What are you currently reading?

[Karl Henning]

The article had some retrospective elements, as I recall 

[Florestan]

The article had some retrospective elements, as I recall 

Back to Dan Brown: as Cato and Eric mentioned, his ability to make money is commendable and I have nothing against it; the fault lies with those who, like myself, let themselves be fooled by marketing. 

[Cato]

Back to Dan Brown: as Cato and Eric mentioned, his ability to make money is commendable and I have nothing against it; the fault lies with those who, like myself, let themselves be fooled by marketing. 

During the Harry Potter frenzy, I thumbed through a few of the books in bookstores, so that I could see what all the fuss was about.

Certainly the author had some very good luck in plugging into the Zeitgeist, and shows a good amount of talent, and again, it is hard to argue with a billion-dollar result! 

My little books have failed to plug into much of anything!   

We shall see if they last as long as e.g. the books of Dr. Seuss.

[HIPster]

About to start Anathem:

[asin]0061694940[/asin]

[Octave]

Re: ANATHEM and Neal Stephenson:

By way of an intersection of interests, have you seen this?  Stephenson mentions recordings of chant that he likes, especially things he was listening to as he wrote ANATHEM.  I ran across this several years ago and have enjoyed a few of the recommendations.  The actual blog entry (link immediately below) also contains hotlinks to artist/etc sites.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/living-with-music-a-playlist-by-neal-stephenson/

September 17, 2008, 10:53 am
Living With Music:
A Playlist by Neal Stephenson
By DWIGHT GARNER
Neal StephensonNeal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson's books include "Snow Crash," "The Diamond Age," "Cryptonomicon" and the three-volume Baroque Cycle. His new novel is "Anathem."

Neal Stephenson's September 2008 Playlist:

Most of my music listening happens while I'm working, and so the music has to be compatible with the book I'm writing. Lately I've been working on "Anathem," which is all about cloistered monks. I needed to get my head into a medieval/monastic frame of mind. At first blush this would seem to call for Gregorian chant. But a little of that goes a long way. Moreover, the monks I've been writing about are scientific monks in the distant future of an alternate world. There's no reason to assume they'd sound like Gregorians. And their monasteres are co-educational, so I wanted to hear some sopranos and altos in the mix.

* My first recommendation is actually a meta-recommendation: Liturgica.com, which enables you to search for many different styles of chant other than Gregorian; their "power search" drop-down menu lists Bulgarian, Syrian, Byzantine, Russian and many others while their "chant type" menu spills out the bottom of my screen.

* The entity known as the Patriarchal Choir of Moscow or the Russian Patriarchate Choir cranks out soul-shaking drones and vaguely Eastern-inflected chants in "Suprasl Orthodox Mosaic." If that's too heavy and serious for you, their album "Early Russian Plain Chant" is a bit more melodious and folk-songy.

* On the soprano/alto end of the spectrum, Anonymous 4 have generated any number of fine albums, my current favorites being "The Origin of Fire" and "1000: A Mass for the End of Time."

* My favorite style of chant is Byzantine, which I learned about by attending concerts by the Portland, Oregon-based group Cappella Romana. The single most powerful piece of music I've heard in recent years is the "Lament for the Fall of Constantinople." Close your eyes and you can almost see the Blachernae Walls crumbling before the onslaught of Sultan Mehmet's colossal artillery. Cappella Romana have recorded this piece twice; I prefer the somewhat slower and longer version on their album "The Fall of Constantinople."

* Moving forward into Renaissance polyphony, I'm a heavy listener of Seattle-based Tudor Choir, in particular to a bootleg tape of their Music for Candlemas concert of a couple of years ago, which I realize doesn't help the average reader very much. Easier to get is their album "Jacob Clemens non Papa: Requiem and Motets," available through their website http://www.tudorchoir.org/.

* A friend in California recently introduced me to The Hilliard Ensemble's recording of Ockeghem's "Requiem" and "Missa Mi-Mi," a 1995 Veritas Edition CD of a 1984 performance in Temple Church, London. The same material is now available in a more recent recording by Edward Wickham and the Clerks Group.

* It's no surprise that so many recordings can be had of these oldies but goodies. What is more remarkable, to my mind, is that modern composers are at work carrying the same traditions forward. "Darkness into Light," another Anonymous 4 recording, mixes medieval songs with recently composed works by John Tavener — a modern composer not to be confused with his 16th-Century ancestor John Taverner (note minor spelling difference), who was also a composer of this sort of music. A similar feat is achieved by Trio Medieval in "Stella Maris" which mingles 13th and 14th Century music with compositions by the modern composer Sungji Hong

* Lisa Gerrard has the most awe-inspiring voice I know of, and she put it to use in several Dead Can Dance recordings before breaking away to work on her own. Dead Can Dance, a collaboration with Brendan Perry, recorded an amazingly eclectic range of music, of which the best for evoking a medieval feeling is "Aion." In collaboration with, respectively, Patrick Cassidy and Pieter Bourke, she later recorded "Immortal Memory" and "Duality," which are very different from each other but both fine examples of music that is medieval without being old-fashioned.

