What are you reading now?

[Historian]

Only read the first few chapters as yet, but already absorbed.

Finished tonight: had no idea that it would be so enjoyable for me. Far superior to 'The Old Curiosity Shop' in my opinion. That said, I don't recommend books as such because taste is so personal (apologises if this is staying the obvious).

Now on to 'A Clergyman's Daughter' by George Orwell.

[DracoM]

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.
Utterly amazing. Unique and frightening.
Read it aloud - the only way.

[Richard Barrett]

I'm just going by the somewhat convoluted plot(s) as described in Wikipedia.

The plot isn't really very important in ASTB, it's not really the kind of book you read with a compulsion to see "what happens next".

[Ein Heldenleben]

The plot isn't really very important in ASTB, it's not really the kind of book you read with a compulsion to see "what happens next".

No you’re right - it’s more like a book where you try to work out what on earth is happening!

[french frank]

No you’re right - it’s more like a book where you try to work out what on earth is happening!

That was more what I was thinking of. I'm the last person to want to read a page-turner to find out what happens next.

I estimate it will be about a fortnight, at least, before I finish A Time of Gifts. I can't really forget that although these are the events of an 18-year-old's adventures, they were written with the hindsight of a 60+ man - unless you think he has just transcribed his journals verbatim. Given that his school career was abruptly ended by expulsion before he was 17, the breadth of knowledge shown in the work make that hardly credible.

[Sir Velo]

I estimate it will be about a fortnight, at least, before I finish A Time of Gifts. I can't really forget that although these are the events of an 18-year-old's adventures, they were written with the hindsight of a 60+ man - unless you think he has just transcribed his journals verbatim. Given that his school career was abruptly ended by expulsion before he was 17, the breadth of knowledge shown in the work make that hardly credible.

Wikipedia thus: "Many years after his travel, Leigh Fermor's diary of the Danubian leg of his journey was found in a castle in Romania and returned to him.[5] He used it in his writing of the book, which also drew on the knowledge he had accumulated in the intervening years.

In the book, he conveys the immediacy of an 18-year-old's reactions to a great adventure, deepened by the retrospective reflections of the cultured and sophisticated man of the world which he became."

I don't think anyone, either reading at the time, or subsequently, has ever had any illusions about "which" PLF wrote it!

[french frank]

"In the book, he conveys the immediacy of an 18-year-old's reactions to a great adventure, deepened by the retrospective reflections of the cultured and sophisticated man of the world which he became."

I don't think anyone, either reading at the time, or subsequently, has ever had any illusions about "which" PLF wrote it!

I think it was your comment in #2724 which conflicted somewhat with my reaction to the style and comparison with Stephen Fry. I've just read the ODNB article which, unusually, reads like a Wikipedia article written by a proud parent - or by the subject himself. The subject matter is interesting but - for me, and of course this is personal - he comes over as a privileged freeloader. I'm not actually enjoying it much.

[gradus]

Since first reading the original two vols of PLF's account of his journey I've returned to them periodically for the (to me) vivid writing and the sheer interest of a first hand account of Europe in the thirties before so much had been destroyed. The deeply romantic sensibility appeals to me, along with his constant allusions to poetry and classical literature allied to an unlimited appetite for adventure and new experience. Despite stylistic criticisms I have never found the books over-written, in places they plainly reflect the overlay of a worldly man but that is part of the appeal for me, indeed stylistically it could hardly be otherwise, given the delay between the lived experience and the publication dates.

[Sir Velo]

Despite stylistic criticisms I have never found the books over-written, in places they plainly reflect the overlay of a worldly man but that is part of the appeal for me, indeed stylistically it could hardly be otherwise, given the delay between the lived experience and the publication dates.

I'm largely in agreement with you here. There are passages, in particular in Between the Woods and the Water, where the architectural description strays perilously close to self parody in its epithetical excess, or in the sheer litany of detail as in the evocation of the Easter festival rites in the basilica at Esztergom, but few writers have conveyed the feeling of wonder at the transient beauties of this vanishing world as well as PLF.

[french frank]

Since first reading the original two vols of PLF's account of his journey I've returned to them periodically for the (to me) vivid writing and the sheer interest of a first hand account of Europe in the thirties before so much had been destroyed..

That, potentially, seems to be where the interest would have been. But for me, there is something missing which doesn't in fact capture the time and the places. The self-styled "student" for whom doors opened, goes from sleeping in a barn to crashing out in a four-poster in a Count's schloss, with a very occasional hostel or inn. But it misses something in the middle. I'm sure that this is to do with the fact that that was always the level at which I travelled - not a pauper, not even upper middle class. That is where I felt I was discovering what 'people' thought and felt.

In the end, a writer includes and excludes whatever he decides to. I have no quarrel with that. I just feel that at such a momentous time in history, an 18-year-old's view was lacking something which can't be recaptured by the older man.

[gradus]

That, potentially, seems to be where the interest would have been. But for me, there is something missing which doesn't in fact capture the time and the places. The self-styled "student" for whom doors opened, goes from sleeping in a barn to crashing out in a four-poster in a Count's schloss, with a very occasional hostel or inn. But it misses something in the middle. I'm sure that this is to do with the fact that that was always the level at which I travelled - not a pauper, not even upper middle class. That is where I felt I was discovering what 'people' thought and felt.

In the end, a writer includes and excludes whatever he decides to. I have no quarrel with that. I just feel that at such a momentous time in history, an 18-year-old's view was lacking something which can't be recaptured by the older man.

I think my view of PLF was influenced/coloured by his WW2 record, in particular his 'Hussar Stunt' on Crete. He seemed an extraordinary man, much larger than life and seemingly undaunted by danger. To possess these qualities and still be able to recapture, years after the events, the youthful experiences of his sometime well-connected passage through Central Europe still enchants me.

[Hitch]

I enjoyed this sentence from the preface to Bryce's Thumb English Dictionary (1890):

"The special feature of this little volume is, that by the omission of some words which can hardly be supposed either in spelling or meaning to offer any difficulty to people likely to consult a dictionary, space has been found for a considerable number of puzzling words occurring in the scientific and other higher literature of our time."

[french frank]

I enjoyed this sentence from the preface to Bryce's Thumb English Dictionary (1890):

"The special feature of this little volume is, that by the omission of some words which can hardly be supposed either in spelling or meaning to offer any difficulty to people likely to consult a dictionary, space has been found for a considerable number of puzzling words occurring in the scientific and other higher literature of our time."

It has the same sort of lofty patronising about it as the bishop who Virginia Woolf remembered as telling a lady that "Cats do not go to heaven, but they do have souls of a sort". As VW remarked: "How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save us."

[french frank]

I finished A Time of Gifts and my feelings about his style were clarifed in the last couple of chapters. There were two or three sections where, after recovering his lost journal, he included some pages written by 'my 19-year-old self'. To me these had the freshness and immediacy that were lost in the overlay of the elapsed forty years of worldly wisdom and the mini-lectures on Italian Renaissance art or architecture. How the experiences struck the 19-year-old and how they revealed his character were especially interesting. Naive, I'm sure, but capturing the spirit of adventure and the unfamiliar - or so I felt.

New book just arrived, so Descartes and At-Swim-Two-Birds cast aside: Jocelin of Wells, Bishop, Builder, Courtier, ed. Robert Dunning. Now £70 from the publishers and £55 secondhand on Amazon marketplace. I was lucky to pick up a copy for £20.

[DracoM]

Dickens: OMF