What are you reading now?

[Anna]

well, of course not. Jaggers has to be our very own Caliban, n'est-ce pas?

Oh, I'm so glad you said that - I thought it but didn't have the nerve to say so!!

Edit: Ams, surely that pic is Caliban to a T, complete with hat!!

[Nick Armstrong]

well, of course not. Jaggers has to be our very own Caliban, n'est-ce pas?

Oh, I'm so glad you said that - I thought it but didn't have the nerve to say so!!

Edit: Ams, surely that pic is Caliban to a T, complete with hat!!

haha sadly Anna neither the hat nor the 'tache correspond to the reality. If anything, the mountainous form of Mr Coltrane is closer to the truth though I gather he is a mere 6' 1"....

[Nick Armstrong]

Me, in my younger days I always hoped I might be Dr Casaubon. Sadly I now realise I will only ever be Mr Brooke...

Oh vindetable, surely not!!

[amateur51]

haha sadly Anna neither the hat nor the 'tache correspond to the reality. If anything, the mountainous form of Mr Coltrane is closer to the truth though I gather he is a mere 6' 1"....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REqmCRh8NwE

[Nick Armstrong]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REqmCRh8NwE

The 'Cracker' connection is arguably a trifle tenuous but the gags made me chuckle

[amateur51]

The 'Cracker' connection is arguably a trifle tenuous but the gags made me chuckle

Tenuous? Tenuous??? Don't you use your lawyerly wiles with me, Sir!

Pick the tenuous out of this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOm9x8GSuXI

Robbie Coltrane IS Cracker!

[Anna]

Just to continue the Dickens theme, good news! Over Christmas on BBC1 a new 3 part adaptation of Great Expectations. Ray Winstone plays the Magwitch and David Suchet is Jaggers. Gillian Anderson is Miss Havisham (she was brilliant as Lady Dedlock in Bleak House I thought) Douglas Booth is Pip (I wonder if he's a bit too pretty to be Pip?) Anyway, certainly something to look forward to. Cannot as yet find who is cast as Estella.

Edit: And we are to have Edwin Drood in the New Year, with Freddie Fox,

[DracoM]

Belinda Bauer/ Darkside.
Complex, page turner, fast moving policier in more senses than one with an incredible ending. Set on Exmoor and environs in winter. Top read.

[amateur51]

Belinda Bauer/ Darkside.
Complex, page turner, fast moving policier in more senses than one with an incredible ending. Set on Exmoor and environs in winter. Top read.

Thanks for the tip DracoM - I enjoyed her first novel Blacklands - it has moments of improbability but the tremendous tension and momentum that she builds up carries you through - well, it did for me

[tony yyy]

I've finally finished Book 9 of Herodotus. Book 8 next, perhaps.

[Don Basilio]

I've just finished Rhoda Broughton's Cometh up as the Flower.

I was unfamiliar with Miss Broughton's writings until recommended by Mr Grew elsewhere.

Considerably more tart in taste than Trollope or Charlotte M Younge. I will pick up anything else by Miss B if I see it in a second hand shop.

[amateur51]

I heard one episode of Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi read by Derek Jacobi on Book At Bedtime (I think) and knew that I had to read it to find out what happens.

A quirky (it features a protagonist whose answer to every disturbance in his life is to eat an omelette aux fines herbes ) relatively short novel translated from Italian into English with some skill and with some memorable characters, it leaves you wanting to know what happened next.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

just finished Debt The First 5000 years by David Graeber ... an indispensable original work ... it has to be read and understood before one can even begin to approach what the hell is going on ...

here is an interview with Graeber

[old khayyam]

'Lifting The Veil' by Piers Dudgeon.

[Sparafucile]

Just started Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, by Peter Hoeg.