What are you currently reading?

[knight66]

Bruce, I think you are fevered after all these loooong films you have been watching. If you want a multi volume saga set in the past, then try John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. Not so much read now, but he did win the Nobel Literature Prize. It starts in Victorian times and: how many authors in 1906 would start their book with the most buttoned up of characters ruminating while he sits on the toilet?

I know that I am certainly guilty of writing overlong sentences. Also of overusing punctuation, especially the Oxford comma and this....

I now usually go back over what I write and divide the sentences down. I still let flurries of typos through.

Mike

[ritter]

...
I know that I am certainly guilty of writing overlong sentences. Also of overusing punctuation, especially the Oxford comma and this....

I now usually go back over what I write and divide the sentences down. I still let flurries of typos through.

Mike

Ah, the Oxford comma! The horror, the horror... 

I still recall my teachers (and even my dad) insisting on a sort of rule of thumb: "sentences in English should be much shorter than in Spanish". I still regard the English language as one that benefits form short, terse sentences, while writers in French, German, Italian or Spanish can get away with much longer constructions, studded with suordinate sentences and the whole lot.

And then there's the problem of pargarpohs. I think Adorno, for instance, really went too far in this respect

And yes, that paragrapph by Powell is really something. I read the first tome, and stopped there. Why read an English imitation of Proust, when you can have the real thing? 

[zamyrabyrd]

I still recall my teachers (and even my dad) insisting on a sort of rule of thumb: "sentences in English should be much shorter than in Spanish". I still regard the English language as one that benefits form short, terse sentences, while writers in French, German, Italian or Spanish can get away with much longer constructions, studded with subordinate sentences and the whole lot.

I don't think that in English it is a matter of length of sentences but using too many loaded words that gets tiresome. Maybe in scientific writing in which the readers are expected to know the meanings it is not such a problem. In a sentence where there are short, terse words, a compound one stands out and can have a nice effect. Mixing too many descriptive words is a mistake.
When I proofread my own writing, I try to get rid of clauses where participles can do the job just as well.

[jlaurson]

Ah, the Oxford comma! The horror, the horror... 

I still recall my teachers (and even my dad) insisting on a sort of rule of thumb: "sentences in English should be much shorter than in Spanish". I still regard the English language as one that benefits form short, terse sentences, while writers in French, German, Italian or Spanish can get away with much longer constructions, studded with suordinate sentences and the whole lot.

And then there's the problem of pargarpohs. I think Adorno, for instance, really went too far in this respect

And yes, that paragrapph by Powell is really something. I read the first tome, and stopped there. Why read an English imitation of Proust, when you can have the real thing? 

I'll read the Mahler book(s) of Adorno, yet, but he's a terrible writer for all that I am concerned, along there with a whole slew of German philosophers who knew how to hide behind tedious language to aggrandize their thoughts, whether they were mediocre or not. No one questioned them, because by the time you got to the heart of the meaning in the center of a labyrinthian sentence, you no longer had the power to question the veracity of it. Hegel, Heidegger... all deliberately bad writing. Kant bad, but not deliberate, I would think. Good writers among German philosophers are all the more rare for the language lending itself to length, but they exist -- most prominently Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both geniuses at how to use the language.

Not Powell is cranking up the esoteric, to which I am particularly allergic. He really is making it effin' difficult for me to continue with the series. But I have the books, so plow-on I must.

I don't think that in English it is a matter of length of sentences but using too many loaded words that gets tiresome. Maybe in scientific writing in which the readers are expected to know the meanings it is not such a problem. In a sentence where there are short, terse words, a compound one stands out and can have a nice effect. Mixing too many descriptive words is a mistake.
When I proofread my own writing, I try to get rid of clauses where participles can do the job just as well.

A beautiful English sentence, however long or short, comes into being when one word necessarily leads to the next; when one sentence necessarily leads to the next. And, as Bruce points out, if any sentence needs to be read only once and, further, only *feels* like it needed to be read once... as there are some sentences we don't actually re-read but, half-way into the next sentence, wonder if we might not better have read them again. Those are also rubbish.

The reason why I cannot credit Wodehouse to have been genuine when he wrote flatteringly to Powell, is that Wodehouse knew better than perhaps anyone how to make one sentence or phrase follow the next. His writing is almost an antithesis to Powell's.

[aligreto]

I still recall my teachers (and even my dad) insisting on a sort of rule of thumb: "sentences in English should be much shorter than in Spanish". I still regard the English language as one that benefits form short, terse sentences, while writers in French, German, Italian or Spanish can get away with much longer constructions, studded with suordinate sentences and the whole lot.

I think that I recall reading that Hemingway was a ferocious editor of his own work and operated on the basis that if a word did not add value then leave it out.

