What are you reading now?

[Idamante]

I always think Defoe sounds much, much more exciting on paper than he actually is to read.

I agree with that. I also saw an interesting comment on Defoe that compared him to a modern tabloid journalist - making money from scandalous subject matter and yet at the same time presenting himself as a guardian of public morality.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I know this is cheating a bit, but for the last few days, I've been reading back copies The Pianist magazine, bought for a pittance at a charity shop. Most interesting.

[Don Basilio]

I agree with that. I also saw an interesting comment on Defoe that compared him to a modern tabloid journalist - making money from scandalous subject matter and yet at the same time presenting himself as a guardian of public morality.

That makes me a bit smug. I remember years ago choosing to do an essay Defoe, and my tutor agreeing with my comparison of him to a tabloid journalist, expressing disapproval while doing his best to excite prurient interest. Moll and Roxana are both totally unconvincing when they express conventional "repentence" after their careers are done. Moll in particular is living off the result of her previous life. Although Defoe makes it fairly clear that she had little alternative.

More interest as social history than a novel, methinks. Captain Singleton makes the life of a pirate sound like accountancy.

[Tragoedia]

J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man.

How not to live your life.

[eucalyptus44]

DracoM I've just finished a four month feast on Gaskell's books. Although the subject matter of Ruth was brave and forward thinking, I thought the eponymous heroine was faintly cloying in her perfection. Absolutely loved both North and South as well as Wives and Daughters. The Jenny Uglow biography of Gaskell is also excellent. I listened to Prunella Scales' unabridged reading of Wives and Daughters and admired the way she brought out the subtleties of each character. (There's a whole new thread here: Discuss the relative merits of reading and of listening to unabridged books......)

Vinteuil - with your screen name are you a Proust fan?

Am now reading Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

[Don Basilio]

I was very taken with Brooklyn, and I've gone on to read all of Colm Tóibín, bar The South and The Master.

I read Mary Barton this spring. I get the impression Elizabeth Gaskell would probably the nicest person to know among classic English novelists (Jane Austen a bitch, Charlotte Bronte too intense, George Eliot a bore, Charles Dickens too bouncy). The reconciliation of master and plebs was too pat, but a humane work all the same.

[marthe]

Bax of Delights and marthe

Looks as if we share a certain aversion to 'the Russians'! Like BoD I have the Bros. Karamazov gathering dust on the bookshelves and judging by the spinal damage to those venerable black Penguins, I must have read it, but also like BoD I cant remember a word.

I went to see what else I had in the way of Russian literature, with the dawning realisation that I had once struggled through quite a lot of it and then hadnt thought about it for an instant in the last forty-odd years. Very well thumbed copies of The Idiot, The Devils and Crime And Punishment. Also Gogol's Dead Souls and Tolstoy's Resurrection, but not War And Peace or Anna Karenina: I think I decided I'd save them until I broke a leg, but mercifully I never have.

All my reading has been unguided, I studied science at university and literature was confined to evenings when I was too broke to nip over to the pub. I found most of my fellow science students uninterested in 'heavy' reading, to put it mildly, but was delighted to make one friend who shared my enthusiasms and we sort of urged each other on. His dad was a university librarian and they actually lived in a flat over a library, so he had a certain advantage.

Being rather fond of student life and not too concerned about never having any money, I decided I would stay on and do a higher degree if my exam results turned out well enough. And they did. Oh boy, if you think winter is cold now, I can remember winters in the early seventies when my annual income was a research council grant of seven hundred pounds a year. But I survived, despite once nearly asphyxiating myself with a paraffin heater (I think they must give out carbon monoxide as well as heat, I nearly passed out before I realised what was happening) and landed a job in the lowland tropics of the far East. Whoopee, warm at last! And shortly after I arrived my old mate sent me the first part of Swanns Way, with the inscription "This could be the start of something big." It was, I've been meandering through Proust ever since. Wonderful, the final peroration near the end of Time Regained is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I know, even in translation: it must be magical to be able to read the original french.

No-one seems to have responded to my earlier post enthusing about Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, but I'm still hopeful: surely all you musical people must have read it? I will happily post more if any one is interested, I think it is a masterpiece

umslopogaas,

Sorry I missed this earlier. I actually did like Tolstoy and read some of the books you mention as well as 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina.' W&P was my shield against fellow commuters while taking public transport into the city for a summer job in the early 70s. 'Anna K.' I've read several times. When one of my university friends finished Swann's Way she threw a party at which she served, what else, madeleines. One day I'll tackle Proust! At the moment I'm reading Willa Cather's 'My Antonia' having recently read 'Song of the Lark' and 'O Pioneers.'

