What are you currently reading?

[Karl Henning]

Or, The Twilight Zone.

[Florestan]

I have read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

And Andrei, too.

Oh, yes, I have read it. 

[Cato]

The separation was very thorough, in time and place.

Or, The Twilight Zone.

I know somebody whose younger brother (by 12 years) is so similar to him - psychologically and  physically - that I have called them identical twins separated by 12 years.

History, yes --- and geography, too. As a child, I spent hours studying maps, a pleasure which I still experience. Give me a world atlas and lock me in an empty room --- you won´t hear from me for days! 

You whippersnappers are in the club: I also used to peruse maps of all kinds, and read many history books on my own in grade school.   0:)

Oh yes, I too spent countless hours looking at maps.

I didn't have any 'colleagues' in high school that were at all interested in literature, let alone visual arts (I started to get into visual arts later myself too, though, last year of sr. high) or classical music.

I went to an all-boy Catholic high school, and fortunately found a good number of budding experts on what the Germans might call "hochgeistiges Zeug"     : many of us had already discovered e.g. Orwell, Poe, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dumas, Hesse, E.T.A. Hoffmann, etc. and science-fiction authors like Heinlein, Asimov, and Bradbury.

I was a Brucknerian in grade school already, but there were "perfect Wagnerites" among us, pro-Stravinsky people and pro-Schoenberg people.  There was even an acolyte of Stockhausen!

One was an American version of Eduard Hanslick: "Up Brahms, Down Bruckner (and Wagner)!"

[Florestan]

I didn't have any 'colleagues' in high school that were at all interested in literature, let alone visual arts (I started to get into visual arts later myself too, though, last year of sr. high) or classical music.

Classical music fans there were two, myself and another guy. Literature, on the other hand, was quite popular in my class. 

As for visual arts, my father is an amateur painter and has a very good library of books about visual arts, so I was exposed to them very early. 

[Jo498]

I think I loved the Atlas before I could properly read longer books; it was somewhat intermediate between picture-dominated books and text-dominated books. In any case I knew most European capitals by heart before I even entered primary school. I read voraciously as a child, almost everything I could get. The first famous/serious novel was probably "Treasure Island" I was 8 or 9, in hindsight certainly too young but I had been obsessed with pirates already a few years before that. I still love that book, it is among the best adventure stories I know, has a cool ambiguous villain, a heroic (but not extremely unrealistically so) young protagonist etc.

But my favorite book around 11 was probably Ende's "Neverending Story" (and when the movie came out, my first time in a cinema, it was traumatically disappointing, so until today I am very wary of movie adaptations of books, most of them suck)

[Jubal Slate]

Good right off.
[asin]B00AHFJ8ZG[/asin]

[Mookalafalas]

Good right off.
[asin]B00AHFJ8ZG[/asin]

As far as Jazz writing goes, Gary Giddins is tops.  Very knowledgeable, he always sees things in a big-picture, holistic way, like a top-shelf academic, but also has the writing chops of a great journalist. 

TD:
  Based on Ken's recommendation I got this.
[asin]0195125002[/asin]

  I'm only 20 pages in, but it is clear this is a gem.  Very engaging writing style that is dense with information yet wonderfully lucid.

[Bogey]

This one goes out to MN Dave:

[Karl Henning]

(* chortle *)

[Florestan]

Continue reading Oblomov (and enjoying it immensely).

Dostoevsky said about Goncharov: "In [him] one meets the soul of a small time clerk, a head devoid of any idea and the eyes of a boiled fish; and God, as if to make a joke, gave him a brilliant talent ". 

Be it as it may, the delicate poetry and humor in the chapter titled "Oblomov´s Dream" is pure genius. Reading through it I wish some Russian composer took inspiration from it and wrote some Kinderszenen. I know Tchaikovsky´s, but they don´t match exactly that marvelous chapter.

[Drasko]

Michael Psellus - Chronographia

[North Star]

Fetched from the post today, in a package that was large enough for half a dozen volumes.
[asin]0091940176[/asin]

[kishnevi]

Michael Psellus - Chronographia

My version of that....


TD
Bruce Catton
A Stillness at Appomattox
More prep for my little trip next month to Virginia.

[kishnevi]

If you want a great read (and excellent history), find Douglas Southall Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command (3 Volumes).  Best book on the Civil War, IMO.  Most libraries have it.  Shelby Foote's 3-vol. narrative history is also very good.

They are the classics.
But this is for a focused purpose.  I will be B"H with a tour group for four days, literally going over the ground from Petersburg to Appomattox that saw the final week of the Army of Northern Virginia's existence.
Last year I went with the same group to visit the sites of the Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse. We were there literally 150 years to the day after the fighting at Spotsylvania.  If you want, you can see the pictures I took then on my Flickr stream. (Hit the globe under my avatar.)

[Jubal Slate]

 

[Karl Henning]

There's a bulletin:

"It is no secret that popular media have a real struggle communicating complexity," Camosy wrote.

What do Americans really think about abortion? The answer may surprise you.

[Ken B]

This remarkably good blog post.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/22/growth-mindset-3-a-pox-on-growth-your-houses/

[Moonfish]

Just started on this one. Very interesting...   

[asin] 0312427719[/asin]

[Bogey]

Reads like a spy novel. 

[aligreto]