What are you currently reading?

Started by facehugger, April 07, 2007, 12:36:10 AM

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aligreto




Another novel by Somerset Maugham.
This time The Explorer.

aligreto

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on September 17, 2020, 10:00:23 AM
I love them. You may like stories by E.T.A. Hoffman as well.

Cheers and thank you for the recommendation. I do not know E.T.A. Hoffman at all.

Florestan

#10122
Quote from: aligreto on September 18, 2020, 01:55:16 AM
Cheers and thank you for the recommendation. I do not know E.T.A. Hoffman at all.

I second that. You should make his acquaintance asap. You might start with The Sandman which is the inspiration behind Coppelia and Les contes d'Hoffmann.

He was also a composer but his music isn't even a quarter as quirky and interesting as his literary works.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

aligreto

Quote from: Florestan on September 18, 2020, 02:39:59 AM
I second that. You should make his acquaintance asap. You might start with The Sandman which is the inspiration behind Coppelia and Les contes d'Hoffmann.

He was also a composer but his music isn't even a quarter as quirky and interesting as his literary works.

Thank you for that.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Florestan on September 18, 2020, 02:39:59 AM

He was also a composer but his music isn't even a quarter as quirky and interesting as his literary works.

Ha ha 🤣🤣🤣

Iota



This has some of the best writing about classical music I've read anywhere. Mahler, Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Messaien Quartet for the End of Time all appear, contemporary music too, and much else besides.
The plotline is about an unwitting septagenarian bio-terrorist, but really the book is about music, its composition and one man's reaction to it, all from the pen of a very gifted writer. Recommended.

SimonNZ

Quote from: Iota on September 18, 2020, 01:49:55 PM


This has some of the best writing about classical music I've read anywhere. Mahler, Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Messaien Quartet for the End of Time all appear, contemporary music too, and much else besides.
The plotline is about an unwitting septagenarian bio-terrorist, but really the book is about music, its composition and one man's reaction to it, all from the pen of a very gifted writer. Recommended.

There's a copy of that at the local secondhand bookshop and I've been wavering about getting it. I'll probably do so now adding your recomendation on to the scales.

Opened it to a random page while I was looking at it and read something like "You're the Thomas Merton of music: you want to live in a hermitage in Times Square with a big neon sign pointing towards you saying Hermit"

vers la flamme

I've never heard of Richard Powers before (other than seeing The Overstory in bookstores) but that description of Orfeo has definitely put him on my map. Going to try and find that book.

MN Dave

"The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence." — Arthur Schopenhauer

ritter

Didn't really read, but rather listened to Jean Cocteau's monodrama Le bel indifférent, as performed in a 1953 radio broadcast by Édith Piaf (for whom the piece was written).

Ca. 30 minutes of über-melodramatic boulevard theatre, and really, really fun. Piaf is really engaging, and the broadcast ends with one of her classic songs, Je t'ai dans la peau.... Great stuff!

[asin]B00IK18P3A[/asin]

Brian

#10130
Quote from: vers la flamme on September 19, 2020, 06:17:29 AM
I've never heard of Richard Powers before (other than seeing The Overstory in bookstores) but that description of Orfeo has definitely put him on my map. Going to try and find that book.
I bought Overstory to read during pandemic and I expect to get to it next month. Will be my first encounter with Powers but agree that Orfeo sounds really interesting.

Edit: currently reading two different books about America's great migration: nonfiction "The Warmth of Other Suns" (Isabel Wilkerson) and brand new fiction "The Vanishing Half" (Brit Bennett). In hindsight this is too much of the same theme at once, but both are impressive in their own ways. Suns, in particular, is an incredible achievement of history writing and research. As a history master's degree holder, my jaw is on the floor at the achievement even if the subject matter makes challenging reading.

