What are you currently reading?

[vers la flamme]

Yes, genius.

Would love to read more, though it doesn't seem that all that much has made it into English translation. Happy to call him yet another favorite in Japanese literature, which has become an obsession over the past few years, alongside Tanizaki, Kawabata, Sōseki, Mishima and others. Damn, I should learn some Japanese.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Would love to read more, though it doesn't seem that all that much has made it into English translation. Happy to call him yet another favorite in Japanese literature, which has become an obsession over the past few years, alongside Tanizaki, Kawabata, Sōseki, Mishima and others. Damn, I should learn some Japanese.

Dazai in "others"? A majority of these authors committed (bizzare) suicide. Interestingly, none of the Japanese composers did. 
Since Japanese language is very ambiguous and nuanced, English translations of these works may be better. However, as the Japanese text uses two Japanese alphabets, Chinese letters and occasionally English alphabets, they are very colorful. It's like an English text with capital and small letters, Greek alphabet, and Chinese letters.

P.s. Among these authors, the works by Kawabata and Soseki are the most nuanced imo. Sometimes they don't appear to say anything significant.  Yes, I like them.

[BWV 1080]

Shares some similarities with 2666, but (at least so far) not near as heavy

[vers la flamme]

Dazai in "others"? A majority of these authors committed (bizzare) suicide. Interestingly, none of the Japanese composers did. 
Since Japanese language is very ambiguous and nuanced, English translations of these works may be better. However, as the Japanese text uses two Japanese alphabets, Chinese letters and occasionally English alphabets, they are very colorful. It's like an English text with capital and small letters, Greek alphabet, and Chinese letters.

P.s. Among these authors, the works by Kawabata and Soseki are the most nuanced imo. Sometimes they don't appear to say anything significant.  Yes, I like them.

Yes, Dazai is definitely among the others, though I read his stuff at a very dark point in my life and have not revisited since. As is Shusaku Endo (a Christian, he was spared from the suicide epidemic among Japanese literary figures) and Kobo Abe, and among younger authors Haruki Murakami (who is really not that young anymore... but he is alive, at least), Banana Yoshimoto, and Hiroko Oyamada. There are still tons of others I'd like to read. Also I need to finish the Shiba Ryotaro series that you put me onto last year, of which I really enjoyed volume 1.

Regarding Dazai, New Directions published something of his that was translated into English for the first time, that I have yet to read. Something of a sequel to No Longer Human, from what I understand.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Yes, Dazai is definitely among the others, though I read his stuff at a very dark point in my life and have not revisited since. As is Shusaku Endo (a Christian, he was spared from the suicide epidemic among Japanese literary figures) and Kobo Abe, and among younger authors Haruki Murakami (who is really not that young anymore... but he is alive, at least), Banana Yoshimoto, and Hiroko Oyamada. There are still tons of others I'd like to read. Also I need to finish the Shiba Ryotaro series that you put me onto last year, of which I really enjoyed volume 1.

Regarding Dazai, New Directions published something of his that was translated into English for the first time, that I have yet to read. Something of a sequel to No Longer Human, from what I understand.

As for Dazai, is it Shayo/Setting? It's a nice novel.
You may want to check out The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Lady in Waiting Purple Shikibu) eventually. Though it's an oldest novel in the written literature (11th century), the story doesn't sound old and it's entertaining. I don't know which is the best translation though.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/books/tale-of-genji-japan-women.html

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Michel de Montaigne - Essays.

[San Antone]

Cities of the Plain is the final volume of American novelist Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy", published in 1998. The title is a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:29).



I am 75% finished, starting probably the last chapter (IV) of this vaguely disappointing read.  I say 'disappointing' because the two characters of the firsat two book, meet up, but the same theme of the first book is central to this one: John Grady Cole (protagonist in All the Pretty Horses) is once again trying to run off and marry a Mexican girl who, odds are, won't be his despite their love for each other.  But he will go through fire to get her ....

The only difference is that in the first book, the girl was out of reach because she came from a wealthy Mexican family, and this other girl has been a whore at an upscale brothel, whose "owner" will not let her go.

Still, the prose is majestic, and who knows, it's been years since I read it the first time, and I've forgotten how it actually ends, so maybe I will be happily surprised.

[Florestan]

I wanted to read this:



Javier Marias - Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

but I was put off by the first two pages. I'm not quite keen on a protagonist who launches in philosophical divagations occasioned by his abandoning the corpse of his mistress, mother of two, who had just died in his arms during a tryst.

Then I remembered I had not yet read Jane Eyre so I started it. Half an hour later I was deep into Chapter 8. Now we're talking!

[Mandryka]

Dusapin - Yes
Bedrossian - No
Ferneyhough - Yes
Scelsi - Yes
Silvestrov - No
Rochberg - Yes
Scarlatti - No
Beeke - No
Starzer - No


Bear in mind, this is a summarised one-volume version of 4 books, maybe the coverage is wider in the full version.

Please PM me your email address and I'll send you photos of the full composer index, the tables of contents and the three pages relating to Op.33 

Well, I ordered the volume "from Haydn to Brahms" on sale or return from Amazon, and it arrived today. First impressions are of high quality journalism rather than academic rigour in the English speaking  manner  (I've been reading Nancy November on Beethoven's quartets too recently, and the difference in rigour and sense of real research is obvious.) I was also a bit surprised at the weighting -- Haydn gets about 60 pages, Mozart gets about 120 pages; Beethoven gets about 850 pages with a subtitle "The Apogee of the genre" (Does he define the genre? I mean the specific nature of the Viennese string quartet project.)

We'll see -- Does it stay or Does it go? -- as Mick (nearly) said.

