Now Reading & Books

As per usual I'm reading several dozens of books at the same time (I don't have ADD! I don'oh look at the cute kittycat!).
But mainly I'm reading Proust's lovely Swann's Way (From À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. No, not in French, although I would've liked to. But I don't trust my command of French that much), Selected Stories of O'Henry (one of the first writers to employ the modern "twist in the tail" form), Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant (the bloke could do with actually ending a paragraph at some point. I haven't read sentences like these since I read Caesar!) and Roberto Bolaño's mystifying but intriguing meganovel 2666.

And besides that I'm reading the entire run of Detective Comics from the sixties and seventies and every single comic series by Garth Ennis I can find.

Yeah.

In a similar vein that's why I need my iPod Classic.
The very idea of NOT having the wide range of choices that 160 GB yields (which is still FAR insufficient for my needs, but hey-ho) is abhorrent to me.

I want to be able to pick up what I want whenever I feel like it.

Waclaw Potocki's Moralia - for my PhD thesis (it's saved for now). It's a very long poetic work (a collection of poems) that is very interesting even if the guy can get tedious, I find that somehow enticing and maybe even a bit charming.

Max Scheler's Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. Polish translation (I trust my command of German probably less than Martijn trusts his French). On the train to and fro work/university. I like philosophy and since I read some of his anthropological works, I find Scheler very interesting. I also took a big liking in Georg Simmel and William James recently. I intend to read the latter's Principles of Psychology, especially after his Pragmatism, which is a fantastic work. Ralph Waldo Emerson isn't too shabby either. Scheler makes some interesting points, especially that during the time of writing the particular work he was a theist, then he backed off somehow, but that I'd have to read up on.

Max Scheler heavily influenced the philosophical work of John Paul II when he was a university professor (and either a bishop or already a cardinal) on the Catholic University in Lublin.

Arthur C. Clarke's A Space Odyssey series. Also Polish translations. I bought a bundle that is basically the whole four parts in one book. Now I'm on 2010. I read that in my leisure time in my own free time, when I have it. Great, great stuff. It's not my first venture into hard SF (I read Lem's Solaris on my fourth university year and I loved it), but one of the first. I'd love to read Rendezvous with Rama (or even the whole series) in English.

You haven't experienced The Hunger Games until you've read it in the original Klingon.

As a student I found Kant's prose terrible. Then I read Hegel ...

Volker

Hello everybody, I am reading for school mostly but after next week I'll have two weeks off! Yippee. That means: reading, drawing, music and more.


Right now I am reading Humanistic Education by Nimrod Aloni and Education and Humanism by Wiel Veugelers and some Freire, for school obviously. Exam next week.

I also started reading Stil de tijd by Joke Hermsen (essays on time) but I will finish it in my weeks off. I also have a book about childern's book's illustrators and I read a chapter every once in a while.

Reading a book on the life and times Tchaikovsky. Very very enlightning. I've learned a whole lot about him that I never knew.
Tom

Currently reading and comparing and writing a paper about Red Harvest (Dashiell Hammett) and The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler). As much as I dearly wish I didn't have to do the paper (just a few thousand words left and then I'm DONE WITH UNI FOREVER ), the one thing I will say for an English degree (beyond its obvious usefulness in the real world ) is that it does broaden your horizons considerably. I doubt very much whether I'd have ever read a gen-you-wine hardboiled detective novel otherwise. And I'm really enjoying both! There's just so much personality and cynicism and wit oozing out of every throwaway line. Great stuff! I'll have to track down some more stuff by these two gentlemen in the near future.

Also, I realize now just how much a series I was already familiar with - The Dresden Files, which is basically "what if there was a wizard who was also a private detective" - owes to Chandler in particular.

So I've heard. I'll check it out! I've put the rest of the Philip Marlowe books on my "read sometime in the near-ish future" list as well.


Both my parents are teachers, so the thought that that's where I'll end up has certainly crossed my mind a few times. But no, I don't think my current degree would qualify me. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do next year anyways...

I'm reading a hell of a lot of Stephen King these days. While I hate watching horror films and don't particularly love listening to their scores, I don't mind reading it at all - however, I'll argue hotly with anyone who pigeonholes King as "just" a horror writer. So what I've read is:

The Gunslinger (Dark Tower I) - hm. I kind of like the empty, desolate feel of it, but it didn't really grab me. A little too artsy and "out there" at times. I've got the other Dark Tower books lined up to read at some point though, and I've heard they're quite different in tone. Maybe I'll appreciate this one more after I've read the rest of the series.

Bag of Bones - this I really enjoyed. The haunted house stuff is good, of course, but it's the emotional side of the story that really impressed me. I don't think this is a particularly well-known book of his, but I'd definitely recommend it.

Carrie - a classic and rightfully so.

It - could probably do with being a few hundred pages shorter (and featuring less awkward underage sex), but the length certainly makes it immersive. And it's genuinely unsettling. They float indeed.

The Running Man - doesn't pull any punches, a very brutal story. It's interesting to read this post-Hunger Games. The ending, though appropriate, is a little annoyingly abrupt though.

And now I'm reading Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas, the first of which is (Rita Hayworth and) Shawshank Redemption. Now I won't have an excuse anymore for having not seen the movie.

Prefered Eldest a lot over Eragon! Loved Rorans story very much (I don't think it's a spoiler that Roran gets his own adventure... right?) Now I'm almost halfway Brisingr.

I'm enjoying these books a lot. I wonder what the fourth part will be like, since it was supposed to be a trilogy.

Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye

The original MATRIX. Galouye was so ahead of his time!

Volker

Sorry, but

EDIT: OK, now I consulted an online dictionary. You learn something every day here.

I picked up my niece at Cologne airport this morning and took occasion to buy an issue of THE TIMES OF LONDON. I didn't read the TIMES in ages. I have to say I found rather little relevant political, economic of cultural information but a lot of "human interest" stuff. Has this paper ever always been in tabloid format? What British paper do you recommend? I hear some good things about the GUARDIAN.

Volker