What are you currently reading?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Dinosaurs: A Visual Encyclopedia.

[vers la flamme]

Dinosaurs: A Visual Encyclopedia.

I got a very similar book for my girlfriend for Christmas, she loved it My brother didn't approve, commenting that the illustrations did not feature enough feathers and thus were inaccurate.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I got a very similar book for my girlfriend for Christmas, she loved it My brother didn't approve, commenting that the illustrations did not feature enough feathers and thus were inaccurate.

Did you get my message last week?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

The Arabian Nights: A Companion - Robert Irwin.

[Florestan]

This book confirms that my estrangement from, and repudiation of, philosophical and aesthetic Romanticism, particularly of the German kind, is irreversible.



Fyodor Sologub - The Petty Demon

The moral atmosphere of this novel is so bleak and suffocating, the main characters (all of them without exception) so unlikable and disgusting, the "Russian soul" so irredeemably corrupt and repulsive --- as to make Dostoevsky's world look like some sort of Pickwick Papers. 

[ritter]

The other day, an online seller was offering a heavily discounted copy ofthe third volume of Roger Martin du Gard's mammoth diary (the three volumes have some 1200 pages each on average), and I immediately snapped it up.



This volume covers the years 1937 (when the author was awarded the Nobel prize) to 1949 (when his wife Hélène died). Not something to tackle in one sitting IMHO, but I'm reading the pages covering the liberation of France and the German defeat in WW2, and they're very interesting.

[Iota]

Historical Note:

'In the 1580s, a couple living in Henley Street, Stratford had three children: Susanna, then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins.
The boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven.

Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.'

(Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, used entirely interchangeably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.)

The above is all that's actually known about the story, and the book's conceit is to take these bare facts as a springboard to imagine the larger tale surrounding them. It's a nice idea, and the story's a good one, couched in attractive prose, and peopled by convincing characters with whom it's easy to empathise.
But despite all this and despite enjoying it, I didn't feel I got anything more than what was on the page, the only subconscious or subliminal elements were ones actually described, rather than emanating from the characters themselves, and in that sense it felt rather lightweight.
I may however be in the minority, as many seem deeply enthused by it, including the person who urged it upon me.

(I'll add that if I'm ever handed the levers of a time machine and told I can choose one moment in history to visit, it might well be one to find out more about who Shakespeare really was and whether the plays were all his work or not. It is one of the lacunae in our historical knowledge that I feel most keenly.)

[Ganondorf]

Started recently Zola's Nana. Doesnt seem as interesting as L'assommoir, L'Argent or Germinal but there is some quite sexually explicit language for it's time period. I can easily see why this was probably Zola's most scandalizing book. For modern reader Germinal's "woman's no means yes" bullcrap is far more offensive however.

[vers la flamme]

Just finished Waiting for Godot, second or third reading of it. Still unable to make heads or tails of it. Perhaps someone here can help me understand Beckett. I know he is much beloved by many, but this famous play does little for me. Maybe I just need to see it live?

[San Antone]

J.D. Salinger: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction



Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
The story was originally published in the November 19, 1955, issue of The New Yorker.

Like many of the other Glass family stories, Raise High is narrated by Buddy Glass, the second of the Glass brothers. It describes Buddy's visit on Army leave (during World War II, in 1942) to attend the wedding of his brother Seymour to Muriel and tells of the aftermath when Seymour fails to show. The events set the stage for Seymour's suicide in 1948. Seymour is described through the eyes of Buddy and through those of the would-be wedding's attendants. Included is the Matron of Honor, a loud and burly woman whom Buddy meets in a car leaving the site of the wedding.

Seymour: An Introduction
Seymour: An Introduction was also originally published in The New Yorker in 1959,  four years after Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.

As the title suggests, the story represents an attempt by Buddy Glass to introduce the reader to his brother Seymour, who had committed suicide in 1948. The story is told in a stream of consciousness narrative as Buddy reminisces in his secluded home.

This story, like others concerning the Glass family, touches upon Zen Buddhism, haiku, and the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta.

===================================

I periodically re-read all of the Salinger books, this time going in reverse-chrono.  Ironically, early this morning, I stumbled upon a documentary, Seymour:an introduction, which has nothing to do with the book, but is  film made by Ethan Hawke about the pianist Seymour Bernstein.  Highly recommended.

[SimonNZ]

[ritter]

Continuing my exploration of the Spanish "silver age" with the memories of Rafael Cansinos Assens 1882-1964):



Cansinos (distantly related to Rita Hayworth) was a Spanish writer and critic, and one of the leading figures in avant-garde literature in Spain before the Civil War. He was much admired by Jorge Luis Borges, but has now lapsed into relative obscurity.

