same problems as _I Am Legend_, except that the ending is even less convincing. It started off well … and then it kind of went flat for me. It’s supposedly loosely modeled after Shirley Jackson’s _The Haunting of Hill House_, which I read several weeks ago, and you can sort of read it as a transition novel between Jackson’s masterpiece and Stephen King’s _The Shining_, also a masterpiece. But Hell House doesn’t live up to the stature of those two works, except it undoubtedly contains the most “scares”. But a large quantity of scary moments isn’t a substitute for quality. Also a large amount of gratuitous sexual violence; at first, it served a functional purpose for the plot (I know that’s a crude thing to say, but it did), but then it just got weird, un-nuanced, and over the top. It was telling me a lot more about Richard Matheson as a person than as a writer. One of his short stories mentioned above, “From Shadowed Places”, was also like this. I can’t say the book is bad – there are a couple redeeming features of the book – but it is a bit disappointing.


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## Blancrocher

Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head 

great entertainment


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## SanAntone

_The Civil War: A Narrative_ - *Shelby Foote *(this one will take a while)










_Intruder in the Dust_ - *William Faulkner*


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## Judas Priest Fan

Ludwig Schon said:


> I love Dickens. Living along the Thames in Greenwich… Our Mutual Friend is my personal favourite of mine…


I have been in a Dickens phase lately. I am currently reading Bleak House. 

I LOVE Dickens´ books.


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## Eva Yojimbo

I was sick for two weeks with CV and didn't feel like doing much but reading, so I ended up reading A LOT, more than I have since I was in my early-20s and obsessed with Shakespeare. Here's some reviews/thoughts on everything I read (all extracted from emails I sent to my friend, so pardon the fact they don't read like they were addressed to a general audience): 

*Far from the Madding Crowd *by Thomas Hardy


> Far From the Madding Crowd was excellent as well, though I'm not the least bit surprised Hardy eventually ditched writing novels for writing poetry. He very much has the poet's eye for rich, imagistic descriptions as well as the poet's mind for detailed metaphors and similes. All of this in service of a rather simple story of a woman (Bathsheba) who owns/runs a farm and her three romantic interests; the hearty and steady Gabriel; the prosperous and smitten Boldwood; and the dashing rascal that is Sergeant Troy. Perhaps you can guess which one she ends up going with, and it turns out predictably disastrous.
> 
> Though the story itself has many fine, dramatic moments, I very much feel they take a backseat to Hardy's purple prose. His style is, at times, rapturously beautiful but, unlike Dickens, I don't think he finds quite the right balance between them and his characters/story. It's not that the later elements are bad--far from it--it just feels like they often belong to a different novel. There's actually much positive to be said about all of these elements in isolation, but together they make for an awkward mixture. I will say that Bathseba is a fascinatingly complex character: she's at once independent and self-reliant, but with the "fatal flaw" of vanity who ends up giving into the flattering lies of Troy and suffering for it. No less remarkable is how much grief Troy suffers when, bad guy though he is, he realizes the damage he's done to his former lover. The scene in which Troy and Bathsheba confront each other over the casket of his dead lover is the novel's dramatic apex. One negative, though is that most all of the best story parts happen in the novel's middle, while it starts slow and ends more with a whimper than a bang.
> 
> But, to me, I think the images and metaphors ultimately stand out more strongly than the characters and story. There are just some stunningly gorgeous passages in the work, like this one that I cared to save: "It was still the beaming time of evening, though night was stealthily making itself visible low down upon the ground, the western lines of light taking the earth without alighting upon it to any extent, or illuminating the dead levels at all. The sun had crept round the tree as a last effort before death, and then began to sink, the shearers’ lower parts becoming steeped in embrowning twilight, whilst their heads and shoulders were still enjoying day, touched with a yellow of self-sustained brilliancy that seemed inherent rather than acquired. The sun went down in an ochreous mist; but they sat, and talked on, and grew as merry as the gods in Homer’s heaven. Bathsheba still remained enthroned inside the window, and occupied herself in knitting, from which she sometimes looked up to view the fading scene outside. The slow twilight expanded and enveloped them completely before the signs of moving were shown."
> 
> These passages are great, and I wasn't surprised to see him often quoting poets like Keats, Shelley, and even referencing Virgil. Less successful, IMO, are Hardy's attempt at rendering in a more philosophical way the abstract aspects of characters and themes, as often the richness of his prose gets tangled in its abstractions. A good example is how he first describes Troy: "Sergeant Troy, being entirely innocent of the practice of expectation, was never disappointed. To set against this negative gain there may have been some positive losses from a certain narrowing of the higher tastes and sensations which it entailed. But limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser therefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrasts plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it, whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer. It is not a denial of anything to have been always without it, and what Troy had never enjoyed he did not miss; but, being fully conscious that what sober people missed he enjoyed, his capacity, though really less, seemed greater than theirs." This is followable, of course, but only in a rather vague way.
> 
> So while it's a mixed bag I'd still give it an 8/10, but with the understanding that's more an average of its worst 6-7/10 parts and the also abundant 9/10 parts.


*Buddenbrooks *by Thomas Mann


> Of all the great novels I've read recently this was probably the most frustrating one that I had some ambivalence about. A short synopsis is that it's about 4 generations of a wealthy (well, upper-middle class) merchant family in 19th century Germany. Though it starts with the older generations most of the novel focuses on the childhood and adulthood of the 3rd generation.
> 
> Part of my frustration and ambivalence starts with the style. In general the novel feels like a mix between the broad, sweeping, romantic epics of the 19th century--perhaps it's just my ignorance but I do often get a kind of Dickensian feel in its slightly caricatured rendering of characters--and the more intimate, detailed, and nuanced "realism" of the 20th century, all undercut by a kind of Austenian irony and distancing that often keeps the characters/events at arm's length. The part I'm ambivalent about is more the latter (the realism) than the former, especially in Mann's insistence on descriptions of the looks of characters and places. While I love me some good descriptions I think Mann overdoes it, especially when he describes characters that just appear once! I will say, though, that there's definitely a point to it, because one of the themes is the luxurious decadence of the people of that class and time period contrasted with the moral and personal decay of their inner lives. So those descriptions are, in one sense, crucial to establishing the former; but I still think Mann overdoes it. It does, to its credit, give the novel a very cinematic, visual, tactile quality. It also creates a kind of "slow burn" effect that allows Mann to get maximum impact from its emotional moments and outbursts that definitely rewards the reader's patience. I think part of my problem is the lack of imagination in the descriptions themselves; there's very little figurative or beautiful language as there was in, say, Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd.
> 
> Equally as interesting are the characters and themes, and the two go together perfectly so there's no real need to talk about them separately. Particularly I think the central conflict is between the ideals of impractical dreamers (artists) and practical businessman. Thomas Buddenbrook takes over his father's business when the father dies and essentially becomes the head of the Buddenbrook house, which leaves his brother Christian (the artistic one) to indulge in his artistic passions (and general free-spiritedness) and sister Toni to find an appropriate marriage. The fascinating thing is how the novel balances the flaws and virtues of all of them, especially how it allows Thomas and Christian to come into conflict with both being partly right and partly wrong... though the novel definitely focuses on Thomas more than Christian.
> 
> I was also struck by how death-obsessed the novel was. For all of its focus on Thomas's attempts at trying to maintain the Buddenbrook name/respectability (and financial stability) towards the end it really does feel like an incredibly bleak spiral into the nihilism of death. There are several "death scenes" in the book, with several being among the most chilling I've ever read, and the novel basically ends with most of the family having died off without much in the way of spiritual compensation or consolation. There are some truly extraordinary passages related to this, especially Thomas's "dark night of the soul" where he really wrestles with what consolation there is for him after death, even though it's undercut by the irony at the end with (and I'll just c/p the last paragraph of his "revelation" as well for context): "'I am going to live,' he whispered to his pillow. And he wept … and in the next moment he no longer knew why he wept. His brain stood still, his hard-won knowledge vanished, and suddenly there was nothing around him but darkness turned mute. 'But it will come back,' he assured himself. 'Didn’t I possess it?' And, sensing around him the irresistible shadows of sleep and numbness, he swore an oath never to let go of that immense joy, to gather all his energies, and to learn, to read, and to study, until he had made that view of the world—the source of all that he had felt—firmly and inalienably his own."
> 
> "Except that it was not to be, and the next morning, when he awakened feeling slightly embarrassed by the intellectual extravagances of the night, he had an inkling of how impossible it would be to carry out his fine intentions."
> 
> Beyond those, I'd say the other central theme is the conflict between outer and inner lives, though this partly ties in with the conflict between dreamers vs pragmatists. The idea being that Thomas, especially, is obsessed with maintaining the veneer of respectability (this obsession really degenerates as the novel progresses) while his siblings care more about the passions and integrity of one's inner life. One of the great scenes in the novel is when Toni discovers that her second husband has attempted to cheat on her in a fit of drunken lust so she leaves to come back home in a furious rage, while Tom tries to tell her it's no big deal because nobody knows about it but her and it would be far worse for her to get another divorce and face the ridicule/scorn from society, and she responds with: "So you think the only shame and scandal in life is what people gossip about, do you? Oh no. The secret scandals that gnaw at us and eat away at our self-respect are far worse. Are we Buddenbrooks the kind of people who want to be ‘tip-top’ on the outside, as they say here, while choking down our humiliation within our four walls?" ... "I know that I have done what I thought was right. But to swallow insults and allow myself to be reviled in a drunken, illiterate dialect out of fear of Julie Möllendorpf and Pfiffi Buddenbrook, to live with such a man and in such a city, where I have to put up with that kind of language and with scenes like the one I saw on the stairs, out of fear of what they might say, to learn to deny my family and my upbringing and everything in me just so that I may appear to be happy and content—that is what I call a loss of dignity, that is what I call scandalous, let me tell you.”
> 
> One last brief thing I'll mention is how well Mann renders music in the novel: I've never seen it rendered better. You can tell he had a real passion for it, especially that of Wagner as not only does he mention Wagner specifically (particularly there's a dispute about Wagner's worth between Thomas's wife and her music teacher), but he incorporates Wagner's concept of leitmotifs where characters are constantly associated with phrases and gestures that gain a kind of resonance as the novel goes on to really cool effect. Probably the best example is Toni's constantly referring to how she used to be a "silly goose."
> 
> Anyway, I've written far too much on this book and it's probably uninteresting to anyone who hasn't read it, but it's definitely a great novel whose (not-infrequent) transcendentally great moments save it from its (also not-infrequent) longueurs. If you do decide to read it, be prepared to struggle through much of the first 1/3, but it really starts getting good over its last 2/3 with some of the best moments of any novel I've read.


*The Man in the High Castle *by Philip K. Dick


> My first Dick novel and it definitely won't be my last (plan on reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? today if I have the time). This one is set in a world where the Axis powers won WW2... not a terribly original concept today, but it definitely was back in the early 60s when this was written (it may be the first novel on the subject). One thing that really surprised me about this was how self-aware the novel was. The titular "man in the high castle" is a novelist who, himself, has written an "alternative fiction" book imagining life if the Allies had won the war, and most all the characters in the novel are reading that novel (which has been banned in/by the Nazis) and there are several "quoted" passaged from the novel-within-a-novel.
> 
> There's also a rather large cast of characters for such a short book (I read it in 3 hours) from such different walks of life: there's a merchant of American antiques that are loved by the Japanese; there's a maker of such "fake" antiques; there's the ex-wife of that fake-antique maker who's the one who actually goes to meet the title character; there's a Japanese businessman who has dealings both with the antique shop and a mysterious "Swedish" businessman, who turns out to be a kind of spy. While none of the characters have a lot of depth they're also not completely superficial and I think the novel does a good job twining their various stories and relationships together.
> 
> More than anything, though, I think the novel succeeds in its wealth of ideas about what such a world would be like: there's political tensions between the Japanese and Germans (much of the political intrigue revolves around the spy named Baynes), there's a lot of racism and classism, in some ways similar and dissimilar to what exists in our own world, there's the religious and philosophical implications of people using the I Ching as a divination text to tell the future, there's also a lot of discussion on the nature of whether historicity is in objects or in the mind, and about whether new objects can inspire a kind of spiritual change (there's a remarkable passage/chapter in which the Japanese businessman contemplates a "new" piece of jewelry the maker of "fake antiques" has made).
> 
> It's a lot to take in one setting, and I will say that, coming off Buddenbrooks, the lack of descriptions was both refreshing but also frustrating because I feel like it's a novel where comparatively less will stick in my mind because without descriptions there's less visual "scenes" to remember.


*As We Know *by John Ashbery


> ...I will say that Ashbery is the pinnacle of postmodern obscurantism. If most poetry is sense occasionally frustrated by difficulties that obscure what the sense is, Ashbery is primarily nonsense from which sense occasionally emerges. It's a fascinating approach that almost feels like a kind of raw, primal, pure-chaos form of creativity: the mind at play without concern for anything approaching logical coherency. It works (when it does) because of the power of his imagination and language. Like, his long poem called *Litany *from _As We Know _was written by side-by-side text meant to read simultaneously! Since I couldn't do that in ebook form I just read them sequentially, and it really does give the feeling of riding on the chaotic tides of pure imagination. I will quote this one part, as it feels like a kind of thematic summation of Ashbery's entire creative mode:
> 
> "The dust blows in.
> The disturbance is
> Nonverbal communication:
> Meaningless syllables that
> Have a music of their own,
> The music of sex, or any
> Nameless event, something
> That can only be taken as
> Itself. This rules ideas
> Of what else may be there,
> Which regroup farther on,
> Standing around looking at
> The hole left by the great implosion.
> It is they who carry news of it
> To other places. Therefore
> Are they not the event itself?"
> 
> I will also post one more abstract that's more representative of his non-sensical but beautiful writing:
> 
> "A coronet of dark red jewels
> Like winter berries was slowly lowered
> Onto the snow-white curls, and the dream became
> A person, a beautiful princess unable to stand
> Or sit. And the older guests remembered
> How none of it had been predicted, though the mystery word,
> “Magic,” had been imagined
> Many years before. How
> Do we live from the beginning of the tale
> To its inevitable, momentary end, where all
> Its pocket’s treasures are summarily emptied,
> On the mirroring tabletop? And wait
> For someone to whisper the word that restores them
> To their velvet hummock, sets all right again?"


