What are you currently reading?

[Florestan]

Pierre looks like a slightly grown up Harry Potter. 

[JBS]

Got this from the library today.
Amazon says it was published at the end of May, but Barnes and Noble had it displayed as a brand new release. Perhaps there are publication delays?

[hopefullytrusting]

Akira!

Just got this set from eBay (over 50 percent off!)

[ritter]

Back home from a short holiday in France, starting Blaise Cendrars' D'Oultremer à Indigo, which I've been meaning to read for quite some time now, and has vague connections with the town of Biarritz, where I was yesterday.

[Spotted Horses]

The Professor's House, by Willa Cather.



I don't really know what the book was about, except being alive in the world. The hallmark of a great writer.

Nominally about a professor who grows weary with life and detached from the worldly interests of his family. The household moves into a splendid new house but he remains behind in their shabby old rented residence to continue working in his old study. The other focus of the book is a former student (Tom Outland) who mysteriously appeared and enrolled in the professors college, and who becomes a brilliant protege of the processor. A mysterious invention by Outland enriches the Professor's family when Outland dies in WWI and the proceeds of the invention are willed to Outland's finance, the professor's daughter. Ironically, this is a source of estrangement in the family. The story is strange, but the characters that inhabit it seem real to me.

[SimonNZ]

These two on the go:

[AnotherSpin]

[Todd]

The Constant Battle.

[AnotherSpin]

[Todd]

Nice NBER nugget: From Fiscal Deadlock to Financial Repression: Anatomy of a Fall

[Henk]

Continued reading 'The Right to Oblivion. Privacy and the Good Life' by Lowry Pressly.

Stopped using Whatsapp and moved to Signal. Stopped using Meta.

[ritter]

First approach to the essays of Mario Praz (1896 - 1982), an influential Italian art critic, and a specialist in English literature.



@Dry Brett Kavanaugh , the character of The Professor in Visconti's Conversation Piece (a movie we both admire) is based on Praz. He apparently wasn't amused when he first realised this, but I've read somewhere that later he admitted that Visconti had made a very accurate portrait of him (or something to that effect).

[Florestan]

First approach to the essays of Mario Praz (1896 - 1982), an influential Italian art critic, and a specialist in English literature.

A few months ago I browsed through this:



and found it interesting enough to put it on my "to peruse" list.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

First approach to the essays of Mario Praz (1896 - 1982), an influential Italian art critic, and a specialist in English literature.



@Dry Brett Kavanaugh , the character of The Professor in Visconti's Conversation Piece (a movie we both admire) is based on Praz. He apparently wasn't amused when he first realised this, but I've read somewhere that later he admitted that Visconti had made a very accurate portrait of him (or something to that effect).

I didn't know that there was a model of the Professor. When I saw the movie first time, I was younger than Konrad. Now I am closer to the Professor. I will look for English and Japanese editiin of books by Praz.

[ritter]

...When I saw the movie first time, I was younger than Konrad. Now I am closer to the Professor. ...

Just like me!!! Tempus fugit... 

[SimonNZ]

A few months ago I browsed through this:



and found it interesting enough to put it on my "to peruse" list.

I've had that sitting on my shelves unread for a couple of decades. I'll take this as a nudge to finally get to reading it. My edition:



And seeing now it has an introduction by Frank Kermode I'll be reading that tonight.

[AnotherSpin]

[..]
@Dry Brett Kavanaugh , the character of The Professor in Visconti's Conversation Piece (a movie we both admire) is based on Praz. He apparently wasn't amused when he first realised this, but I've read somewhere that later he admitted that Visconti had made a very accurate portrait of him (or something to that effect).

This Visconti film enjoyed wide circulation in Soviet cinemas during the seventies. In the local release it appeared under the title Family Portrait in Interior. Visconti was, as one might expect, quite the darling of the Soviet screen, presumably he had the good sense to be a member of the Italian Communist Party? As for Family Portrait in Interior, I saw it a couple of times at the cinema and recall being thoroughly taken with it. Perhaps it's time to put my memory to the test and watch it again.

[hopefullytrusting]

This should be arriving today: Bouquet's (1934) The Doctrine of God (bought it because of a snippet I saw):

[Florestan]

Started reading this exact edition (available for free on Archive.org --- this is a treasure trove of a site, blessed be whoever conceived and created it!) and it's a fascinating piece of cultural history. It exposes the insanity, error and folly of the Romantic literature (and Romanticism in general) in a much more erudite, humorous and humane way than Max Nordau's Degeneration, whose crude positivism and prudish moralism Praz rebukes in no uncertain terms.

However, I stopped reading it about halfway through --- because in one of his footnotes, which are as interesting as the text itself, he refers to this book:



which piqued my interest at once and of which I found a copy of the editio princeps at, you guessed it, Archive.org. Now, I find it an even more absorbing reading than Praz's book, because the latter deals with Romantic literature and ideas, while Maigron's book deals with their influence on the life, feelings and thoughts of ordinary people and the consequences, tragic or ridiculous, that this literature and the ideas therein proposed and defended had on oh so many French (mostly young) men and women between 1830 and 1845. Copious quotes are offered from the letters and poems of such people as evidence for Romanticism being responsible for leading them astray and turning their lives into misery, anguish, despair and not infrequently suicide. And all presented with typically Gallic wit and style. A page turner, really, which I'll finish before resuming Praz's book from where I left off.

EDIT 1 : I now understand perfectly a fact that when I first learned about it rather perplexed me: namely that Schopenhauer, in his precepts for the education of youngsters, formally prohibited the reading of novels.  Given the quality of such novels as were available at the time, his position strikes me now as eminently sane and sound.

EDIT 2: Goethe, who knew a thing or two about Romanticism, was absolutely right: Das Klassische nenne ich das Gesunde und das Romantische das Kranke.

[hopefullytrusting]

This should be arriving today: Bouquet's (1934) The Doctrine of God (bought it because of a snippet I saw):

Massive edit: I misread the snipped, lol, but I am still glad to have the book - a happy accident.