Now reading...

[WorldB3]

[AllenLowe]

niko - actually, Stella has an entire website devoted to her work, a memorial trust type of thing -

[B. Goren.]

[A Lark Ascending]

Still have my copy from 1977 that I used to guide my early steps into jazz. I owe it a great deal.

[Niko]

Still have my copy from 1977 that I used to guide my early steps into jazz. I owe it a great deal.

same here, lost my copy a few years ago but still know a lot of it by heart...

thanks allen, will check out that site...

[B. Goren.]

Still have my copy from 1977 that I used to guide my early steps into jazz. I owe it a great deal.

same here, lost my copy a few years ago but still know a lot of it by heart...

thanks allen, will check out that site...

I bought it when I've started listening to jazz, in 1990-91 and at that time it was the bible for me.

I still take a look at this book from time to time.

[A Lark Ascending]

One of the interesting things about the edition I have is that it gives jazz-rock/fusion a great deal of space, seeing it as a major marker in the way jazz was developing. I'd be interested to know if later editions altered that perspective in the light of what happened and the relative marginalisation of fusion.

[Niko]

One of the interesting things about the edition I have is that it gives jazz-rock/fusion a great deal of space, seeing it as a major marker in the way jazz was developing. I'd be interested to know if later editions altered that perspective in the light of what happened and the relative marginalisation of fusion.

i used to know... a few years ago when i considered rebuying the book i had a look at the new edition and while i did like some of the changes (more on louis sclavis is all i remember) i decided to seek out the 1989 edition again (which definitely has more fusion in it than most jazz books i've seen, even mentioned kenny g's early work... don't know if earlier editions had even more); i'm 98% sure they (or actually: he, guenter huesmann who had written the 80s portion or so of the 1989 edition is now the sole author; nothing wrong with him but he's not as open to fusion as berendt, i believe) did alter the perspective in the way you mention... the book definitely doesn't tell you that the most relevant part of jazz history ended in 1968 or so like so many others (and i guess, that perspective was easier to maintain in 1989 than today... not so sure which view i have on jazz after 1968 - but it definitely helps in writing a fair and balanced account to take the seventies and eighties serious...)

Edited September 17, 2009 by Niko

[jlhoots]

Abraham Verghese: Cutting For Stone

[Matthew]

Eric Ambler: Judgment On Deltchev. Starting to reread my Ambler novels, and I like this one the best, very interesting story with nice twists and turns.

[AllenLowe]

minds (it's a gift I have) -

[BillF]

Eric Ambler: Judgment On Deltchev. Starting to reread my Ambler novels, and I like this one the best, very interesting story with nice twists and turns.

Must try that one. Read four Amblers recently.

[jostber]

Paul Theroux - Ghost Train To The Eastern Star

This is a fitting read as I am now staying in Singapore for 3 weeks.

[7/4]

I found a copy of this $80 book for 4.99 this weekend!

Kyle Gann - American Music in the Twentieth Century

Edited September 25, 2009 by 7/4

[Don Brown]

Auto da Fe / Elias Canetti

[MartyJazz]

ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA, George Orwell essay compilation

[Matthew]

ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA, George Orwell essay compilation

I've been tempted to get that huge book of Orwell's essays, I always found the ones that I've read very interesting.

[ejp626]

A few clunkers lately. Now to a certain extent, this doesn't surprise me, since I am working through a stack of paperbacks I am pretty sure I will give away when I am through (trying to reclaim some shelf space). But it can be a bit tiring.

Expiration Date by Tim Powers

One of only a handful of novels I've stopped reading midway through. It's a ghost story, but more specifically about living people that go around and try to snort up ghosts. This is preposterous, but ok. Then he adds more unusual ground rules, such as pre-adolescents can't absorb ghosts and then they carry around the undigested ghost "inside." Pushing the envelope but ok. This kid gets into a stressful situation, and the ghost emerges and creates a flesh shell around the boy while it (the ghost) goes Rambo and takes on one of the villains -- and eats a dog in the process. Ok, stop, just stop. This is stupid. There have to be half a dozen better ways to extricate the boy from the situation without completely violating a dozen rules of physics (like the instaneous creation of flesh). It struck me that the Onion had it right, as always: Sci-Fi Writer Attributes Everything Mysterious To 'Quantum Flux' http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sci_f...iter_attributes

A writer that just keeps adding one inplausible thing after another without having any stable ground rules is not one I want to read. 'Nuff said.

Platitudes by Trey Ellis

A very sadly dated exploration of Black literature from the late '80s. Basically, an experimental (male) Black writer is getting feedback from a feminist Black author, who rewrites his chapters in her own voice. So the book zigzags between these two disparate styles. It should surprise no one that the two authors meet and "get it on" as the ending to the book. Highly recommended by Ishmael Reed, which probably tells you everything you need to know. It is very short, however, so I will finish it up and give it away.

I've also been reading some of the shorter fiction of Stephan Zweig (put out by Pushkin Press). Some I think is ok, but I'll never be a huge, huge fan. His preoccupations are just so different. Maybe works that are so "interior" and psychological fare worse than ones that are more action driven when social mores change over time. It's a little like watching someone raised on a steady diet of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther try to cope with the late Twentieth Century. And there is no question that suicide plays a huge role in Zweig's fiction, as well as his actual life.

[Matthew]

Led Zeppelin: 1968-1980 -- The Story of a Band and Their Music. by Keith Shadwick. A very good book on the mighty Zep. Maybe they didn't rule the earth, but they sure ruled Madison High School in San Diego.

Edited September 21, 2009 by Matthew

[paul secor]

Just finished reading David Fulmer's novel, Jass.

[sal]

"Filth" - Irvine Welsh

[Van Basten II]

Enjoying quite a bit so far.

[paul secor]

James Nolan's Perpetual Care: Stories

Worth reading - short stories mostly in, of, and about New Orleans. Read in spurts - can't take too much weirdness in large doses.

[medjuck]

Finished Pynchon's Inherent Vice a couple of weeks ago. By the end I quite enjoyed it but think it' minor Pynchon. Feel the same way about Vineland.

[sal]

Finished Pynchon's Inherent Vice a couple of weeks ago. By the end I quite enjoyed it but think it' minor Pynchon. Feel the same way about Vineland.

I haven't read Vineland, but I thought Inherent Vice lost alot of steam in the final third of the book. Was excellent before that.