_*Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? *_by Philip K. Dick



> I was worried this was just going to be "Blade Runner: The Novel," but it very much wasn't. At least there was enough different to make it worth reading. The first surprise was the importance of animals in the novel, as animals are nearly extinct in this post-apocalyptic Earth that most humans have abandoned and those that have stayed are afflicted by the atomic fallout that caused everyone to flee. Deckard in the novel has an electronic sheep, but no real animal, but (like everyone, apparently) wants one. From that point there is close similarity with the film in terms of him tracking down escaped androids and administering that test to see if that's what they are.
> 
> Another new element is the existence of a kind of religious figure that most people.... errr, "feel" by using these sympathy-machines. The religious figure is constantly climbing a mountain and getting mysteriously pelted by rocks, but when he reaches the top he "dies" and is "resurrected" (turns out it's just an old, cheap movie being played on a loop). The novel ends with Deckard "imitating" the action of the religious figure before finding a toad he thinks is real. Another big change is that the androids he's hunting in the end aren't given a big to-do other than their meeting and sanctuary with the radioactively-damaged guy living in the apartment: there's no "tears in the rain" monologue, just Deckard ruthlessly "retiring" all of them. There's also an entire intriguing episode where Deckard is "arrested" by another agency he isn't aware of and the question becomes whether they or him is the android.
> 
> I do still think the film is better, if only because of its visual style. Noir is really one genre that I think film did better than literature in general, if just perhaps because Dick is not much of a descriptive writer; but the novel does maintain all the themes of identity, humanity, memory, etc. in the face of artificial intelligence.


*Elantris *by Brandon Sanderson


> This felt like a lost opportunity to me. To be fair, this was Sanderson's first novel and even he says in the afterward he evolved tremendously as a stylist and storyteller since then, but it has a such a fascinating premise and potential that just isn't explored/developed enough. It's set in a fantasy world in which there's a cursed/forsaken city (that was once glorious) that people are sent to once they become afflicted with a kind of zombie disease where they turn undead. The novel centers around a prince who is sent to that city and his efforts to transform it back to its former glory. There's two other key plot threads, one involving the Prince's bride whom he was going to marry (and is legally married to even though he was cursed before the wedding) and her attempts at dealing with the corrupt and inept politicians/leaders of the Prince's kingdom (including the king himself); and that of a religious leader and his underlying/fanatic to convert the people of the city (not the cursed city, but the city just outside the cursed city).
> 
> It's an interesting premise IMO with a lot of potential, especially in the possible symbolism of the cursed city, how those within can't heal (so if they, say, stub a toe it will hurt forever) and will feel pain without dying, the effort that goes into making a "heaven of hell" (to quote Paradise Lost), and that juxtaposed with the political and religious machinations... but all of that potential feels unexplored in favor of what I'd call plot busy-work. Everyone seems too busy scheming and planning and chatting to dwell on much of substance; yet, despite that, not much of real consequence happens until the end. Most of the characters are also rather flat and undeveloped; the princess has the most potential, but her political plot is the least interesting of the three. Anyway, there's still some things to like here and it does show Sanderson's talent for world-building, so I'm still interested to see how he betters this in his more popular works like Mistborn.


*Letting Go *by Philip Roth



> My first Roth was his first novel, and it's remarkably mature for a first novel. It's about two couples who are occasionally friendly and their ******-up lives and equally ******-up psyches. I think the thing that struck me most is that it's almost like a "post-courtship" novel. If you think of all the 19th and 18th century novels that almost made mythologies out of courtship (Pride & Prejudice being perhaps the most famous example; Washington Square is another), this is really a novel about the fallout and disillusionment that happens afterward. Paul marries Libby for love, but because he's a Jew and she's a Christian, their parents disapprove and abandon helping them, with their only support being Gabe, who has parental issues of his own after his controlling mother dies and his needy father basically wants Gabe to take care of him. Gabe is attracted to Libby and there's sexual tensions between them until Gabe falls in love with Martha, a divorced woman with two young children. Paul and Libby's marriage ends up strained for many reasons, not least of which is an abortion and Libby's poor health.
> 
> It would be easy to go down a list of the novels virtues: the emotional tensions; the dark, wry humor that helps to relieve those tensions (even if temporarily); the psychological acuteness, nuance, and realism; the lived-in "realness" of the characters; the moral ambiguities and and accumulation of small actions and character faults; Roth's infrequent but vivid lapses into description, metaphor, philosophical retrospection; the elegant, often poetic, prose; the attention to colloquial language... but I also can't escape the feeling that something's missing. I think it's in the construction, which feels a bit ungainly, like a series of short stories rather than a coherent whole. This is perhaps typified by Roth's willingness to have chapters dedicated to minor characters and other perspectives like Gabe's father or Martha's children; while these aren't badly written or insignificant, I think they come too late and feel like a distraction from our interest in the main quartet. I also wish (and this is probably more subjective) that there was more humor as a relief to the rather perpetual sense of bitterness, depression, etc. The novel is shockingly funny at times, like the fight between the old men that Paul was trying to help in their apartment, and this immediately after Libby arrives back home after the abortion! It has an absurdly comical feel to it, reminding one how other people are unaware of the drama in our lives when they disrupt it.
> 
> Yet complaints like that seem relatively minor when there are passages as good as this: "He did not have to go to his father’s sickbed; he did not have to comfort his mother; he did not have to return to Libby; he did not have to go back to his job. Anything else?"
> 
> "“What else is there?” he asked aloud."
> 
> "Ah yes. Himself. He could take off his wedding ring (which he had not yet been quite able to do); he could leave the University. But how to divest himself of himself … Stretched out on Asher’s sofa, fatigue helped to direct his thoughts to the precise issue at hand, self-divestment. In his drowsy state he was able to think of himself as something to be peeled back, layer after layer, until what gleamed through was some primary substance. Peeling, peeling, until what was locked up inside was out in the open. What? His Paulness. His Herzness. What he was! Or perhaps nothing. To unpeel all day and all night and wind up empty-handed. To find that all he had rid himself of was all there was. And that? Here his body trembled, as bodies will, overcome with grief or revelation—that he was Libby, was his job, was his mother and father, that all that had happened was all there was. Or? At the very moment that he plunged down into sleep, he soared too above all the demands and concerns he had known, beyond what he had taken for expectation, beyond what he had interpreted as need and understood as pity and love. He nearly glimpsed for himself a new and glorious possibility. But whether there was no glorious possibility, or whether sleep separated him at that moment from some truth about life’s giving and taking, was impossible to say. He felt himself hovering at the edge of something; since it was sleep he next experienced, perhaps it was only that."
> 
> This isn't typically considered one of Roth's best, yet I'm often interested in seeing where great artists start, and this was an immensely promising start and I now really look forward to his more acclaimed novels.


I also reread Faulkner's *The Sound and the Fury*, which I still think is a masterpiece. Its difficulty diminishes some with rereadings as one becomes more aware of its temporal structure, how certain events in one time period evoke memories in another. The more I reread it, the more I get a sense for how profoundly poignant a novel it is, how irrevocable loss hangs over everything like a cloud: loss of loved ones, loss of tradition, loss of family, loss of security, even loss of one's self. One of those "difficult, but worth the challenge" novels.


----------



## jegreenwood

^^^ - Wow that’s a lot of reading! When I was sick in bed I usually read Agatha Christie and Harry Potter.

Re: _Buddenbrooks_ - I read it either during or shortly after college, which was a long time ago. Over the years I also read _The Magic Mountain, Dr. Faustus,_ and several of the novellas. I found the subject matter interesting, but the writing somewhat turgid. Last year I reread _The Magic Mountain_ but in a newer translation - Woods instead of Lowe-Porter - what an improvement!. A little Googling will show that my assessment is shared by many.

Re: Roth - He wrote a string of brilliant novels from the mid 90s into the mid 2000s. His favorite was _Sabbath’s Theater,_ which features the anti-est of his anti-heroes (of the 10 or so books of his I’ve read). I also liked in particular _American Pastoral_ and _The Plot Against America._

And even before _Letting Go, _Roth had written a masterpiece - the novella _Goodbye, Columbus. _That was turned into a pretty good movie with Richard Benjamin and Ali McGraw - her debut.


----------



## SanAntone

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I also reread Faulkner's *The Sound and the Fury*, which I still think is a masterpiece. Its difficulty diminishes some with rereadings as one becomes more aware of its temporal structure, how certain events in one time period evoke memories in another. The more I reread it, the more I get a sense for how profoundly poignant a novel it is, how irrevocable loss hangs over everything like a cloud: loss of loved ones, loss of tradition, loss of family, loss of security, even loss of one's self. One of those "difficult, but worth the challenge" novels.


Fantastic. I re-read Faulkner almost every year. Right now, I've almost finished _The Unvanquished_; which I started just after finishing _Intruders in the Dust_. Next, possibly, _Flags in the Dust_. My favorites are _Light in Augus_t and _Absalom, Absalom!_ - but I always save them till the end of my Faulkner time. I may or may not start _The Sound and the Fury_ since I've read it so often in the past; but you are right, re-reading it pays dividends each time.

I am also reading Shelby Foote's three volume masterpiece on The Civil War - and I might stick with it and come back to Faulkner after I'm done with that, which might take several months. It is 1.5 million words ....


----------



## philoctetes

This introduced me to Sharman Apt Russell, a local writer, and describes a number of trails and landmarks I've been exploring since moving to NM. Not as good as I hoped, but it covers a lot of ground in a slim volume.









Chan's minority perspective is essential for clarity on virus debates


----------



## philoctetes

More Gila Wilderness told by a miner in the bad old days. A "local classic".


----------



## ericshreiber1005

Two currently: Shelby Foote: Civil War Trilogy Vol 1, and James Haley: Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait.


----------



## Blancrocher

Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

Enjoyed the love plot, and wasn't bothered by the ham-fisted ideological boilerplate.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

SanAntone said:


> Fantastic. I re-read Faulkner almost every year. Right now, I've almost finished _The Unvanquished_; which I started just after finishing _Intruders in the Dust_. Next, possibly, _Flags in the Dust_. My favorites are _Light in Augus_t and _Absalom, Absalom!_ - but I always save them till the end of my Faulkner time. I may or may not start _The Sound and the Fury_ since I've read it so often in the past; but you are right, re-reading it pays dividends each time.
> 
> I am also reading Shelby Foote's three volume masterpiece on The Civil War - and I might stick with it and come back to Faulkner after I'm done with that, which might take several months. It is 1.5 million words ....


I started reading Faulkner many years ago and was going to start at the beginning and work chronologically and had read his first three; but then I got more into poetry and then a million different life things happened (and other interests) and I stopped for many years: I'm just now realizing (and remembering) what I've been missing. He's definitely an author who's high on my priority list to read through. 

Good luck finishing that Civil War tome. If for whatever reason you don't finish it at least you'll always have a handy self-defense weapon!


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

jegreenwood said:


> ^^^ - Wow that’s a lot of reading! When I was sick in bed I usually read Agatha Christie and Harry Potter.
> 
> Re: _Buddenbrooks_ - I read it either during or shortly after college, which was a long time ago. Over the years I also read _The Magic Mountain, Dr. Faustus,_ and several of the novellas. I found the subject matter interesting, but the writing somewhat turgid. Last year I reread _The Magic Mountain_ but in a newer translation - Woods instead of Lowe-Porter - what an improvement!. A little Googling will show that my assessment is shared by many.
> 
> Re: Roth - He wrote a string of brilliant novels from the mid 90s into the mid 2000s. His favorite was _Sabbath’s Theater,_ which features the anti-est of his anti-heroes (of the 10 or so books of his I’ve read). I also liked in particular _American Pastoral_ and _The Plot Against America._
> 
> And even before _Letting Go, _Roth had written a masterpiece - the novella _Goodbye, Columbus. _That was turned into a pretty good movie with Richard Benjamin and Ali McGraw - her debut.


_Buddenbrooks _was my first Mann but it won't be my last. Even with the turgidness he pays it off well enough that I can't complain too much. I did read the Woods translation. 

Yeah, I'm looking forward to more Roth. In fact, I'll probably read _The Ghost Writer_ next. I did know about _Goodbye, Columbus_ but they didn't have that on Audible. Lately what I've been doing is reading and listening to books at the same time, which I feel engages me more than doing either alone. After really enjoying _Letting Go_ I just went ahead and bought the audibooks for _Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint_ on Amazon.


----------



## jegreenwood

Eva Yojimbo said:


> _Buddenbrooks _was my first Mann but it won't be my last. Even with the turgidness he pays it off well enough that I can't complain too much. I did read the Woods translation.
> 
> Yeah, I'm looking forward to more Roth. In fact, I'll probably read _The Ghost Writer_ next. I did know about _Goodbye, Columbus_ but they didn't have that on Audible. Lately what I've been doing is reading and listening to books at the same time, which I feel engages me more than doing either alone. After really enjoying _Letting Go_ I just went ahead and bought the audibooks for _Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint_ on Amazon.


I've read _The Ghost Writer_ as well. Went on to read the next two books in _The Zuckerman Trilogy._ In hindsight maybe not an accurate title as Zuckerman appears in quite a few subsequent works (including _American Pastoral_). I read _Portnoy's Complaint _when it was first published - perfect reading for a 17 year old. Many years later I attended a rehearsal and one-time performance of a one-man stage version of _Portnoy._ Tony Goldwyn was the actor and Roth was there as well. Roth berated Tony throughout the rehearsal - it was hard to watch.

My next Mann may be a rereading of several of his novellas, this time translated by Woods. You may also be interested in _T__he Magician_ by Colm Toibin - a sort of fictionalized biography of Mann.


