What are you currently reading?

[Moonfish]

Will skip on the DVD set for now though, Moonfish

But...seeing is believing....   
Go Shakespeare!!!!

[Florestan]

Cervantes - Exemplary Novels

[Ken B]

Very good so far. Technical enough to be accurate but not a text book.
[asin]3527404708[/asin]

It requires a little math. If you know what a complex number is, what a vector is, and what an expected value is that's enough.

Rereading this
[asin]0316289299[/asin]

Ant it is pronounced taw-gallyant Al.

[Mookalafalas]

Ant it is pronounced taw-gallyant Al.

  I didn't know that.  I reread the Hornblower series a few years back.  Enjoyed it a lot.   Started 8 of Aubrey yesterday, but hope to stop soon. 

[rockerreds]

Doris Lessing- Stories

[Karl Henning]

A few days ago, I finished Oscar Levant's Memoirs of an Amnesiac, which towards the end becomes less an entertaining train-wreck, and more something one practically squirms to read.  The title is no mere amusing affectation, as he was a substance abuser, and (as he writes here) there is a year of his life, most of his awareness of which is no matter of what he can remember, but of what his wife recounts to him as having occurred.  So, yes, the first 80% (say) of the book is plausibly a rattling good time, if at times verging on the wild (and, without culpability, might simply be enjoyed);  but the wildness takes rather a disconcerting turn for the final chapters (the last chapter IIRC is titled "My Bed of Nails").

This "mind-messing-with" aspect, perhaps, may be why the book has not been made available as an e-book (or is it still under copyright, and thus the heirs/owners are chary of letting it all hang out afresh?)

[Karl Henning]

Your timing is extraordinary (unless you're at my shoulder, in which case, it's creepy):  I just lit on a book here on my shelf, which I had not thought about for (say) three years, and am thinking of starting to read it:

Prompted by the Snobbery thread, I've begun reading:

[asin]B003UV91CE[/asin]

[Karl Henning]

Prompted by the Snobbery thread, I've begun reading:

[asin]B003UV91CE[/asin]

This is good fun.

Also:  popcorn-munching reading

[Ken B]

This is good fun.

Also:  popcorn-munching reading

Pffft. Who can waste their time reading such books?

Think about it ...

[Karl Henning]

Pffft. Who can waste their time reading such books?

Think about it ...

Well played!

[Artem]

Two books that I finished recently by two authors that are new to me:

[Mookalafalas]

I'm a big fan of McCullough. 

[asin]1476728747[/asin]

[Ken B]

Taking a fiction break, starting with
The Judge and his Hangman
Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Been on my book shelf for a very long time, maybe 15 years.

[Ken B]

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/4715#.VXKvmnD3arU

[Jo498]

Taking a fiction break, starting with
The Judge and his Hangman
Friedrich Dürrenmatt

This is sometimes assigned in middle school in Germany (we did it in 8th grade or so, although the most popular Dürrenmatt for school reading are the plays "The visit" (of an elderly lady) and "The physicists"). To my recollection, this is quite good.

There are a few more crime novels by Dürrenmatt, some with the same protagonist but this is the first and probably the best (it's been a long time I read them).

I do not know if all of them have been translated but there are another handful of somewhat unconventional Swiss (and with more local feeling than Dürrenmatt) mysteries: Friedrich Glauser's "Sergeant Studer" and sequels (written and taking place in the 1930s). Glauser died 1938 in his early 40s after years of drug addiction.

[Ken B]

This is sometimes assigned in middle school in Germany (we did it in 8th grade or so, although the most popular Dürrenmatt for school reading are the plays "The visit" (of an elderly lady) and "The physicists"). To my recollection, this is quite good.

There are a few more crime novels by Dürrenmatt, some with the same protagonist but this is the first and probably the best (it's been a long time I read them).

I do not know if all of them have been translated but there are another handful of somewhat unconventional Swiss (and with more local feeling than Dürrenmatt) mysteries: Friedrich Glauser's "Sergeant Studer" and sequels (written and taking place in the 1930s). Glauser died 1938 in his early 40s after years of drug addiction.

I will look for Glauser. This is the third of Durrenmatt's I read. I will probably reread The Quarry soon. They are good.

[Jo498]

"The quarry" (Der Verdacht) is a loose sequel to The judge... with Baerlach in the hospital. There is another one "Das Versprechen" which is connected to a rather famous movie from the late 50s (with "Goldfinger" Gert Froebe) but Duerrenmatt changed it slightly for the novel. And then there is a latecomer, "Justiz" from the 1980s.

Glauser is different but also quite original (they are often said to be the first crime/mystery novels written in German)

In a poll among German crime fiction writers and critics about the all time best crime novels, the first Glauser novel "Wachtmeister Studer" came as #4 (behind "The postman always rings twice", "The long goodbye" and "The maltese falcon") as the best German language one. "The Judge and his hangman" was #8 (the next German language one in the list). (The list is a little strange, I think. Clearly biased towards the hardboiled, spies etc. stuff. According to the text, Simenon was mentioned a lot but always with different books, so none made the list. And "Gaudy Night" the best of Sayers'...?)

http://www.krimilexikon.de/dkp/die119.html

[Ken B]

Interesting danke. I have read almost all through 15th place.

[Ken B]

Coincidentally, I am reading about free tulips in Finland.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/

[Moonfish]

Coincidentally, I am reading about free tulips in Finland.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/

You must have so much free time, Ken....!