What are you reading now?

[gradus]

Diarmaid MacCulloch's Reformation: Europe's House Divided.An engrossing book from a brilliant mind.

[Joseph K]

I finished Another Now by Yanis Varoufakis last night. It was so good that I was sad to finish it!

Now I'm going to resume with Richard B's recently released book and JG Ballard's collected short stories.

[smittims]

I'm always sorry to leave an Anthony Trollope novel as it means leaving the characters I've come to know. I'm sure this is why novelists write sequels.

[Maclintick]

Jonathan Coe Bourneville -- newly-published paperback in Waterstone's "buy one get one half-price". Hmmmm. Having enjoyed What A Carve-Up, Rotters' Club and Coe's earler work I'm struggling with this. Doesn't quite come into the category of "Once I put this book down, I found it impossible to pick up again", but close...

[Petrushka]

Slow Horses by Mick Herron. Really enjoying this so it means another series to catch up on! I've got dozens of books yet to read but I keep on adding to the pile.

I usually follow a serious book (classic, history, biography etc) with a lighter read (thriller, detective story etc) and wonder if others have a pattern to their reading.

[HighlandDougie]

Slow Horses by Mick Herron. Really enjoying this so it means another series to catch up on! I've got dozens of books yet to read but I keep on adding to the pile.

I usually follow a serious book (classic, history, biography etc) with a lighter read (thriller, detective story etc) and wonder if others have a pattern to their reading.

The 'Slow Horses' series gets better and better as one proceeds through them. Apart from his habit of almost casually killing off characters of whom one had grown almost fond, Mick Herron's writing is up there with Philip Kerr in my particular pantheon of fine writers. Alongside the usual police procedurals of which I never tire (Simon Mason much to be recommended), I've just much enjoyed Julian Jackson's, "France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain".

[teamsaint]

Been doing a few classics recently, including Under the Greenwood Tree, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and currently Tom Sawyer.
not quite sure what to make of the Mark Twain, in which the plot has just taken a nasty and dramatic turn for the worse……!!

[french frank]

One of my favourite "read often" things (like Travels with a Donkey): Herman Melville's short story Bartleby, the Scrivener. It's so beautifully written: the silent, inscrutable Bartleby stands 'like the last column of some ruined temple". The story is sort of proto-absurdist in the gentle style of humour of JL Borges, and yet manages to reach deep into human suffering and compassion.

"I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach."

[DracoM]

Reading novels by 'Michael Innes' - i.e J.I.M Stewart.

[Pulcinella]

The narrow land, by Christine Dwyer Hickey
Winner of The Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction 2020

A poignant tale about a 10-year-old adopted German lad spending summer 1950 on Cape Cod, where he meets the artists Jo and Edward Hopper.

Picked up at our local book exchange.

Favourite line so far (spoken by Jo Hopper): I don't care much for apologies, not even when I'm on the receiving end of them, so why don't we just forget it.

[richardfinegold]

The 'Slow Horses' series gets better and better as one proceeds through them. Apart from his habit of almost casually killing off characters of whom one had grown almost fond, Mick Herron's writing is up there with Philip Kerr in my particular pantheon of fine writers. Alongside the usual police procedurals of which I never tire (Simon Mason much to be recommended), I've just much enjoyed Julian Jackson's, "France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain".

The Petain book has caught my interest. I am forcing myself to take a break from reading about World War II,but my wife and I really enjoyed the TV series A French Village, one reason being the way that the characters would alternate collaborationist or resistance postures

[smittims]

The John Thaw TV drama series Monseigneur Renard , about a french priest in 1940 was rather good on that subject: the difficulty of taking sides, etc.

Having at long last reached the end of The Barchester Chronicles for the fourth time, I'm relaxing with Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country.

[french frank]

Not yet reading, but I was very impressed by reviews of Perhat Tursun's novel The Backstreets, the first Uyghur-language novel to be translated into English, and published last year. It seems to be a Kafkaesque stream-of-consciousness narrative, based on contemporary life in Urumqi. Perhat and the unnamed co-tranlator, also a Uyghur, have both since 'disappeared', and are probably in prison.

A good background article by the novel's American translator, Darren Byler. I shall order it from our local bookshop. When the rain stops.

[richardfinegold]

The John Thaw TV drama series Monseigneur Renard , about a french priest in 1940 was rather good on that subject: the difficulty of taking sides, etc.

Having at long last reached the end of The Barchester Chronicles for the fourth time, I'm relaxing with Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country.

I am unfamiliar with that series. Is it relatively recent? I gave in and ordered the Jackson book and it’s absorbing. I am at the part where Petain has surrendered. Growing up in America in the 1960s all we we were ever taught about France during the occupation was that everyone was heroically blowing up bridges. In my religious school we learned about the deportation of French Jews and that the French had been licking their chops for this opportunity since the Dreyfus Affair. The truth of course was infinitely more nuanced, and I thought that the aforementioned A French Village did a great job showing how difficult it was during the occupation and how people alternately could be collaborationist or resistors

[smittims]

Monsignor Renard dates from 2000, and was a four-part mini-series . According to Wikipaedia it was later show inthe USA as part of Masterpiece Theater.

There is also , of course , Marcel Ophuls' massive two-part documentary Le Chagrin et le Pitie, which, although made in 1968 to commemorate the end of the war, could not be shown on French TV for many years as it was still a very sore subject. The moment that stood out most for me was Anthony Eden's reply to the question of whether he condemned the French Government for making a separate armistice with Hitler, thereby dropping Britain in the lurch. He said words to the effect that 'unless you've been invaded yourself you cannot really comment'. For the same reason I've never been able to watch 'Allo Allo'. Call me stuffy . but I think some things just aren't funny.