What are you reading now?

[Historian]

Just finished Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita which I found compelling and extraordinary.

[french frank]

Had lunch out and took Kafka's short story In the Penal Colony to read. It's a grisly tale which piles on the agony until at one point, inappropriately, I laughed as it hit the level of Kafkaesque/Borgesian absurdity. Much interpreted, it surprised me with its ending.

[smittims]

Oh, that's a marvellous book, DracoM. I love to re-read it.

Have you seen the film with Jane Birkin and Trevor Howard? It's called Dust , though there are other films of the same title. I'd love to see it again.

[DracoM]

J.M.Coetzee: In the Heart of the Country.

[LMcD]

Thomas Keneally - Napoleon's Last Island

[gurnemanz]

Just finishing Wolfszeit - Deutschland und die Deutschen 1945 - 1955 by Harald Jähner. Fascinating, detailed study of this period with many new insights for me on a subject which I thought I knew about. I was reading last night about the Nazis' Werwolf plan of resistance against occupation which was initiated once they knew for sure after D-Day that they had lost the war. This is Goebbels' frightening propaganda message to the German people two months before the war ended:

My rough translation: "For the werewolves every Bolshevik, every Englishman, every American on our soil is fair game. Every opportunity to eliminate them must be taken with pleasure and without regard to our own life. Hate is our prayer and revenge our battle cry. The werewolf is the judge deciding on life and death."

In fact, as the author points out, almost no such revenge acts took place and the only killings were by surviving Nazi fanatics against fellow Germans who they saw collaborating with the occupying conquerors.

I read the German version but it has appeared in translation under the title Aftermath

Good Wiki article about the Werwolf plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf

[smittims]

Having finished The Brothers Karamazov I'm now relaxing with Margaret Drabble's The Realms of Gold. I enjoyed The Garrick Year.

[french frank]

I've just started Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: a new biography of the Old City, by Matthew Teller. It documents the history and current social and religious make-up of the area usually divided into four quarters (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Armenian), nine being a random number to suggest much more disparate communities. I gather it touches on the present realities of political life there, Matthew Teller indicating that his own upbringing had been 'strongly Zionist' which should provide an interesting viewpoint.

[Jonathan]

I'm hoping millions of people will be reading my second novel which is out next Friday!

[vinteuil]

His solution was that Russians should embrace a mystical cocktail of Russopphilia, pan Slavicism, and Christianity,. As he feared that this collapse was imminent, he was rather strident that his fellow Russians make haste...

... hmmm - contemporary relevance or what!

.

[richardfinegold]

I think you're taking it a little too far. I do enjoy character development and atmospheer; I just don't like being preached to. I think this is why I prefer Turgenev to Tolstoy or Dostoievsky.

It’s been a while since I read The Brothers K; I have more proximately re read Crime and Punishment, which was superb in depicting the atmosphere of St. Petersberg. I do remember the Brothers as having a hectoring, or preachy tone. I remember reading that by that point in his life Dostoyevsky, who had been a radical in his youth, had become a reactionary. As with many late nineteenth Russian intellectuals, he knew that the despotic Romanovs were doomed and feared that what might follow in their wake. His solution was that Russians should embrace a mystical cocktail of Russopphilia, pan Slavicism, and Christianity,. As he feared that this collapse was imminent, he was rather strident that his fellow Russians make haste. Perhaps that context may help you along

[smittims]

I think you're taking it a little too far. I do enjoy character development and atmospheer; I just don't like being preached to. I think this is why I prefer Turgenev to Tolstoy or Dostoievsky.

[french frank]

Well, yes, but is that a reduction? Isn't that what literature is? What about the Bible, the Iliad? aren't they story-telling? Granted that they're not just narrative. There's character and atmosphere.

It's a reduction if that's all you're interested in (cf Ezra's mother), uninterested in character development or description. If all you want is a good yarn you're not interested in literature and there's plenty of stuff to choose from.

[vinteuil]

Georges Simenon, Maigret en meublé (Maigret rents a room)

We have been watching the marvellous series of Maigret starring Bruno Cremer on Talking Pictures TV over the last year. In total there are 54 episodes, and Maigret en meublé will be episode 51, to be shown next Tuesday. I have been reading / re-reading them all as the series unrolls ; I shall be very sad when we reach the end next month.

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[Pulcinella]

Yes, I expect you are aware that Donna Leon has been a great supporter of baroque opera (especially Handel) for many years, initially helping to support financially Il Complesso Barocco and then (after Alan Curtis' death) Il Pomo d'Oro - hence the dedication presumably. She also writes excellent crime novels!

With as much emphasis on food as on solving the crimes!