What are you reading now?

[amateur51]

"Snowden"?!

What a dreadful Typo!


I meant, of course, "Yr Wyddfa"!

Oh I thought you meant the photographer, bachgen drwg

[Petrushka]

It normally takes me around 3 to 6 months to read a book.
My spare time is almost always spent listening to music and I can't read and concentrate on the music at the same time.

I sympathise as being in full time work leaves little time for reading. I try to catch up by using as many opportunities as possible such as reading during lunch hour and on the train to and from work.

Currently dipping into M R James ghost stories. Ideal reading for a pre-Christmas evening on the train...

[verismissimo]

I've been listening with great pleasure to Don Quixote (on Naxos CDs) while riding my recently acquired exercise bike.

Such a witty book.

Does this count?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Just finished Jeanette Winterson's terrific Sexing the Cherry: Dickens, Chaucer, the Arabian Nights and Four Quartets - total enjoyment. Is there, I wonder, a novel by, say, a Russian that can compare with the magic of such prose, such story-telling? I think not.

And, just started The Girl who Played With Fire - apart from the opening four pages (which made me feel queasy: why do male thriller writers feel the compunction to include such scenes?) this has me hooked!

[Mandryka]

Just finished Jeanette Winterson's terrific Sexing the Cherry: Dickens, Chaucer, the Arabian Nights and Four Quartets - total enjoyment. Is there, I wonder, a novel by, say, a Russian that can compare with the magic of such prose, such story-telling? I think not.

And, just started The Girl who Played With Fire - apart from the opening four pages (which made me feel queasy: why do male thriller writers feel the compunction to include such scenes?) this has me hooked!

A couple of years ago, myself and my (female) companion had a very unpleasant experience of LE Winterson while leaving the ROH: descending the (rather too narrow) stairway, we noticed Winterson bobbing about among the departing masses, a sinister grin on her face and her hands (hidden for much of the time by the passing bodies) no doubt in places they had no right to be. 'On the pull', in other words.....Deeply unpleasant and gave my companion nightmares for months afterwards....

Back ot: having finished Proust's Novel last month, I'm in line for some lighter reading matter, so have pulled Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf off my shelves. This is supposedly a 'dangerous' book to be read by immature minds, so I'm very glad I didn't read it when I was in my teens/twenties; so far, it's of mild interest. I can't understand why it became such a cult....

[amateur51]

A couple of years ago, myself and my (female) companion had a very unpleasant experience of LE Winterson while leaving the ROH: descending the (rather too narrow) stairway, we noticed Winterson bobbing about among the departing masses, a sinister grin on her face and her hands (hidden for much of the time by the passing bodies) no doubt in places they had no right to be. 'On the pull', in other words.....Deeply unpleasant and gave my companion nightmares for months afterwards....

With a such a febrile imagination, surely no fiction could satisfy

NB: Yet another example of Mandy's anti-Northern sneer

[vinteuil]

: having finished Proust's Novel last month....

... any comments / views?

[Mandryka]

With a such a febrile imagination, surely no fiction could satisfy

NB: Yet another example of Mandy's anti-Northern sneer

Y'know, Amy, I'd forgotten she was from Lancashire. Thanks for reminding me!

Thanks also for not accusing me of homophobia!

[Mandryka]

... any comments / views?

It's difficult to give succinct expression to my feelings on finishing this enormous work. All I will say, though, is that I'm very glad I read it and that I feel I'm (probably) a better person for having done so. I think Proust had the greatest omniscience about his fellow humans that it is possible for one human to have - and that is, apparently, the reason why he never married/formed a lasting relationship with anyone: he could see too clearly how things could go wrong.

I'm also glad I read it at my present time of life (45), as it isn't something you would get the most out of if you read it in your twenties. A friend of mine did just that and is hoping to read it again before his appointment with anno domini (he's now 71).

As an 'envoi' to the Novel, I've also read Pinter's (unproduced) screenplay, which is an amazing piece of concision, even though it inevitably leaves out Proust's priceless apercus.

[verismissimo]

... any comments / views?

I don't think people realise just how witty it is! Sometimes even having read it (or part of it!).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't think people realise just how witty it is! Sometimes even having read it (or part of it!).

Oh, yes; I think Proust described it as a "comic" novel didn't he? There is a Pooteresque aspect to many of the events the narrator describes.

[vinteuil]

I don't think people realise just how witty it is! Sometimes even having read it (or part of it!).

... verismissimo - I'm so glad you said that! When I first set out to read it - aged 20, some forty years ago,,, - it was almost out of a sense of duty, this is a Great Work, this Will Do Me Good, etc - and yet it didn't take too long (the mad aunts in Combray and their convoluted thanks to Swann, so opaque as to be indecipherable) for me to realise - this is (among other things) just so funny - a real comic novel. I re-read it every five years or so (at least in part... ), and get more out of it each time. He is, of course, wildly Wrong about Love (or rather, he is laser-like exceptionally Right about some limited aspects of love/jealousy/possessiveness : but hopelessly inadequate at covering a wider range of what love might mean... ) - but his insights into perception, memory are matchless; and his depictions of late-nineteenth / early-twentieth century French high bourgeois life are a joy. I make annual pilgrimages to Cabourg (Balbec) , and occasional visits to Illiers (Combray)...

[Mandryka]

Yes, Vinteuil, I got the humour, too - sometimes, it is laugh out loud funny. I particularly like 'I'm A Wash-Out' the Balbec ne'er do well who comes good in the end. Charlus is, of course, one of the great tragi-comic characters in world literature: you can't help loving him, in spite of (or, perhaps, because of) his rampant snobbery and perversion.

One thing I couldn't empathise with entirely was Marccel's insane jealousy of Albertine's 'other' life: the idea of a man being jealous of his other half's female lovers just doesn't register with me. But that's my problem, I suppose....

[vinteuil]

Yes, Vinteuil, I got the humour, too - sometimes, it is laugh out loud funny. I particularly like 'I'm A Wash-Out' the Balbec ne'er do well who comes good in the end.

... ah, young Octave! - Yes, a hoot. Many of the minor characters are comic masterpieces. Altho' I have adopted as a nom de guerre one of the less visible but more serious characters of the Work, I have to confess that I really wd see myself more as a combination of Brichot and the marquis de Norpois: the latter one of my favourite comic characters in all literature...

One thing I couldn't empathise with entirely was Marccel's insane jealousy of Albertine's 'other' life: the idea of a man being jealous of his other half's female lovers just doesn't register with me. But that's my problem, I suppose....

... I suppose it is more plausible when seen as Marcel Proust's jealousy of the other possible gay entanglements of his lover Agostinelli.

[verismissimo]

The Verdurins never invited you to dinner; you had your 'place laid'
there. There was never any programme for the evening's entertainment. The
young pianist would play, but only if he felt inclined, for no one was
forced to do anything, and, as M. Verdurin used to say: "We're all friends
here. Liberty Hall, you know!"

If the pianist suggested playing the Ride of the Valkyries, or the Prelude
to Tristan, Mme. Verdurin would protest, not that the music was
displeasing to her, but, on the contrary, that it made too violent an
impression. "Then you want me to have one of my headaches? You know quite
well, it's the same every time he plays that. I know what I'm in for.
Tomorrow, when I want to get up--nothing doing!"