What are you reading now?

[ChandlersFord]

Finishing off The Crimson Petal & The White, by Michel Faber.

This is easily the most enjoyable 'dirty book' I've ever read (I hasten to add, I've not read many!) and a great piece of wanton storytelling. It's not a great novel by any means, but I can understand why it was a once so popular.

I believe the bbc made a mess of it with their dramatisation, though.

[Joseph K]

I'm enjoying Anthony Storr's Music and the Mind - despite some questionable assertions (OTOH, he gets some big things correct e.g. that there is nothing more 'natural' about common-practice tonal music than there is about any other kind of music) it's an enjoyable hodgepodge of philosophy, psychology, aesthetics and literature all related back to music, and it's not at all difficult. He has his limitations of course and some large topics are somewhat skirted over, but it's quite informative as a book which might entice you into looking into these things more deeply.

[Historian]

A curiosity. Straw without Bricks: I visit Soviet Russia by EM Delafield, pub 1937. I doubt anyone here will be acquainted with the never-out-of-print Diary of a Provincial Lady, the twee semi-fictional journal of a genteel upper middle-class lady living with her family in rural Devon. I like the Wiki detail that on moving to Devon: "At the initial meeting of the Kentisbeare Women's Institute, Delafield was unanimously elected president [of course she was], and remained so until she died.'

On the contrary ff, read the 'Diary' last year including the sequels which covers up to 1941 (she died in 1943). It was on my wife's shelf so thought I would give it a go. Enjoyed them but felt there was a falling-off as time went on. Wasn't aware of her trip to the USSR.

There's always at least one person on here who has read more or less anything one posts about isn't there?

[smittims]

Hi, JosephK, glad to hear you're reading 'Music and the Mind. Storr also wrote 'The Dynamics of Creation' whiis is more general, i.e. about other arts including music, and if you haven't read it I recommend it.

I'm halfway through 'The Duke's Children', the last of Trollope's Palliser novels, I think the third time I've read them.

[Mal]

Just finished E. M. Forster's "Aspects of the Novel", which was a very good read, and made me want to explore a few classics, e.g., Thais by Anatole France and The Ambassadors by Henry James.

[RichardB]

he gets some big things correct e.g. that there is nothing more 'natural' about common-practice tonal music than there is about any other kind of music

A somewhat rare statement coming from a psychologist!

[french frank]

On the contrary ff, read the 'Diary' last year including the sequels which covers up to 1941 (she died in 1943). It was on my wife's shelf so thought I would give it a go. Enjoyed them but felt there was a falling-off as time went on. Wasn't aware of her trip to the USSR.

There's always at least one person on here who has read more or less anything one posts about isn't there?

I'm not quite sure about the "always"!

I'm not far into Straw without Bricks yet (still on the first part, 'The Commune'), but it's a strange bit of serendipity. A year or so ago I was studying the Teulu Trefeca, the mid-18th-c community founded by the (fanatical) early Welsh Methodist Hywel Harris. The "Seattle Commune", south-east of Rostov-on-Don (founded by radical American immigrants in 1922) resembled Trefeca in its 'simplicity', hard work, imposed discipline (by the Comradely Court), penalties for rule-breaking, payment to join and difficulty in leaving.

[Joseph K]

Hi, JosephK, glad to hear you're reading 'Music and the Mind. Storr also wrote 'The Dynamics of Creation' whiis is more general, i.e. about other arts including music, and if you haven't read it I recommend it.

Thanks.

[Historian]

I'm not quite sure about the "always"!

Yes, that is so ff. All generalisations are liable to challenge (oh dear, there's another one: I should know better). Thank you for the information on the unknown 'Soviet period' Delafield and the two attempts at a utopia.

In the middle of Edith Wharton's 'House of Mirth' (among other things) at the moment. Much to enjoy and perhaps a bit faster-moving than Henry James.

[Joseph K]

A somewhat rare statement coming from a psychologist!

