What are you currently reading?

[Bu]

[Keemun]

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land 

[Haffner]

The Tristan Chord, Wagner and Philosophy Bryan Magee

This is a book that really goes into depth concerning Wagner's relationship to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. And it is terrific: never using overt academic lingo, informative. In fact, even non-Wagnerians would find the information here fascinating. The only problem? Well, it's a problem concerning people whom don't see Wagner as the single greatest artist in the history of Western Civilsation (or at least have a borderline excessive regard for Wagner's operas). Magee (an English philosopher and politician) is, in his own term, a Wagnerolator. He uses words like "transubstantiation" over and over, throughout the text, to describe Wagner's creating process. For a person whom is a Wagnerian, this isn't too irritating. For people whom see Wagner as merely the greatest composer since Beethoven, or less, this book will be finished about halfway through (if that).

Since you know pretty much all know what camp I happen to be in regard to Wagner's music: I absolutely love this book, and learned one heck of alot.

[Bogey]

This evening:
Matthew 3

[Kullervo]

This evening:
Matthew 3

Is it any good?

[Bogey]

Is it any good?

For me, unquestionably and undoubtedly my friend.

[Florestan]

Andres Trapiello - The Lives of Miguel de Cervantes

(a very unconventional but highly entertaining biography of Cervantes)

simultaneously with

Sandor Marai - Casanova in Bolzano

(being an excellent fictional account of the adventures, encounters and musings of the hero, shortly after his escaping a Venetian gaol)

[Haffner]

This evening:
Matthew 3

Just my opinion, but I'd say it's definitely a Classic.

[Solitary Wanderer]

High quality images of stunningly beautiful English gardens.

How I'd love to take a turn around some of these delights!

[Solitary Wanderer]

Also enjoying this book about the gardens at Prince Charles home at Highgrove.

[Lethevich]

John Carter and the Mind of the Gothic Revival


I was aware that he was an important figure, but not to the extent that this book reveals. Considering how many buildings he arguably protected from desecration, it is both odd and sad that he doesn't even have a Wikipedia stub to his name. I'll sort that out sometime. Plenty of very amusing quotes from his (by modern standards) hilariously passionate obsession with original gothic architecture and his Romantically florid* but still very direct manner of writing about the objects of his interest. There are also a lot of his illustrations, and he was a superb documentary artist, producing many highly accurate engravings of wall/window detail and the fittings of the buildings. It provides some illuminating insights into just what horrifying condition most of the "great" medieval cathedrals were in before the mid 19th century. Perfect length as well, very readable, and due to the number of illustrations, quite short.

*Example: "Ye Powers! How horrid, how infernal, was all before me! Deep in the very centre of the sacred walls were set furnaces wherein the poisonous ore becomes a prey to fusion. What dreadful crash of mighty engines! With flames and smoke the scene was filled."

[Philoctetes]

Pessoa, Ginsberg, and Hughes.

Yes.

[Brian]

C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion - John Beversluis - 2nd edition

A criticism of C.S. Lewis' theology and philosophy which is just about devastating. When I read Mere Christianity there were many arguments of Lewis' with which I disagreed, and a few which I liked. Beversluis hardly ever met a Lewisian thought he liked at all, and he takes up just about every single one in this work and systematically demolishes them all. One Amazon reviewer gave the book one star and asked if readers would enjoy watching Shaquille O'Neal beat up an old lady. I disagree with the star rating, but the analogy is illuminating. Yes, C.S. Lewis was a minor mind in the Christian tradition, but he is well-nigh worshiped here in America, especially among people my age for some reason, and this book disposes of him once and for all.

My current chapter - "The Argument from Reason" - is considerably obtuse and written on an advanced philosophical level, but the rest of the work is more approachable and Beversluis occasionally even rivals Lewis' own legendary wit.

[Renfield]

Yes, C.S. Lewis was a minor mind in the Christian tradition, but he is well-nigh worshiped here in America, especially among people my age for some reason, and this book disposes of him once and for all.

I wonder why poor C. S. Lewis, who was a writer, needs disposing of to begin with. It sounds like saying a group of people assume that Oscar Wilde was a gay propagandist, and so he needs disposing of too. How about disposing of false impressions or needless overreaction?

[Haffner]

I wonder why poor C. S. Lewis, who was a writer, needs disposing of to begin with. It sounds like saying a group of people assume that Oscar Wilde was a gay propagandist, and so he needs disposing of too. How about disposing of false impressions or needless overreaction?

A very thought provoking question.

I have my quibbles with Lewis as well.

[rubio]

For me a veritable page-turner (1000 pages), as I found it thoroughly fascinating and exciting. If everything in this book is really true  - what a life this man must have lived! Now I would love to go to Mumbai.

[Brian]

I wonder why poor C. S. Lewis, who was a writer, needs disposing of to begin with.

A lot of people 'round my parts are under the impression that C.S. Lewis is a prominent theologian and/or not just an expositor of ideas but a fount of truth. My campus Christian club changed their name from "Campus Crusade for Christ" to a term from Lewis' work; they give out free copies of Mere Christianity at all their events, and they have even invited a speaker, Dr Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project, to give a talk this week in the biggest lecture hall on campus about how C.S. Lewis influenced his spirituality and his science. So I suppose one might say that, if philosophers can (or must?) disagree with or "dispose of" the ideas of authors like Ayn Rand, they can do the same for Lewis. The fact that his subject matter is different (ie, religion) should not protect him from scrutiny if he makes arguments, good or bad, about what we ought to think, especially since he holds such surprising influence over the thought of many people who won't be up for reading real philosophical works.

[SonicMan46]

Scriabin - A Biography by Faubion Bowers, 2nd revised edition (1996) - interlibrary loan; just starting; long book, so not sure about the organization - comes as just one book but divided into 'two volumes', the first w/ Books 1/2 & the second volume as Book 3 - 

[Christo]

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land  

Nice, very nice! (Though Eliot himself wasn't quite sure about what it all meant ...) 

[Opus106]

The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga

An entertaining read. (In the sense that I never found it boring or the narrative slowing down.) But the content is the stark and naked truth about the condition of hundreds of millions of people in India told in the form of the story of the protagonist, who comes from the Darkness as he calls it - his (and every other) village which is plagued by Landlords and Caste system - to Light, the urban India with it's economic boom and shopping malls. But it's filled with lots dry and dark humour to cover up what is essentially a rant on the state of things.


And today I began reading

ZUBIN MEHTA
The Score of My Life

(It was published in English last year, and is actually a translation of a memoir published earlier in German.)

Into the second chapter now which covers his student days in Vienna. In some ways, it sounds like a fairly tale. One day he's listening to scratchy records and occasionally assisting his father in performances (with Menuhin!), and a few years later he's sneaking in through the rear entrance of the Musikverein to witness Karajan conduct Tchaikovsky's 4th* and singing (as a member of Singverein) under the baton of Bruno Walter!



*Apparently, he was not caught.