What are you currently reading?

[SimonNZ]

As mentioned a few posts back: starting Jill Lepore's new collection of her New Yorker essays from the last 10 years.

US cover and title on the left, but the one I've got is the UK edition on the right.

[JBS]

Not read, but seen at the bookstore, and wondering if the book lives up to  the publisher's blurb.
Addressed in particular to @Dry Brett Kavanaugh




Both editions use the same translation.

[AnotherSpin]

Not read, but seen at the bookstore, and wondering if the book lives up to  the publisher's blurb.
Addressed in particular to @Dry Brett Kavanaugh




Both editions use the same translation.

I have it in my reading queue.

[vers la flamme]

Not read, but seen at the bookstore, and wondering if the book lives up to  the publisher's blurb.
Addressed in particular to @Dry Brett Kavanaugh




Both editions use the same translation.

I believe the Gateway paperback uses an older translation by Edward McClellan and the Penguin uses a newer one by Meredith McKinney. I can't speak on either as I have not read Kokoro, but I do admire Natsume Sōseki greatly, having read his Kusamakura, Botchan, and Sanshirō over the past couple years.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Not read, but seen at the bookstore, and wondering if the book lives up to  the publisher's blurb.
Addressed in particular to @Dry Brett Kavanaugh




Both editions use the same translation.

Nice psychological novel. I recommend it.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I believe the Gateway paperback uses an older translation by Edward McClellan and the Penguin uses a newer one by Meredith McKinney. I can't speak on either as I have not read Kokoro, but I do admire Natsume Sōseki greatly, having read his Kusamakura, Botchan, and Sanshirō over the past couple years.

As you know, Glenn Gould was a big fan of Kusamakura.


https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200203/p2a/00m/0et/023000c

[JBS]

Thanks to both of you. Looks like another contribution to the TBR pile is needed.

[AnotherSpin]

As you know, Glenn Gould was a big fan of Kusamakura.


https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200203/p2a/00m/0et/023000c

As a habit, I don't usually read two books by the same author in a row. Kokoro was on my reading pile, but now I've learned that Glenn Gould was fan of Kusamakura... What to do? 

[AnotherSpin]

[LKB]

Damn, it's massive! I'd love to read a bio of Wagner, but wonder if there is a shorter, one-to-two volume bio of him out there.

On topic, having just finished three by Dickens in a row (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Hard Times—all just brilliant) and having no more by that author in my collection at present, I've decided to pick up Moby-Dick again. I'm working my way through it slowly, but I can already tell, some 20% of the way through it, that it's a damn good one, and clearly a book that is about much more than the story of a vengeful whale hunt. Long overdue read, and I hope to finish it by the end of the year, though I'm only picking it up here and there.

Melville's book is amazing, and his imagery of Pequod's nocturnal operations is unforgettable. Enjoy! 

[vers la flamme]

Melville's book is amazing, and his imagery of Pequod's nocturnal operations is unforgettable. Enjoy! 

It is amazing! I'm a bit over half way now, making my way through a bit more quickly than I thought I would be, but I'm still trying to purposely take it slow, since there's a lot to digest. I love the characters; I love the imagery and style; and I even like the lengthy tangential diversions about whales, whaling ships, and much more. Sure to become a favorite of mine, and one I hope to reread every once in a while.

[Florestan]

After Christian Jacq's Mozart-Osiris nonsense, here's Claude Mosse's Conspiracy-To-Kill-Mozart one. Looks like the French have a monopoly on this stuff. It's so bad that it's actually funny. Judge for yourself:

- in 1787 rumor had it that Mozart gave lessons to a young and promising composer by the name of Beethoven.

- one Karl Grossmann, a Viennese whose grandfather had converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism, was an intimate friend and confidante of Marie-Antoinette since they were children up to the times when she was Queen of France (NB: not von Grossmann, just Grossmann).

- an innkeeper from a village near Vienna rants about the Salieri-led Italian anti-Mozart cabal and reprimands Joseph II for nominating the former as Imperial Kapellmeister.

- Gluck envied Mozart's success.

- Cagliostro was involved in a plot to kill Mozart.

- the said Karl Grossmann, upon arriving in Prague in 1787, discovered that he didn't understand the language of the inhabitants.

- Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte were on very bad terms while working on Don Giovanni.

- Mozart was a drunkard, forgetful about the basic rules of politeness.

This is only what I gathered by reading so far. I'm looking forward eagerly to more such interesting stuff.





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[SimonNZ]

Starting: another from the Baille Gifford prize longlist:



"The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at the Tavistock and Portman Trust in North London, was set up initially to provide — for the most part — talking therapies to young people who were questioning their gender identity. But in the last decade GIDS has referred more than a thousand children, some as young as nine years old, for medication to block their puberty. In the same period, the number of young people seeking GIDS's help exploded, increasing twenty-five-fold. The profile of the patients changed too: from largely pre-pubescent boys to mostly adolescent girls, who were often contending with other difficulties.

