Now reading...

[rostasi]

Someone, elsewhere, was looking for an interview that Art Lange did with John Cage
in Lange's periodical Brilliant Corners, so I decided to take some time to send it on to
this person as well as re-read this and some other issues of this nice bit of '70s history.

Edited April 9, 2017 by rostasi

[ghost of miles]

Re-reading Carson McCullers' The Member Of The Wedding, as well as the third volume of Simon Callow's Orson Welles biography.

[paul secor]

Rafi Zabor: The Bear Comes Home

[danasgoodstuff]

5 hours ago, paul secor said:

Rafi Zabor: The Bear Comes Home

Interested in your reaction.  I loved it when I read it (when it was new) but even then I didn't think it was as good as the excerpts in Musician some years earlier had promised.

[paul secor]

1 hour ago, danasgoodstuff said:

Interested in your reaction.  I loved it when I read it (when it was new) but even then I didn't think it was as good as the excerpts in Musician some years earlier had promised.

It sat on my shelf for years, unread. No good reason why. I found it ok, but in need of a lot of editing. Way overwritten - at least for my tastes.

[BillF]

On 3/23/2017 at 8:11 AM, BillF said:

A lesser Le Carré, but he's always worth reading IMHO.

Another of the same ilk.

 

Edited April 13, 2017 by BillF

[jlhoots]

Layli Long Soldier: Whereas

[johnblitweiler]

On 3/25/2017 at 11:14 AM, BillF said:

Had mixed fortunes with the movie. Loved it when I saw it on release c.1960 - thought it hip and amusing, but found it tedious when I had a second look at it a few years ago. Perhaps I'm old and jaded, or perhaps it just belonged to its time and place.

I too saw the movie a second time and didn't even smile at all. But I loved Queneau's novel Zazie. 

[alankin]

Julian Barnes – Keeping An Eye Open: Essays on Art (Alfred A. Knopf)

Interesting essays on Gericault, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Fantin-Latour, Cezanne, Degas, Redon, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, Braque, Magritte, Oldenberg, L. Freud, and Hodgkin; many of them previously published in the magazine Modern Painters] and elsewhere.

[JSngry]

[jlhoots]

Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremony

[ejp626]

Apuleius's The Golden Ass

After that, Murakami's 1Q84

[BillF]

 

A best seller of considerable literary merit.

[paul secor]

Ann Beattie: Picturing Will

[rostasi]

Robert Pirsig (1928-2017)

[paul secor]

Denis Theriault: The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman

[alankin]

Philip Kerr – March Violets [first volume in the Bernie Gunther Berlin Noir trilogy] 

Edited April 25, 2017 by alankin

[paul secor]

Nat Hentoff: Boston Boy

[rostasi]

[paul secor]

The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries

[ghost of miles]

Getting ready to start this: 

[sonnyhill]

On 3/24/2017 at 3:05 PM, erwbol said:

Daniel C. Dennett From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

How was this one?

[rostasi]

[erwbol]

On 5/8/2017 at 11:12 PM, sonnyhill said:

How was this one?

I still haven't finished this, but not because it isn't good. I got distracted by several fiction books that did a better job of holding my attention. I also usually read two or more non-fiction books at the same time.

Dennett does take his time to get to his explanation of consciousness, however. A lot of groundwork in the first half. I never read Consciousness Explained, so I can't compare, but his ideas have evolved, so if you never read any Dennett, this latest book is probably the best pick. Hopefully the later chapters will deliver. My mind isn't blown yet.

Edited May 9, 2017 by erwbol

[sonnyhill]

16 hours ago, erwbol said:

I still haven't finished this, but not because it isn't good. I got distracted by several fiction books that did a better job of holding my attention. I also usually read two or more non-fiction books at the same time.

Dennett does take his time to get to his explanation of consciousness, however. A lot of groundwork in the first half. I never read Consciousness Explained, so I can't compare, but his ideas have evolved, so if you never read any Dennett, this latest book is probably the best pick. Hopefully the later chapters will deliver. My mind isn't blown yet.

Thanks erwbol.  I am always looking for interesting science/technology non-fiction. 

I just finished I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong; I liked it.  I generally only read one book at a time and usually alternate between fiction and non-fiction.  The Dennett looks interesting for my next non-fiction selection.

Can anyone recommend a well-written mystery novel published in the last five to seven years?   The last mystery novel I read was Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley.

 

Edited May 10, 2017 by sonnyhill