What are you currently reading?

[Elgarian]

I'm going to be scouring secondhand stores over the coming weeks. Sherborne, Crewkerne and Dorchester won't know what hit them

Keep your eyes open for one of these:

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1253689804&searchurl=an%3Dtennyson%26bi%3D0%26bx%3Doff%26ds%3D30%26pn%3Dmoxon%26sortby%3D3%26sts%3Dt%26tn%3Dpoems%26x%3D65%26y%3D7%26yrh%3D1865

They bring fancy prices online these days, but they still turn up now and then for £20 or less. Owning one is sort of like having Millais, Hunt and Rossetti coming for dinner. Well, sort of. OK, not at all, really, but I dream.

[Bu]

Finishing (and it's been quite insightful and worth reading!):



Just starting:

[Opus106]

Just starting:

I love that painting, especially the illumination of the faces -- which seems a little blown out on the picture posted above! It was also on the cover of another book I was reading a couple of months ago.

[Drasko]

Finished this few days ago. It's fairly good, Sembach's style is rather dry and he does push few ideas that don't really work for me, like linking Art Nouveau with film, connection I don't see on deeper level (he drops that one quickly anyhow) and more so the idea of Art Nouveau being the style that thrived in provinces rather than centers, while that works for France (Nancy), Germany (Weimar, Darmstadt, Munich) or in cases of Glasgow and Helsinki, Sembach gets in major problem trying to fit Vienna into his scheme and with some theoretical acrobatics he makes the Vienna some sort of sublimation of movement. I'm not sure I buy that on first spin, would have to re-read that part.
Other than that book is actually quite decent, focusing on architecture and design rather than painting (good idea).

After this one I intended to go straight in some decent sized book on Bauhaus (given that Gropius and Rohe were students and assistants of Peter Behrens) but that'll have to wait. My between the errands stop at largest local bookstore yesterday was pretty pathetic (haven't had the time for browsing around), Ullman & Konemann book on Bauhaus which was my primary target was out of stock and so was some unrelated stuff I was also looking for, like Terrail's Fragonard and they haven't even heard of Liotard, let alone of his pastels (now I see there is only one book in English and difficult to find even on-line). Not to walk out empty handed I picked up Ullman & Konemann's book on Romanesque art. At first dips looks impressive, though I'm not sure I'll start that now or try to get the Bauhaus to keep the momentum.



Other than this I've been leisurely re-reading some Chekhov stories, nothing else due the shortage of time.

[CD]

I wasn't really enjoying Isaac Babel's simplistic and ugly style, so I've set him aside for now.

I've started instead:

[bwv 1080]

this book is turning into a 2 year project, currently on quantum field theory which is about 2/3rds through the total

[Diletante]

I recently finished Julio Cortázar's Todos los fuegos el fuego.

Yesterday I picked up Demian by Hermann Hesse from the library. I started reading it and it seems really interesting.

[Opus106]

this book is turning into a 2 year project, currently on quantum field theory which is about 2/3rds through the total

How effective is it? And how much of the material are you already familiar with?

[bwv 1080]

How effective is it? And how much of the material are you already familiar with?

My knowledge of physics going into this was Discover-magazine level & now at least I know what I don't know

Its very well done, with the caveat that it is written by a mathematical genius who thinks he can explain most of the math involved in modern physics (differential forms, tensor calculus, symmetry groups, fibre bundles etc) in the first 400 pages of the book.  I hit it knowing a little calculus and it was a tough go but it is presented in a way that does allow you to sort of get the concepts qualitatively without doing the work & study necessary to know them well enough to actually do physics.

[Opus106]

My knowledge of physics going into this was Discover-magazine level & now at least I know what I don't know

Its very well done, with the caveat that it is written by a mathematical genius who thinks he can explain most of the math involved in modern physics (differential forms, tensor calculus, symmetry groups, fibre bundles etc) in the first 400 pages of the book.  I hit it knowing a little calculus and it was a tough go but it is presented in a way that does allow you to sort of get the concepts qualitatively without doing the work & study necessary to know them well enough to actually do physics.

Ah. Glad that you're liking it. I once borrowed it from the library, at a time when I preferred my textbooks that dealt with one subject at a time quite extensively , so I wasn't too excited about taking the time to read this tome. Now my physics and maths are a few years behind me and a little rusty and I just have enough time to push in a novel or a not-so-big non-fiction. I'll still be sceptical, though, about Penrose's book until I read it.


