What are you reading now?

[french frank]

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...

That's heavy all right. But Joseph Roth, now. I got on with him: The Legend of the Holy Drinker (barely 100 pages rather sparsely printed), The Radetzky March, The Emperor's Tomb - all very satisfying. No necessity for tentativeness either. I had a bit of a Central European binge and enjoyed Bohumil Hrabal's The Little Town Where Time Stood Still, and I Served the King of England. But more moral and literary weight to Roth, I feel. Hungary I've missed out on - other than Sándor Márai (after Radio 3 dramatised Embers on Do3).

[Warwick]

Plots & Parallel Powers.

I have just read an unusual and good novel on the Gunpowder Plot. by Robert Neville.
I think the thing I noticed about it was how well written it is and I guess you would call it a literary kind of novel.
There are some actual and fictional characters in it. I liked an old wizard that he invents called Vasco. What I would say is that as a novel it does look at the plot from a deeper an even an inside way, which I found very unusual. A rare and interesting read.

http://www.amazon.com/Plots-Parallel.../dp/B00CS3BMQ8

..

[Chris Watson]

Anyone here read the Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli? I was put onto it by a German singing colleague and it's wonderful. Article about it here http://www.economist.com/blogs/prosp...tdecai_trilogy
I'm reading it on my Kindle but am definitely going to buy a proper copy for future re-reads.

[vinteuil]

Anyone here read the Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli? .

... o yes, there are fans here :

Kyril Bonfiglioli, anyone? - The Mortdecai Trilogy - where the central character is a cross between a Bertie Wooster with the brain of Jeeves, Raffles, and Falstaff...

"It was still only nine o'clock when I set off on the last leg of my journey, feeling old and dirty and incapable. You probably know the feeling if you are over eighteen."

[ which I see I posted in November 2010. Good Lord, we've been at it that long? ]

[Chris Watson]

Excellent. I'm a new convert and I love it!

[Thropplenoggin]

Has anyone here read Musil's A Man Without Qualities? I'm looking for a hefty tome to engage with and its temporal locale (modernism) appeals.

[french frank]

Has anyone here read Musil's A Man Without Qualities? .

Yes. aeolium

[Thropplenoggin]

Yes. aeolium

Ouf! Have we just saved ourselves 1200 pages of indigestible omphaloskepsis, FF?

To think, 22 years, and all Musil got out of it was a doorstop.

[french frank]

Ouf! Have we just saved ourselves 1200 pages of indigestible omphaloskepsis, FF?

To think, 22 years, and all Musil got out of it was a doorstop.

I'm taking aeo's advice pour l'instant. I've finally 'got into' Kaputt which promises to be a grim, grim read (400 pages), no less so for a certain levity at moments.

[vinteuil]

Yes. aeolium

... very struck by aeolium's comment :

"

I sometimes think long Mitteleuropean novels acquire a spurious and undeserved gravitas simply by virtue of being long and Mitteleuropean. I was put off reading anything Mitteleuropean for quite a long time after enduring Musil's The Man Without Qualities

I confess to having several of these on the shelves. Mostly unread, but they do look good...

If you can't face the 1770 pages of the Musil, or even the 1330 pages of Heimito von Doderer's "The Demons", - you might like to think of that lightweight, Hermann Broch's "The Sleepwalkers", a paltry 648 pp...

Enjoy!

EDIT - or even :

- 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...

[Thropplenoggin]

... very struck by aeolium's comment :

"

I confess to having several of these on the shelves. Mostly unread, but they do look good...

If you can't face the 1770 pages of the Musil, or even the 1330 pages of Heimito von Doderer's "The Demons", - you might like to think of that lightweight, Hermann Broch's "The Sleepwalkers", a paltry 648 pp...

Enjoy!

I sampled Broch's The Death of Virgil via the Big River folk. It's stream-of-consciousness writ large, eschewing paragraphs a la Thomas Bernhard...I was overwhelmingly underwhelmed. 'Meh', I bleated. 'Meh, and thrice, meh.'

[french frank]

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

Thus Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte. I have to confess that after approximately half of it, I could face no more. Kaputt, as far as I'm concerned. Too harrowing. Not recommended unless you can stomach nonchalant, mindless inhumanity.

I turn instead to 'Closely Observed Trains' by Bohumil Hrabal, which in comparison is a picnic.

[eighthobstruction]

Just finished re-reading : christ recrucified by nikos kazantzakis, and Zorba the Greek [by the same author]....two of my favourite books, they always hit the spot....full of vitality....a great writer in my opinion....

[amateur51]

I sampled Broch's The Death of Virgil via the Big River folk. It's stream-of-consciousness writ large, eschewing paragraphs a la Thomas Bernhard...I was overwhelmingly underwhelmed. 'Meh', I bleated. 'Meh, and thrice, meh.'

One of the books that got Sir Colin Davis through a difficult time in his life, I remember reading. Each to his/her own

[amateur51]

Thus Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte. I have to confess that after approximately half of it, I could face no more. Kaputt, as far as I'm concerned. Too harrowing. Not recommended unless you can stomach nonchalant, mindless inhumanity.

I turn instead to 'Closely Observed Trains' by Bohumil Hrabal, which in comparison is a picnic.

I've not read Closely Observed Trains but I love the film, currently available for very little money

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Closely-Observed-Trains-V%C3%A1clav-Neck%C3%A1r/dp/B0001DI4YU