----------



## Red Terror

Bwv 1080 said:


> nearly halfway through this fascinating, but hard to describe book. Not a difficult read, other than in some of the subject matter - the many plots center around the killings of women in Juarez in the 90s and 00s (the city was moved to a fictional locale in Sonora in the book)


After reading many translated Russian novels, it's refreshing to know that I can actually read this in its original language.


----------



## Dulova Harps On

Just finished The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Loved it.
Now i'm reading Harlem Renaissance: Five Novels Of The 1920s which i got so i could read Cane by Jean Toomer 
which is extraordinary so far. I also just purchased the Collected Poems of Peter Porter.


----------



## Rogerx

I laugh so as not to cry.
Stunning book


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## Eva Yojimbo

*The Ghost Writer *by Philip Roth


> This is an incredibly clever novel, but what also sticks out is that it's almost the opposite of _Letting Go. _Where the latter is long, sprawling, messy, full of detailed/nuanced life, but vague on any thematic cohesion; _The Ghost Writer_ is short, compact, clean, so thematically layered and pristine it's like watching light refracted through a perfect crystal... even though I did find it lacking in the more detailed nuances of character in _Letting Go. _In fact, I read this one twice because on my first reading I was a bit disappointed by missing much of what I loved in _Letting Go_, but I also felt that there was something there I didn't quite grasp, so I read it again (it helps it's only a 90-minute read for my reading speed) and actually found it quite brilliant.
> 
> The premise is that it's about a young, ambitious author, Nathan Zuckerman, who meets his reclusive literary hero named Lonoff at his remote home where he lives with his wife and a young female writer who's like an assistant. It's divided into 4 chapters: the first is largely focused on the Lonoff and Zuckerman's view of him, while the second is focused on Zuckerman's own history/life. Of Particular interest in the latter is Zuckerman's strained relationship with his father. Nathan's a Jew and the most ambitious story he's written involves a family squabble over money based on a true event within his own family. His father disapproves as he feels it will reinforce negative Jewish stereotypes, but Nathan believes in the freedom of authors and artists.
> 
> It's hard to talk about the following chapters without understanding all of the thematic implications there about the relationship between fathers and sons, and how that parallels that between young authors and mentors, and between authors/young people (in general) and their heritage, community, family, race, culture, etc. It basically asks the question of what are the social and moral responsibilities of the artist towards these things. This is also paralleled in the relationship between Lonoff and the young woman staying with them as that young woman is something of a surrogate daughter, which has also created strained relations between Lonoff and his wife. Amidst all this thematic compact there's also that of choosing between "the perfection of the life or of the work," as Yeats said. Lonoff has saved a quote from a short story by Henry James (James was also referenced in Letting Go; I think Roth is a fan), which Nathan reads, and which also happens to be about the relationship between a great author near the end of his life and a huge fan of his.
> 
> So with all that laid out, Chapter 3 involves Nathan inventing a story in which the young woman staying with Lonoff is actually Anne Frank, who survived the war but wanted everyone to think her dead because she knew it would make her "diary" all the more powerful. This a fascinating chapter, a novellette within the novel, that does a fascinating job at taking all those themes and folding them back in on themselves, which leaves the final chapter as a kind of epilogue.
> 
> It's a fascinating read. I can see why it won a Pulitzer. It's just pristinely constructed; yet, all that said, I still find myself missing some of the lived-in messiness of _Letting Go_. I suspect I wouldn't have missed it had I read _The Ghost Writer_ first, but in a way both books compliment each other well considering that themes of Jewishness are also touched on in _Letting Go_, but feel much more deeply explored here.


----------



## jegreenwood

Eva Yojimbo said:


> *The Ghost Writer *by Philip Roth


If you seek messiness, I recommend _Sabbath's Theater._ I skipped a bunch of books following the Zuckerman Trilogy and did not return until _American Pastoral. Sabbath _was the novel that preceded that, and I didn't read it until shortly before his last public reading, which I attended:



https://www.92ny.org/archives/philip-roths-last-public-reading



.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

jegreenwood said:


> If you seek messiness, I recommend _Sabbath's Theater._ I skipped a bunch of books following the Zuckerman Trilogy and did not return until _American Pastoral. Sabbath _was the novel that preceded that, and I didn't read it until shortly before his last public reading, which I attended:
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.92ny.org/archives/philip-roths-last-public-reading
> 
> 
> 
> .


I wouldn't say I "seek" messiness, but after encountering it in _Letting Go_ I was surprised by how "clean" _The Ghost Writer_ is. Any author that can write so well at both extremes is impressive, and now I'm more prepared to encounter either in future Roth; maybe even some that finds a middle ground. If he maintains this level I'll probably end up going through much (if not most) of his bibliography. It also helps that most of his later novels seem relatively short.


----------



## starthrower

Just starting this one.


----------



## SanAntone

Just finished _The Hamlet _(Faulkner) and started _Flags in the Dust_ (Faulkner), which was the unabridged and original book written in 1927. The original manuscript was heavily edited (with Faulkner's reluctant consent) removing about 40,000 words in the process and published as _Sartoris_ in 1929.


----------



## Philidor

Ewald Kooiman, Gerhard Weinberger, Hermann J. Busch:
*Zur Interpretation der Orgelmusik Johann Sebastian Bachs*
(The Interpretation of the Organ Music of J. S. Bach)


----------



## Yabetz




----------



## Denerah Bathory

Summer tends to be a time for indulging in good classic fiction, mostly of the adventure, supernatural or detective type. When I'm not writing music, I relax with a good Sax Rohmer novel. Recently finished The Beetle by Richard Marsh. Soon getting into the works of HG Wells.

I used to read a lot more modern stuff, although my preference will not take me any later than say, 1960. After the Beat Generation, there is very little literature worth reading, I'll stick to the good old 1875-1945 era


----------



## Dulova Harps On

Almost finished Collected Poems Of Peter Porter. Wonderful collection.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Even after recovering from CV I've still been reading a lot, sometimes a novel a day when they're under 100k words. Here's everything I've recently read and my thoughts (I'll reiterate that these are taken from emails to a friend, hence the casual tone): 

_*Crime & Punishment*_ by Feodor Dostoevsky



> The interesting thing about returning to this is how much more I both appreciated and found flaws in this book compared to when I read it as a teen. In my teens I just didn't appreciate all of the psychological elements, the manipulation of perspective, the vaguely surrealistic, nightmarish descent that Rask goes through; but back then I really disliked the long monologues and felt the novel suffered every time it moved too much away from Rask. All these years later I still feel like that. The novel is at its best when it's really digging into Rask's psyche--the dreams, the paranoia, the phantasmagoric way his mind warps everything around him; but every time it moves away from that I found myself disinterested. It's a bit like Dosto couldn't decide between the social realism and a heightened, vaguely-noirish, expressionistic novel, and tried to combine both of them together in a really awkward way. It certainly gives the novel a unique personality, and in its more expressionistic elements (and in the relationship between the inspector and Ralph) I can see precursors of the entirety of the film noir genre, especially combined with the rather grim and gritty depiction of the setting and lower classes of Russia.
> 
> So if I'm 50/50 on the style, I'm even less sympathetic with the themes. Taken as a philosophical novel its as shallow as Ayn Rand, and I'm honestly surprised it's seen as a kind of pillar or exemplar of existentialism. All it is is a very reactionary take on Dosto's own fears about rationalism and utilitarianism. It became something of a trope, especially after Nietzsche, that really intelligent folk who followed those philosophies would simply make a god of their own reason and decide they're above human morality and would make up their own. The problem is this simply doesn't happen. You have psychopaths that simply lack sympathy/empathy and, at most, will seek to justify their own selfish actions (usually afterwards by rationalization); but you don't get genuine rationalists/utilitarians going around murdering people. It's the same premise in Hitch's Rope, but Hitch gets away with it because Rope is so intentionally over-stylized; it's not meant as a serious exploration of its theme, whereas C&P clearly is. At best we can say that Dosto is brilliant in his realization of a totally fictitious psychological state that stemmed from an equally fictitious cause.
> 
> As for the ending, I know it's controversial but I didn't really mind it. I think once I stopped taking the novel's themes/characters as seriously realistic I was just willing to let it go in whatever direction it wanted to. Dosto, much like Bresson in Pickpocket, was clearly very concerned about the theme of redemption, and how much the good we do for others can serve as the seed from which that redemption can grow from, so I don't mind the ending offering that. It's a glimmer of hope in what is otherwise a pretty dark novel.


_*The Portrait of a Lady* _by Henry James



> This is often regarded as James's first masterpiece and I can see why. While many of the novels before were thoroughly competent (especially Washington Square), this feels like a whole other level. It starts out as another rather typical 19th century novel of courtship with James's pet themes of new Americans confronting old Europe: Isabel Archer, an American, comes to stay in Europe with her uncle and cousin (Ralph) who falls for her, as does a wealthy nobelman neighbor (Warburton), while she's also romantically pursued by another American (Caspar) she met before she arrived. However, Isabel doesn't have the time of day for them, being an incredibly bright young woman who values her freedom and want to explore Europe; but that changes when she meets Gilbert Osmond, a rather mysterious American ex-patriate. It's fair to say that roughly the first half of the novel involves Isabel's single life in Europe, and the second her marriage to Osmond.
> 
> This all sounds very typical, and on a very superficial level it is, but its greatness lies in the nuances of its plot (like how it glosses over the her decision to marry, the actual marriage, and then years afterward), and in the almost microscopic level of psychological detail. It surprises me that this was (still is) James's most popular novel both among critics and general readers; the former is more understandable, but I'm surprised most average people wouldn't find this a complete bore. The vast majority of the novel's "action" takes place in the characters' minds and James's surgical, though frequently breath-takingly beautiful, dissection of it. If it works for so many it's probably because Isabel is simply one of the greatest literary heroines of all time. I feel like in her James felt he finally had a character as intelligent and sensitive as himself, and he clearly poured a lot of love and sympathy (but not without flaws; she's no Mary Sue) to bring her to life. If the novel's slow burn ends up feeling like a conflagration it does so because we're so attracted to Isabel herself, and can understand why everyone else is too, which makes her downturn so torturous.
> 
> The characters around Isabel are more lightly sketched, but I think all of them take on 3-dimensionality if only by virtue of the reflected light that she's bathed in. What I was most struck with is how this may be the novel with the most vibrant female cast I've ever read, from Isabel herself, to her brash, outspoken, American journalist friend (Henrietta Stackpole); to her blunt and cynical aunt (Mrs. Touchett); to the equally intelligent, refined, but calculating Madame Merle, who serves as a kind of Charon to Isabel's descent into the underworld of her marriage. The men I feel are slightly more type-ish, but perhaps because they seem that way to Isabel, who rejects all of them (except Osmond) for what they represent to her: her cousin, Ralph, is the sensitive type that's too weak; her American suitor (Caspar) is all sex appeal, strength, and business acumen, but no sensitivity or refinement; Warburton has the refinement but no mystery; it's only Osmond who Isabel sees as having all of the positive qualities and none of the negatives; but it's the hidden negatives that she doesn't see or understand that turn out to be the most venomous.
> 
> With regards to the latter, I wonder if the novel is a kind of self-criticism of James's own feelings about ascetic aestheticism, what can happen when you close yourself off from the world for the most part and indulge in the hedonistic pleasures that art and other refinements of taste can allow. He seems to suggest that the problem with this is selfishness, that one merely starts to care about the pleasures that things (and people) can provide. At one point in the novel it's stated explicitly that Osmond starts to hate Isabel because she had her own mind and simply wouldn't serve the same purpose as (and this is my own interpretation here) a kind of beautiful portrait whom people admire both because you own it and because of what it says about you. It's also telling that Isabel can't and doesn't recognize any of this in Osmond even while she's so quick to recognize the flaws (as she sees them) in her other suitors; as if she sought a mate who would be a kind of self-portrait, rather than someone who actually complemented her.
> 
> Even though I've written a lot about what actually happens I don't feel as if I've given anything away, because so much of the greatness here is just in how James renders it. The prose is gorgeous (if often quite complex; long sentences with sub-clauses and layered metaphors abound), and the structure is as immaculate as the European architecture James seems to admire so much, with so many subtle motifs that take on a kind of symbolic significance because of their associations with characters. The whole is burnished and polished to such a rich and beautiful sheen. It's not the most outwardly exciting novel I've ever read, but in terms of its psychology it's one of the richest and most alive.
> 
> I also want to add, though this feels rather tangential, that there's one passage in the book in which not only felt like a piercing insight into Isabel (courtesy of Henrietta), but also felt like an arrow into my own. Never seen a novel describe my own psychological flaws so well. Here's the entire passage:
> 
> "The peril for you is that you live too much in the world of your own dreams. You’re not enough in contact with reality – with the toiling, striving, suffering, I may even say sinning, world that surrounds you. You’re too fastidious; you’ve too many graceful illusions. Your newly-acquired thousands will shut you up more and more to the society of a few selfish and heartless people who will be interested in keeping them up.’
> 
> Isabel’s eyes expanded as she gazed at this lurid scene. ‘What are my illusions?’ she asked. ‘I try so hard not to have any.’
> 
> ‘Well,’ said Henrietta, ‘you think you can lead a romantic life, that you can live by pleasing yourself and pleasing others. You’ll find you’re mistaken. Whatever life you lead you must put your soul in it – to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you: it becomes grim reality! And you can’t always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you’re very ready to do; but there’s another thing that’s still more important – you must often displease others. You must always be ready for that – you must never shrink from it. That doesn’t suit you at all – you’re too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views – that’s your great illusion, my dear. But we can’t. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all – not even yourself.’"


