What are you currently reading?

[Kontrapunctus]

[Artem]

Conversations between Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa on classical music and recordings.

This book looks interesting. I didn't know about it. I read a collection of pieces Murakami wrote about jazz music that was enjoyable.

[SimonNZ]

This book looks interesting. I didn't know about it. I read a collection of pieces Murakami wrote about jazz music that was enjoyable.

It is interesting. Murakami, though not a musician, is a very perceptive and close listener, as well as being articulate about the recordings he's listening to with Ozawa, and guides the conversation well. Ozawa even expresses surprise.

Its a fast undemanding read, but still more interesting than I was expecting.

His jazz book hasn't been translated into English yet, as far as I'm aware. Which language were you lucky enough to find it in?

[Artem]

It was translated into Russian language.

[Bogey]

Should be a treat!  Oy, Ken!

[Ken B]

Should be a treat!  Oy, Ken!

I've read 'em all Bill! An uneven series but well worth getting to know. You'll enjoy the ride. The best are Rare Coin, Sour Lemon, and my favourite, Deadly Edge.

That one was filmed with Lee Marvin, the perfect Parker, as Point Blank I think.

[ritter]

Paolo Isotta: Altri canti di Marte

[asin]883172181X[/asin]

This book follows La virtù dell'elefante, the author's previous tome of memoires and opinions on art, literature and the arts in general.

Mr. Isotta is one of the doyens of musical criticism in Italy, having written for Il Corriere della Sera in Milan for many years. He is not devoid of controversy, to the point that--for instance--the previous general manager of La Scala (Stéphane Lissner) tried to ban him from that theatre.

This volume appears more valuable than its predecessor, as the style is less catty and gossipy, and contains a rather interesting chapter on Enescu and Szymanowki, and a quite inspired essay on Parsifal. Still, Mr. Isotta's insistence on his hates and likes is annoying. The former include Abbado, Pollini, Nono and all the Milan intelligentsia, and among the latter are Muti, Franco Alfano and composer/conductor Gino Marinuzzi (whose symphony the author tells us over and over is "the best of the 20th century"--fortunately we're spared having to read that it's better even than Parsifal  ). And yet, there is a bizarre chapter in which Isotta accuses Muti of "treason"  , for not following his advice as to what to program in Chicago (Martucci, for instance). Other artists are dismissed rather disrespectfully (both John Eliot Gardiner and Mitsuko Uchida are labelled "ridiculous", just like that  ).

In any event, a book that denotes a real knowledge of music and the arts in general, and that would be much better if the tone were more balanced (and less as if written by a "marica mala", to use an untranslatable Spanish term).

[Ken B]

The Tyranny of Experts
William Easterly
An argument that the mainstream approach to development in the poorer parts of the world is often ineffective, because it fails to respect the rights of the poor.

In Matto's Realm
F Glauser
A detective novel written in Switzerland in 1936.

The Conquering Tide
Ian Toll
Second part of his excellent history of the Pacific War. Listening to this on audio.

[Hilltroll73(Ukko)]

The past couple days I was reading The Thicket, by Joe R. Lansdale. Helluva story. Near as I can tell, it is set in maybe the early 1920s. The locale is East Texas, the Thicket and environs. Kirkus Reviews says it's "alternately violent and tender, with a gently legendary quality that makes this tall tail just about perfect." I sure don't recognize hardly any of that in the story I read, except maybe the 'about perfect' part. When a 4 gauge shotgun and a 600 pound companion boar pig are active but supporting players, it may be legendary but it ain't gentle.

I loved it, any country boy ought to. I do wish the protagonist was a little better shot.

[Bogey]

I've read 'em all Bill! An uneven series but well worth getting to know. You'll enjoy the ride. The best are Rare Coin, Sour Lemon, and my favourite, Deadly Edge.

That one was filmed with Lee Marvin, the perfect Parker, as Point Blank I think.

Finished up The Hunter, Ken.  Enjoyed it a lot o looking forward to the rest of the series.  Probably hit my 5th Reacher book next.  Ah, the essence of "brain candy" continues.

[Ken B]

Finished up The Hunter, Ken.  Enjoyed it a lot o looking forward to the rest of the series.  Probably hit my 5th Reacher book next.  Ah, the essence of "brain candy" continues.

Excellent. 

I've never read a Reacher, but I did enjoy the movie.

