Now reading...

[ghost of miles]

Just reread Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night". I'd read it back when I was in college. I mention it here only because of my astonishment at how much I had forgotten  about it. Very sad book.

←

I re-read GATSBY several weeks ago... generally re-read that one every couple of years or so. Also re-read some essays from THE CRACK-UP.

Just finished LIVIN' IN A GREAT BIG WAY, the new bio of Tommy Dorsey.

[jlhoots]

Cormac McCarthy: No Country For Old Men

[Matthew]

I’ve just finished reading Walter Harding’s The Days of Henry Thoreau, and it is a great biography, it shows Thoreau in all his complexity. It also reminded me what a social person Thoreau was in his lifetime, how devoted his friends were to him, especially in his final illness. Interesting section on Thoreau’s relationship with John Brown, and his reaction to Brown’s execution – Thoreau burned with indignation and wrote some of his most powerful essays in response. My favorite new quote from Thoreau is his response to James Russell Lowell taking out this sentence from Thoreau’s essay in the Atlantic Monthly: “It [a pine tree] is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.” Thoreau wrote to Russell a letter, in which this sentence appears:

I could excuse a man who was afraid of an uplifted fist, but if one habitually manifests fear at the utterance of a sincere thought, I must think that his life is a kind of nightmare continued into broad daylight.

Ouch! On to Thoreau’s journals now.

[jlhoots]

Alice Munro: Runaway

Peter Guralnick: Dream Boogie

[BruceH]

The State of the Art----Iain M. Banks

[Jazzmoose]

Proficient Motorcycling by David L. Hough

[ghost of miles]

Lewis Erenberg, THE GREATEST FIGHT OF OUR GENERATION: LOUIS VS. SCHMELING.

[sheldonm]

Blood and Champagne; The Life and Times of Robert Capa

[frank m]

SHELDONM----That book somehow slipped off my reading list. How do you find it??? If written well I'll put it back on my list. Thanks.

[sheldonm]

frank m,

Just started reading a couple days ago so not far enough into it to. I'll let you know in a few days!

m~

[brownie]

Some recent readings:

- Bix 'Une Biographie', good well-documented (very rare for a French jazz bio) book on Beiderbecke by Jean-Pierre Lion, understand a US edition has come out,

- 'Tous les Blues d'Albert Ayler', short collective book from Simon Guibert,

- 'Bouncing With Bud' (All the Recordings of Bud Powell' by Carl Smith,

- Jean Malaquais 'Journal de Guerre - Journal du Métèque', great war memoirs book which was reissued some time ago.

[ghost of miles]

Bruce Crowther's SINGING JAZZ and Doug Ramsey's TAKE FIVE: THE PUBLIC & PRIVATE LIVES OF PAUL DESMOND.

[Kalo]

Just finished Tibor Fisher's The Thought Gang. Sort of annoying and kind of enjoyable at the same time. Pulp Fiction meets Philosophy 101.

Just before that I read Geoff Nicholson's Everything and More. It's the fifth book I've read by him. He's an enjoyably dark British comic novelist, yet not without substance either. He's learned a lot from my favorite living (American) novelist, Thomas Berger. If that sounds intriguing, start with Bleeding London and proceed from there.

[JohnJ]

Just finished Tibor Fisher's The Thought Gang. Sort of annoying and kind of enjoyable at the same time. Pulp Fiction meets Philosophy 101.

Nothing annoying about 'The Thought Gang' for me. I thought it was hilarious and recommended it to all my friends.

Currently reading 'The Final Country' by James Crumley. Probably my favorite modern crime writer.

[Kalo]

Just finished Tibor Fisher's The Thought Gang. Sort of annoying and kind of enjoyable at the same time. Pulp Fiction meets Philosophy 101.

Nothing annoying about 'The Thought Gang' for me. I thought it was hilarious and recommended it to all my friends.

Currently reading 'The Final Country' by James Crumley. Probably my favorite modern crime writer.

What's the deal with Crumley, John J? Haven't caught up with him, but I like a good crime novel.

I found The Thought Gang quite funny, too, by the way. But there was something a bit labored about it. Still superior to 90% of what's out there. Anyone read his new one?

[BruceH]

Just finished Tibor Fisher's The Thought Gang. Sort of annoying and kind of enjoyable at the same time. Pulp Fiction meets Philosophy 101.

