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I would say that Berlin wanted so desperately to find a Russian socialist thinker who opposed the communism that stemmed from Marx's writings that he often exaggerates the break. You can find several places in Herzen's late letters where he is still calling for revolution, for example. I thought Herzen's memoirs were quite interesting (I read them slightly abridged in the two volume set from Oxford), but at some point or other Berlin calls them as good or better than Tolstoy's War and Peace! Come on, man. Don't blow these things up to that extent. It does them a real disservice. I've actually meant to blog about this for a while, but just haven't gotten around to it. After you finish Berlin and read Herzen, you might be interested in reading Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia, which draws very heavily on both these sources.

I read that last year, along with some of the writers he was describing. A very good set of essays, even if he goes a bit over the top in praising Herzen.

I ended up liking Gilead much more than I expected. I understand what she is doing in Lila and in Home, but I am just not sure I want to spend time in these other characters' lives. But I may one of these days. Currently, midway through Machado de Assis's Philosopher or Dog? which is a sort of sequel to Epitaph of a Small Winner. I'm also reading Margaret Atwood's Payback, which is a non-fiction exploration of debt and indebtedness. Next up, more Canadiana: Alice Munro's Who Do You Think You Are? and Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table.

I guess, though that just seems a stupid legacy of cricket. In any case, the umpire had ruled it a dead ball, and in my view (but apparently not the rule book) that would take precedence. It would be like a soccer team trying to shoot after the whistle. Well, no question I will never be any kind of a sports fan, since I think all of them have layers and layers of stupid rules that have perverse outcomes. I did watch the Jays' closer get his last 5 outs and the kid was incredible. I don't know how others felt, but I thought that elevated the game beyond all the other bush-league stuff, including the fans in the stands.

No point in trying to excuse the Jays fans. They were jerks. It will be interesting to see if any rules are rewritten in the wake of this post-season. That rule about the catcher throwing a dead ball back to the pitcher and allowing it to score a run is badly written.

I'm just about done with Epitaph for a Small Winner. I don't find it quite as engaging as his short stories, but it has its moments. The general outlook on life expressed within is pretty bleak, and that is probably mostly what is troubling me. I'm also just about done with Iris Owens' After Claude (NYRB). I find the main character absolutely infuriating, actually a couple of notches past the annoyance I often felt at Ignatius in A Confederacy of Dunces. I really look forward for terrible things to befall her, as it seems likely to transpire. Actually she reminds me a bit of the "wild woman" who is just "misunderstood" also seen in Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding, but the narrator of After Claude has no redeeming qualities that I can see. I can't wait to be through with this one.

That is true, though it is only because they changed the boundaries of Toronto in 1998. It includes a lot of territory that is essentially suburban.

Some interesting twists, turns, heartbreaks, etc. It looks like the Blue Jays are done, but I like the Cubs chances of getting to the next round at least. (I know, I know. Not supposed to say anything...)

Some really interesting projects here. PM sent.

To be honest, I have to agree with the sentiments in the comments that Waterstones was just complete rubbish at selling the things, since the management and staff are wedded to the idea that paper books are the only real books. I'd say well over 90% of my reading is in the form of tangible books, but I don't pooh-pooh the idea of reading digital books, particularly given the awesomeness of Project Gutenberg. I just wrapped up Muriel Spark's The Informed Air, which are mini-essays on how she became a writer, her literary preoccupations (mostly Proust and T.S. Eliot) and her reflections on religion, particularly the Book of Job. This is definitely a book that almost everyone would only flip through once, so see if your library stocks it. Still working my way through de Assis's Epitaph of a Small Winner.

So I don't want to get into a big debate about the morality of these labels, but they do appear in eMusic (at least the Canadian version), and I really wish there was a way to filter them out. Now if you do a search for Sonny Rollins or Miles Davis, you end up getting 75%-85% PD labels that are sort of just cannibalizing each other. It's very frustrating and that can't be good for getting newbies interested in jazz. It gets to the point where you need to search for the particular album you are looking for outside of eMusic (Google or Bing or something) and then linking in. (I guess that isn't so different from the Organissimo search function these days...)

I don't quite get it either. With just a single wild card, there could be a team so far ahead of the others, that it could lose the last game of the season and still be the official wild card. In general, with that second spot up for grabs, there are more teams that have a shot at it, and thus keep grinding it out and not slacking off. That's definitely the case in the AL this year. Anyway, this promises to be a fairly interesting October.

Just finished Irène Némirovsky's David Golder. In some ways it is a funhouse mirror version of Silas Marner. I thought it quite interesting. I am struggling to get through Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question. I might as well push on (about 100 pages left) but he leaves me absolutely cold as a reader. I didn't see what the big fuss was about Kalooki Nights, and I don't think very highly of The Finkler Question. This will definitely be the last Jacobson novel I attempt. The next up after this is Machado De Assis's Epitaph of a Small Winner, which I have never read, despite it being a fairly short book.

It was a total bust here. The sly was so overcast I couldn't even tell where the moon was supposed to be. Very disappointing, esp. for the kids.

