What are you reading now?

[Beef Oven!]

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam - Douglas Murray

Well, not actually reading it, I’m playing it over my Minirig speakers - I bought the Kindle version and purchased the 'audio narration' add-on for an extra £4.99. I’ve been somewhat incapacitated recently, so this will help me while I slowly and gingerly tidy up the mess I’ve made - place looks like a bomb’s hit it!

I don’t like audio books, I’m a visual person on most information/data, but they have their uses. One may find that one is in a situation where listening to something is a suitable recreation/distraction, and it does not always have to be music.

[Cockney Sparrow]

He had a filmed piece followed by discussion on "This week" last night (BBC2, late). Of course, Liz Kendall was having none of it (she fills the space,err, left by Diane Abbott on their sofa so appropriately.....). I record the programme so I can scoot through the idiotic play acting at the start, and Andrew Neil's conceited monologues.. and save quite a few minutes.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08q4j45/this-week-11052017

[Beef Oven!]

He had a filmed piece followed by discussion on "This week" last night (BBC2, late). Of course, Liz Kendall was having none of it (she fills the space,err, left by Diane Abbott on their sofa so appropriately.....). I record the programme so I can scoot through the idiotic play acting at the start, and Andrew Neil's conceited monologues.. and save quite a few minutes.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...-week-11052017

Can’t watch that - no TV licence!!

I like Andrew Neil very much, I shall miss him! I also like Dianne Abbott!

[aeolium]

Have just finished The Untouchables, a really impressive piece of research by the journalists Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn about a series of flawed investigations by the Met between around 1980 and 2004. The extent of the corruption and incompetence laid bare here is sometimes jaw-dropping. The only pity is that it has not been brought up to date, since it does not take into account the corruption around the phone-hacking scandal, as well as the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes among more recent events.

I am about to finish Atom by Steve Aylett, which is hard to describe but perhaps my closest impression is of a Dadaist satire on a world intersecting between those of Raymond Chandler and Philip K Dick. Here's a more considered view from around about the time the work came out:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/nov/11/fiction.reviews3

Sometimes it misfires but the language and imagery is constantly inventive (forget about the plot). I'm glad to have discovered this writer.

[Pianorak]

Moura Lympany: Her Autobiography - The moving story of a great pianist

. . . and of a great trouper one might add. By her own admission it was her mother, possibly an even greater trouper, who made it all happen.

[Petrushka]

Moura Lympany: Her Autobiography - The moving story of a great pianist

. . . and of a great trouper one might add. By her own admission it was her mother, possibly an even greater trouper, who made it all happen.

Saw her once absolutely years ago. Can't remember what she played or who the conductor was but think it was Norman del Mar with the RPO. I'll have the programme somewhere.

Currently re-reading Our Game by John le Carre.

[Richard Tarleton]

Currently re-reading Our Game by John le Carre.

One novel le Carré was forced to write without his customary site visit - his trip to the Caucasus was cancelled 48 hours before departure as his Ingush contact declared it unsafe (in spite of the team of bodyguards, gold for paying the bandits who regularly raided the train from Moscow....) - but not a huge problem as most of the action takes place in England. Adam Sisman's biog reveals the alternative titles that were considered, and discusses its generally favourable reception in the press....

One of only a handful (3?) of le Carré novels written in the first person?

I saw M Lympany once, playing Rach 4 - can't remember a thing about it. There must have been another reason for attending that concert.

[Petrushka]

One novel le Carré was forced to write without his customary site visit - his trip to the Caucasus was cancelled 48 hours before departure as his Ingush contact declared it unsafe (in spite of the team of bodyguards, gold for paying the bandits who regularly raided the train from Moscow....) - but not a huge problem as most of the action takes place in England. Adam Sisman's biog reveals the alternative titles that were considered, and discusses its generally favourable reception in the press....

One of only a handful (3?) of le Carré novels written in the first person?

I saw M Lympany once, playing Rach 4 - can't remember a thing about it. There must have been another reason for attending that concert.

I see that there is a new le Carre novel out on September 7 - A Legacy of Spies. There is a launch at the Royal Festival Hall on that night and I would dearly love to have gone - but I'm at the Proms at exactly the same time!

[Pianorak]

Currently re-reading Our Game by John le Carre.

Found "A Perfect Spy" a gripping and unputdownable read - but am very disappointed with le Carre's The Pigeon Tunnel.

Amazed myself by enjoying James Herriott's All Creatures Great and Small. Never bothered watching the TV series thinking I'd be bored to tears.

[Richard Tarleton]

Found "A Perfect Spy" a gripping and unputdownable read - but am very disappointed with le Carre's The Pigeon Tunnel.

Definitely one for le Carré buffs/bores/anoraks (delete as appropriate ) - includes a lot of recycled material from previous books/articles/interviews. There were fears he might have kept stuff back from Adam Sisman's excellent biog, but I don't think there were many major revelations.

[vinteuil]

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... am revelling in Jonathan Meades : 'An Encyclopaedia of Myself' [2014].

His account of growing up in south Wiltshire in the 1950s (he was born in 1947) has so many resonances for me who grew up in north Wiltshire in the 1950s (born 1952).

His savagery at various of his usual targets is tonic.

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http://amzn.eu/16OylYR

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[Conchis]

Having read The Golden Bowl earlier in the year, I'm now reading Ulysses.

This is the Year Of The Difficult Book.

[Stanfordian]

'I Shall Bear Witness - The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933-41'. Publisher W&N

[gradus]

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane. A good read as are all of Mr Macfarlane's books.

[Bryn]

A newly published writing by Eddie Prevost: Confronting a Darkening World: AMM at 50 Years—An Aesthetic Memorandum