What are you currently reading?

[val]

Edouard Husson, "Heydrich et la Solution Finale"   (PERRIN)

Husson is a French historian. This book, very detailed, offers a good perspective of the life of Reinhard Heydrich, (perhaps the greatest murder of all times), since his childwood (his father was a composer of operas) until the terrible days of 1941/42. I didn't know, but it seems that Heydrich was a very good violinist.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Edouard Husson, "Heydrich et la Solution Finale"   (PERRIN)

Husson is a French historian. This book, very detailed, offers a good perspective of the life of Reinhard Heydrich, (perhaps the greatest murder of all times), since his childwood (his father was a composer of operas) until the terrible days of 1941/42. I didn't know, but it seems that Heydrich was a very good violinist.

He was. And a first-rate fencer. And a terrible human being.

[orbital]

Well, the books he did manage to write are mostly huge and very ambitious. Gaddis is an uncompromising writer. What I find almost magical about his way of writing is the fact that you can see so much purely through dialogue. He really erects a theatre on the page. He does everything through voices. Very musical, too.

Sosumi  I have yet to read Carpenter's Gothic and there is another posthumous book IARC. I had a friend who was a corporate lawyer back in New York, and according to him A Frolic of His Own was almost part of the curriculum in Columbia 

Have you read Vonnegut?

I had started to read SlaughterHouse Five at one point, but I don't think I finished it. Should I give  it another try?

On the other hand, I've just gotten hold of The Illuminatus Trilogy in digital format. I had read that one years ago and that book was completely nuts!!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Sosumi 

Nice one. (I think you are referring to the combination of music and the law...)

[mn dave]

I had started to read SlaughterHouse Five at one point, but I don't think I finished it. Should I give  it another try?

Well, that's up to you. Or read Breakfast of Champions.

[Papageno]

Decameron by Boccaccio

[ezodisy]

Decameron by Boccaccio

I always wanted to read that. 

[Kullervo]

I always wanted to read that. 

It's sitting on my shelf, collecting dust. I'll probably read it eventually, but I have to be in a certain mood to enjoy Classical literature. 

[mn dave]

Ross MacDonald was one of our best crime fiction writers. I daresay some of the highbrows here might even like his stuff to some extent.

Still dipping into this...



A good book for those interested in Buddhism.

[drogulus]

     The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand
     
     

      It's an excellent introduction to the revolution in American thought after Darwin and the Civil War. This is my second reading.

[mozartsneighbor]

     The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand
     
     

      It's an excellent introduction to the revolution in American thought after Darwin and the Civil War. This is my second reading.

that looks very interesting

now reading:

Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris -- some parts of this are roll-on-the-floor funny

Wild Swans, by Jung Chang -- great personal insights into 20th century Chinese history

[Lethevich]

Can't find a pic of the cover. A John Dryden overview by Earl Miner, which seems to focus on his life, and the meaning behind his works, rather than presenting them in the raw. I like this kind of book, as generally I find information about plays and poems more interesting than the works themselves - all hail the autistic mind

[Solitary Wanderer]

Romantic [era] Fairy Tales.

Delightful 

[Lilas Pastia]

Also I just finished Victor Pelevin's book called Chapaev and Emptiness. I read it in Russian. Many of Pelevin's books have been translated, but this is his new book. He got Small Booker Prize for a novel Omon Ra and Life of insects in 1994.
I liked this book very much. With time the reader understands that the hero is in asylum. The book is influenced by Dostoevsky of course. Also there are many similarities between times of New Economic Politic in the 1920s in Russia and period after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I hope they will translate this book too.
Chapaev is a well known civil war hero (a commissar). But people really don't know much about him. He was a cartoon character created by communist for propaganda purposes. All people know about him is that he was a commissar and then he was running away from some White soldiers and drowned while swimming across the river.

Did you see the Vasyliev movie (1934) ? That's all I know about Chapayev the man. Saw it many, many years ago. I recall it was in direct contradiction with Eisenstein's ideas about film.  Stock figure, but good cinema.

[Drasko]

Listening rather than reading, first half hour is superbly tense, fake news bulletins style really could fool a person if briefly tuned in.



this is the best sounding copy I could find (full show, 60 minutes, 128 kbps mp3, 50 MB)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NZZQG6IG

[mn dave]

UNCLE SILAS by Sheridan Le Fanu

[tr. pianist]

Lilas Pastia,
I saw some movie about Chapaev when I was a child. Chapaev was the hero of civil was in Russia that happened after the Revolusion of 1917.
No one knows much about him. Nothing is known to people about his family or his life. May be he was a fiction invented by communists. He was cartoon like character that was fighting bad people. He featured in many jokes, but no one knew about him much. He was a comander and then he was trying to escape from some  bad guys and drowned in a river. I remember the last scene in the movie and I remember crying, but I don't remember what he did.

Pelevin of course is critical of communists. He also finds a lot in common between NEP (New Economic Policy) time when private business was allowed and transition period in Russian economy after collapse of the Soviet Union.

Both perioeds have a lot in common. They are periods of uncontrolled greed and worship of money. May be during NEP communists (or whatever they were called then) controlled situation better. The two periods were extremely difficult for simple (or odinary) people to survive in. They were periods when people forgot about human values and tried to grab as much as they could. It is strange how idealism can be replaced by such an unbriddle lust for money and power.Of course the idealism that I knew was paper idealism. People used it to comuflage their desire for better life, but still bandits and criminals were controlled and people did not officially worshiped money and greed.

I tried to read another book by Pelevin called Empire V), but I did not like it at all, though there were interesting discussions there too. Discussions that I read were about how people are manipulated by advertisement and also about relations and differences between men and women.
I could not sustain my interest in reading because the plot was strange. It involved one man becoming a vampire. Vampires could read people's thoughts and understnad their psyche.

[Lethevich]

The Symphony (Ralph Hill)

An interesting book, aimed at the middle listener (neither beginner, nor musicologist). It's from 1949 and passed the initial "test" that I had set it, which was to read Bruckner's biography. Pleasingly it avoids apologism or cliche when describing this very difficult character. I was entertained by his description of Hugo Wolf as "an unbalanced critic" - hopefully he intended the more entertaining meaning of the word.

[mn dave]

The Symphony (Ralph Hill)

An interesting book, aimed at the middle listener (neither beginner, nor musicologist). It's from 1949 and passed the initial "test" that I had set it, which was to read Bruckner's biography. Pleasingly it avoids apologism or cliche when describing this very difficult character. I was entertained by his description of Hugo Wolf as "an unbalanced critic" - hopefully he intended the more entertaining meaning of the word.

Ooo. I think I'm a middler listener.

[Kullervo]

Just picked this up from the library:



I'll probably read it after I finish The Sleepwalkers.