What are you reading now?

[Joseph K]

'Wish You Were Here' by Graham Swift.

"I wish he'd stop sending me these".

[Bryn]

Stefan Szczelkun: Silence! The Great Silencing of British Working Class Culture.

[Bella Kemp]

Stefan Szczelkun: Silence! The Great Silencing of British Working Class Culture.

I imagine this may be very good. It is certainly timely. The Working Classes have long been oppressed by the Tories and then, with the advent of Corbyn, the Labour Party also turned against them. I was struck quite recently by how many seem genuinely to have been battered by talk of 'white privilege' which few of them ever experienced, and in the school where I teach the emphasis is certainly on how wicked the British Empire was and how it is deeply suspect to be proud to be British. As a Dominican, I find myself often in a peculiar position where I tell my pupils that there is nothing wrong with being patriotic (so long as one is not uncritically so).

[teamsaint]

Wuthering Heights.
For the first time.

I feel myself more drawn, during the process of reading, to elements such as how the story is told, the structure, and the way characters are revealed, than the romantic drama of the thing. It is , for sure, powerfully written.

[Rjw]

The Photographer of the Lost.

I could put this on the thread of books I have read but will never read again!

It deals with the need for closure after close relatives are reported to be missing in the First World war.

[LMcD]

Winds of Change: Britain In the Early Sixties by Peter Hennessy

[Pulcinella]

Just arrived in the post:

The turn of the screw (Benjamin Britten)

The Cambridge Opera Handbook
Ed Patricia Howard

Probably should have read this before going to Opera North's production last week, but it will give me something to study as I get to know the work better from my recordings (Bedford and Harding).

But pre-empted by the first chapter of the final volume of Hilary Mantel's trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, The Mirror & The Light, in today's Guardian.

[Rjw]

Just finished

Alexander Baron's There's no home.

A wonderful book about soldiers resting in Sicily in 1943. This book is well written, by that I mean you don't notice that you are reading it!

[Joseph K]

Finished Anna Karenina last night. I thoroughly enjoyed it - I prefer it to War and Peace, definitely.

Now, onto Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.

[teamsaint]

Persuasion.
The Jane Austen One.

Incidentally, Vinteuil has been noticeably absent recently. I trust all is well with him.

[Petrushka]

John le Carre: The Biography by Adam Sisman.

Been deliberately saving this weighty tome for retirement.

[Joseph K]

Persuasion.
The Jane Austen One.

Incidentally, Vinteuil has been noticeably absent recently. I trust all is well with him.

Yes - him, Ferney, Richard Barrett and Richard Tarleton all disappeared simultaneously, it seems.

[teamsaint]

Yes - him, Ferney, Richard Barrett and Richard Tarleton all disappeared simultaneously, it seems.

Ferney and RT announced their departures. Not sure that RB and Vinny did though. Hopefully they’ll be back .

[MrGongGong]

Time to re-read this methinks

https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/iain-banks/complicity/9780349142845/

[gradus]

Mrs Moreau's Warbler by Stephen Moss, a must for anyone interested in birds and how they got their common names. It really is a book that teaches you something new and fascinating on almost every page.