What are you currently reading?

[North Star]

The 20 most fascinating accidental inventions

...by Americans?

[Florestan]

Steven Pinker.

Haven't read anything by him.

Cervantes.
Homer.

Yes to both.

Ayn Rand.

No. Not for me in any case. 

I suggest two lists:

1. More on the thinking side, but with excellent literary quality
Pascal
Schopenhauer
Nietzsche
Unamuno

2. More on the writing side, but with sharp and penetrating thoughts
Dante
Goethe
Proust
Tolstoy

[Karl Henning]

My present reading:

[asin]0521162904[/asin]

[Lisztianwagner]

Emile Zola
Doctor Pascal

[stingo]

Finished Shift, and started Dust, the last book in the Silo trilogy.

[asin]B00CYNGPTG[/asin]

[Ken B]

Haven't read anything by him.

Yes to both.
No. Not for me in any case. 

I suggest two lists:

1. More on the thinking side, but with excellent literary quality
Pascal
Schopenhauer
Nietzsche
Unamuno

2. More on the writing side, but with sharp and penetrating thoughts
Dante
Goethe
Proust
Tolstoy

Dante and Goethe yes, If I hadn't just been tweaking Brian I might have listed them. Tolstoy no no no. Great great novelist. I read WP twice. But a wretched thinker.
Flaubert, Stendahl, Maupassant.

[Moonfish]

Going through an Eliot phase...
2/3 through and for the moment it is slow going.     However, she is a great writer. No doubt about it!

[asin] 0199538484[/asin]

[Moonfish]

My present reading:

[asin]0521162904[/asin]

How do you like that companion Karl?

[Karl Henning]

How do you like that companion Karl?

Inhaling it!

[Karl Henning]

Also reading:  Violence thwarted through community vigilance.

[Moonfish]

Inhaling it!

That great, eh?  Hmm, some people inhale cookies while other inhale glue. You inhale the Cambridge companions...

[Karl Henning]

Not just any Cambridge Companion, buddy!

[Moonfish]

Well, then....

[Ken B]

Inhaling it!

I knew you were on something,  after the Elgar > Wagner thing.

[Karl Henning]

I did not say that Elgar was greater than Wagner;  I only gave Elgar as an example of composers who learnt something from Wagner, and whose work made it worth the hassle of enduring Wagner. 

[Florestan]

Tolstoy [...] a wretched thinker.

Why?

[mn dave]

A Feast for Crows by GRRM

[milk]

Finished Shift, and started Dust, the last book in the Silo trilogy.

[asin]B00CYNGPTG[/asin]

Who recommended this to me here??? I'm on the first one and so far so good!!! Fun fun!

[Ken B]

Why?

1 the last 100 pages of wp
2 the maudlin rose colored view of the peasants in ak
3 the religiosity
4 the kreutzer sonata's implicit views on women and sex
5 his collection of Stockhausen CDs

Don't get me wrong. He had an incredible pull on me when I was in high school. But that's an age when many are seduced by nonsense. (How many fell victim to Ayn Rand at that age?) i am thankful I never had a chance to meet Leo.

[Ken B]

I did not say that Elgar was greater than Wagner;  I only gave Elgar as an example of composers who learnt something from Wagner, and whose work made it worth the hassle of enduring Wagner. 

See now I'm picturing a tee-shirt. "We lived through Wagner and all I got was this Elgar."