Just before that I read Geoff Nicholson's Everything and More. It's the fifth book I've read by him. He's an enjoyably dark British comic novelist, yet not without substance either. He's learned a lot from my favorite living (American) novelist, Thomas Berger. If that sounds intriguing, start with Bleeding London and proceed from there.

That sounds intriguing...

[ghost of miles]

Mary Gaitskill, VERONICA.

[frank m]

Ghost of Miles------Would you care to give us a capsule review of the Brubeck bio.

and BTW--I'm astonished at your literary intake. How do you manage it? I'm retired and read a good deal but I'm put to shame by your volume. How DO you do it"

[Kalo]

Just before that I read Geoff Nicholson's Everything and More. It's the fifth book I've read by him. He's an enjoyably dark British comic novelist, yet not without substance either. He's learned a lot from my favorite living (American) novelist, Thomas Berger. If that sounds intriguing, start with Bleeding London and proceed from there.

That sounds intriguing...

Yeah, Nicholson's quite enjoyable. I first read him because I had seen a short interview with him where he talked about stealing from Berger. He's not as deep as Berger at his best, nor as fine a prose stylist, but he reminds me of later Berger in particular, in the way he'll take an odd premise and really run with it. At the very least, his books are among the most intelligent entertainments being written today. You'll dig him too, BruceH for the attention he pays to architecture, which figures more prominently in his books than most any other author I can think of. I've enjoyed all the books I've read by him and I plan to get around to all of them at some point.

Jonathan Lethem is a vocal Berger fan (influenced by his serious genre parodies, I'm guessing?) as well as a Phillip Dick fanatic, but I haven't gotten around to reading him yet.

Edited December 11, 2005 by Kalo

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Been slowly working my way through a book I'd read (well, sort of ) in college -- The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa about an educator who was around (1835-1901) to witness the vast changes that took place during Japan's transformation from isolated feudal state. Interesting guy who first visited the U.S. in 1860 as a crew member on what was the first ever trans-Pacific voyage to the U.S. of a Japanese warship (purchased from the Dutch). The funny thing is, the ship was basically escorting another ship that was carrying Japan's first envoy to visit Washington......but the envoy was being ferried over on the U.S. warship! Interesting observations about his later travels in Europe and subsequent return to Japan where the anti-foreigner pot was about boiling over (1863) with explusion decrees being issued in Kyoto, and all sorts of attacks upon Dutch, English & US vessels...

[jazzbo]

Been doing research and am reading an interesting book about The Revelation of Saint John (Revelation: Down to Earth, by Edwin Walhout), a pastoral interpretation that is so different from the "Revelations as triumpant future history" that is usually bandied about.

Also purchased and will work my way through this coming year (if you have seen this you would know this is a realistic target period of time!) The Oxford History of Christian Worship. Quite a phenomenal work.

[Matthew]

Been doing research and am reading an interesting book about The Revelation of Saint John (Revelation: Down to Earth, by Edwin Walhout), a pastoral interpretation that is so different from the "Revelations as triumpant future history" that is usually bandied about.

That's what so many Christians forget about Revelations; it was written to a particular faith community to give them comfort in their trails and persecution, it was never meant to be a blueprint for the end of the world.

[jazzbo]

Agreed. But man oh man I know so many who see this as a Time magazine from the week of Armeggedon.

[BruceH]

Just before that I read Geoff Nicholson's Everything and More. It's the fifth book I've read by him. He's an enjoyably dark British comic novelist, yet not without substance either. He's learned a lot from my favorite living (American) novelist, Thomas Berger. If that sounds intriguing, start with Bleeding London and proceed from there.

That sounds intriguing...

Yeah, Nicholson's quite enjoyable. I first read him because I had seen a short interview with him where he talked about stealing from Berger. He's not as deep as Berger at his best, nor as fine a prose stylist, but he reminds me of later Berger in particular, in the way he'll take an odd premise and really run with it. At the very least, his books are among the most intelligent entertainments being written today. You'll dig him too, BruceH for the attention he pays to architecture, which figures more prominently in his books than most any other author I can think of. I've enjoyed all the books I've read by him and I plan to get around to all of them at some point.

Maybe I'll check out Nicholson after the holidays....

[paul secor]

Paul Auster: Hand to Mouth