What are you currently reading?

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music by Rob Young

A few years ago, I got interested in folk and roots music, and its rock offshoots, and eventually I wanted to know more about the whole subject. This enormous tome (almost 700 pages) covers the UK side of things in exhaustive detail.

One thing I like about it is that the author doesn't really respect genre boundaries. This means he is able to discuss the folk influences and explorations of composers like Vaughan Williams, Bax and Holst as part of the same larger phenomenon as the later folk revivals and the folk-rock explosion of the 60s/70s. He also discusses how folk music in Britain was a "floating signifier" that passed through a number of stages in its significance: the recovery of 'buried" national culture in the early 20th century, the politicized working-class music of the mid-century, and the psychedelic, individualist phase from the 1960s onward.

There's so much detail here that it's easy to get lost in it, but on the positive side, I can open any chapter and learn something interesting. It's really quite an achievement, and I highly recommend it for fans of British classical, folk, or rock (or all three).

[AlberichUndHagen]

Started reading Mann's lengthiest work:



Based on the opening pages, there is going to be more time-related pondering, a la Magic Mountain.

[JBS]

Started reading Mann's lengthiest work:



Based on the opening pages, there is going to be more time-related pondering, a la Magic Mountain.

From what I remember (it's been several decades since I read it), Mann ponders over a lot of things over the course of the series (isn't it actually a trilogy?).

[André]

Started reading Mann's lengthiest work:



Based on the opening pages, there is going to be more time-related pondering, a la Magic Mountain.

My favourite book, ever. I read it 4 times in the last 35 years. Mann takes his sweet time retelling Joseph's saga - and its many peripheral stories. It is filled with humorous traits that often come unexpectedly (as in Magic Mountain), and the recurrence of character leitmotives is brilliantly handled.

[Mookalafalas]

Phenomenal writing and scholarship. Like his Teddy Roosevelt trilogy (but unlike his rather cursory LvB), a joy to read. It's not a page turner, but does achieve (for me, anyway) novel-like immersion. And I've always rather disliked Edison.
[asin]081299311X[/asin]

   It's written in reverse chronological order, which as far as I can tell (1/4 in) provides no benefit at all, except welcome novelty.  I read a lot of biography, and it is kind of fun to not start with the parents, ancestors, childhood, etc.   Perhaps when I get to the end there will be some kind of payoff.

[aligreto]

I have just started The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

[AlberichUndHagen]

(isn't it actually a trilogy?).

Actually, it's a tetralogy, however it is one novel in 4 parts, not a novel series in 4 parts. Funny how I am reading at the same time 3 novels among the longest in the world (In search of lost time, Joseph and his Brothers, Les Misérables).

[j winter]

Phenomenal writing and scholarship. Like his Teddy Roosevelt trilogy (but unlike his rather cursory LvB), a joy to read. It's not a page turner, but does achieve (for me, anyway) novel-like immersion. And I've always rather disliked Edison.
[asin]081299311X[/asin]

   It's written in reverse chronological order, which as far as I can tell (1/4 in) provides no benefit at all, except welcome novelty.  I read a lot of biography, and it is kind of fun to not start with the parents, ancestors, childhood, etc.   Perhaps when I get to the end there will be some kind of payoff.

Interesting... I got this at Christmas, but haven't started it.  I'm in the middle of big book on Napoleon at the moment, but this is on the list.  I enjoyed his previous books on Roosevelt, haven't read any others...

[Mookalafalas]

I have just started The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

   I liked that a LOT.  The first has some thriller mystery elements that I had some doubts about, and book two starts off slowly. However, when it eventually moves into the far future, it was the most fascinating and thought provoking Sci-Fi I've read (which isn't much, admittedly).  One point he makes, which I found absolutely persuasive, is that we should NOT be trying to broadcast our presence to ET life.

[Mandryka]

Started reading Mann's lengthiest work:



Based on the opening pages, there is going to be more time-related pondering, a la Magic Mountain.

I'll be interested to know what you make of that, I'm not sure if  I finished it. He certainly had ideas about time and rebirth, and I vaguely remember being a bit put off by it all, but I may well return to it.

