What are you reading at the moment?

[Green Knight]

Bernard Malamud--The Fixer

[Herzeleide]

Beethoven: The Music and the Life by Lewis Lockwood.



Which I'm enjoying the more I read it. Okay, not 'enjoying' in the sense of that word that you'd get from reading some great literature, but rather in the sense of it reading like very high quality CD liner notes - the sections about the music, that is - and thus providing an excellent mental framework within which to listen to and think about Beethoven. And this is just as much the case with the excellent sections on the biographical, social, artistic and philosophical contexts of Beethoven's time. Lockwood seems to get a lot of information across in a concise and perspicuous way, making for easy reading; naturally, I'm listening to the music as I go along, but my listening can't expect to keep up with my reading.

My only complaint is that most of the score examples are online - seems to me unnecessary and inconvenient (I'd probably still think this even if I had a computer). Would it have killed them to make the book a bit bigger?

[Green Knight]

Michael D. Gordin--Red Cloud At Dawn: Truman, Stalin, And The End Of The Atomic Monopoly.

[ggluek]

I have a lot of Beethoven books, and Lockwood's is the one I would recommend to people who only want one.

[Liberty]

"Civilization: The West and the Rest" by Niall Ferguson

[Green Knight]

Tim Flannery--The Weathermakers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth.

[myaskovsky2002]

I read Mozart's wife two weeks ago and now I'm finishing Mozart's sister...Quite good books.

Martin

[Héctor]

In Civilizations of Ancient Iraq, Benjamin and Karen Foster tell the fascinating story of ancient Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements ten thousand years ago to the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Accessible and concise, this is the most up-to-date and authoritative book on the subject. With illustrations of important works of art and architecture in every chapter, the narrative traces the rise and fall of successive civilizations and peoples in Iraq over the course of millennia--from the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians to the Persians, Seleucids, Parthians, and Sassanians.

Ancient Iraq was home to remarkable achievements. One of the birthplaces of civilization, it saw the world's earliest cities and empires, writing and literature, science and mathematics, monumental art, and innumerable other innovations. Civilizations of Ancient Iraq gives special attention to these milestones, as well as to political, social, and economic history. And because archaeology is the source of almost everything we know about ancient Iraq, the book includes an epilogue on the discovery and fate of its antiquities. Compelling and timely, Civilizations of Ancient Iraq is an essential guide to understanding Mesopotamia's central role in the development of human culture.

Civilizations of Ancient Iraq

El antiguo Irak es el don de dos ríos. El Éufrates nace en la meseta de Anatolia, en Turquía, discurre hacia el suroeste pasando por Siria y después hacia el sureste atravesando Irak, para desembocar en el Golfo. Su ancho y poco profundo cauce hace de él una fuente ideal de agua para irrigación, y en muchos tramos es fácilmente navegable. A medida que avanza a través de las llanuras aluviales del sur y se aproxima al Golfo, se funde con el Tigris formando una red de pequeños ríos, lagos y marjales. A un poeta babilonio, el Éufrates le parecía un poderoso canal de creación divina:

Oh Río, creador de todas las cosas,
cuando los grandes dioses cavaron tu lecho,
dispusieron el bienestar a lo largo de tus orillas.

[brianwalker]

Conrad - Victory

[Musaeus]

...... for Conrad.

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky

Dr Faustus - T Mann