* Finally, David Stutz (who sings in both Cappella Romana and The Tudor Choir) has composed several pieces directly based on "Anathem," most of which are mathematical proofs set in a (non-religious) liturgical chant style. That album, entitled "IOLET: Music from the World of Anathem," is available here.

[Parsifal]

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is the only book I've ever regretted buying in 25 years of purchasing all sorts of books. Even Paulo Coelho has more ideas and makes for a more pleasant reading.

I don't get the Dan Brown hating.  I listened to the da Vinci code as a book on tape during an unaccompanied cross country car trip.  It wasn't a well of deep thoughts, but I found it a very well crafted mystery story.  I wasn't tempted to read another Dan Brown book, though.

[Bogey]

I don't get the Dan Brown hating.  I listened to the da Vinci code as a book on tape during an unaccompanied cross country car trip.  It wasn't a well of deep thoughts, but I found it a very well crafted mystery story.  I wasn't tempted to read another Dan Brown book, though.

Of which I did.  I enjoyed the da Vinci Code.  In fact, I read the illustrated version that was packed with photos of the settings and the art work being referenced.  I enjoyed so much that I did not put it down for two days straight and almost finished it in that time.   I then read a couple more of his books, and found them entertaining, but that is about it. 

[HIPster]

Re: ANATHEM and Neal Stephenson:

By way of an intersection of interests, have you seen this?  Stephenson mentions recordings of chant that he likes, especially things he was listening to as he wrote ANATHEM.  I ran across this several years ago and have enjoyed a few of the recommendations.  The actual blog entry (link immediately below) also contains hotlinks to artist/etc sites.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/living-with-music-a-playlist-by-neal-stephenson/

Octave!  Thank you so much for posting this.  Fantastic.

By any chance, do you have that Stutz recording he mentions as an accompaniment to the book itself?  OOP and amazon lists an insane price for it. . .

Lotsa good stuff though!  Thanks again.  I am very eager to begin reading and have sort of held this in reserve for a while now.  Both Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle are favorites of mine.

[Octave]

Hi HIPster, I'm sorry that I do not have that Stutz ANATHEM-related recording; in fact, that's one that I have not heard yet.  I would like to know about it, if you track it down.  I did get the Cappella Romana FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, and I thought it was awesome; I once terrified some neighbors, playing it much too loud.  "Are you a Satanist?" one of them asked me.  I responded: "Aren't we all?"
Also, I was careless saying that all the recordings he mentioned were 'chant'; I see that that is not really the case.

[Karl Henning]

While (standing, actually) at the train station at half past ten last night, I finished Dial Emma for Murder. Yet more than with Why Begins With W (which I've read four times, three with hard copy, once with the Kindle app), I couldn't put the book down.

Now, given my schedule yesterday, this is what couldn't put the book down meant: I read Emma on my morning train ride into Boston, and again while riding the Green Line from Government Center to the MFA, again during my break at the museum, and then again on the Green Line from the MFA to North Station, and then finishing the book off while waiting at the station for my train home.

So, to such a degree as my day's agenda permitted, I read far the greater part of the book in one breath.

What to say, that will not blurt out any spoiler? The smart-alecky-but-likeable (I wanted to say simpatico, but realized I couldn't without suggesting a gender, a continued unknown quantity) narrator is more on edge than in W, the confidence at times wavers, and when a number of apparently important elements come to light, they of necessity admit of more than one reasonable possibility, and . . . there is danger of error.

And what of Lana? Is she a ditz? Or does she have a chunk of brain, which perhaps falls into place at odd times, if she cocks her ear just so? . . .

[Florestan]

I don't get the Dan Brown hating.  I listened to the da Vinci code as a book on tape during an unaccompanied cross country car trip.  It wasn't a well of deep thoughts, but I found it a very well crafted mystery story. 

Well, you're a big fan of Twitter so I do not wonder... 

Irony aside, what most irked me was not the story in itself (which is trite) but the falsehoods and fabrications about history and religion that were presented as facts. I am not Roman Catholic but I can't stand someone bashing Catholicism* and masquerading it as truth.

* Or any other denomination / religion

[Florestan]

I enjoyed the da Vinci Code. 

I'm flabbergasted to say the least. IIRC you're a Roman Catholic. How can you then enjoy a compendium of blatant lies about, and vicious attacks on, the religion you profess? 

[Opus106]

If it helps any, DVC got me interested in etymology. And it brought me back into reading fiction.

This thread isn't about what one's not reading, is it?

