What are you reading now?

[french frank]

I'm tempted to get a copy...though you don't sell it very well! Does it explain why the French are so much readier to defend [what they see as] their rights by taking to the streets? Whilst I don't condone violence of any sort, I really think we Brits, and especially youngsters, are supine. I mean if France had tripled University fees in one go can you imagine what their students might have done???

Such as I've read, it does describe the widespread political engagement, with people actually thinking about the issues rather than the kneejerk reactions and tribalist thinking we have here. Which might actually mean that they'd have been less likely to riot over the "tripled University fees in one go" …

[pastoralguy]

I found a lovely copy of John Culshaw's 'Putting the Record Straight' in Oxfam, Ulverstone today. Fascinating reading.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I found a lovely copy of John Culshaw's 'Putting the Record Straight' in Oxfam, Ulverstone today. Fascinating reading.

Ulverston (Stan Laurel's home town.)

[Beef Oven!]

Ulverston (Stan Laurel's home town.)

Yes, last week I watched This is your Life with L&H presented by Ralph Edwards and that important fact was indicated.

[Conchis]

I found a lovely copy of John Culshaw's 'Putting the Record Straight' in Oxfam, Ulverstone today. Fascinating reading.

A great shame he never finished it. The end of his period at Decca and his work as a BBC honcho would make for a fascinating read.

He sticks the boot into a lot of people in PTRS who only get the soft soap treatment in Ring Resounding.

[Richard Tarleton]

He sticks the boot into a lot of people in PTRS who only get the soft soap treatment in Ring Resounding.

Dame Vera could have been nicer about it, I thought

[Bella Kemp]

Bookshops!

£12 (RRP £25) with next-day delivery if you're signed up to Amazon Prime. Not that I'm trying to tempt you...

I'm in the process of being well and truly gob-smacked at the extraordinary goings-on that preceded the German attack on Crete....

Nooo! Go to a bookshop. Amazon are able to discount because they have few overheads and pay their workers a pittance. Bookshops are the glory of our civilisation and once gone will never return. And besides is there any greater joy than browsing in a bookshop and coming upon unexpected delights?

[ardcarp]

Bookshops are the glory of our civilisation

Indeed. But so are our libraries. I spent a wet afternoon (waiting for a car to be serviced) in a warm, welcoming, wifi-providing library. Alas during two pleasant hours my only company (apart from the librarian) were 2 gentlemen of the road. I mean, not alas for them or for their company but for the total non-use of a wonderful local library by its surrounding town.

[french frank]

Nooo! Go to a bookshop. Amazon are able to discount because they have few overheads and pay their workers a pittance. Bookshops are the glory of our civilisation and once gone will never return. And besides is there any greater joy than browsing in a bookshop and coming upon unexpected delights?

I would never buy a brand new book from Amazon, whatever the delivery advantages. But as a vast secondhand bookshop which just might, if you're lucky, have something you're looking for, it is (sadly for all its faults) unrivalled. In real bookshops I've even been tempted to 'Buy one, get one half price' and have ended up sending what turns out to be uninteresting to the Amnesty bookshop. Win-win. Er, I think … no, wait a minute …

[Richard Tarleton]

I would never buy a brand new book from Amazon, whatever the delivery advantages.

I would never buy a brand new book in that case - it's all very well for you city folk

But as a vast secondhand bookshop which just might, if you're lucky, have something you're looking for, it is (sadly for all its faults) unrivalled.

Indeed. My copy of Diana Poulton's Life and Works of John Dowland came from San Francisco, a rare first edition of my cousin Geoffrey McDonell's memoir of the Boer War (1902) from Norwich. I could have spent a week in Hay-on-Wye and not found either. All the best second hand shops are part of AbeBooks anyway these days (so the guy in the Laugharne shb'shop told me) - so what are the faults of online? you're buying from the same people, only they're all connected....

[Conchis]

Just finished Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

Thought it was a pile of crap, tbh.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Vasliy Grossman Life and Fate, sometimes billed as the greatest(*) C20 Russian novel, comparable with War and Peace in its treatment of the Russian WW2 from Stalingrad onwards and including the exterminations of Jews and the gulags. A hundred-odd pages in I'm not arguing.

It's a big read, 850+ pages and here, as with W&P, I do have difficulty remembering all the shed-loads of Russian personal names. Fortunately there is a character list, which I'd have been very annoyed by if I'd struggled through from p.1 to the end, then found it at the back. Why not put it at the front for Pete's sake??:grr;

[Mrs LMP would have been more assured of finding it: she usually looks at the end of a novel before deciding to read it!]

(*) So great that Khrushchev told the author on its completion in 1960 that no one would read it for at least a few centuries because he was going to suppress it! Fortunately, a couple of MS copies weren't tracked down.

[verismissimo]

Taking a halftime break from Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time series. Six down, six to go. Seriously enjoyable.

Just started F Marion Crawford's 1909 fictionalised life of the composer Alessandro Stradella.

[LMcD]

Antony Beevor: Arnhem The Battle Of The Bridges 1944

[gradus]

The Gardens of the British Working Class: Helen Willes. Perhaps not everyone's choice but a fascinating read if your fingers have the slightest hint of green.