What are you reading now?

[JasonPalmer]

I have been reading todays telegraph, i havent bought a paper in a long time and had spare time today. Excellent paper with in depth reporting on current affairs.

[Jonathan]

Last night, I finished my old university friends second novel - it's brilliant. It's called The Talents 2: Fugitives and Pioneers...

[Bella Kemp]

The Iliad in the new Emily Wilson translation. It seemed the appropriate time for a re-read - hostages, a besieged city, invasion, hideous slaughter.

[JasonPalmer]

Read a book about the julia language earlier, think i will spend a few days when wife in london on the home computer playing with code.

[PatrickMurtha]

Time to tackle a biggie. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom.

Astonishing prose - Shakespearean - like "Out, out brief candle." or "What a piece of work is man." Faulkner could turn a good phrase.

At first I thought - this is too gothic for me. But I'm completely seduced. I'm up to Chapter Five - Rosa. Just amazing prose! Who cares whether it makes sense? Not me! I really don't want to spoil the experience with close reading or philosophical analysis, I just want to enjoy the music of it, the poetry of it.

I read quite a bit of Faulkner in (Southern) literature classes at university and grad school, but it has been years and I am just getting back to him now. I recently finished Light in August (first time) and then started Go Down, Moses (which I had read parts but not all of). I should re-read Absalom, Absalom! As I Lay Dying is a great favorite, and like Light in August, is a good “starter Faulkner”.

I am a completist, so of course I hope to get to everything, but I am a completist for EVERYONE, which makes that difficult.

[PatrickMurtha]

Despite, or perhaps because of, reading Eng Lit at university, I struggle with the didactic novels of the 19th century, "loose, baggy monsters" as they have been described. GE appears to be top (or bottom, depending on one's POV) of the pile in this respect. I certainly read a lot less fiction than as an undergraduate, and these days look for entertainment or instruction in areas in which I have limited knowledge but interest. Currently reading, in an admittedly dilatory way, Fort Amity by Arthur Quiller Couch ("Q"), a writer I suspect few will have heard of these days. A strange hybrid work of factual history though with clear overtones of the Leatherstocking novels of Fenimore Cooper, it definitely merits more than just a footnote in the annals of literary history. There are some striking descriptive passages and the historical background to the conflict and the first nations ambiguous involvement therein is meticulously researched, as befits a former Oxbridge professor. There is also little of the racial stereotyping which mars some of Q's other writings, and the native Americans are presented plausibly but without condescension or overly romanticising.

Ah, this sounds right up my alley. I have long been aware of Q, but don’t believe I’ve read anything by him. I’m a big fan of James Fenimore Cooper, currently reading his The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, about King Philip’s War in the late 17th Century.

[PatrickMurtha]

As a keen reader of the 1970 Latham unexpurgated edition when it first appeared, I was amused by Stuart Sim's remark in his 800-page single volume reissue of the 1825 Braybroke version that ' the ommission of the sexual passages is not necessarily detrimental to the work as a whole'.

I am well into the first volume of the Latham edition. Give me the smut. 🙂

I read a lot of books “at once”. Among those I’ve recently finished:

Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World (on to 4th volume of A Dance)
Émile Zola, His Excellency Eugène Rougon (on to 3rd volume of Rougon-Macquart)
George Gissing, New Grub Street
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love (should be called “Men in Love with Each Other”)
William Shakespeare, Coriolanus
Goethe, Faust, Parts One and Two (tr. Stuart Atkins)
James Hilton, Random Harvest
George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

[PatrickMurtha]

Been doing a few classics recently, including Under the Greenwood Tree, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and currently Tom Sawyer.
not quite sure what to make of the Mark Twain, in which the plot has just taken a nasty and dramatic turn for the worse……!!

I am reading the Hardy novels that I haven’t read in order, and recently finished Under the Greenwood Tree, on A Pair of Blue Eyes now. Re-read Tom Sawyer just a little while ago, as well.

