What are you currently reading?

[Bogey]

[Philoctetes]

Currently a toss up:

Charles Wallraff's Introduction to Karl Jaspers

or

Arthur Wilson's biography on Diderot

I'm learning towards Wallraff, mainly because it is the shorter of the two, by a considerable number.

Finished the book on Jaspers, severely underwhelming. I have his three volume Philosophy on the way, so here's hoping he's better than those who comment.

In the meanwhile, I'm going to see how the Diderot biography is, and if that fails probably a book by Merleau-Ponty, and if that fails, something that I don't know quite just yet.

[Florestan]

George Steiner - Errata. An Examined Life (the Romanian translation reads "An Autobiography")

More a collection of essays than an autobiography as such, it makes for a very interesting reading. The chapter on music is of particular interest; his analysis of the three Greek myths relating to music (Marsyas vs Apollo, the Syrens and Orpheus) and how all of them involves tension, even outright conflict and violence, between music and word is fascinating.

[The Diner]

Pride and Prejudice (without zombies)

[Scarpia]

Pride and Prejudice (without zombies)

Some might say they were all zombies in that book.   

[karlhenning]

Hah! I was going to ask, "How can you tell?"

[karlhenning]

It's not what I'm currently reading, because I've lent my (second) copy to a co-worker . . . said co-worker writes of Why Begins With 'W':

LOVING the book.  Just about done! : )

[Cato]

It's not what I'm currently reading, because I've lent my (second) copy to a co-worker . . . said co-worker writes of Why Begins With 'W':

What a most curious title!   

I can think of others: "You Begins With Why,"  "W Begins With Double," etc. 

Sounds like a series!   0:)

[karlhenning]

We want more!

[Opus106]

A* pollen starts with a B.






*Artistic license starts with an A.

[karlhenning]

Every improvement in communications renders the bore that much more dreadful.

[Coco]

Theodor Adorno - Philosophy of Modern Music

Extremely difficult to grasp (I'm only about 40 pages in), but incredibly perceptive once you penetrate the flow of his rhetoric.

[Philoctetes]

Theodor Adorno - Philosophy of Modern Music

Extremely difficult to grasp (I'm only about 40 pages in), but incredibly perceptive once you penetrate the flow of his rhetoric.

It's sufficiently dense. That's how you know you're learning.

[zorzynek]

It's sufficiently dense. That's how you know you're learning.

Is that the book with all that nonsense about Stravinsky?

[Coco]

Is that the book with all that nonsense about Stravinsky?

I'm trying to put aside whatever preconceptions I have and making an attempt to understand what he has to say.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Is that the book with all that nonsense about Stravinsky?

I don't agree with Adorno, but wouldn't call his critique 'nonsense', either. He pits Schoenberg against Stravinsky and uses interesting arguments for doing so. But just as we don't feel driven to choose between Brahms and Wagner anymore, as the distance in time has lessened their differences, so we don't feel inclined to do the same with Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Though Stravinsky certainly has come out as the 'winner'.

I'm trying to put aside whatever preconceptions I have and making an attempt to understand what he has to say.

Very good. Adorno is always stimulating, even if you object to some of his conclusions (jazz and Sibelius are two other blind spots of his).

[Brian]

Very good. Adorno is always stimulating, even if you object to some of his conclusions (jazz and Sibelius are two other blind spots of his).

Oh, he certainly had his eyes trained on jazz and Sibelius, and intensely too; he just ... didn't quite see them anyway, for all that.

[Todd]

In the early chapters of Edmund Morris' final installment of his bio of everyone's favorite imperial president.  Well written and literary rather than dry and scholarly, it's a nice continuation of the last book.  I doubt I'll learn anything new beyond some intriguing details, though I do want to see how Morris handles the rift between Roosevelt and Root.

[Coco]

Julio Cortázar - The Winners

[Fëanor]

Just finished another Reich book ...

Robert B. Reich: Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life

Basically Reich argues that the current political and political malaise of the U.S.A. and increasingly other developed nations is the result of increased captialist competition since the mid-1970's. Technological advances, (many related to the U.S.' military and space efforts), plus emerging nations' advantage caused a major increase in competion amongs old and new corporations. Corporations, overall, have responded vigourously to this competion thereby serving consumers and investors very well -- but people not so well.

Of critical importance, the need to be extremely competitive has encourage the growth of business lobbying of politians at the expense of citizen lobbying. Hence advocates for labour unions, the environment, human rights, and the poor have be marginalized to the deteriment of people as human beings.

... Amazon.com