Anyone who has ever gamely tried and failed to absorb, enjoy, and--especially--understand the complex works of Schoenberg, Mahler, Strauss, or even Philip Glass will allow themselves a wry smile reading New Yorker music critic Alex Ross's outstanding The Rest Is Noise. Not only does Ross manage to give historical, biographical, and social context to 20th-century pieces both major and minor, he brings the scores alive in language that's accessible and dramatic.

Take Ross's description of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, "in which he hesitates at a crossroads, contemplating various paths forming in front of him. The first movement, written the previous year, still uses a fairly conventional late-Romantic language. The second movement, by contrast, is a hallucinatory Scherzo, unlike any other music at the time. It contains fragments of the folk song 'Ach, du lieber Augustin'--the same tune that held Freudian significance for Mahler. For Schoenberg, the song seems to represent a bygone world disintegrating; the crucial line is 'Alles ist hin' (all is lost). The movement ends in a fearsome sequence of four-note figures, which are made up of fourths separated by a tritone. In them may be discerned traces of the bifurcated scale that begins Salome. But there is no longer a sense of tonalities colliding. Instead, the very concept of a chord is dissolving into a matrix of intervals."

Armed with such a detailed aural roadmap, even a troglodyte--or a heavy metal fan--can explore these pivotal works anew. But it's not all crashing cymbals, honking tubas, and somber Germans stroking their chins. Ross also presents the human dramas (affairs, wars, etc.) behind these sweeping compositions while managing, against the odds, to discuss C-major triads, pentatonic scales, and B-flat dominant sevenths without making our eyes glaze over. And he draws a direct link between the Beatles and Sibelius. It's no surprise that the New York Times named The Rest Is Noise one of the 10 Best Books of 2007. Music nerds have found their most articulate valedictorian. --Kim Hughes

Just finished the introduction/foreward by the father. Enthralling. I'm enthralled.

Looking forward to them. About 1/3 of the way through A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and while it's enjoyable, the parts where he perseverates could've definitely used more paring (how funny is it, though, that he put all the excised parts back into the prologue =).

Totally. Probably my second favorite Dickens (after Little Dorrit).

It's minor Dickens...

On my flights I finished the first three sections of 2666, and I am about forty pages into the "Part about the Crimes." Fantastic book. But if someone were to ask me what it is about, I don't think I could answer properly.

I also finished Flannagan's Wanting. A great read, not anything mindblowing, and maybe too quick (needed at least fifty more pages of character development), but I still think he is one of the best guys going right now.

Anyone have any opinions on Morrisons's A Mercy?

Ultimately, I liked this a lot. Then like a dork I had to google him, and was sad to read that Beth committed suicide a few years ago.

Reading DeLillo's first book, Americana. About half-way through it. It's decent enough, but this middle section is feeling a little long and isn't terribly interesting. Passages seem drawn out without as much punch as some of his later work.

seconded. and i don't even like baseball.

Took me 3 years but I just now realized how to read the stuff that y'all black out like that. I'm clever.

currently reading
Shopgirl --Steve Martin
The Magic Lantern--Ingmar Bergman

Recently acquired the Griffin & Sabine series by Nick Bantok...slowly reading the postcards and manuscripts and thinking deep thoughts about the artwork...:cool:

Recently finished:
Chasing Vermeer--Blue Baillet
Zappa--barry Miles (the first Zappa bio I read that's not afraid to criticize the puerile lyrics or his autocratic band leadership)

I just finished reading this and while there were parts that made me laugh it was more depressing than funny. I think Lange is pretty damn hilarious but the dude needs serious help. About an hour after finishing his book I saw this, which means while I was reading about his drug and alcohol infested life he was rear-ending someone because he was drunk... at 2:00 pm. Oh, the irony.

bout to start this one:

Not his best, but good nevertheless. God, I love Vonnegut.

I'm about halfway through this book, after sitting in jury duty today. I'm enjoying it and there are some very funny parts, but I feel like I'm missing parts because I don't speak Spanish. I think it might be even better so much of it wasn't slang Spanish.

Finished Americana, which didn't really pick up much at all after the long and tedious middle section. A disappointing read, but I'm glad I read it. It was nice to see the seeds that would blossom more successfully in later DeLillo works. Now on to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Halfway through at the moment. For some reason I keep zoning out in the middle of sentences and forgetting what I've read and having to read them over again. This is happening constantly. Probably due to the excessive use of semi-colons and interrupted thoughts, etcetera. I'm starting to get used to it, though. Enjoyable, so far. Not as good as Orlando.

