What are you currently reading?

[Elgarian]

Sold!  I read some pages on Amazon (it's available as a Kindle edition) and I immediately was hooked by her style. I don't know if this will be finally true, but Niffenegger's style recalled me to Ethan Canin, a writter who I love from the Emperor of the Air (short stories) and For Kings and Planets (novel).

Don't know Ethan Canin, Antoine - thanks for the observation. I'm currently re-reading Her Fearful Symmetry, very slowly, from the beginning, and finding it very rewarding. I'm picking up much that I missed the first time.

[Philoctetes]

Currently I'm reading:

Charles Taylor and Liberia by Waugh
Fixing the Facts by Rovner
Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy by Pillar
Marx and Whitehead by Pomeroy
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Habermas
Archaeologies of the Future by Jameson
Organizational Sociology edited by W. Richard Scott

[Elgarian]

I'm now re-reading Her Fearful Symmetry, very slowly, savouring every sentence and discovering so many nuances I missed first time round. I often re-read favourite books (sometimes many times), but I don't think I've ever done this before - i.e. reach the end, and start again at the beginning almost immediately. It's full of faults - one can pick holes in it for all sorts of reasons; but they count for nothing in the end because I simply adore this book.

[Karl Henning]

Thanks for the reminder, Alan . . . I've now ordered a copy of the book.

[Bogey]

A biography on Christopher Columbus.  Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus.  Though there are many bios out there I chose this one from the early 40's because of this:

Admiral of the Ocean Sea is Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison's classic biography of the greatest sailor of them all, Christopher Columbus. It is written with the insight, energy, and authority that only someone who had himself sailed in Columbus' path to the New World could muster. Morison undertook this expedition in a 147-foot schooner and a 47-foot ketch, the dimensions of these craft roughly matching those of Columbus' Santa Maria and Niña. The result is this vivid and definitive biography that accurately details the voyages that, for better or worse, changed the world.

and

This recreation lends credibility to his writing. But more than that, it makes much of the book, particularly those parts at sea, seem as if the reader is experiencing the voyages through the person of Columbus. Not only the particulars of what he saw, but the smells of land breezes, the feel of the trade winds, the motion of the boat.

Our 1942 copy belonged to my father-in-law, so there is also that neat feeling of reading the same exact book as he did.

[Opus106]

[T]he greatest sailor of them all, Christopher Columbus.

!

Seriously?

Our 1942 copy...

Interesting juxtaposition of the digits.


Thread duty: The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmello. A highly researched biography of the theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate, Paul Dirac. For someone whose personal life (early life, anyway, as far as I've read) was not much to write home about*, Farmello has managed to write in a manner that makes me want to read further.


*In fact, as a researcher at Cambridge, the unusually quiet Paul didn't write much to his anxious parents back in Bristol, while he, along with a few other colleagues in Europe, was changing the way people thought about science.

[Bogey]

!

Seriously?

I almost got rid of that part from the quote.... 

Interesting juxtaposition of the digits.

[Karl Henning]

 Quote from: Elgarian on March 02, 2012, 04:11:59 PM >

I'm now re-reading Her Fearful Symmetry, very slowly, savouring every sentence and discovering so many nuances I missed first time round. I often re-read favourite books (sometimes many times), but I don't think I've ever done this before - i.e. reach the end, and start again at the beginning almost immediately. It's full of faults - one can pick holes in it for all sorts of reasons; but they count for nothing in the end because I simply adore this book.
    Quote from: karlhenning on March 02, 2012, 04:17:29 PM >Thanks for the reminder, Alan . . . I've now ordered a copy of the book.
 
Curiously, the Amazon third-party seller just cancelled my order. But I've now ordered another copy of the book.

[Ataraxia]

.[asin]0553807714[/asin]
I don't dislike it so far but many Amazon reviewers did...apparently.

[Elgarian]

Curiously, the Amazon third-party seller just cancelled my order. But I've now ordered another copy of the book.

Obviously one of those phantom third party sellers. Quite appropriate for this particular book though.

I've finished my re-reading, and am even more profoundly affected than before. Also a second reading clarifies some things that seemed obscure first time around. I find myself very reluctant to leave this strange world of twins (two sets) and cemeteries and ghosts and The Little Kitten of Death, and these flawed and vulnerable people.

