What are you currently reading?

[rockerreds]

Nabokov-Lectures On Literature

[rockerreds]

V.S.Pritchett-Midnight Oil

[M forever]

I just finished "Before the Dawn" and really liked it, so I am continuing "Guns, Germs, and Steel" now which is quite interesting, too, although for some reason, I don't find it a little tedious to read, not quite as compelling as "Before the Dawn" although that book is much more densely packed with hard scientific facts which are not always easy to understand for M, but the way it was written made it highly readable.
As M has the strange habit of either not reading anything at all or 3 or so books at the same time (typically about various subject, like one about history or technical stuff and one about music and sometimes also a novel), I have just finished "So und nicht anders" (roughly "Like This and No Other Way"), a highly interesting biography of Günter Wand and I will start reading "Das Reichsorchester", a book about the role of the Berliner Philharmoniker in the "3rd Reich" now.

[Renfield]

As M has the strange habit of either not reading anything at all or 3 or so books at the same time (typically about various subject, like one about history or technical stuff and one about music and sometimes also a novel)

Interesting. Renfield seems to share that habit with M, and is adopting the third person for this sentence to honour that fact.


I picked up William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive yesterday, after recently having read (and loved) Neuromancer: I hope to dispatch it soon. And I'm also reading Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, though in a pace befitting of its mystique.


Finally on the non-technical front, I've decided to include this in my lighter, summer as-of-the-current-moment reading list:



So much did I love Other Voices, Other Rooms that I'm willing to give one of his other, different-style works a go.

And what better works to start with than a few of his last?

At worst, I'll just go back to a nice collection of Kafka's short stories that I was perusing a couple of months ago.

[rubio]

Interesting. Renfield seems to share that habit with M, and is adopting the third person for this sentence to honour that fact.


I picked up William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive yesterday, after recently having read (and loved) Neuromancer: I hope to dispatch it soon. And I'm also reading Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, though in a pace befitting of its mystique.

I also read 4 books at the same time now, and I all the time get comments for this habit. Now it is the "Complete Short Stories" by Hemnigway, "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann, a biography about Pol Pot by Philip Short and a book about memorizing techniques (by visualizing more easily memorable associations to incidents/words - very interesting).

I love the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Murakami is probably my favourite novel writer!

[Lethevich]

A little Pratchett goes a long way as far as I am concerned, but it's currently time for some:

[Kullervo]

"Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann

What did you think?

[Anne]

In April of this year the Child Welfare people went unannounced to the homestead of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church) in Texas and took over 400 children with them back to a Texas court.  They had received an anonymous phone call from a young girl who said underage girls were being forced to marry 40+ 50+ year-old men.  The mothers of these 400+ children were distraught for their children and wanted them returned.

I knew just a little about this religion and happened to read at Amazon that a new book had just been released.  It was Escape by Carolyn Jessop.  I bought the book to have better background on the 400 children situation in the news.  Carolyn Jessup had been the 4th wife of a 50-yr-old man at the age of 18 yrs.  She had given birth to 8 children in 15 years.  She escaped with all of her children.  I think the book was well-written, and factual.  It is hard to believe that lives like these are still happening in the US today.  Highly recommended.

I just wanted to add that in this book one day Carolyn noticed that some boys teenage and subteen were not around any more.  She discovered that 100 of them had been unceremoniously kicked out of the compuond.  The reason?  To give the 50-60+ aged men more wives.

[Anne]

The second book I read for background info on the Texas Child Welfare proceedings of the 400 hundred children taken from their homes on FLDS church was His Favorite wife, Trapped in Polygamy by Susan Ray Schmidt.  This also was a true story.  In this case the wives were left alone while Verlan Lebaron (their husband) was away working or doing church work.  He would be gone for months.  This family was poverty stricken.  Verlan married 9 times.  Susan was his 6th wife.  The wives were on their own to feed their children.

By accident as I was reading this book, I happened to write down the names of the wives in the order that they married Verlan.  Susan (and her children) finally escaped with the help of her brother.

The second woman to become Verlan's wife was named Irene.  Last night as I was looking for another book to read, I discovered that Irene had escaped also and had written a book Shattered Dreams, My Life As a Polygamist's Wife  by Irene Spencer.  The cover of the book says that she stayed married to Verlan Lebaron for twenty-four years.  Verlan died in 1981.  Irene married again for 18 years to her present husband (non polygamist).  It is going to be interesting to see the family from first Susan's viewpoint and then Irene's.  Both books are very well written.


All 3 books show what it is like to a polygamist wife.

[FideLeo]

The Tale of Genji (11th century)
Murasaki Shikibu
trans. Royall Taylor



courtly, existential and surrealistically beautiful
an extremely readable version that is also a dazzling display of its translator's erudition

[orbital]

Madame Bovary 
Thanks to my reader, I have so many classics available anytime. Otherwise, I doubt I'd go and purchase each of them separately.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Interesting. I have this classic waiting on the shelves, but in an older translation by Edward G. Seidensticker (Penguin).

[ChamberNut]

What To Listen For in Music - Aaron Copland

[karlhenning]

Fun book, isn't it, ChN?

[FideLeo]

Interesting. I have this classic waiting on the shelves, but in an older translation by Edward G. Seidensticker (Penguin).

The Seidensticker translation clearly has its fans -- the version available from Oxford Online Archive is his. 

[mn dave]

My music time is way up and my book time is way down. 

I try to read a chapter of fiction a day, then follow it with some non-fiction until I fall asleep. 

I'm saving money on books anyway.

[Kullervo]

My music time is way up and my book time is way down. 

I try to read a chapter of fiction a day, then follow it with some non-fiction until I fall asleep. 

I'm saving money on books anyway.

I go through phases where I devote most of my free time to one thing at the expense of all others (I'm never one for balance ). Right now I am just coming off a big music binge and moving into another heavy reading phase.

[mn dave]

I go through phases where I devote most of my free time to one thing at the expense of all others (I'm never one for balance ). Right now I am just coming off a big music binge and moving into another heavy reading phase.

I need to move into a heavier writing phase. 

[ChamberNut]

Fun book, isn't it, ChN?

Yup, just starting it, but I am enjoying it very much.  Perfect book for a layman come moi.  0:)

[karlhenning]

I need to move into a heavier writing phase. 

Work/life balance is so tricky, isn't it?  Good luck!

I learnt (and it seems to me that I learnt fairly quickly) to focus (and to be able to lock into focus fairly quickly) on creative work at the odd times which a fairly busy work schedule does yield up.  It is a sort of detachable aspect of comparison, of course . . . but it seems to me that I may possibly be writing more, than some composers who actually have more freed-up 'composing time' by the clock.

I cannot really take credit for this on my own;  it was a result of getting to know Maria and Irina, and watching how they work, and how well they work, not only in terms of the quality of their work, but the thorough concentration and professionalism they bring to their work.  In a real sense, they taught me how to get focused;  and they were an example to me in terms of the level of work I should want to achieve.