_*Rabbit, Run*_ by John Updike



> I've been saying this a lot but: my first Updike, won't be my last. It's a short, gorgeously written, impressionistic novel; the first in a series about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, who was a star basketball player in college but now lives in an unhappy marriage with a baby on the way. The novel mostly concerns his effort to run away from his marriage, but also what happens when he returns after the birth of his daughter. In a way, the novel feels like a kind of Lolita in reverse: instead of an incredibly intelligent lech who goes on a road trip with a young girl who's his Platonic ideal of love & beauty, you have a rather dumb lech who goes on a road trip alone just seeking the animalistic pleasures of sex. Like with Lolita there's some remarkably sensual and erotic passages in the novel; but equal to Rabbit's sexual obsessions is his search for God in the apparent emptiness of at all.
> 
> More than the themes or characters I was simply enraptured by the prose. Updike's prose is so sensually detailed, yet it's more impressionistic than anything; like what I imagine a Terrence Malick film in prose would be like, especially later Malick with the all of the montage. This is probably the novel closest to poetry I've read since Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, but here it feels a more natural fit if only because Updike isn't tied to the more conventional aspects of the courtship novels of the 19th century. There's a combination of here of a kind of gritty mundanity made unspeakably beautiful by Updike's rendering of it, with what grace and (dare I say) heavenly light he shines on what otherwise would be inconsequential detail of the world and the lives in it.
> 
> I do think the novel suffers a bit during its second half when it takes a really dark turn and feels as if much of the light and life has been drained from it, though Updike saves it by the ending... perhaps even more than saves it. I suspect this will be a novel I return to soon. It's short enough that I could read in a day if I put my mind to it, though on a first go it took longer because I was so frequently going back to savor the prose. I could post probably a million different abstracts to demonstrate what I mean, but here's one (context is Rabbit playing golf with a Priest. Janice is his wife, Ruth is his lover, and Fosnacht is a guy in town everyone disliked):
> 
> "Nightmare is the word. In waking life only animate things slither and jerk for him this way. His unreal hacking dazes his brain; half-hypnotized, it plays tricks whose strangeness dawns on him slowly. In his head he is talking to the clubs as if they’re women. The irons, light and thin yet somehow treacherous in his hands, are Janice. Come on, you dope, be calm; here we go, easy. When the slotted clubface gouges the dirt behind the ball and the shock jolts up his arms to his shoulders, his thought is that Janice has struck him. So dumb, really dumb. Screw her. Just screw her. Anger turns his skin rotten, so the outside seeps through; his insides go jagged with the tiny dry forks of bitter scratching brambles, where words hang like caterpillar nests that can’t be burned away. She stubs stubs fat she stubs the dirt torn open in a rough brown mouth dirt stubs fat: with the woods the “she” is Ruth. Holding a three wood, absorbed in its heavy reddish head and grass-stained face and white stripe prettily along the edge, he thinks O.K. if you’re so smart and clenches and swirls. Ahg: when she tumbled so easily, to balk at this! The mouth of torn grass and the ball runs, hops and hops, hides in a bush. And when he walks there, the bush is damn somebody, his mother; he lifts the huffy branches like skirts, in a fury of shame but with care not to break any, and these branches bother his legs while he tries to pour his will down into the hard irreducible pellet that is not really himself yet in a way is; just the way it sits there white and Number 1 in the center of everything. As the seven iron chops down please Janice just once awkwardness spiders at his elbows and the ball as he stares bending one way bends the other way into more sad scruff further on, the khaki color of Texas. Oh you moron go home. Home is the hole, and above, in the scheme of the unhappy vision that frets his conscious attention with an almost optical overlay of presences, the mild gray rain sky is his grandfather waiting upstairs so that young Harry will not be a Fosnacht."


*Zuckerman Unbound *by Philip Roth (I had to edit a rather key word in my review as it's getting caught in the censor. I'll just say that it's the term for a child born out of wedlock, typically as a slur against a man). 


> I would say this is the first disappointment I've had with Roth, though it's only so in comparison with the two novels that I previously read. It's still quite good, but my issue is that too much of it reads like a complaint about being successful (in case it's not clear, this is a sequel to The Ghost Writer, in which the author in that book has had his first big national success). Yeah, we get it that fans can be annoying, but it's one of those "don't complain about your kid when you decided to have it" kind of things. What's more interesting than those issues are the themes that run underneath it of the ambiguity of communication and interpretation, with hints that the notion of "reading people" is not unlike that of reading books. The parallel is basically woven in to the story of Zuckerman confronting a fan who seems a bit obsessive and pressures him to write or help him write a story about his experience being scammed on a game show, as well as the variety of brief interactions he has with others and what they have to say about his work. Beyond this is also Zuckerman dealing with his dad's death, and his final words that Zuckerman heard but couldn't make out. Probably the best thing here are the passages of Zuckerman trying to decipher what his father said. Here's one good bit:
> 
> "Of course for some seventy-two hours now he had been wondering if his father’s last word could really have been “Bstrd.” Under the strain of that long vigil his hearing may not have been too subtle. *******? To mean what? You were never my real son. But was this father equal to such unillusioned thought, ever? Though maybe that’s what he read in my eyes: Henry’s your boy, Papa, not me. But from my two eyes? No, no, some things I’m not unillusioned enough for either, out of the safety of the study. Maybe he just said “Faster.” Telling Death his job the way he told his wife how to roll the winter rugs and Henry how to do homework when he dawdled. “Vaster”? Unlikely. Nathan’s cosmology lecture notwithstanding, for his father, in dying as in living, there were still but two points of reference in all the vastness: the family and Hitler. You could do worse, but you could also do better. Better. Of course! Not “*******” but “Better.” First principle, final precept. Not more light but more virtue. He had only been reminding them to be better boys. “*******” was the writer’s wishful thinking, if not quite the son’s. Better scene, stronger medicine, a final repudiation by Father. Still, when Zuckerman wasn’t writing he was also only human, and he’d just as soon the scene wasn’t so wonderful. Kafka once wrote, “I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?” Agreed, as to books. But as for life, why invent a blow to the head where none was intended? Up with art, but down with mythomania..."
> 
> "Batter. The mixture time had beaten together for making Zuckermans. Suppose their father had closed things out with that: Boys, you are what I baked. Very different loaves, but God bless you both. There’s room for all types."
> 
> "Neither the Father of Virtue nor the Father of Vice, but the Father of Rational Pleasures and Reasonable Alternatives. Oh, that would have been very nice indeed. But the way it works, you get what you get and the rest you have to do yourself."


*Martian Time-Slip* by Philip K. Dick



> Such a silly name for such a great book, probably my favorite I've read so far from Dick (close with The Man in the High Castle). I think there are three big virtues here: two are that the novel was way ahead of its time in addressing issues of mental health and postcolonialism. The idea is that Mars has been settled and "taken away" for natives there, and that this migration has caused a great many people to develop autism/schizophrenia (Dick doesn't distinguish between the two, which is probably an unfortunate sign of the ignorance of the times; but I don't think this detracts much from his sympathetic portrayal). However, there's a theory that this schizophrenia may be people's way of experiencing time in a different way, presenting the opportunity to some greedy folk to take potential advantage of that. The novel revolves around one such unscrupulous business man trying to use a young boy for that purpose, to go back in time and stop someone from buying up valuable real estate on Mars, and the story of a man working for him who suffers with bouts of the mental illness as well.
> 
> What I love in this one is just how ******* surreal it gets. Though it would probably feel more cliche now, there's a scene in which the protagonist, his employer, their mistress (she's sleeping with both of them), the schizophrenic boy, and the employer's Martian servant are having a meeting. I think this scene is presented 4 different times, each time suggesting either a difference of perspective or, indeed, a possible "time slip." The one which focuses on the boy is so unsettling I had chills reading it. Without giving it away, the basic idea is that the boy is capable of seeing into what Dick refers to as the "death realm" (this concept also showed up in Do Androids...) and what he sees there is horrifying, resulting in a nonsense phrase of gubbles gubbling everything up, with (I think) the nonsense term standing in for the "worm of time" ruining everything.
> 
> For Dick, it seems, there are the people caught up in world and life like the businessman who go about never questioning what they're taught or the values of society; there are outsiders who see past the superficial emptiness of those pursuits but are often disconnected from it (like the boy); and there are those like the protagonist who are in a kind of liminal state, having a foot in both realms. In fact, there's a great scene in which the protagonist is repairing some "teacher bots" in a school and has a rather profound inner monologue where he ponders all this. It's too long to quote in full (I literally highlighted three pages worth), so here are some (no pun intended) highlights:
> 
> "The teaching machines demonstrated a fact that Jack Bohlen was well aware of: there was an astonishing depth to the so-called “artificial.”"
> 
> "And yet he felt repelled by the teaching machines. For the entire Public School was geared to a task which went contrary to his grain: the school was there not to inform or educate, but to mold, and along severely limited lines. It was the link to their inherited culture, and it peddled that culture, in its entirety, to the young. It bent its pupils to it; perpetuation of the culture was the goal, and any special quirks in the children which might lead them in another direction had to be ironed out."
> 
> "It was a battle, Jack realized, between the composite psyche of the school and the individual psyches of the children, and the former held all the key cards. A child who did not properly respond was assumed to be autistic—that is, oriented according to a subjective factor that took precedence over his sense of objective reality. And that child wound up by being expelled from the school; he went, after that, to another sort of school entirely, one designed to rehabilitate him: he went to Camp Ben-Gurion. He could not be taught; he could only be dealt with as ill."
> 
> "Autism, Jack reflected, as he unscrewed the back of the Angry Janitor, had become a self-serving concept for the authorities who governed Mars. It replaced the older term “psychopath,” which in its time had replaced “moral imbecile,” which had replaced “criminally insane.” And at Camp B-G, the child had a human teacher, or rather therapist."
> 
> "...schizophrenia was a major illness which touched sooner or later almost every family. It meant, simply, a person who could not live out the drives implanted in him by his society..."
> 
> "The Public School, then, was right to eject a child who did not learn. Because what the child was learning was not merely facts or the basis of a money-making or even useful career. It went much deeper. The child learned that certain things in the culture around him were worth preserving at any cost. His values were fused with some objective human enterprise. And so he himself became a part of the tradition handed down to him; he maintained his heritage during his lifetime and even improved on it. He cared. True autism, Jack had decided, was in the last analysis an apathy toward public endeavor; it was a private existence carried on as if the individual person were the creator of all value, rather than merely the repository of inherited values. And Jack Bohlen, for the life of him, could not accept the Public School with its teaching machines as the sole arbiter of what was and what wasn't of value. For the values of a society were in ceaseless flux, and the Public School was an attempt to stabilize those values, to jell them at a fixed point—to embalm them."
> 
> Sorry for the length, but this is just so damn good, and its insights into human nature, values, the relationship between society and individuals who don't conform, is as good as any I've ever read from anyone else. Sure, the prose isn't polished, but I'm not sure I've read anything more profound by much more polished authors either.


*Dr. Bloodmoney * by Philip K. Dick



> This was a frustrating one because it has strengths that Dick usually does not have. It has, by far, his strongest cast of characters: the paranoid Bruno (the titular character who tested the original bomb in which an accident caused a fallout with widespread mutations), a trio of TV salesmen who are just trying to get along in their relatively normal lives (though one, Hoppy, becomes a kind of mutant enemy with psychic powers who tries to be a god-like character later); a husband and wife who are launched into space, the former of which becomes a kind of "universal DJ" after the second fallout; there's Bonny and Edie Keller, the latter of which has a sentient fetus inside her body; all of which are interesting, but with some unrealized potential given that there are many and the shortness of the novel doesn't allow Dick to fully flesh them out. It's also one of his most fully realized alternative world, a post-apocalyptic one due to nuclear bombs, and one in which a new war detonates another such bomb within the novel, effectively making what comes after a post-post-apocalyptic novel.
> 
> Yet, despite these virtues, this is the first Dick novel where I found my attention drifting. I get the sense that in this one Dick poured most of his energy in to the big event and into the characters but not nearly enough into what to do with them. There's lots of interesting things in the fragments but unlike with the previous Dick novels nothing really seems to quite come together. I suspect some may like it for this. Despite my loving Martian Time-Slip I can see how some might complain Dick "spells things out" too much, and Dr. Bloodmoney is more in the "show, don't tell" mode of writing (which I personally don't think is an innate virtue).


*The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch *by Philip K. Dick



> This sits in the middle of my Dick ratings currently, probably just below Martian and High Castle, but above Androids and Bloodmoney. Again Dick is ahead of his time in basically imagining an Earth that Global Warming has made unlivable to humans, who've now started colonies on nearby planets. The basic story here is of a precog (people who can predict, if imperfectly/vaguely, the future) working for a man who manufactures a drug that allows people to simultaneously experience being back on Earth. However, this is upset when another man, Palmer Eldritch, returns from a decades-long voyage out into space with a rival drug of his own.
> 
> Unlike most Dick's, this one started slow but really ended with some mind-bending "WTF?" sequences involving the precog taking Eldritch's new drug, and then becoming Eldritch, but only partially, and seeing these drug-worlds as manifestations of Eldritch as a god-like being, who may or may not be real, or just an avatar for God, or or just an avatar for the evolutionary paradigm of reproducing itself... it's hard to say because things get so damn trippy. After having seen A Scanner Darkly (which I'm looking forward to reading) this was probably closer to the kind of thing I expected from Dick, and I'm glad to have finally gotten it. More than any Dick so far this one left me rather unsettled and pondering the metaphoric link between God concepts and genes and their drive to reproduce. I know Dawkins originally coined the term "meme" to describe this kind of social evolution, but I don't think I've ever seen the theme so vividly depicted in media and I'm still not quite sure if any of it makes sense, but it's fascinating stuff.





SanAntone said:


> Just finished _The Hamlet _(Faulkner) and started _Flags in the Dust_ (Faulkner), which was the unabridged and original book written in 1927. The original manuscript was heavily edited (with Faulkner's reluctant consent) removing about 40,000 words in the process and published as _Sartoris_ in 1929.


I remember thinking _Flags in the Dust_ was a solid effort but probably more for completionists given that seemed much more generic and unrefined compared to what came after. Kind of like what you'd expect from a talented student, showing potential and a good grasp on the fundamentals of their art and craft, but not yet having the vision and mastery to make it something more.


----------



## MrTortoise

Eva Yojimbo said:


> *Zuckerman Unbound *by Philip Roth (I had to edit a rather key word in my review as it's getting caught in the censor. I'll just say that it's the term for a child born out of wedlock, typically as a slur against a man).