It's not his best, but it might be my favorite. It was my first Vonnegut, purchased from the used books section of the local drug store, and it was largely responsible for developing my interest in the broader world of literature beyond my parent's shelves. It's still a fun read.

^ One of my favorite books but I haven't re-read it since high school. May be time to remedy that.

I think cat's cradle is my favorite Vonnegut as well.

Finally getting around to this after letting it sit on shelf for years. Clever and enjoyable stuff - pretty Rothish.

can't ever get enough of him

The only Dickens novel I ever had to read for school was A Christmas Carol, but I agree with you completely w/r/t A Tale of Two Cities. Virtually unreadable.

Fun fact: The Pickwick Papers was at least partly based on (and named after a street in) the less than two mile town where I reside.

this was the most compulsively readable book i've read in many a moon. i'm not so big on mysteries (the structure feels cheap, inherently ludicrous), especially when there's so much other good shit out there, but this book really got me. it's well written for the most part, with a few lapses into cliche. the writing never made me stop and think "wow, this is really well done" but it also never made me feel like i was wasting my time. but the plotting, the characters, the setting and most importantly the resolution, were all excellent. plus, as one of the blurbs on the back mentions, this is an incredibly moral mystery. it touches on issues of violence towards women, economic malfeasance, and general moral decay in a way that is neither too obvious, nor too light. there is a clear message in this book, but not one that comes at the expense of the narrative. i really cannot recommend this book enough to anyone who isn't opposed to genre writing.

It took infinitesummer.org and Newsweek to finally wise me to this one. Sheesh.

Fifty pages in. So far: excellent.

Aero, I will tell you what I tell all IJ newbs...

Don't expect a clean wrapup...and not all of the footnotes are important.

Thanks for the note about the end (to be honest, I don't expect much of clean anything with this hyperworked text - every time pieces fit together, I'm in schock, like "holy shit!").

I'm sure I'll end up reading all of the footnotes anyways, since

aleph) I'm an obsessive about such things (I had to give up on Perec's "Life: A User's Manual" after torturing myself with pages upon pages of entries from a tool-supply catalog). I know that I have a problem.

and

beta) I often prefer the foot-material to the body-material (esp. to the Steeply/Marathe business and also much of the E.T.A. stuff which is very dull)

I should mention that I'm at page 153, for context's sake.

Finished The Hours, which was OK. Certainly nothing special. I don't know how it won a Pulitzer. Guess that doesn't mean what it used to (rather, not sure it ever meant anything at all). The book would've been a lot better if the Laura Brown and Virginia Woolf sections were excised or absorbed into the Mrs. Dalloway sections. That's where the heart of the book is, Mrs. Dalloway and her relationship with Richard. The other parts are tedious and underdeveloped.

Now reading Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier. I'd avoided this for awhile. Don't know why. Coming off of the first issue of Century, I was fiending for more Moore and Gentlemen. This is pretty brilliant so far. I can understand people being initially disappointed when they realized it wasn't another pure graphic novel, but that disappointment should've lasted all of 5 minutes. "On The Descent of Gods" alone was enough to prove this book's worth. And the fantastic "Life of Orlando." Really loving this so far.

The Hours ... saw the movie. What dreck.

Black Dossier was gobsmackingly brilliant and now so is this. Alan Moore is not just the greatest comic book writer, but truly one of the greatest writers in any form working today. The thematic density of this thing, as well as the attention to historical detail, is absolutely mindblowing. Utterly compelling from page one and deeply horrifying. Beautiful, disgusting, atmospheric art by the indispensable Eddie Campbell, as well.

Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth.

Earlier this week I finished Inherent Vice, which was a joy. I wasn't totally sold at first, but the last hundred pages flew by. Maybe it's because I had the hardest time following along for the first half of the novel (then again, I was doing a lot of airport/airplane reading, which is usually not my most attentive.

