What are you reading now?

[Pianorak]

Thomas Mann: Mario and the Magician

and for some light relief:
Herbert Breslin/Anne Midgette: The King & I. The uncensored tale of Luciano Pavarotti's rise to fame by his manager, friend and sometime adversary.
Herbert Breslin, born October 1 1924, died May 16 2012

[Mandryka]

Thomas Mann: Mario and the Magician

and for some light relief:
Herbert Breslin/Anne Midgette: The King & I. The uncensored tale of Luciano Pavarotti's rise to fame by his manager, friend and sometime adversary.
Herbert Breslin, born October 1 1924, died May 16 2012

I remember enjoying M And The M when I read it, ten years ago: an allegory of fascism, supposedy.

Would love to read the Breslin book. I knew a promoter who tried to present Pavarotti in the UK in the mid-seventies, but got pipped at the post by someon else His memories of LP were entirely positive - 'one of the nicest singers I've ever met'.

[Barbirollians]

umslopogaas - before you give up on The Brothers Karamazov - or even if you do - I do think it's worth reading the "Grand Inquisitor" section ("Volume one; Part two; book five; chapter five" - if you're reading in the penguin (Magarshack) edition, pages 288-310 of vol. 1... ) - it's almost a stand-alone piece, with good stuff in it.

I read Karamazov in my twenties: I am now sixty - I don't think I cd face going through it all again...

I loved the Brothers K but did not finish Crime and Punishment though not intentionally I left it behind on a hotel bedside table and did not get round to buying another.

Until about three years ago I had always finished books I had started but had been struggling with . It took a particularly overrated piece of tosh "The Time Traveller's Wife to break me of that sado-masochistic habit .

[Peyton]

Hi friends i am reading rite now The Sea Lady this is great book to get every kind of information and this is very informative book for every body i recommend you to read this book daily and also read the new versions of this book now i am waitning a new version for this book when it released i'll be purchased this book....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Q by Luther Blisset ... a parable for our times

[vinteuil]

re-reading Georges Perec la Vie, mode d' emploi

reading Trollope Dr Wortle's School

starting Ford Madox Ford Parade's End - very much enjoying it - not sure I'll get through the eight hundred pages before the telly version starts later this week...

[Pianorak]

. . . starting Ford Madox Ford Parade's End - very much enjoying it - not sure I'll get through the eight hundred pages before the telly version starts later this week...

I am on page 497 - but appear to have been on that page for a good number of years. . .

Thomas Mann: Royal Highness (Koenigliche Hoheit)

[french frank]

In Waterstones this am I picked up Jonah Lehrer, Proust was a neuroscientist. "In this sparkling and provocative book, Jonah Lehrer explains that when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first."

It's a "two cultures", art and science book.

My mental arithmetic told me that if I bought Parade's End I could get P was a N free. But that isn't what most shops mean by Buy One Get One Half Price . Still, it means Parade's End was only £3.99 - which is a lot of book for a paltry sum.

[Extended Play]

It's exactly fifty years since the first publication in the United States of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's rallying cry for the environmental movement. The book has been on my reading list for years, and to my shame I've only now started on it. First impressions are that it is soundly researched -- but I'm not qualified to comment on its scientific credentials. There can surely be no doubt, though, that it is beautifully written.

Before Silent Spring, Rachel Carson drew on her experience as a marine biologist to write three books about the sea and the shore: Under the Sea Wind, The Edge of the Sea and The Sea Around Us. If you don't know them, and should come across them, I'd like to suggest that they are well worth exploring. Again, the writing is superb; and I had no idea that there was so much to be said about the sea!

[Barbirollians]

Young Men in Spats - a complete joy to come across a PGW I have not read before .

[amateur51]

It's exactly fifty years since the first publication in the United States of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's rallying cry for the environmental movement. The book has been on my reading list for years, and to my shame I've only now started on it. First impressions are that it is soundly researched -- but I'm not qualified to comment on its scientific credentials. There can surely be no doubt, though, that it is beautifully written.

Before Silent Spring, Rachel Carson drew on her experience as a marine biologist to write three books about the sea and the shore: Under the Sea Wind, The Edge of the Sea and The Sea Around Us. If you don't know them, and should come across them, I'd like to suggest that they are well worth exploring. Again, the writing is superb; and I had no idea that there was so much to be said about the sea!

I was given and read Silent Spring when it first came out and it impressed me deeply. I was in a state of suppressed shock for days afterwards, I remember.

Thanks for this alert EP - I'll put her earlier works on my list 'for further investigation' on your recommendation

[amateur51]

Young Men in Spats - a complete joy to come across a PGW I have not read before .

There's just so much PGW isn't there, Barbirollians?! - and to discover a new piece is always a joy!

[Sparafucile]

Hullo,
Just entering the final stretch of Sarah Waters's third novel Affinity, set in Millbank Prison in the 1870s. Only a short book, around 350 pages, but the first 150 were, frankly, a slog. Not a patch on her most recent (I think), The Little Stranger, which I devoured a few months ago, and loved from first to last. Possibly LeFanu's The House by the Churchyard next.....I haven't decided. No great hurry, but I do like to have an idea when I near the end of a book what's going to the next one.....

[kernelbogey]

I haven't been following this thread but feel impelled to recommend to anyone who hasn't read it The Hare with Amber Eyes, A hidden inheritance, by Edmund de Waal, which I've just read. An extraordinary book - possibly a masterpiece. (I daresay it appears above in 1-597.)

[vinteuil]

I haven't been following this thread but feel impelled to recommend to anyone who hasn't read it The Hare with Amber Eyes, A hidden inheritance, by Edmund de Waal, which I've just read. An extraordinary book - possibly a masterpiece. (I daresay it appears above in 1-597.)

verismissimo was reading it in January 2011...

Just embarked on Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Green Eyes.

Like it from the start - he quotes Charles Swann/Proust on collecting:

Even when one is no longer attached to things, it’s still something to have been attached to them; because it was always for reasons which other people didn’t grasp...

... tho' French Frank wanted to check whether it was green or amber -

Do you mean The Hare with Amber Eyes? Or has he written another one?

It's not that I know the book but I was just checking on him because he was on one of Radio 3's Work in Progress series a while back - 5-minute discursive talks, Monday to Friday, by writers, artists &c. For totally unrelated reasons I knew his aunt and my brother knew his father at one time, so I had a particular interest in him.

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