What are you currently reading?

[Brian]

I don't think the reasons that we're interested in Russell are the same reasons we might be interested in reading Wikipedia pages about all the great philosophers.

Personally I like authorial "bias" and voice, an author with strong opinions, because it creates a much more entertaining read and my mind is still strong enough to draw its own conclusions once I've figured out what the author's bias is. Same type of pleasure as reading literature, music, and film critics whose tastes aren't identical to my own.

[ritter]

Just read Guillaume Apollinaire's short Le Flâneur des deux rives, a delightful collection of texts on Paris and some specific characters. It was published in 1918, the year of the poet's death, and the book is regarded as a precursor of surrealism.

The above has led me to tackle André Salmon's mammoth Souvenirs sans fin. The 1100+ pages of this memoir cover the years 1903 to 1940. Salmon was a friend of Apollinaire's, an early promoter of cubism, and seems to have met everyone in the French literary and artistic milieu of the first half of the 20th century.

[Spotted Horses]

I don't think the reasons that we're interested in Russell are the same reasons we might be interested in reading Wikipedia pages about all the great philosophers.

Personally I like authorial "bias" and voice, an author with strong opinions, because it creates a much more entertaining read and my mind is still strong enough to draw its own conclusions once I've figured out what the author's bias is. Same type of pleasure as reading literature, music, and film critics whose tastes aren't identical to my own.

+1

Another book I like is "The Making of the Modern Mind" by John H Randall. Published in 1926, final revision in 1977. I remember being very impressed with I read it many decade ago.

[JBS]

Got these tonight on the way home from work



FAVN was published in 2014, so its poems are not included in what might be called the collected edition, which includes her poetry up to 2012.
WRFTC is brand new (its official publication date was yesterday).

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

[vers la flamme]

Rereading Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha



A good read for a tumultuous time in my life.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Rereading Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

A good read for a tumultuous time in my life.

Great novel!

[Spotted Horses]

Rereading Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha



A good read for a tumultuous time in my life.

Tumultuous? Based on your participation here, you spend all day reading novels and listening to the stereo.

[Ganondorf]

The real Miz.

I think this will keep me occupied for a few weeks.

I am currently in the beginning of 5th and final part in Finnish. Yeah I know, I'm slow as hell. There are very long stretches when I don't read it at all. And it's not because of lack of interest either. I love it and Hugo in general is one of my favorite writers ever.

Related to another lengthy book, I today finally finished Mann's Joseph and his Brothers. I very much enjoyed it overall, though to me the easiest and best parts were the second and fourth part. In first and third parts it felt at times convoluted and overwritten although overall the effect I had of Mann's work was very enjoyable as expected from a writer of his stature. Also, the book, like most great literature, moves on so many levels that it is impossible for anyone, maybe even for the writer himself, to catch every single nuance and meaning inherent in the story. Also, the book indeed was very funny as most of all Mann's work while still remaining a serious piece of art.

[André]

I am currently in the beginning of 5th and final part in Finnish. Yeah I know, I'm slow as hell. There are very long stretches when I don't read it at all. And it's not because of lack of interest either. I love it and Hugo in general is one of my favorite writers ever.

Related to another lengthy book, I today finally finished Mann's Joseph and his Brothers. I very much enjoyed it overall, though to me the easiest and best parts were the second and fourth part. In first and third parts it felt at times convoluted and overwritten although overall the effect I had of Mann's work was very enjoyable as expected from a writer of his stature. Also, the book, like most great literature, moves on so many levels that it is impossible for anyone, maybe even for the writer himself, to catch every single nuance and meaning inherent in the story. Also, the book indeed was very funny as most of all Mann's work while still remaining a serious piece of art.

+1. Very well put !

Mann's magnum opus is fantastic precisely because it operates on many levels simultaneously. Family drama mingles with vaudeville and tonge-in-cheek humour, history, oneirism, the mysteries of arithmetics, mysticism, etc.

[vandermolen]

Recently finished this gruelling read (not without moments of very dark humour):

[vers la flamme]

Tumultuous? Based on your participation here, you spend all day reading novels and listening to the stereo.

I'm pleased to give off that impression. However my life isn't quite all that idyllic. Working full time, taking classes, dealing with the aftermath of a breakup... Siddhartha makes more sense with all this craziness going on.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I'm pleased to give off that impression. However my life isn't quite all that idyllic. Working full time, taking classes, dealing with the aftermath of a breakup... Siddhartha makes more sense with all this craziness going on.

Yes, we all live like that. Plus some of us marry and raise kids, who do the same thing. However, in decades, we won't exist and will be forgotten. Interesting world.

[LKB]

Yes, we all live like that. Plus some of us marry and raise kids, who do the same thing. However, in decades, we won't exist and will be forgotten. Interesting world.

Optimist...

,

LKB

[vers la flamme]

Optimist...

,

LKB

The man's a true Schopenhauerian 

[SimonNZ]

Half way through:



Probably following this up with Jenny Diski's memoir of growing up as a ward of Doris Lessing, and their difficult relationship.

[aligreto]

O'Connor: My Father's Son





This is an autobiographical work. It deals with that stage in O'Connors's life where he, as a young man, began his working life and also his literary life. It is also a time where he came into social contact with many of the great literary figures of his time in Ireland. It is interesting in that he treats them as people as opposed to literary figures. O'Connor's writing style is ostensibly simple but it delivers incisive and sensitive insights into his characters, the world in which they inhabit and the contemporary society in general in which he lived. It is a story of his time and also the formative years of a young man maturing. What I found most interesting was the relationship that he had with Yeats both within and without our National Theatre, The Abbey Theatre.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

O'Connor: My Father's Son



This is an autobiographical work. It deals with that stage in O'Connors's life where he, as a young man, began his working life and also his literary life. It is also a time where he came into social contact with many of the great literary figures of his time in Ireland. It is interesting in that he treats them as people as opposed to literary figures. O'Connor's writing style is ostensibly simple but it delivers incisive and sensitive insights into his characters, the world in which they inhabit and the contemporary society in general in which he lived. It is a story of his time and also the formative years of a young man maturing. What I found most interesting was the relationship that he had with Yeats both within and without our National Theatre, The Abbey Theatre.

The book sounds interesting. I will get a copy.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Boris Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life. Leon Aron.

[aligreto]

The book sounds interesting. I will get a copy.

He was simply a very good writer irrespective of what he was writing about. He would be best remembered for his short stories.