Our friend Katya reading (or, truthfully, pretending to read) The Ambassadors, by Henry James. She was reading it earlier in the day on Bart on the way from the East Bay to San Francisco and pulled it out for me to photograph while we were sunning ourselves after my sister made us waffles and mimosas--better sunshine in San Francisco than snow in Denver!
What she thinks of the book--not so good, though credits this to the short stints she's been reading it in and hopes to later (while not in the company of friends) to read a big chunk of it and reevaluate.
Her favorite author is Marcel Proust. She had someone, with great difficulty, bring her all seven volumes of his English translation of Remembrance of Things Past to Moscow, where she's from. They're all wonderful she says--written with convoluted syntax (she can't stand writers like Hemingway and Camus) and filled with observations. My sister the hostess said he's often quoted in neuroscience textbooks for his writing on the senses. They're all wonderful, Katya amended, except for the last, which is poorly edited--he was working on it up until the day he died.
She's also read three biographies on Proust, who was once considered the most complicated man in Paris, that are filled with "really weird stuff." 
1/1/2007
11/2/2007 - Friday evening
Reading Granta, Anthony Cavendish Inside Intelligence. He's reading bits here and there, about the Cold War.
Granta is a quarterly magazine published in England. It's also, he pointed out, a river. It runs along Cambridge, where Granta was born. But, though he spoke with a charming British accent, it was not purchased on the other side of the Atlantic (or Pacific plus Siberia plus Europe as I like to think of it). No, he bought it right here on our shores, absent a cover, for a dollar at the Main Library.
A few months ago I went to the Commonwealth club here in San Francisco to hear readers from Granta's Best of Young American Novelists 2, among which was, as I was pleasantly surprised, a writer who heralded from my own hometown, Helena, Montana--Maile Meloy.
His favorite book, which he called out to me as he boarded his bus--À la recherche du temps perdu--which had the ring of, rhyming with perdu, Adieu! ....by Marcel Proust. (The English translation--Remembrance of Things Past.) Check out this link for other people on my blog who like Proust.
July 31, 2014, Thursday morning -- Reading Tom Sharpe and Haruki Murakami
3/11/2007
Reading Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, by Dominic J. O'Meara. Neoplatonism, he explained, is a philosophical movement that took place around t 100 to 500 A.D., which expanded upon Plato's ideas and added doctrines that didn't exist. Before this he read a medieval Islamic religious philosophy of the kalam by H.A. Wolfson. He became interested in philosophy and science fifteen years ago when he read The Chain of Being, by Arthur Lovejoy and Against Method, by Paul Feyerabend, which, because it talked about things he didn't know anything about, he began reading more, to understand the arguments Feyerabend was making.
His favorite fiction authors are Thomas Mann (especially Doctor Faustus) and Henry James. Currently he's reading something by Proust ( I forgot to ask what). 
5/23/2007
Reading The Memory of Running, a novel by Ron McLarty. It's been on his to-read list for longer than he can remember. It's not really about running--it's about a guy bicycling across the country.
He's also reading Windup Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, and has been reading Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust, for a long while, though, aside from his commute doesn't have much time to read--he has a four month old baby!
One of his favorite authors is Tom Jones, who has written a few collections of short stories about boxing and Vietnam, and while these are not topics he gravitates towards, he likes the style.
January 24, Saturday night -- Reading Bartholomae Petrosky
Working the door at the Elbo Room for a hip-hop show, checking admission bracelets for re-entry and pointing intoxicated hipsters towards where to buy their tickets
Reading, for school, Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers, edited by Bartholomae Petrosky. He's actually a math student, but math students take English, too. He's a musician and math is, he said, the haunted house where no other musicians or artists follow. He also likes it because in math, there are no politics.
His favorite book -- Against Nature, bu Joris Karl Huysmans, which his brother -- who reads authors like Proust-- had recommended. His favorite author, though, is not French, is not Huysmans, but, the inventor of the murder mystery, Edgar Allen Poe. He writes in his native English.
April 26, 2017, Tuesday evening -- Reading Kenzaburo Oe
She has lots of favorite authors, including Marcel Proust and Percival Everett.
4/26/2007
Before a production of the San Francisco Symphony, reading the score of
La Damnation de Faust, by Hector Berlioz.
He's a composer and, in three weeks, she'll graduate from the San Francisco Conservatory--she's a soprano. Recently they did well in a competition where she sang something he composed!
Her favorite book-- A La Recherche du Temps Perdu or, in English, Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust.
He likes the complete works of Shakespeare, the sonnets and all, and is currently working on composing a piece to the "mad scene" in Hamlet, it'll be a one-act opera or, in his friend's opinion, something more.
Thanks and best of luck in your pursuits!
November 11, 2007 - Sunday afternoon
Reading Kanō Eitoku, by Tsuneo Takeda, about the eponymous Japanese painter of the 1500s. He has just returned from Japan where he saw an exhibit by the artist.
His favorite author--Marcel Proust, for the slowness. A comparable Japanese author, for the same experience, is Lady Murasaki Shikibu and a favorite work--Tale of Genji. Both authors, he said, should be read aloud.
He is an author of seven books himself and is an art historian. You can find his books at the library! Check out, by John M. MacGregor, The Discovery of the Art of the Insane and Henry Darger in the Realms of the Unreal, which, at 800 pages, is dwarfed by the work of the book's star: Henry Darger. Darger was an eccentric who by day worked as a janitor and by night wrote (and illustrated) a manuscript consisting of 15, 145 pages about a fantastical world where little girls fight evil.
January 10, Saturday night -- Reading Pier Paolo Pasolini
On the BART train
Reading Petrolio, a novel by Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian author/filmmaker. The novel is unfinished. Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered in the 1970s before it was completed.
He is Italian, but speaks also Spanish, English and French. A Favorite -- Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust, which, he read in the original French -- À la recherche du temps perdu.
When he was young he loved the King Arthur stories.
His book -- it'd be about life. What about life, I don't know. The train stopped and it was my stop this time. I was sorry to go.