[french frank]

I was lent The New Puritans by Andrew Doyle, and as I suspected am finding it hard going, mainly because I'm so out of sympathy with his entire undertaking. He writes for the Spectator and has, apparently, a programme on GBNews. The book in the quoted blurb has a good write-up as a solid, well-argued work (I suspect by people who hold the same views as he does). For me the challenge is to understand where I think his argument falls down (it has pages and pages of footnotes). But 300 pages of the stuff: I'm not sure I'll make it to the end

My unargued, unreasoned knee-jerk reaction is that it's an anti-"woke" rant which I'd do better to forget about and start on the other book I was lent: Guy Shrubsole's The Lost Rainforests of Britain (btw I'm taking bets on at what page I shall give up on The New Puritans). I was looking for a Guardian review to validate my uneducated opinion but I can't find one

[RichardB]

Good to know there's an authoritative book on this subject. I've recently come to love the Spanish school: Cabezon, Guerrero, Lobo, Morales and, of course, towering above them as S.Paul's does the other Wren churches, Victoria.

The Iberian branch of Renaissance polyphony isn't given as much room in the book as perhaps one might think it should have, but the author does give his apologies for having had to fit an enormous subject into a relatively small book, for example omitting any mention of developments in the New World.

I have just started Naomi Klein's latest book Doppelganger (sic), about the way misinformation and untruths spread through the internet in general, and how this has affected her and her work in particular (since she is so often confused with conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf). It didn't seem on the face of it that it would be particularly interesting in comparison with some of her essential works like No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, but she always writes in a way that draws the reader in and encourages them to take a fresh view of the subject in hand.

[richardfinegold]

I read quite a bit of Faulkner in (Southern) literature classes at university and grad school, but it has been years and I am just getting back to him now. I recently finished Light in August (first time) and then started Go Down, Moses (which I had read parts but not all of). I should re-read Absalom, Absalom! As I Lay Dying is a great favorite, and like Light in August, is a good “starter Faulkner”.

I am a completist, so of course I hope to get to everything, but I am a completist for EVERYONE, which makes that difficult.

Light In August is the most readable Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury is a struggle, certainly in the first section, but one that reaps dividends.

[Mandryka]

I read quite a bit of Faulkner in (Southern) literature classes at university and grad school, but it has been years and I am just getting back to him now. I recently finished Light in August (first time) and then started Go Down, Moses (which I had read parts but not all of). I should re-read Absalom, Absalom! As I Lay Dying is a great favorite, and like Light in August, is a good “starter Faulkner”.

I am a completist, so of course I hope to get to everything, but I am a completist for EVERYONE, which makes that difficult.

I very much enjoyed The Bear in Go Down Moses - I’ve been meaning to read the other stories in the book for a while, I will do so soon.

After reading Absalom Absalom, it felt like a good idea to read about the biblical David, so I’m half way through Robert Alter’s translation of Samuel I and II. The big thing I’ve got out of it so far is what a thoroughly immoral, evil, person god is.

[PatrickMurtha]

Light In August is the most readable Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury is a struggle, certainly in the first section, but one that reaps dividends.

The Sound and the Fury is coming up shortly for me, first-time read, perhaps right after Go Down, Moses.

I was surprised by how unproblematic Light in August is. Moving, too.I would recommend it heartily to everyone.

[PatrickMurtha]

I very much enjoyed The Bear in Go Down Moses - I’ve been meaning to read the other stories in the book for a while, I will do so soon.

After reading Absalom Absalom, it felt like a good idea to read about the biblical David, so I’m half way through Robert Alter’s translation of Samuel I and II. The big thing I’ve got out of it so far is what a thoroughly immoral, evil, person god is.

I am reading the King James Bible * , partly out of guilt that I had never undertaken it in full, and well, I agree with your assessment of the Big Guy. 😏

* The current Oxford paperback edition, which is very good.

[Mandryka]

The Sound and the Fury is coming up shortly for me, first-time read, perhaps right after Go Down, Moses.

I was surprised by how unproblematic Light in August is. Moving, too.I would recommend it heartily to everyone.

I know someone else who speaks highly of Light in August, so I will be reading it soon. For Sound and Fury, it’s challenging because the first chapter is a sort of stream of consciousness in the head of a teenager with moderate learning difficulties. So I guess many people don’t get past the first chapter. I think the whole book is really musical - it really becomes so much clearer when read aloud. There’s a good audiobook!