Iota

#10131
Quote from: SimonNZ on September 18, 2020, 06:28:09 PM
Opened it to a random page while I was looking at it and read something like "You're the Thomas Merton of music: you want to live in a hermitage in Times Square with a big neon sign pointing towards you saying Hermit"

:D  There's one particular relationship in the book where some memorably caustic opinions are traded, the protagonist being on the end of the majority of them. Though actually I think that one may be from another, also important figure.

Quote from: vers la flamme on September 19, 2020, 06:17:29 AM
I've never heard of Richard Powers before (other than seeing The Overstory in bookstores) but that description of Orfeo has definitely put him on my map. Going to try and find that book.

I hadn't come across him before Orfeo either, but will now be on the look-out for the next possibility.

aligreto

Huxley: Antic Hay





This is a rather cynical look at upper class attitudes and cultural life in a time of great change after the end of WWI.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on September 17, 2020, 10:00:23 AM
I love them. You may like stories by E.T.A. Hoffman as well.

Quote from: aligreto on September 18, 2020, 01:55:16 AM
Cheers and thank you for the recommendation. I do not know E.T.A. Hoffman at all.


Quote from: Florestan on September 18, 2020, 02:39:59 AM
I second that. You should make his acquaintance asap. You might start with The Sandman which is the inspiration behind Coppelia and Les contes d'Hoffmann.

He was also a composer but his music isn't even a quarter as quirky and interesting as his literary works.

I forgot to mention that Offenbach's opera, Tales of Hoffman, is based on three short stories by E.T.A. Hoffman.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: aligreto on September 20, 2020, 07:56:09 AM
Huxley: Antic Hay





This is a rather cynical look at upper class attitudes and cultural life in a time of great change after the end of WWI.

Gorgeous cover !! I still read his Doors of Perception every year!

aligreto

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on September 20, 2020, 08:25:06 AM
Gorgeous cover !! I still read his Doors of Perception every year!

As a young man I devoured his books. I am now, as a more "mature" man, embarking on a slow re-reading project.  ;D

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

#10136
Katherine Mansfield, Stories. A glimpse of death, live and aging in fancy life.

Jo498

Quote from: Florestan on September 18, 2020, 02:39:59 AM
I second that. You should make his acquaintance asap. You might start with The Sandman which is the inspiration behind Coppelia and Les contes d'Hoffmann.

He was also a composer but his music isn't even a quarter as quirky and interesting as his literary works.
As a composer he revered Mozart (and changes his middle name to Amadeus) and this shows but while he also hailed Beethoven Hoffmann himself remained a more hesitant (and probably simply not as musically gifted) classicist romantic. Admittedly I have never heard his opera, Undine, that was more or less displaced by a later light romantic opera with the same title by Lortzing (which used to be rather popular in Germany until the 60s but has since almost fallen into obscurity).

The most famous piece based on Hoffmann (but rather different in detail) is the Nutcracker.
There is at least one more opera based on Hoffmann (the novella Madame de Scuderi), namely "Cardillac" by Hindemith.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Florestan

Quote from: Jo498 on September 20, 2020, 09:54:46 AM
As a composer he revered Mozart (and changes his middle name to Amadeus) and this shows but while he also hailed Beethoven Hoffmann himself remained a more hesitant (and probably simply not as musically gifted) classicist romantic. Admittedly I have never heard his opera, Undine, that was more or less displaced by a later light romantic opera with the same title by Lortzing (which used to be rather popular in Germany until the 60s but has since almost fallen into obscurity).

The most famous piece based on Hoffmann (but rather different in detail) is the Nutcracker.
There is at least one more opera based on Hoffmann (the novella Madame de Scuderi), namely "Cardillac" by Hindemith.

I've heard his piano sonatas. I've forgotten them as soon as they were over --- but honestly, there's not much beyond Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven which did not suffer the same fate, Scarlatti, Schubert and Chopin excluded.  :D

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Jo498

I think I have heard his symphpony that is modelled after Mozart's E flat K 543 and I have a recording of a piano trio. The latter is nice but not quite Beethoven.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal