What are you currently reading?

[DavidW]

Just read Shutter Island, and it was a heck of a page turner.



I look forward to the movie, because even if I know all the twists, now I can appreciate the behavior of the characters pre-twists.

[MN Dave]

Did you guess the ending before you got there?

[DavidW]

Did you guess the ending before you got there?

Well dang I should have!   I bought into the story.  Looking back, it seems so obvious, but I just didn't see it!

[MN Dave]

Well dang I should have!   I bought into the story.  Looking back, it seems so obvious, but I just didn't see it!

I didn't either.

[val]

KARL POPPER:     An Intellectual Autobiography

Popper repeats here most of his ideas, that can be found in many of his other books. I would prefer that he talked more about all the people he knew during his life, from Einstein to Schönberg and Webern.

[MN Dave]

Reading it for review.

[karlhenning]

KARL POPPER

That's a name makes me nervous.

[ChamberNut]

Shostakovich - His Life and Music  (Brian Morton)

[Harpo]

The Death of Why: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy

I totally agree with her thesis that Americans today look for quick-fix answers instead of critically thinking things through. Book's focus is on how to teach young people to value inquiry, questioning, and analyzing. Google retrieves instant answers, schools focus on "right" answers, media entertain rather than analyze, etc.

[Bogey]

Yup.  I love his stuff and bought it right after work and have already begun reading it.

[Philoctetes]

The Literature of Nihilism by Glicksberg

[karlhenning]

Last night, I finished reading the book in the BFI series on Night of the Living Dead.

It was good. Detail:

1. I enjoyed reading the book.
2. I got the impression that I know the movie, without the inconvenienve of watching it.
2a. "Inconvenience," in this case, because I don't think I'd enjoy watching the movie.
2b. Others may enjoy it, and I am delighted for them  0:)
3. In general, I read rather guardedly when there is a lot of verbiage about a movie (as I do when there is verbiage about music).
3a. Especially, I tend to be suspicious when there is a lot of high- (or even mid-) falutin' philostofy about what is, at the end of the day, a 90-minute movie.
3b. Made on a low budget.
3c. About zombies.
3d. In a western Pennsylvania farmhouse.
4. That all said, see (1.) above.

[drogulus]

Last night, I finished reading the book in the BFI series on Night of the Living Dead.

It was good. Detail:

1. I enjoyed reading the book.
2. I got the impression that I know the movie, without the inconvenienve of watching it.
2a. "Inconvenience," in this case, because I don't think I'd enjoy watching the movie.
2b. Others may enjoy it, and I am delighted for them  0:)
3. In general, I read rather guardedly when there is a lot of verbiage about a movie (as I do when there is verbiage about music).
3a. Especially, I tend to be suspicious when there is a lot of high- (or even mid-) falutin' philostofy about what is, at the end of the day, a 90-minute movie.
3b. Made on a low budget.
3c. About zombies.
3d. In a western Pennsylvania farmhouse.
4. That all said, see (1.) above.

     It may be too late to see the film in the right frame of mind, now that there have been books and sequels and critical appreciations. I saw the film about 5 years after it came out when it made its first appearance on the Late Late Show. I knew it was supposed to be a very scary horror film, but what intrigued me was that some reviewer in Newsday gave it 4 stars. The review made it clear that yes, this was a low budget horror flick with amateurish acting and not much in the way of production values. Nevertheless, given what horror films are supposed to do, this was a great film.  I saw the film and immediately realized that the reviews were correct, that what was bad about the film made no difference to what was good about it. The parallel I would draw today is with Eraserhead by David Lynch, though that film had obvious art house pretentions while NOTLD had unobvious ones. The films both operated subliminally as nightmares, whereas a film like Nightmare on Elm Street operates like a well made teen horror flick.

[Haffner]

Sounds like a fascinating book.

I saw Dawn of the Dead before Night of the Living Dead, and it was by far the most traumatically frightening movie I'd ever seen. I still have nightmares over it.

When I went to college, many of my fellow students carried on about the zombies as commentary on the typical worker ant person. These students would comment on how the zombies were like the typical 9 to 5 worker, living to covet, never really satisfied, marking time, walking dead. What I noticed is that these selfsame analysers rarely pointed out how many times the consumptive nature of the "living" characters was portrayed. The latter aspect blurred the lines in a really creative way, making Romero's "Dead" movies a cut above the rest.

[CD]

Read Thomas Mann's Black Swan the other night in one sitting. Wonderful little book. Glad to be getting back into him.

Reading (and rereading most) now:

[Harpo]

Zeitoun is a nonfiction account of a Syrian family's encounters with Hurricane Katrina, government bureaucracy and anti-Arab sentiment. Reads like a novel.

[SonicMan46]

A Land So Strange:  The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca (2009) by Andre Resendez - 

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c.1490-c.1557-9), member of a Spanish royal family (hence the coat of arms, below right, w/ a cow's head); the 'Royal Treasurer' on a mission to settle Florida in 1528; the group of about 300 landed near present day Tampa Bay, FL, and only 4 (including Cabeza de Vaca) survived to emerged 8 years later after an extraordinary excursion across southern USA and Mexico; just getting to the Tampa landing!

 

[MN Dave]

For review. Short stories. I'm digging it so far.

[offbeat]

Read Thomas Mann's Black Swan the other night in one sitting. Wonderful little book. Glad to be getting back into him.

Reading (and rereading most) now:

Hi Corey - whats yr opinion on Kafka - the only story ive read is The Trial - wow what a weird and claustrophobic book that is -like being in a strange dream world - what are the other stories like 

[Bu]