What are you currently reading?

[Opus106]

Not reading, but want to read Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. An excerpt is posted in The Guardian's website.

[Lilas Pastia]

I left Nietzsche's The Gay Science midway through. A collection of aphorisms, sentences and mini-essays with no apparent direction and no inter-relatedness. Pearls of wisdom, chips from the workbench, bathroom reading, I guess there's a bit of all that here. Often very perceptive, but the lack of structure doesn't help make this a compelling reading experience. I  jumped to Der Wagner Fall ("The Wagner Case"). At least here there's a coherent development of his thought-provoking ideas on the subject.

[Haffner]

Wagner's writings can be verbose to the extreme (surprised anyone?) but this book is an excellent insight into Wagner as a man. The intro by the editor is worth the book by itself.

[karlhenning]

Wagner's writings can be verbose to the extreme (surprised anyone?)

Not I 

[mozartsneighbor]

[Kullervo]

[karlhenning]

Read that in high school French class, actually.

[pjme]

Gustave Flaubert



Bought it for 2 euros on the second hand bookmarket ( Koningsplein - Antwerp). Read only a few pages : hilarious, serious, masterly....Fleas and mosquitos are everywhere ....
+ a translation of Charles Burney's voyage through the Netherlands....Really great!

English music historian and composer. Educated at Shrewsbury School and at the Free School, Chester, he was apprenticed to Thomas Arne, 1744-46. In 1749 he became organist at St. Dionis's Backchurch, London, and in 1751 moved to King's Lynn, Norfolk, where he was a teacher and organist. Returning to London in 1760 he taught music to the well-to-do. Meanwhile he cultivated growing interests in science, literature, and history; in 1769 he published a book on comets. The following year he embarked on his brilliantly chronicled travels; although his tours of Italy and France (1770) and of Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands (1772) were made chiefly to gather information for his General History of Music, the chronicles themselves are as valuable to scholars as the history. They detail with rare precision and humor the author's personal contacts with figures such as Gluck, Hasse, C. P. E. Bach, Quantz, J. A. Hiller, Galuppi, Padre Martini, Piccinni, Farinelli, Metastasio, Diderot, Rousseau, and Klopstock. In its emphasis on contemporary rather than "ancient" music, the General History, differs from that by John Hawkins (1776). Burney's writings constitute the most important firsthand account of 18th-century European musical life. In 1806 he was pensioned by the British government.



P.

[Kullervo]

Read that in high school French class, actually.

He certainly isn't one for verbosity.

Not that that's a bad thing...

[Lethevich]

The rather epically titled "The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine and North Germany". Due to the total lack of reasonable English-language choices on the subject, I had to go for a book from 1906, and unfortunately it both looks and smells its age. It's not good when the spine of a book is not just sun-bleached, but an entirely different colour... The pages are uneven, so make "flicking through" impossible, and the binding looks like it's about to give way. Why do people like antiques?



Edit: impossible to get a good photo at this time at night (the flash overexposes everything), but even with this bad pic it is evident how weird the pages are. Not sure how they ended up like that - perhaps insects/rats or something. It looks like papyrus

[mozartsneighbor]

Maybe Christopher Buckley will end being more famous than his father in the long run. Anyway, he is certainly a lot funnier. Recommended.

[mozartsneighbor]

Also read this a couple of days ago. Immensely funny and perceptive -- Dan Savage is one of the best social commentators around, though he is underrated because everyone just thinks of him primarily as a sex columnist.

[mn dave]

Except they colored in the pants on my copy. Didn't like those prison leggings on the cover I guess.

[SonicMan46]

Except they colored in the pants on my copy. Didn't like those prison leggings on the cover I guess.

 

Dave - that's an excellent book from one of the seminal field folklorist of early 20th century American music - Alan Lomax started w/ his father John - great & numerous 'field' recordings and discoveries (including Ledbelly) - for those interested, check out this short Wiki Article on the son! 

Just getting back to the Forum after a 3-day trip to visit my son in Indianapolis - started a new book on the plane - The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (2008) by David Abulafia - just got through the first hundred pages, mainly the European reactions (and interactions and eventual destruction) of the populations of the Canary Islands; next on the list is Columbus and the 'other' New World - so far, well done w/ plenty of research & references (pic added above) - 

[M forever]

Is that a submarine on the cover? It looks like a Russian typhoon class. Are there subs in the book?

[lisa needs braces]

Is that a submarine on the cover? It looks like a Russian typhoon class. Are there subs in the book?

This wasn't exactly my edition, but I believe that's supposed to be a remote research station in Siberia.

[lisa needs braces]

I finished this novel yesterday:



The plot concerns a colony on the moon gaining independence from Earth. Heinlein can overindulge in extended dialogue sequences but the novel was overall pretty good. I especially liked the "weapon" that the colonists ultimately used against Earth!

[lisa needs braces]

Started this novel today:

[val]

Just finished the first volume of Karl Marx and Engels Chosen Works. It includes some texts I didn't know, but also great works such as Le 18 Brumaire de Louis Bonaparte, the Théses sur Feuerbach.
It is a very good and precise edition.

[Florestan]