Reading
Currently reading: The Studio by John Gregory Dunne. This little book has a hundred great stories but my favorite is this: When planning the television series Custer, 20th Century Fox TV execs knew who they wanted to play Crazy Horse: Toshiro Mifune. This did not happen, for good reasons, but I can’t help wondering…. 📚
Currently reading: The Debate on the Constitution. Reading through these documents, so brilliantly chosen and edited by Bernard Bailyn, my two dominant thoughts are (a) Neither the Federalists nor the Antifederalists believed in the honesty or decency of their opponents, and (b) Quiet little James Madison is terrifyingly brilliant. 📚
Finished reading: Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. Teaching this today. It is, every time I read it, a dazzling and disturbing book. 📚
Finished reading: 3 Shades of Blue by James Kaplan. A brilliant book, but in its later stages immensely sad. 📚
Reading this because it’s discussed, with considerable energy, in Sayers’s Gaudy Night. 📚
Currently reading: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I wrote a post about returning to this great book. 📚
High is Adam Roberts in his thriller mode. Think: Mission: Impossible on Mars. Brilliant. So much fun. 📚
Currently reading: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert Louis Wilken. This will be my third complete reading of this great book. 📚
Finished reading: The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn. A lovely novel, at once melancholy and hopeful, about learning to cope with a changed world, and about the many forms and meanings of family. 📚
Finished reading: The Corner that Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner. A strangely riveting book, and unlike anything I have ever read. I don’t even know how to describe it. 📚
Finished reading: The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley. what an extraordinary book. I am filled with regret that I didn’t read it decades ago, though some of its arguments shaped the works I have read. 📚
This is gonna take a while. Currently reading: Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann 📚
Abandoned reading: Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews by Jonathan Cott. Dylan, the greatest singer-songwriter ever, is a terrible interviewee because … well, to put it bluntly, because he lies all the time. You can’t trust anything he says. 📚
Finished reading: Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. Reading about the music of the Sixties can be fascinating, but reading about all the $$$ complications is often infuriating, and reading about the musicians' personal lives is deeply depressing. 📚
Finished reading: Bleak House by Charles Dickens 📚
Currently reading: Bleak House by Charles Dickens 📚
Finished reading: Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin 📚
Currently reading: Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin 📚
Finished reading: Farewell the Trumpets by James/Jan Morris. An extraordinary narrative history — I got to the end of this third volume and was strongly tempted to return to the first volume and start again. 📚