What are you reading now?

[gradus]

Just getting into 'Barchester Towers' for I think the fourth time, and the Signora has just arrived as Mrs. Proudie's reception.

Wonderful book.

[french frank]

Another writer who had a thing about Bruges was Pamela Hansford Johnson , who lived there for a while and at least one of whose novels is set there. I think she's due for a reassessment, some of her books coming back into print after having been forgotten for decades.

Just looked this up: I assume you mean The Unspeakable Skipton? Not sure that it appeals but the article reminds me that I've never read Hadrian the Seventh. Had mixed up JB Priestley with CP Snow in being Mr Hansford Johnson. Priestley married to the archæologist Jacquetta Hawkes, of course

[vinteuil]

Just getting into 'Barchester Towers' for I think the fourth time, and the Signora has just arrived as Mrs. Proudie's reception.

... some years back, i recall a critic 'fessing up that the first time he had read 'The Great Gatsby' he had seen Gatsby as the great hero to whose lifestyle one should aspire - and only many years later realizing what a fraud and sham Gatsby was. Similarly : may I 'fess up that the first time I encountered (I think I was twelve) the Archdeacon Dr Grantly at Plumstead Episcopi at his copious breakfast table (tho' in The Warden rather than Barchester Towers, I think) I thought - yes, that's the good life, I could do with that - only many years later understanding that that was not the point of what Trollope was portraying...

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[smittims]

Hmm, well, Grantly is a complex character and Trollope sees good in him as well, at least when compared with the Proudies. I must 'fess' that Dr. Stanhope is my favourite.

As for Gatsby, I can't agree that he is simply a fraud and a sham, nor that Fitzgerald wished us to see him so. Was he not, as many others do, making the best of the cards life had dealt him? . Many feel that, although there are hints that he is a villain, he is a curiously sympathetic character, and a tragic one too, when one considers all that he does in the vain hope of gaining Daisy's favour?

[vinteuil]

... the article reminds me that I've never read Hadrian the Seventh

It's fun. Wiki says - ' "in 2014, The Guardian placed Hadrian the Seventh on its list of the 100 best novels written in English. Robert McCrum called it "entertaining if contrived […] orchidaceous, eccentric and weirdly obsessive, some would say mad." '

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/02/100-best-novels-hadrian-seventh-frederick-rolfe

[smittims]

Don't worry, ff. I made the faux pas of saying, when it was announced that Princess Royal was expecting her first child, that I'd forgotten she was married.

Yes, Skipton is the character who lives in Bruges. I've come to regard Johnson as uneven, her best books being those influenced by Sbnow, such as 'A Summer to Decide'.

[vinteuil]

I must 'fess' that Dr. Stanhope is my favourite

... I always had a bit of a crush on Dr Arabin -

https://trollopesociety.org/bulletin/2021/notes-on-dr-arabin/

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[smittims]

You cannot be serious!

[vinteuil]

You cannot be serious!

... o yes. But then I think the hero of Middlemarch is Dr Casaubon. After all, when friends asked Eliot where she got the idea for Casaubon from, she would point mischievously at herself...

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[Pulcinella]

Mr Harding in The Warden is probably my favourite character in the series, though the Archdeacon cones close when at one point he offers 'additional prayers' (I hope not only in the TV adaptation).

[vinteuil]

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... sensing that this world is rapidly transmuting into an absurd virtual reality Matrix-type illusion, I felt it was time to re-acquaint myself with the Master's Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius - and was intrigued to find in the Foreword a sentence I had hitherto overlooked : "The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. That was Carlyle's procedure in Sartor Resartus, Butler's in The Fair Haven - though those works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others... "

Sartor Resartus I know and love; Butler I admire - but I had never encountered his The Fair Haven. I have a five-hour train journey to Edinburgh tomorrow - it might suit. But I must first finish Simenon's la Nuit du carrefour - and there is also Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner on the shelf which needs re-reading - and which may be better for an Edinburgh sojourn...
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[french frank]

It does the heart good just to read about these things here . Like surveying all the appetising comestibles on display in a delicatessen.

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... sensing that this world is rapidly transmuting into an absurd virtual reality Matrix-type illusion, I felt it was time to re-acquaint myself with the Master's Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius - and was intrigued to find in the Foreword a sentence I had hitherto overlooked : "The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. That was Carlyle's procedure in Sartor Resartus, Butler's in The Fair Haven - though those works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others... "

Sartor Resartus I know and love; Butler I admire - but I had never encountered his The Fair Haven. I have a five-hour train journey to Edinburgh tomorrow - it might suit. But I must first finish Simenon's la Nuit du carrefour - and there is also Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner on the shelf which needs re-reading - and which may be better for an Edinburgh sojourn...
.

[richardfinegold]

just finished August 1914 by Solzhenitsyn started Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

[eighthobstruction]

As it happens, Bella, my book (I'm re-reading it) just mentioned yours. "I got stoned alone. . . read The Grapes of Wrath and The House of the Seven Gables which seemed as if they had to be tied for the most boring book ever written . . . " Theo Decker in The Goldfinch.

I tend towards your view!

....G of W .....fab.....The Goldfinch one of the most boring over written books EVAA....

Ed....or am I being churlish....no offense meant....I'm just offensive....

[Bella Kemp]

As it happens, Bella, my book (I'm re-reading it) just mentioned yours. "I got stoned alone. . . read The Grapes of Wrath and The House of the Seven Gables which seemed as if they had to be tied for the most boring book ever written . . . " Theo Decker in The Goldfinch.

I tend towards your view!

I must read The Goldfinch - I greatly enjoyed The Secret History. I'm fascinated by how anyone - even a stoned character in fiction! - could find The Grapes of Wrath boring. It's one of the most compelling books I've ever read.