What are you reading now?

[Ian Thumwood]

I have read abiut 5 Dickens novels. The better ones were excellent but then you read a book like "Hard Times" and you realise even he was capable of an off day.

I find that quite a bit of 19th century literature is dark in it's tone so the dialogue in Dickens is a relief. In my opnion., he is great simply because he gives his such great dialogue that we know who is speaking by the tone of the words within the speech marks. I have aways been attracted to great dialogue in writing and i feel it sets great writers apart from good ones. As a whole, the 20th century seemed to usher in writers who were less dense and often easier to read. I know there are writers from 2t century who are really difficult but, as a rule, i find books written in the last 100 years to be more concise.

The other point I would raise with Dickens is to contrast him with his contempories. I think he had the edge on Balzac who was also capable f creating memorable characters. If you cast your net further afield, I have been intrigued by the likes of someone like Jose Rizal who dealt with the social issues of his native Philippines. It intrigues me to see how authors were writing elsewhere in the world. He may have been the most important writer of his nation and a champion of social issues as much as Dickens and Elliot, however I feel that he was not writing on the same level as Dickens - this is coming as a Rizal fan. British writers have tended to be superior to their foriegn contemporaries in 19th century. Comments about being non-pc are ridiculous. Dicken's work will always stand the test of time even if some books are better than others.

i have finished Ian Rankin;s "Set in Darkness." I find Rankin to be a great writer and this novel is expertly plotted. In the future, there is much for critics to mull over in his novels as Rankin deals with the independence referendum and issues like Brexit. There is plenty in here to paint a vivid picture of life in Scotland in 1990s - repesent day. I would like to say that people will still read Rebus novels in 100 years time as I think Rankin is an exceptional writer. However, I wonder if the cultural references will have been totally lost by then and future readers left unable to appreciate just how salient Rankin's Rebus novels have been. When you consider this, you realise how good writers like Dickesn or Orwell are.

[richardfinegold]

Katherine Boo, behind the beautiful forevers, about an Indian underclass living in the shadows of Mumbai ultra modern airport. The writing is excellent , but the relentless description of duality and misery takes its toll on this reader

[LMcD]

'A Darker Domain' by the 'Queen of Crime', Val McDermid.

[smittims]

I'd certainly rank Dickens above Eliot and the Brontes but not necessarily higher than Austen. Yes,the length may be off-putting, but, as with Scott (and dare I add Wagner?) I think it's a mistake to try to skip bits (the opening chapters perhaps) to get to 'the real story', as I have seen recommended. One needs to give it time and read every word carefully fromthe very opening , and it will reveal its magic. .

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm sure you're right. His stock was certainly not high when I read Eng Lit at Cambridge back in the 90s. If there were a pecking order of 19th century novelists back them he definitely came behind Eliot, James, the Bronte sisters et al.

Interesting . I would have put the low point in the 60’s when Leavis accused him of a lack of seriousness maintaining somewhat bizarrely that Hard Times was the only novel worth studying . He famously and equally bizarrely recanted in Dickens The Novelist.
At Oxford where things were less prescriptive the main barrier to studying him was the length of the books .

[Sir Velo]

Never seen a single credible article by some one who knows what they are talking about which suggests we shouldn’t read Dickens. His critical stock has never been higher and he remains the most popular classic literary fiction author in the world. Very few achieve that - mass audience and literary critical acclaim - maybe just Shakespeare and Austen . Bleak House for example is arguably the greatest English Novel - on publication it earned Dickens a record advance - running into millions in todays money. It’s still selling by the tens of thousands globally and is a key text in any academic course in the 19th century novel.

I'm sure you're right. His stock was certainly not high when I read Eng Lit at Cambridge back in the 90s. If there were a pecking order of 19th century novelists back them he definitely came behind Eliot, James, the Bronte sisters et al.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm not sure whether a 'balanced curiosity' would be enough to make me bother with Ayn Rand. As for 'Dickens the misogynist' it's a characteristic of the judgemental present age - and by no means just feminists - to misunderstand the lesson of history, the vast mass of human beings being prisoners of their own age, its assumptions, attitudes and behaviour, tinged with individual inclinations and experiences.

Dickens treated his first wife very badly that is true . There’s little evidence of misogyny in the novels. They have though been criticised for their rather sketchy portraits of woman . They either tend to be idealised embodiments of threatened virtue e,g, Kate Nickleby or caricatures e.g. Miss Havisham - some one who’s personality is driven by one motive. But then there are people like that . He does write some interesting female characters E.g. the ennui of Lady Dedlock in Bleak House and thinly veneered sadism of Estelle in Great Expectations.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Just about to start re-reading David Copperfield. I've never been a Dickens fan but I have enjoyed and appreciated some of his novels.

