What are you reading now?

[Pianorak]

Iris Murdoch: The Sea, The Sea (re-read) and Gogol: Dead Souls.

[Padraig]

I have read, over time, a little about Daniel Deronda. Today, daunted at the prospect, I started reading. I found the first two chapters most engaging and felt my previous admiration for George Eliot once more beginning to revive.
I wonder if I have bitten off . . . too much?

[smittims]

I'm a George Eliot doubter. I couldn't get into The MIll on the Floss. The characters just didn't interest me. I enjoy Middlemarch but I find it structurally faulty; it's well-known that it is a compendium of two separate projected novels. I like Scenes from Clerical Life. I don;tthink I could stomach Daniel Deronda. I fear it might be too preachy.

Yet I've been given to understand that admiring George Eliot is a badge of intellectual respectability in England, silmilar to having read Moby Dick in the USA, and I should be ashamed of preferring Anthony Trollope.

I've just started re-reading Thomas Beecham: An Obsession with Music, by John Lucas. I cannot praise this book too highly.

[richardfinegold]

Somerset Maugham The Razor Edge. It was assigned by one of my book clubs. I read it 30 years ago but only remember the broad outlines

[vinteuil]

I'm a George Eliot doubter. /.../ . I don't think I could stomach Daniel Deronda. I fear it might be too preachy.

... many years since I last read Daniel Deronda, but I enjoyed it immensely. My wife read it last year and loved it, 'the best book I've read in ages'.

I don't think you wd find it 'preachy' in the slightest. And the insights into the world of the Jews in 19th century London are just lovely...

.

[smittims]

Thanks, vinteuil. Maybe I'll get round to it. I did see the TV film about 30 years ago but I've forgotten it.

[Jonathan]

Now reading another of J D Kirk's Scottish murder mysteries - book 3 The Killing Code.


Not writing anything myself at the moment as work is sapping my creative energies . I'm afraid those who bought my novel will maybe have to wait quite a while for the 3rd book in The Ventos Conspiracy series.

[Padraig]

... many years since I last read Daniel Deronda, but I enjoyed it immensely. My wife read it last year and loved it, 'the best book I've read in ages'.

. And the insights into the world of the Jews in 19th century London are just lovely.

Two ringing endorsrments from both M et Mme vinteuil ! Merci.

I shall remember as I progress with my task.

[Petrushka]

Just about to re-read The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 by Antonia Fraser.

This is a cracker of a book and well worth a re-read. If you think you know about Guy Fawkes and the conspiracy this book will shake you. I never knew until I read it first time that most of the conspiracy was centred around the West Midlands not too far from here.

[Mandryka]

I first read Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit 20 years ago. I'm not a native French native speaker, so it was tough going at the level of vocabulary.

I picked it up again a month ago. It's still tough going for me but Jesus - what a fabulous novel. I would say the greatest French book I've read from the first half of the 20th century - and yes, that incudes Proust. Greatest at the level of style and idea.

I liked it so much that when I finished it, I started it again immediately - I'm now 3/4 of the way through this second (or rather third) traversal (voyage?) - for those who know it, Bardamu has just gone to Toulouse to see Robinson.

When I finish the choice will be to either reread it, or to start Mort à credit.

[gurnemanz]

Just reaching the end of Eva Rieger's insightful biography of Minna Wagner. Infatuated with Mathilde Wesendonck, Richard finally decided to separate from Minna, even though any future with Mathilde was out of the question. Minna left Zurich and went back to Germany where Richard was still banned, so he hightailed it to Venice. One day at St Mark's Square, a wind band was playing the march from Tannhäuser - too slowly. As the composer, he pointed this out to them and in his honour they played The Rienzi Overture.

[smittims]

I've just finished re-reading King John. It's a few years since I last read it and I'd forgotten what a superb play it is, a considerable advance on the Henry VI plays I think. Quite satirical and aimed at an Elizabethan audience with its references to a threatened invasion and a quarrel with the Pope.

[vinteuil]

I first read Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit 20 years ago. I'm not a native French native speaker, so it was tough going at the level of vocabulary.
I picked it up again a month ago. It's still tough going for me but Jesus - what a fabulous novel.
/ ... /
When I finish the choice will be to either reread it, or to start Mort à credit.

... I have various volumes of Céline on the shelves, still unread. Up in the loft I have several dictionaries of French argot, so I really ought to be able to get thro' them - but I don't have the strength yet.

I am ( s l o w l y ) making my way thro' the more recent translation (John E Woods) of Mann's Doctor Faustus : this is going to take some time.
After which I think as light relief it will be Jocelyn Brooke's Orchid Trilogy ...

.

[vinteuil]

(have put Doctor Faustus to one side... )

Jocelyn Brooke, The Orchid Trilogy

a neglected master, I think. The influences of Proust, Huxley, Firbank are evident, but he has his own voice. Elegiac but also funny - observant and wry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Brooke

.

[smittims]

Yes, I also put Doktor Faustus to one side (Back on the shelf, in fact) and haven't touched it since. I'm afraid it's not for me.

I'm re-reading How I became a Holy Mother, and other stories, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Slow-burning, contemplative, ironic, bitter-sweet narratives which seem to me (I've never been there) to express the difference between India and European ways of life better than anything else I've read. Ruth was originally from Poland , with an Indian husband, and best known as the screenwriter for Merchant-Ivory films . Her stories can lack a climax or denoument as we would exect in a European story, and the end is often not an end . It's as if she's saying, well, that's India .