What are you reading now?

[DracoM]

Just finished 'Defending Jacob' by William Landay. Phew!

[richardfinegold]

Finished "Explaining Hitler" by Ron Rosenbaum, and" The Heart Has It's Reasons" by Maria Duenas. Started "The Most Wicked War" about the Mexican-American War in the mid 1840s.

[Petrushka]

Inspired by Petrushka's and gurnemanz's enthusiasm on the Radi4 Freezes its Schedules thread, I am reading War & Peace for the first time in Anthony Briggs' translation. And I am reading it for the first time - I've tried several times in the past in different translations and have never been able to get beyond the first few pages, so tedious did I find the characters and prose. But this is a real revelation - the prose communicates so much, the individuals mould into three dimensional individuals (rather than the cliched "types" I remember from the other versions).

This is going to be a real pleasure - my thanks to Pet & Gurne.

I have the Briggs translation but haven't read it yet. The translation I've read twice is that by Rosemary Edmonds. I did try the Constance Garnett translation (dating from 1910, I think) a very long time ago but found it difficult to get into. Edmonds' translation in the Penguin Classics series (from the 1960s) is fine and I had little trouble with it. It probably helped having watched the BBC TV adaptation with Anthony Hopkins and Morag Hood just prior to tackling it.

Reading War and Peace is like listening to Wagner's Ring for the first time: a life-changing event.

[aeolium]

Last year I read Vassily Grossman's great novel Life and Fate, which is clearly modelled on War and Peace, about a later invasion of the Russian territory by a European power and especially the siege of Stalingrad. I think this novel ranks close to Tolstoy's epic in the scale of its ambition, its handling of many characters, sub-plots and themes, and the astonishing bravery of the author in seeking to have it published in 1960 (in fact it didn't see the light of day in the Soviet Union until after Gorbachev's policy of glasnost).

I also know War and Peace through the Edmonds translation, which I thought very readable. I listened to most of the R4 adaptation on New Year's Day and enjoyed it a lot. I cannot imagine the Bondarchuk film ever being superseded as the best visual production.

[Petrushka]

Recently: A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre. An excellent, readable book about Kim Philby. Strongly recommended.

Currently re-reading John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl for the first time in 30 odd years. I wasn't as appreciative of Le Carre's prose style then as I am now and I remember finding it hard going. Not so now, of course; greatly enjoying it.

[verismissimo]

The Extraordinary Adventures of Blanche Arral by Blanche Arral (but ghosted by Ira Glackens). Rattling good read. She was a pupil of Mathilde Marchesi.

[Richard Tarleton]

Just finished Dan Jones's The Hollow Crown, preceded by The Plantaganets. They manage to flesh out and give coherence to people and events in these turbulent centuries. I gave the late medieval period a miss when studying history at university. I'm frankly sceptical about any claims BBM might have to the throne, as any remaining Plantaganet with a vestige of a claim was topped by Henry Vll or Vlll, ending with Margaret Pole's butchery by the assistant headsman in 1541.

Delving into my Scottish ancestors, I've also been reading Marianne McLean's The People of Glengarry, the story of the 9 major emigrations from Western Inverness to Glengarry County in Canada between the 1770s and 1820s. Meticulously researched, it unpicks the people and socio-economic forces behind each wave. A calmer and more illuminating account than John Prebble's 50-year old The Highland Clearances, which I've also had another look at (though that covers the whole of the Highlands, not just West Inverness).

[teamsaint]

Not reading it now, but has anybody read " Into the Forest" by Jean Hegland ?
very fine indeed, I thought, though our copy went missing.
available cheap second hand, well worth a punt.

Just searched the thread, and Bernice Rubens doesn't get a mention, AFAICS.

"Yesterday in the back lane" is superb. Have read one or two others which are excellent too.

Not many laughs, though.

[gurnemanz]

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 by Anne Applebaum. A thorough and detailed account of the process by which Communist states were established in Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, using the most recent research and also, most fascinating for me, personal memoirs recounting the decisions which individuals were forced to make in the struggle between principle and pragmatism, bravery and compromise, honesty and hypocrisy, resistance and collaboration. It sheds light on a key period of of European history about which my knowledge was surprisingly vague - a period which spanned the date of my birth.

[richardfinegold]

Lincoln's Boys, by Joshua Zeitz. The story of how Lincoln's personal secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, fought to control the perception of Lincoln in the years after his death. It was also interesting chronicling their own attitudes on race relations.

[Petrushka]

The Strange Death of Liberal England by George Dangerfield.

I read this witty and thoroughly readable book back in the early 1970s and as the General Election approaches it's good to read it again. As witty and readable a history book as any you will ever find. Strongly recommended to all who don't know it.

[ardcarp]

The Owls' House by Crosbie Garstin. Who? Well he was a hugely popular and widely read author before and after WWII, but seems to have sunk without trace...in more ways than one. His Penhale trilogy is partly set in C18 Cornwall, but this is no Poldark-style confection! Action swings to the Barbary Coast of all places. It's a rip-roaring read, and I can thoroughly recommend it.

http://www.stivesart.info/crosbie-garstin-biography/

[Richard Tarleton]

The Strange Death of Liberal England by George Dangerfield.

I read this witty and thoroughly readable book back in the early 1970s and as the General Election approaches it's good to read it again. As witty and readable a history book as any you will ever find. Strongly recommended to all who don't know it.

That brings back memories Pet - I read it for A level history which I did in 1966 and again doing the same period at degree level. I don't think I'd realised it was published as long ago as 1935, but its trenchant analysis of how the political consensus in which the Liberal party flourished pre-WWl broke down as a result of the four great rebellions still holds good.

[aeolium]

I'm currently reading Misha Glenny's book The Balkans 1804-1999 to learn a lot more about the complex history of this region, and to have a better understanding of the historical background to the events of 1914 and the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I'm already discovering how little I knew about the region.

I recently finished Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, which when I first read it ages ago made little impression apart from the Hogarthian descriptions of the Gordon Riots. Reading it again with a greater awareness of themes in Dickens' other work, I found the portrayal of the different characters and their interrelationship more comprehensible. It's interesting too how Dickens makes the central character of the novel a mentally disabled person in an age which looked askance at all kinds of disability, one example of how he was often at odds with the mores of the time.

[french frank]

I'm currently reading Misha Glenny's book The Balkans 1804-1999 to learn a lot more about the complex history of this region, and to have a better understanding of the historical background to the events of 1914 and the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I'm already discovering how little I knew about the region.

That might be a better bet than Noel Malcolm's Bosnia. Tends to be anti-Serb while I wanted something that was completely neutral.