What are you reading now?

[gurnemanz]

A friend recommended Max Hastings' "All Hell Let Loose", recently out in paperback. It's a riveting overview of WW2, many aspects of which, it turns out, I had little previous knowledge of. I'm zipping through it. It really was six years of hell and I just kept feeling grateful that I was born in 1949 and have had such a soft life.

[umslopogaas]

gurnemanz, thanks for bringing that book to my attention, I hadnt come across it. Have you tried William Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'? At 1400 pages it isnt really a cover-to-cover read, but its a mine of fascinating information and is in places quite a gripping read. It also reveals some truly shocking things and can be nearly too painful to read. Shirer is not really an objective historian, he hated Nazism with a passion and it shows.

He includes the story of Dr Herta Oberheuser, which is the blackest bit of irony I've ever encountered. She was a doctor at Ravensbrueck concentration camp and was hauled up before the Nuremberg judges at the so-called 'Doctors Trial'. She was accused of giving lethal injections to some of the Polish women inmates. Hoping for leniency, she admitted it was true, but said she did it out of compassion, to prevent them from suffering even worse torments. Instead of leniency she got twenty years, the maximum sentence. Euthanasia is regarded as a very serious crime in Germany.

[Thropplenoggin]

The past few months I've been Mann-ing up.

The Magic Mountain - it blew my mind such that I was desirous of re-reading it the minute I'd finished. You know how once you've discovered Dennis Potter, even fairly decent telly comes across as tepid? Well, that, but with fairly decent literature. A worthy Nobel Prize winner.

Death in Venice & Other Stories - 'Tonio Kröger' was the most splendiferous of a fairly solid bunch. 'Death in Venice' couldn't live up to the hype. Not its fault, of course.

Doctor Faustus... - I'm knee deep into this and it's slow but enjoyable. The disquisition on Beethoven's op.111 was worth the £9.99 entrance fee alone. I shall report back once it's complete.

Beethoven: His Spiritual Development - JW Sullivan. Some interesting tidbits, but far fewer than I'd hoped for. I had to scythe through dense thickets of vagueness, such as "organic" this and "synthetic whole" that. Beurk! Plus, he disses the last movement of the Ninth.

[johnb]

A friend recommended Max Hastings' "All Hell Let Loose", recently out in paperback. It's a riveting overview of WW2, many aspects of which, it turns out, I had little previous knowledge of. I'm zipping through it. It really was six years of hell and I just kept feeling grateful that I was born in 1949 and have had such a soft life.

I bought it too, a few months ago, but I was rather disappointed as I was hoping for a tome that would take me through WW2 whereas Hasting's book seems so consist of a sequence of experiences of the people affected by the war. I was also disappointed by the inadequate maps. After reading part of Hasting's book I gave up and bought Anthony Beevor's "The Second World War". (Which is still on my "must read" pile.)

[verismissimo]

I'm reading Blow for Balloons by WJ Turner (1935).

Strange! Part novel and part autobiography. Anyone read it?

[Belgrove]

Now that the nights are rapidly drawing in, something substantial seems appropriate, so I've just ordered The Master and Margarita. Scanning through this entire thread to see if it has been mentioned, it has appeared only relatively recently and to a rather mixed response. The translation would appear to be critical to enjoyment, with Glenny's version receiving largely positive responses on Amazon and from friends. Looking forward to starting this.

In surveying this thread, Thomas Mann crops up regularly, not entirely surprising given his musical sensibility. There is a notable exception however - Joseph and His Brothers, which I have but have not yet read. Mann regarded it as his masterpiece. Its 1500 pages presents a daunting prospect, and the informative preface by the translator J. E. Woods does not shy away from the difficulties that the reader will be confronted with in terms of the density of ideas and the meandering style. He even suggests a nonlinear approach to reading it. Has anyone taken the plunge and read this?

[Petrushka]

Have you tried William Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'?

I read this when I was 15 (in 1969) and still have the Pan paperback I read then.

Currently reading 'Munich: The Appeasment Crisis of 1938' by David Faber. Superbly well written and a tremendous read. A few weeks ago I read '1938 Hitler's Gamble' by Giles McDonogh which covers pretty much the same ground but compared to Faber's book it is a stodgy read with a narrative that refuses to move forward and not in the same class.

[vinteuil]

- Joseph and His Brothers, / ... / . Has anyone taken the plunge and read this?

... looking at the battered penguin copy of this on my shelves I find that I bought it in 1984, and was reading it in Delhi and Karnataka March/April 1989. Appearances lead me to believe that I abandoned it at about page 938.

I can't for the life of me remember much about it. But I would say that, whereas nowadays I will cheerfully abandon a book half way through, back then (I wd have been thirty seven) I must have been seriously bored...

[Hitch]

As I closed the covers of The Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc-Lowndes 1911–1947, I wondered if anybody in British society has ever been quite so well-connected as the author of The Lodger. It seems she knew nearly every notable novelist, politician and aristocrat, and if she wanted to know what was going on during either the First or Second World War, all she had to do was dine with the relevant general or minister. I can't remember any musicians getting a mention...

[amateur51]

As I closed the covers of The Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc-Lowndes 1911–1947, I wondered if anybody in British society has ever been quite so well-connected as the author of The Lodger. It seems she knew nearly every notable novelist, politician and aristocrat, and if she wanted to know what was going on during either the First or Second World War, all she had to do was dine with the relevant general or minister. I can't remember any musicians getting a mention...

Many thanks for the lead, Hitch

[vinteuil]

Marie Belloc-Lowndes :

... I see her daughter was Countess Iddesleigh. Fans of Amanda Ros will appreciate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Adelaide_Belloc_Lowndes

[french frank]

On the recommendation of Foyles, and intrigued by the suggestion of the Italian answer to Joyce and Proust, I bought Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda. In translation, but the Italian sounds rather better than That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana .... Joyce, in particular, is invoked because of the linguistic style and language play. How much is lost (as a percentage, for example) in translation I can't say. But it's a novel for those who enjoy style rather than story. It's a detective story, a whodunnit in which (I'm assured) we never learn whodunnit.

But it has just been dun and I should have started reading earlier in the evening as this is not really the moment to be going to bed and trying to get to sleep

[amateur51]

... I see her daughter was Countess Iddesleigh. Fans of Amanda Ros will appreciate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_A...Belloc_Lowndes

What a marvellous discovery

[amateur51]

On the recommendation of Foyles, and intrigued by the suggestion of the Italian answer to Joyce and Proust, I bought Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda. In translation, but the Italian sounds rather better than That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana .... Joyce, in particular, is invoked because of the linguistic style and language play. How much is lost (as a percentage, for example) in translation I can't say. But it's a novel for those who enjoy style rather than story. It's a detective story, a whodunnit in which (I'm assured) we never learn whodunnit.

But it has just been dun and I should have started reading earlier in the evening as this is not really the moment to be going to bed and trying to get to sleep

The thot plickens ....

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n18/tim-parks/che-pasticcio

[french frank]

The thot plickens ....

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n18/tim-parks/che-pasticcio

It has a forward by Italo Calvino and I didn't get the impression that the novel was 'unfinished' as much as that it represents Gadda's philosophical idea: that nothing has one single cause or explanation but is a tangle (pasticciaccio?) of related elements. Whether or not, I may just end up feeling cross ...