Great list and comments, hope you are back to 100% health quickly. Been a while since I read the Zuckerman trilogy, but I fondly remember "The Anatomy Lesson". It was laugh-out-loud hilarious.


----------



## Yabetz

I'm starting on a set that I've always intended to read but never have: Shelby Foote's _The Civil War: A Narrative.







_


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## Yabetz

I have too many book-irons in the fire, but this one is another that has had me busy for a while. Excellent and highly recommended, although not easy. A great feature is the amount of detail given about the history and culture in Britain at the time the various dialects of Old English were spoken and the literature was being created. It isn't just paradigms and extracts.


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## SanAntone

Yabetz said:


> I'm starting on a set that I've always intended to read but never have: Shelby Foote's _The Civil War: A Narrative.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _


I also began reading this epic set. But it was difficult for me to keep track during the lengthy and detailed descriptions of the battles, so I set it aside and have read several Faulkner novels in the meantime. I fully intend to come back to it.


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## Yabetz

SanAntone said:


> I also began reading this epic set. But it was difficult for me to keep track during the lengthy and detailed descriptions of the battles, so I set it aside and have read several Faulkner novels in the meantime. I fully intend to come back to it.


Yeah I imagine it will take me about as long to read it as the war lasted.  It's massive.


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## Bwv 1080

The Foote books are well written, but dated, overly sympathetic to the Confederacy and too long.


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## SanAntone

Bwv 1080 said:


> The Foote books are well written, but dated, overly sympathetic to the Confederacy and too long.


I do not agree, and consider the books balanced, which was the critical opinion at the time of their publication, and for at least the next two decades. Foote has said that the most common comment he heard was from readers saying that they couldn't tell which side he supported. A comment that brought him much satisfaction.

What has changed is the political climate today which has zero tolerance for the rationale of the Southern states.


----------



## Bwv 1080

SanAntone said:


> I do not agree, and consider the books balanced, which was the critical opinion at the time of their publication, and for at least the next two decades. Foote has said that the most common comment he heard was from readers saying that they couldn't tell which side he supported. A comment that brought him much satisfaction.
> 
> What has changed is the political climate today which has zero tolerance for the rationale of the Southern states.


I read the books over 20 years ago, but my recollection was it really ignored the whole issue of slavery and did not discuss the internal civil war within the confederacy between unionists and secessionists. It also spends too much time on every minor campaign


----------



## SanAntone

Bwv 1080 said:


> I read the books over 20 years ago, but my recollection was it really ignored the whole issue of slavery and did not discuss the internal civil war within the confederacy between unionists and secessionists. It also spends too much time on every minor campaign


He hardly ignored the issue of slavery, but at the outset of the fighting and for the first two years, preserving the union was Lincoln's cause, not freeing the slaves. That rationale came later. There is a quote from Lincoln to the effect that if he could preserve the union without freeing any slaves, he would do so (or freeing some and not all; or freeing all) the point being that preserving the union was his goal, not slavery.

And Foote spent considerable time describing the border states of Kentucky and West Virginia with a sizable number of Unionists although the state was officially Confederate. 

I do agree he spent time on the minor campaigns in the attempt at comprehensiveness, that he might have truncated.

This is not the forum to discuss these aspects of the book, and generally the causes of the war.


----------



## Yabetz

SanAntone said:


> ...
> What has changed is the political climate today which has zero tolerance for the rationale of the Southern states.


I think it's as much the philosophical climate as the political. Regardless of perspective and biases (and all historians have the latter), that sort of historical writing is no longer possible. Foote's series is literally monumental in that sense, as is Catton's.


----------



## SanAntone

One of my favorite writers about music is *Peter Guralnick* and I've loaded several of his books onto my Kindle to read this summer - re-read most of them since I'd had most of these for years. Only the Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley books are new. 

I just finished reading the Robert Johnson book this week - but the others will be on my list in the coming month.

*Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians*










*Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll*










*Searching for Robert Johnson: The Life and Legend of the "King of the Delta Blues Singers"*










*Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll*










*Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley*


----------



## Selby

Hello forum! This thread looks very cool...
I'm currently in two book clubs. One is online and stems out of comics community and we read primarily genre fiction. The other is my 'real life' friends and we seem to be focusing on 'great' American fiction.

Last: I recently finished Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey and absolutely loved it. I could sing it's praises all day. 

Current: I am currently in Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I'm enjoying it so far and my opinion is still forming.

Next: Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Earnes.


----------



## Bwv 1080

SanAntone said:


> He hardly ignored the issue of slavery, but at the outset of the fighting and for the first two years, preserving the union was Lincoln's cause, not freeing the slaves. That rationale came later. There is a quote from Lincoln to the effect that if he could preserve the union without freeing any slaves, he would do so (or freeing some and not all; or freeing all) the point being that preserving the union was his goal, not slavery.
> 
> And Foote spent considerable time describing the border states of Kentucky and West Virginia with a sizable number of Unionists although the state was officially Confederate.
> 
> I do agree he spent time on the minor campaigns in the attempt at comprehensiveness, that he might have truncated.
> 
> This is not the forum to discuss these aspects of the book, and generally the causes of the war.


While preserving the Union at any cost was Lincoln’s goal at outset, preserving slavery and white supremecy was the sole motivation for secession - which Foote glosses over. The book is drenched in lost cause mythology, not to mention Foote’s cringeworthy bromance with Nathan Bedford Forrest.

a good article here on the modern scholarship of the war









The Lost Cause In Retreat - Claremont Review of Books







claremontreviewofbooks.com


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## Bwv 1080

Selby said:


> Hello forum! This thread looks very cool...
> I'm currently in two book clubs. One is online and stems out of comics community and we read primarily genre fiction. The other is my 'real life' friends and we seem to be focusing on 'great' American fiction.
> 
> Last: I recently finished Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey and absolutely loved it. I could sing it's praises all day.
> 
> Current: I am currently in Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I'm enjoying it so far and my opinion is still forming.
> 
> Next: Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Earnes.


liked Hyperion, but lost interest in the sequel- but it may just be I have read too much old SF back in the day


----------



## Bwv 1080

Still slogging through 2666, which is a masterpiece IMO
Also reading Swafford's Brahms bio, but skimming alot, Interesting bit of speculation that Brahm's later relationship / sex issues stemmed from abuse by prostitutes or their clients at the saloons / brothels he played at as a young teen


----------



## Doulton

"The Way of All Flesh" by Samuel Butler. I can recommend "The Smash-Up" by Ali Benjamin if you'd like a contemporary look at human folly---well-written, ironic, inspired by Edith Wharton (only in a rather flimsy way via money).


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Just finished Tolstoy's _Anna Karenina_. I can't say I have read another novel that elicited the sense of characters truly living and breathing like this one. Tolstoy is the closest novelist I know to the style and spirit of Shakespeare. There are scenes in this book that are so exquisite, like you are right in the room with these characters whom you have known intimately your whole life, that once read, they are unforgettable. I will not be able to dislodge this book from my soul for a long time.


----------



## jegreenwood

I’ve been doing some writing, and I find it difficult to read serious literature at the same time. These days, I’m most likely to substitute TV and Netflix. But I did find time to reread _The Seagull_ by Chekhov. I read the Stoppard translation with a translation by Jean-Claude Van Italie by my side to compare and contrast. I’ve read and seen the play a number of times, and I have never quite liked it as much as Chekhov’s other major plays. But this read really worked for me.


----------



## SanAntone

My last on the subject of the CW and Shelby Foote's history of it.

The South had a strong case for secession based on constitutional rationale, no matter the cause. Southerners were affronted by the fascist nature of the abolitionist movement and then by Lincoln's dictatorship. I have no tolerance for the modern criticism of the South and its major characters which has turned figures such as Forrest in to anachronistic cartoons. N.B. Forrest was a complex man and has suffered because of superficial associations with the formation of the KKK, a group he disbanded after it had outlived its purpose which was to combat the worst abuses of reconstruction. Unfortunately the issues surrounding this war, especially from the Southern side, have been taken over by some completely immoral actors, and 20th century racists, which has made it impossible to assess the reality of the South during the decades before, during, and shortly after the war.

Lincoln overreached his constitutional powers based on an irrational obsession with the idea of preserving the union, an abstract construct which was not worth the loss of any blood and rape of civil liberties. I believe as do many other historians that slavery would eventually have been abandoned (it had already begun to be perceived as an economic albatross). The reality is that the war exacerbated the cultural and social issues and merely caused the ideas behind slavery (which were not invented by the South) to morph into Jim Crow and effectively continue slavery through sharecropping and indentured tenancy. 

This war delayed of recognition civil rights for Blacks for well over 100 years after the conclusion of the fighting. We still struggle with racism and related issues. Cultural and social problems can never be solved through force.

The war was worse than completely unnecessary; it was the worst violent episode in US history; a mistake we are still paying for and one from which we may never fully recover. We certainly won't recover from it if the truth is obscured by the kind of revisionist and superficial scholarship that you cite.


----------



## Bwv 1080

SanAntone said:


> My last on the subject of the CW and Shelby Foote's history of it.
> 
> The South had a strong case for secession based on constitutional rationale, no matter the cause. Southerners were affronted by the fascist nature of the abolitionist movement and then by Lincoln's dictatorship. I have no tolerance for the modern criticism of the South and its major characters which has turned figures such as Forrest in to anachronistic cartoons. N.B. Forrest was a complex man and has suffered because of superficial associations with the formation of the KKK, a group he disbanded after it had outlived its purpose which was to combat the worst abuses of reconstruction. Unfortunately the issues surrounding this war, especially from the Southern side, have been taken over by some completely immoral actors, and 20th century racists, which has made it impossible to assess the reality of the South during the decades before, during, and shortly after the war.
> 
> Lincoln overreached his constitutional powers based on an irrational obsession with the idea of preserving the union, an abstract construct which was not worth the loss of any blood and rape of civil liberties. I believe as do many other historians that slavery would eventually have been abandoned (it had already begun to be perceived as an economic albatross). The reality is that the war exacerbated the cultural and social issues and merely caused the ideas behind slavery (which were not invented by the South) to morph into Jim Crow and effectively continue slavery through sharecropping and indentured tenancy.
> 
> This war delayed of recognition civil rights for Blacks for well over 100 years after the conclusion of the fighting. We still struggle with racism and related issues. Cultural and social problems can never be solved through force.
> 
> The war was worse than completely unnecessary; it was the worst violent episode in US history; a mistake we are still paying for and one from which we may never fully recover. We certainly won't recover from it if the truth is obscured by the kind of revisionist and superficial scholarship that you cite.



funny that modern historiography is ‘superficial and revisionist’ unlike a book that would not have given any offense to any 60s Wallace supporter.

Do you seriously think the lives of African Americans would have been better if the South was allowed to go it’s own way? You also think it would have worked out better without similar Federal interference in Southern ways in the 1950s and 60s?

Counterfactuals about when slavery might have ended without the war go both ways. The elites that ruled the Southern states derived their wealth from the institution and were expanding it into industrial enterprises at the time of the war. You forget that secession was completely unprovoked- the Southern states seceded before Lincoln’s inauguration. Perhaps the free states should have tried to appease the planters more, maybe by enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act with more zeal, allowing slavery to expand into Kansas or granting the planters’ wish to invade some Latin American country for more slave territory? You call Lincoln a fascist, a common neoconfederate trope, but I am not aware of sites scattered across the North of officially sanctioned mass executions of Copperheads, but I know of several killing grounds of Unionists here in Texas - mostly German immigrants who refused to betray their adopted country.


----------



## Barbebleu

This to Bwv 1080 and San Antone - I wonder which one of you will secede from this thread first? 😂


----------



## starthrower

Re-reading this one. Here's one of my favorite lines when addressing the subject of manufacturing consent and the molding of public opinion in an effort to produce the desired result of "an orgasmic Pavlovian reflex just as the brain goes dead."


----------



## Craveoon

Almost done reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I enjoyed reading this book and Wilkerson expertly connects the race-based caste system that persists in America to the ancient caste hierarchy of India and the rapid formation of ethnoreligious castes in Nazi Germany. 

And, I'm re-reading my favorite book. I can still feel the same fascination when I read this work of Murakami's for the first time.


----------



## Ingélou

Miriam Margolyes' autobiography, *This Much Is True*. I'm only a few chapters in but have already begun a habit of reading out irresistible bits to my spouse. It's so witty & perceptive.









I'm further in now & still laughing but not so sure now that I like her. She's certainly a good example of Philip Larkin's This Be The Verse!


----------



## SanAntone

*Sing Me Back Home: Southern Roots and Country Music* by Bill C. Malone










Combination memoir and history of the roots of Country music, this is probably Malone's final statement on the cultural history he's spent his life publishing. Beginning with what was his doctoral dissertation, Country Music U.S.A. and now in its latest edition, the 50th anniversary edition.

*Country Music USA*: 50th Anniversary Edition by Bill C. Malone and with final chapter written by Tracy E. W. Laird










I am also re-reading this one about the Mississippi Delta.

*The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity *by James C. Cobb










And just finished reading this one telling the stories of Charley Patton and Jimmie Rodgers - how they both influenced American music, the musical roots they shared, and the tragedies of their lives.

*In Tune: Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Roots of American Music *by Ben Wynne


----------



## starthrower

Lincoln by Gore Vidal


----------



## Bwv 1080

Finally finished 2666, which was one of the best things I have read

so looking for a new book, and after that POS attacked him today, the choice of author was easy. Read Satanic Verses years ago and read Haroun and the Sea of Stories to my kids


----------



## starthrower

Sorry to hear about that horrible attack on Rushdie. His injuries are pretty severe. These fanatics are disgusting.


----------



## jegreenwood

Bwv 1080 said:


> Finally finished 2666, which was one of the best things I have read
> 
> so looking for a new book, and after that POS attacked him today, the choice of author was easy. Read Satanic Verses years ago and read Haroun and the Sea of Stories to my kids
> 
> View attachment 172640


I've read two works by Rushdie: _The Moor's Last Sigh _and _Midnight's Children._ Both were outstanding. Terrible news about the attack.