[jlaurson]

Anthony Powell


(Folio Society Edition, v.1 of 4)

A Dance to the Music of Time, v.1 A Question of Upbringing

A Dance to the Music of Time, v.2 A Buyer's Market

A Dance to the Music of Time, v.3 The Acceptance World

It starts convoluted, with the strained comparison of the opening scene to the painting that gives this series its name... and it continues that way, mostly.
A Question of Upbringing has a fine, Tom Brown's Schooldays-feel to it, but less naive.
A Buyer's Market is, although better readers and writers than I disagree, atrocious writing; comical even.
The Acceptance World is either getting better, so far as my experience with the first chapter is concerned, or I have simply entered the Acceptance World myself, and come to terms with Powell's style of endless hedging, double negatives, and subordinate clauses and endless asides. How this was ever considered good writing is entirely lost on me. I'm with V.S.Naipaul on this. Got them, because Wodehouse wrote enthusiastically about these books to Powell himself... but either he was being nice or he liked the sentimental all-English aspect that flooded him with fond memories from the world that Wodehouse had left behind. Endlessly, characters are yanked back into the narrative that really have no place being there [constant discussion how a third party would have commented upon the things currently happening], there's that typically odd mix of total memory, down to the last phrase and casual "I don't know if she said anything else that night; at least I don't remember anything being said" dismissal. But the fact that he can't just write a simple sentence is absolutely unnerving me. Here's a fine example:

"In spite of the apparently irresistible nature of the circumstances, when regarded through the larger perspectives that seemed, on reflection, to prevail - that is to say of a general subordination to an intricate design of cause and effect - I could not help admitting, in due course, the awareness of a sense of inadequacy. There was no specific suggestion that anything had, as it might be said, 'gone wrong'; it was merely that any wish to remain any longer present in those surroundings had suddenly and violently decreased, if not disappeared entirely. This feeling was, in its way, a shock. Gypsy, for her part, appeared far less impressed than myself by consciousness of anything, even relatively momentuous, having occurred. In fact, after the brief interval of extreme animation, her subsequent indifference, which might almost have been called torpid, was, so it seemed to me, remarkable. This imperturbability was inclined to produce, more or less, an impression that, so far from knowing each other a great deal better, we had progressed scarcely at all in that direction; even, perhaps, become more than ever, even irretrievably, alienated. Barbara's recurrent injunction to avoid any question of 'getting sentimental' seemed, here in the embodiment of Gypsy, now carried to lengths which might legitimately be looked upon as such a principle's logical conclusion." ("A Buyer's Market")

So there you have it: "extreme animation", reflected upon somberly, while dragging secondary characters back into the contemplation of the state as such, is the extent to which Powell, hiding the act, if an act you can call it, in sub-clauses and draping it with not entirely irrelevant double negatives, goes into the explicit description of carnal lust and passion.

But I'll get all the way through, now that I've started.

[Bogey]

Excellent. 

I've never read a Reacher, but I did enjoy the movie.

Absolutely mindless fun.  If you do read one, look them up for a chronological order.  Start with The Enemy.  I was hooked after this one, but the next couple were better than ok, but I would not call great story lines.  Also, a lot of folks that are into the novels are upset that they did not cast a taller more rugged star for the role.  However, I love Cruise in this kind of stuff, so I'm good with it.

[Kontrapunctus]

[Bogey]

[arpeggio]

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer.

This is a novel in the Southern Reach Trilogy.  It was very confusing and it made no sense to me.  About a third of the way through I then discovered that Acceptance is actually the third book in the trilogy.      The three novels in the Trilogy are Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance.  Annihilation received the 2014 Nebula Award (Science Fiction/Fantasy) for best novel and 2014 Shirley Jackson Award (psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic) for best novel.

If I read it in the correct order it may now start to make sense.

[Artem]

I read the Southern Reach Trilogy earlier this year. The first volume was the best in the trilogy for me.

[zamyrabyrd]

Finally getting around to Moby Dick, appreciate it better now than when I was in high school.

[aligreto]

Finally getting around to Moby Dick, appreciate it better now than when I was in high school.

I read it many years ago and found it difficult going at the time. I wonder if I could read it with more ease now?

[Ken B]

I read it many years ago and found it difficult going at the time. I wonder if I could read it with more ease now?

By a peculiarity of marketing it often shows up in the children's books section.