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Double Bass DB forum "what books are you reading" thread

#421
I've been reading some great interviews from the Smithsonian Oral Jazz History site, converted to Kindle form. Just finished one with Jim Hall, and I've just started one with Kenny Burrell. Next after him is one with Ron Carter. I should also mentioned I asked for Mark Stryker's "Jazz in Detroit" for my upcoming birthday, so I'll consider that one as being on the docket.
 
#423
Just started this one this week:
Unknown.jpeg


I was looking for some much needed perspective, and boy, did I find it. Really good read so far.
 
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#424
I've had "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose on my shelf for over ten years, finally finding myself with the time to absorb something that's so dense with names and dates and such. Of course the world is just a little bit different than it was at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, but there's still some worthy perspective in considering just how rough life was for generations past..
 
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#425
@unbrokenchain, I haven't read the book you mention, but I very much agree with this:
unbrokenchain said:
there's still some worthy perspective in considering just how rough life was for generations past.
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My parent's generation was the Great Depression and then World War II. My father served in the South Pacific, and one of my friends' parents escaped Czechia just ahead of the Nazi's and lived in a barn attic in Denmark as a teenager before making it to the US. All these things really made profound impressions on me that I have endeavored to pass along to my children. My grandfather, born in 1895, was a musician, a band leader in Atlantic City, NJ in the 1920's who lost everything in the Depression - they lived with a relative for years after that and my father, born in 1925, slept on the living room sofa.

-S-
 
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#426
@chrisfitzgerald I REALLY enjoyed Man's Search For Meaning. I'll be interested to hear how you feel about it when you finish.

I'm reading Power VS. Force by David Hawkins and it has been a really good book to 'check in with' through out the day. Also, I Am That by Sri Nisgardatta Maharaj. (Which is also on YouTube as a book on tape.) Things that help me remember a bigger picture and open up my view.

I hope everyone reading this is as well as they can be. In the infamous words of Red Green, "Keep your sticks on the ice, were all in this together."
 
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#427
I've had Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century on my shelf for a long time, but I've only started reading it lately. I'm not a huge fan of history books (and am thus, deficient in that part of my education), but the fact that it deals, in great part, with the plague has me interested in it.

I know she was a celebrated author of popular history books, but I've never read anything by her. So far, it's entertaining enough to keep me engaged.
 
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#428
Chris Fitzgerald said:
Just started this one this week:
View attachment 3773430

I was looking for some much needed perspective, and boy, did I find it. Really good read so far.
Click to expand...
If you've ever seen Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, the character of Professor Louis Levy is supposed to be partially based on Viktor Frankl.

I read Man's Search back when I was in my 20s, and I think I got the crux of his existentialist philosophy, and it made sense to me.

It would be interesting to revisit it, 30 years later, to see if I get something different out of it.
 
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#429
Just finished "The View from the Back of the Band: The Life and Music of Mel Lewis". Fantastic and highly recommended read. I saw the VJO almost every Monday back when I was in school, so it was also great to discover the history behind the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra and read about how it progressed into what it's become today.

Up next: Mark Stryker's "Jazz from Detroit".
 
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#433
Chris Fitzgerald said:
I'm a big fan of reading, and have lately been getting into more classics with a few lighter things thrown in for variety's sake. Since you DB castle dwellers are part of the everyday hang, I thought it might be fun to find out what kinds of books you guys read and/or recommend.

In the past year, here are some of the highlights:

* Literature *
Ignorance - Milan Kundera
The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot - Dostoyevsky
Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
Siddhartha - Hesse
The Beautiful and the Damned - Fitzgerald
Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders - Robertson Davies
To Kill A Mockingbird - Lee


* Fiction *
The Book Of Aire and Shadows, Tropic of Night*, and The Forgery of Venus - Michael Gruber
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini **
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón **


* Biography *
Oscar Peterson - Gene Lees


* Nonfiction *
Become What You Are and The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts (Toad recommendations)
A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living - Diane Osbon
Healing and the Mind - Bill Moyers


Anyway, if anybody's into this kind of thing, please share your reading list and any recommendations in any category. I'm looking for more biographies of musicians (jazz or "legit") and quite enjoyed Gene Lees' writing style. Also looking for the next couple of "literature" entries. Maybe some Steinbeck? I dunno yet.

My faves: The Kundera and Davies books were rereads, and both of these authors are kind of talismanic for me. Some people don't like them, which is cool. Kundera speaks to me with no filters, especially in the later books translated from French, and his insights into human motivation and behaviors are both wonderful and terrifying. I sometimes wonder if I'm actually some screwed-up (in a natural bumbling human sort of way) character in one of his novels that I read a page of every day as I live it.

The Hosseini and Zafón entries were both excellent in very different ways. The Gruber books manage to be both highly intelligent and remarkably stupid at the same time (intelligent and insightful writing combined with transparent and just downright unnecessary "made for the movies" plot twists which annoy the living crap out of me). Still, I read 'em, didn't I?

Harper Lee's Mockingbird is simply mind blowing. I can't believe I never read this before now (it's the current book). And how is it that she could write this and never write another? Wow.


Anybody else wanna play, or did I just waste 20 minutes further proving (as if such proof were needed) what a total hopeless nerd I am?





* (Compelling, but very dumb and manipulative...not recommended)

** (excellent, really belongs in "Literature" IMO)
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The Beautiful and the Damned was one of my favorites. Right now I'm reading The Invisible Cure, by Helen Epstein, about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. A timely choice. But as I'm still teaching (online, but still teaching) much of my reading is review of material for my classes in social studies, especially AP psychology.
 
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#434
So Anyway, when our library closed a couple of weeks ago, this is what I had checked out.
America for Americans is a look at the 'nation of immigrants' and their history of xenophobia towards anyone else who wants to come here.
Small Is Beautiful is a look at corporate 'bigness' and how the economy would work if people mattered.
I've also got a DVR of 'The Bicycle Thief'... but I bailed after 15 minutes. It seemed too sad.
IMG_20200405_143227.jpg
 
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#439
Jazzdogg said:
From a particular perspective? Author's conclusions?
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The perspective is a scholarly one.
Conclusion: there are 5 basic laws:
1. There are more stupid individuals than you think.
2. Stupid individuals are not bound to one social class or group; they are everywhere.
3. Stupid individuals cause loss to another person or a group, without gaining something, and possibly even lose something.
4. The power of stupid individuals is underestimated by non-stupid individuals.
5. A stupid individual is the most dangerous kind of individual.
 
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