since my daughter was asking me questions about it i just reread (i could perhaps simply say read because i don't think i even got through it completely when i was a thorough thoreauvian... parts of walden are a bit silly) these old ML editions are a joy to read, or simply to holdthis volume is actually an almost "complete works"; strange that it just says walden on the cover. his speech about john brown, and especially his relating of a canoe trip in the maine woods ("the allegash and east branch") are much better and make me want to pick up The Maine Woods and read the other two parts.
Otherwise Known as the Human Condition by Geoff Dyer (2011) Really interesting essays I've been reading around in. Excellent essays on jazz, including a few mentions of a trio I'd never heard of whose CDs I bought recently at a library benefit sale. Great book reviews, and very good essays on photographers. Also The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century by Alex Ross (2007) Really good history of 20th Century music from Strauss and Mahler to John Adams, focused mostly on the European classical tradition but Ross highlights the influences of folk, popular, and world music on the Western concert tradition, and vice versa.
Sputnik Sweetheart (1999) by Haruki Murakami I'm a big Murakami fan and enjoyed the overwhelming majority of this book, but I was a bit underwhelmed/puzzled by the ending. Murakami never really wraps anything up nice and neat, but this was kind "Huh?"
Working on two right now: Bob Shacochis's take on the US mission in Haiti when we set about restoring Aristide to the presidency in the mid-1990s. Interesting so far and I am just in the historical background section. The eighth of the Aubrey/Maturin books, O'Brian's The Ionian Mission. As good as the others with months yet to go before I finish the series. Perfect!
I first read Sophie's Choice 25 years ago. I thought I was going to be William Styron fan for life after reading The Confessions of Nat Turner, and then I read a lot of dreck. I decided that Styron only had 1 and a half stories in him. Sort of left a bad taste in my mouth for two decades. I have to say, it has been quite refreshing to rediscover just how great this book is. Even now, knowing what the choice is, I find that I forget about where the book is going because I'm wrapped up in the current story...
i was so impressed by the wind-up bird chronicles that i immediately went on a murakami spree. i found wild sheep chase very similar, and if only slightly inferior* it was probably because the surprise of his surrealistic style was no longer new, and his constant cultural tag-dropping started to irk. norwegian wood started, and sputnik sweetheart confirmed, a feeling that each murakami would be less satisfying than the previous, so another couple i had already taken out went back to the library unread. not to say i don't like murakami. i recommend him heartily, which is not something i generally do for living authors. i liked wub and sheep chase enough that i think i may re-read one of them someday. but i don't think anything could convince me to pick up a thousand pages of 1Q84. unless you want to try! *in hindsight actually i wonder if it might not in fact be superior.
I'm not a Murakami novice and have read a good cross-section of his works: Norwegian Wood, After the Quake, After Dark, South of the Border West of the Sun, Underground and now Sputnik Sweetheart. That's a mixture of novels, short stories and non-fiction. I'm definitely a fan, but Sputnik was the first one where I was just kind of "meh" when it was over. I have 1Q84, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Hard-Boiled Wonderland... at home ready to read. South of the Border, West of the Sun and to a lesser extent After Dark don't really have the whole surrealism thing going on. One of the thing that I love about Murakami's work is his love for a vast array of music. Music always figures prominently in the lives of his characters and I like that because it's such a huge part of mine. I could understand how he's not for everyone, but I think his work is probably a little bit more diverse than most people give credit for because some of his more recent works break with the trends of his blockbusters.
I read that on a 30 hour bus trip back when I was in graduate school. Had dreams featuring the charcters when I nodded off. I remember waking up and being confused because something that happened in the novel didn't make sense, but then I realized I'd dreamed a plot twist that Styron didn't see fit to follow up on. Read about 70 pages of this book this afternoon The Ring Resounding by John Culshaw, an account of the first ever complete studio recording of Richard Wagner's four-opera cycle. Interesting account of what had to be a ginormous administrative headache, not to mention the feats of audio engineering involved. The first opera in the series was recorded in 1958, the second was the final one recorded in 1965, with the final two being recorded in 62 and 64. Judging by the way my wife reacted when she saw the book, I think I know what she got me for Christmas http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=808172 Note to self: clear history before handing her the Ipad.
