What are you reading now?

[Petrushka]

Le Carré is still at the top of his game and knocking out a book every couple of years - if you're reading them in order, Petrushka, you've got a couple to go - I've just taken delivery of A Delicate Truth. His novels are to be savoured and re-read.

I did start (re)reading them in order but my copy of Our Game has proved difficult to locate and I so much wanted to read A Most Wanted Man I decided I couldn't wait any longer. I met Le Carre at a signing session for Our Kind of Traitor and my copy of A Delicate Truth arrived last week.

You may be interested to know that he is appearing at a Proms Plus literary event at the RCM on July 29. I will be there.

[richardfinegold]

Just finished Sense and Sensibility and Beethoven's Hair, which I was reading simultaneously.

[verismissimo]

The Salome Dancer - a biography of Maud Allan by Felix Cherniavsky.

Born in Canada, she was a pupil of Busoni in Germany who abandoned the piano to become a famous (now forgotten) dancer in what turned out to be the era of Isadora Duncan.

[Petrushka]

Escape Alone by David Howarth.

Another one of those astonishing escape stories from WW2, this one recounting the story of Jan Baalsrud in Norway. First read this in 1968 but as with so many of these kind of books it can be read and re-read.

Still also reading Gustav Mahler: A New Life Cut Short by Henri Louis de la Grange. Been making a very leisurely progress through this for the past three years!! Too hefty to read on the train and little time at home means I might finish it by the end of the decade but am in no hurry.

[Flosshilde]

I've just finished Cosima Wagner, the Lady of Bayreuth, by Oliver Hilmes. An interesting, & I think balanced, study of a very complex person. Cosima can easily come across as a 'monster' - which she undoubtedly was in many ways (disowning Isolde, for example, & denying that she was Wagner's daughter), but Himes presents a more complex personality. Her childhood was pretty apalling, & perhaps laid the foundation for her treatment of her own children. She & Richard seemed to have been made for each other, & without her I think the Bayreuth theatre & festival would not have survived (& without her daughter-in-law, Winifred, it would probably have suffered the same privations that other theatres suffered under the Nazi regime).

[Pabmusic]

I've just finished To Kill A Mockingbird - something I hadn't read since I was at university. Brilliant of course, but with added interest as I now understand that Dill was based on Truman Capote (that had escaped me before). I briefly considered opening In Cold Blood, but don't think I can face the self-indulgence of it - at least not at the moment.

[Richard Tarleton]

I've read the Tremlett but have deferred taking up the Preston until I was feeling strong. Your review suggests it is worth reading so I must gird up my emotional loins and tackle it - many thanks RT

Do you rate Preston's other works on the Civil War in relation to Thomas & Beevor, RT?

Apologies for delayed reply Ams, have been away birdwatching in Adnams country

This was my first Preston so I can't offer a comparison with the other two - but Thomas inevitably very dated albeit definitive in its day (1961). A bit dry and too many acronyms, I thought at the time. Any history of the Spanish Civil War needs a good glossary . Beevor is always impressive describing military campaigns (Stanlingrad, Berlin) but (whilst emphasising he is dealing with a different aspect) Preston gets under the skin of the people behind the events.

[amateur51]

Apologies for delayed reply Ams, have been away birdwatching in Adnams country

This was my first Preston so I can't offer a comparison with the other two - but Thomas inevitably very dated albeit definitive in its day (1961). A bit dry and too many acronyms, I thought at the time. Any history of the Spanish Civil War needs a good glossary . Beevor is always impressive describing military campaigns (Stanlingrad, Berlin) but (whilst emphasising he is dealing with a different aspect) Preston gets under the skin of the people behind the events.

Birding + Adnams country sounds an unbeatable combo, RT

Thanks for the encouragement re Preston

[verismissimo]

Katharine Susannah Prichard's memoirs, Child of the Hurricane.

Rattling good read of Aussie Prichard's travels and adventures and discovery that she was a communist.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus; The creation of Inequality ... an eminently gentle read through all the evidence of the various forms of social inequality in human groups from pre-history on ..

and James Lee Burke's Robicheaux novels in sequence, addicted 'fraid to say ....

[french frank]

I'm toying, very tentatively, with embarking fully on Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt. It doesn't seem like an easy read (even in translation) but very interesting style - and potentially strong novel, in which (as I gather) World War 2 is (if I may!) a kind of 'backstory' to the high living of the Nazis, and written surreptitiously during the war while he was a journalist on the Eastern Front. There's a fascinating description of how he managed to smuggle his manuscript, in parts as he completed them, back to Italy.

http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/kaputt/

Still, I don't want life to be too easy ...

[Richard Tarleton]

I met Le Carre at a signing session for Our Kind of Traitor and my copy of A Delicate Truth arrived last week.

You may be interested to know that he is appearing at a Proms Plus literary event at the RCM on July 29. I will be there.

Thanks Petrushka (only just seen this) - unfortunately I don't think I can manage 29/7. I did meet him in 1966 at a talk - this was between "The Looking-Glass War" and "A Small Town in Germany" - he told us about how his first two did nothing, then "Spy" sold 14,000 copies a day for 3 months, or thereabouts, then his first two started to sell.

[amateur51]

I'm toying, very tentatively, with embarking fully on Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt. It doesn't seem like an easy read (even in translation) but very interesting style - and potentially strong novel, in which (as I gather) World War 2 is (if I may!) a kind of 'backstory' to the high living of the Nazis, and written surreptitiously during the war while he was a journalist on the Eastern Front. There's a fascinating description of how he managed to smuggle his manuscript, in parts as he completed them, back to Italy.

http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/kaputt/

Still, I don't want life to be too easy ...

I'd not heard of this work/author french frank and I look forward to hearing how it goes in due course.

NYRB does exhume some really interesting stuff - I bought The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B.Edwards the other day in my local charity shop for £1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Ebenezer-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590172337/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369391101&sr=1-1&keywords=the+book+of+ebenezer+lepage

[french frank]

I'd not heard of this work/author french frank and I look forward to hearing how it goes in due course.

Me neither, am5 - but it bears the Foyle's legend "3 for 2" so was a serendipitous (I hope) find. Much like your GB Edwards, I suppose (who he?). I've 'done' Primo Levi on the period, so it should fit well.

I'm a great fan of these somewhat out-of-the-way titles by somewhat out-of-the-way writers. They're usually good value, whereas better known items can fail expectations.

[vinteuil]

I'm toying, very tentatively, with embarking fully on.... It doesn't seem like an easy read (even in translation) but very interesting style - and potentially strong novel...

Still, I don't want life to be too easy ...

.... similar sentiments here, but concerning another book.

Last year I had a bit of a Hungarian binge - Antal Szerb, Dezső Kosztolányi, Miklós Szentkuthy - and I am wondering about - as French Frank puts it, "toying, very tentatively, with embarking fully on" - Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy - (They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided), just published in Everyman's Library.
There is a tempting blurb : "an elegy on empire to rival Joseph Roth's, with the epic sweep and drama of Tolstoy and a tinge of Proustian nostalgia. Yet the blend of criticism, compassion, and humour is all his own. An undoubted twentieth century classic."

I think I'm up for another plunge into the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - but it is some 1,450 pages...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miklós_Bánffy