We haven't yet had cold weather but it's on its way once the wind direction changes from south-easterly to north-westerly. I remember suffocating, smelly paraffin heaters from my time in England...also the gas fire in rented digs that required an endless supply of coins in order to get a feeble bit of heat.

marthe

[rubbernecker]

Just finished Georges Rodenbach's novella Bruges-la-Morte in the translation by Philip Mosley. A mini-masterpiece of symbolist literature, first published in 1892 and more recently re-worked as a source for the libretto of Korngold's Die Tote Stadt. It hauntingly chronicles one man's quasi-religious obsession with his dead wife, externalised in the landscape and architecture of the defunct city of Bruges. After several years he meets a dancer who resembles his wife in physical appearance and he in turn becomes obsessed with her. I am sure Thomas Mann was heavily influenced by this work in writing Death in Venice, published 20 years later. The sickness of the city, Aschenbach's inertia, and his inability to see the folly of his refusal to remove himself from the object of his obsession, are all weirdly similar.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

umslopogaas,

I actually did like Tolstoy and read some of the books you mention as well as 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina.' W&P was my shield against fellow commuters while taking public transport into the city for a summer job in the early 70s.

marthe

I know I must sound a bit of a philistine, marthe, but can I ask how one gets into Tolstoy? I've tried jotting down the characters' names as they appear, but I still get confused, and I've started War & Peace 3 or 4 times. No other book has ever defeated me.

[DoNothing]

What a great thread! I quite enjoyed Pamela. Quite. Not desperate to read any more Richardson, though. I think I may even have skipped a few bits... I am curious about Sir Charles though. I'm planning to get round to The Vicar of Wakefield at some point; another book that was massive at the time but is little read now

I read Castle Rackrent in my teens before I really got to know and love Jane (she's quite my favourite re-read.) I can't remember the details, but I'd have thought the big difference is that Edgeworth indicates people living in real poverty, whereas nobody in Austen gets poorer than Mrs Smith in Persuasion.
t.

That sounds very interesting, I'm definitely going to start reading some Edgeworth. I was reading about an ordinary person's diet in Surrey circa Austen's time in Kate Coloquhon's Taste recently. It was a sobering alternative existence that that of the characters of Emma.

I read recently that Austen is one of the most re-read authors. She re-reads so well, I find, with new layers revealing themselves in each new reading.

[QUOTE=Don Basilio;8425 I always think Defoe sounds much, much more exciting on paper than he actually is to read. He manages to make all these adventures sound so mundane. [/QUOTE]

I haven't read any Defoe, but I remember my tutor saying the same thing about Moll. So you can enjoy some more smugness!

DracoM I've just finished a four month feast on Gaskell's books. Although the subject matter of Ruth was brave and forward thinking, I thought the eponymous heroine was faintly cloying in her perfection.

This pretty much how I felt about Mary Barton, although Mary does make a few redeeming mistakes. I've been feeling a bit guilty for enjoying the novel less than Trollope's Barchester novels. It's years since I read it, but I remember her father being a much more interesting character than Mary.

I listened to Prunella Scales' unabridged reading of Wives and Daughters and admired the way she brought out the subtleties of each character.

I LOVE Prunella Scales' subtle and sympathetic reading of Emma. I've listened to it many times (I'm a bit guilty about that too); my OH and I are listening together at the mo., and to his surprise, he's enjoying it. He's a fan of Knightly.

DracoM The Jenny Uglow biography of Gaskell is also excellent.

Oooh good, I've just picked up a copy of her George Eliot biog in a charity shop.

(There's a whole new thread here: Discuss the relative merits of reading and of listening to unabridged books......)[/I]

Excellent idea!

[verismissimo]

I'm going to give Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson another go. Any reports?

[marthe]

Hello Eine Alpensinfonie,

'War and Peace' was a one-shot read for me. I've not gone back to it since I first read it. At the time, I was interested in all things Russian so had some motivation to stick with it, boring bits and all. Also my father explained to me the system of using patronymics and nicknames in Russia. In those terms, W&P isn't nearly as deadly as Sigrid Undset's 'Kristin Lavransdatter,' a book which did defeat me! Bondarchuck's film version of W&P was out at this time and helped me keep the story straight and give faces to names.

marthe

[Idamante]

I read 'War & Peace' at the time of the BBC series. I don't think I did it justice so I intend to read it again fairly soon.

re 18th century novelists I'd suggest Henry Fielding. Try 'Joseph Andrews' first and if you like that go on to 'Tom Jones' which is similar but longer.

Another 18th century novel, which I would recommend to anyone, is Voltaire's 'Candide'

[eucalyptus44]

can I ask how one gets into Tolstoy?

The way in to War and Peace might be listening to it rather than reading it - unless you think that's cheating. Is it just me or have others noticed a diminution in their reading stamina as one ages? I could tackle practically anything when younger in a life where there weren't so many shiny and bewitching distractions. My great joy now is the ipod and a steady diet of unabridged books to which I listen early in the morning when the mind is as fresh and clear as it's ever going to get. Neville Jason's reading of War and Peace (Naxos) is subtle, sympathetic and keeps one fully engaged throughout its 70+ hours. He also cracked A La Recherche for me too (abridged, but 39 CDs is enough to keep one going) His interpretation of M de Charlus is wonderful. The scenes just seem to hang in the mind long after one's finished listening.

Just think Alpen, you could do two hours on Listz in preparation for the Sparky recital and then have a guilt-free hour listening to War and Peace!

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

The way in to War and Peace might be listening to it rather than reading it - unless you think that's cheating... Neville Jason's reading of War and Peace (Naxos) is subtle, sympathetic and keeps one fully engaged throughout its 70+ hours.

I agree, eucalyptus. Last year, I read War and Peace, having attempted it several times in my late teens/ early twenties, but also listened to chapters from the Naxos unabridged recording on the iPod as I walked to work.