What are you currently reading?

[Florestan]

Solzhenitsyn: One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich





This is a Classic spawned under the rule of a brutal regime. As is universal with the human condition both the best and the worst of human nature are on display here. The book is about survival in the harshest of conditions, physical, psychological and emotional. It is bleak on many levels.

You people who never ever experienced anything even remotely like that, should forever be grateful that you were born too far away from Russia/USSR.

[aligreto]

A truth indeed! There are and have been too many other powers who have inflicted similiar regimes on other nations.
Man's inhumanity to Man.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

People in most democratic nations agree with, and support, representative democracy. Many people in Russia/Soviet maintain a tendency to admire/support a tyranny or ruler who holds absolute power. They may have had what they wanted.

[Ganondorf]

I hope no-one is equating Russians in general with its corrupt leadership. There are many Russians who have supported their leader's dastardly plots but there are also countless Russians who have protested against it (even before the war started hitting a little too close to home).

My point is, I don't enjoy painting ordinary Russians as demon people or something like that when first, and most of all, we should be focusing our hate on the tyrant holding the reins.

[Artem]

People in most democratic nations agree with, and support, representative democracy. Many people in Russia/Soviet maintain a tendency to admire/support a tyranny or ruler who holds absolute power. They may have had what they wanted.

Strange assumption that is just an excuse for a tyrant to justify its limitless power.

[Florestan]

Actually, Russians have a long and distinguished tradition of both intellectual and practical resistance to, defiance of, and action against, tyranny. Isaiah Berlin's Russian Thinkers gives a thorough account in this respect.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Prompted by @aligreto in the movie thread, I've just started reading a collection of short stories by Stephen King.  It's called "If It Bleeds".  It contains the short story which the movie that Fergus saw called "Mr. Harrigan's Phone".  I read that story yesterday (partly while waiting in a doctor's office).

PD

[aligreto]

Prompted by @aligreto in the movie thread, I've just started reading a collection of short stories by Stephen King.  It's called "If It Bleeds".  It contains the short story which the movie that Fergus saw called "Mr. Harrigan's Phone".  I read that story yesterday (partly while waiting in a doctor's office).

PD

I hope that you enjoy your collection of short stories and that everything was OK at the doctor's office, PD.

[Florestan]

An informative and not too technical book which nevertheless contains some strange assertions.

For instance, thus on Grieg:

his music is devoid of Norwegian folk tunes, indigenous dances, or other nationalistic elements, and he spoke scornfully of attempts to write nationalistic music.

Basically every claim in the above sentence is false.

About Bartok:

he was traveling among Arabs, Bulgars, Romanians, Slovakians, Turks, and Walachians as well.

Wallachians is an antiquated term for the Romanians who inhabited the Principality of Wallachia which was never used by Romanians themselves. By the time Bartok collected and arranged Romanian folklore music, Wallachians had been an anachronism for more than 50 years. Plus, writing "Romanians and Wallachians" is like writing "Germans and Prussians". Also, Bartok could not have been traveling among Bulgars for the simple reason that they had been extinct for some centuries before he was born; the author meant Bulgarians.

[VonStupp]

My wife and I are not into horror in any media, but she has always wanted to try H.P. Lovecraft. I bought her this set and it is the first time I remember her having to set a book aside for a few moments while reading to get her bearings.

I tried a few stories. Lovecraft repeatedly uses the term 'Cyclopean' in reference to architecture, a word I was hitherto unfamiliar with. My wife frequently used her phone to broaden her lexicon with vocabulary from his stories.

VS

[JBS]

My wife and I are not into horror in any media, but she has always wanted to try H.P. Lovecraft. I bought her this set and it is the first time I remember her having to set a book aside for a few moments while reading to get her bearings.

I tried a few stories. Lovecraft repeatedly uses the term 'Cyclopean' in reference to architecture, a word I was hitherto unfamiliar with. My wife frequently used her phone to broaden her lexicon with vocabulary from his stories.