[Karl Henning]

Well, I have just finished If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground by Lewis Grizzard (does not rhyme with blizzard).  A nice courtroom scene near the end, too.  With that title, the anticipation ran throughout the book as to just where outside of The Peachtree State he was a-goin' to wind up.  And now I've found out.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Finally getting around to Moby Dick, appreciate it better now than when I was in high school.

I am coincidentally reading it, too. Heavy reading at times, certainly, but it has its merits. My favorite chapter so far is the chapter 41, which describes how Ahab lost his leg and became mad. Very convincing psychological description going on there. I find it remarkable how ahead of his time Melville seemed to be when concerning african americans, native americans etc. Certainly there is a bit of exaggerated stereotyping concerning Tashtego, Daggoo and Queequeg but they are all described as sympathetic characters.

[zamyrabyrd]

I am coincidentally reading it, too. Heavy reading at times, certainly, but it has its merits. My favorite chapter so far is the chapter 41, which describes how Ahab lost his leg and became mad. Very convincing psychological description going on there. I find it remarkable how ahead of his time Melville seemed to be when concerning african americans, native americans etc. Certainly there is a bit of exaggerated stereotyping concerning Tashtego, Daggoo and Queequeg but they are all described as sympathetic characters.

Oh great, I am on Chapter 61, won't give you any spoilers though. I bought the book on the cheap a couple years ago and it meanwhile retreated to the back of my double shelved library. I was desperate for something to read recently and found it by chance. Happy surprise!

[Karl Henning]

Oh great, I am on Chapter 61, won't give you any spoilers though. I bought the book on the cheap a couple years ago and it meanwhile retreated to the back of my double shelved library. I was desperate for something to read recently and found it by chance. Happy surprise!

(Again:) Excellent! 

[knight66]

Ah, the Oxford comma! The horror, the horror... 

And yes, that paragrapph by Powell is really something. I read the first tome, and stopped there. Why read an English imitation of Proust, when you can have the real thing? 

Haha, very good, the words 'nail' and 'head' come to mind.

Mike

[Ken B]

An old locked room murder mystery

[asin]1601870612[/asin]

[zamyrabyrd]

Apparently there is a Star Trek derivation of the Moby Dick saga (more than one reference):
Check out 4:59 (original "mortar" was changed to "cannon")

https://www.youtube.com/v/btxMWZeO88Y

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."

[zamyrabyrd]

Does anyone remember the "Moby Grape" jokes back then?

Q: "What's purple and huge and swims in the ocean?"
A: "Moby Grape."

[zamyrabyrd]

Show and tell for Moby Dick, was ignominiously nailed to the mast...

[Parsifal]

Just finished The Crystal Palace by Amitav Ghosh. It is a historical novel that begins with the removal and exile of the last king of Burma and follows the lives of various members of his household down to the late 20th century. The protagonists in the later part of the tale are not members of the royal family, but descendants of the queens servant and the wife of the Indian official put in charge of the exiled king. Interesting themes are treated, including the role of India troops in the British imperial army during colonial times and up to WWII. A very interesting and rewarding book.

[NikF]

Crazy Cock (Miller, Henry)

[asin]0802132936[/asin]

[Jo498]

I have about 100 pages to go in N. Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon". This author had been recommended to me several times and I finally got around to read first "Snow Crash" a few weeks ago and then what is probably his most famous book. Snow Crash was a wild ride and a fairly quick read and quite entertaining, despite a somewhat weaker ending. It must have been amazingly impressive in the early 90s when the internet and virtual reality were still in the future.

Cryptonomicon is about 2.5 times the length (about 900p in my pbck edition) and a little too ambitious for its own good, I think. It takes almost a 3rd of the book to pick up a decent pace but then it gets quite good although I find the "dotcom" part of the action (contemporary with its publication in 1999) not as interesting and even slower than the WW II part.

(I also wonder it Stephenson found it necessary to invent German words to make the Nazis even more obtuse or if he/the publisher were simply too lazy to check the German words for errors (most of them are slight but obvious for a competent speaker/reader). This seems amazingly widespread (both the "Fringe" TV series as well as a book or two by Ben Aaronson are even worse in this regard), considering that German is not an exotic language and it should be easy to find someone to check such stuff)

[SimonNZ]

[Mahlerian]

Just finished this book:



Do music critics influence taste?  Mark Grant says...maybe?  Sometimes?  He doesn't provide any definitive answer to the questions he asks, which may be just as well, but a range of personalities are found within this lively and very readable history of American criticism, from those who loved everything new they came across to the most bitter of reactionaries (I hadn't known, or had forgotten, that Henry Pleasants lived long enough to see the thesis of his anti-modernist screed completely disproven).  Olin Downes' fawning letters to Sibelius are excerpted, as are the usual panoply of derogatory bon mots which some critics loved to traffic in.

[Florestan]

Gregor von Rezzori - Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

A splendid page turner, full of humanity, humor, tenderness and nostalgia. Highly recommended.