Another good one.
See my review on amazon.co.uk - although the book has a different cover there. Remarkably there are only 5 reviews up, which suggests that very few people ever finish it, which is possible. I enjoyed it in the end, though.
A birthday or Fathers' Day prezzy that I forgot to put up. Anyway I dug it out again recently since I set a quiz in November each year during Science Week Ireland, and I should be able to mine this for several questions. There were lots of things I didn't know, and quite a few things I thought I knew but would be just the sort of half-knowledge that sets off the alarms on QI. I don't mind giving away that I'm going to use this book - if it gets someone to read it through then so much the better!
Three short stories of variable quality. Sarrasine was quite amusing, but Gambara and particularly Massimila Doni are wrecked by being stuffed with Balzac's musical reflections - about as valuable as Rossini pontificating on the meaning of literature would have been. But apparently Massimila Doni is an important little bit of La Comedie Humaine, so Balzac fans will unfortunately need to read it.
Another German philosophical book where I understood every word (at least with the help of a dictionary) but barely understood a single sentence. I wondered if maybe I was being over-ambitious, so checked out an English translation - and that didn't make any more sense. But at least what I think he means marries well with my Thomas Smug stuff.
Above is a scan of the edition I read. It's on amazon.co.uk but the picture won't come up. Nor will any of the untranslated edtions on amazon.com.
I remember reading a po-faced review of the Charlton Heston film which said it contained "unnecessary nudity". Well, it's a good job the film didn't adhere more strictly to the original book. The humans spend most of it starkers.
Pierre Boulle also wrote Le Pont de la Riviere Kwai - which became "Bridge over the River Kwai" - actually about French prisoners of war
Also loaned by a colleague. Better written than "Not Dark Yet", but not enough stats. But also less rubbish about Dylan, who I don't especially like. When I first heard the title I assumed it was "Zimmerman", which almost put me off reading it.
Birthday prezzy from my wish list. For a fuller review see what I put up on amazon.co.uk. To be honest, they weren't quite "Fusion" and should have made their mind up - did they really want to do rock-classic/baroque fusion (which they dabble in during "Vivaldi" and one or two other tracks, and which Continuum had a good go at - see below) or did they secretly want to be a rock band with an unusual sound, from the electric violin? Either would have been better, but I think they should have gone for the rock option.
Given that I am catching up on various 19th century French authors, I thought I ought to do the same in English. I'd never read any of the Bronte's, George Eliot or Henry James and there is even a lot of Dickens I've never opened. I thought I would start with this book (in fact I read the Folio edition), expecting something soppy, but really it's nothing of the sort, is it? Except for the very end, when young Cathy and Hareton Earnshaw start to mend their ways, there isn't a sympathetic character in the book. Lockwood and Nellie are OK, but they are little more than viewers of the action. I hadn't seen the Olivier film, but I understand that it is where the idea of Heathcliffe as romantic hero comes from, but I simply can't accept such a treatment. You can sympathise with his having a chip on his shoulder against the Lintons and Earnshaws, but his slights aren't sufficient to justify the violent, sadistic, thieving, deranged bully that he becomes. And putting Hareton Earnshaw to one side, all the other protagonists are as much the authors of their own problems as victims of Heathcliffe. All in all an interesting exploration of the crapness of the human soul, and a much better book than I was expecting.
I had been trying to get hold of Continuum's 1971 album, "Autumn Grass" since about 1972. I finally thought I had found it on e-Bay, and bought it - my first e-Bay purchase. It turns out it wasn't "Autumn Grass" at all, but their 1970 album, just called "Continuum". I decided i quite liked it though, so I'll keep it & keep on looking.
It's called a rock-classic fusion album, but in fact the first side (much my favourite) would be far better described as jazz-baroque fusion.
The second side could probably best be labelled as expressionist-rock fusion. It doesn't work so well for me, but that is probably because I find "modern classical" music (for want of better term) later than Stravinsky or Rachmaninov pretty unapproachable, and adding bass guitar & drums doesn't really help.
PS: I bought this for something like AUS$25. I wnet back onto e-Bay the other day to see if anyone else had put up "Autumn Grass" and someone had - at US$150! I didn't bid.