Yes well - unfortunately I came across the page or so on serial music yesterday. Quotes Fred Lerdahl (predictable) and shows not even the merest sign of having tried to get to grips with it. I mean, he could have said something about how it was an attempt to impose order on the still-recent atonal musical language, but rather he doesn't appear even to be cognizant of the difference between freely atonal works and serialism. Because serialism apparently eschews repetition it's difficult, and that's the end of that (he later makes reference to this 'discussion' on serial music as a reason why 'the listener' might not be able to perceive a work's structure). Let's just ignore how some of the earliest serial music was of a neoclassical sort and definitely did feature literal repetition as in Schoenberg's piano suite or Webern's Symphony. He quotes Bertrand Russell on mathematics, about the love of system and interconnection, and I thought that that could have a been a nice way of thinking of serial music, how most - or all - of a piece can be related back to a row or rows it's based on, or that at its most general, everything bears some relation to everything else.

[ChandlersFord]

Finished Waiting Period by Huber Selby Jnr. today - his final novel, and not one of his better ones. Tedious, in fact.

Just started reading Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler - though have Chinua Achebe's African Trilogy to fall back should the Fuhrer prove a bit .... too much.

[Petrushka]

Finished Waiting Period by Huber Selby Jnr. today - his final novel, and not one of his better ones. Tedious, in fact.

Just started reading Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler - though have Chinua Achebe's African Trilogy to fall back should the Fuhrer prove a bit .... too much.

Which edition of Mein Kampf do you have? Presumably an English translation? I have the 1969 Hutchinson edition translated by Ralph Manheim. Fascinating in its way as a historical document but a pretty turgid read and I never did get to the end.

[ChandlersFord]

Which edition of Mein Kampf do you have? Presumably an English translation? I have the 1969 Hutchinson edition translated by Ralph Manheim. Fascinating in its way as a historical document but a pretty turgid read and I never did get to the end.

The same translation, but published by Pimlico.

Apparently, Mannheim virtually disavowed his version in later years, feeling it was 'inaccurate'. From what I can gather, not being a fluent German speaker, anyone attempting to translate this really does have their work cut out for them - Hitler gifted several words to the German language ('Willensmeinung' being one of them - apparently meaning 'the opinion of the will'!) as well as being a terrible, turgid writer of prose. Worse than Wagner, in fact.

I've no idea whether I'll finish it. AH's habit of breaking off the narrative to have a rant about something - usually the fact that Austria isn't a part of Germany - is highly off-putting.

[jayne lee wilson]

In hospital recently, I had to mitigate the tedium of the long, long nights. Oh, the relief as dawn rose and the hospital hummed and whirred and trollied back into action. Breakfast soon! ,
I could see the sunrise each morning from my bed, it came up just behind a giant turbine.

So I pondered the Booker Shortlist. I came up with Elizabeth Strout and Alan Garner.
I loved Strout's "Oh, William!" and didn't realise it was part of a trilogy until I got home. So I've just finished the first one, "My Name is Lucy Barton"; now on to "Anything is Possible". (A 4th is just out...)

Her prose is so clear and direct, but modulates smoothly into devastating insights into self, others, children, relationships, partners and ex-partners, family and personal history; how all those outer influences inescapably shape our inner worlds.

Alan Garner's "Treacle Walker" was a strange adventure, partly inspired by Kids' Comics, set in a countryside of mythical cuckoo-calls and humanoids made from mud and trees and water; stones and marbles take on a symbolic resonance; the train which passes by the house each day is called "Noony". At once very earthy yet fantastical; the prose simply cadenced but with invented words and gnomic formulations. I finished somewhat baffled, but - creatively! Perhaps I'll try again.

[Bella Kemp]

I hope all is well with you now, Jayne. Your first sentence reminded me of:
'Nearly midnight. The hour when an invalid, who has been obliged to set out on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel, awakened by a sudden spasm, sees with glad
relief a streak of daylight showing under his door. Thank God, it is morning! The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring, and someone will come to look after
him. The thought of being assuaged gives him strength to endure his pain. He is certain he heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath
his door is extinguished. It is midnight; someone has just turned down the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night suffering without remedy.'
I won't insult the intelligence of forumistas by identifying the source of this passage. I can't pretend, however to have read the whole epic, but have read these first pages many times and they always move me deeply