They've updated the text on the project page to say that this "may be his final CD," so there is a bit of wiggle room, given that he is still playing gigs. I guess you could say it is mostly likely his final CD.

It is definitely a strange Kickstarter campaign. There are very few people just getting the CD, whereas usually the bottom of the pyramid is pretty wide. There are obviously a few people that really chipped in, but they did make it past $6000. This is one of the few campaigns where it seems my contribution actually moved the needle... Still about a day and a half left if you want in on what may be Junior's last CD.

Yes, being unimpressed is important, but it is just as important that one have a refined, even genteel, enjoyment of the worthy things in life. One cannot be a fan boy and still be considered cultivated.

I wrapped up We Need New Names. I enjoyed it. It was sort of in the same vein as Teju Cole's Open City, though focused on a slightly younger girl from Zimbabwe who eventually makes her way to the U.S. I just read Clarice Lispector's Água Viva, and really disliked it. I know this is probably her most avant novel, but I am now wondering if I should go ahead and read any of the other novels. (5 were recently published in new translations by New Directions.) Still, she is a bit of an acquired taste to be sure. I'm currently reading a few collections of short stories: Russell Smith Confidence, Stuart Dybek Ecstatic Cahoots and Ivan Vladislavic 101 Detectives. It's kind of nice to switch between them.

There is some fine writing in Urquhart's The Night Stages, and some people will like it very much, but I did not like the book for a number of reasons. I've just started Neil Smith's Boo. It is quite interesting. I can't quite tell if the audience is actually YA or adult (it's about an afterlife devoted solely to 13 year olds from the US!). I am finding it to read very much like a mix of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead. I have a general sense of how it will turn out, but I definitely want to read this first to decide if it is appropriate for my son (and if not this year, then at what age level). As an extra bonus, Smith counts as a Canadian author, so I can add him to my pile to be reviewed for the 9th Canadian Challenge.

Actually I'm not really digging The Night Stages. I just can't quite understand the logic behind the book. It is mostly about this woman who gets fogged in at the airport, so she has lots of time to think over her childhood. But then the narrative keeps shifting to her lover's younger brother, when there is no reason for either the woman or her lover to be able to get into his mind (he vanished without a trace years ago, but here we go working through his childhood as well). And then we find out about the painter who painted the mural at the airport. There doesn't seem to be any logical correspondence between them. I'm finding it like watching one of those jugglers who juggles an apple, a wrench and a chainsaw. Ok, you can do it, awkwardly enough, but it's actually not as graceful or compelling as watching someone juggle 5 or 6 balls effortlessly. (It probably doesn't help that I am not a fan of novels that are almost entirely composed of flashbacks.) I'm kind of surprised at how positive the early reviews have been, though I will press on for a bit longer.

Recommended. Enjoying it so far. I thought her A Game of Hide and Seek was well written from a technical perspective, but not actually particularly compelling, as I had no real interest or sympathy in the main characters. I like this one better. Through a weird glitch in the library reserve system, I am about to get 12 books all at once. The ones highest in demand (and thus that I can't renew) will be read first. That includes Urquhart's The Night Stages and Bulawayo's We need new names in addition to Neil Smith's Boo and Barbara Comyns' The Juniper Tree. I did enjoy the Taylor, though it is still hard to get over these quickie marriages. I think there was one in Bowen's To the North as well, though I am probably confusing it with another book. I would say Taylor is better in capturing wry ironies than deep passions... (Definitely more influenced by Austen than Bronte, whereas some critics felt that Bowen more successfully fused these two threads.) I also finished Comyns's The Juniper Tree. Quite interesting. Probably her least characteristic book. I don't think there was a single feckless character in the novel, perhaps because we met a handful of art dealers, but no artists... A lot of sadness throughout, but also some hopeful renewal here and there. I think this and The Skin Chairs have the happiest endings of all her books, if I am remembering correctly (well, perhaps The House of Dolls, though that is more of a farcical ending). Just starting Urquhart's The Night Stages. I've generally heard good things about it. Here's hoping.

Recommended. Enjoying it so far. I thought her A Game of Hide and Seek was well written from a technical perspective, but not actually particularly compelling, as I had no real interest or sympathy in the main characters. I like this one better. Through a weird glitch in the library reserve system, I am about to get 12 books all at once. The ones highest in demand (and thus that I can't renew) will be read first. That includes Urquhart's The Night Stages and Bulawayo's We need new names in addition to Neil Smith's Boo and Barbara Comyns' The Juniper Tree.

Yes, it is fixed! I am just about to launch into Elizabeth Taylor's A View of the Harbour.

I think I remember hearing that he might have expanded this into one more trilogy, though he didn't complete it obviously. It does appear that Now Reading is still broken. I did finish Moby Dick, just before the play. I gave up on Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond. It seemed like it would be a combination of Barbara Pym and Graham Greene, but it just didn't work for me. At this point, not likely to read more Macaulay. Currently just about to wrap up Robert Walser's Jakob Von Gunten.

Just stopped by the Milwaukee Art Museum. The main collection is all being reinstalled, but they have a pretty great special exhibit from the Albright-Knox Museum. It runs through Sept. 20.