What are you currently reading?

[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.

[Mandryka]

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.

I've just finished Cosette, so I'm probably more than one third through. Jean Valjean's strength and resourcefulness reminds me of Ulysses. The romantic nature worship is dated of course, but so is the Homeric cult, so I'll let it pass. It does seem to be a real epic, with Homeric ambitions.

I'm quite surprised by how much of a work of ideas it is. I'm keen to see what he does with the Jean Valjean/Cosette relationship, it's not like anything I've come across before in literature.

The French is a pleasure to read, so clear and easy to follow. And some of Hugo's anti- church diatribes are great fun - f.e. the bit where he draws a long comparison between the life of the prisoners on a labour camp and the life of children in a convent school.

[Artem]

Linn Ullmann is a daughter of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. She recounts her childhood, but mostly Unquiet is about her feelings and attitudes towards her dying father. Children writing about their dead parents is not my favourite genre.

The Ice Palace was another book about death and dead children. Why is Nordics literature so gloomy?

I was very curious about Murakami/Ozawa book, but my expectations were probably too high. Murakami writes well about music, but Ozawa doesn't add too many interesting details to that book during his conversations with Murakami. He's very modest. Murakami's own book about classical music would be great.

[vers la flamme]

Linn Ullmann is a daughter of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. She recounts her childhood, but mostly Unquiet is about her feelings and attitudes towards her dying father. Children writing about their dead parents is not my favourite genre.

The Ice Palace was another book about death and dead children. Why is Nordics literature so gloomy?

I was very curious about Murakami/Ozawa book, but my expectations were probably too high. Murakami writes well about music, but Ozawa doesn't add too many interesting details to that book during his conversations with Murakami. He's very modest. Murakami's own book about classical music would be great.

I really liked Absolutely on Music. It was actually the first Murakami I ever read. But you're right. Ozawa is pretty quiet for the most part. I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that he was convalescing from a pretty serious illness during the time of the interviews. In Ozawa's epilogue to the book, he writes

I have lots of friends who love music, but Haruki takes it way beyond the bounds of sanity. Jazz, classics: he doesn't just love music, he knows music. Tiny details, old stuff, musicians—it's amazing. He goes to concerts, and to live jazz performances, and he listens to records at home. It really is amazing.

If a damn conductor ever said that about me, I think I could die happy  I bet Haruki Murakami feels the same way.

[Artem]

I hope Murakami's book about classical records will be translated into English. I enjoyed his book about jazz LPs.

[SimonNZ]

I hope Murakami's book about classical records will be translated into English. I enjoyed his book about jazz LPs.

The jazz writings gave been translated into English?

[Artem]

It was translated into Russian.

It is interesting that Murakami book about running was picked up for the English speaking audience for translation, but his music writing hasn't been so far. Perhaps, the book with Ozawa is the beginning.

[Jo498]

I've just finished Cosette, so I'm probably more than one third through. Jean Valjean's strength and resourcefulness reminds me of Ulysses. The romantic nature worship is dated of course, but so is the Homeric cult, so I'll let it pass. It does seem to be a real epic, with Homeric ambitions.

I'm quite surprised by how much of a work of ideas it is. I'm keen to see what he does with the Jean Valjean/Cosette relationship, it's not like anything I've come across before in literature.

The French is a pleasure to read, so clear and easy to follow. And some of Hugo's anti- church diatribes are great fun - f.e. the bit where he draws a long comparison between the life of the prisoners on a labour camp and the life of children in a convent school.

OTOH the Bishop at the beginning is as close to a real saint as anyone in modern literature, and Jean Valjean overall also is a bit of a (more fleshed out) saint.

I should some time re-read this. It was the first "real" literature I ever read (in translation, of course) at about 12 (not really having asked for my parent's consent, I "borrowed" it from their shelves), I had become interested because a few years earlier my mother had read it and recounted a summarized, bowdlerized version to me and my siblings. I vaguely remember that when I first read it I was a bit disappointed at the relative lack of "escape from the galleys" action episodes and I certainly missed a lot of the historical and other background. I re-read once but probably still a teenager or in my early 20s. I am not sure if I have the patience nowadays although I expect it to be a much faster read than most 19th/early 20th century Russians or Germans.