What are you currently reading?

Started by facehugger, April 07, 2007, 12:36:10 AM

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NikF

#8720
July 05, 2018, 09:36:55 PM


For reading today while at the gym, between sets and perhaps even reps.
"You overestimate my power of attraction," he told her. "No, I don't," she replied sharply, "and neither do you".

ritter

#8722
July 05, 2018, 11:48:38 PM
Quote from: SimonNZ on July 05, 2018, 11:24:19 PM


Quote from: ritter on October 14, 2016, 01:36:00 AM
Transcript of the deliberations of the Nobel prize committee:



- Let's give the prize to Haruki Miru...Huraki...
- It's Hikaru Makirumi
- Hariku Mukirami?
- Haiku...
- To hell with it, let Bob Dylan have it...
;D

Christo

#8723
July 10, 2018, 04:42:09 AM
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

Florestan

#8724
July 12, 2018, 12:50:00 PM
Quote from: Christo on July 10, 2018, 04:42:09 AM
And good to know that you love the calvinist Daniel Defoe too.  :D https://www.christianforums.com/threads/robinson-crusoe-a-calvinist-tract.676850

I like Defoe as a writer. I had no idea he was a Calvinist (just how Robinson Crusoe can be interpreted as Calvinist propaganda is beyond me), but hey nobody's perfect, not even a great writer.  ;D
"Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part." - Claude Debussy

Ken B

#8725
July 12, 2018, 07:03:20 PM
Quote from: Florestan on July 12, 2018, 12:50:00 PM
I like Defoe as a writer. I had no idea he was a Calvinist (just how Robinson Crusoe can be interpreted as Calvinist propaganda is beyond me), but hey nobody's perfect, not even a great writer.  ;D
He couldn't help it, it was predestined.

Florestan

#8726
July 13, 2018, 01:11:39 AM
Quote from: Ken B on July 12, 2018, 07:03:20 PM
He couldn't help it, it was predestined.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
"Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part." - Claude Debussy

Jaakko Keskinen

#8727
July 19, 2018, 09:40:32 AM
Reading Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist".
"Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him. Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand."

- Victor Hugo

SimonNZ

#8728
July 21, 2018, 12:38:06 AM


a history of Eritrea through the twentieth century

Jaakko Keskinen

#8729
July 22, 2018, 11:29:07 AM
Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age, the short story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz".
"Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him. Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand."

- Victor Hugo

Daverz

#8730
July 22, 2018, 09:56:20 PM
I don't read much fiction these days.  These detective novels are set in the pre-war Third Reich.

[asin] B006LFO1DA[/asin]

vandermolen

#8731
July 23, 2018, 12:50:02 AM
Quote from: Daverz on July 22, 2018, 09:56:20 PM
I don't read much fiction these days.  These detective novels are set in the pre-war Third Reich.

[asin] B006LFO1DA[/asin]

I've wanted to read those for some time. Like the TV series Babylon Berlin I like detective stories set in that time.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Christo

#8732
July 23, 2018, 02:33:06 AM
An old favourite, in this very classical format:
... music is not only an 'entertainment', nor a mere luxury, but a necessity of the spiritual if not of the physical life, an opening of those magic casements through which we can catch a glimpse of that country where ultimate reality will be found.    RVW, 1948

André

#8733
July 23, 2018, 04:24:51 AM
Quote from: Daverz on July 22, 2018, 09:56:20 PM
I don't read much fiction these days.  These detective novels are set in the pre-war Third Reich.

[asin] B006LFO1DA[/asin]

Excellent, all three of them. Kerr has supplied spin-offs set in German-occupied Prague, Nazi-infested Argentina under Perón, pre-Castro Cuba, etc. Like the proverbial cat, Bernie Gunther has many lives !

Draško

#8734
July 23, 2018, 05:31:06 AM Last Edit: July 23, 2018, 05:35:14 AM by Draško


Picked up a random volume of Giacomo Casanova's memoirs (Histoire de ma vie), just to see whether it's readable and worth spending the time, the whole thing is rather long.

Ken B

#8735
July 23, 2018, 01:49:40 PM
Quote from: vandermolen on July 23, 2018, 12:50:02 AM
I've wanted to read those for some time. Like the TV series Babylon Berlin I like detective stories set in that time.

Slightly a mixed bag, but I enjoyed them. The later ones I read were not as good as these three IMO.

vandermolen

#8736
July 24, 2018, 07:50:17 AM
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles which I'm enjoying greatly.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

aligreto

#8737
July 24, 2018, 08:06:47 AM
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled





I am about one third of the way through this book and I have no idea what is really going on here. I find it disconcerting. Other than very well stage managed choreography within the linear plot and credible characters, if a somewhat incredible storyline, the basic premise eludes me or has yet to be revealed later. I hope that it is the latter.

vandermolen

#8738
July 24, 2018, 02:46:27 PM
Quote from: Ken B on July 23, 2018, 01:49:40 PM
Slightly a mixed bag, but I enjoyed them. The later ones I read were not as good as these three IMO.

Thank you Ken.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Draško

#8739
July 24, 2018, 03:12:58 PM
Quote from: aligreto on July 24, 2018, 08:06:47 AM
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled





I am about one third of the way through this book and I have no idea what is really going on here. I find it disconcerting. Other than very well stage managed choreography within the linear plot and credible characters, if a somewhat incredible storyline, the basic premise eludes me or has yet to be revealed later. I hope that it is the latter.

No, it won't get any clearer or more linear by the end.  >:D

I absolutely loved the novel. One of my very favorite contemporary pieces.

I understood it / read it as four parts being four dreams over four nights of a concert pianist on a tour in some random city, where his everyday experiences of travel, hotels, practicing, anxiety about the concerts get mixed and jumbled with his memories of his life, family, his youth, his fears and frustrations and all in this dream logic where everything is familiar but not quite, where one can enter a broom closet and exit miles away, where nothing resolves and multiple characters can represent the same person, but in some strange way it all makes sense. It did to me at the time, at least.   
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