What are you reading now?

[Padraig]

Dickens: OMF

Merci bien D; a clear and succinct answer to the question.

[eighthobstruction]

Merci bien D; a clear and succinct answer to the question.

....did you have GE ....?

[Padraig]

....did you have GE ....?

Please, eightho, no HT.

[french frank]

This is getting a bit OT.

[DracoM]

Our Mutual Friend

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I was given "The Salt Path" by Raynor Winn for Christmas 2020. It was a moving account, brilliantly expressed and beautifully written. The sequel "The Wild Silence" is, if anything, even better.
My sister thought I might enjoy another account of a walk along the South West Coast Path, "Walking Away" by Simon Armitage. After "The Salt Path" I found this extremely dull. It shouldn't have been, as it was hailed as a best-seller and was written by the Poet Laureate. I struggled to keep going, thinking it must be leading to something better than a certain inward smugness. But I'm sure others would find more in the book than I.

[Katzelmacher]

Today, I finished reading The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum by Heinrich Boll.

Not that struck with it - the idea that the tabloid press can literally destroy lives is not new (and I doubt it was new in 1977, when the book was published).

[Petrushka]

'Enthusiasms' by Bernard Levin.

I absolutely adore this book and re-read it every now and then. It's definitely one of my 'comfort' books, one to turn to for the sheer pleasure of the writing, and not least because I share most of Levin's own enthusiasms. Every re-reading rekindles certain enthusiasms and leads me on to fresh ones not yet explored.

I saw Levin many times at concerts in London, even sat next to him once, and went to one or two talks that he gave but sadly never had a proper conversation that was anything more than a few words.

[DracoM]

Francois Mauriac.

[muzzer]

Today, I finished reading The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum by Heinrich Boll.

Not that struck with it - the idea that the tabloid press can literally destroy lives is not new (and I doubt it was new in 1977, when the book was published).

We did that at school for German A level. There’s a film as I recall.

[Padraig]

Following on from George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, now reading his A Swim in a Pond in the Rain It's a sort of workshop on the short story with 7 stories by Russian masters Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Nikolai Gogol as examples for in-depth discussion.

Also re-reading The Grapes of Wrath, as discussed in thread on writers no longer read. 100 pages in. Better than before.

Finally some American criticism of Books for Children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njL1Hfk9fXM

[gradus]

I'm reading a collection of John Steinbeck's journalism and non-fiction and enjoying every word.

[gradus]

'Enthusiasms' by Bernard Levin.

I absolutely adore this book and re-read it every now and then. It's definitely one of my 'comfort' books, one to turn to for the sheer pleasure of the writing, and not least because I share most of Levin's own enthusiasms. Every re-reading rekindles certain enthusiasms and leads me on to fresh ones not yet explored.

I saw Levin many times at concerts in London, even sat next to him once, and went to one or two talks that he gave but sadly never had a proper conversation that was anything more than a few words.

Ditto re Levin at RFH concerts - he was often accompanied by an attractive young woman but not always the same one.
On one occasion we sat opposite him in the RFH during the interval as he ate a slice of cake decorated with a peach slice. Whilst he was holding forth to his young companion with cake-loaded fork poised over his coffee cup, the peach dropped from the fork and silently submerged into his coffee. I caught my wife's eye but we both managed to keep straight faced. I still recall Levin's look of bafflement when he returned his attention to the now empty fork.

[french frank]

Ditto re Levin at RFH concerts - he was often accompanied by an attractive young woman but not always the same one.

Which prompted me to read his obituary. 'A legend in his lifetime', as they say.

Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson.

[Bella Kemp]

Anna Karenina for the fifth or sixth time - I've lost count: it may even be the 7th or 8th time. Each time I encounter something new in addition to the sheer joy of anticipating certain favourite scenes. This time around I am particularly struck by the minutiae of Tolstoy's observations - the light inside a railway station building seen from outside on a winter's night; late afternoon summer sunlight flooding a railway carriage. There is something uncanny about how Tolstoy can transport one to a room or a place.
Alongside this I am reading Tolstoy's diaries together with Sofia's, his wife's. I do recommend this approach. When one reads his diaries in isolation one always sides with him, and when one reads her version of events then you can't help but see her as a wronged woman. Only when taken together do we get a more balanced view. Interestingly both of them would periodically run away with the intention of ending it all and then usually a few weeks later the diaries reveal them to be full of the joys of spring. But, of course, Leo did eventually run off never to return.
I wonder, incidentally, if any here would commend the music of Sergei Taneyev - a regular visitor to the Tolstoys . Leo became convinced that he and Sofia were having an affair - not true. But then Sofia believed that Leo, in his extreme old age, was having a homosexual affair with one of his elderly disciples. Chertkov - again, not true, although there are hints in his early diaries that Tolstoy was occasionally physically affectionate with men. Theirs was certainly a very odd household.