Now reading...

[birdanddizzy]

Now reading :

[brownie]

Currently re-reading 'Django, Mon Frère' (Editions Losfeld, 1968), Charles Delaunay's recollections of Django Reinhardt. The book was the basis for most biographies of the gypsy guitarist!

[Free For All]

[birdanddizzy]

Currently re-reading 'Django, Mon Frère' (Editions Losfeld, 1968), Charles Delaunay's recollections of Django Reinhardt. The book was the basis for most biographies of the gypsy guitarist!

That's the one I prefer...

[jlhoots]

Wallace Stegner: Angle Of Repose

[Kalo]

What a great cover! How is it, Free For All?

How many biographies of trombone players have you read?

How many have been written?

[BruceH]

I was going to wait for the briefest history to come out, but figured this will have to do in the meantime.

I actually didn't much care for this. By trying to make the material more accessible he took a lot of the meat out of it, I thought. And the new illustration were strangely annoying. But hey, maybe it's just me...

[jlhoots]

Sigrid Nunez: The Last Of Her Kind

[jazzbo]

After finishing rereading "The Judgment of Eve" by Edgar Pangborn, I'm reading "The Spartans" by Paul Cartledge.

[BruceH]

After finishing rereading "The Judgment of Eve" by Edgar Pangborn, I'm reading "The Spartans" by Paul Cartledge.

Good ol' Edgar Pangborn! I trust you've read "Davy"?

[Matthew]

Eric Ambler's: A Coffin for Dimitios. About the fourth time I've read this one -- very enjoyable.

[birdanddizzy]

[sal]

Cosmos - Carl Sagan

Just finished "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince". A wonderful and sad book.

[Brandon Burke]

[ghost of miles]

Hey, yes to Eric Ambler and MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN.

The Dorsey bio's decent. It's amazing how many surviving musicians Levinson was able to interview for it. Definitely worth your time if you're a Dorsey fan at all.

I just finished Thomas Merton's THE SIGN OF JONAS (hello, Matthew! ) and am variously perusing a Nat King Cole biography and FREEDOM IS, FREEDOM AIN'T (book about jazz in the 1960s).

[ejp626]

Would agree on Motherless Brooklyn. I actually introduced a book club to it, and it went over really well. I've read many of Lethem's other books, but this is the one I like the most. The bit where his OCD turns on this woman he briefly dates is very funny and of course also very sad.

Lethem reminds me a bit of Madison Smartt Bell, who wrote some wonderful books in the 1990s. My favorite of all is Bell's Waiting for the End of the World, which I may try to reread this year. Doctor Sleep is also quite good.

Am currently working on book 6 in Anthony Powell's Dance series.

[ghost of miles]

Would agree on Motherless Brooklyn. I actually introduced a book club to it, and it went over really well. I've read many of Lethem's other books, but this is the one I like the most. The bit where his OCD turns on this woman he briefly dates is very funny and of course also very sad.

Lethem reminds me a bit of Madison Smartt Bell, who wrote some wonderful books in the 1990s. My favorite of all is Bell's Waiting for the End of the World, which I may try to reread this year. Doctor Sleep is also quite good.

Am currently working on book 6 in Anthony Powell's Dance series.

I'd like to read Lethem's FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE--the ending scene actually takes place in Bloomington, Indiana (at the Kinsey Institute).

My favorite M. Smartt Bell book is THE YEAR OF SILENCE. Haven't read any of his Haiti trilogy, but he's a writer I almost always seem to enjoy reading. Not as overlooked as he used to be... he caused quite a stink back in the mid-1980s with his attack on minimalism in Harper's.

[ejp626]

My favorite M. Smartt Bell book is THE YEAR OF SILENCE. Haven't read any of his Haiti trilogy, but he's a writer I almost always seem to enjoy reading. Not as overlooked as he used to be... he caused quite a stink back in the mid-1980s with his attack on minimalism in Harper's.

I thought Year of Silence was ok but not as good as Waiting or Doctor Sleep. The Washington Square Ensemble is ok as well. That one has some curious parallels with Motherless Brooklyn, though the situations the main characters get into (and choices they make) are bleaker than those in MB. I must admit the Haiti trilogy doesn't sound that promising to me, but I may read it some day. (I generally don't read historical fiction and think that Bell is writing so far outside of his own experience I don't see how he could keep it up for three books.) I would like to get around to reading his short stories. Lethem's short stories are often interesting.

[Brandon Burke]

I'd like to read Lethem's FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE--the ending scene actually takes place in Bloomington, Indiana (at the Kinsey Institute).

i finished Fortress of Solitude about a month or so ago, enjoyed it immensely. bought his The Dissapointment Artist over the weekend. (mostly because i found out there's an essay in there on Cassavetes...)

[Matthew]

I just finished Thomas Merton's THE SIGN OF JONAS (hello, Matthew! )

After I recommended The Sign of Jonas, I decided to read it myself and found that I was turned off by Merton's constant stream of camplaining -- it rubbed me the wrong way this time. I still find the section after his ordination interesting, with the "Fire Watch" being one of the better things he wrote. I'll have to get the Journals one of these days.

PS: Hi, I just took a break from the Big O for awhile.....

[ghost of miles]

I just finished Thomas Merton's THE SIGN OF JONAS (hello, Matthew! )

After I recommended The Sign of Jonas, I decided to read it myself and found that I was turned off by Merton's constant stream of camplaining -- it rubbed me the wrong way this time. I still find the section after his ordination interesting, with the "Fire Watch" being one of the better things he wrote. I'll have to get the Journals one of these days.

PS: Hi, I just took a break from the Big O for awhile.....

Hmm... I'm having other strange issues with Merton that I should PM you about! JONAS intrigues me because you witness the change that took place in him after SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN became a bestseller. Yeah, he does seem to complain more, and to become more self-absorbed. What a strange fate, though--to take up the life of a monk, and to then become a literary celebrity. Very odd... our station's music director retired this past summer and went to Gethsemani to become a monk, btw. Haven't talked to him since, but we saw a recent picture, and he looks really, really happy. An enormously talented pianist and singer, and they seem to be making good use of his gifts.

[paul secor]

Penelope Lively: Making It Up - fictionalizing what one's life might have been had different choices been made and different paths been followed.

[jazzbo]

I've had to spend a lot of time in waiting rooms lately in another city and reread a lot of detective novels and this has me on a binge. . . Read a bit of A. A. Fair, Charles Willeford, Ross McDoanld, Rex Stout. . . .

Now on Rex Stout's "The Golden Spiders."

[Matthew]

Just starting to get into David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. Scary how the same mistakes are occuring now as in the past. Forward into the past I guess. Also saving two Eric Ambler's for my week vacation in April (waiting in airports and on airplanes): The Light of Day & Passage of Arms. I'm hooked on Ambler for some reason.

[md655321]

Just finished Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. Definitely and interesting read. Are all his books different? or does he maintain a similar style? I cant imagine he would.

For something completely different I am reading The Creation of the American Republic by Gordon Wood. Great book that absolutely made history change on its axis. Too bad a couple more people in power dont read it as well.