Why had the patients changed so dramatically? Were all these distressed young people best served by taking puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones, which cause irreversible changes to the body? While some young people appeared to thrive after taking the blocker, many seemed to become worse. Was there enough clinical evidence to justify such profound medical interventions in the lives of young people who had so much else to contend with?

This urgent, scrupulous and dramatic book explains how, in the words of some former staff, GIDS has been the site of a serious medical scandal, in which ideological concerns took priority over clinical practice. Award-winning journalist Hannah Barnes has had unprecedented access to thousands of pages of documents, including internal emails and unpublished reports, and well over a hundred hours of personal testimony from GIDS clinicians, former service users and senior Tavistock figures. The result is a disturbing and gripping parable for our times."

[Florestan]

After Christian Jacq's Mozart-Osiris nonsense, here's Claude Mosse's Conspiracy-To-Kill-Mozart one. Looks like the French have a monopoly on this stuff. It's so bad that it's actually funny. Judge for yourself:

- in 1787 rumor had it that Mozart gave lessons to a young and promising composer by the name of Beethoven.

- one Karl Grossmann, a Viennese whose grandfather had converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism, was an intimate friend and confidante of Marie-Antoinette since they were children up to the times when she was Queen of France (NB: not von Grossmann, just Grossmann).

- an innkeeper from a village near Vienna rants about the Salieri-led Italian anti-Mozart cabal and reprimands Joseph II for nominating the former as Imperial Kapellmeister.

- Gluck envied Mozart's success.

- Cagliostro was involved in a plot to kill Mozart.

- the said Karl Grossmann, upon arriving in Prague in 1787, discovered that he didn't understand the language of the inhabitants.

- Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte were on very bad terms while working on Don Giovanni.

- Mozart was a drunkard, forgetful about the basic rules of politeness.

This is only what I gathered by reading so far. I'm looking forward eagerly to more such interesting stuff.

Here's another one: at the premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague, the opera hall was decorated with flowers which the King of Bohemia had sent from his personal greenhouses, in order to show that Prague had as much and as refined taste in music as the Viennese. Now, of course, in 1787 the King of Bohemia was none other than Joseph II... 

[Karl Henning]

Orthogonal to the topic: I was amused by the apparent goofiness of the endeavor at first but found the video entertaining all the same.

[Florestan]

First time reading Homer's Iliad.

It's the latest Romanian translation, in hexameters, by a reputed scholar who claims it's so faithful to the original that for any given Romanian word in the text the distance from the original one is at most one verse. I wouldn't know, to me ancient Greek is, well, Greek.

Read the First Book so far. It's very instructive.

In the first part, we learn that it's not a good idea to mess up with priests (rather outdated) and that greed, lust, pride and power are the eternal reasons for wars and feuds (timeless).

In the second part, we learn why Offenbach saw fit to turn the whole thing into an operetta.

Achilles (weeping): Mom, look, Agamemnon stole my toy! Please, tell dad to teach him a lesson!

Thetys (patting him on the back): Will do, darling, don't worry!

Hera (tender): Zeus, honey, you're not going to listen to that Thetys in spite of me, are you?

Zeus (bad-tempered): Oh, just shut up, woman, and don't piss me off or not even all the boys could save you from my mopping the floor with your hair!

Hephaestus (pleading): Mom, I beseech you, calm down and keep quiet, dad's completely nuts! I know it only too well, he once pushed me so badly that I rolled on my back over the whole of Greece into the sea!

Zeus: Now everybody cut the crap and let's get to dinner! No more fuss about that, understand? I want merriment! Ganymedes, wine! Apollo, play!

No, really, it's absolutely hilarious and I got a Homeric (pun) laughter from it.

It's a very promising start.

[vers la flamme]

^ I'm planning to read Homer for the first time this year too.

Currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Man, what a treat this book is. I guess I've been aware of it for a long time, but for some reason I've never had the slightest interest in reading it until recently. Now I'm kicking myself for that, because it's been such a pleasure to read. Very entertaining, very plot driven, with great characters and a very compelling premise. Certainly much better than I expected!

[Valentino]

The Big Show by Pierre Clostermann.

[DavidW]

Orthogonal to the topic: I was amused by the apparent goofiness of the endeavor at first but found the video entertaining all the same.

I immediately called #1 before I even watched the video!

[DavidW]

^ I'm planning to read Homer for the first time this year too.

Currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Man, what a treat this book is. I guess I've been aware of it for a long time, but for some reason I've never had the slightest interest in reading it until recently. Now I'm kicking myself for that, because it's been such a pleasure to read. Very entertaining, very plot driven, with great characters and a very compelling premise. Certainly much better than I expected!

I hope you picked up the Penguin edition, because that is the translation that is not bowdlerized.  I reread it a few years ago.