What are you reading now?

[Barbirollians]

That happens to be no more that a handy coincidence. I have been absent since Christmas Eve, and I'm reporting back.I thought I would start by updating my reading history - hence the lucky starting point.

Last new year I bought several books and borrowed one from the library.The borrowed one was Daniel Deronda, which I enjoyed immensely and which took me until September to finish. The others were a Michael Connolly LAPD police and courtroom drama, a Mick Herron spy thriller - new kid on the block for me - Rory Stewart's Politics on the edge and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger which I have recently started.

I plan to do something similar this New Year with my book tokens - my first pick being to buy Daniel Deronda, which I have ordered in the same edition as the borrowed copy. This time though I won't exactly be starting 'in res media' as the introduction and notes are extremely helpful. By the way, I am a big fan of George Eliot - devotee is a better word - and Daniel Deronda is a big challenge to Middlemarch. I need to read it again.

If anyone is asking I have been the victim of the worst dose ever which still enfolds me but which is, I think, slowly receding. Energy low but spirit reaching upwards. I hope you all have managed to miss this particular visitor.

Happy New Year

Glad to hear you are on the mend . I recall finding DD harder to read than Middlemarch but I found it a very satisfying read in the end . I remain fond of Adam Bede,Silas Marner and Felix Holt the Radical . To my shame although I have read it I have no memory of Romola at all.

[Padraig]

Thank you John, Historian and Barbirollians for your kind wishes and literary comments. I'm particularly gratified to read encouraging views of George Eliot's novels from people who enjoyed them. I have read only two - Middlemarch in my Fifties and Daniel Deronda just recently. I have a vague memory of Silas Marner but Middlemarch took over my reading for two or three years - and the odd re-reading since. When I posted that I was going to read Daniel Deronda last year and asked for opinions I indirectly received the most remarkable encouragement from 'a friend of the Forum' who claimed it was the best book ever read. That stood by me through my Oddyssey.

[Historian]

There was a good film of Esther Waters in the days of the great British black-and-white era (1948), Kathleen Ryan , and Dirk Bogarde in his first screen role. It turns up on TPTV (channel 82) occasionally.

Thank you for the tip: I will keep an eye out.

[Master Jacques]

I'm surprised that nobody (in the posts I've glanced at) mentions The Mill on the Floss, which in many ways is not only her hardest hitting, but also most 'perfect' novel, with a scarcely-contained anger about the repression of intelligent girls in favour of dull-witted boys which the years have not dimmed.

As for me, I'd recommend an oddity I finished reading yesterday:

Three Men in New Suits
J. B. Priestley, 1945

Written immediately before his most complex and rounded achievement, Bright Day, the date on this is significant. We're in 1945, with three soldiers returning from the war in their new, ill-fitting civvy suits. The short narrative relates their varied experiences of return, welcome and feelings of alienation. Despite their major social differences - as sensitive aristocrat, thoughtful yeomen farmer and inarticulate quarryman - they find that they can more easily talk to one another than to to their families or anyone else.

Priestley's narrative is beautifully-structured, his characterisations true, his writing vivid. Only his "pamphleteering" in the last few pages (essentially "vote Labour") strikes a creakily Utopian note, eighty years on. Recommended.

[Sir Velo]

I'm surprised that nobody (in the posts I've glanced at) mentions The Mill on the Floss, which in many ways is not only her hardest hitting, but also most 'perfect' novel,

I don't know re Middlemarch being G. Eliot's best, but then that means I will have to re-read Mill on the Floss because I thought that was!

I'm a George Eliot doubter. I couldn't get into The MIll on the Floss. The characters just didn't interest me.

[smittims]

Thanks for that notice of Priestley, Master Jaques. That sounds interesting to me.

The phenomenon of adjusting to post-war life was a theme for several films and books at the time but has largely, I suppose, been forgotten now it's no longer topical. Many ex-servicemen had had no adult life before the war and simply didn't know what to do. Some just blew their war-serivice gratuity on long-desired luxuries and then probably settled for a dead-end job; others prospered, like the two chaps who had the idea of buying up bombed-sites and turning them into car-parks. They ended up selling National Car Parks for millions. 'You gotta have vision , my son. See?'

[vinteuil]

George Moore, Esther Waters, 1894. Influenced by French writers such as Zola, Moore wrote the history of an illiterate young woman in the 1870s who has a baby son while unmarried. Despite many disappointments she manages to look after her son and survive. Moore received much criticism at the time, partly because of its focus on behaviour and aspects of lower-class which the Lending Libraries considered 'unsuitable', but the book was a success and made his name. I found it very interesting as an early realistic study of working life, especially of servants, from a woman's point of view.