[Wakefield]

If it helps any, DVC got me interested in etymology. And it brought me back into reading fiction.

That's frequently "diagnosed" as a "healthy" result of some bestsellers over some intelligent readers. A sort of provocation in order to search more and better books. 

[Cato]

While (standing, actually) at the train station at half past ten last night, I finished Dial Emma for Murder. Yet more than with Why Begins With W (which I've read four times, three with hard copy, once with the Kindle app), I couldn't put the book down.

Now, given my schedule yesterday, this is what couldn't put the book down meant: I read Emma on my morning train ride into Boston, and again while riding the Green Line from Government Center to the MFA, again during my break at the museum, and then again on the Green Line from the MFA to North Station, and then finishing the book off while waiting at the station for my train home.

So, to such a degree as my day's agenda permitted, I read far the greater part of the book in one breath.

What to say, that will not blurt out any spoiler? The smart-alecky-but-likeable (I wanted to say simpatico, but realized I couldn't without suggesting a gender, a continued unknown quantity) narrator is more on edge than in W, the confidence at times wavers, and when a number of apparently important elements come to light, they of necessity admit of more than one reasonable possibility, and . . . there is danger of error.

And what of Lana? Is she a ditz? Or does she have a chunk of brain, which perhaps falls into place at odd times, if she cocks her ear just so? . . .

Many thanks for such a marvelous recommendation!   

[kishnevi]

Well, you're a big fan of Twitter so I do not wonder... 

Irony aside, what most irked me was not the story in itself (which is trite) but the falsehoods and fabrications about history and religion that were presented as facts. I am not Roman Catholic but I can't stand someone bashing Catholicism* and masquerading it as truth.

* Or any other denomination / religion

I gave up reading* DaVinci Code about three chapters in, not because of any possible fabrications but because it was just so boringly predictable and stereotypical in its characters and action.  And the writing style simply made things worse.   Well made mystery? Possibly, in the same way that Kentucky Fried Chicken presents its customer with a well made basket of fried chicken.   I had the feeling he was following the sort of instructions that come with do it yourself furniture.
It's possible to have cardboard characters and yet have a first class thriller--Hunt for Red October is one such book--but DaVinci didn't manage that feat.

*that understates my reaction.  I was so bored and disgusted by the writing and the flat characters and the overall predictability of it that I threw it across the room.  If was checked out from the library, which is why I didn't throw it into the wastebasket.

During the Harry Potter frenzy, I thumbed through a few of the books in bookstores, so that I could see what all the fuss was about.

Certainly the author had some very good luck in plugging into the Zeitgeist, and shows a good amount of talent, and again, it is hard to argue with a billion-dollar result! 

My little books have failed to plug into much of anything!   

We shall see if they last as long as e.g. the books of Dr. Seuss.

I predict they'll last quite a long time.  They are very well written,  but to appreciate how well written they are requires more than just thumbing through them.   For instance, it's only when you've gotten near the end of the series that you understand how the very first book in the series lays out the major themes and even the narrative of the last volume.  Valdemort refuses to accept his own mortality, and to escape the possibility of death is ready to do anything and everything;  Harry, however, unwillingly, accepts his own mortality and when faced with what seems to be the necessity of his own death, makes no attempt to escape it.    Harry's self sacrifice in Book Seven is prefigured in Ron's act of self sacrifice in Book One. 

And this goes on through the entire series. 

Add to that the fact that Rowling was successful in giving us a complex and more or less consistent "subcreation" (to use the term invented by the most successful subcreator of modern times) of which the movie versions only scratch the surface.

Some of this is obscured by the fact that the series was written with an audience of older children/younger teens in mind,  and there are parts that I could have done without (like all the Polyjuice Potioning in the second volume),  but I think the whole series could be read profitably* by adults and children both.

*Profitably for the reader, not for Ms. Rowling, who, as you point out, has made quite a bit of profit already from these books.

[Florestan]

I gave up reading* DaVinci Code about three chapters in, not because of any possible fabrications but because it was just so boringly predictable and stereotypical in its characters and action.  And the writing style simply made things worse.   Well made mystery? Possibly, in the same way that Kentucky Fried Chicken presents its customer with a well made basket of fried chicken.   I had the feeling he was following the sort of instructions that come with do it yourself furniture.
It's possible to have cardboard characters and yet have a first class thriller--Hunt for Red October is one such book--but DaVinci didn't manage that feat.

*that understates my reaction.  I was so bored and disgusted by the writing and the flat characters and the overall predictability of it that I threw it across the room.  If was checked out from the library, which is why I didn't throw it into the wastebasket.

I completely sympathize with both your assessment and your reaction. 

[CaughtintheGaze]

So far the key text in my research:

[Bogey]

[Beorn]

HARPO SPEAKS!

...and others.