What are you reading now?

[Sir Velo]

"Can You Forgive Her" by Anthony Trolllope.

This is the novel which elicited the famous response from James: "Can we forgive her? Yes; and forget her too."

I have to say that, much as I enjoy much of Trollope's scenes of victorian clerical and political life, the heroine Alice Vavasor is so blandly passive that she makes Fanny Price (q.v.) seem like Katie Price. One of the few Trollope novels which don't stand the test of time, I'm afraid.

[Mahler's3rd]

Cosima Wagner: The Lady Of Bayreuth

[Richard Tarleton]

Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror", the great American historian's account of the "Calamitous Fourteenth Century" - the century of the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, the Papal schism, Froissart, Chaucer, Petrarch and much more besides.

[vinteuil]

the "Calamitous Fourteenth Century" - the century of the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, the Papal schism, Froissart, Chaucer, Plutarch ....

... shurely shome mishtake?

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

[Richard Tarleton]

... shurely shome mishtake?

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

Well spotted, it was a senior moment which I corrected almost immediately

[DracoM]

Underworld / Don DeLillo

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Underworld / Don DeLillo

- good stuff, DracoM. It's been about twelve years since I read it; time to get it off the shelf again.

[richardfinegold]

Just finished "The Feast of the Goat' by Mario Vargas Llosa. It is a marvelous Political Novel, based around the Trujillo assination in the Dominican Republic in the early 1960s.

[Thropplenoggin]

Re-reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain:

"Plate and basin, one could see, and as the little one heard once again, had not originally belonged together; but, Grandfather said, they had been in use together for a round hundred years, or since the time when the basin was made. The latter was very beautiful, of simple and elegant form, in the severe taste of the early nineteenth century. It rested, plain and solid, on a round base, and had once been gilt within, but the gilding had faded with time to a yellow shimmer. Its single decoration was a chaste garland of roses and serrated leaves about the brim. As for the plate, its far greater antiquity could be read on the inside: the date 1650 was engraved there in ornamental figures, framed in curly engraved lines executed in the "modern manner" of the period, florid and capricious devices and arabesques that were something between star and flower. On the back, engraved in a variety of scripts, were the names of its successive owners, seven in number, each with the date when it had passed into his hands. The old man named each one to his grandson, pointing with beringed index finger. There was Hans Castorp’s father’s name, there was Grandfather’s own, there was Great-grandfather’s; then the "great" came doubled, tripled, quadrupled, from the old man’s mouth, whilst the little lad listened, his head on one side, the eyes full of thought, yet fixed and dreamy too, the childish lips parted, half with awe, half sleep-ily. That great-great-great-great—what a hollow sound it had, how it spoke of the falling away of time, yet how it seemed the expression of a piously cherished link between the present, his own life, and the depth of the past! All that, as his face showed, made a profound impression. As he listened to the great-great-great, he seemed to smell the cool, earthy air of the vault of St. Michael’s or Saint Katherine’s; the breath of regions where one went hat in hand, the head reverently bowed, walking weavingly on the tips of one’s toes; seemed, too, to hear the remote and set-apart hush of those echoing places. Religious feeling mingled in his mind with thoughts of death and a sense of history, as he listened to the sombre syllable; he received therefrom an ineffable gratification—indeed, it may have been for the sake of hearing the sound that he so often begged to see the christening basin."

From the chapter entitled 'Of the Christening Basin, and of Grandfather in His Two-fold Guise'.

[Petrushka]

You'll Die in Singapore by Charles McCormac.

One of the greatest WW2 escape stories ever written. First read in 1967!

[Tevot]

[I]Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45[/I] by Max Hastings

A lucid and clear account of the endgame of WW2 in Europe that is very user friendly. Hastings has this knack of translating quite complicated military jargon and concepts into simple yet elegant prose.

[Richard Tarleton]

Paul Preston's The Spanish Holocaust - his account of "inquisition and extermination in twentieth century Spain". I have read the standard accounts of the Spanish Civil War - Hugh Thomas, Antony Beevor etc - but nothing prepared me for the harrowing experience of reading this book. It is a forensic account of the "mass extra-judicial murder of tens of thousands, cursory military trials, torture, the systematic abuse of women and children...." There were atrocities on both sides, and the tales of internecine strife on the Republican (government) side between the Soviet-backed Communists and Anarchists make for grim reading, but the overwhelming bulk of atrocity was on the rebel side. Franco and his generals, who had cut their teeth in the Rif Wars in North Africa, pursued their campaign through Spain with the utmost bestiality.

Two of the most chilling chapters come at the end, after the war. The idea of national reconciliation was anathema to Franco, and his campaign of ruthless extermination of his enemies continued for another 20 years. A retrospective law made it possible to accuse everyone who had supported the legitimate government from 1934 of treason, and strenuous efforts were made to recover those who had the misfortune to flee to what became both German-occupied and Vichy France.

National brainwashing (through the Church and the education system) continued throughout the dictatorship. The regime rewrote history to absolve itself of all guilt. The after-effects of this were to make it impossible for Spain to come to terms with its past, and recent efforts to do this (see Giles Tremlett's book Ghosts of Spain), have been traumatic, with lawyer Baltasar Garzón being prosecuted by pro-Francoists and the Falange for abusing his powers in opening investigations into the past.

[Petrushka]

A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre.

Vintage le Carre.

[Richard Tarleton]

A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre.

Vintage le Carre.

Le Carré is still at the top of his game and knocking out a book every couple of years - if you're reading them in order, Petrushka, you've got a couple to go - I've just taken delivery of A Delicate Truth. His novels are to be savoured and re-read.

[amateur51]

Paul Preston's The Spanish Holocaust - his account of "inquisition and extermination in twentieth century Spain". I have read the standard accounts of the Spanish Civil War - Hugh Thomas, Antony Beevor etc - but nothing prepared me for the harrowing experience of reading this book. It is a forensic account of the "mass extra-judicial murder of tens of thousands, cursory military trials, torture, the systematic abuse of women and children...." There were atrocities on both sides, and the tales of internecine strife on the Republican (government) side between the Soviet-backed Communists and Anarchists make for grim reading, but the overwhelming bulk of atrocity was on the rebel side. Franco and his generals, who had cut their teeth in the Rif Wars in North Africa, pursued their campaign through Spain with the utmost bestiality.

Two of the most chilling chapters come at the end, after the war. The idea of national reconciliation was anathema to Franco, and his campaign of ruthless extermination of his enemies continued for another 20 years. A retrospective law made it possible to accuse everyone who had supported the legitimate government from 1934 of treason, and strenuous efforts were made to recover those who had the misfortune to flee to what became both German-occupied and Vichy France.

National brainwashing (through the Church and the education system) continued throughout the dictatorship. The regime rewrote history to absolve itself of all guilt. The after-effects of this were to make it impossible for Spain to come to terms with its past, and recent efforts to do this (see Giles Tremlett's book Ghosts of Spain), have been traumatic, with lawyer Baltasar Garzón being prosecuted by pro-Francoists and the Falange for abusing his powers in opening investigations into the past.

I've read the Tremlett but have deferred taking up the Preston until I was feeling strong. Your review suggests it is worth reading so I must gird up my emotional loins and tackle it - many thanks RT

Do you rate Preston's other works on the Civil War in relation to Thomas & Beevor, RT?