I have been trying to read more widely with the aim of discovering authors and works of which I was not aware before. Esther Waters was a major find for me. I expect there will be others here who know it better than I did.

... you might enjoy Mrs Gaskell's Ruth [1853], which engages with the same subject a generation earlier. Mme v has just finished it, and is now considering starting Esther Waters...

.

[Master Jacques]

Thanks for that notice of Priestley, Master Jaques. That sounds interesting to me.

The more so, I suspect, as it has some interesting material on Das Lied von der Erde, plus guest appearances from Bruckner ... and Delius's Violin Concerto!

One of the little things I noticed, was that Priestley always talks about "music", never about "classical music" or any of that sort of nonsense. More evidence that the term didn't really exist (in its generalised rather than specific sense) until rather recently.

[Petrushka]

I'm surprised that nobody (in the posts I've glanced at) mentions The Mill on the Floss, which in many ways is not only her hardest hitting, but also most 'perfect' novel, with a scarcely-contained anger about the repression of intelligent girls in favour of dull-witted boys which the years have not dimmed.

As for me, I'd recommend an oddity I finished reading yesterday:

Three Men in New Suits
J. B. Priestley, 1945

Written immediately before his most complex and rounded achievement, Bright Day, the date on this is significant. We're in 1945, with three soldiers returning from the war in their new, ill-fitting civvy suits. The short narrative relates their varied experiences of return, welcome and feelings of alienation. Despite their major social differences - as sensitive aristocrat, thoughtful yeomen farmer and inarticulate quarryman - they find that they can more easily talk to one another than to to their families or anyone else.

Priestley's narrative is beautifully-structured, his characterisations true, his writing vivid. Only his "pamphleteering" in the last few pages (essentially "vote Labour") strikes a creakily Utopian note, eighty years on. Recommended.

I've got a 1938 edition of Priestley's 'English Journey' to be read as well as a 1950's edition of 'Angel Pavement' somewhere in the house which frustratingly can't be found. I didn't think Priestley was much read nowadays but it's good to see him get a mention here.

[DracoM]

Another 'Michael Innes' detective puzzle - 'An Awkward Lie' - lovely bedtime reading!

[Historian]

... you might enjoy Mrs Gaskell's Ruth [1853], which engages with the same subject a generation earlier. Mme v has just finished it, and is now considering starting Esther Waters...

Thank you. Don't know Ruth, so will put that on the list. When (if) Mme V. reads EW I would be interested in any comparisons she cares to make.

[smittims]

I'm sure you're right about 'classical music', Master Jaques. I dont recall its use on Radio 3 before about 1998 when I heard Petroc Trelawney telling us that Handel's Messiah was 'an important piece if English classical music'. I often think that's when the dumbing-down began.

Having finished A Passage to India I'm now re-reading Parson Woodforde's diary, vol. 5 (the last ), 1797-1801. iT's much loved forthe deatil it gives of everyday life, what time people got up and went to bed, what they had for dinner, what they did when visiting friends, how they got on with their servants, etc.

[HighlandDougie]

Pedantry on my part (sorry!) but, courtesy of a shameless lift from the Classic FM website,

“People use this word (i.e. classical) to describe music that isn’t jazz or popular songs or folk music, just because there isn’t any other word that seems to describe it better,” the great composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said in an instalment of TV’s Young People’s Concerts, broadcast in January 1959."

As a term, it seems to have been around for quite some time, even in its generalised form. Not, I think, invented by Petroc T.

[french frank]

Pedantry on my part (sorry!) but, courtesy of a shameless lift from the Classic FM website,

“People use this word (i.e. classical) to describe music that isn’t jazz or popular songs or folk music, just because there isn’t any other word that seems to describe it better,” the great composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said in an instalment of TV’s Young People’s Concerts, broadcast in January 1959."

As a term, it seems to have been around for quite some time, even in its generalised form. Not, I think, invented by Petroc T.

Looking through the OED definitions, I'd conclude that it gained its more generalised meaning with the postwar explosion of 'popular music'.(1947 By popular art we mean creative work that measures success by the size of its audience and the profit it brings to its makers.). The term 'classical music' filled a vacuum to mean 'art music' rather than music with a broad popular appeal.

[pastoralguy]

I picked up a lovely copy of Murakami’s book ‘Absolutely on Music’ which appears to be a series of conversations with the late Seiji Ozawa. Looking forward to starting it tonite after our Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert.