What are you reading now?

[Padraig]

There was a very good Woman's Hour item on Edna O'Brien yesterday, if anyone wants to search BBC Sounds, including a recording of her own voice.

Thanks, smittims. Found it - and bookmarked it. My sound has gone. Looking forward to hearing Edna O'Brien in her own words.

[AuntDaisy]

...
I'm impressed by how much people read and how much music they listen to as well: do they do both at the same time?

A friend in the States listened to more recent BBC radio plays at twice speed
Would that work for CDs? Up an octave, who'd notice?
... and those "long, tedious symphonies by composers such as Mahler, Bruckner and Brahms" might be Prom-worthy again.

[Pulcinella]

I read a few of his novels about 20 years ago - Disgrace, Foe, The Master of Petersburg, Life and Times of Michael K. Being blessed with total non-recall, I just have a memory of having rated them - a serious writer. Worth a revisit.

I'm impressed by how much people read and how much music they listen to as well: do they do both at the same time?

Quite often, but not if the music is vocal/choral!

I remember thinking Disgrace good, but struggling with others; maybe it's time for a reassessment, though summer tends to be lighter reads that I can pick up and drop as and when the mood and the weather fit. Currently a library loan taken out yesterday: The bookseller of Inverness, by SG Maclean; historical fiction set in 1752 (some years after Culloden).

[french frank]

'Foe' / JM Coetzee.
RE-imagining of how Robinson Crusoe might have come to be researched / written.
Utterly brilliant.

I read a few of his novels about 20 years ago - Disgrace, Foe, The Master of Petersburg, Life and Times of Michael K. Being blessed with total non-recall, I just have a memory of having rated them - a serious writer. Worth a revisit.

I'm impressed by how much people read and how much music they listen to as well: do they do both at the same time?

[smittims]

There was a very good Woman's Hour item on Edna O'Brien yesterday, if anyone wants to search BBC Sounds, including a recording of her own voice.

I've just started re-reading Chance, my favourite of Joseph Conrad's novels. Fifty years ago my professors frowned at this opinion. One isn't supposed to prefer it to Nostromo or Lord JIm. But, like Virginia Woolf's The Years andTurgenev's Virgin Spring in their turn, it was his most popular novel .

[DracoM]

'Foe' / JM Coetzee.
RE-imagining of how Robinson Crusoe might have come to be researched / written.
Utterly brilliant.

[Padraig]

Where to put this?

Obituary: Edna O'Brien, the controversial Irish novelist - BBC News

[LMcD]

I read that. I always enjoyed Updike but remember thinking he was a bit out of his depth there

I agree, but I stuck with it to the end!

[smittims]

Yes, I see what you mean, thought I didn't notice that so much when I read it. The thing that struck me was that it lacked a satisfactory conclusion.

[richardfinegold]

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. I’m reading it for a book club. I had read it when I was 14-it was a standard of American Education of the day- and its depiction of people chewed up by capitalism and being helpless and destroyed is timeless. Steinbeck is quite preachy nd repetitive and if I had been his Editor I would have left most of these out and let the story speak for itself

[richardfinegold]

Just started John Updike's 'Terrorist'

I read that. I always enjoyed Updike but remember thinking he was a bit out of his depth there

[smittims]

I remember Paul Foot's fearless writings. We need more people like him today.

I'm re-reading Smoke. one of Turgenev's shorter novels , about a man whose life is turned upside down by the reappearance of a first love . I find more and more in Turgenev every time I re-read him. He was much admired by other novelists.

[Jazzrook]

Margaret Renn’s recent biography of the great investigative journalist and revolutionary socialist, Paul Foot:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=8dmjtcxLU2Y

JR

[LMcD]

Just started John Updike's 'Terrorist'

[smittims]

Lady Anna, one of Anthony Trollope's less-well-known novels , dating from 1874, after Phineas Redux.

Unusualy for Trollope it has only one plot. Usially there are at least two; it's a familiar story of a wronged heiress contesting a will and finding love,etc. but what made me post this is the type face for this Oxford World Classics reprint. It is notoceably larger than normal , and seems to be an enlargement of the old miniature World's Classics hardbacks, if you remember them; they were much on sale inthe 1970s.

This set me thinking about cheap reprints. Does anyone remember Heron Books, who used to advertise on the backs of magazines, tempting you to subscribe to a whole series of what looked like leather-bound 'fine editions' but which were actually laquered paper and card , and usually reprints of 19th-century editions. A neighbour of mine had shelves full of them , which sadly he never got around to reading.