[aligreto]

   I liked that a LOT.  The first has some thriller mystery elements that I had some doubts about, and book two starts off slowly. However, when it eventually moves into the far future, it was the most fascinating and thought provoking Sci-Fi I've read (which isn't much, admittedly).  One point he makes, which I found absolutely persuasive, is that we should NOT be trying to broadcast our presence to ET life.

Cheers. I am some eighty pages in at this point and I too like it.

[Brian]

The Mill on the Floss

[AlberichUndHagen]

The Mill on the Floss

Ah, I plan on reading that one at some point too. Btw, I am almost finished with Daniel Deronda and it has been fantastic!

[Ratliff]

Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told, Tom Phelan



A novel telling the story of two deaths that took place in an Irish village in 1951. The tale is recounted by three people who meet in a sunroom, more than 50 years later, consisting of the coroner who presided at the inquests at the time, his wife, and a man who was a boy in the village at the time and witnessed part of the aftermath of the first death. It turns out that both deaths were homicides, and the village overlooked the circumstances of the deaths because they brought justice to the victims, in a larger sense.

A fine book, recommended.

[Ratliff]

Exactly. I just re-read Mansfield Park in January, and the thing that's a struggle is that it's just a vicious read. I'd skim over a paragraph thinking it would be boring descriptions of party planning, then my eye would catch onto a word like a fish hook, and I'd go back and discover that Austen was just seething with sarcasm. Mansfield Park is about as genteel as a knife fight. The fact of slavery hovers over everything Sir Thomas touches - and another thing, too, especially with Fanny's beau, the absolute buffoonery and uselessness of the Church of England on moral issues like slavery. Fanny and Edmund are a uniquely loserly pair of "heroes"; they wind up together because they are useless to anyone else. I don't think Austen had much love for them at all.

The enormous and lengthy subplot about staging the play was - even after I pulled up the play's Wiki and read the scandalous plot summary - not interesting.

EDIT: In her fascinating and highly recommendable (if occasionally far-fetched - but in a quite thought-provoking way) book, "Jane Austen, the Secret Radical," Helena Kelly points out that Mansfield Park received almost no reviews and comment after its publication, and even a column late in Austen's life celebrating her body of work omitted it. The general consensus has been that it's because of the book's weakness; but Kelly, and based on some comments in letters possibly Austen herself, believed it was because of the anti-Church agenda hidden behind Edmund.

It was your mention of the book here that prompted me to read the book again. Thanks!

The Mill on the Floss

Another fine book, better than Middlemarch, I think, which is usually mentioned as her best work.

[Florestan]

The Man in Revolt

[AlberichUndHagen]

Macbeth

[Brian]

Another fine book, better than Middlemarch, I think, which is usually mentioned as her best work.

Interesting! I'm about two-thirds of the way through now (their father just died); like Middlemarch, the book has an interesting inertia-driven pace - that is, at the start, it takes forever to get wound up, and then once it starts moving, it doesn't stop. Getting really engrossed.

The ending of Middlemarch is a beautiful little sermon. I hear that the ending of this one is ... rather different.

[Daverz]

   I liked that a LOT.  The first has some thriller mystery elements that I had some doubts about, and book two starts off slowly. However, when it eventually moves into the far future, it was the most fascinating and thought provoking Sci-Fi I've read (which isn't much, admittedly).  One point he makes, which I found absolutely persuasive, is that we should NOT be trying to broadcast our presence to ET life.

I enjoyed that one, particularly the historical backdrop.  But I was not able get into the sequel.

Currently reading:

[asin]B07KVLPYDQ[/asin]

Reminds me of a jazz musician riffing on a tune they wrote earlier in their career. 

[asin]B07GD46PQZ[/asin]

[AlberichUndHagen]

Interesting! I'm about two-thirds of the way through now (their father just died); like Middlemarch, the book has an interesting inertia-driven pace - that is, at the start, it takes forever to get wound up, and then once it starts moving, it doesn't stop. Getting really engrossed.

The ending of Middlemarch is a beautiful little sermon. I hear that the ending of this one is ... rather different.

Now that I'm finished with Daniel Deronda I think I will move on to The Mill on the Floss as my next George Eliot project whenever that may be. Daniel Deronda was awesome, as was Silas Marner. The only minus with Deronda was that the ending felt rather abrupt and anti-climactic. However, I didn't find the two plots of the book unconnected at all.