Dickens has take a lot of stick recently from feminists etc. and people who seem to be telling us he was politically incorrect by 21st centtury standards and so we shouldn''t read him. Have any of you been 'put off' a book by what you've been told about its author?

Never seen a single credible article by some one who knows what they are talking about which suggests we shouldn’t read Dickens. His critical stock has never been higher and he remains the most popular classic literary fiction author in the world. Very few achieve that - mass audience and literary critical acclaim - maybe just Shakespeare and Austen . Bleak House for example is arguably the greatest English Novel - on publication it earned Dickens a record advance - running into millions in todays money. It’s still selling by the tens of thousands globally and is a key text in any academic course in the 19th century novel.

[french frank]

Have any of you been 'put off' a book by what you've been told about its author?

I'm not sure whether a 'balanced curiosity' would be enough to make me bother with Ayn Rand. As for 'Dickens the misogynist' it's a characteristic of the judgemental present age - and by no means just feminists - to misunderstand the lesson of history, the vast mass of human beings being prisoners of their own age, its assumptions, attitudes and behaviour, tinged with individual inclinations and experiences.

[smittims]

Just about to start re-reading David Copperfield. I've never been a Dickens fan but I have enjoyed and appreciated some of his novels.

Dickens has take a lot of stick recently from feminists etc. and people who seem to be telling us he was politically incorrect by 21st centtury standards and so we shouldn''t read him. Have any of you been 'put off' a book by what you've been told about its author?

[Ein Heldenleben]

... also the memorable meal earlier on when he lunches with Mme de Vionnet in a restaurant near Notre-Dame for mere pleasure’s sake :

"How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered water-side life came in at the open window?—the mere way Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their human questions."

SPOILER
Yes - wonderful.
Why doesn’t Strether read the signals with M de V ? Why doesn’t he accept Maria ?
Have ever wanted to be in any scene more than that meal with the veal cutlet? The way James transmutes the Lambinet painting into the idealised vision of the village.
and then the kicker …
It’s masterly.

[vinteuil]

There’s one chapter near the end of The Ambassadors where the “hero” goes to a small restaurant near a river in the French countryside which I think is one of the finest in all European fiction. I envy you reading it for the first time.
”Live all you can - it’s a mistake not to.”

... also the memorable meal earlier on when he lunches with Mme de Vionnet in a restaurant near Notre-Dame for mere pleasure’s sake :

"How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered water-side life came in at the open window?—the mere way Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their human questions."

[Ein Heldenleben]

Just downloaded The Ambassadors to my Kindle. Almost immediately derailed by this passage from the Preface:

"I could even remember no occasion on which, so confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in this fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that there are degrees of merit in subjects—in spite of the fact that to treat even one of the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for the feverish and prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its dignity as possibly absolute. What it comes to, doubtless, is that even among the supremely good—since with such alone is it one’s theory of one’s honour to be concerned—there is an ideal beauty of goodness the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic faith to its maximum."

Only another 500 pages to go.

If you think The Ambassadors is tricky then The Wings Of The Dove is more so, and the Golden Bowl is in places impenetrable. It sounds like I’m bragging but I’ve read all of them at least 4 times and there are still passages where I can’t work out what on earth HJ is going on about. There is a serious school of critical thought that he was partly senile when writing some of these . He dictated some of them and I’m pretty sure at the end of some sentences he wasn’t sure how he’d started. I wouldn’t read the Prefaces - it’s all part of his elliptical game with the reader.
There’s one chapter near the end of The Ambassadors where the “hero” goes to a small restaurant near a river in the French countryside which I think is one of the finest in all European fiction. I envy you reading it for the first time.
”Live all you can - it’s a mistake not to.”

[johncorrigan]

Is that the same book as Every Man Dies Alone? It was retitled when the movie was made

Same book, Richard. I didn't know that. I will have a look for the film. One of the strange things about this most interesting and enjoyable book is that the chapter titles often give you an idea of what is about to happen in the chapter...like telling you a character is about to die, or be arrested or the like. I really enjoyed this. It also has an afterword telling the story of the author's troubled life, and the story of the case which inspired the novel.

[CallMePaul]

Akhenaten - Egypt's False Prophet - by Nicholas Reeves. Published in 2001, so before the DNA work on 18th Dynasty pharoahs which has changed some of his views, but still an enjoyable read that has taught me things I was previously unaware of.

Intriguing is a passing reference to one Aper-el, a foreign-born vizier of lower Egypt in the reigns of Amenophis III and Akhenaten. Could a memory of this be a basis for the story of Joseph in Genesis, which was written centuries later? I need to investigate this further.