What are you currently reading?

[MN Dave]

On to this.

[CD]

[marvinbrown]

  This will be my first entry on this thread  Usually I read opera libretti (hey that Ring cycle will keep even the most avid reader busy for hours  )

 
   Currently I am reading Albert Camus L'etranger (The stranger) in French!

  I am only 20 pages in, Meursault's mother has passed away and he is surprisingly indifferent, emotionally deficient oh where will Camus take me I wonder???   My French is good enough (I have studied it for many years) and I found the language quite approachable.  I would urge anyone who is studying French to pick this book up.........   I regret not reading it earlier.

  marvin

[greg]

  This will be my first entry on this thread  Usually I read opera libretti (hey that Ring cycle will keep even the most avid reader busy for hours  )

 
   Currently I am reading Albert Camus L'etranger (The stranger) in French!

  I am only 20 pages in, Meursault's mother has passed away and he is surprisingly indifferent, emotionally deficient oh where will Camus take me I wonder???   My French is good enough (I have studied it for many years) and I found the language quite approachable.  I would urge anyone who is studying French to pick this book up.........   I regret not reading it earlier.

  marvin

That's cool that you're reading the original French version.

Well, he'll take you places... just not in terms of an "interesting plot" (same thing with The Plague). More than anything, he provides interesting insights, a tense ending, and in some ways, dark humor (though maybe it's just me that finds this book funny?). Fun read, either way.

[AndyD.]

Wagner Mein Leben

I had to skip ahead a little in the first volume; Wagner's prose style can be torturous at times. It's as though he was writing under the convoluting influence of Hegel.

[karlhenning]

Low-Hanging Fruit Dept:

Wagner Mein Leben

I had to skip ahead a little in the first volume; Wagner's prose style can be torturous at times.

Fairly consistent with his poetic style in this, then? ; )

[AndyD.]

Low-Hanging Fruit Dept:

Fairly consistent with his poetic style in this, then? ; )

lol

[DavidRoss]

[SonicMan46]

  This will be my first entry on this thread  Usually I read opera libretti (hey that Ring cycle will keep even the most avid reader busy for hours  )

Marvin - LOL!    I'm thinking more geologically, i.e. eons of time!  Dave 

[MN Dave]

THE TAO OF DAILY LIFE - Derek Lin

[karlhenning]

Young Men in Spats.

It's Wodehouse, so of course it's brilliant

[MN Dave]

Othello

[karlhenning]

Othello

Even after all those centuries . . . that is a devastating stunner.

[AndyD.]

Even after all those centuries . . . that is a devastating stunner.

The Shakespeare is amazing, but I'd rather watch and listen to the Verdi! Shoot me.

[Scarpia]

The Shakespeare is amazing, but I'd rather watch and listen to the Verdi! Shoot me.

I knew the original first and the Verdi adaption later.  I guess my impression was a lot of the subtlety was washed out of the Verdi adaption.  In Shakespeare there is a painfully insidious process of Otello's trust in Desdemona being eroded away and replaced by suspicion and hatred.  In Verdi's opera the transition is very abrupt.  It's the nature of Italian Opera, I guess.

[AndyD.]

I knew the original first and the Verdi adaption later.  I guess my impression was a lot of the subtlety was washed out of the Verdi adaption.  In Shakespeare there is a painfully insidious process of Otello's trust in Desdemona being eroded away and replaced by suspicion and hatred.  In Verdi's opera the transition is very abrupt.  It's the nature of Italian Opera, I guess.

This is an excellent point. In the Verdi, Otello tends to come across as maniacally, intractably cuckoo jealous. But as you implied, Italian Opera is by its nature hyperbolic (that doesn't mean I don't love it).

[MN Dave]

Goats and monkeys!

Now reading:


The first chapter is about Aaron Copland.

[MN Dave]

Ah, deliciously spooky. A cut or two above so far!

[AndyD.]

The Case of Wagner (Nietzsche)


It's extremely amusing to read Nietzsche's sour grapes in light of his later admission that Wagner was the greatest benefactor of his life.

[karlhenning]

I've started re-reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, because I found a remaindered copy of a new edition headed "The only authoritative text based on the complete original manuscript" ("including 663 pages recently found in a Los Angeles attic"). I have a vague sense that there are bits which must be different/additions to what I read earlier, but no systematic knowledge thereof.  This is great; even better than I remembered it.

I think I am the only one to contribute a Twain title to this; nor do I repent of my choice (Life on the Mississippi).  I suppose it would be too much to ask that there be twain Twain titles in such a list of only 100 books . . . but it do seem a shame that Huck ain't on that list.