What are you reading now?

[vinteuil]

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Robt: Lewis Stevenson : 'The Pavilion on the Links' [1880]. Arthur Conan Doyle characterized this as "the high-water mark of Stevenson's genius" and "the first short-story in the world". I enjoyed it, but wdn't rate it as among the best of RLS's work - not in the same league as the marvellous ''The Beach of Falesá' or ''The Ebb Tide'.
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Julian Barnes : 'Flaubert's Parrot' [1984]. I had forgotten how good this is. It may nudge me to re-read more Flaubert : 'l 'Éducation sentimentale' [1869] wd be top of my list...

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[Count Boso]

The source of the expression “the pram in the hall” iirc.....

It was. But I've now abandoned Enemies of Promise for the second time. (Looking up Connolly's quotes, I preferred, on George Orwell's "obsession" with politics: "He could not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry. " It made me smile, even though it encapsulates what I dislike about his OldEtonianism.

Now reading The Snows of Yesteryear by Gregor von Rezzori. Also abandoned some while back, but I'm making better headway this time.

[ardcarp]

Talking of George Orwell, have you read Down and Out in Paris and London?

[LMcD]

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Robt: Lewis Stevenson : 'The Pavilion on the Links' [1880]. Arthur Conan Doyle characterized this as "the high-water mark of Stevenson's genius" and "the first short-story in the world". I enjoyed it, but wdn't rate it as among the best of RLS's work - not in the same league as the marvellous ''The Beach of Falesá' or ''The Ebb Tide'.

: 'Flaubert's Parrot' [1984]. I had forgotten how good this is. It may nudge me to re-read more Flaubert : 'l 'Éducation sentimentale' [1869] wd be top of my list...

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As it happens, I've just finished Julian Barnes's 'Arthur and George', which I enjoyed greatly.

[Count Boso]

The Snows of Yesteryear by Gregor von Rezzori, admirably translated (NYRB) by HF Broch de Rothermann. It's written in autobiographical sections focusing on family members, the family having been a mixture of eastern(ish) European nationality, but basically German-speaking Austrian of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, living in a region which post WWI had a mix of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and principally Romanian influences. The Proust-like early childhood was that of a moneyed, stable bourgeoisie, physically disrupted in the post-war era and by World War II.

Particularly well-depicted are the psychological portraits (father, mother, sister, peasant 'nurse') and, even moreso, the description of the way an Austrian, German-speaking population living on the eastern/Slavic fringes of Europe (Bukovina) viewed the rise of Hitler and National Socialism in the 1930s - they welcomed it - and this from a writer whose political and philosophical viewpoint would have been repelled had there been any awareness of what was happening. Nothing is simple. During WWII itself they were scattered and 'relocated' as ethnic Germans.

[Petrushka]

Berlin Diary by William L Shirer.

Reading this in an edition published in September 1941. Shirer is a master of the written word and his descriptions of Hitler, Goebbels and Goering etc are unforgettable, witnessed at first hand. Can't think why I've never read this book before!

[richardfinegold]

Berlin Diary by William L Shirer.

Reading this in an edition published in September 1941. Shirer is a master of the written word and his descriptions of Hitler, Goebbels and Goering etc are unforgettable, witnessed at first hand. Can't think why I've never read this book before!

Read that a few months back. He really had a birds eye view to a lot of terrible history

[gradus]

Read that a few months back. He really had a birds eye view to a lot of terrible history

Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is another example of his mastery of narrative coupled with extraordinarily vivid prose, imv a writer/journalist of the highest calibre.

[richardfinegold]

Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is another example of his mastery of narrative coupled with extraordinarily vivid prose, imv a writer/journalist of the highest calibre.

Agreed. Although looking at the different Shirer books available, he seems to have made an industry out of recycling the same material...

[Rjw]

White Mughals by william Dalrymple.

Very interesting on British attiudes in India at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

[gradus]

Crossing the Line, John Sutherland's plain and simple prose style matches the clear, forceful and experience-based arguments he advances for change.

[richardfinegold]

Agreed. Although looking at the different Shirer books available, he seems to have made an industry out of recycling the same material...

Currently I’m reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Republic, basically the history of France from the Franco Prussia War aftermath to the fall of France in 1940. No recycled material here, and good explanations of how the Republic was always beset by underlying anti Republican forces that weakened it fatally so that when the Germans were able to combine Military might with an ideology that many anti Republican French found sympathetic, it just crumbled

[richardfinegold]

White Mughals by william Dalrymple.

Very interesting on British attiudes in India at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

I read a long and favorable review of this book in the New York Review of Books. It sounded fascinating.

[vinteuil]

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Anne Carson : The Albertine Workout

Readers of Proust might be interested. Here she is :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofR3Qd2E_A0

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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Albertine-Workout-Directions-Poetry-Pamphlet/dp/0811223175

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[Petrushka]

Currently I’m reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Republic, basically the history of France from the Franco Prussia War aftermath to the fall of France in 1940. No recycled material here, and good explanations of how the Republic was always beset by underlying anti Republican forces that weakened it fatally so that when the Germans were able to combine Military might with an ideology that many anti Republican French found sympathetic, it just crumbled

I'd also recommend To Lose a Battle by Alistair Horne which is about the Fall of France in 1940.

If you can find it I strongly recommend Major General Sir Edward Spears' two volume memoir Assignment to Catastrophe. I picked up both volumes in a 1954 hardback edition from a book market many years ago and it's a terrific read. Some publisher really needs to get this reissued. Spears was Churchill's liaison officer with the French and he gives a thrilling insight into the 1940 disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_to_Catastrophe

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/assignment-to-catastrophe/author/spears/