What are you reading now?

[teamsaint]

One of my all-time favourites too, teams

you can never really see Hot Dogs in the same light.....

[JFLL]

Great stuff, JFLL - I adore the recording by the Fitzwilliam Quartet

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Franck-Strin...9922818&sr=1-1

Yes, Ams, I see that I have no less than six versions of the Franck SQ -- Pro Arte (1933), Parrenin, Joachim, Fitzwilliam, Dante and Ysaÿe, but the palm goes to either the Pro Arte or Fitzwilliam. I'm pretty sure it was the Fitzbilly who I saw yonks ago perform it at the Wigmore.

[french frank]

More's History of King Richard the Third. Uncanny how exactly it captures the actual scenes from Shakespeare's play. I have a clear visual reminder of Olivier's film: the nobles feigning to make peace with each other as enjoined by the dying King Edward; Richard's ploy to keep the Queen's family from going to meet the young Edward V; the description of Richard (as described in the play by the young Duke of York) as having been born already with teeth ('he could gnaw a crust at two hours old') ... &c. And if all this was political propaganda, I also think of the saintly More (Paul Scofield) in A Man for All Seasons.

You pays yer money ...

[Bryn]

More's History of King Richard the Third. Uncanny how exactly it captures the actual scenes from Shakespeare's play. I have a clear visual reminder of Olivier's film: the nobles feigning to make peace with each other as enjoined by the dying King Edward; Richard's ploy to keep the Queen's family from going to meet the young Edward V; the description of Richard (as described in the play by the young Duke of York) as having been born already with teeth ('he could gnaw a crust at two hours old') ... &c. And if all this was political propaganda, I also think of the saintly More (Paul Scofield) in A Man for All Seasons.

You pays yer money ...

But More was writing his 'history' a couple of decades after Richard III's death, and for a Tudor audience. Surely he knew which side his bread was buttered? That Shakespeare took More's story as his principal source is pretty mush received wisdom, is it not? Is it the Logan edition you have been reading? That makes the connection between More and Shakespeare pretty clear, I would have thought.

[french frank]

But More was writing his 'history' a couple of decades after Richard III's death, and for a Tudor audience. Surely he knew which side his bread was buttered? That Shakespeare took More's story as his principal source is pretty mush received wisdom, is it not? Is it the Logan edition you have been reading? That makes the connection between More and Shakespeare pretty clear, I would have thought.

All quite true - but I was struck by the number of times I found myself actually quoting Shakespeare as I read the text: as young Edward returns from Ludlow to London to be crowned, More mentions Northampton (yes, Northampton!) and Stoney Stratford:

"Last night, I hear they at Northampton lay
At Stoney Stratford will they be tonight.
Tomorrow or next night they will be here."
"I long with all my heart to see the prince,
I hear he is much grown since last I saw him."
"But I hear no. They say my son of York
Hath almost overta'en him in his growth."

"[...]Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast
That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old.
Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth ..."
&c.

(From memory - excuse inaccuracies.)

[vinteuil]

I see I have to hand: History of King Richard III by Sir T. More, and H. Walpole's Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III. Ideal reading for a winter's evening.

More's History of King Richard the Third. Uncanny how exactly it captures the actual scenes from Shakespeare's play. ...

I haven't read the Thos: More. I seem to recall that Horace Walpole's book tries to demolish much of More 's account : his "Supplement to the Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III With Remarks on some Answers that have been made to that Work" shows Horace at his most testy and captious ( and he is particularly unkind to Hume) ; he does make the point that More was very young when he wrote his History (twenty eight, I think).

[french frank]

he does make the point that More was very young when he wrote his History (twenty eight, I think).

You'd have to say if Shakespeare's tale was a good drama, so is More's. Shakespeare's could be considered a dramatisation of More, with actual words paraphrased. He may be the poet - but More had the imagination. I can't remember what his source material was supposed to be, or if he invented it all himself.

[Dave2002]

Currently just starting - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Reaso.../dp/B009ZJQLAU Beyond Reason by David Hopson. So far interesting.

[Richard Tarleton]

I thoroughly enjoyed Alan Rusbridger's "Play it again - an amateur against the impossible". Private Eye seems to have it in for AR right now.

Jared Diamond's latest, "The World until Yesterday", frankly disappointing after Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse - too much detail about New Guinea leads to an unbalanced book. A great mind and polymath but I feel he's missed his mark with this one.

[amateur51]

I thoroughly enjoyed Alan Rusbridger's "Play it again - an amateur against the impossible". Private Eye seems to have it in for AR right now.

Jared Diamond's latest, "The World until Yesterday", frankly disappointing after Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse - too much detail about New Guinea leads to an unbalanced book. A great mind and polymath but I feel he's missed his mark with this one.

Many thanks for these reviews, RT

Perhaps Private Eye is jealous of Rusbridger's recent coups with Wikileaks and phone-hacking,seeing both those as natural Eye territory?

Very sorry to hear about the Jared Diamond, whose earlier books that you mention I have enjoyed. Do you remember Ritchie Calder who used to write similar sorts of books (The Inheritors 1961) aeons ago?

[Richard Tarleton]

Many thanks for these reviews, RT

Perhaps Private Eye is jealous of Rusbridger's recent coups with Wikileaks and phone-hacking,seeing both those as natural Eye territory?

Very sorry to hear about the Jared Diamond, whose earlier books that you mention I have enjoyed. Do you remember Ritchie Calder who used to write similar sorts of books (The Inheritors 1961) aeons ago?

Ah, that could well explain it (re the Eye). Ian Hislop gets a mention in the book, as he and Rusbridger found themselves doing a double act at a Lords committee re phone hacking etc. AR is very nice about IH.

There are some good chapters in the Diamond. There is a certain amount of re-treading old ground, re food, disease, etc., and some very good chapters, but the book veers uncomfortably between the magisterial big-picture stuff that JD does so well and blow by blow accounts of tribal wars in New Guinea which frankly you can't follow and the details of which you've forgotten by the bottom of the page. I'm really not sure that New Guinea works well enough as a microcosm of the pre-Western world.

[amateur51]

I thought I’d have another go at Proust (started but abandoned in my twenties), and have almost finished Du côté de chez Swann, and wondered whether our own M. Vinteuil could say whether he thinks Proust might have had a real violin sonata in mind behind as a basis for the one by Vinteuil which so moved and obsessed Swann. I’ve seen Fauré, Franck and Saint-Saëns mentioned.

Perhaps this might spur you on, JFLL?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p013x71f/Witness_Marcel_Proust/

[JFLL]

Perhaps this might spur you on, JFLL?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...Marcel_Proust/

Thank you, Ams, that does look appealing. (Though I'm terrified of reading or hearing anything else on Proust until I've finished all six, as, like any Mills & Boon reader, I don't want to know how it finishes.) I may have to wait for ever, though ...

[Sir Velo]

George Gissing The Odd Women

I must confess to not finding this as engaging as "New Grub Street". Perhaps because the subject matter now seems so dated, whereas the world of Fleet Street still flourishes, albeit metaphorically. There is little of the dark humour of, for example, that great work of literary literalness, "Mr Bailey: Grocer". The romance between Everard and Rhoda is nicely drawn, however; it reminded me of Austen's Miss Bennet and Mr Darcy as seen through a glass darkly.

[Thropplenoggin]

Christoph Wolff: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician

I thought it would be very heavy-going but, thus far, it seems not. I expect the section on organs might be, mind.