229 ratings (4.57 avg)
56 reviews

Chris A

Add friend

http://www.basiltung.com

https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomainley

Chris’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (43)

currently-reading‎ (2)

read‎ (309)

did-not-finish‎ (0)

Stats | More…

Chris is Currently Reading

Chris A is currently reading

Remembering Bix, A memoir of the jazz age

by Ralph Berton

bookshelves: currently-reading

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Mar 12, 2026 03:20PM

Chris A is currently reading

3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

by James Kaplan

bookshelves: currently-reading

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Feb 27, 2026 12:13PM

Chris’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for The Pacific and Other Stories

The Pacific and Other Stories by Mark Helprin

1 highlight

You know how great singers and musicians are always supposed to be prisoners of temperament? It’s the opposite of what’s true. In fact, what so distinguishes them in this regard is that they have no temperament: they are absolute. It is we, ...more

recent posts
Chris’s Groups

ALL IS LOVE — 82 members — last activity Jun 23, 2019 12:54PM
Online bookclub, inspired by IDLES.

Amazon Kindle — 11811 members — last activity 5 hours, 9 min ago
For readers using the Amazon Kindle ebook device.

Underground Knowledge — A discussion group — 25481 members — last activity 2 hours, 12 min ago
This global discussion group has been designed to encourage debates about important and underreported issues of our era. All you need is an enquiring ...more

¡ POETRY ! — 22521 members — last activity May 24, 2026 04:09PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

The History Book Club — 26181 members — last activity 5 hours, 34 min ago
"Interested in history - then you have found the right group". The History Book Club is the largest history and nonfiction group on Goodread ...more

More of Chris’s groups…