What are you reading now?

[LMcD]

Black Gold - The History of How Coal Made Britain by Jeremy Paxman.

[Master Jacques]

Happily they are now fallacies more than they used to be, not least because of such programmes - one of the things I’m grateful to Radio 3 for is that the works of Farrenc, de Montgeroult, Bonis, Pejačević &c &c are a part of my listening pleasure in a way that they could never be in the first few decades of my musical interest, precisely because they were in effect unknown i.e. ‘silenced’…

Gratitude is tempered, surely, when R3's focus on this - musically conservative, mainly high bourgeois / aristocratic - group of romantics, sucks airtime away from superlative living composers such as Sally Beamish, Judith Weir and Cecilia McDowall, let alone spikier, challenging figures from the more recent past, such as Ranier and Lutyens.

(I've just reread Haruki Murakami's remarkable The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which might be making me cantankerous!)

[french frank]

I'm pressing on with John Gray's The New Leviathans ('prescient', 'a secular prophet', 'clear-sighted' - blurb), aware that Gray divides opinions: ("Gray defines his own “identity” as that of a “philosopher”, though he skimps on the sceptical circumspection usually associated with the word.")

I've ordered Hobbes's Leviathan - in its day also anathematised and burnt as atheistic, egotistical, heretical, blasphemous. One may find some messages unwelcome, and strongly disagree with them, but they may be right.

[Historian]

I'm having another wander through the Broadway of Damon Runyan in 'Guys and Dolls'. I saw it in a charity shop at the weekend and couldn't resist another stroll through that wonderful language in the company of those larger than life characters.

First time for me, at least in terms of more than an isolated story. Agree that both the language and the characters are memorable.

[teamsaint]

You might enjoy this 'updated' series:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Lindche.../dp/B08TGW186D

Thanks. Will check it out. In about 600 pages time …..

[smittims]

Inded, Nick; point taken. But it remains a mystery to me that while Radio 3 has made such a determined 'push' for female composers ,they are still 'silencing' the two who for me are the best of all: Elisabeth Lutyens and Priaulx Rainier.

[Nick Armstrong]

I hear radio programmes in the same vein every now and then, all repeating the same worn-out fallacies

Happily they are now fallacies more than they used to be, not least because of such programmes - one of the things I’m grateful to Radio 3 for is that the works of Farrenc, de Montgeroult, Bonis, Pejačević &c &c are a part of my listening pleasure in a way that they could never be in the first few decades of my musical interest, precisely because they were in effect unknown i.e. ‘silenced’…

[Pulcinella]

The Last Chronicle of Barset.
Trollope.

You might enjoy this 'updated' series:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Lindchester-Chronicles/dp/B08TGW186D

[smittims]

'Pratt' said Crosbie, putting his hand in his friend's shoulder , 'do you see that girl there in the dark blue habit?'
'What, the one nearest to the path?'
'Yes. That is Lily Dale'
'Lily Dale!'
Yes. That is Lily Dale.'

[teamsaint]

The Last Chronicle of Barset.
Trollope.

[Pianorak]

"Abolish the Monarchy" by Graham Smith. One of today's 99p Kindle downloads.

[Ian Thumwood]

Anna Beer's book is unsufferable. It is wierd to read about a composer and only fnind the odd snippet of information to reveal what instruemtns these women composered for. Halfway through and Iit only served to make me annoyed. Female composers deserve better than this twaddle.

[Jonathan]

The left handed booksellers of London, Garth Nix

[johncorrigan]

This time, a collection of short stories ; ' Your lover just called'.

I'm having another wander through the Broadway of Damon Runyan in 'Guys and Dolls'. I saw it in a charity shop at the weekend and couldn't resist another stroll through that wonderful language in the company of those larger than life characters.

[DracoM]

This time, a collection of short stories ; ' Your lover just called'.