What are you reading now - and then

[Prospero]

And just started Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur by Raymond Tallis a series of essays on issues to do with neuroscience and consciousness.

[tsmirandameadows]

I'm currently rereading Harley Hahn's Guide to Unix and Linux, which is easily my favorite book on computing -- yes, more that Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs or K&R C. While ostensibly a beginner's course in the *nix family of operating systems, it is really a general introduction to scientific computing, the ideas and concepts that underlie it, and the historical contexts in which these principles and technologies developed, all of which is told with a very distinct and funny authorial voice. I've been getting back into programming a bit, and felt the need to brush up on the tools with which to do so -- with Unix/Linux, the OS itself is basically an IDE for the C programming language, and the command line environment and its programs work just as well for other languages. Plus, it's quite an enjoyable read, and even at 800 pages, it goes fast enough that you never mind going through it again.

[Stavros]

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante... A stunning modern novel by a reclusive writer widely considered the greatest living Italian novelist. This is an incredible narrative about a wife's descent into near madness as her personality splinters when her husband of fifteen years leaves her for a younger woman. A truly remarkable and terrifying piece of writing.

Better than Marta Morazzoni? A matter of taste I suggest.

[Stavros]

This year:
I read Anatoly Rybakov's Children of the Arbat (1987) before my Russian trip and also stayed in the building in the Arbat where he wrote it. It is the first of a trilogy and although it is a good read on the experience of living under Stalin in the 1930s (and Stalin is one of the characters in the book) it stands or falls by any interest you can muster in two of the main characters, and on that the score is 5/10.

Mark Forsyth The Etymologicon (2011) is a witty, entertaining, informative and often hilarious tour through the origin of English words and phrases with some asides in other languages notably the Chinese poem consisting of one word which is an extreme form of Antanaclasis...

Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre (1847) -attributed to Currer Bell -I had not read this English masterpiece before and was pleased to encounter such delightful and elegant prose after the crabbed and hideous essay in cruelty penned by her sister aka Wuthering Heights (also 1847 and this time attributed to Ellis Bell).

Matthew Parris and Andrew Bryson The Spanish Ambassador's Suitcase (2012) is an occasionally hilarious compendium of despatches from British ambassadors around the globe, from the gruesome eyewitness account of hara-kiri in Japan in the mid-19th century through to the rain-soaked event in Brasil and some lapidary comments on other countries.

Christopher Clark The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012). Clark says 25,000 books have been published on the First World War, and none of them offer a definitive view of its causes because there is no single cause. This undermines the tendency to blame Germany which emerged from the Versailles peace conferences, and deflects the arguments of Fritz Fischer's seminal work which, nevertheless, Clark argues is really motivated by the Second rather than the First war. He manages to establish beyond doubt that the gradual erosion of Ottoman imperial rule in the Balkans and Bulgaria created a vacuum of power into which the contending forces of imperialism -Austria-Hungary- and nationalism -Serbian, collided with devastating results. Indeed, he sees the First World War as an extension of the Third Balkan War, while its link to the 'Greater Serbia' of Milosovic is chilling, as if the events of the 1990s were but another chapter in the Serbian obsession to realise an impossible dream. He also brings out the extent to which deeply felt hostilities between individuals in politics and the military in Vienna, Paris, Berlin and St Petersburg turned the assassination of Franz Ferdinand into a World War. I haven't finished it yet so I don't yet know how he explains the involvement of the British Empire in this event. A long book but worth investigating if you want to get ahead of the curve next year.

[Prospero]

Re Marta Morazzoni... Not read her but will investigate. I was simply reporting the critical overview I've encountered. Best is a slippery word in this context.

[Jericho]

Rogers Profanasaurus.

I had to do her up the arse, she had a face like an abandoned shit farm!

[ILuvGurls]

Sure is a lot of heavy reading going on at this site, I mainly read for enjoyment.

At present reading James Patterson newest Cross My Heart

[Stavros]

Re Marta Morazzoni... Not read her but will investigate. I was simply reporting the critical overview I've encountered. Best is a slippery word in this context.

As short stories are in vogue at the moment she is highly recommended; her novels are barely 100 pages long too, and her story La ragazza col Turbante (The Girl in a Turban) pre-dates The Girl with a Pearl Earring and is in its brevity more exquisite and subtle than Chevalier.

[effigyc]

Just finished The Kite Runner. Going to start Blood Meridian or As I Lay Dying today, depending on which one the library has.

[trish]

Half way through The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It's an eight hundred and some page mystery and a superb reproduction of life in the gold towns of nineteenth century New Zealand.