Reading
Finished reading: Raymond Chandler: the Library of America Edition by Raymond Chandler. Most of these I hadn’t read in decades … I’m having a complicated response to them after all this time. I’ll write up my thoughts eventually. 📚
Currently reading: Raymond Chandler: the Library of America Edition by Raymond Chandler 📚
Finished reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. A masterpiece. 📚
Finished reading: Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth D. Samet. This one was disappointing: too predictable and pedestrian. 📚
Currently reading/listening: Glenn Gould - The Goldberg Variations - The Complete Unreleased Recording Sessions June 1955. An extraordinary experience. 📚 ♫
Currently reading: Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth D. Samet 📚
Finished reading: Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. What an extraordinary book — so glad I decided to revisit it a decade after I first read it. My head is just buzzing with ideas. 📚
Currently reading: Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. Read it and loved it when it came out a decade ago, time to return to it. 📚
Finished reading: Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard. It seems wrong somehow to say that this was merely good, but … it moves quickly, and I think the story deserved a deeper treatment – something like the three plays of The Coast of Utopia. 📚
Currently reading: Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard 📚
Finished reading: Reporting World War II: The 75th Anniversary Edition: A Library of America Boxed Set. I wrote about the experience here. 📚
Currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Revisiting in preparation for class. Still can’t easily believe that I get to teach something so delightful. 📚
Finished reading: Charles Ives by Jan Swafford. A superb biography of one of the most peculiar composers: an ordinary man in almost every respect who simply heard, and couldn’t stop hearing, music that no one else could make sense of. 📚
Currently reading: Charles Ives: A Life with Music by Jan Swafford 📚
Finished reading: Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues by Albert Murray. I read this over a period of months, [ausing to listen to the music Murray talks about. It’s a feast. 📚
Finished reading: The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula K. Le Guin. What a joy to revisit these glorious books. 📚
Finished reading: Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly by Joshua Rivkin. Rivkin is very clear up front that this is not a straightforward biography; but as I read I often found myself longing for a straightforward biography. 📚
Currently reading: Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly by Joshua Rivkin 📚
I’m still reading Reporting World War II: The 75th Anniversary Edition: A Library of America Boxed Set – what an extraordinary anthology of journalism, including photojournalism. The books feature a good chronology of the war and a series of useful maps. It’s a strangely immersive experience. 📚
Currently reading: The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