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  • Petrushka
    Full Member
    • Nov 2010
    • 12229

    Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View Post
    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.
    I did start (re)reading them in order but my copy of Our Game has proved difficult to locate and I so much wanted to read A Most Wanted Man I decided I couldn't wait any longer. I met Le Carre at a signing session for Our Kind of Traitor and my copy of A Delicate Truth arrived last week.

    You may be interested to know that he is appearing at a Proms Plus literary event at the RCM on July 29. I will be there.
    "The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink

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    • richardfinegold
      Full Member
      • Sep 2012
      • 7640

      Just finished Sense and Sensibility and Beethoven's Hair, which I was reading simultaneously.

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      • verismissimo
        Full Member
        • Nov 2010
        • 2957

        The Salome Dancer - a biography of Maud Allan by Felix Cherniavsky.

        Born in Canada, she was a pupil of Busoni in Germany who abandoned the piano to become a famous (now forgotten) dancer in what turned out to be the era of Isadora Duncan.

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        • Petrushka
          Full Member
          • Nov 2010
          • 12229

          Escape Alone by David Howarth.

          Another one of those astonishing escape stories from WW2, this one recounting the story of Jan Baalsrud in Norway. First read this in 1968 but as with so many of these kind of books it can be read and re-read.

          Still also reading Gustav Mahler: A New Life Cut Short by Henri Louis de la Grange. Been making a very leisurely progress through this for the past three years!! Too hefty to read on the train and little time at home means I might finish it by the end of the decade but am in no hurry.
          "The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink

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          • Flosshilde
            Full Member
            • Nov 2010
            • 7988

            I've just finished Cosima Wagner, the Lady of Bayreuth, by Oliver Hilmes. An interesting, & I think balanced, study of a very complex person. Cosima can easily come across as a 'monster' - which she undoubtedly was in many ways (disowning Isolde, for example, & denying that she was Wagner's daughter), but Himes presents a more complex personality. Her childhood was pretty apalling, & perhaps laid the foundation for her treatment of her own children. She & Richard seemed to have been made for each other, & without her I think the Bayreuth theatre & festival would not have survived (& without her daughter-in-law, Winifred, it would probably have suffered the same privations that other theatres suffered under the Nazi regime).

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            • Pabmusic
              Full Member
              • May 2011
              • 5537

              I've just finished To Kill A Mockingbird - something I hadn't read since I was at university. Brilliant of course, but with added interest as I now understand that Dill was based on Truman Capote (that had escaped me before). I briefly considered opening In Cold Blood, but don't think I can face the self-indulgence of it - at least not at the moment.

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              • Richard Tarleton

                Originally posted by amateur51 View Post
                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?
                Apologies for delayed reply Ams, have been away birdwatching in Adnams country

                This was my first Preston so I can't offer a comparison with the other two - but Thomas inevitably very dated albeit definitive in its day (1961). A bit dry and too many acronyms, I thought at the time. Any history of the Spanish Civil War needs a good glossary . Beevor is always impressive describing military campaigns (Stanlingrad, Berlin) but (whilst emphasising he is dealing with a different aspect) Preston gets under the skin of the people behind the events.

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                • amateur51

                  Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View Post
                  Apologies for delayed reply Ams, have been away birdwatching in Adnams country

                  This was my first Preston so I can't offer a comparison with the other two - but Thomas inevitably very dated albeit definitive in its day (1961). A bit dry and too many acronyms, I thought at the time. Any history of the Spanish Civil War needs a good glossary . Beevor is always impressive describing military campaigns (Stanlingrad, Berlin) but (whilst emphasising he is dealing with a different aspect) Preston gets under the skin of the people behind the events.
                  Birding + Adnams country sounds an unbeatable combo, RT

                  Thanks for the encouragement re Preston

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                  • verismissimo
                    Full Member
                    • Nov 2010
                    • 2957

                    Katharine Susannah Prichard's memoirs, Child of the Hurricane.

