What are you reading now?

[Petrushka]

Currently re-reading John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I'm a devotee of the brilliant 1979 BBC TV adaptation having seen it umpteen times but not yet seen the film. Even though I know the story backwards (or perhaps because of it) I'm still finding it a compulsive page-turner.

[Richard Tarleton]

Currently re-reading John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I'm a devotee of the brilliant 1979 BBC TV adaptation having seen it umpteen times but not yet seen the film. Even though I know the story backwards (or perhaps because of it) I'm still finding it a compulsive page-turner.

Yes. Le Carré's prose continues to mature, like a great vintage. This is one of his books that bears periodic re-reading - like a great game of chess, eminently satisfying even though you know how it ends.

[Don Basilio]

Dickens published all his novels in parts, like many of his contemporaries.

If they look daunting, you could try reading them in monthly episodes, as originally read. I read Thackery's The Newcomes that way. The trouble is, as ff says, you forget who Lady Kew is or was.

I read Dombey and Son recently. The opening third is wonderful but one Dickens has introduced all the characters (whoever will he come up with next?) my interest tails off.

[french frank]

Well, a quiet weekend has done wonders for Our Mutual Friend (now on p 529 and the threads are beginning to come together). But Lizzie, Lizzie, you won't be betrayed to Bradley Headstone by the Deputy Lock Keeper who is none other than ... Rogue Riderhood, will you?



On coincidences: Betty Higden has wandered far from her native heath and yet in short time she has met with Rogue Riderhood and Lizzie, who have both fetched up (unbeknown to each other?) in the same place ... But on coincidences, I remember hearing Ian McEwan saying (roughly, it was a long time ago) that he used to think coincidences were bad fiction writing but, after all, coincidences do occur in real life so why not in fiction?

[vinteuil]

Well, a quiet weekend has done wonders for Our Mutual Friend (now on p 529 and the threads are beginning to come together).

... but don't you think, in the end, that tho' Dickens's plots are adequate to keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next - what you really remember is the characters - and often the small irrelevant details - like (I repeat myself, but... ) - the Man who said "Esker?" at the Veneerings' table? And Twemlow as the central leaf of that table??

[Globaltruth]

Currently reading The Equilibriad by William Sansom.

A sadly forgotten English writer of short fiction



posted in the vague hope the other fan may be on here....

[marthe]

I've just started The Making of the English Landscape by WG Hoskins (the 1977 edition) complete with an atlas at hand to locate places mentioned in the text.

[Nick Armstrong]

... but don't you think, in the end, that tho' Dickens's plots are adequate to keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next - what you really remember is the characters - and often the small irrelevant details - like (I repeat myself, but... ) - the Man who said "Esker?" at the Veneerings' table? And Twemlow as the central leaf of that table??

Yes! yes! characters and incidents, and the humour!! I agree with earlier posts about Pickwick being purely funny... but I found that the other books were full of the deftest and yet broadest humour. I spent 7 years commuting for work, with a 50 minutes train ride, usually seated - I read just about all the Dickens novels in that time. It was the lightness of touch that I found inspiring, bracing... During that period, the Blackadder series were coming out on TV, and it seemed to me that Dickens was behind it all, the joy of absurd characters, the sublime use of language, the little details repaying repetition time and time again.

And re: the BBC coverage this winter, I was interested and glad to note Ianucci stressing just that aspect of Dickens works. I'll be tuning in with interest.

And I was speaking to someone who's seen it: apparently in the "Great Expectations" on BBC1 (broadcast over three nights after Xmas), Gillian Anderson's 'Miss Havisham' is absolutely mesmerising and heartbreaking.

[Chris Newman]

Currently reading The Equilibriad by William Sansom.

A sadly forgotten English writer of short fiction

posted in the vague hope the other fan may be on here....

As a teacher I often used Samson's first short story The Wall in conjunction with Ambrose Bierce's Occurrence at Owl Creek to show those amazing literary moments when time stands still. Samson writes for some four pages as he and Fireman Flower play water on a blitzed London warehouse and describes everything in the scene as the wall falls onto them and their fellow firefighters. I won't give it away.

[french frank]

... but don't you think, in the end, that tho' Dickens's plots are adequate to keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next - what you really remember is the characters - and often the small irrelevant details - like (I repeat myself, but... ) - the Man who said "Esker?" at the Veneerings' table? And Twemlow as the central leaf of that table??

Yes, the characters are such characters. It wasn't that I had no memory of Twemlow but couldn't think where he fitted in to what I'd just been reading - I could remember the characters grouped around him, in their own environment, but was surprised to find they were all in this novel. And up pops Fledgeby again, still feeling his face for a sign of whiskers appearing. And the Person of the House, constantly scolding her naughty child and everyone else whose conduct she disapproves of. And the terrible Mrs Wilfer. They are, I suppose, caricatures, rather than developed characters, but always familiar because of the consistent features.

[salymap]

Currently re-reading John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I'm a devotee of the brilliant 1979 BBC TV adaptation having seen it umpteen times but not yet seen the film. Even though I know the story backwards (or perhaps because of it) I'm still finding it a compulsive page-turner.

Oh that was very odd Petrushka. i was just about to post almost the same message. Am reading TTSS for the umpteenth time and don't know that I want to see the new film, having videod seven hours of the BBC production. If people have different personalities in the film it may change my view of the original.

[Anna]

It was a 4-log evening. Tonight the back parlour with the stove - good for griddling crumpets, keeping the soup pot warm and over brewing abominable coffee .

Frenchie, wot wiv yer 4 log-hevening in your front parlour, all respectable like, and then your cosy back parlour, stays loosened, and them crumpets, griddled, (oh fair toasted they was Yer Honour, to a turn, crisp, and the soup, shall I expound upon the soup, I swear there was a flavour of weal chops about it) I quite believe you possibly may be a character out of Dickens!!

[vinteuil]

- what you really remember is the characters - and often the small irrelevant details -

... not just Dickens, of course. I recall much enjoying Henry James's The Ambassadors - but what do I remember from the 430 pages? Well, the narrator sitting opposite Mme de Vionnet over intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates with a bottle of straw-coloured chablis... and not a lot more

[Flay]

As a teacher I often used Sanson's first short story The Wall in conjunction with Ambrose Bierce's Occurrence at Owl Creek to show those amazing literary moments when time stands still. Samson writes for some four pages as he and Fireman Flower play water on a blitzed London warehouse and describes everything in the scene as the wall falls onto them and their fellow firefighters. I won't give it away.

I had never heard of him. There are previews here.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stories-William-Sansom-ebook/dp/B0056MYYNQ#reader_B0056MYYNQ

"....That long second held me hypnotized, rubber boots cemented to the pavement. Ton upon ton of red-hot brick hovering in the air above us numbed all initiative. I could only think. I couldn’t move."

Should I be asking Santa for a Kindle?

[vinteuil]

I could remember Twemlow was friend of Veneering, and the whole dinner-party crowd;

Edmund Wilson flagged up Proust's indebtedness to Our Mutual Friend - with the Verdurin circle cribbed from the Veneerings, and Saniette taking on the rôle of Twemlow. But the Verdurins are of course magnificently more ghastly than the Veneerings - and Proust was much crueller to Saniette than Dickens is to poor Twemlow...