Finally (after several hiatuses) finished Alex Ross, The Rest in Noise. Very interesting and helpful. It got me thinking more lucidly about an undercurrent I have been noticing in my listening lately of recurring slight anxiety about an ongoing tectonic drift in my listening habits. After an intense post-rock year, two or three years of mostly ambient and electronic, and now a year when I have been listening to as much jazz as anything, I have found myself myself very drawn to piano trios, and wondering if I might be heading for a foray back into classical music.
And then I catch in myself an odd anxiety that if I get to the place of really better understanding and appreciating more classical (and technically advanced piano) music it will deny me former pleasures, closing off things I already love in the same way that having advanced literary training can make it harder to enjoy workmanlike junk fiction in quite the same way. (I delete half of the free kindle novels I find because I can't bear the style after a few pages). In my head I am happy listening widely and believing that all musical genres have their own gift, yet when I approach the classical I find somewhere in me this irrational sense that it will keep me from enjoying other things, that it will show my enjoyment of them as somehow rooted in my failure at the time to really understand music well, my lack of musical training, like tasting gourmet food and realizing that MacDonalds was not so great after all. It's an irrational fear, because I am pretty deeply attached to some of the things I love to listen to. I think a grammar school education and maybe some music snob acquaintances over the years put it there, and apparently it's not so easy to think it away.
Reading Ross helped me see both how that fear is grounded in the actual self-presentation of classical music as mediated through 20th century culture and my education - the intentional idea of modern classical music as arcane high brow rejection of the populist - and how the interpenetration of classical with all other genres as the last century wore on (Ross's last chapter) makes it a baseless fear. Reading about Eno, Cage, Glass, Velvet Underground, U2, Björk, Pärt etc in the same chapter in a book on classical music was quite liberating, even though that chapter was a bit rushed and cursory after the detail of the rest of the book.
Rhys Hughes' Tucked Away in Aragon, which is the ebook version of the limited run Sangria in the Sangraal. Ten absurdist tales that take place in an fictional Spanish Moorish kingdom. I was much interested in this sort of weird fiction about 10-15 years ago, but I never read Hughes except in a few anthologies. Fun reading. 99 cents at Smashwords, $3.99 at Amazon.
This was an impulse buy after being stuck in the Atlanta airport thanks to bad weather and someone from Delta royally screwing up our bookings. Anyway, I really loved his earlier book about the OED "The professor and the Mad Men" Not sure about this book yet though. It's perhaps trying to cover too much and sometimes seems confused between a history book and personal travel account. It's fairly engaging though with some colorful historical figures.
Currently reading The People in the Photo (French: Eux sur la photo) which after winning a million literary awards in France is coming out en anglais. I won a review copy in a Twitter competition.
According to my goodreads stats page I read 16845 pages this year. That'll be low because I joined goodreads in April and did not add everything I read to it. Anathem was the longest at 937 pages. (One of the best, too).
Well, you put me to shame! I only read 5,845 pages this year, with the longest being "Infinite Jest" at 1,079. Like you, though, my longest was one of the best as it is one of three to get 5 stars from me. The others were Peter Heller's "The Dog Stars" and Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We".
I bought Infinite Jest in a kindle sale a while back and haven't braved it yet. I set myself 50 books in April as the reading challenge for the year and made 54, but it did discourage me from tackling huge books late in the year. I am thinking next year I will choose a smaller number but tackle some of the really big books I want to read. (I have, for instance, read the first chapter of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age twice.) Balanced against that, I read in addition a bunch of trashy sci fi and mystery novels that turned out to be too trashy for me to want to claim them as things I had read. (I keep wavering back and forth between spells of 'life is too short to download free novels in the slim hope the next one will be one of those hidden gems" and "hmm, I wonder what's free today...")
I was more generous with 5 stars (or just read more books, or different books - how do could I not give Augustine or Chekhov 5 stars?)
The Kindle version of Douglas Adams's Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is $1.99 today. It's not one of his Hitchhiker's guide books, but still has that off beat weirdness.
The Long Dark Tea-Time is a good book for $2. It is a sequel to Dirk Gently's Wholistic Detective Agency, and while not as good as either Dirk or the Hitchhiker's Guide, it is still worth your time.
My Goodreads word-count is 10248, but I do not add alot of the professional reading to the site, and I am sure I missed a few. The longest was Roberto Bolano's 2666.
Nothing to do with music, but got a link to this article from a friend's blog and found it very worth reading. About how truckers experience their work and how our collective behaviors affect them.
I pay attention to jazz kerfuffles so you don't have to, at least not until they become interesting.* There is a new Duke Ellington bio by author/critic Terry Teachout that has raised some hackles, and then even more hackle-raising by some under-informed reviews in the NYT and (especially, IMO) New Yorker. Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus, who has a relationship with and has interviewed Teachout, takes it all on in a lengthy blog post that I wish I understood half of, from a musical standpoint. Interesting stuff, or so I think.
*I spared you the one a couple weeks ago, where the Times ran Keith Jarrett's name under a 70s photo of Chick Corea.
Good news is, Univ of Chicago Press is giving away this Bill Broonzy ebook - DL link - Bad news is you have to do some kind of Adobe Digital Editions thing. I've made this work before - will try the Bluefire app (for iPad) and report back...
Really fantastic book; bit of travel, bit of novel, bit of history. Highly recommended. The recent movie about it is good too - I think it's still on netflix.
Turns out the father of one of my daughter's friends is a professor of media studies and a very active... let's say opponent of the current copyright cabal. We had a fascinating discussion one night and I got a copy of his latest book in a trade. So far it's an excellent read that goes much further than simply echoing much of my own thoughts on copyright, but delves into a real exploration of how and why we got to where we are.
