What'cha Reading?

Off Topic!!!
1208

For reading, I like to fluff up a couple of pillows under my head, hold a paperback above me, elbows resting on the bed, that’s comfortable and relaxing. But my hands… I don’t draw anymore because after a few minutes, the ache starts in, with full out flair up of ‘yowch!’ after that. So yeah, a hefty book can cause me too much pain.

But I have the ebook, and once I finish with Dorian, I’ll sit at the couch with my laptop and read it that way… it’s not as relaxing as bed reading with a paperback, but you do what you have to do if you want to read what you want to read. (and honestly that’s easier on the eyes - I’m at that age were blowing up the print on an ebook or checking out a large print at the library is welcome, even with glasses…

Cranky hands, weakening eyesight, getting old is such a blast) :laughing:

1209

I have just started Ice by Anna Kavan (1967; my copy is a 1970 paperback.) Surrealism, slipstream, New Wave? Anyway, it’s about a nameless man seeking a nameless woman in a world of encroaching ice. Realistic narrative is frequently interrupted by what must be delusions on the part of the nameless narrator.

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1210

Just finished Klara and the Sun Kazuo Ishiguru. Lots of interesting ideas about AI and obsolescence, told from the perspective of a somewhat child-like ‘artificial friend’. The first half is kind of slow, with lots of observations and a lack of in explanations. The second half is a lot more interesting, although it never gets intense with drama or action.

The author had previously won the Nobel Prize for Never Let Me Go, a book that is set in an alternate version of England in the 1990s, in which “guardians” are cloned and raised for the sole purpose of donating their organs to their counterparts. So yes, the Nobel Prize for literature went to a story with the same basic plot as Parts the Clonus Horror.

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1211

When I was young, I absolutely loved Italo Calvino’s books of short stories, t Zero and CosmiComics, especially the story of the apparently immortal and ever-changing Qfwfq.

Someone has now collected all of the Qfwfq stories into one volume. I’m really enjoying reading them again and am looking forward to reading the ones that weren’t in those volumes, especially the ones that hadn’t been translated into English before.

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1212

Okay, how the glmd do you pronounce that?

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1213

That’s nothing. In the first story, he tells us his sister’s name is G’d(w)n.

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1214

I know I of all people have no space to complain, but what?

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1215

If you read the actual stories, you’d understand. For example, in the story in which his sister with that name appears, they are living beings of some sort who live in a dark nebula which eventually forms into our solar system after millions of years of uniformity.

On the other hand, there’s another story where he and two other people are humans, but falling in parallel lines for eternity.

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1216

Well, I just found a new but rewarding timesuck.

Ethan Iverson, a founding member of “jazz” group Bad Plus starting in the early aughts of this century, and apparently a pianist of some ability (teaches at NE Conservatory of Music) has an almost overwhelming selection of print interviews, transcriptions of (primarily) jazz pianist’s solos, provided as examples to illustrate a point, not as instructional material and criticism of the highest quality of any number of albums, performances, and artists in general.

His general repository can be found here, but apparently he is more active on X and Insta these days.

For a musician, cynically, it may be worth it just for the transcriptions. Yes, anyone can write out transcriptions, but makes them look good with whatever engraving software he uses, and, let’s be real, it takes some time and ability to scribble out entire solos comprising many choruses…well, it takes patience, anyway, and time!

No, it’s not a “book,” but the content is easily the equivalent of a (lengthy) book of essays on disparate but equally intriguing topics relating to matters of taste, different forms or genres of music, and culture.

Nice. A spend a number of year studying constrant-based writing, and yet either my Italian wasn’t good enough, or I didn’t feel I had the time to spare, but this provides a new direction for me. Well…“new” enough anyway!

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1217

NickMason_InsideOut

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1218

I am well into Tool of the Trade (1987) by Joe Haldeman. Cold War spy thriller with an SF gimmick. The protagonist is a Soviet “sleeper” agent, who has lived in the USA for many years and who is now as much an American as a Russian. He also developed a gizmo, based on his genuine profession as a psychologist, that sort of acts as super-hypnosis; he can make anybody he’s near do anything, up to and including killing themselves. (At one point he goes all Death Wish and deliberately attracts muggers and such so he can have them take their own lives. He’s not always a nice guy.) He’s now on the run from both sides, and the KGB have kidnapped his American wife. Very readable.

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1219

I have just started Science Fiction: The Best of 2001 edited by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber.

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1220

So, I’ve been reading several articles on why we have different musical tastes.

Like this one…

The science of why we like — and dislike — certain music | The Week

This topic has always fascinated me - for example, I might listen to a song posted on the forum and think “yuk”, but for the one who posted it, it’s a knock-out. And it isn’t as simple as it coming down to consonant vs dissonant - the tunes are melodic, might have a nice hook, is well sung… but it doesn’t hit me, why is that?

Now, you can learn to love other types or styles. New Wave, Devo, got me into the off-kilter stuff. And watching movies from India - at first the music sounded shrill, not very pleasing to my ears, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate and even enjoy it.

But why do I like folk music and so and so doesn’t? And why do I not like all folk music?

It’s just interesting to me, same with other arts, or even food (are we tasting the same thing, and why can it change… like, why are sweets too sweet for me as I’ve gotten older?)

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1221

I have just started Red Moon (2018) by Kim Stanley Robinson. By repute, a science and exposition heavy novel set on the Moon and in China later in this century. (2047, to be exact, which seems optimistic for a Moon base to be established, alas.)

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1222

Just got this one from the Zon…good clean fun so far.

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/* This start better getting a hell of a lot funnier than the first few pages of “musician jokes” that everyone’s heard a million times, or some random crap attributed to some musician that is straight out of a 1950s “dad joke” book.

Thing is, it’s a typical cheap, glued paperback, and I don’t particularly want to crack the spine by getting to the supposedly “good” stuff, nor go page by page opening each one…so I read it front to back, eventually.

Better start bringing it, though.

Hell, there are a few books I have where I haven’t even gotten to taking a knife and cutting the pages apart, except the first few dozen doublets of pages…remember those? Of course I got those second-hand. I’m old but not quite enough. */

/** UGH!!! Fortunately I can honestly return this one as mint condition…this is not an amusing book. It’s dense pages in small print of lame “jokes” or anecdotes…and it never ends…it belongs in a wood chipper, TBH.

Imagine if Milton Berle or somebody wrote a book…that’s about what this is like.

Not just awful, but gawdawful.

I’d rather use the money for a blank notebook into which something better could be written. Ugh. */

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1223

Right now I’m in the middle of Robert Heinlein’s “Expanded Universe” His essays are really interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_Universe_(book)

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1224

Just started the new biography of Edith Hamilton. There’s a surprising amount of Indiana related stories

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1225

Edith Hamilton, the classics scholar and popularizer of the old myths, right?

I never considered her personal life, probably ever…are there scandals? Intrigues? Allegations?

That sounds like fun.

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1226

Attempted re-read the Abbess of Crewe, but it just doesn’t do it for me, despite it being considered one of Sparks better pieces. I set that book aside and found another from Spark at the archive (the library doesn’t carry it). This one I haven’t read before.

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It’s a scathing look at movie making, acting, and cultivating an image. First chapter in and so far, it has a good, funny, set-up. Though very cynical, and I could see how that could become wearisome (just a series of, “look at these stupid people being stupid”), but if it can add a few layers, it could be another winner from one of my favorite writers.

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1227

Yep. One review that made me aware of the book complained it concentrated too much on her personal life but it’s actually fascinating for her generation. Her “Greek Way” and mythology collection were very important to me back in the olden days. She was a serious classics scholar as well as a wonderful writer and translator

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