[Mandryka]

Well, I ordered the volume "from Haydn to Brahms" on sale or return from Amazon, and it arrived today. First impressions are of high quality journalism rather than academic rigour in the English speaking  manner  (I've been reading Nancy November on Beethoven's quartets too recently, and the difference in rigour and sense of real research is obvious.) I was also a bit surprised at the weighting -- Haydn gets about 60 pages, Mozart gets about 120 pages; Beethoven gets about 850 pages with a subtitle "The Apogee of the genre" (Does he define the genre? I mean the specific nature of the Viennese string quartet project.)

We'll see -- Does it stay or Does it go? -- as Mick (nearly) said.

Just read what he says on Haydn op 33. It's very good -- clear and well put. It's a keeper. Thanks @Papy Oli

[AnotherSpin]

Yes, Dazai is definitely among the others, though I read his stuff at a very dark point in my life and have not revisited since. As is Shusaku Endo (a Christian, he was spared from the suicide epidemic among Japanese literary figures) and Kobo Abe, and among younger authors Haruki Murakami (who is really not that young anymore... but he is alive, at least), Banana Yoshimoto, and Hiroko Oyamada. There are still tons of others I'd like to read. Also I need to finish the Shiba Ryotaro series that you put me onto last year, of which I really enjoyed volume 1.

Regarding Dazai, New Directions published something of his that was translated into English for the first time, that I have yet to read. Something of a sequel to No Longer Human, from what I understand.

Opinions about Ogai Mori?

[vers la flamme]

As for Dazai, is it Shayo/Setting? It's a nice novel.
You may want to check out The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Lady in Waiting Purple Shikibu) eventually. Though it's an oldest novel in the written literature (11th century), the story doesn't sound old and it's entertaining. I don't know which is the best translation though.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/books/tale-of-genji-japan-women.html

Definitely planning on reading Genji, and that is the translation I was looking at (Seidensticker, who also translated some Kawabata and others to my satisfaction) though it is abridged. Fine by me, the full text is well over a thousand pages in English, I think.

The recent Dazai was called The Flowers of Buffoonery. Don't know much about it except that it apparently follows the protagonist of No Longer Human after the events of that novel—which is kind of hard to imagine considering where that book left things off for that guy. The ones I read and loved are No Longer Human and Shayo.

@AnotherSpin, I have not read anything of his yet, but would love to. Kinokuniya by my school has a copy of The Wild Geese that I keep looking at but haven't bought yet. Have you read his work? Recently when reading Akutagawa, the introduction by Haruki Murakami said of Ogai Mori something along the lines of "he is very good, but the subject matter is kind of dated/less relevant than Soseki, Akutagawa etc".

[AnotherSpin]

@AnotherSpin, I have not read anything of his yet, but would love to. Kinokuniya by my school has a copy of The Wild Geese that I keep looking at but haven't bought yet. Have you read his work? Recently when reading Akutagawa, the introduction by Haruki Murakami said of Ogai Mori something along the lines of "he is very good, but the subject matter is kind of dated/less relevant than Soseki, Akutagawa etc".

Didn't read yet, but I have my eye on it.

[Papy Oli]

Just read what he says on Haydn op 33. It's very good -- clear and well put. It's a keeper. Thanks @Papy Oli

Nice one @Mandryka , glad you find it of interest 

[Scion7]

Although I have 4 different editions, re-reading this classic again in this edition from 1979:

[Florestan]

A very interesting book, containing some ideas and thoughts I've been ruminating on for years --- I am only too glad, and frankly quite proud, to find them confirmed by no less an authority than Dahlhaus. 

[ando]

The Book of William, Paul Collins (2010, Bloomsbury)

On 8 November 1623, Isaac Jaggard, printer, and Edward Blount, bookseller, went to the Stationers Hall in London to register their publication: Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, finally completed after two years' effort.

Shakespeare's First Folio will be 400 years old tomorrow. The performance history is much more intriguing but a look at the history of its reception and circulation outside of that is interesting, too. I also picked up an Arden edition of The Tempest in commemoration.

[SimonNZ]

Shakespeare's First Folio will be 400 years old tomorrow.

The latest episode of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast has Emma Smith talking about the First Folio:

400 Years of Shakespeare's First Folio, with Emma Smith

I've had her book on the First Folio Unread for a while and must put it back near the top of the pile:



related, I recently knocked off these two quick reads:



Dromgoolie was director at the Globe and Doran was director at the RSC, but the books take seperate paths in telling their authors stories.

Dromgoolie is focused on showing how Shakespeare shaped his personal development throughout his life even from an early age (he was born to a family of actors, and was in productions from primary school) with just a little of his own production history. Doran is focused on each of his RSC performances, drilling down on working through the text with the actors, with a much smaller amount of biography mixed in.

[ando]

The latest episode of the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast has Emma Smith talking about the First Folio:

400 Years of Shakespeare's First Folio, with Emma Smith

I've had her book on the First Folio Unread for a while and must put it back near the top of the pile:



related, I recently knocked off these two quick reads:



Dromgoolie was director at the Globe and Doran was director at the RSC, but the books take seperate paths in telling their authors stories.

Dromgoolie is focused on showing how Shakespeare shaped his personal development throughout his life even from an early age (he was born to a family of actors, and was in productions from primary school) with just a little of his own production history. Doran is focused on each of his RSC performances, drilling down on working through the text with the actors, with a much smaller amount of biography mixed in.

Thanks!

[Daverz]

Just started reading



The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
by Anthony Kaldellis

Already some really great insights in the early pages.  I hope it doesn't take me as long to read it as the Eastern Empire lasted.