----------



## Yabetz

SanAntone said:


> *Sing Me Back Home: Southern Roots and Country Music* by Bill C. Malone
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Combination memoir and history of the roots of Country music, this is probably Malone's final statement on the cultural history he's spent his life publishing. Beginning with what was his doctoral dissertation, Country Music U.S.A. and now in its latest edition, the 50th anniversary edition.
> 
> *Country Music USA*: 50th Anniversary Edition by Bill C. Malone and with final chapter written by Tracy E. W. Laird
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I am also re-reading this one about the Mississippi Delta.
> 
> *The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity *by James C. Cobb
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And just finished reading this one telling the stories of Charley Patton and Jimmie Rodgers - how they both influenced American music, the musical roots they shared, and the tragedies of their lives.
> 
> *In Tune: Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Roots of American Music *by Ben Wynne


Those look very interesting. I'm from the south originally and it's always fascinated me that a region that was _historically_ one of the most segregated and racist on the planet produced such a racially-blended culture.


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## Yabetz

Bwv 1080 said:


> funny that modern historiography is ‘superficial and revisionist’ unlike a book that would not have given any offense to any 60s Wallace supporter.


It's still around and highly regarded so apparently it didn't give much offense to Wallace opponents either.



> Do you seriously think the lives of African Americans would have been better if the South was allowed to go it’s own way? You also think it would have worked out better without similar Federal interference in Southern ways in the 1950s and 60s?


Things would have turned out better if Lincoln had survived to supervise Reconstruction rather than have it in the hands of vengeful ideologues like many of the Radical Republicans. The consequence was that there really wasn't much Reconstruction at all. And the North wasn't exactly all-around heavenly for Black people either.



> Counterfactuals about when slavery might have ended without the war go both ways. The elites that ruled the Southern states derived their wealth from the institution and were expanding it into industrial enterprises at the time of the war. You forget that secession was completely unprovoked- the Southern states seceded before Lincoln’s inauguration. Perhaps the free states should have tried to appease the planters more, maybe by enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act with more zeal, allowing slavery to expand into Kansas or granting the planters’ wish to invade some Latin American country for more slave territory? You call Lincoln a fascist, a common neoconfederate trope, but I am not aware of sites scattered across the North of officially sanctioned mass executions of Copperheads, but I know of several killing grounds of Unionists here in Texas - mostly German immigrants who refused to betray their adopted country.


One thing or things that really isn't/aren't examined very much are the economic motivations the northern states had to see the south and its planter class obliterated. Remember that those states threatened to secede over the War of 1812 because the war looked to cut into their profits. The Civil War has always been presented as a holy crusade to end slavery and emancipate Black people from those evil southerners (most of whom owned fewer slaves than U.S. Grant did at one point). That was as much a rationale as a cause.

Anyway the Foote books are about the war itself, so I guess they can be excused for not being Howard Zinn-like.


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## SanAntone

> Things would have turned out better if Lincoln had survived to supervise Reconstruction rather than have it in the hands of vengeful ideologues like many of the Radical Republicans.


I agree completely, in fact, I had meant to post something to this effect before I decided to abandon this digression in this thread.


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## Bwv 1080

Right, so the planters should have been appeased more both before AND after the war. Perhaps by not insisting on voting rights and other protections for freed slaves? This is what all the whining about Reconstruction boils down to - there was no circumstance where white Southerners were going to accept their former slaves as equal citizens


----------



## Yabetz

Bwv 1080 said:


> Right, so the planters should have been appeased more both before AND after the war. Perhaps by not insisting on voting rights and other protections for freed slaves? This is what all the whining about Reconstruction boils down to - there was no circumstance where white Southerners were going to accept their former slaves as equal citizens


"White southerners" were no more monolithic then than they are now. Anyway this is a distracting tangent from the purpose of the thread.

Speaking of which, here's a current (actually long-standing) interest:


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## jegreenwood

Yabetz said:


> "White southerners" were no more monolithic then than they are now. Anyway this is a distracting tangent from the purpose of the thread.
> 
> Speaking of which, here's a current (actually long-standing) interest:
> View attachment 172674


I have that in a collection of his early poetry (first three volumes). Haven’t opened it in some time.

Right now reading _Crossroads_ by Jonathan Franzen.


----------



## Merl

I've just finished Steve Hamilton's excellent 'The Lock Artist'. An intriguing and entertaining read that I'd wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who loves crime thrillers. He's also a top bloke (I know him). 🤠


----------



## Montarsolo

Read this last night.

“The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is somewhere else, and I don’t know what that elsewhere is.”


----------



## SanAntone

New this week:

*Arthur Miller - Collected Plays
Mark Twain - *_*Life on the Mississippi*_

And an ongoing reading project - skipping around with several on music history and biographies on musicians: Jimmie Rodgers (a couple of books, one the standard bio, another a comparative history of the period) , Country Music (Bill C. Malone's two books), Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday (Angela Davis's book on all three).


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## starthrower

My first time reading Goodwin. She's a great writer who really brings these characters back to life. Unlike today's out of touch "leaders", Franklin and Eleanor worked tirelessly to understand the needs and conditions of America's working people and those confined to various state institutions. Eleanor was the president's eyes and ears as she traveled several hundred thousand miles around the country and to Puerto Rico and then reporting back to the president.


----------



## calvinpv

*Franz Kafka: Letter to Father*

I’ve read all of Kafka literary works, but until now, I never read any of his correspondences, made up of some 1500 letters. This singular letter to his father from 1919 is by far the longest Kafka ever wrote – about 100 pages of manuscript, including drafts, a typed version, and even annotations for his 3rd fiancée to understand its contents. But not only, for unknown reasons, did his father never receive the letter to read (very sad to think about, since the letter is a very poignant plea for reconciliation), there are even some doubts as to whether Kafka intended the letter to be a private communication at all rather than an ambitious literary text. Although the biographical details in the letter are very likely to be true, the interpretation of events from Kafka’s childhood often read like backwards projections meant to fit certain formal schema adhering to Kafka’s worldviews, and the ordering of discussed topics feels very pre-planned, which runs counter to the spontaneous nature of a written letter. If I had to guess, with no evidence to back up my claim, I’d say the letter was a real communication but with Kafka testing out some newfound ideas that were always lurking underneath the surface of his writings but finally clicked into place in his head.

What might’ve forced this possible ‘clicking into place’ is the following. Kafka’s father was for all intents and purposes an emotionally abusive parent, who would often mock, laugh at, condescend, threaten, and show contempt for his children’s activities, much of it unjustified (Kafka and his youngest sister Ottla seemed to have received the brunt of it); he was also apparently abusive towards his employees in his small business. But in 1919, when Kafka became engaged with his 2nd fiancée, not only did his father disapprove because of her lower social status, he also insinuated that Kafka is only interested in marriage for sex and that he should just visit a brothel instead: “She probably put on some well-chosen blouse, as Prague Jewish women are so good at, and right away, of course, you decided to marry her. … I don’t understand you, you’re a grown man, after all, you live in the city and don’t know any better than to marry just anybody. Are there no other possibilities? If you are frightened of it, I’ll go there with you myself.” This obstacle, along with the inability to find a suitable apartment, led to the marriage getting called off. Within a few weeks, he began writing the letter.

I won’t get into every little detail from the letter but will just summarize. In Kafka’s view, the “success of the entire letter” depends on “clarifying these attempts at marriage” as well as clarifying why he ultimately could not follow through. The reasons given are unusually abstract, borderline metaphysical, but they amount to saying that the very idea of marriage is “most closely connected” with his father and is therefore inimical to Kafka’s sense of being because Kafka sees the two of them as fundamentally different people and also sees himself as lacking those necessary traits for a successful marriage. The discussions about marriage make up the final quarter of the letter; the first three quarters goes into his childhood upbringing, with many examples and a lot of theorizing.

Interestingly, despite all the emotional abuse, Kafka believed his father had quite a successful marriage because it suits his nature perfectly. And even more interestingly, Kafka believed that under normal circumstances, his father would’ve made for a great parent. But what made Kafka’s upbringing a failure is that his father not only couldn’t provide an upbringing conducive to his temperament (“you can only treat a child as you yourself are constituted, with strength, noise and violent temper”), his father couldn’t even understand it (“I would have needed a little encouragement … a little keeping open of my path; instead you obstructed it for me, with the good intention, it is true, of making me take a different path. But I was not suited to that.”). The result was a child -- who at his young age couldn’t understand these abstract nuances about personalities -- developing a guilt complex about not living up to his father’s standards. This guilt and the corresponding fear and anxiety not only stunting growth in those few areas that are connected to his father, but also bleeding over into those areas that are entirely Kafka’s own, giving him a sense of weakness and low self-esteem. There were only two places where, towards the end of his life, Kafka felt a bit more security: in his writing and in his newfound interest in Judaism, awakened by his friends Max Brod and Jizchak Löwy.

There is, of course, a central psychological tension cutting through the heart of the letter, if you were to read it closely. Kafka is on the one hand saying he can’t marry because of an inferiority complex, which implies he lacks his father’s traits but is ultimately like his father; on the other hand, Kafka is also saying he can’t marry because of his unique temperament, which implies he lacks his father’s traits and is ultimately _not_ like is father. But if one were to take a strictly logical viewpoint, the coincidence of opposing tendencies in this “lack” means that if his father’s abuse is responsible for the “lack” in the first sense, then it follows that his father’s abuse is responsible for the “lack” in the second sense as well, in which case we get a different picture of the origins of Kafka’s sense of identity. Kafka effectively says at one point his identity is due to a genetic disposition inherited from his parents, but that may be the backwards projection I mentioned earlier. In reality, his own sense of self probably originated _through_ his father's abuse and not independent of it -- which would be the cruelest irony of them all. But it would also make the most sense: would Kafka have written all of those wonderful stories if he hadn’t had the upbringing his father gave him? Probably not. Kafka sort of recognizes this paradox when he says, “if he escapes [from his father into his own identity] he cannot rebuild [in his father’s image and end the conflict] and if he rebuilds he cannot escape”.

And Kafka even ends the letter ambiguously, where he imagines his father giving a hypothetical response to all the accusations thrown at him by turning them on their head and directing them back at Kafka himself. Kafka’s own response to this is to “not deny a certain justification for this objection, which in itself also contributes to the characterization of our relationship. Naturally, in reality things cannot fit together the way the evidence does in my letter, life is more than a jigsaw puzzle”. In other words, Kafka is not only admitting his own sense of being as inextricably tied to his father’s, but even his ability to theorize about the relationship is compromised. It leaves the reader with a vague feeling of having went around a Penrose staircase or a Möbius strip back to the beginning.

Besides these central concerns, the letter contains many of the hallmark traits of Kafka’s writings. Here’s a list I came up with; these can all be found to varying degrees:

1) a sense of unease and anxiety that has no source
2) a taste for paradox and the coincidence of opposites, usually the divine and the vulgar
3) comically sadistic legal/bureaucratic structures
4) labyrinthine explanations of ordinary events and endless internal monologues by the narrator weighing the pros and cons of an inconsequential decision (Kafka really loves to qualify bold, naked assertions with layers of doubt and complexity)
5) permanently inextinguishable feelings of guilt
6) fantastical, monstrous portrayals of the everyday
7) infinitely long – and ultimately untraversable – journeys to one’s destination
8) stark dichotomies between groundless appeals to authority and hyper-rational paranoic obsessiveness
9) overlaps between the Family, Law, and Religion as institutions
10) reversals of cause and effect, especially in relation to crime and punishment
11) oppositions between characters possessing some sort of élan vital and characters so psychologically repressed to the point of non-identity

I’ll end with a couple juicy quotes (they are from a different translation than the photo above):



> “Please understand me correctly Father: in themselves these would have been utterly insignificant details, they only became oppressive for me because you, the toweringly authoritative person for me, never held yourself to the commandments you imposed on me. This is how the world came to be divided into three parts for me, one in which I, the slave, lived under laws that had been invented only for me and with which, moreover, I could, I didn’t know why, never fully comply, then a second world, infinitely distant from mine, in which you lived, preoccupied with government, with issuing orders and with annoyance at their not being obeyed, and finally a third world wherein everyone else lived happily and free from orders and from having to obey. I was forever in disgrace: either I obeyed your orders, that was a disgrace, for they were, after all, meant only for me; or I was defiant, that was also a disgrace, for how dare I defy you, or I could not obey because I didn’t have, for example, your strength, your appetite, your skill, even though you expected it of me as a matter of course; and that was the greatest disgrace of all.”





> “It is precisely this close connection that partly tempts me to marry. I envision this equality that would then arise between us, and which you would understand better than anyone else, as so beautiful because then I would be a free, grateful, guiltless, upright son, and you an untroubled, untyrannical, sympathetic, satisfied father. But for this purpose everything that ever took place would have to be undone, that means we ourselves would have to be obliterated. But being as we are, marrying is barred to me because it is your very own territory. Sometimes I imagine the map of the world spread out and you stretched diagonally across it. And then it seems to me as though I could consider living only in those places that you either do not cover or that do not lie within your reach. And, in keeping with the conception that I have of your size, these are not many and not very comforting regions, and marriage in particular is not among them.”


----------



## Barbebleu

The Gramophone and the Voice - John Steane. Brilliant music criticism and reviews from 25 years of the Gramophone magazine. Suffice to say his writing had me scurrying to my collection to listen to his recommendations, either in agreement or otherwise.


----------



## Montarsolo

I finished two books this weekend:

John Williams, Stoner. Nicely written but I don't understand why it was all hype.
Joseph Rot, Job. What a phenomenal book. I immediately started again.

I am also reading Storig's 'history of philosophy' (Originally written in German). I don't think there is an English translation of it.


----------



## Montarsolo

A book about Alma Mahler byFrançoise Giroud.

I read this morning the part about the engagement and marriage to Mahler. And I thought: Mahler had an autistic spectrum disorder.


