What are you currently reading?

[Florestan]

As a child (7-12) my daily literary meals consisted of Romanian and international folktales, Charles Perrault, The Grimm Brothers, Wilhelm Hauff, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Paul Feval, Fenimore Cooper, R. L. Stevenson. Eugene Sue and so on. Also, one brick of a book, an encyclopedic dictionary (quite similar an experience to that of Gurn). Nothing groundshattering or transcendental, but I owe to them a lifelong passion for literature in all its forms, and also a deep interest in history, geography and linguistics.

While in my teens the first literary shock was discovering the poems of Poe (and his prose) and Baudelaire in excellent Romanian translation. I was instantly hooked and poetry has been one of my favorite genres ever since.

The second shock came in my late teens when I read Pascal´s Meditations, which lead me to The Bible, and then to a book written by a Romanian Jew who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy while he was imprisoned during the Communist regime for the capital crime of having read Emil Cioran. I didn´t consider myself an atheist even before reading these three books, but they positively turned me to Christianity.

So, these are the books which heavily influenced me in childhood and teenage.

[North Star]

Also, one brick of a book, an encyclopedic dictionary (quite similar an experience to that of Gurn). Nothing groundshattering or transcendental, but I owe to them a lifelong passion for literature in all its forms, and also a deep interest in history, geography and linguistics.

While in my teens the first literary shock was discovering the poems of Poe (and his prose) and Baudelaire in excellent Romanian translation. I was instantly hooked and poetry has been one of my favorite genres ever since.

Encyclopedias were important in my childhood as well. I knew all of the history taught in elementary school beforehand.
Poe was important in my teens as well, I don't remember exactly when, but I got first a translated edition of his stories and poems, and a couple of months later the Penguin complete tales & poems. Still haven't read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, though.

[Florestan]

Encyclopedias were important in my childhood as well. I knew all of the history taught in elementary school beforehand.

History, yes --- and geography, too. As a child, I spent hours studying maps, a pleasure which I still experience. Give me a world atlas and lock me in an empty room --- you won´t hear from me for days! 

Poe was important in my teens as well, I don't remember exactly when, but I got first a translated edition of his stories and poems, and a couple of months later the Penguin complete tales & poems. Still haven't read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, though.

I discovered Poe in an excellently translated Romanian two-volume edition of his works from my parents´ library. The Raven, Annabel Lee, The Gold Bug and The Fall of the House of Usher were instant hits for me. I was in high school and fortunate enough to have a few colleagues interested in literature, so we established something of a Poe club. 

[North Star]

History, yes --- and geography, too. As a child, I spent hours studying maps, a pleasure which I still experience. Give me a world atlas and lock me in an empty room --- you won´t hear from me for days! 

Oh yes, I too spent countless hours looking at maps.

I discovered Poe in an excellently translated Romanian two-volume edition of his works from my parents´ library. The Raven, Annabel Lee, The Gold Bug and The Fall of the House of Usher were instant hits for me. I was in high school and fortunate enough to have a few colleagues interested in literature, so we established something of a Poe club.

I didn't have any 'colleagues' in high school that were at all interested in literature, let alone visual arts (I started to get into visual arts later myself too, though, last year of sr. high) or classical music.

[vandermolen]

'Buddhist Boot Camp'

[Karl Henning]

Encyclopedias were important in my childhood as well. I knew all of the history taught in elementary school beforehand.
Poe was important in my teens as well, I don't remember exactly when, but I got first a translated edition of his stories and poems, and a couple of months later the Penguin complete tales & poems.

Well, we really were separated at birth 

Although I have read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

[Karl Henning]

And Andrei, too.

[North Star]

Well, we really were separated at birth 

Although I have read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

The separation was very thorough, in time and place.

[Karl Henning]

Aliens were probably involved.

[Karl Henning]

Or, The Twilight Zone.

[Florestan]

I have read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

And Andrei, too.

Oh, yes, I have read it. 

[Cato]

The separation was very thorough, in time and place.

Or, The Twilight Zone.

I know somebody whose younger brother (by 12 years) is so similar to him - psychologically and  physically - that I have called them identical twins separated by 12 years.

History, yes --- and geography, too. As a child, I spent hours studying maps, a pleasure which I still experience. Give me a world atlas and lock me in an empty room --- you won´t hear from me for days! 

You whippersnappers are in the club: I also used to peruse maps of all kinds, and read many history books on my own in grade school.   0:)

Oh yes, I too spent countless hours looking at maps.

I didn't have any 'colleagues' in high school that were at all interested in literature, let alone visual arts (I started to get into visual arts later myself too, though, last year of sr. high) or classical music.

I went to an all-boy Catholic high school, and fortunately found a good number of budding experts on what the Germans might call "hochgeistiges Zeug"     : many of us had already discovered e.g. Orwell, Poe, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dumas, Hesse, E.T.A. Hoffmann, etc. and science-fiction authors like Heinlein, Asimov, and Bradbury.

I was a Brucknerian in grade school already, but there were "perfect Wagnerites" among us, pro-Stravinsky people and pro-Schoenberg people.  There was even an acolyte of Stockhausen!

One was an American version of Eduard Hanslick: "Up Brahms, Down Bruckner (and Wagner)!"

[Florestan]

I didn't have any 'colleagues' in high school that were at all interested in literature, let alone visual arts (I started to get into visual arts later myself too, though, last year of sr. high) or classical music.

Classical music fans there were two, myself and another guy. Literature, on the other hand, was quite popular in my class. 

As for visual arts, my father is an amateur painter and has a very good library of books about visual arts, so I was exposed to them very early. 

[Jo498]

I think I loved the Atlas before I could properly read longer books; it was somewhat intermediate between picture-dominated books and text-dominated books. In any case I knew most European capitals by heart before I even entered primary school. I read voraciously as a child, almost everything I could get. The first famous/serious novel was probably "Treasure Island" I was 8 or 9, in hindsight certainly too young but I had been obsessed with pirates already a few years before that. I still love that book, it is among the best adventure stories I know, has a cool ambiguous villain, a heroic (but not extremely unrealistically so) young protagonist etc.

But my favorite book around 11 was probably Ende's "Neverending Story" (and when the movie came out, my first time in a cinema, it was traumatically disappointing, so until today I am very wary of movie adaptations of books, most of them suck)

[Jubal Slate]

Good right off.
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[Mookalafalas]

Good right off.
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As far as Jazz writing goes, Gary Giddins is tops.  Very knowledgeable, he always sees things in a big-picture, holistic way, like a top-shelf academic, but also has the writing chops of a great journalist. 

TD:
  Based on Ken's recommendation I got this.
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  I'm only 20 pages in, but it is clear this is a gem.  Very engaging writing style that is dense with information yet wonderfully lucid.

[Bogey]

This one goes out to MN Dave:

[Karl Henning]

(* chortle *)

[Florestan]

Continue reading Oblomov (and enjoying it immensely).

Dostoevsky said about Goncharov: "In [him] one meets the soul of a small time clerk, a head devoid of any idea and the eyes of a boiled fish; and God, as if to make a joke, gave him a brilliant talent ". 

Be it as it may, the delicate poetry and humor in the chapter titled "Oblomov´s Dream" is pure genius. Reading through it I wish some Russian composer took inspiration from it and wrote some Kinderszenen. I know Tchaikovsky´s, but they don´t match exactly that marvelous chapter.

[Drasko]

Michael Psellus - Chronographia