What are you reading now?

[smittims]

It's one of the Dickens novels I like, and of course it has a high reputation amongst 19th-century English literature. I'm afarid I'm not likely to read the other book you mention as I don't care for books deliberately based on other books, except perhaps for Thackeray's 'Rebecca and Rowena' a delightful spoof of 'Ivanhoe'.

[Mal]

Just finishing Lessons by Ian McEwan, which I think deserves the high praise given to it by most of the reviewers. But don't look to it for light relief; it's a long, serious, read! Might be his Dombey & Son. (There is a strong "classical music" thread to the book, the "Lessons" referring (wryly) to piano lessons...)

[Bryn]

Vincent Perez Benitez: Olivier Messiaen's Opera, François d'Assise. Very pleased to have found it from WOB (as new) for £4.15 (after multiple order 20% discount).

[Serial_Apologist]

Vincent Perez Benitez: Olivier Messiaen's Opera, François d'Assise. Very pleased to have found it from WOB (as new) for £4.15 (after multiple order 20% discount).

Amazingly reasonable, Bryn!

[Pulcinella]

Amazingly reasonable, Bryn!

Especially if it's as long as the opera.

[Bryn]

Especially if it's as long as the opera.

328 pages. An ebook version appears to be available free of charge with a trial period of allcoastmedia: https://allcoastmedia.co/get/book.ph...042909&c=music

[DracoM]

Ann Cleeves: Blue Lightning.
Her Shetland books are great 'last thing at night time' reading

[gradus]

A book of excerpts from Richard Jefferies works.

[Petrushka]

'Putting the Record Straight' by John Culshaw.

I bought this when it first came out in 1981 and re-read it every few years,, though it's a long time since I last picked it from the shelf.

Once finished, I'll be tackling 'Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962' by Max Hastings.

[Stanfordian]

Ann Cleeves: Blue Lightning.
Her Shetland books are great 'last thing at night time' reading

Must mean 'Anne of Cleves'. Clearly a wind up. Who's ever heard of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn writing books? Ha!

[ChandlersFord]

'Putting the Record Straight' by John Culshaw.

I bought this when it first came out in 1981 and re-read it every few years,, though it's a long time since I last picked it from the shelf.

Once finished, I'll be tackling 'Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962' by Max Hastings.

A fascinating book, which I wish he’d lived to finish.

As always with Culshaw, though, I’m left intrigued by the elusive personality of the writer who had a genius for revealing nothing important about himself.

[JasonPalmer]

Enjoying mondays telegraph, nice to have in depth articles instead of just relying on brief mainstream media.

[Padraig]

Charles Portis True Grit - yes the one they twice made into rather good Westerns. Meet Mattie Ross.

[Joseph K]

I finished J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World last night. As usual it was wonderfully written, though I have to say, when the character Strangman is introduced I was beginning to have my doubts about the overall structure of the work but the final chapter, I felt, satisfactorily tied together the various threads in a nice & quite moving way. Ballard is an author I feel quite close to, what with his surrealism and willingness to contemplate the loss of what many people take for granted. I recently bought both the first volume of his collected short stories and Concrete Island, but rather now I am going to read Graeber & Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, which I am looking forward to.

[JasonPalmer]

I have started a book to teach myself drawing, found myself sketching a mug and a bowl of fruit today.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1581807899

Have noticed I already looking at things differently.