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What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 6:54 pm
by finlay
what it says on the tin

In books, I just finished reading Ender's Game today, which was good.
I'm also reading Stephen Fry's autobiography and Arthur C Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise, along with a pile of other books that I've acquired...

In films, I watched Burke and Hare yesterday, which was a bit cheesy and not particularly great. Before that it was The Social Network, which was good but not the masterpiece that it's made out to be in the reviews.

How about you?

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 7:04 pm
by Aurora Rossa
I was reading The Limits of the City by Murray Bookchin and The Great Cat Massacre, whose author I don't recall this week. I have also been working my way through Capital by Marx, though it's a long and tough read. I haven't really watched anything of note other than Family Guy and Bleach. Same goes for listening.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 7:16 pm
by Trailsend
Tuesday night I churned through the Digger archive. With really, really good stories, I tend to buckle down and do the whole thing in one sitting, and...gaaaah. Such a good story.

Extremely good writing needs to come with warning labels or something...I've been in a funk for two days.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 7:21 pm
by Torco
I've been seeing a lot of Law and Order lately

I'm reading SPSS output files, mostly... that and other job-stuff

I'm listening to Joan Manuel Serrat.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 9:04 pm
by Rui
Reading: Unless you count my Real Analysis textbook, nothing. I have far too much to do to have time to read, unfortunately. The last book I finished was "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea," which I thought was absolutely fascinating, and would definitely recommend. I definitely plan on reading it again at some point.

Films: The most recent films I've seen were Being John Malkovich, The Illusionist, The Hole, and Amreeka, all of which I thought were really good (The Illusionist being my favorite of those 4...the only one I had seen before this past weekend, when I watched them all, was The Hole...the one with Thora Birch and Kiera Knightley that no one I know has heard of). And I cannot wait until Harry Potter comes out next week, though I will have to wait until Thanksgiving Break to actually see it.

Listening: Always something different. I just leave my iTunes on iTunes DJ. My 10 most recently played songs were: OneRepublic - Stop and Stare; Beach Boys - Surfin' Safari; Bushido ft. Karel Gott - Für Immer Jung; Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight; B.o.B. ft. Bruno Mars - Nothin' On You; Bond - Hymn; Christina Stürmer - Nie Genug; Xavier Naidoo - Was Wir Alleine Nicht Schaffen; CoCo Lee ft. Yo-yo Ma - 月光爱人; The Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 4:19 am
by makvas
Book: "Makers" by Cory Doctorow

Film: Saw "Waiting for Superman". Tho informative, it was quite boring as far as cinematic merit goes.

Music: My waffles.fm account says I recently downloaded the albums Flashmob, Innerspeaker, Totem's Flare, and The Crystal Axis. So that.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 4:27 am
by Radius Solis
I don't much read books or "watch" anything. As for listening, I last night ran across the good old Ieva's Polka by Loituma (it's in Finnish, for the unaquainted) and goddammit it's been repeating itself in my head ever since. Continuously. The song does not stop when you turn it off, or at all.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:26 am
by Jipí
Monica Ali, Brick Lane (for class)

Big Big Train, The Underfall Yard (album)

Books take longer to read than films take to watch and albums to listen. So am I supposed to list Brick Lane for the next 2 weeks?!

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:48 am
by Declan
Listening to The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov, reading die Schachnovelle by Stefan Zweig and The Otherland Trilogy by Tad Williams. I'll start reading or listening to The Wheel of Time again soon, given that the second last one just came out (I really can't wait for it to be finished so I can just wrap that series up :P).

Music-wise, a lot of Paolo Nutini, and the Nielson Scott Joplin recordings I just got. A bit of Chris de Burg too.

In films, recent ones are Inception, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Social Network and Back to the Future. I liked them all, but Inception was not as mentally inspiring as it was made out to be, merely a very good and exciting action film with a plausible plot, not an astounding plot. I also seem to end up watching Criminal Minds, Fringe and the Mentalist every weekend, which is my two hours of series watching all condensed into a few hours!

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:14 am
by alice
Well, it's a bit banal, but here you are anyway:

Reading: this thread in the ZBB.

Watching: the text I type grow ever longer.

Listening to: the sounds of the fans in the server cabinet at work and my colleagues conversating.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:49 am
by Jipí
recursive reference is recursive

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 3:13 pm
by HandsomeRob
Now reading Iron Council by China Miéville (how the hell do you pronounce that anyway.)

Now watching a lot of basketball (college is just starting and the NBA's been going for a few weeks - I'm going to the Bucks/Lakers game on Tuesday)... also, a few movies I've seen recently include The Prestige (which I liked and was creepy, although the sci-fi in it caught me by surprise) and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (which I think was supposed to be an homage to old-fashioned Pulp comic books - it was extremely goofy and the special effects haven't held up so well).

Now listening to Pinkerton a lot, for some reason. Other bands I've heard lately that I like include Sleigh Bells, Janelle Monáe, and Band of Skulls.

