What are you currently reading?

[greg]

Finished The Plague last night. Pretty satisfying, thoughtful experience.

Checked out 3 books from the library today (because I'll be in the car quite a bit next week):
Ulysses, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Anthem (Ayn Rand).

I've just started Ulysses, and I'm going to have to do something to get a better grasp of what's going on (i'll google cliff notes or something). I brought it in to work to read and someone told me that he read it (it was required reading at his school), and he completely enjoyed it ("I'm glad I was required to read it- it's a great book"). Seems to be the book I hear most praised, anyway, so I guess it's about time I start it. 

[greg]

Read Anthem today. One of the best things I've ever read. 

[DavidRoss]

I just started reading the book "Oliver Cromwell" (from the Very Interesting People Series) by John Morrill. I just recently discovered that my 10 times great grandfather was Sir Oliver Cromwell the Lord and Protector's uncle (so this makes him my first cousin 11 times removed). 

Hmmm...and one of mine was John Pym, so our families have long had an association we never suspected. 

Alburquerque, Rudolfo Anaya, just finished, and various web sites regarding sorting out Windows 7 driver issues with older motherboards and RAID arrays.  All sorted, running like a top.

[Elgarian]

Since he had reason to believe that those tapes would never be heard, he could create the impression that they were inconsequential, just a learning experience for Gordon Parry.

This attributes a kind of Machiavellian manipulation on Culshaw's part that I can't believe in. It's at odds with his essential humility and regard for most of the people he worked with that for me is a characteristic of the book as a whole. We seem to be demonstrating a classic example of two people reading the same book and coming away with completely polarised perceptions of it.

[Elgarian]

Currently reading (but only just continuing with) one of the most tedious biographies I've read: Adrian Boult by Michael Kennedy. Apparently Kennedy was given access to Boult's detailed diaries, which he's used freely, but with curious results. Whenever he quotes anecdotes directly from the diaries, Boult the man begins to shimmer into life. But elsewhere the biography gives the impression of a teeming list of facts and events, arranged in the form of prose. As a reference book I can see that this might have value; as an attempt to bring us closer to the life and work of the man, it fails almost completely, for me. I suspect I'll give up the struggle fairly soon.

[Scarpia]

This attributes a kind of Machiavellian manipulation on Culshaw's part that I can't believe in. It's at odds with the his essential humility and regard for most of the people he worked with that for me is a characteristic of the book as a whole. We seem to be demonstrating a classic example of two people reading the same book and coming away with completely polarised perceptions of it.

Give Machiavelli a microphone and you have Culshaw.   

[Elgarian]

Give Machiavelli a microphone and you have Culshaw.   

Let's give him a crossed pair of microphones and record him in the vivid immediacy of stereo.

[Scarpia]

Let's give him a crossed pair of microphones and record him in the vivid immediacy of stereo.

Well, strictly speaking Machiavelli with one microphone is Walter Legge.  Culshaw would demand at least three.   

[CD]

Ellsworth Kelly by E.C. Goossen. Can't find a cover image, but here's the painting on the front:

[Hollywood]

Hmmm...and one of mine was John Pym, so our families have long had an association we never suspected. 

Way cool! Small world isn't it? 

[DavidRoss]

Way cool! Small world isn't it? 

Especially after a dozen or so generations!  (At least for us vigorously interbred Yanks!) 

[greg]

Out of curiosity, any other book like Anthem that has the same type of narrative tone? I mean, the whole detached, dreamlike tone?

Halfway through Slaughterhouse-Five (should be done soon)... not quite what I was expecting. Kind of an amusing book.

[Scarpia]

Especially after a dozen or so generations!  (At least for us vigorously interbred Yanks!) 

I met a girl who said she was a descendant of Pocahontas.

[DavidRoss]

Recently:

Yes.

[Daverz]

Recently:

Yes.

Oh, dear, the dumb brother.

[Philoctetes]

Oh, dear, the dumb brother.

...but the one not damned by God.

[val]

THOMAS S. KUHN:        "The Structure of scientific revolutions"

One of the most important and influential books of the 20th century. Kuhn rejects the idea that science proceeds by accumulation of knowledge, but, instead, in some ways like Art's history, by ruptures, deep changes of pattern or paradigm.

[CD]

[Brian]

Recently:

Yes.

Happily, apart from his namesake Christopher, few or no atheists in my awareness experience any sort of "rage." I'd be a mighty tempestuous person otherwise... actually I'd be enraged.

~



A book which, counter all our mass media, makes the intriguing and wholly fascinating argument that the world is getting better all the time, it's a better place than it was lately, and it will keep getting nicer and nicer. I don't know how much I'll end up agreeing, but it really is refreshing to read somebody who has reasons for being an optimist, rather than yet another easy-cash book about Doom and Gloom and the death of civilization.

[MN Dave]

V. Van Gogh letters