What are you currently reading?

[vers la flamme]

Picked up Jan Swafford's Johannes Brahms again, and hoping to finally finish it sometime. It's an absolutely excellent biography (I haven't made it all the way through just yet but I've enjoyed every page); I wish more composer bios were written in a style like this.

I did indeed finish it. I also finished this book which I started back in the fall;



Ryotaro Shiba's Clouds Above the Hill, Vol. 1, recommended to me by Dry Brett Kavanaugh. I just wanted to say thanks, Manabu, for the amazing recommendation. I loved it! It read almost like straight history, particularly military history, which I've never been great at reading, but with novelistic moments of real humanity in the characters and how they interact with each other. I intend to read the other three volumes of the series, eventually.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I did indeed finish it. I also finished this book which I started back in the fall;



Ryotaro Shiba's Clouds Above the Hill, Vol. 1, recommended to me by Dry Brett Kavanaugh. I just wanted to say thanks, Manabu, for the amazing recommendation. I loved it! It read almost like straight history, particularly military history, which I've never been great at reading, but with novelistic moments of real humanity in the characters and how they interact with each other. I intend to read the other three volumes of the series, eventually.

Yes the later volumes are much better and fun with a lot of battles and military/political decisions. The Vol 1 is just an introductory volume. Thank you for reading it!

[vers la flamme]

Yes the later volumes are much better and fun with a lot of battles and military/political decisions. The Vol 1 is just an introductory volume. Thank you for reading it!

Can't wait to get to them.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

A screen of time: A study of Luchino Visconti – Monica Stirling.

[milk]

This is the best novel I've read in a long time.
Before starting Stoner, I reread this Le Guin which is fine literature as well as the finest science-fiction. I am not sure about her anarchistic syndicalist non-market socialistic ambiguous "utopia." But, to be fair, neither is she. Well, she's in their camp more than the other one (you'd have to read it). It doesn't matter; it's a great book that places societies in time as opposed in some shiny dystopia outside of the struggles that real societies face over the course of a lifetime. It's another question altogether whether her moon-world makes any sense outside the book. She does a great job of making it resonate inside the story.

[Brian]

This is the best novel I've read in a long time.

This is one of my favorite novels ever, although some of the later chapters with the office politics are painful to read. I am a real sucker for novels that tell a full life story from start to finish so you can follow a character across his or whole entire experience on earth. And the author's control of tone and style is really incredible.

There is a passage near the beginning, where Stoner's mentor tells him that he's destined to be a teacher, that made me cry. In public, too, on an airplane!

His novel Augustus has a similar surprising power.

[milk]

This is one of my favorite novels ever, although some of the later chapters with the office politics are painful to read. I am a real sucker for novels that tell a full life story from start to finish so you can follow a character across his or whole entire experience on earth. And the author's control of tone and style is really incredible.

There is a passage near the beginning, where Stoner's mentor tells him that he's destined to be a teacher, that made me cry. In public, too, on an airplane!

His novel Augustus has a similar surprising power.

It's heartbreaking at times; it's a beautiful novel. Have you read Butcher's Crossing? I wonder if it's good.

[Brian]

It's heartbreaking at times; it's a beautiful novel. Have you read Butcher's Crossing? I wonder if it's good.

Yes! Own all three of his mature novels and a biography of the author as well (but not his juvenile novella). Butcher's Crossing has that same very intense, distilled style, with a little bit more descriptive beauty and maybe a little more complex writing on a paragraph-by-paragraph level. At the big-picture level, Butcher's Crossing is another grand parable with epic sweep. It's like a dark Western movie that, midway through, descends into nightmare. Maybe another way to put it would be Cormac McCarthy for people who don't like Cormac McCarthy's style.

The biography taught me that he only produced three mature novels, all great, for several reasons: he was an exacting perfectionist who only rarely had ideas he deemed worth seeing through, let alone the rest of the process (he left only one unfinished novel at his death), he was an alcoholic whose drinking slowed down his work, and he occasionally did spend lots of his time getting into departmental fights with coworkers. He wasn't so innocent in them as Stoner was, however. By the time that he retired his health was quite poor from a lifetime of drinking and smoking. Apparently the unfinished novel was going to be about the world of art forgery and fraud.

