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Art Garfunkel's Library

artgarfunkel.com

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Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#131

Post by alkyon »

stephencanon wrote: post #57
olvy0 wrote: post #42

Did he actually read War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, Catch 22, Candide, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Malcolm X biography and two other books during the single month of Feb 1969?? I find that a tad hard to believe... But whatever. I'm a pretty fast reader myself, so I'll take that as a challenge / inspiration for myself :)

War and Peace aside, most of those are pretty breezy reads, so if you’re laid-up sick for a couple weeks with nothing else to do it would be easy to blow through them all.

“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” Woody Allen

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#132

Post by pneumatic1 »

janvdberg wrote: post #55
vasco wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it matter if it's self hosted? That requirement would make 99% of readers not do it. Goodreads sucks but for the majority of people will be way better.

I am biased: https://j11g.com/2019/11/16/foster-how-to-build-your-own-boo...

I have been looking for something to build as a way to learn Rust and I think I just found my inspiration. Thanks!

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#133

Post by kleiba »

jcynix wrote: post #44
kleiba wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have three little kids, I get through about one page a week.

Teach your kids the love of books and when they reach school age, they will be sitting in a cosy corner and read books. I started reading at the age of six and "plundered" the local library with eight or nine. That allowed my parents to read too (again).

All my kids love books, don't worry. But in the "one page per week" statement above, I excluded children's books. ;-)

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#134

Post by Thrymr »

dsr_ wrote: post #50
olvy0 wrote: post #42

Did he actually read War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, Catch 22, Candide, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Malcolm X biography and two other books during the single month of Feb 1969?? I find that a tad hard to believe... But whatever. I'm a pretty fast reader myself, so I'll take that as a challenge / inspiration for myself :)

It's entirely possible that he had nothing else to do but read that month. If there was no album currently in production and no tour going on -- both of those things seem plausible for that month -- then it was all available time. The Great Gatsby is short. Candide is shorter. The Picture of Dorian Gray is fairly short. Each of them might have been read in a day or less. War and Peace is famously long, but at a norma…

"Catch 22" was also presumably read for work, he played Nately in the film version that was in production in 1969: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065528/

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#135

Post by subpixel »

javajosh wrote: post #72
subpixel wrote: post #58

I don’t care to find it but a journal entry from Art Garfunkel’s web site crossed my radar many years ago. I recall thinking “wow, this is some next-level narcissism here.” This list (and the royal we!) produce a similar reaction.

Too often "narcissism" is used to describe a quality of someone we don't like or admire who seems to like and admire themselves. Skimming this library, Garfunkel is certainly not lacking in intellectual confidence! It implies to me that he wants to understand the world, from many angles at a deep level, and yeah to do that you need confidence that might create unpleasant feelings in an observer. The discomfort is cau…

I don't often see the term narcissism misapplied that way. Regardless in this case I admire Art Garfunkel, the singer. But he clearly has delusions of grandeur. Not my opinion alone, to wit this Washington Post review of one of his memoirs:

"The subtitle of Art Garfunkel's new memoir, " Notes From an Underground Man," echoes Dostoyevsky's "Notes From Underground" and Richard Wright's story "The Man Who Lived Underground" — both serious works of literature.

Garfunkel’s book, however, is a splattering of 30-plus years of handwritten thoughts, lists, travel notes, bad poetry, confessions, snarky digs, platitudes and prayers gussied up for publication in different fonts and sizes.

Reading it is like rummaging through a huge junk drawer of the mind."

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#136

Post by AlbertCory »

hamburglar wrote: post #108
hamburglar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why reading a story would be superior to having someone tell you a story. I doubt The Odyssey was a lesser experience before it was written down. Well I don't think it necessarily has to be lesser, especially if it's designed to be verbally delivered, but it's a different art form, and it's not how most literature was created to be delivered. So it seems fairly obvious that you're going to lose somethin…

As an example, I've noticed when reading books to my kids that certain styles of writing lend themselves very poorly to being read aloud. An example is when the writer chooses to write pieces of dialog as alternating series of quotes missing directions like "Fred said" or whatever. Just literally what is said by each person in quotation marks. It's hard to read this aloud and convey who is saying what without trying…

Funny. My books do have a lot of dialog, and when I was considering narrating them myself, I realized that it's not as easy as it looks. People do have to do the voices. A good narrator is used to it.

When you audition narrators on ACX, you provide a two-minute sample for them to read. I picked one with all three of the major characters, male and female, to hear how he did it. My guy is good.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#137

Post by stephencanon »

bslorence wrote: post #86
stephencanon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War and Peace aside, most of those are pretty breezy reads, so if you’re laid-up sick for a couple weeks with nothing else to do it would be easy to blow through them all.