The chapter I just read makes the point that the commodification of music was not a natural progression and that even the invention of copyright way back in the 1600s was about protecting businesses and the king - not artists. Unfortunately this book will probably lead to me becoming even more "ranty" around the house.
Pretty sure we have talked about this series on this board before - Well, it's back again, for the last time. I guess this has been out since fall, 'scuse if it's been discussed and I missed it.
I powered through it, having been reading this series since age 16. Bit of a slog, but ya know. Ending is pretty bad, but what hope is there when you have brought your dead hero back to life? My previous comments apply, namely that it's curiously overwritten junk, yet with an insistent, deeply interiorized point of view on---what, guilt, victimization, responsibility, self-determination??? Etc. Just occurred to me to wonder whether this author is into TM or some other structured way of looking at the world. In any case, those who have read the series will want to read it, those who haven't, won't!
I failed to make it all the way through the penultimate volume, despite being quite invested in the series. A slog indeed. Might have to get to this at some point. I still love volumes 1-3 and like volumes 4-6, after that, not so much.
As a reader contemporary with the original two trilogies, I read "like volumes 4-6, after that, not so much" and say, "huh, there are books after White Gold Wielder??". But also, not so interested anyway. The first six seem enough.
Comments
Ahem.
And then I catch in myself an odd anxiety that if I get to the place of really better understanding and appreciating more classical (and technically advanced piano) music it will deny me former pleasures, closing off things I already love in the same way that having advanced literary training can make it harder to enjoy workmanlike junk fiction in quite the same way. (I delete half of the free kindle novels I find because I can't bear the style after a few pages). In my head I am happy listening widely and believing that all musical genres have their own gift, yet when I approach the classical I find somewhere in me this irrational sense that it will keep me from enjoying other things, that it will show my enjoyment of them as somehow rooted in my failure at the time to really understand music well, my lack of musical training, like tasting gourmet food and realizing that MacDonalds was not so great after all. It's an irrational fear, because I am pretty deeply attached to some of the things I love to listen to. I think a grammar school education and maybe some music snob acquaintances over the years put it there, and apparently it's not so easy to think it away.
Reading Ross helped me see both how that fear is grounded in the actual self-presentation of classical music as mediated through 20th century culture and my education - the intentional idea of modern classical music as arcane high brow rejection of the populist - and how the interpenetration of classical with all other genres as the last century wore on (Ross's last chapter) makes it a baseless fear. Reading about Eno, Cage, Glass, Velvet Underground, U2, Björk, Pärt etc in the same chapter in a book on classical music was quite liberating, even though that chapter was a bit rushed and cursory after the detail of the rest of the book.
Rhys Hughes' Tucked Away in Aragon, which is the ebook version of the limited run Sangria in the Sangraal. Ten absurdist tales that take place in an fictional Spanish Moorish kingdom. I was much interested in this sort of weird fiction about 10-15 years ago, but I never read Hughes except in a few anthologies. Fun reading. 99 cents at Smashwords, $3.99 at Amazon.
This is the latest Harry Hole Norwegian detective story - IMO one of his better books
Nearly done...interesting experiment, three, maybe four plots at once.
The provocatively titled The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean.
This was an impulse buy after being stuck in the Atlanta airport thanks to bad weather and someone from Delta royally screwing up our bookings. Anyway, I really loved his earlier book about the OED "The professor and the Mad Men" Not sure about this book yet though. It's perhaps trying to cover too much and sometimes seems confused between a history book and personal travel account. It's fairly engaging though with some colorful historical figures.
Craig
I was more generous with 5 stars (or just read more books, or different books - how do could I not give Augustine or Chekhov 5 stars?)
Just picked this up at the library. I read Helter Skelter many years ago, I hope this is as interesting.
My goodreads stats was 33, 618 pages GULP.
my read count is 15671, but some of those books I only read the intro and a few chapters, so that number is a bit inflated.
*I spared you the one a couple weeks ago, where the Times ran Keith Jarrett's name under a 70s photo of Chick Corea.
Amid a string of pulp novels not worth mentioning, I just finished this, which I for the most part greatly enjoyed:
Good news is, Univ of Chicago Press is giving away this Bill Broonzy ebook - DL link - Bad news is you have to do some kind of Adobe Digital Editions thing. I've made this work before - will try the Bluefire app (for iPad) and report back...
Really fantastic book; bit of travel, bit of novel, bit of history. Highly recommended. The recent movie about it is good too - I think it's still on netflix.
and
Turns out the father of one of my daughter's friends is a professor of media studies and a very active... let's say opponent of the current copyright cabal. We had a fascinating discussion one night and I got a copy of his latest book in a trade. So far it's an excellent read that goes much further than simply echoing much of my own thoughts on copyright, but delves into a real exploration of how and why we got to where we are.
The chapter I just read makes the point that the commodification of music was not a natural progression and that even the invention of copyright way back in the 1600s was about protecting businesses and the king - not artists. Unfortunately this book will probably lead to me becoming even more "ranty" around the house.
Pretty sure we have talked about this series on this board before - Well, it's back again, for the last time. I guess this has been out since fall, 'scuse if it's been discussed and I missed it.
I powered through it, having been reading this series since age 16. Bit of a slog, but ya know. Ending is pretty bad, but what hope is there when you have brought your dead hero back to life? My previous comments apply, namely that it's curiously overwritten junk, yet with an insistent, deeply interiorized point of view on---what, guilt, victimization, responsibility, self-determination??? Etc. Just occurred to me to wonder whether this author is into TM or some other structured way of looking at the world. In any case, those who have read the series will want to read it, those who haven't, won't!