Over the last two days I read The Road in two sittings. Stunning novel. I'm really considering teaching it this year to my senior English class. I just need to figure out if there is a reason to teach it, other than it being really frickin' good. But yeah, it's sure one haunting book.

just finished this today:



and really came away impressed. hybrid self-aware literary fantasy and observational coming of age novel. for all of the fantasy elements, the characters rang true most of the time. the closest book i can think to this one are lethem's fortress of solitude and diaz's oscar wao. this is a little more straightforward, but no less resonant. it's a riff on narnia and harry potter, but one that operates under the assumption that unhappy, troubled people will remain unhappy and troubled, whether in a fantasy world or the real one. a lot of the conflicts and situations around the protagonist felt quite close to those in my own recent past, and the book really captures the feeling of the transitional years after leaving home (and then leaving college).

Ellis, one of my favorite authors, newest novel (released in 2005) is a haunting novelization of his own life. The book is Ellis's first foray into the supernatural type horror genre and he succeed in scaring the hell out of me. A great read, though not his best.

My ranking of Elli's work:
Less Than Zero > Glamorama > American Psycho >Lunar Park > The Informers > The Rules of Attraction

Slow going but an excellent read (it's hard to handle a 10-lb hardback book in bed).

just re-read John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, and it may be my favorite book. It's almost fifty years since publication and his vision of the disintegration of the American dream and morality seems more prescient than ever.

Only 130 pages. Very quick read. Very fun. Very Tom Robbins.

Currently starting this:

About 20 pages left, but I have to say that this book is fucking unbelievable.

I usually have a hard time reading something if I've already seen the movie and know the ending and plot. But the writing and perspective of the Chief is just too damn good for me to put down.

Picked it up the other night - just the tonic I wanted: escapist fun.

And the Chicago Sun-Times Neil Steinberg, himself a gifted writer, goes ga-ga today over Dave Egger's newest offering called Zeitoun. And I mean ga-ga. And Steinberg's not ordinarily one for hyperbole...or even compliments, for that matter - in fact, he's pretty much a sourpuss grouch. I'm stopping by Border's on the way to the train to get a copy after work.

i read zeitoun last weekend and while it was enormously affecting, it isn't that great from a literary perspective (a complaint that i have about eggers in general). either way, definitely read this book. it's noble, but not without flaws.

speaking of flaws, i also read inherent vice last week and was also really moved by that one. it suffers from all of pynchon's normal problems, aside from overlength. this one is nutty, but short enough to not feel like a slog. by the end of the book, it was affecting my dream-life. that and the end of summer. either way, i'd also recommend it to anyone who even remotely enjoys pynchon.

Speaking of Pynchon, I'm finally reading this. First Pynchon I've read. About a third of the way through. I'm digging it so far. It's definitely a lot to take in, though. I probably won't know how I really feel about it for a very long time.

It's certainly bound nicely - reminds me of 'classic' children's books when I was a kid.

mcsweeney's books are always nicely bound. best publishing, in aesthetic terms at least.

Started this over the weekend, about 1/4 of the way through and it's definitly one of the most thorough and enjoyable biographies I've read in the last few years. Definitely recommended for fans of the man, or biographies in general.

This is phenomenal - terrific story-within-a-story writing against a post-war Spanish background.

I never read Dumas as a kid and have been told that I missed out on a crucial part of childhood. Well, judging from this, childhood is where Dumas belongs. He's an extraordinarily poor writer. It grips as narrative and that's what keeps his stuff alive but there's nothing to these characters at all and pages upon pages of prolix locution that fails to enlighten (Edmond sat back in the chair behind him when he noticed the tears streaming down the cheeks of his beloved Mercedes, he then smiled and stood up from the chair behind him and...)

My girlfriend got this for me for my birthday. She knows me well. Currently fighting the urge to start reading this while I still have half of Gravity's Rainbow to read.

Some great news in today's Real Estate section of the Chicago Sun-Times - this from David Roeder's column:

READ ON: River North is getting a new attraction that has nothing to do with eating or drinking. This one's all about reading and the beauty and power of the written word. Open Books, dedicated to literacy and books for books' sake, will open a bookstore and community center at 213 W. Institute this fall under a lease negotiated by Baum Realty Group. The site is just north of Chicago and Franklin.

The used-book store will take 5,200 square feet, Baum's Andrew Watson said. Above that, he said, will be 7,200 square feet devoted to offices and classrooms. Profits from the store will support the good works. Open Books' Web site said it plans to offer more than 40,000 volumes for sale.