What are you reading?

Reading:

Empires of the Word, Nicholas Ostler (History of spread and influence of languages through the ages)

1491, can't remember author's name at the moment (Precolumbian history of North America)

Re-reading:

Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color, Phillip Ball. (history of the development, social significance, and use of pigments. One of my favorite books)
 
Just finished "The Last Place on Earth" by Roland Huntford. Tells the story of the race to the South Pole between Amundsen and Scott. Also has orignal photographs of each expedition. If you're a Scott fan don't read this....he's roasted as an incompetent and the author brings many facts to light enforcing this premise.
Now reading "The Professor of desire" by Philip Roth.
In between these and other novels I read short comments in "Photography Speaks/150 Photographers on their Art"
 
einolu said:
'the long dark tea time of the soul'

no, not a photo book...
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Wonderfully imaginative story together with it's sequel or prequel, I cannot remember, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". I am currently plowing through a Hillerman novel, the Sinister Pig... I usually leave Hillerman stories for airplane trips but this one is hardback and too much to carry since my M gearbag takes up the space. I am also looking through Regan's "The Joy of Mixology" which is a wonderful look at liquor and its proper service... "I passed one bar (exam) and ever since I swore not to pass another one unless it was closed" bad-um-pah...on another like topic, the fabulous "Gentleman's Companion" by Baker... better descriptions of recipes and drinks cannot be found anywhere... what is it about elizibethan/edwardian vocabularies that completely express the point the author is trying to describe? Fowles "The Magus" and Rand's "The Fountainhead" are on the bedside table together with Bower's "Leica M Photography" for late-night reading.
 
For fun I'm reading David Lodge's Small World, and for edification, Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (in English translation of course).
 
I am re-reading the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series. I have all the books and periodically read the series from end to end again.

Tom
 
"Shadows, Fire, Snow---- The Life of Tina Modotti". I have a weakness for sexually liberated Communist Latin female artists , I guess. Just recently finished reading "Frida".
 
markinlondon said:
Don't worry, Gabriel, that's just Ulysees Syndrome. I had a copy for 25 years, but I can't say I actually read it. :)

I've just finished Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and now need a lie-down, but am reading an old Ilford Manual of Photography from 1953.

Mark
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great series mark! it took me a while to get into another book after those too!

i recently read "sirens of titan" because i had never read a vonnegut book before (believe that or not). now i'm getting ready to read "kafka on the shore" by haruki murakami. i read "hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world" and loved it, so hopefully this works out for me!
 
enochRoot said:
great series mark! it took me a while to get into another book after those too!

i recently read "sirens of titan" because i had never read a vonnegut book before (believe that or not). now i'm getting ready to read "kafka on the shore" by haruki murakami. i read "hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world" and loved it, so hopefully this works out for me!
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I enjoyed "Hardboiled Wonderland", read it during my travels this summer. I forgot how I heard about it, but I think I was just seduced by the cover. The author recently did a talk at MIT but it was impossible to get in because so many people showed up.

As for "Sirens of Titan", its a great book and one of my favorites by Vonnegut, but I also greatly enjoyed "Cats Cradle", "Slapstick" (some people dont really like this one) and "Slaughter House 5" (I recomend reading this after you read a few of his books already). I used to like Vonnegut a lot, but I havent been in the mood for depressing literature lately, this is why I have been rereading a lot of Douglas Adams.

PS: I just ordered a book called "Sin and Syntax", which should be a fun read. Does anybody else enjoy grammer? I dont know much about it :)p), but find it attractive.
 
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Murakami rocked my socks for a while. I was seduced by "Wind-up Bird Chronicles" while exploring this kickass music shop near chinatown in London. I was rockin to new-to-me music that was pumpin over the store stereo, and I was intrigued by the cover of this book (Protest by Tomatsu {which I recently found in a book called "New Japanese Photography"}). So i picked it up and read like 30 pages without realizing it. I then went on to read Kafka on the Shore, and the rest of his novels. 'Hardboiled Wonderland' was prolly one of the most scifi, but a goodun nonetheless.

They all kind of lump together in my head, because they all seem to have the same basic idea: there is this guy and girl, and the they should reallly be together, but in the end, they aren't. The end. :p

Of course that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy every page-turning minute. :) Check out 'Norwegian Wood' - one that particularly sticks out in memory.
 
I just finished, Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith, and have now started The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
 
Manolo Gozales said:
Hey:)

Trying to read "Camera Lucida" by Roland Barthes. Very French. Not what you would call a "can't put it down" read! ;)
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It may amuse some of you to know that Waltham Forest public libraries (my local) have both Barthes' "Camera Lucida" AND Sontag's "On Photography" shelved under hobbies along with 101 "take better digital photos" books. :bang:

Oh, and two copies of Brian Bower's "Leica Lens Book".

Mark
 
The University of Nebraska- Lincoln just relocated their photography books, so a lot of things that had gone missing are now in their rightful spots. Just finished:
Aaron Siskind: Toward a personal vision
Tony Ray-Jones

Among those to be read:
Bill Jay, Negative/Postive: A philosophy of photography
Stephen Shore, The nature of photographs
Robert Smithson: Photoworks
Joel Sternfeld, American prospects
Let truth be the prejudice: W. Eugene Smith His life and photographs
Two boods of Andeas Gursky photographs.

On the non-photo side, I'm finishing up Donna Leon's series of Commissario Brunetti mysteries and American Gunfight: The plot to kill Harry Truman.
 
Manolo Gozales said:
Hey:)

Trying to read "Camera Lucida" by Roland Barthes. Very French. Not what you would call a "can't put it down" read! ;)
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The 1st book(related to photography) i've read...I'm ready to read it again..

I've just finished Mrs Dolloway for Woolf, well she was a bit boring in the start, but then the train of thoughts, cross roads between characters, the interactions, the party...I thought when reading the 1st couple of pages that it would never match the waves or to the light house(that was one master piece)...I like this Virginia...

I'm thinking about the odyssey for Homer, i found it on a sale, 2 canadian dollars/book...I just wanted back then to read war and peace for Tolstoy and i bumped into that, so why not...It's been 3 years now and i haven't read a line...
But i started, it seems interesting...
 
I've been reading the HCB biograhy by Pierre Assouline, translated from the French. Simply wonderful story. Not the most rigorous biographical account, but full of warm, often reverent, and often insightful perspective. It's great to get a detailed view of the master's entire life.
regards,
-Mark
 
I'm reading Bauhaus by Frank Whitford. I'm not reading this by choice, but I feel I have to when a 10-12 pages paper is due on friday the 25th (my exam in the course Bauhaus - A modernist view on the Gesamtkunstwerk)

When I have finished all my final exams (by the end of december), Magnum Stories by Magnum Photos is next in line.
 
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