[milk]

Yes! Own all three of his mature novels and a biography of the author as well (but not his juvenile novella). Butcher's Crossing has that same very intense, distilled style, with a little bit more descriptive beauty and maybe a little more complex writing on a paragraph-by-paragraph level. At the big-picture level, Butcher's Crossing is another grand parable with epic sweep. It's like a dark Western movie that, midway through, descends into nightmare. Maybe another way to put it would be Cormac McCarthy for people who don't like Cormac McCarthy's style.

The biography taught me that he only produced three mature novels, all great, for several reasons: he was an exacting perfectionist who only rarely had ideas he deemed worth seeing through, let alone the rest of the process (he left only one unfinished novel at his death), he was an alcoholic whose drinking slowed down his work, and he occasionally did spend lots of his time getting into departmental fights with coworkers. He wasn't so innocent in them as Stoner was, however. By the time that he retired his health was quite poor from a lifetime of drinking and smoking. Apparently the unfinished novel was going to be about the world of art forgery and fraud.

Great to hear. Im going on to Butcher's Crossing next.

[vers la flamme]

Damn, you all are making me want to read more by Williams. I read Stoner last fall and gave the book to my dad as a backup Christmas present (it turned out he already had the new Dylan book I got for him), and he read it in something like 2 days and loved it. Have not read anything else. Butcher's Crossing sounds good.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia. Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman.

[Ganondorf]

Not much of a Dostoevsky fan nowadays but so far this has been fairly good. Rather a mean portrait of Turgenev in this book.

[Florestan]

Not much of a Dostoevsky fan nowadays but so far this has been fairly good. Rather a mean portrait of Turgenev in this book.

Do you mean that Verkhovensky Sr. is modelled on Turgenev? This would be the first time I come across this claim. What is your source for it? 

[Ganondorf]

Semyon Yegorovich Karmazinov, a rather minor character, is based on Turgenev, apparently.

[Ganondorf]

http://community.middlebury.edu/~beyer/courses/previous/ru351/novels/devils/karmazinov.shtml

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Not much of a Dostoevsky fan nowadays but so far this has been fairly good. Rather a mean portrait of Turgenev in this book.

Nice work. Yoh may like his Gambler as well.

[Florestan]

http://community.middlebury.edu/~beyer/courses/previous/ru351/novels/devils/karmazinov.shtml

Thanks. Honestly, I didn't even remember this character. I believe Dostoevsky's reconciliation with Turgenev occasioned by Pushkin's commemoration is more famous.

[ritter]

Although it's really the catalogue to an exhibition (at the Museo Picasso in Barcelona), this book on Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler is proving to be a very interesting read:



I've always been fascinated by how this man's vision, business acumen, and faith in a handful of artists turned cubism into an international sensation. In this book, we have articles on the three successive galleries he led (Galerie Kahnweiler, Galerie Simon, and Galerie Louise Leiris), on his international network, on his relations with Picasso and Juan Gris, and —of particular interest to me- a survey of all the artist's books he published over more than 50 years).

It's available in Spanish, English, Catalan, and French (the exhibition was earlier shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris).

[DavidW]

I just finished Brave New World.  What I thought of it before reading was that it was an indictment against fascism and drugs were used to keep society docile.  But after reading it, I see that the novel runs deeper.  It is demonstrating the extreme limits of valuing happiness and comfort above truth and beauty.  And warning us against the dangers of social conditioning.  Really good, short read.  It was well worth my time and effort.

[Brian]

As an act of defiance against Penguin Books I am reading this (hardback 1st edition) which is one they never published:



In truth it is not one of his best ... but even his less-than-best can still be pretty good, and better than many.

I also recently read a "not his best" book (Galahad at Blandings) and found it nevertheless totally charming and comforting.