What are you currently reading?

[Florestan]

I abandoned the above book at around 250 pages (out of more than 800). Too many details, too many secondary and tertiary characters, too many footnotes --- all of them interrupting the flow. At about a quarter of the whole, Mozart didn't even get to compose Idomeneo. A clear instance of too much of a good thing.

Switched to this:



and it's much more of a page-turner. The essential characters and events are covered, insightful comments on people and music are offered, the flow is fluent (pleonasm, I know) and there are no footnotes whatsoever. I am already a page 282 of 416. (I'm reading it in the original French)

Marcel Brion is a master biographical narrator, I had already read his Life of Schumann and it was an equally gripping reading.

[Mandryka]

[foxandpeng]

All the books, it seems. Finally have access to every book that we own, now that we have moved house. Have spent the last week together 'oohing' and 'aha-ing' at things we haven't seen for ages, didn't know we had, and having listened to the Radio 4 programme on the Library at Alexandria, realising that Ptolemy and his boys were utter amateurs when it comes to gathering the accumulated wisdom of humanity

[Karl Henning]

Nearing the end of re-reading The Hobbit. And I've just learnt today that an old schoolmate (we've known each other practically from the egg) has jumped artistic rails and is finishing up his first novel, which I've just begun reading in MS.

[SimonNZ]

Started:

[hopefullytrusting]

Jack Lindsay's autobiography (mine is the collected edition, but I could find no good images of it so here are the 3):



Although, I would love to have this set displayed (these covers are gorgeous).

[T. D.]

Long ago I read the first in the Slough House series and enjoyed it. Then I read a non-Slough House book by Mick Herron (I think it was Down Cemetery Road) that was less good (though not bad either) and moved on.

Returning to try Slough House #2 and will see how it goes.

[SimonNZ]

Started the Herron. Halfway through the Murray:



Among the many now forgotten historical writings from the 18th and 19th century that Murray details I was particularly interested in a work by Benjamin Constant from 1819 called "The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns".  Looks like I'll be ordering it as part of this:



I'll also need to get around to reading Plutarch's life of Lycurgus and of Solon. I had previously no idea that these figures and these texts had generated such discussion and debate among historians and political thinkers of the period.

[SimonNZ]

I'll also need to get around to reading Plutarch's life of Lycurgus and of Solon. I had previously no idea that these figures and these texts had generated such discussion and debate among historians and political thinkers of the period.

Reaquired from a secondhand bookshop just now:



Lycurgus is 40 pages of the first volume, Solon 35 pages of the second. Hopefully can do both this weekend.

They also had one of the Pimlico editions of Berlin's essays that I'm now hunting down:

[ritter]

Aldo Palazzeschi's 1953 novel Roma.



Palazzeschi (real name Aldo Giuriani, 1885 - 1974) was a part of the Futurist movement in his youth, but this novel is a sort of belated "return to order". It is set in the last days of WW2 and early postwar years in Rome, obviously, with the city and its  people being the main character. But the vignette-like chapters are held together by the character of the (Papal) Prince of Santo Stefano (in some ways a precursor of Tomasi's Prince of Salina - The Leopard was first published posthumously five years after Palazzeschi's book) and his family.

I'm enjoying this tremendously.

[San Antone]

The Late Monsieur Gallet by Georges Simenon



Georges Simenon and Agatha Christie are two of my favorite writers, and I have been alternating their books this summer.

[hopefullytrusting]

The job is to remember.

[AnotherSpin]

[SimonNZ]

A quarter of the way into this 600 page book in just one sitting, as its a much swifter and more engaging work than I was expecting.

I hadn't known Machaut was such a large influence on Chaucer, nor the tidbit that while seventeen year old Chaucer was outside witnessing the siege of Reims in 1359 the much older Machaut was inside waiting out the siege writing music.

[LKB]

At last I've (1) remembered, (2) am motivated and (3) have the energy to follow through.

Therefore, the following posts will, I think, adequately document the rather ostentatious edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings which I purchased a couple of years ago. There are ( rather appropriately ) nine images to follow, along with my attempted descriptions.

( There will be a brief delay while I re-train myself on posting attachments here... please feel free to hum the " standing by " tune from Jeopardy!. )

[LKB]

At last I've (1) remembered, (2) am motivated and (3) have the energy to follow through.

Therefore, the following posts will, I think, adequately document the rather ostentatious edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings which I purchased a couple of years ago. There are ( rather appropriately ) nine images to follow, along with my attempted descriptions.

( There will be a brief delay while I re-train myself on posting attachments here... please feel free to hum the " standing by " tune from Jeopardy!. )

Well, despite converting the phone's native .jpg's into .png files, they're still too large to attach. I didn't  anticipate this, and to reconfigure my phone's camera just for this task is not an attractive option. So until the size limit catches up with this Year of Our Lord 2025, I won't be able to post the images.

As an alternative, I'll find the edition online at a site with images included, and post a link.

Sorry...