What are you reading now?

[hackneyvi]

I've just been reading 'Endurance' by Alfred Lansing the story of Shackleton's ill-fated journey to cross the Antarctic on foot. If you fancy reading it, make sure you get the version with Frank Hurley's wonderful photographs which add so much to the story. It's an incredible tale - the fear in the ship trapped on the ice. The part of the book detailing the journey in a small open boat from Elephant Island across the Southern Ocean, looking for South Georgia, was mind-blowing for me. Lansing gets right into the story from the word go and tells it with all its twists and turns brilliantly.

Apparently it is reported that the advert in the paper read: MEN WANTED: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. Sir Ernest Shackleton."

I think I've read a version of that story in Barrow's Boys by Feargal Fleming and the dignity in the men's courage is quite unbelievable. I find it hard to believe that a flapping, helpless thing like myself is a member of the same species. I wouldn't care to be tested as they were but to know that such a test can be survived in such a way is thrilling and moving. If these are examples of Man then Man is not nothing, not negligible.

F R Leavis reckoned it was the only Dickens novel in his Great Tradition, but he came to a greater appreciation of the rest of Dickens later.

Hard Times is the one I haven't re-read at all, and it also, uniquely for Dickens, has no scenes in London.

I think the Lancastrian setting is probably a great part of its appeal to me.

When I was a little boy, we used to visit my mother's Aunt Louisa, a very elderly lady born sometime in the 1880s, I think. I know I was little because on the edge of a chest of drawers the top of which I could not see, were always a block packet of Callard & Bowser butterscotch (in a soft sky blue wrapping) and a half a crown. I had to feel for the coin to find it. Auntie Louisa worked in the mills from the time of her youth (though she was brought up on a farm) and I was told that she could work four looms simultaneously where the other women worked two.

[hackneyvi]

I imagine it's not been very popular because it's especially lacking in hope, light and loveliness.

Maybe it's a Northern pleasure but a large part of Hard Times' loveliness to me is its brilliant darkness.

[Petrushka]

Currently re-reading Vienna 1900: Games of Love and Death by Arthur Schnitzler. Remember the BBC TV series from the early 1970's with affection and I read these stories from time to time.

[french frank]

George Gissing, By the Ionian Sea. I've read several of Gissing's best known novels: New Grub Street, Born in Exile, The Netherworld, The Odd Women, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft; also The House of Cobwebs. I'd need to reread them to have any ideas as to why he has become such a secondary figure.

By the Ionian Sea is already suggesting a trip next year to follow in Gissing's steps: from Naples by train to Paola (Gissing did it by boat), then to Cosenza (that bit was done by coach) and on to Taranto; then walking back along the coast. I've only just reached Taranto by train so far so I'm not sure how the coastal bit was done.

Gissing's descriptions of the people and customs are charming, and he's a wonderful companion with his knowledge of Greek and Latin history and literature. I'd also take Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad for company in Naples. My memory of both is that, if you substitute cars for coaches, Naples traffic hasn't changed much.

[Chris Newman]

The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich

[Lateralthinking1]

Seamus Heaney's "Digging" - http://www.wussu.com/poems/shdigg.htm. For a long time I have been thinking of reading Heaney's "Beowulf" in full but I am not sure that I am up to the task.

I have also been reading about the history of Canewdon, a small place in Essex where my Mum spent her weekends in the period 1938-1940.

[Chris Newman]

Seamus Heaney's "Digging" - http://www.wussu.com/poems/shdigg.htm. For a long time I have been thinking of reading Heaney's "Beowulf" in full but I am not sure that I am up to the task. .

Oh, but you must, LT1. It is not very long and such a good muscular version.

[Lateralthinking1]

Thanks Chris for your support. I will do it.

[vinteuil]

By the Ionian Sea is already suggesting a trip next year to follow in Gissing's steps: from Naples by train to Paola (Gissing did it by boat), then to Cosenza (that bit was done by coach) and on to Taranto; then walking back along the coast. I've only just reached Taranto by train so far so I'm not sure how the coastal bit was done.

Gissing's descriptions of the people and customs are charming, and he's a wonderful companion with his knowledge of Greek and Latin history and literature. I'd also take Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad for company in Naples. My memory of both is that, if you substitute cars for coaches, Naples traffic hasn't changed much.