----------



## SanAntone

*Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts*
Robert M. Dowling










*Eugene O'Neill: Complete Plays 1913–1920*
_Beyond the Horizon_ | _“Anna Christie”_ | _The Emperor Jones_ | _The Glencairn cycle_ (4 one-act plays) | 22 other plays


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## senza sordino

I've just finished reading Oryx and Crake. A dystopian near future where genetic engineering has run amok. 









And now I'm reading the sequel, The Year of the Flood. Apparently, it's not really picking up from the end of the last story but runs parallel to Oryx and Crake. There's a third in the series, MaddAddam, which ends both stories, or so I've seen. I don't want to read entire plot summaries before I read the actual book.


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## advokat




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## starthrower

"No Republic in history has lasted longer than three hundred years, and this nation may not long endure as a great power unless it finds the eyes to see things as they are in the world. That once was the mission of the Central Itelligence Agency."


----------



## Barbebleu

Return of the Shadow. Volume 6 of Christopher Tolkien’s History of Middle Earth. Not to be missed for Tolkien fans.


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## SanAntone

Just finished _*Texasville*_ which continues the story of the characters from Larry McMurtry's _The Last Picture Show_, thirty years later.










With _Texasville_, *Larry McMurtry* returns to the unforgettable Texas town and entertaining characters from one of his best-loved books, _The Last Picture Show_.

This is a Texas-sized story brimming with home truths of the heart, and men and women we recognize, believe in, and care about deeply. Set in the post-oil-boom 1980s, _Texasville_ brings us up to date with Duane, who's got an adoring dog, a sassy wife, a twelve-million-dollar debt, and a hot tub by the pool; Jacy, who's finished playing "Jungla" in Italian movies and who's returned to Thalia; and Sonny — Duane's teenage rival for Jacy's affections — who owns the car wash, the Kwik-Sackstore, and the video arcade. (Simon & Schuster)


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## bharbeke

Barbebleu said:


> Return of the Shadow. Volume 6 of Christopher Tolkien’s History of Middle Earth. Not to be missed for Tolkien fans.


I find books like The History of Middle-Earth and the Hammond/Scull reader's companion to be a little dense and dry. I listen to a Tolkien podcast called The Prancing Pony Podcast, and they regularly dip into those kind of sources, so I can get the same material put into a context that I appreciate a bit more.


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## Barbebleu

bharbeke said:


> I find books like The History of Middle-Earth and the Hammond/Scull reader's companion to be a little dense and dry. I listen to a Tolkien podcast called The Prancing Pony Podcast, and they regularly dip into those kind of sources, so I can get the same material put into a context that I appreciate a bit more.


I must give that a listen.


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## Pat Fairlea

I'm currently reading Lucy Worsley's new biography of Agatha Christie. Very good indeed.


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## Chat Noir

I've not finished it yet, but I've been reading _La Carte Postale_ by Anne Berest. It's a large-ish book at 500-some pages; large enough to be divided into 'parts' and I read though part 1 during my summer holiday just gone. A lot of history and development is packed into that section and the closing of it is still unnerving even though we're already long familiar with the history of the Third Reich and deportations. It's only really in part 2 that the mystery of the anonymous postcard really gets underway. And that's where I am. Wonderful clarity in the writing.


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## Chat Noir

I started reading _Tuer le père _by Amélie Nothomb. She's probably known for books other than this, but it's a nice slim volume until I get back to the above book.


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## Chilham

I've never been a great reader of novels. A few, like Cider With Rosie, Sons and Lovers, Animal Farm, and Far From the Madding Crowd, I was required to read at school, John Wyndham and Isaac Asimov as a teenager, and the very occasional book I was gifted over the 45 years since then, and lasted past the first chapter. Mario Puzo's The Godfather is about the only one I remember in that category.

The net result is I feel that I've missed out on reading many of the greats of literature. With that in mind, I've created a list of books to read, and a relatively unambitious target on reading one per month, starting today. First up:









JD Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye


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## Chat Noir

Chilham said:


> JD Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye


Well I hope you enjoy it. I've started this about six times and never made it past a few pages. One day the right circumstances will come together and I'll read it.


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## alinkner1

*James Hanley* (1897-1985): _Sailor's Song_ (1943)


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## jegreenwood

I recently finished _The Candy House_ by Jennifer Egan. Sort of a companion piece to _A Visit From the Goon Squad_ - overlapping characters, but not a sequel, as both jump back and forth in time. This time around, I felt Egan was stretching things. Various Internet related imaginary (I hope) apps. Disappointing. Before that I read Franzen's _Crossroads_. I don't think I've posted on that before. My fourth Franzen and maybe one too many.

Thinking of looking to the past. Has anyone here read _The Vicar of Wakefield_?


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## jegreenwood

Chilham said:


> I've never been a great reader of novels. A few, like Cider With Rosie, Sons and Lovers, Animal Farm, and Far From the Madding Crowd, I was required to read at school, John Wyndham and Isaac Asimov as a teenager, and the very occasional book I was gifted over the 45 years since then, and lasted past the first chapter. Mario Puzo's The Godfather is about the only one I remember in that category.
> 
> The net result is I feel that I've missed out on reading many of the greats of literature. With that in mind, I've created a list of books to read, and a relatively unambitious target on reading one per month, starting today. First up:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JD Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye


What else is on your list?


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## Chat Noir

jegreenwood said:


> Thinking of looking to the past. Has anyone here read _The Vicar of Wakefield_?


Yes, though I should not tell you the plot. It's a good book.


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## NoCoPilot

Chat Noir said:


> Well I hope you enjoy it. I've started this about six times and never made it past a few pages. One day the right circumstances will come together and I'll read it.


I forced myself to read "Catcher in the Rye" last year, after meaning to for decades. I found it to be terrible. Why is it famous?


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## Bwv 1080

Chilham said:


> I've never been a great reader of novels. A few, like Cider With Rosie, Sons and Lovers, Animal Farm, and Far From the Madding Crowd, I was required to read at school, John Wyndham and Isaac Asimov as a teenager, and the very occasional book I was gifted over the 45 years since then, and lasted past the first chapter. Mario Puzo's The Godfather is about the only one I remember in that category.
> 
> The net result is I feel that I've missed out on reading many of the greats of literature. With that in mind, I've created a list of books to read, and a relatively unambitious target on reading one per month, starting today. First up:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JD Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye


You are too old, if you didnt read it in high school or college, then its too late.


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## Bwv 1080

Taking a break after 2666 and reading some fantasy - now in the second book in Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow & Thorn, which apparantly inspired GRRM to write SOIF/GOT and is sort of a bridge between that and LOTR


----------



## Chat Noir

NoCoPilot said:


> I forced myself to read "Catcher in the Rye" last year, after meaning to for decades. I found it to be terrible. Why is it famous?


Probably because most people haven't actually read it.


----------



## NoCoPilot

senza sordino said:


> I've just finished reading Oryx and Crake. A dystopian near future where genetic engineering has run amok.


Sounds like "The Windup Girl" which was popular a few years ago. I found it easy enough to read, and very imaginative, but wildly illogical and implausibly plotted.


----------



## Chilham

jegreenwood said:


> What else is on your list?


First twelve, in no particular order, are:

Catcher in the Rye
Brave New World
David Copperfield
Lolita
To Kill a Mockingbird
Midnight's Children
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Grapes of Wrath
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Don Quixote
A Passage to India
Moby Dick


----------



## Roger Knox

What Do We Really Know? The Big Questions of Philosophy by Simon Blackburn (Quercus, 2009). Readable, sensible essays on current issues, like relativism.


----------



## Monsalvat

On topic for this site: two books I checked out from the library.

- *Sir Georg Solti* (“with assistance from Harvey Sachs”): _Memoirs_. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1997. ISBN 0-679-44596-x

- *Michael Charry*: _George Szell: A Life of Music_. University of Illinois Press, Urbana/Chicago/Springfield, 2011. ISBN 978-0-252-03616-3.

Starting with the Solti since that's what I went to the library to check out. Just happens that Szell is very close to Solti on the bookshelf...


----------



## Alinde

I'm making my tentative way through Brian Greene's "Until the End of Time" - learning new things about the physical world and revisiting old things. 

Re-reading John Keay's "A History of India". I'm up to the 6th century AD and have absolutely no recollection of having encountered the dynasties of that era before.

I've just finished the latest Robert Galbraith mystery and only read to the end (page 1,000 and something) out of loyalty to the author, whose previous mysteries I had enjoyed.


----------



## Rogerx

Wij waren , ik ben / We were, I am

The story of a boy who kept hostage with his brothers and sisters bij his father who thinks he is Jesus.

He was locked in a loft one by one meter for a whole month , Fascinating reading.


----------



## SanAntone

*Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska *
by John Luther Adams










JL Adams is a composer I have been interested in, and I enjoy his music. I usually avoid composer autobiographies, or memoirs, but this one touches on the context for much of his work - plus I've been interested in Alaska and the idea of solitude as inspiration.


----------



## Roger Knox

redundant post .............


----------



## arpeggio

The _Belisarius Saga_ by David Drake.


----------



## jegreenwood

Alinde said:


> I'm making my tentative way through Brian Greene's "Until the End of Time" - learning new things about the physical world and revisiting old things.
> 
> Re-reading John Keay's "A History of India". I'm up to the 6th century AD and have absolutely no recollection of having encountered the dynasties of that era before.
> 
> I've just finished the latest Robert Galbraith mystery and only read to the end (page 1,000 and something) out of loyalty to the author, whose previous mysteries I had enjoyed.


I too enjoyed (and learned from) “Until the End of Time.” 

I haven’t seen much about the Galbraith in the USA yet. I don’t recall a Ties review. Those books do keep getting longer. Maybe this one should be titled “Infinite Quest”


----------



## Bwv 1080

arpeggio said:


> The _Belisarius Saga_ by David Drake.


If you are interested in a more straight historical fiction, Robert Graves, author of_ I, Claudius_, wrote a great novel titled _Count Belisarius_


----------



## SanAntone

Starting to re-read all of the Bond books by Ian Fleming - in order of publication, which was different from the order of the movies. First up, _Casino Royale_.


----------



## Bwv 1080

_To Green Angel Tower, _last book in Tad Williams Sorrow, Memory Thorn series - written in the late 80s, sort of a bridge between _Lord of the Rings_ and _Game of Thrones _ can see where GRRM borrowed from this book - the various quasi-European realms, the White Walker thing etc


----------



## jegreenwood

Not "quite" a book, but I discovered yesterday that the Globe production of _Twelfth Night_ is available on DVD as part of comedy three-pack with _Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Taming of the Shrew. _I might actually have seen that _Shrew _as I attended a performance at the Globe about a decade ago, but it is _Twelfth Night_ that I am posting about. This all-male production featuring Mark Ryland as Olivia (and Stephen Fry as Malvolio) is the second best Shakespeare production I've ever seen. The best was Peter Brook's _A Midsummer Night's Dream,_ and the two share the distinction of being included in the British Library's 2016 exhibition highlighting 10 milestone productions of Shakespeare from the last 400 years.

Edit - no, it's a different production of _Shrew._


----------



## Chi_townPhilly

*Church History*- The Basics

360+ pages- the basics...


----------



## jegreenwood

Finished “The Vicar of Wakefield.”A charming return to 18th century fiction. Now trying to decide whether any 1000 page detective novel is worth my time before digging into the new Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) novel. The New York Public Library thinks two weeks is adequate time to read it. Although it’s OK if I’m tardy in returning it, as the Library no longer charges late fees - a policy that baffles me somewhat.


----------



## Zolomon

Re-reading an old favorite - The Rolling Stones (1952) by Robert Heinlein.


----------



## jegreenwood

jegreenwood said:


> Finished “The Vicar of Wakefield.”A charming return to 18th century fiction. Now trying to decide whether any 1000 page detective novel is worth my time before digging into the new Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) novel. The New York Public Library thinks two weeks is adequate time to read it. Although it’s OK if I’m tardy in returning it, as the Library no longer charges late fees - a policy that baffles me somewhat.


Well, I read it - actually speed read the last half. A major disappointment, given that I’ve liked the previous books in the series. I assume it was inspired in part by the recent treatment of Rowling on social media. That was not my problem. The problem (and I want to avoid spoilers) is that by telling much of the tale through web channel dialogs (up to three simultaneously) and Twitter, she makes it extremely difficult to follow. I’m willing to spend 15 minutes parsing a page of Proust or Pynchon, but not a purported pleasure read. Much of the book is spent trying to link the “real life” characters with their screen names. I would have needed an Excel spreadsheet to keep track.


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## alinkner1

*Éric* *Chevillard*'s deeply post-modernist retelling of the classic Grimm's fairy tale:


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## Chat Noir

jegreenwood said:


> Finished “The Vicar of Wakefield.”A charming return to 18th century fiction.


What did you make of _The Vicar of Wakefield_ overall? Apart from it being an 18th century work. 



jegreenwood said:


> Now trying to decide whether any 1000 page detective novel is worth my time...


Are any of them? 99 out of 100 modern books that go beyond 200 pages are just stretched out beyond reason. A waste of valuable life.


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## jegreenwood

Chat Noir said:


> What did you make of _The Vicar of Wakefield_ overall? Apart from it being an 18th century work.
> 
> 
> Are any of them? 99 out of 100 modern books that go beyond 200 pages are just stretched out beyond reason. A waste of valuable life.


For _Vicar,_ my key word was "charming."  I can't agree with your second point. As I said, I am willing to devote as much time to Proust as is needed. I spread it over a number of years, but in the end, I read all of _In Search of Lost Time._


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## Chat Noir

jegreenwood said:


> I am willing to devote as much time to Proust as is needed. I spread it over a number of years, but in the end, I read all of _In Search of Lost Time._


Okay, but I think there's probably more to derive in terms of things worth thinking about from Proust (I've only ever read the first two instalments). Whereas the average modern detective novel is often superficial. In general I was complaining about how these writers (and especially those writing 'fantasy') tend to suffer from verbal, or rather written, diarrhoea above actually saying anything of substance.


