What are you currently reading?

[Artem]

Here are some books that I finished recently.



This is my second book by Denis Johnson. I quite like him as a writer. This short collection of stories reminded me of Raymond Carver but with a heavier focus on drug abuse.



A large part of the book deals with Newport music festival and the clash between folk and rock crowds, so it is not about Dylan all the time.



That novel was really great. I suppose it is considered fantasy, which is something I don't normally read, but it is such an odd story with so many interesting characters. Highly recommended. I'll just post this here:

Next to the colonial town of Essenwald sits the Vorrh, a vast—perhaps endless—forest. It is a place of demons and angels, of warriors and priests. Sentient and magical, the Vorrh bends time and wipes  memory. Legend has it that the Garden of Eden still exists at its heart. Now, a renegade English soldier aims to be the first human to traverse its expanse. Armed with only a strange bow, he begins his journey, but some fear the consequences of his mission, and a native marksman has been chosen to stop him. Around them swirl a remarkable cast of characters, including a Cyclops raised by robots and a young girl with tragic curiosity, as well as historical figures, such as writer Raymond Roussel and photographer and Edward Muybridge.  While fact and fictional blend, and the hunter will become the hunted, and everyone's fate hangs in the balance, under the will of the Vorrh.

[lisa needs braces]

Audiobook via audible.com

[Karl Henning]

One Virginia teen's journey from ISIS rock star to incarceration

[Ken B]

One Virginia teen's journey from ISIS rock star to incarceration

Worth noting that he found no support for his radical views from his local religious leaders. 

[Karl Henning]

Worth noting that he found no support for his radical views from his local religious leaders. 

Indeed!

[Karl Henning]

Makes me think a little about the Robt Sheckley story, "Is That What People Do?"

Woman admits storing 93-year-old mom's corpse while she cashed checks for a year

[ The really strange thing about chancing on that story is, I only heard about Gloversville for the first time at the church choir picnic this past Saturday. ]

[Karl Henning]

Volkswagen is a de facto German national icon, and so its deception is forcing Germans to rethink their most basic assumptions about their country.

[Ken B]

Volkswagen is a de facto German national icon, and so its deception is forcing Germans to rethink their most basic assumptions about their country.

Like perhaps basing your view of your country on a single company? 

Insert Tim Horton's joke here.

[Karl Henning]

In a YouGov poll released this summer, Germans chose Volkswagen as the national icon they most identify with, with 63 percent voting for it – far ahead of Bach, Goethe, and even Chancellor Angela Merkel.

I cannot decide which is the occasion for greater national disgrace: far ahead of Bach, Goethe or and even Chancellor Angela Merkel . . . .

[North Star]

I cannot decide which is the occasion for greater national disgrace: far ahead of Bach, Goethe or and even Chancellor Angela Merkel . . . .

I suppose we shouldn't expect the average person to identify themselves with Leibniz, Kant, Wittgenstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Einstein, Planck, Dürer, CD Friedrich, Mann, Grass, Lang, Schubert or Hartmann.

[Jo498]

These are all dead white males (except Merkel), most of them boring, whereas almost everyone can buy a Volkswagen...
Schubert, Wittgenstein, Schrödinger were all Austrian. Not that there is any lack of unquestionably German great composers, philosophers or scientists.

I hate those polls (often coupled with a TV show) about the "greatest German" or so, because the results are always so terribly embarrassing. I seem to recall that 10 years ago or so, Adenauer (first postwar chancellor) came out before Goethe, Bach, Beethoven etc. Beckenbauer or Kohl would have been worse, but it's ridiculous anyway.

[Karl Henning]

I hate those polls (often coupled with a TV show) about the "greatest German" or so, because the results are always so terribly embarrassing.

Well, I suppose I take comfort in the thought that the malaise is not, after all, unique to the U.S.  0:)   

[North Star]

These are all dead white males (except Merkel), most of them boring, whereas almost everyone can buy a Volkswagen...

You're dead right.  0:)

Schubert, Wittgenstein, Schrödinger were all Austrian. Not that there is any lack of unquestionably German great composers, philosophers or scientists.

Yes of course. Silly of me to not remember it in each of those cases.

I hate those polls (often coupled with a TV show) about the "greatest German" or so, because the results are always so terribly embarrassing. I seem to recall that 10 years ago or so, Adenauer (first postwar chancellor) came out before Goethe, Bach, Beethoven etc. Beckenbauer or Kohl would have been worse, but it's ridiculous anyway.

Ridiculous they certainly are. A dozen years ago there was one here too. Mostly politicians/war heroes, the pediatrician Ylppö, the three most significant literary figures (Agricola, Kivi, Lönnrot), and Sibelius in the eighth place. Edelfeldt and Salonen didn't make it to the top 100, Akseli Gallen-Kallela was no. 56. But it is to be expected that politicians, pop musicians, athletes and racing drivers will do better than artists.

[Ken B]

/quote]
For a while.

To An Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

[Karl Henning]

The Suppression of Speedy

[kishnevi]

These are all dead white males (except Merkel), most of them boring, whereas almost everyone can buy a Volkswagen...
Schubert, Wittgenstein, Schrödinger were all Austrian. Not that there is any lack of unquestionably German great composers, philosophers or scientists.

I hate those polls (often coupled with a TV show) about the "greatest German" or so, because the results are always so terribly embarrassing. I seem to recall that 10 years ago or so, Adenauer (first postwar chancellor) came out before Goethe, Bach, Beethoven etc. Beckenbauer or Kohl would have been worse, but it's ridiculous anyway.

I would have thought a good mug of beer would have placed in first, or close to it.

[Ken B]

I would have thought a good mug of beer would have placed in first, or close to it.

Indeed.

Anything but a particular company to be honest.
If I had to name one company I associate with Germany it would not be one the Germans would be happy about!

[Wandering Aengus]

I haven't read this specific collection, but I love reading Carver, even though his stories are almost always devastating.

This is my favourite collection of his stories.  And the short story 'Cathedral' itself always leaves me in (joyous) tears.  'A Small, Good Thing' is in that collection also if I recall. 

'Devastating' is an apt word for Carver's stories!

[Wandering Aengus]

I tend to read two or three books at a time, but the main one which has preoccupied me lately is Augustine's Confessions, which I'm coming close to finishing now.  I've desperately tried to give it a generous reading, but it's gotten much more difficult toward the end (full disclosure: I've been a non-theist for about 15 years, but not dogmatically so -- Dawkins, Hitchens, et al do not interest me).



The first half of the book was not terrible because at least it takes the form of a narrative -- to put it in the broadest terms possible, a quest for meaning.  And I can identify (to some degree) with Augustine's struggle -- years ago I was a Christian going through my own search from everything from Origen to Tillich.  Understood in general terms, and bearing the historical context in mind, I actually found Augustine to be interesting, even if I disagreed with him almost every step of the way.  Augustine's chief source of misery seems to me not sin at all but rather his fierce perfectionism.  Too often he seems to be chasing his own metaphysical tail in circles.

His insights on the nature of the self and the will are nevertheless interesting, to say the least and he's raised interesting philosophical questions for me -- though hardly in the way Augustine ever intended!  But I'll need something to wash down the bitter taste of his religious fervour (which is quite exhausting!), so the more even-handed self scrutiny Montaigne's Essays are next for my reading. lol

[The new erato]