What are you currently reading?

[Scion7]

[aligreto]

Amis: That Uncertain Feeling





This is the story of a married, indolent and self centred librarian, his affair with a young married woman and the consequences that inevitably come as a result. It is witty, amusing, entertaining and is also full of biting satire on Welsh nationalism.

[MN Dave]

Just borrowed

[Florestan]

Just started



Far from the Madding Crowd

So far so good.

[Scion7]

[AlberichUndHagen]

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Gogol: Diary of a Madman and Other Stories





These stories are filled with eccentric and interesting characters.

I love them. You may like stories by E.T.A. Hoffman as well.

[aligreto]

Another novel by Somerset Maugham.
This time The Explorer.

[aligreto]

I love them. You may like stories by E.T.A. Hoffman as well.

Cheers and thank you for the recommendation. I do not know E.T.A. Hoffman at all.

[Florestan]

Cheers and thank you for the recommendation. I do not know E.T.A. Hoffman at all.

I second that. You should make his acquaintance asap. You might start with The Sandman which is the inspiration behind Coppelia and Les contes d'Hoffmann.

He was also a composer but his music isn't even a quarter as quirky and interesting as his literary works.

[aligreto]

I second that. You should make his acquaintance asap. You might start with The Sandman which is the inspiration behind Coppelia and Les contes d'Hoffmann.

He was also a composer but his music isn't even a quarter as quirky and interesting as his literary works.

Thank you for that.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

He was also a composer but his music isn't even a quarter as quirky and interesting as his literary works.

Ha ha 🤣🤣🤣

[Iota]

This has some of the best writing about classical music I've read anywhere. Mahler, Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Messaien Quartet for the End of Time all appear, contemporary music too, and much else besides.
The plotline is about an unwitting septagenarian bio-terrorist, but really the book is about music, its composition and one man's reaction to it, all from the pen of a very gifted writer. Recommended.

[SimonNZ]

This has some of the best writing about classical music I've read anywhere. Mahler, Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Messaien Quartet for the End of Time all appear, contemporary music too, and much else besides.
The plotline is about an unwitting septagenarian bio-terrorist, but really the book is about music, its composition and one man's reaction to it, all from the pen of a very gifted writer. Recommended.

There's a copy of that at the local secondhand bookshop and I've been wavering about getting it. I'll probably do so now adding your recomendation on to the scales.

Opened it to a random page while I was looking at it and read something like "You're the Thomas Merton of music: you want to live in a hermitage in Times Square with a big neon sign pointing towards you saying Hermit"

[vers la flamme]

I've never heard of Richard Powers before (other than seeing The Overstory in bookstores) but that description of Orfeo has definitely put him on my map. Going to try and find that book.

[MN Dave]

Gear [asin]0306817837[/asin]

[ritter]

Didn't really read, but rather listened to Jean Cocteau's monodrama Le bel indifférent, as performed in a 1953 radio broadcast by Édith Piaf (for whom the piece was written).

Ca. 30 minutes of über-melodramatic boulevard theatre, and really, really fun. Piaf is really engaging, and the broadcast ends with one of her classic songs, Je t'ai dans la peau.... Great stuff!

[asin]B00IK18P3A[/asin]

[Brian]

I've never heard of Richard Powers before (other than seeing The Overstory in bookstores) but that description of Orfeo has definitely put him on my map. Going to try and find that book.

I bought Overstory to read during pandemic and I expect to get to it next month. Will be my first encounter with Powers but agree that Orfeo sounds really interesting.

Edit: currently reading two different books about America's great migration: nonfiction "The Warmth of Other Suns" (Isabel Wilkerson) and brand new fiction "The Vanishing Half" (Brit Bennett). In hindsight this is too much of the same theme at once, but both are impressive in their own ways. Suns, in particular, is an incredible achievement of history writing and research. As a history master's degree holder, my jaw is on the floor at the achievement even if the subject matter makes challenging reading.

[Iota]

Opened it to a random page while I was looking at it and read something like "You're the Thomas Merton of music: you want to live in a hermitage in Times Square with a big neon sign pointing towards you saying Hermit"

  There's one particular relationship in the book where some memorably caustic opinions are traded, the protagonist being on the end of the majority of them. Though actually I think that one may be from another, also important figure.

I've never heard of Richard Powers before (other than seeing The Overstory in bookstores) but that description of Orfeo has definitely put him on my map. Going to try and find that book.

I hadn't come across him before Orfeo either, but will now be on the look-out for the next possibility.

[aligreto]

Huxley: Antic Hay





This is a rather cynical look at upper class attitudes and cultural life in a time of great change after the end of WWI.