What are you reading now?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature

this review describes it well and tallies with my reactions ... an admirable work in many ways

[umslopogaas]

I just had an inconsequential thought.

I just had, sitting on my sofa, two books (the books were sitting, I was just looking on from a neighboring cushion):

'The story of O' by Pauline Reage

and

'The Island of Doctor Moreau' by HG Wells.

Now this is a rare chance. I'm not particularly keen on pornography, but 'The story of O' is a famous example and if I'm surveying the world's literature, surely I should examine it?

(I should say, in my defence, that it was only lying on my sofa because I had promised to lend it to a friend).

And Well's 'Island' is also famous of its type.

What occurred to me is the way we have changed.

Back in the days when Wells wrote 'Dr Moreau', he would have had no trouble getting it published, but if he had happened to write 'O' and tried to publish it, he would have been instantly flung into jail.

These days the situation is reversed. Publishers would be falling over themselves to publish 'O', but it would be a brave one who would put out 'Moreau'.

OK, Penguin did, but only because it crept in as a 'Modern Classic'. I doubt they would consider a modern novel whose subject was vivisection.

Just a thought. But maybe there are other items that were once enticing, and are now too dangerous to touch?

My thoughts shift uneasily to 'Dracula', but I'm not sure why. Its a classic in its way, for sure. Perhaps the subject matter is not nice? There was a time when you could write a novel about sucking blood from young women and become a lion of literature. Try that now and you'd be number one exhibit in the 'Desperately Uncomsummated Ladie's Pervert Gallery'.

I dont have access, but if anyone does, it might be fun.

[John Shelton]

edit see # 650.

[umslopogaas]

Er, Hey Nonymous, I may just be a bit off target, but there doesnt seem to be any text in your message 648?

[John Shelton]

Er, Hey Nonymous, I may just be a bit off target, but there doesn't seem to be any text in your message 648?

Woops. There's a choice in this room (until I am mobile enough to change the central light fitting: temporary if slowly improving incapacity) between charging my laptop or having two small lamps on. With great pedantry I revised to add a full stop ...

Edward Dorn Collected Poems - at last a collected poems!

The fine poet Peter Manson's new Mallarmé translations.

Mieke Bal, Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-image Opposition.

(All the full stops are there ).

[edit to provide links]

Dorn: http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/in...=9781847771261

Mallarmé / Manson: http://www.orgs.muohio.edu/mupress/d..._mallarme.html

Bal: http://www.miekebal.org/publications...ing-rembrandt/ (the Amsterdam Academic Archive edition http://www.bibliovault.org/thumbs). /978-90-5356-858-3-frontcover.jpg

[Sparafucile]

Hullo,
Not been around much lately.

Just finished reading Iain Pear's novel Stone's Fall. Very good, nicely plotted, plenty of detail. Not quite as satisfying as his earlier An Instance of the Fingerpost perhaps, but almost.
I'm about to begin, this evening, Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which should take me nicely up to the holiday. Holiday reading is to commence with the new C.J. Sansom novel, Dominion, a departure from his Shardlake series, and likely to be closer in style and content to his splendid Spanish Civil War novel Winter in Madrid.

Periodically dipping in and out of various of the Wordworth Editions of ghost stories, most of which were only previously available in the magazines they were originally published in. It's a little startling to find some nicely atmospheriec creepers and tinglers from the pen of the likes of Edith Nesbit, of The Railway Children fame.
Link here: http://www.wordsworth-editions.com/c...&-supernatural

See ya,

[gurnemanz]

One I've long pondered reading...do let us know how you find it once you finish.

As for me, I picked up Mann's Doctor Faustus after a three-month hiatus. Yes, it's brilliantly written, but it's also perhaps too brilliant. My brain can barely keep up with its ideas, archaisms and metaphors...Mephistopheles has appeared, so I must be half-way through. Like a good Beckettian: I can't go on, I'll go on... Not as rapturous a read as The Magic Mountain, whose philosophical longuers I relished (its many political debates seem "simples" (to quote Bryn) in comparison to DF.)

