What are you reading now?

[vinteuil]

... must remember not to use the Oxford comma!

Anna - I'm very sorry hear you feel that way. I have always used the Oxford comma; I think the arguments in its favour, if not overwhelming, are preponderant. Tho' as Mistress Truss wisely puts it: "There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken."

The wiki page sets out the arguments for and against quite well -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

[handsomefortune]

wiki:
To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

There is ambiguity about the writer's parentage, because Ayn Rand and God can be read as in apposition to my parents, leading the reader to believe that the writer claims Ayn Rand and God are her parents. A comma before and removes the ambiguity:

To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.

blummin heck, the example cited might put someone off all commas for life!

[vinteuil]

... and for those who don't give a f### about the Oxford Comma -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g

[Nick Armstrong]

... and for those who don't give a f### about the Oxford Comma -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g

I am very fond of this track and indeed the album, one of the few of 'modern popular music' that I own

[Mr Pee]

I'm reading "I, Partridge:- We need to talk about Alan", the long awaited autobigraphy of the broadcasting legend that is Alan Partridge. At last we get the full story behind his tragic Toblerone addiction, his true thoughts on the Linton Travel Tavern, and his shameful treatment by the BBC.

We also find out that his visionary programme idea, "Monkey Tennis" , so inexplicably not taken up by the BBC, did find a home elsewhere, as we learn on page 165:-

Monkey Tennis was later snapped up by TV stations is Laos and Taiwan and ran for two succesful years- after which the format reached the end of its natural life and the monkeys were quickly and humanely destroyed.

[handsomefortune]

'We need to talk about Alan'


and not kevin!

[marthe]

Time to give this thread a shot in the arm. Recent reads have been: Weeds by Richard Mabey, The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker, and The Finishing School by Muriel Spark. I've just started American Eden by Wade Graham.

[PatrickOD]

I am reading again bits of Izaak Walton.

What's that they say - fishermen are liars and boasters, and fishing merely an excuse for a booze-up?

''Piscator. ... for, look you! here is a Trout will fill six reasonable bellies. Come hostess.... give us some of your best barley-wine, the good liquor that our honest forefathers did use to think of; the drink which preserved their health, and made them live so long; and to do so many good deeds.''
Oh aye!

Also, A Troubled See by Bishop Edward Daly, he of the white handkerchief on Bloody Sunday. A saintly man, now retired.

And, Redbreast by Jo Nesbo, another Scandanavian thriller. Harry Hole is the detective hero.

[Ellen]

A novel for my French class, Vipère Au Poing (A Viper in the Fist). Not a bad story, but (for me) horrific number of vocabulary words and historical references to look up. (Sympathy and commiseration welcome . . . )

[marthe]

Good luck with your French vipers, Ellen. The last viper story I read in French was Mauriac's Le Noeud de Vipere for a French class at university many years ago. I'm a bit rusty with my French lit at the moment. Let us know how you get on.

[Chris Newman]

Almost halfway through the first volume of John Tyrrell's monumental biography of Leoš Janáček having recently finished Tyrrell's Intimate Letters, the letters between LJ and Kamila Stösslová.

[aeolium]

I am currently reading The Penguin Guide to Classical Myths, as I keep coming across references to mythical characters about whom I am shamefully ignorant. Those gods were certainly tetchy characters...

[gurnemanz]

Eric Sams: "The Songs of Johannes Brahms" to go with his classics on Wolf and Schumann.

I've never really thought about to what extent composers are musicologists, so it is interesting when he says of Brahms in his intro: "Of all the great composers, he was the foremost musicologist, an eclectic collector and editor of works from all periods and sources."

PS I've just acquired the Jessye Norman/Daniel Barenboim DG twofer of Brahms Lieder - both artists on peak form. http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product/CD/4594692.htm

[DublinJimbo]

Re-reading Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, his pre-Suitable Boy verse novel. Pure joy from beginning to end (which is approaching all too quickly).

It's such a while since my previous reading that I'd forgotten much of it, though some groups of lines jump off the page like long-lost friends, and the characters continue to effortlessly engage.

[Chris Newman]

You must move to Salisbury, DublinJimbo (Welcome by the way). Vikram Seth is a familiar sight whizzing around on his bike.