What are you currently reading?

[NikF]

Nabokov's Dozen



For my train journey.

[milk]

A dreadful book. It is deeply unreliable. Armstrong is either unaware of,or ignores the large corpus of modern historians and their work on the sources. Cf ibn Warraq, The Quest for the Historical Mohammed.
Even Robert Spencer's extremely hostile and tendentious book is better than Armstrong's.

I read a book by her years ago, I can't remember which one. If I am not mistaken, her thesis is that religions have a more-than-superficial commonality. If I remember right, her view is a bit pollyannish, like, all religion tends to the uplifting of humanity - something that appealed to me at the time but seems like quackery now.

[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.

Sorry. Maybe wrong thread as it's music related!

[LKB]

They Call it Pacific by Clark Lee

Mr. Lee was working with the Associated Press in Asia when the USA was drawn into WWII. This book is an engaging account of his various encounters and adventures during the Japanese conquest of the Philippines, as well as the subsequent campaigns which began to change the course of the Pacific War.

Readers considering this opus should bear in mind its contemporary nature ( it was published in 1943 ), and set their expectations accordingly. With that caveat stated, I'm happy to recommend this work.

Cheers,

LKB

[SimonNZ]

Started:

[Jaakko Keskinen]

[Ken B]

Robert Littel
The Company

An 800 page novel about the CIA. After 400 pretty good pages it has bogged down a bit, but not enough to give up on yet.

[ritter]

Starting this well-researched and rather engaging survey of Gabriele d'Annunzio's relation to music and composers:



I recently finished author Rubens Tedeschi's scathing but very interesting survey of Italian opera at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries (but skipped—for the time being—his essays on diverse works by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi that we're appended to the book in the reprint I own).

[LKB]

For probably the rest of the week, I'll be perusing the scores of Bach's Mass in b minor and the Brandenburg Concertos. Old friends, but it's been a few years since l went searching out any secrets that may have been eluding me.

Dover Miniatures ftw,

LKB

[Christo]

Finished:



The Wolff book was much better than I expected it to be, and is kind of misrepresented by the "shocking revelations!" advertising its had.

My findings too (though I read it superficially only, skipping some parts). It's a convincing chronicle of all the gossip that not only fills, but represents the present White House.

[Karl Henning]

Dover Miniatures ftw

srsly!

Thread Duty:

[asin]0300108826[/asin]

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Finnish literature for a change.

[André]

An excellent book. I read it in the French translation.

[NikF]

I donate a bunch of stuff to the charity shop but usually end up buying something too.

[NikF]

I've never read any Dickens. So I'm going to read this.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

I've never read any Dickens. So I'm going to read this.

I've read that once and recall liking it. Many of Dickens's endings have left me cold (although there are exceptions of course such as Our Mutual Friend) but this just might have the very best last sentences in a Dickens novel.

[NikF]

I've read that once and recall liking it. Many of Dickens's endings have left me cold (although there are exceptions of course such as Our Mutual Friend) but this just might have the very best last sentences in a Dickens novel.

I'll look forward to that - and the rest of it, of course!

[milk]

The last year or so I've been trying to read sci-fi. Of the many books I've tried, I only ended up liking a handful. Many well-regarded sci-fi bored me to tears. Some exceptions are Hyperion and almost any book by Ursula Le Guin. Anyway, this vintage wacky sci-fi pulp is a surprisingly fun read.

[Florestan]

I've never read any Dickens. So I'm going to read this.

Depending on taste, you're in either for a treat or for being bored to tears. Fwiw, it's my favorite Dickens novel.

[Mahlerian]

Two sets of lectures given at Harvard by well-known composers.  I have to say that while some parts of Hindemith's idealistic vision of the composer's role in society resonate with me, his disparagement of the 12-tone method would laughable if it weren't the prototype of many of the same nonsensical criticisms that Bernstein brought out again in his own lecture series (and which continue to be parroted as gospel truth by people who have never listened to much 12-tone music anyway).

Sessions speaks from an equally erudite but less lofty viewpoint, and his discussion of his own creative process feels very familiar to me.