What are you reading now?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

. The other Bede volume is another Penguin one, The Age of Bede, and includes his life of Cuthbert, which is of course relevant to the Moorhouse book and the Durham scene.

That was the "another Penguin Classic" I referred to earlier but which for some reason (!) I forgot to name. I'm sure you'll enjoy them both.

Best Wishes.

[marthe]

Sparafucile, I came to read the Moorhouse book because I saw it in the new books section of the local library. I had been reading a biography of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and wanted to read about events that would have been in the cultural memory, though not the living memory, of the early English settlers of New England. Newport, RI was first settled in 1639, 100 years after the monastery at Durham was dissolved.

[french frank]

I listened to th Night Waves discussion on Our Mutual Friend ("last week's brilliant Night Waves about Our Mutual Friend!" as R3 tweeted). It was a typically unstructured Night Waves with Philip Dodd throwing out thoughts and the guests responding. Radio 3 doesn't seem to have much time for specialists putting together a talk and covering the major points in a logical order. That would be much more informative and educational. It's not the kind of topic that benefits from off-the-cuff comments.

[verismissimo]

Haven't visited for a while. So an update.

I’ve recently read two seminal novels on the Bohemian movement – Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème and George du Maurier’s Trilby. The former is set in 1840s Paris. The latter in Paris and London in the following decade. Both deal with artists living the Art for Art’s Sake ideal. But there the similarity ends.

Murger’s Bohemians are young, uninhibited, penniless and witty. Most of du Maurier’s are rich and high-born, merely pretending to be the real thing ‒ and there’s not a skerrick of wit between them. Murger’s prose bounds along joyfully, where du Maurier’s is lumpen.

Of course, La vie de bohème was written and published when the movement was young, whereas Trilby was composed in retrospect in the 1890s, fifty years later, embracing prudish late-Victorian values. Irritatingly, in Trilby du Maurier denounces “bourgeois” values and “philistines”, while managing to be consistently both of these.

My sense is that, although Trilby is still widely read, the lead character Svengali well-known, Murger’s Bohemia is only recognised these days as the book behind Puccini’s still very popular opera. Cordially recommended.

[DracoM]

Hakan Nesser. Writer of easy to read European crime fiction, but very well written. Good central detective - Van Veeteren.

[french frank]

Gissing again: The House of Cobwebs, published posthumously in 1906 (he died in 1903). These are short stories which mainly deal with Gissing's abiding themes: poverty and failure . He has a quiet way of depicting good, unassuming people who are beaten by cheats and fate, not apparently subjects which make for popular blockbusters these days. Most of the 'stories' are fairly light on plot and focus on the character of a particular person. Hope for the best outcome for them, but expect the worst ...

[vinteuil]

Gissing's abiding themes: poverty and failure / ... / [characters] ... Hope for the best outcome for them, but expect the worst ...

I think this is why, apart from Henry Ryecroft and The Ionian Sea, I now dip into Gissing so seldom. It's just so depressing... (Mind you, the world painted by one of my regular reads - Simenon - ain't always flowers and a bunch of laughs neither... )

Currently rereading various of the Correspondence of Walpole and of Gray. Eighteenth century squalor is more appealing to me than Victorian shabby penury...

[french frank]

more appealing to me than Victorian shabby penury...

Faugh! I model my domestic life on it! Blessed is he that expecteth nothing ...

But perhaps Humphry Clinker next...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

with mouth open and hooked although the Third Reich is brought to life so tellingly that I feel uneasy reading it ... the Berlin Noir Trilogy by Philip Kerr

[vinteuil]

[

more appealing to me than Victorian shabby penury...

Faugh! I model my domestic life on it! Blessed is he that expecteth nothing ...

Currently rereading various of the Correspondence of Walpole and of Gray. Eighteenth century squalor is more appealing to me than Victorian shabby penury...

... ah, well - I think I model my domestic life on eighteenth century squalor. But I think Mme Vinteuil is quite keen to move us on to Victorian shabby penury...

[bluestateprommer]

My sense is that, although Trilby is still widely read, the lead character Svengali well-known, Murger’s [Scènes de la vie de bohème] is only recognised these days as the book behind Puccini’s still very popular opera. Cordially recommended.

I read the Murger a while back as research for a writing project for a local production of La bohème, a pretty vintage translation from one of the London publishing houses, if memory serves. Some of the details definitely got softened in the transformation into the opera.

More recently, am now juggling reading between:
1. Home, Witold Rybczinski
2. The Golden Bowl, Henry James

The former is obviously much easier reading.

[Richard Tarleton]

Am a few chapters into The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco. I greatly enjoyed The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum at the time, re-read both, didn't get on with the next two (I think) that I read. Reviewers bill this as a return to form. Puzzling, so far. Strange little engravings every few pages.....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Reviewers bill this as a return to form.

As far as I'm concerned, Eco has never left the standards he set himself in those early masterpieces (and what a genius to parody The Da Vinci Code 12 years before Dan Brown wrote it!) - The Mysterious Flame of Queen Leona in particular, is a superb work full of humour and compassion and both a gently blistering analysis of life in Fascist Italy and a great hymn to literature, life and popular culture (not to mention Single Malts!). "Reviewers" need to up their game!

Best Wishes.

[Richard Tarleton]

Thanks fhg, I missed that one for some reason, will try it in due course. The Island of the day before and Baudolino were the others I read.

[verismissimo]

Zola's The Masterpiece (L'Oeuvre) which I'm enjoying immensely.