VS

The last one, with the green cover, was part of a series of three that contains all of HPL's stories; I have it and one of the others, and don't remember why I never got the third volume.

His style can take getting used to, and the snobbery and racism tend to stick out like a sore thumb. The 2 stories I like best are "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath", which isn't horror but more unrestrained poetic fantasy.

[Ganondorf]

My favorite Lovecraft Story is "The Mound". I'm surprised by how ultra-racist Lovecraft is relatively tame in his views about some Native Americans in that story. He is more of a condescending prick in that story than an openly freaked out one.

BTW, there is great resemblance in style and content between "The Mound" and "At the Mountains of Madness" of which I have 10 pages left. Both are superb stories (at least unless Lovecraft manages to mess up at the last second in "Mountains" which I doubt considering it is one of his most acclaimed ones).

[JBS]

My favorite Lovecraft Story is "The Mound". I'm surprised by how ultra-racist Lovecraft is relatively tame in his views about some Native Americans in that story. He is more of a condescending prick in that story than an openly freaked out one.

BTW, there is great resemblance in style and content between "The Mound" and "At the Mountains of Madness" of which I have 10 pages left. Both are superb stories (at least unless Lovecraft manages to mess up at the last second in "Mountains" which I doubt considering it is one of his most acclaimed ones).

"The Shadow Out of Time" is very similar to "Mountains of Madness". I've not read "The Mound".
My problem with those stories is that despite the elaborate world building that fills their pages, the "horror" revealed at the end just doesn't horrify me.

[SimonNZ]

[Bachtoven]

His "Max Liebermann" novels are the basis for Vienna Blood on PBS. This is the 7th and last in the series. I just started it, but it's very enjoyable so far. There are quite a few classical music references, so that's always a plus.

[SimonNZ]

[SimonNZ]

[aligreto]

Hesse: Strange News from Another Star





This is an interesting collection of short stories from Hesse. They are stories, in the form of modern Fairy Tales, that explore levels of the subconscious and deep emotional thought.

[Brian]

Like a total maniac, I am reading five books at the moment:

A History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell
My winter project read, begun January 1 but pausing between sections. Finished the classical era, decided to read another book as a palate cleanser, and then all chaos broke loose as I started 4 more books instead of one.

Under the Glacier - Halldor Laxness
I really enjoyed his oddball fable Paradise Reclaimed, so got all his other novels for Christmas. (At least, the ones available in English.) However, this one is a little extreme in the odd absurdism department, so it's best in small doses. I am enjoying the second half more than the first, but after about 30 pages, I need a break from the eccentricity.

Pirate Libertalia - David Graeber
Started this while taking a break from Laxness while taking a break from Russell  It is a mere 150 pages, a short little text about the mid 1700s pirate communities in Madagascar and their experiments with proto-democratic, egalitarian societies. Interestingly, the arrival of the pirates was incredibly empowering for the local women, who were able to marry into money and control the pirates' interactions with the locals. They even had a sort of polyamory where if their pirate husband sailed on a voyage, they could shack up with another man until the pirate came back and paid her a return fee!

Four Lost Cities - Annalee Newitz
Very quick, easy, but absorbing read about the histories of Catalhöyük, Pompeii, Angkor, and Cahokia, and lessons we can learn from those cities' declines. Newitz also does a great job updating the inaccurate things we learned in school (Angkor was not suddenly abandoned; people still lived there when the French "discovered" it).

Winning Fixes Everything - Evan Drellich
A history of the Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox, and other lying cheating baseball teams trying to win at any cost. This one only barely counts as an ongoing read, because my preorder copy arrived and I read the introduction before getting back to Newitz and Graeber. Will get to this after finishing those and Under the Glacier.

Also upcoming: two novels, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray.

[SimonNZ]

The author's experience of growing up in Hoxha's Albania, and of living through the fall of communism and the chaos that followed.