What are you reading now?

[Richard Tarleton]

Few people, of course, fit the job title of International Crook better than David Cornwall’s own father ....

Cornwell (a pedant writes).......he was more of an old-fashioned con-man....

[french frank]

I think it's about oligarchs, kleptocrats, money-laundering &c.

[antongould]

Cornwell (a pedant writes).......he was more of an old-fashioned con-man....

OMG Apologies RT ..... but IMVVHO he went beyond con man to crook ...... maybe not an oligarch or whatever ...

[Richard Tarleton]

Indeed - but (on recently re-reading both Sisman's biography, and Le Carré's The Pigeon Tunnel) - his activities, whatever the scale and wherever conducted, were basically the type of old-fashioned scam where he conned people into giving him money, or credit - it was all only ever a house of cards, a pyramid scheme, whatever, no real wealth, which invariably collapsed - it only lasted as long as he managed to dazzle his marks....

[antongould]

Indeed - but (on recently re-reading both Sisman's biography, and Le Carré's The Pigeon Tunnel) - his activities, whatever the scale and wherever conducted, were basically the type of old-fashioned scam where he conned people into giving him money, or credit - it was all only ever a house of cards, a pyramid scheme, whatever, no real wealth, which invariably collapsed - it only lasted as long as he managed to dazzle his marks....

Just reading Sisman now and tonight the bit where David at the height of his fame and fortune is drinking house fizz by the glass and meets Dad who is knocking back Moet and Chandon(?) by the bottle ...

[Richard Tarleton]

Just reading Sisman now and tonight the bit where David at the height of his fame and fortune is drinking house fizz by the glass and meets Dad who is knocking back Moet and Chandon(?) by the bottle ...

He sounds deeply unpleasant - see Sisman p. 324 for one of countless examples in the book - and completely, irredeemably incorrigible. A rich source of material, at any event!

[DracoM]

Can anyone explain to me why one might be tempted to give up reading 'The Idiot' by Dostoevsky?
Because that's where I am at the mo....!

I do realise there is a very obvious answer to this [], but I was wondering if anyone else has ever felt like that and, if poss, how to overcome it.

[Conchis]

Can anyone explain to me why one might be tempted to give up reading 'The Idiot' by Dostoevsky?
Because that's where I am at the mo....!

I do realise there is a very obvious answer to this [], but I was wondering if anyone else has ever felt like that and, if poss, how to overcome it.

I read it in 1991 and it was tough going. I can offer no advice other than Churchill's ('when you're going through hell, keep going'), but I seem to recall the 'action' speeds up towards the end and the denouement and conclusion was memorable. The other problem (a perennial one with Dostoyevsky) is keeping track of the dramatis personae, most of whom have similar-sounding Russian names (Keller the boxer stood out for being German/Austrian).

I tried to read The Devils for a second time a couple of years ago and didn't get very far, for similar reasons.


Sorry I can't be more helpful than that. Which translation are you using? I don't get on well with Constance Garnett's ancient stuff but I think the newer translations by Pevear and Volkhonsky are overrated.

[Pulcinella]

I'm trying to (re)read books that survived the great cull that took place before our move to York, to see if I really need to keep them or if they too can go to Oxfam/Amnesty.
I'm currently enjoying I, Claudius (with Claudius the God to follow), but can't get the images of Derek Jacobi and Sian Phillips from the BBC production out of my mind.
Was that dramatisation really as good as I seem to remember it being?
(Or should this question be on the Television programme thread?)

[french frank]

I read the Penguin edition (David Magarshack) and, having recently been diagnosed as epileptic, I couldn't wait to get to the episode of the Chinese vase ( ' … as soon as the prince entered the drawing room, he sat down as far as possible from the Chinese vase … ') . And it comes very close to the end.

But I have got through novels that were hard going (Hesse's Glass Bead Game) and did it by limiting how much I read at a time - a chapter, say, if they were relatively short - each night. With the Hesse I found I was suddenly completely captured about half way through, and sat up until the small hours in order to finish it.

Can anyone explain to me why one might be tempted to give up reading 'The Idiot' by Dostoevsky?
Because that's where I am at the mo....!

I do realise there is a very obvious answer to this [], but I was wondering if anyone else has ever felt like that and, if poss, how to overcome it.

[DracoM]

[QUOTE=french frank;693130]I read the Penguin edition (David Magarshack)

Well, here we go - I'm reading [sic] the Wordsworth Classics paperback edtn, and NO translator is credited AT ALL!!!
I didn't think that was legally possible?

[french frank]

I read the Penguin edition (David Magarshack)

Well, here we go - I'm reading [sic] the Wordsworth Classics paperback edtn, and NO translator is credited AT ALL!!!
I didn't think that was legally possible?

Looks as if the translator was Constance Garnett. She died in 1946, so it's certainly not out of copyright. Is there a page missing?

I do find that some older paperbacks - and new ones - make reading difficult. Typeface, point size are often much better in older editions. I had problems with Gissing's Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft until I found an older hardback edition which made reading much easier.

[Conchis]

I'm trying to (re)read books that survived the great cull that took place before our move to York, to see if I really need to keep them or if they too can go to Oxfam/Amnesty.
I'm currently enjoying I, Claudius (with Claudius the God to follow), but can't get the images of Derek Jacobi and Sian Phillips from the BBC production out of my mind.
Was that dramatisation really as good as I seem to remember it being?
(Or should this question be on the Television programme thread?)

You could make a concerted effort to imagine Charles Laughton, instead! :)

Seriously, I think just about EVERYONE of a certain age who reds I,C and CtG must imagine Derek Jacobi et al: I"m not sure how widely read the books were BJ (Before Jacobi) but that series must have increased the readership exponentially.

I last saw the series in 2003. It was the first DVD box set I bought and I remember thinking it was every bit as good as I remembered it (and it was astonishing how much of it I DID remember), though inevitably I noticed certain things that I hadn't noticed at the time (the fact that it's completely studio-bound and the fact that it's so dialogue-heavy). I wouldn't expect someone under-35 (say) to find it as compelling as I did (though I began watching it as a 9-year old - liberal parents and all that - and got very quickly hooked) and a younger audience would probably think it was intolerably slow. Most television from the golden era was conceived as 'filmed theatre', with dialogue-driven plotting and 'theatrical' performances. As someone who prefers the stage to the cinema, I'm not troubled by this but I can understand why some might be.

The DVD release includes the 1965 documentary The Epic That Never Was, where you get some astonishing 'rushes footage' of Laughton as Claudius, Emlyn Williams as Caligula and Flora Robson as Livia. The latter two lived long enough to be interviewed for the programme, as did the director Josef Von Sternberg (who, you suspect, wasn't altogether popular with every member of the cast). Williams makes a wonderfully camp and malicious interviewee. You come away wishing the film had been finished.

[Petrushka]

Still working my leisurely way through Antony Beevor's Arnhem. Well up to Beevor's usual standard though I'm finding it difficult to keep track of where everything was happening but then the battle was such a chaotic mess that's hardly surprising. I'm pretty well clued up on the Second World War but didn't know much about Arnhem and Beevor puts that right.

A late family friend (I knew him for many years) fought in this battle but he would never talk about it. All I knew was that he was a paratrooper (probably with the South Staffs) who landed by glider in the second wave and was taken prisoner by the Germans. Reading Beevor's account of that second wave makes for horrendous reading.

Montgomery should have been sacked for this debacle.

[Cockney Sparrow]

My mother was stationed on one of the airfields from which the paratroopers embarked. She couldn't abide mention of Arnhem, nor were we allowed to see the film when it was broadcast on TV.