These memoirs so far a very entertaining read, frank and gossipy. They were published posthumously, as Cansinos would not yield to the requests of self-censorship that distinguished publisher Manuel Aguilar made to be able to release them during Franco's time (Cansinos had translated The 1001 Nights for publication in one of Aguilar's lavish leather bound series, which now have become collectors' items).

[BWV 1080]

now reading 3 books on colonial America

the audiobook of M&D is quite good - the narrator picks up Dixon's Geordie accent (not that I would know how well, but makes it easy to hear the dialog)


Expansive pomo novel dealing the French & Jesuit contacts with Indians told from both perspectives


A history book I picked up on audible

[SimonNZ]

Never read Stephenson before. Excellent (though I wasn't expecting the cyberpunk-y feel).

[atardecer]

Different Seasons - Stephen King

[andolink]

Mircea Cărtărescu (b. 1956): Solenoid

[AnotherSpin]

This book confirms that my estrangement from, and repudiation of, philosophical and aesthetic Romanticism, particularly of the German kind, is irreversible.



Fyodor Sologub - The Petty Demon

The moral atmosphere of this novel is so bleak and suffocating, the main characters (all of them without exception) so unlikable and disgusting, the "Russian soul" so irredeemably corrupt and repulsive --- as to make Dostoevsky's world look like some sort of Pickwick Papers. 

I agree. Read Sologub's book a long time ago, but I remember the unpleasant feeling. And that's what I am wondering about, where does this fanaticism towards Russian music come from? It's all about the same thing, dark, stifling, perverse.

[San Antone]

J.D. Salinger: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

I periodically re-read all of the Salinger books, this time going in reverse-chrono.

I have finished Franny and Zooey (which I liked,; I'd forgotten most of it). I have now continued Nine Stories, which I had put down about half way through, with "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" - an exceptionally fine story.

[Florestan]

I agree. Read Sologub's book a long time ago, but I remember the unpleasant feeling. And that's what I am wondering about, where does this fanaticism towards Russian music come from? It's all about the same thing, dark, stifling, perverse.

I share your Russophobia when it comes to politics but not when it comes to literature and music. Turgenev, Tolstoy and Bulgakov dark, stiffling, perverse? Tchaikovsky, Arensky, Balakirev, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Bortkiewicz dark, stiffling, perverse? You kidding, right?

[AnotherSpin]

I share your Russophobia when it comes to politics but not when it comes to literature and music. Turgenev, Tolstoy and Bulgakov dark, stiffling, perverse? Tchaikovsky, Arensky, Balakirev, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Bortkiewicz dark, stiffling, perverse? You kidding, right?

Not a phobia, no one's afraid of the Russians anymore. Мore like disgust. Yes, I loved Leo Tolstoy for a long period of my life, I don't know how I do now. But Tolstoy was an opponent of everything that formed the basis of Russian life. He was constantly protesting the very principles. He was officially excommunicated from the state's church, which effectively put him outside the social framework. Many of those named by you chose to move far and away, some of them even before the Bolshevik coup. Bortkiewicz is a Pole who was born in Ukraine and went to Austria.

The same thing must have happened to me. In my childhood and youth I was force-fed with all this Russian/Soviet music, which was played incessantly on radios, TVs and from records. There was little else in the country where you couldn't just go to a record shop and buy Beethoven's symphonies performed by Karajan, the Ring performed by Knappertsbusch, or Chopin's nocturnes performed by Arthur Rubinstein. Mahler or Richard Strauss and many, many other composers were not known at all. But, from morning to evening, there was Shostakovich non-stop in the same two or three interpretations. Plus couple of others. Khrennikov, Sviridov, Khachaturian. Rodion Schedrin. Yes, it was stiffling and perverse.

Tchaikovsky, or course. The slow part from the fifth with that most fantastically beautiful solo was repeated several times during the broadcast of Brezhnev's funeral. Rachmaninoff was represented by a couple of pieces and of course the introduction to the second concerto, which, according to the propagandists, was supposed to illustrate some broad march of the revolutionary people or some accomplishments. In general, all music in USSR illustrated something. The class struggle, the aspirations of the working people, etc. And you know, it works. If I carelessly hear something from those times, the marches or aspirations immediately arise in my head. I want to stand up from sofa and march straight to the victory of communism in the whole world.

By the way, in my town was possible to listen to long and medium wave radio transmissions from Bucharest. There was, fortunately, almost no revolutionary Russian music, but there was much else, various and in best performances. I listened to Radio Bucharest every day. And on the shortwaves you could catch a programme of Radio Liberty in Romanian (it was not jammed), where you could listen to new Western popelar music in whole albums!!! From Grateful Dead and Chick Corea to Led Zeppelin and AC/DC.

P.S.: Do you know, that famous Tolstoy's novel title was not translated correct? It was not War and Peace at all. War and Society is closer. The word мир has two meanings in Russian language. Тoday both meanings are spelt the same, in Tolstoy's time there were two different spellings, мир и мір.