I read it 40 years ago during my German degree and keep meaning to go back, but it never quite makes it to the top of the pile. Our lecturer was a keen musician and gave us a lot on the musicology - Op 111 and The Appassionata and 12 tone music, which was a bit of closed book to me at the time.

Prompted by a first visit to India, I've just finished "Partitions", which I bought entirely based on Amazon reviews. It's a compelling read - horrific and inspiring - set during historical events about which I knew surprisingly little.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hullo,
Not been around much lately.

I'd noticed! Welcome back, Spara!

Just finished reading Iain Pear's novel Stone's Fall. Very good, nicely plotted, plenty of detail. Not quite as satisfying as his earlier An Instance of the Fingerpost perhaps, but almost.

Thanks for the nudge; I enjoyed Fingerpost when I last read it and it's been awaiting a re-read for some years now. I didn't know about Stone's Fall - having been disappointed with one of his Art Dealer detective novels, I've rather lost track.

I read The Sorrows of Young Werther (which I was so glad to have finished - so well-written, but Werther himself is so wet!) a month or so ago; moved on to Richard Thornley's Cayote (the first 38 pages of which had me totally hooked - a blend of Peter Ackroyd and Jeanette Winterson - which made the inexorable dullness of the remaining 140 pages all the more disappointing); dipped into Hugo's Last Days of a Condemned Man and dipped out again pretty quickly, before settling on Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine which I think somebody on this Thread recommended and which I'm finding very enjoyable and readable.

[Hitch]

Periodically dipping in and out of various of the Wordworth Editions of ghost stories, most of which were only previously available in the magazines they were originally published in. It's a little startling to find some nicely atmospheriec creepers and tinglers from the pen of the likes of Edith Nesbit, of The Railway Children fame.
Link here: http://www.wordsworth-editions.com/c...&-supernatural

See ya,

Thank you for the link. Quite the literary bran tub.

[french frank]

I read The Sorrows of Young Werther (which I was so glad to have finished - so well-written, but Werther himself is so wet!) a month or so ago;

A few years ago, I spotted a small secondhand edition that had to be bought - and then read. It's just interesting to discover what it's about, so that you know. Then it's done. I don't remember much about it but the wetness of Werther sounds about right.

Now reading Irretrievable (Unwiederbringlich ) by Theodor Fontane. A sort of paler Balzac; or, domestically, a bit reminiscent of Buddenbrooks. I must just go and look something up so that I know whether it takes place in Germany or Denmark. I'm rather vague about the history of Schleswig-Holstein.

[vinteuil]

I must just go and look something up so that I know whether it takes place in Germany or Denmark. I'm rather vague about the history of Schleswig-Holstein.

You are, of course, not alone...

"Lord Palmerston is reported to have said: “Only three people...have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it." "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleswig-Holstein_Question

[french frank]

Thank you for the link. I have decided not to bother. I'll just carry on reading, and wondering where necessary.

[DracoM]

Villette / Bronte

[aeolium]

Now reading Irretrievable (Unwiederbringlich ) by Theodor Fontane. A sort of paler Balzac; or, domestically, a bit reminiscent of Buddenbrooks. I must just go and look something up so that I know whether it takes place in Germany or Denmark. I'm rather vague about the history of Schleswig-Holstein.

Speaking of Schleswig-Holstein and Fontane, I like some of the writings of a friend of Fontane and denizen of that area, Theodor Storm, e.g. his novelle Immensee and some of his lyric poetry. A while back I came across a copy of his last novelle, Der Schimmelreiter (The Rider on the White Horse), but have yet to start on it. The seascape of North Frisia in which the novelle is set I believe plays a significant part in the story.

[Thropplenoggin]

I have given up on Doctor Faustus. Again. Some 300 pages into it.

It's longueurs just haven't convinced me the way The Magic Mountain's did.