[Geo Dude]

After finishing Wolff's biography of Bach after an embarrassingly long period of time (damn that TV in front of the only reading spot in this house...) I've started on The Best Short Stories of William Kittredge and a biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Charles Nicholl.

[Opus106]

After finishing Wolff's biography of Bach after an embarrassingly long period of time

And how was the book? I have it unread for an embarassingly long period of time.

[Ataraxia]

The Vintage Guide to Classical Music by Jan Swafford is an old, much-loved friend. So now I am happy to say I am finally reading his Brahms bio which is off to a splendid start.

Hell, the day may come when I read his Ives bio, a composer I have little interest in; he's that good.

[asin]0679745823[/asin]

[Geo Dude]

And how was the book? I have it unread for an embarassingly long period of time.

It is excellent.  There are a few parts here and there that will bore the non-scholar, but I can't fault him for including them, and he really digs into the details where possible to give you an interesting picture of a life that looks rather 'normal' for a musical genius of Bach's level from the perspective of an outsider.

[Geo Dude]

The Vintage Guide to Classical Music by Jan Swafford is an old, much-loved friend. So now I am happy to say I am finally reading his Brahms bio which is off to a splendid start.

Hell, the day may come when I read his Ives bio, a composer I have little interest in; he's that good.

I'm very glad to see someone reading this!  Yes, Swafford is a fine writer and this biography is excellent.  Brahms lived a fascinating life and he's a much more complex character than he is commonly made out to be.  You will enjoy this.

[Ataraxia]

I'm very glad to see someone reading this!  Yes, Swafford is a fine writer and this biography is excellent.  Brahms lived a fascinating life and he's a much more complex character than he is commonly made out to be.  You will enjoy this.

Thank you.

Have you read the Ives?

[Opus106]

[Wolff] really digs into the details where possible to give you an interesting picture of a life that looks rather 'normal' for a musical genius of Bach's level from the perspective of an outsider.

Thanks. That's generally what I read in reviews also, and what I can glean from the obligatory interviews the he often gives in Bach-related documentaries. Despite the seemingly, as you said, 'normal' life a historical figure of his stature led, in a way I find it satisfying to not know much about Bach's life, or at least not have a thick layer of romanticised story-telling laid upon history as is the case with the lives of most composers who came after him. The music speaks clearly to me, and how wonderfully!

I should consider picking the book up once more regardless of my shortcomings with regard to understanding the technicalities of the music (although I would very much like to learn that as well, some day). If I remember correctly, I stopped somewhere in the preface where he starts dissecting Bach's obit.

[Karl Henning]

Thanks. That's generally what I read in reviews also, and what I can glean from the obligatory interviews the he often gives in Bach-related documentaries. Despite the seemingly, as you said, 'normal' life a historical figure of his stature led, in a way I find it satisfying to not know much about Bach's life, or at least not have a thick layer of romanticised story-telling laid upon history as is the case with the lives of most composers who came after him. The music speaks clearly to me, and how wonderfully!

I should consider picking the book up once more regardless of my shortcomings with regard to understanding the technicalities of the music (although I would very much like to learn that as well, some day). If I remember correctly, I stopped somewhere in the preface where he starts dissecting Bach's obit.

Thanks for the discussion, lads. Checking this book out on Amazon has me asking this question.

[Elgarian]

I'm not just a lover of books in terms of their content. I'm also a lover of books as physical objects - most particularly if the book-making and design has been part of an artistic creative process in itself.

Audrey Niffenegger was, long before she became a best-selling novelist, an original printmaker and maker of books; so when I learned that in addition to the usual commercial mass-publication, she'd designed two special editions of Her Fearful Symmetry herself (one for the USA and another one for elsewhere), I couldn't rest until I was able to see/hold/buy/own one. I now have a copy of the UK special edition. Presented in a slip case dominated by Niffenegger's drawing of 'The Little Kitten of Death', set against a background of faded typescript from the pages of the novel, it's such an intriguing object that it gives me goosebumps. The endpapers are funeral black (appropriate for a book whose chief location is Highgate cemetery), and the page edges are bright red. The lettering on the spine records initials only of the book title and author (HFS/AN), in a most attractive way. Some photos:

[Geo Dude]

Thank you.

Have you read the Ives?

No, I haven't.  I'll probably get to it eventually, but Brahms was on the priority list because he's one of my favorite composers.