                    Rattling good read of Aussie Prichard's travels and adventures and discovery that she was a communist.

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                    • aka Calum Da Jazbo
                      Late member
                      • Nov 2010
                      • 9173

                      Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus; The creation of Inequality ... an eminently gentle read through all the evidence of the various forms of social inequality in human groups from pre-history on ..

                      and James Lee Burke's Robicheaux novels in sequence, addicted 'fraid to say ....
                      According to the best estimates of astronomers there are at least one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.

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                      • french frank
                        Administrator/Moderator
                        • Feb 2007
                        • 30209

                        I'm toying, very tentatively, with embarking fully on Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt. It doesn't seem like an easy read (even in translation) but very interesting style - and potentially strong novel, in which (as I gather) World War 2 is (if I may!) a kind of 'backstory' to the high living of the Nazis, and written surreptitiously during the war while he was a journalist on the Eastern Front. There's a fascinating description of how he managed to smuggle his manuscript, in parts as he completed them, back to Italy.



                        Still, I don't want life to be too easy ...
                        It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

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                        • Richard Tarleton

                          Originally posted by Petrushka View Post
                          I met Le Carre at a signing session for Our Kind of Traitor and my copy of A Delicate Truth arrived last week.

                          You may be interested to know that he is appearing at a Proms Plus literary event at the RCM on July 29. I will be there.
                          Thanks Petrushka (only just seen this) - unfortunately I don't think I can manage 29/7. I did meet him in 1966 at a talk - this was between "The Looking-Glass War" and "A Small Town in Germany" - he told us about how his first two did nothing, then "Spy" sold 14,000 copies a day for 3 months, or thereabouts, then his first two started to sell.

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                          • amateur51

                            Originally posted by french frank View Post
                            I'm toying, very tentatively, with embarking fully on Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt. It doesn't seem like an easy read (even in translation) but very interesting style - and potentially strong novel, in which (as I gather) World War 2 is (if I may!) a kind of 'backstory' to the high living of the Nazis, and written surreptitiously during the war while he was a journalist on the Eastern Front. There's a fascinating description of how he managed to smuggle his manuscript, in parts as he completed them, back to Italy.



                            Still, I don't want life to be too easy ...
                            I'd not heard of this work/author french frank and I look forward to hearing how it goes in due course.

                            NYRB does exhume some really interesting stuff - I bought The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B.Edwards the other day in my local charity shop for £1

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                            • french frank
                              Administrator/Moderator
                              • Feb 2007
                              • 30209

                              Originally posted by amateur51 View Post
                              I'd not heard of this work/author french frank and I look forward to hearing how it goes in due course.
                              Me neither, am5 - but it bears the Foyle's legend "3 for 2" so was a serendipitous (I hope) find. Much like your GB Edwards, I suppose (who he?). I've 'done' Primo Levi on the period, so it should fit well.

                              I'm a great fan of these somewhat out-of-the-way titles by somewhat out-of-the-way writers. They're usually good value, whereas better known items can fail expectations.
                              It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

                              Comment

                              • vinteuil
                                Full Member
                                • Nov 2010
                                • 12767

                                Originally posted by french frank View Post
                                I'm toying, very tentatively, with embarking fully on.... It doesn't seem like an easy read (even in translation) but very interesting style - and potentially strong novel...

                                Still, I don't want life to be too easy ...
                                .... similar sentiments here, but concerning another book.

                                Last year I had a bit of a Hungarian binge - Antal Szerb, Dezső Kosztolányi, Miklós Szentkuthy - and I am wondering about - as French Frank puts it, "toying, very tentatively, with embarking fully on" - Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy - (They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided), just published in Everyman's Library.
                                There is a tempting blurb : "an elegy on empire to rival Joseph Roth's, with the epic sweep and drama of Tolstoy and a tinge of Proustian nostalgia. Yet the blend of criticism, compassion, and humour is all his own. An undoubted twentieth century classic."

                                I think I'm up for another plunge into the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - but it is some 1,450 pages...


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