-Rob

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 3:26 pm
by communistplot
Reading? On Religion, Karl Marx & The Manifesto
Watching? The anime Bartender.
&& Finally! Listening? A bit of Nobuo Uematsu, & ROmantic Mode (If not for Mika Nakashima, Saori Saitou would be the love of my life.)

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 3:36 pm
by Delthayre
I've been reading The Germanc Languages and The Governments of Europe by Frederic Austin Ogg. Both are quite good, although the former depresses me some because it reminds me how much of my always tenuous grasp of syntax I have lost, although that it presents its examples within its paragraphs, in rapid succession without glosses probably exacerbates that. The electronic book version The Governments of Europe seems to have some glitches that cause my reader to crash when I turn to particular pages, but it's a very interesting book that has ample, detailed information on European government in the late nineteenth and very early twentiether centuries, including particulars of legislative organization and local government, that I have struggled to find in convenient form elsewhere.

I haven't be watching anything exception, just my usual rotation of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Community, 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and some other things. I can say that on November 21st, I will be sitting down to dutiful drink in what will surely be the very excellent season finale of The Venture Bros.. Tonight I shall likely watch an episode of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

I've been listening to many of my jazz albums in an erratic rotation. This has for the last month always included American Gypsy by Babik and today included A Night In Tunisia by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and Pithecanthropus Erectus by Charles Mingus. I've also been listening to The Heart of Saturday Night by Tom Waits, which is the first of his albums that I've found no really extraordinary songs on. It's quite good, but besides the title song, nothing has caught my fancy the way that "Martha", "Downtown Train", "Small Change", "Innocent When You Dream" or any of my other favorites from elsewhere in his corpus have.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 3:43 pm
by Twpsyn Pentref
Reading: Thucydides and Sophocles's Electra (in Greek), Vergil's Georgics (in Latin), and Madame Bovary. Brothers K. and Middlemarch, as well as about twenty other books that I'm in the middle of, are on hold.

Watching: I am catching up on The Wire and Mad Men, in various forms of gradually, and staying abreast of 30 Rock.

Listening to: I haven't actually had time to listen to much music lately. I did listen to a few random piano pieces of Grieg yesterday. But I've been singing (and therefore listening to, over and over again) Cornysh's Ave Maria, Byrd's Mass for Three Voices, John Harbison's Nunc Dimittis, Bruckner's Abendhimmel, Leonard Bernstein's Two Harvard Choruses, Beethoven's Ninth, and John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls (the last two of which we have just begun rehearsing).

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:42 pm
by faiuwle
I've been reading a Dorothy Sayer's book on the train, and when it's finished I will probably go back to rereading Foucault's Pendulum, and/or maybe try and get ahold of the third ASoIaF book one more time.

I haven't watched TV in a long time, and haven't watched a movie in a while, either.

I have been running and analyzing the results of an experiment for the last two weeks, so what I have been listening to is recordings of 80 college students telling a voice recognition prompt that they want to register for "Economics 328: Booming Economies". I hear it in my sleep sometimes, too.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:07 pm
by Izambri
Reading: Some history books on battles, fighting techniques and Mycenaean warfare.

Watching: True Blood, third season.

Listening: Obi Wan Kenobi saying something about flaps and losing something.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:32 pm
by Shm Jay
Reading: One step behind [English translation of Steget efter] by Henning Mankell.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:33 pm
by Risla
Radius Solis wrote:I don't much read books or "watch" anything. As for listening, I last night ran across the good old Ieva's Polka by Loituma (it's in Finnish, for the unaquainted) and goddammit it's been repeating itself in my head ever since. Continuously. The song does not stop when you turn it off, or at all.
Damn you. I have now been listening to that for the last six hours.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 7:53 pm
by Astraios
Radius Solis wrote:As for listening, I last night ran across the good old Ieva's Polka by Loituma (it's in Finnish, for the unaquainted) and goddammit it's been repeating itself in my head ever since. Continuously. The song does not stop when you turn it off, or at all.
Agreed. :D

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:28 pm
by David McCann
Latest books: The enchantment emporium, by Tanya Huff, and The evolution of the soul, by Richard Swinburne.

Latest CDs: Des Knaben Wunderhorn, by Mahler, and Nothing was sweeter than the Boswell Sisters (my attempt to sing along with Heebie Jeebies should probably be illegal...)

Watching: not my thing.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:19 pm
by Tropylium
Reading: most recently, some articles on Nostratics.

Watching: I don't do that (either)

Lis'ning: currently Hidria Spacefolk — s/t

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 10:20 pm
by Nesescosac
Reading: The Economy of Cities, by Jane Jacobs.
Watching: Nothing.
Listening to: Sorabji's Djami, Debussy's Preludes, and Ravel's Piano Concerto in D for the left hand (not at the same time).

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 10:27 pm
by Aurora Rossa
Listening to Cloudbusting by Kate Bush.

Re: What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 10:30 pm
by bulbaquil
I just watched Unstoppable this evening. Found it rather enjoyable,