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## jegreenwood

Chat Noir said:


> Okay, but I think there's probably more to derive in terms of things worth thinking about from Proust (I've only ever read the first two instalments). Whereas the average modern detective novel is often superficial. In general I was complaining about how these writers (and especially those writing 'fantasy') tend to suffer from verbal, or rather written, diarrhoea above actually saying anything of substance.


Especially this one. I’d love to comment more in depth, but I’m afraid of spoilers.

Agatha Christie novels were about 200 pages,


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## Jannet Brk.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. It should be interesting for those who like alpinism, mountains and everything related to it.


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## starthrower

Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg


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## Captainnumber36

Agatha Christie's - "Hallowe'en Party". I'm on chapter 5, very much an enjoyable read thus far.


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## Ingélou

Brick Lane by Monica Ali. I found it in a charity shop. I thought the writing very good, and the character delineation & comic and also poignant touches were masterly. I had to go on reading. I thought the ending didn't quite work, but overall it was a great achievement. However, I found it painful reading about the living conditions of women in Bengal and London so I won't read it again. It's gone back into the charity bag.


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## RMinNJ

Just got this early holiday present from me to me...all 936 pages...ack, am I going to need a music history degree to read this??


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## Chat Noir

RMinNJ said:


> Just got this early holiday present from me to me...all 936 pages...ack, am I going to need a music history degree to read this??


At 936 pages it is fortitude you need, rather than a music degree.


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## SanAntone

Ian Fleming, "Thunderball."

I've been reading the original James Bond books in order. They are much better than the movies, which except for a few early ones, depart, often drastically, from the books. Fleming is actually a very good writer. His prose style is somewhat elegant, with descriptions that are detailed and imaginative.


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## Rogerx

Bubbles -by Beverly Sills (Author)


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## littlejohnuk1




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## jegreenwood

RMinNJ said:


> Just got this early holiday present from me to me...all 936 pages...ack, am I going to need a music history degree to read this??


I read it. Some knowledge of music helps, but it isn't necessary.


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## jegreenwood

SanAntone said:


> Ian Fleming, "Thunderball."
> 
> I've been reading the original James Bond books in order. They are much better than the movies, which except for a few early ones, depart, often drastically, from the books. Fleming is actually a very good writer. His prose style is somewhat elegant, with descriptions that are detailed and imaginative.


About to start _Dr. No_ - but not the Fleming novel, which I read more than 50 years ago. It's by Percival Everett, and it made the NY Times 100 best books of the year. It does riff on Fleming. From the Times review: 

"Everett’s version of the title character is a distinguished professor of mathematics at Brown University who studies nothing, meaning that he contemplates and researches the topic of nothingness. His name is Wala Kitu, but he has a doctorate and specializes in naught, so: Call him Dr. No, if you please."


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## Rogerx

the Swiss home of Dame Joan Sutherland Richard Bonynge. They spend most of there time there.


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## prlj

SanAntone said:


> Ian Fleming, "Thunderball."
> 
> I've been reading the original James Bond books in order. They are much better than the movies, which except for a few early ones, depart, often drastically, from the books. Fleming is actually a very good writer. His prose style is somewhat elegant, with descriptions that are detailed and imaginative.


I read all of the Fleming books, in order, about a year ago. While I've always been a fan of the movies (embracing the large-scale campiness), the books are another level. Absolutely loved them in a very different way than the films. 

Interestingly, I never pictured any specific actor as I read them. I expected to imagine Connery as I went through, but the mental image I conjured up didn't match up to any of the actors.


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## SanAntone

*Ian Fleming*: _The Spy Who Loved M_e (June 1, 1962)










Unique in the Bond series in that the main character is not James Bond but the female protagonist Viv Michel who occupies the first two-thirds of the book before Bond arrives to save her from the predicament she's found herself. 

I read that Fleming was not happy with the book and did not authorize a paperback edition, but the rights to the title were sold for the film, which does not resemble the book's plot at all.

I am glad I stuck with it since it ended up being a good read. It came under some bad reviews when it came out, but I think it has fared well. After Fleming's death a paperback edition was published.


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## Chat Noir

SanAntone said:


> I read that Fleming was not happy with the book and did not authorize a paperback edition, but the rights to the title were sold for the film, which does not resemble the book's plot at all.


I think there is only one film where the plot of the book matches the film (Casino Royale). They seem to have only sold the titles and then scripts were written to match using certain characters. I don't know the story behind it all, but around ten years ago I read all the Bond books after having watched all the films in sequence. I don't remember any complete matches. Most entirely different.


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## SanAntone

Chat Noir said:


> I think there is only one film where the plot of the book matches the film (Casino Royale). They seem to have only sold the titles and then scripts were written to match using certain characters. I don't know the story behind it all, but around ten years ago I read all the Bond books after having watched all the films in sequence. I don't remember any complete matches. Most entirely different.


There are some which mostly follow the book. 

I read _Thunderball_ just before this one and it was very similar, although with some differences. _Goldfinger_ had a number of elements from the book, although the plot did depart significantly. But I think _The Spy Who Loved Me_ is the only one that has nothing to do with the book. _From Russia With Lov_e basically followed the book.

_For Your Eyes Only_ is a group of shot stories with titles which were used for some of the movies, e.g. _A View to a Kill_, _For Your Eyes Only_, _Quantum of Solace,_ but since I haven't seen them in a long time I am unsure if they retained any plot elements.

You must be referring to the second _Casino Royale_, with Daniel Craig since the first one was a spoof of the Bond brand. I haven't seen any of the movies since Pierce Brosnan.


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## Chat Noir

_Quantum of Solace_ is a modern one isn't it? I haven't seen it. I did mean the Daniel Craig _Casino Royale_. I thought it was quite good and I don't often watch new films!


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## Oldhoosierdude

Fascinating.


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## HenryPenfold

Some Petrarch verses, Proust (in the original French), a couple of Euripides tragedies in Greek and last year's Viz annual.


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## PeterKC

Finished Inferno and Purgatorio. Now on Paradiso.
And recently read this fantastic book about Leibniz and Spinoza. A book I would recommend to anyone interested in the history of philosophy.


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## littlejohnuk1




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## Rogerx

David Leavitt - Shelter in Place


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## alinkner1

Thoroughly enjoying this collection of short fiction by Joe Sacksteder:


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## Chat Noir

Something I've never read before despite it being almost 150 years old. _Carmilla_ by Sheridan Le Fanu. The gothic vampire novel pre-dating and influencing _Dracula_ and introducing that notion of vaguely lesbotic vampiresses.


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## littlejohnuk1

littlejohnuk1 said:


> View attachment 179963


Definitely getting into more Greene. Writing to savour. Figuratively I can see someone reading this with a glass of whisky on a side table cigar resting in the ashtray..


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## Chat Noir

littlejohnuk1 said:


> Definitely getting into more Greene. Writing to savour. Figuratively I can see someone reading this with a glass of whisky on a side table cigar resting in the ashtray..


Greene's ability to go between the social commentary novel and the thriller (or 'an entertainment' as he characterised it) was unmatched. One of the most versatile novelists of the 20th century.


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## Bwv 1080




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## SanAntone

I have been a huge Cormac McCarthy fan, and duly purchased this book and the companion book - but his later fiction has not interested me as much as his earlier novels. I'll probably read them, but like The Road, the subject and setting are not to my taste.


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## Barbebleu

Does anyone have the new Dylan book on Kindle. If so, how does it look? Would I be better getting the hardback?


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## JessieJim

I'm reading My brilliant friend Ferrante, a good book.


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## Chat Noir

I read '_Gojim_' by now almost forgotten Belgian author Johan Daisne. He was the first to bring 'magic realism' into Flemish literature. A have a few paperbacks which are 'new-old stock' and look brand new despite being from 1966-68. So there's also a short play of his I'll read.

After that I'm going to read Stan Barstow's _A Kind Of Loving_, which I suspect I might have read years ago, but I can't recall a thing.


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## SanAntone

Barbebleu said:


> Does anyone have the new Dylan book on Kindle. If so, how does it look? Would I be better getting the hardback?


I have the Kindle book, and haven't even noticed the photography so I guess the hardcover would be more impressive regarding that aspect.


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## littlejohnuk1

As a solid quality palette cleanser after Graham Greene:20% into it and it's a rollicking read with historic details.


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## Chat Noir

'Palate' surely?


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## littlejohnuk1

Chat Noir said:


> 'Palate' surely?


Yes. I had a chortle at some of the writing style today. Picture the scene - a youngish manager of a theatre is lodging with a lady ie one thing led to another although they have their own chambers in the house. An actor has died in a brawl in a drinking den. Unbenownst to the manager the deceased has a heavily pregnant wife. The wife of the deceased has visited him when he was out asking the landlady for a private meeting with him. The manager has to explain to her the situation with the wife to which she becomes apologetic and interested in assisting her in her grief.

`Anne (the landlady) went bustling across the room then stopped in her tracks as a thought struck her. She swung round on her heel.

If the girl is going to be in[I] your bed...[/I]

Yes?

Where will you sleep?

HIs (the managers) grin broadened and she replied with a knowing smile. It would give her the chance to show him how sorry she was.


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## Chat Noir

Like a farce.


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## littlejohnuk1

Chat Noir said:


> Like a farce.


It's Marstons style - it's all a bit stated at times yet a rollicking good read. It's not boring. Think Jeffrey Archer as an Enid Blyton for adults.


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## jegreenwood

I walked by one of my bookshelves and noticed an Everyman collection of Muriel Spark novels. I had read _Jean Brodie _decades ago, but had never looked at the rest. So now I am enjoying _The Girls of Slender Means._


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## Chat Noir

jegreenwood said:


> So now I am enjoying _The Girls of Slender Means._


Good book eh? I have a copy of that in the old Penguin edition from the 60s.


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## jegreenwood

Chat Noir said:


> Good book eh? I have a copy of that in the old Penguin edition from the 60s.


So far. Very British. I am a bit of an Anglophile, but I still don't understand all the references.


----------



## Craveoon

I was gifted this book by a fellow traveler and I'm hooked to it. It's a story of a backpacking explorer traveling across different parts of the world and to the remotest of places exposing herself to alien cultures. 









The other book I'm reading is Francisco Cantú's _The Line Becomes a River_. The book is memoir of the author's time as a Border Patrol agent on the US-Mexico border and his experiences after leaving the Border Patrol.


----------



## Bachtoven 1

A dark, gritty, and violent novel about revenge. The title suggests this is not a fun, light read, and it isn't, but it's still very compelling.


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## Bachtoven 1

I've read a lot of dark, creepy novels, but this one must rank near or at the top! It's billed as gothic horror science fiction, and I've never read anything like it. Her writing is stunning. If you have an aversion to parasites, then give it a hard pass.


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## Barbebleu

I’ve just started the new Bob Dylan book on my Kindle and for my own amusement I’m compiling a play list of all his suggestions, as far as they are available, on Amazon Music Unlimited. Looking forward to the odyssey,😎


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## Red Terror

A good but not great novel by McCabe.


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## Red Terror

Bwv 1080 said:


> View attachment 180401


How is it so far?


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## Bwv 1080

Red Terror said:


> How is it so far?


There are parallel stories of a schizophrenic woman and her salvage diver brother, the woman’s POV stuff is full of hallucinations and less interesting, but the brothers part starts with a mystery / caper kind of like No Country for Old Men. Worth giving a shot


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## starthrower

Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal


----------



## ganio

Michael Hudson - The Destiny of Civilization


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## Chat Noir

ganio said:


> View attachment 181004
> 
> 
> Michael Hudson - The Destiny of Civilization


I've read a couple of Hudson's books and quite liked them. However I (and some others) ended up in an online discussion with him and it went awry. Despite his background and reputation (the respectable Univ of Missouri Kansas City), he doesn't seem to understand certain factual operational things about the economy (e.g. the relationshp of the Federal Reserve to government and it's status) and as such he's obsessed with the idea that some other 'public monetary system' needs to be created rather than taking proper control of the existing monetary economy.


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## PeterKC

Do wonder if this is where Vonnegut got some of his ideas. I love Flan!


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## Haydn70




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## Red Terror

PeterKC said:


> View attachment 181026
> 
> 
> Do wonder if this is where Vonnegut got some of his ideas. I love Flan!


One of the best books I've ever read. O'Brien was on par with Joyce.


----------



## Ulalume!Ulalume!

my top 3 novels read in 2022
1. 








2.








3.








all very amusing in their own ways


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## Chat Noir

I finished _La Carte Postale_ last night, in bed, after drinking a glass of champagne with my neighbour (she wasn't in the bed!). It's quite a long book and I'd been reading it on and off since the summer (mentioned here earlier in this thread). The subject matter of the book is based upon the author's actual family background and reads like a biographical/autobiographical mystery set against the backdrop of the Nazi takeover of France; moving back and forth from then and now.

The final chapter is revelatory and quite moving. After having followed the protagonist's life as a young girl, young woman, survivor of the holocaust, to the last days of old age with Alzheimer's, the final piece of the puzzle could easily bring a tear to your eye.


----------



## alinkner1

*Dumitru Tsepeneag*: _A Novel to Read on the Train_


----------



## littlejohnuk1




----------



## bharbeke

The Classical Music Book: Big Ideas Briefly Explained from DK Publishing

This book is a great resource, and I learned quite a bit, especially in the pre-Baroque sections. The book is sometimes discounted to $1.99 as an ebook, which is how I picked it up.


----------



## Chat Noir

The crusades as seen by the Arabs - Amin Maalouf. 

It's 40 years this year since this book was published, which provided a fresh look at the crusades for a western popular readership. I've always meant to read it and I found a copy today for €1.


----------



## Kivimees

alinkner1 said:


> *Dumitru Tsepeneag*: _A Novel to Read on the Train_
> View attachment 181489


It's nice to see a new translation of Dumitru Tsepeneag's work into English. Some years ago, I read his "Hotel Europa", which I quite enjoyed.


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## jegreenwood

Nearing the end of Updike’s _Rabbit at Rest._ Powerful novel but quite depressing. Maybe despairing (from Harry’s/Rabbit’s perspective) at this point.


----------



## Haydn70




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