What are you currently reading?

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Reading Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist".

[SimonNZ]

a history of Eritrea through the twentieth century

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age, the short story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz".

[Daverz]

I don't read much fiction these days.  These detective novels are set in the pre-war Third Reich.

[asin] B006LFO1DA[/asin]

[vandermolen]

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.

[Christo]

An old favourite, in this very classical format:

[André]

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]

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]

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]

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles which I'm enjoying greatly.

[aligreto]

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]

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

Thank you Ken.

[Draško]

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. 

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.   

[aligreto]

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

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.   

Thank you for that; it actually makes some sense to me as I understand what you are saying. I thought that some coherence might eventually evolve but as it will not I will reappraise my outlook on the experiences related as I move on.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is freaking amazing! It is absurd as hell - but it doesn't matter!

[Zeus]

The notion of causality (ie A causes B) is extremely fundamental but very poorly understood.  The social sciences in particular appear clueless about causality.  When scientists tried to answer the question "does smoking cause cancer", it turned out they lacked the tools to properly study the question.

Daniel Pearl has led the charge amongst the machine learning crowd to tackle this fundamental problem, and invented a "causality calculus" to that end.  This book is his attempt to discuss his (and others') progress in the field to lay persons (such as myself).

The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect
by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie

I am reading the book slowly because I think the book may be IMPORTANT.  Hopefully he won't disappoint.

[Mahlerian]

The notion of causality (ie A causes B) is extremely fundamental but very poorly understood.  The social sciences in particular appear clueless about causality.

That's because none of them have read much philosophy, and many of them ridicule it (which goes for most scientists, actually).  If they actually looked at what's been said over the years, they would know that actually proving that one event caused another particular event to happen is logically and epistemologically thorny.

Hume, anyone?

Oh, thread duty:

村上春樹: 1Q84

The Japanese split long novels into multiple volumes.  I'm on "Book 2" now.

[SimonNZ]

Oh, thread duty:

村上春樹: 1Q84

The Japanese split long novels into multiple volumes.  I'm on "Book 2" now.

How are you finding that? I've heard very mixed reports.

[Mahlerian]

How are you finding that? I've heard very mixed reports.

Granted that I'm only just over one third of the way through, but I'm interested in continuing.  There is perhaps an over-the-top element in the situations involved (every character seems to have gone through some kind of major abuse, or knows someone who has), but at least so far it's all handled with an almost detached perspective.  Obviously I can't speak to the quality of the English translation, but I like the way Murakami's prose reads in Japanese (even though he sends me to my dictionary relatively frequently).

Translation from Japanese into English is very difficult to do well; things that sound elegant and succinct in Japanese often come out clunky and belabored in English because of several peculiarities about the former.

If there's something that would make me think differently after the halfway point, I'm not there yet.

[SonicMan46]

BOY - I've not responded to this thread in a LONG time, but I'm always reading - below are a half dozen books, half finished and the other half ongoing - reading these over the last few months - if any interest, please ask - Dave

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