Thread duty:

Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician's Journey through Symmetry
Marcus du Sautoy

Till now it's been all about picking up shapes, rotating them by a certain amount and seeing that the look the same. The current chapter is about symmetries the author found (just about everywhere) during a visit to the Alhambra. Flicking through the book, I see some discussion of complex numbers and there's a whole chapter on 'sounding symmetry' -- a discussion of symmetries found in music, the western kind, I guess. I find names like Boulez, Messiaen, and Xenakis sprinkled throughout the chapter, and there is even a reprint of a Xenakis score, which doesn't look all that different from an engineering graph. Very curious to read that.

Oh, of course Bach is mentioned. 0:)

[val]

JOACHIM FEST:      "Der lange Weg zum 20. Juli"

A book with a great quality of historical research, very detailed. The image given by Fest of the German Resistance to Hitler is not very flattering.

[Lethevich]

My favourite autobio :3

[Elgarian]

My favourite autobio :3

I'm not a great Berlioz fan - in fact I don't know much beyond Symphonie Fantastique and Damnation of Faust. But I've sometimes wondered if the autobiog was worth a shot. Would reading it inspire me to listen to more? Or should I listen to more in order to be inspired to read it?

[Lethevich]

I like Berlioz's music (especially due to its colourful rambling), but even if I didn't I would find his life inspiring - he is one of the great Romantic figures. His large biography by Cairns is perfect, of course, but his memoirs involve no such slog. It is in fact extremely funny, compelling (naturally some of it is probably embelished), and written in a surprisingly un-dense manner. As it is, it fits nicely between a real biography and his fictional Evenings with the Orchestra. which is equally fun and inimitable. These books stand alone on their own merits as interesting to anyone who wants to read a biography of a "great" person, but they did also encourage me to listen further to his music.

[Brian]

Just starting:

Hey! That's on my reading list!!

Paine's Age of Reason was, oddly enough, my favorite book as a high school student. I was a Paine-style deist for a few years, in fact...

[Diletante]

I like Berlioz's music (especially due to its colourful rambling), but even if I didn't I would find his life inspiring - he is one of the great Romantic figures. His large biography by Cairns is perfect, of course, but his memoirs involve no such slog. It is in fact extremely funny, compelling (naturally some of it is probably embelished), and written in a surprisingly un-dense manner. As it is, it fits nicely between a real biography and his fictional Evenings with the Orchestra. which is equally fun and inimitable. These books stand alone on their own merits as interesting to anyone who wants to read a biography of a "great" person, but they did also encourage me to listen further to his music.

That sounds nice! I'll put it in my "Wish List".

[Elgarian]

As it is, it fits nicely between a real biography and his fictional Evenings with the Orchestra. which is equally fun and inimitable. These books stand alone on their own merits as interesting to anyone who wants to read a biography of a "great" person, but they did also encourage me to listen further to his music.

That sounds good. I've seen it in bookshops here and there, and thought 'should I or shouldn't I?' several times; so I know it's not hard to get hold of. I'll push it some rungs up my ladder of wants.

[Diletante]

By the way, Elgarian, both titles seem to be freely available online (in French):

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/b#a31953

http://www.hberlioz.com/Writings/SOindex.htm

[Elgarian]

By the way, Elgarian, both titles seem to be freely available online (in French)

So they are! Thank you. I think, though, that for continuous reading (as opposed to mere reference, for which these would be invaluable), I need the real books. And a comfy chair in the garden with somewhere to put my feet up. With sunshine. And mug of really good strong coffee or a glass of beer. Maybe a toasted sandwich after an hour or so? And someone to peel grapes for me?

[Harpo]

Anybody have a Kindle or Sony reader? (I don't)  I can't imagine not being able to turn pages and bookmark, but I suppose there is a way to do that. I don't know if reading on the little screen would be harder on the eyes.

I was stranded in an airport a few weeks ago and saw a man seemingly reading a book but not turning the page. I first surmised that he was deep in thought, but then realized he was reading a Kindle. I quickly peeked over his shoulder just to check the size of the type (I tried not to look at the content, though I do have a voyeuristic streak) and it looked pretty readable.

My buddy says that Kindles are the wave of the future and that soon there will be few paper books. I was trying to visualize what Barnes and Noble might look like without books. Hundreds of computer stations (for previewing and buying) and a big coffeehouse (not bad). Rather cold, not like holding a real book, hefting it, turning the pages, flipping through to get a feel for the whole.