.... coincidence! I too have been reading - and much enjoying - By The Ionian Sea - I was moved to read it after having been thoroughly engrossed by Henry Ryecroft.

Yes, the idea of following Gissing's footsteps is most tempting. If you're going to those parts - you probably already know Norman Douglas's marvellous Old Calabria - can I also very much recommend Craufurd Tait Ramage The Nooks and By-ways of Italy [1868; based on Ramage's solitary ramblings in southern Italy in 1828] covering the same area. It's impossibly unavailable in its original form, but there's an excellent recent abridgment, Ramage in South Italy edited by Edith Clay.

[aeolium]

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

[amateur51]

George Gissing, By the Ionian Sea. I've read several of Gissing's best known novels: New Grub Street, Born in Exile, The Netherworld, The Odd Women, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft; also The House of Cobwebs. I'd need to reread them to have any ideas as to why he has become such a secondary figure.

By the Ionian Sea is already suggesting a trip next year to follow in Gissing's steps: from Naples by train to Paola (Gissing did it by boat), then to Cosenza (that bit was done by coach) and on to Taranto; then walking back along the coast. I've only just reached Taranto by train so far so I'm not sure how the coastal bit was done.

Gissing's descriptions of the people and customs are charming, and he's a wonderful companion with his knowledge of Greek and Latin history and literature. I'd also take Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad for company in Naples. My memory of both is that, if you substitute cars for coaches, Naples traffic hasn't changed much.

Thanksa for tje recommendations, french frank, and for the reminder about The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft - I think it would pay re-reading in these turbulent times

[Pianorak]

On the last few pages of All the Tea in China by Kyril Bonfiglioli. Have now read all five books, which includes his The Mortdecai Trilogy. All of them hugely enjoyable. Thanks for recommending, Vinteuil.

[Mandryka]

.... coincidence! I too have been reading - and much enjoying - By The Ionian Sea - I was moved to read it after having been thoroughly engrossed by Henry Ryecroft.

Yes, the idea of following Gissing's footsteps is most tempting. If you're going to those parts - you probably already know Norman Douglas's marvellous Old Calabria - can I also very much recommend Craufurd Tait Ramage The Nooks and By-ways of Italy [1868; based on Ramage's solitary ramblings in southern Italy in 1828] covering the same area. It's impossibly unavailable in its original form, but there's an excellent recent abridgment, Ramage in South Italy edited by Edith Clay.

George Gissing is one of my favourite authors and New Grub Street is one of my favourite novels. I've never read his Isabella Clarendon, which is reportedly the most depressing novel in the English language.

[Don Basilio]

Re-reading Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, the first of his Deptford Trilogy. I'd forgotten all the details, and I'm loving it.

[french frank]

.... coincidence! I too have been reading - and much enjoying - By The Ionian Sea - I was moved to read it after having been thoroughly engrossed by Henry Ryecroft.

Yes, the idea of following Gissing's footsteps is most tempting. If you're going to those parts - you probably already know Norman Douglas's marvellous Old Calabria - can I also very much recommend Craufurd Tait Ramage The Nooks and By-ways of Italy [1868; based on Ramage's solitary ramblings in southern Italy in 1828] covering the same area. It's impossibly unavailable in its original form, but there's an excellent recent abridgment, Ramage in South Italy edited by Edith Clay.

Thank you, vinteuil, for further suggestions. South Wind, mentioned further up the thread, was, as a result, my introduction to Douglas (quite enjoyable but not likely to become a favourite). The travel books look more to my taste. I see a couple about Capri there too. I stayed briefly in Sorrento (in a room above a cafe) a few years ago, but not long enough to visit Capri as I was pushing on down to Salerno (and Paestum) and then to Sicily. I think I might put it on the itinerary next spring, after Naples .

And Am51, I have a story about Henry Ryecroft which I've told many times (stop me if you've heard it!). Bingeing on Gissing at the time, I bought a copy, I think it was one of those 99p World Classics editions, and the paper was awful and the print blurry. I tried to read it several times but kept giving up, just couldn't get into it. Then, in our local secondhand bookshop, I spotted one of those little old pocket editions, Oxford or Collins. The paper was slightly discoloured with age but the print was wonderfully clear. I sat down and ... straight through, almost at a sitting!

Mandryka, you mean more depressing than Gissing's other novels? My word! that's saying something.