I left work half an hour early Friday to take advantage of the ridiculously short hours our library now "boasts" - 1-5 pm is it several days, including Fridays, and with the library closed Sat-Weds. for the holiday, I had to hustle. I got there at ten to five and they shut the computers off five minutes before closing, so I was definitely "impulse borrowing" whatever caught my eye. I grabbed four books, and finished this one: The first book in what is apparently now a series, The Highly Effective Detective has an interesting protagonist, a lumpy sort of fellow who isn't terribly smart but opens a detective agency because he was inspired as a kid by Encyclopedia Brown. A lucky grab off the shelf. I didn't really enjoy the first fifty pages or so but it turned out nicely. Next up is something completely different: Alan Furst's The Spies of Warsaw set in the early stages of WWII.
I just finished "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. The first thing I've read of his, and the best novel I've read in quite a bit. It's a detective story set in an alternative present -day universe where the Jewish state of israel collapsed in 1946 and most European Jews wound up in Alaska, of all places. Chabon's scarily smart and has an extremely dry sense of humor. Some of his metaphors are worth the price of admission along. Its probably funnier if you're jewish (which I'm not), and you get bonus points if you've studied chess a bit. It reminds me more than a bit of Paco Taibo II (who I also recommend heartily, and I heartily wish the local library had more of his stuff in english and that I could read spanish at higher than a kindergarten level).
Gullhanger, Or How I Learned to Love Brighton and Hove Albion - Mike Ward Always a sucker for a good, entertaining footie book, saw this recommended in the essential soccer books thread, I got a Kindle Paperwhite from Santa, and Amazon has this currently for free, all the pieces just fell into place. So far, so good.
some light reading for the holiday season: "Monty Python's Tunisian Holiday" by Kim "Howard" Johnson (2008), a diary of the filming of "The Life of Brian" written by America's first Python fanzine editor and, since then, lomg time compiler of all things Python. Pretty interesting behind the camara look at the making of the movie. Not done ith it yet, but I did start on my next one, an autoboigraphy of the man playing Brian... Graham Chapman, "A Liar's Autobiography, vol. VI". Man, did that guy accomplish something getting over his particular and immense alcohol addiction.
This was okay. Apparently Furst has several of these all set in the pre-WWII period, and I may have stumbled onto the worst of the lot. For a worst of the lot, I'd rate it pretty good and may give another one a try, as they stand alone. This one focused primarily on a French Military Attache trying to ferret out German invasion plans - tanks through the Belgian forests and into France he figures, which his superiors dismiss. I am midway through Patrick Culhane's Black Hats - Culhane is a pseudonym for Max Allan Collins of Road to Perdition fame, not that it would have had any bearing on my impulse borrowing. Black Hats is about Wyatt Earp, age 70 or so, teaming up with Bat Masterson to help Doc Holliday's (fictitious) son Doc Jr., threatened by gangsters (including a young Al Capone) in 1920 Manhattan.
Charles Dickens -- Barnaby Rudge On a week of vacation, I got 60% through this. Have to work on finishing it up this week. I'm quite enjoying my first full-on Dickens in a year or so -- reading a couple of the Christmas books got me in the mood.
I just completed the book "I am The Secret Footballer" during my college break. Anyone who calls soccer their passion or is even interested in sports culture in general really needs to read it. ALot of whats in it I was already aware of but regardless its a real eye-opener, and sometimes not in the best ways. Quality
I've been a big fan (and self-admitted pimp) of Furst's books in this thread and I think Spies of Warsaw may very well be the worst of the lot; to me if felt like he simply mailed this one in and lost interest shortly after he imagined the characters. He has gotten more formulaic over his last few novels (although his most recent one, set in Greece, is a little better), so I would recommend going back to Night Soldiers if you're going to read anything else by him. Dark Star is also MUCH better than Spies of Warsaw.