Well and honestly most of War and Peace is pretty easy and pleasant to read as well (I'm setting aside the philosophy-of-history stuff) -- there's just so much of it.

Agreed. But I have literally read most of them in an afternoon at some point, and very much cannot say the same for War and Peace. =)

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#138

Post by cafard »

lelandfe wrote: post #74
supersrdjan wrote: post #47

I used to keep a list like this (more modest though) but I stopped once I realized it's demeaning both to me and the books. The problem was that the list had no other purpose except as a kind of trophy case. I felt proud about my list, as if finishing a book is an achievement, as if reading is a sport, as if reading a lot makes you better than those who read less. I was disgusted by my own vanity, and moreover, consi…

Does keeping a record of things necessarily imply vanity? It seems to me that your problem was with your own feeling toward the list - “I felt proud about my list” - and not the list itself. Where does that feeling come from? It might be worth exploring.

No. The record I have kept of my reading, more or less, over the last roughly fifteen years, is in handwritten notebooks. They are accessible chiefly to me, though certainly if my wife a) can read my handwriting and b) could be bothered to do so, she would be welcome to look.

It is true that one can be vain with oneself as the sole audience, but I wonder how common that case is. I'm going to give myself a pass on that, since the purpose of the list is mostly to remind me.

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#139

Post by cafard »

denton-scratch wrote: post #121
lelandfe wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does keeping a record of things necessarily imply vanity? It seems to me that your problem was with your own feeling toward the list - “I felt proud about my list” - and not the list itself. Where does that feeling come from? It might be worth exploring.

Publishing your list on your website does imply vanity. I have long thought that Art held himself in high regard (he was certainly a fantastic harmonist though).

When you walk into a house you haven't visited and that house has a bookcase visible, do you look to see what's on it? Do you, perhaps, make judgments about the host or hostess's taste based on what you see? (A friend was unimpressed by a gubernatorial candidate's shelves, which ran to Reader's Digest condensed books.) Every Sunday, the New York Times Book Review has an author interview that concludes with "What's on your bedside table?"

If you have a bookcase in a common area, do you take any thought to what's in it? I confess to taking a little: a bias in favor of hardbacks on one table; biographies and letters on a shelf; etc. (And I confess to being slightly flattered that when my son was working from home during the pandemic some of those he Zoomed with were favorably impressed by the books behind him, most of them mine. I did not set up that bookshelf to be a Zoom background.)

What strikes me as odd here is simply the lack of context. If you've read a book, tell me why you read it, and tell me what you thought about it. It's great that AG read The Inimitable Jeeves, but how did it stack up against Leave it to Psmith or Uncle Fred in the Springtime?

Re: Art Garfunkel's Library

#140

Post by peteforde »

AlbertCory wrote: post #98
peteforde wrote: post #51

Audiobooks, borrowed for free from my library and listened to via the excellent Libby app, have been a life-line over the past four years. I went from 3-4 books a year to 3-4 books a week, sometimes more. I listen in the bathroom, while exercising, cooking, cleaning, cycling, gardening. My listening speed is typically 1.75x for dense prose and hard science, all the way up to 2.5x for fiction and biographies. The secr…

I hired a voice actor, Maxwell Glick, to do the audiobooks for my two books ( https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Big-Bucks/dp/B0BDBG5VNP/r... is the latest. Your speed is interesting, because when I was reviewing his work, I only used 1.5x. Any faster sounded like a cartoon character and I might miss nuances in the dialog, among other things. Someone else mentioned code samples. Fortunately I only had a couple Mesa s…

The books I tend to listen to share two things in common: they are in English, and they don't have large code samples. I don't doubt that there are excellent non-fiction books with source code - heck, probably some fiction as well - but listening at any speed sounds like something I wouldn't do unless my eyes were disabled.

In addition to (good) earbuds and practice listening at higher speeds, I suspect that not all pitch correction algos are created equal. If you are simply speeding up audio without correcting for pitch, it's going to sound like a cartoon even at 1.25x.

However, the main thing is concentration. I do not perceive that the words are sped up, because I am very actively listening to it while doing wrote, repetitive things. I have to stop the audio if I'm doing anything that requires any attention, computation or decision making whatsoever.

Cooking soup? No problem. Following a recipe? NOPE. Picking up vegetables? Sure. Reading ingredients? Not a chance. Biking on a path? Sure. Driving? Not a chance.

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