What are you reading now?

[Conchis]

Just finished The Razor's Edge, by Somerset Maugham. I enjoyed it very much.

I may go on to another Maugham - The Painted Veil. I am in a Maugham mood. His style -at least, in his novels - hasn't dated at all: he definitely wrote with one eye on posterity.

[verismissimo]

James Shapiro's 1606.

Absolutely the best writer of our time on Shakespeare and his time.

[umslopogaas]

Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' ... just, for me, the most important book ever written. and that includes 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu', so dont mess around with lightweights (I dont really mean that) like Thomas Mann and Robert Musil, I havent got time. There is too much out there and too little time.

I dont actually reject Proust, in fact I think he was a genius, as everyone else does too. But I have to get on with the job, and Conrad (and Borges) are the authors of the moment.

[vinteuil]

... can't fault your taste, umslopogaas.

Yes, time to plunge in to Conrad again, I think.

I have to confess that last time I tackled Nostromo I never quite made it to the end - ( I was reassured when meeting an old university friend, now a Conrad scholar, who said that the ending of Nostromo was in any case an irresolvable mess ) - but I loved what I did manage to get through.

Heart of Darkness, just wonderful. And another favourite - The Secret Agent...

good reading!

[Richard Tarleton]

Heart of Darkness

...segue to that other heart of darkness that was the Oxford history faculty in the 1960s - hot on the heels of Adam Sisman's excellent biog of John Le Carré, I'm well through his earlier one of Hugh Trevor-Roper. A fascinating and complex life - this was the man who during WW2 knew more about the Abwehr than they knew themselves, whose account of Hitler's last days, from remarkable on-the-ground detective work in the ruins of Berlin, has not been surpassed....Scholar who never wrote that magnum opus but did produce countless artcles, essays, vicious reviews....who was chosen as Regius Professor ahead of AJP Taylor (and reciprocated by obtaining the Chancellorship for Macmillan), married Earl Haig's daughter (some years older than him, with three children - he couldn't stand children)....still to come are the saga of his unhappy move to Cambridge as Master of Peterhouse, and the debacle of the Hitler Diaries. The sheer savagery of the academic infighting takes your breath away at times. Evelyn Waugh: "One honourable course is open to Mr Trevor-Roper. He should change his name and seek a livelihood in Cambridge" (prompted by HT-R's attacks on Catholicism)

Sisman is on top of every aspect - the secret services in WW2, the controversy over the gentry in the 17th century....an outstanding biographer.

[Sir Velo]

Thanks to that much underrated channel TCM HD's weekend screening of the truly sumptuous Barry Lyndon, one is prompted to commence a re-reading of that oft maligned neo-Fieldingian romp. Part of the joy of reading "classics" such as this is to find out just how much the master auteur has altered to fit his own view of the novel; I suspect the scene of the romping male officers splashing in the Prussian river is a Kubrick invention, but we shall see!

[vinteuil]

... Hugh Trevor-Roper.

... keep your eyes peeled : coming out next week "Hugh Trevor-Roper The Historian", edited Blair Worden, essays by Rory Allan, John Banville, John Elliott, Mark Greengrass, EDR Harrison, Colin Kidd, Noel Malcolm, SJV Malloch, Richard Overy, John Robertson, Gina Thomas, Blair Worden."

I shall be attending book launch 8 March...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1784531243

[aeolium]

... keep your eyes peeled : coming out next week "Hugh Trevor-Roper The Historian", edited Blair Worden, essays by Rory Allan, John Banville, John Elliott, Mark Greengrass, EDR Harrison, Colin Kidd, Noel Malcolm, SJV Malloch, Richard Overy, John Robertson, Gina Thomas, Blair Worden."

I shall be attending book launch 8 March...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1784531243

I hope there is some criticism mixed in with the praise in those essays (how could there not be given the Hitler Diaries episode)? I thought his work was often thought-provoking and interesting to read, though mixed with a somewhat inflexible approach (wasn't it thought that he read out the same set of university lectures year after year?)

One thing that couldn't be faulted was his style, always clear, elegant and expressive. Even if you disagreed with his conclusions, he was often worth reading for that alone. One of my favourite works of his was the biography of the oriental scholar Edmund Backhouse, Hermit of Peking.

[Richard Tarleton]

Many thanks for the tip, vinteuil. Blair Worden has just appeared in the main text, p.381...(footnote p.235).

HT-R's approach quite progressive in many ways...study problems not periods...interested in what other disciplines had to offer (anthropology etc.)....I'm sure he didn't bother to rewrite his lectures to freshmen on Gibbon and Macaulay each year - it was after one of these that I and a chum followed up on his invitation to discuss things further afterwards....

[Radio64]

James Shapiro's 1606.

Absolutely the best writer of our time on Shakespeare and his time.

I was looking forward to that one too. Is it out in paperback yet?

[Richard Tarleton]

... keep your eyes peeled : coming out next week "Hugh Trevor-Roper The Historian", edited Blair Worden
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1784531243

My copy has just arrived, courtesy of The Wordery (several books from them recently ) - Looks excellent, thank you again for the tip. I have just finished the Sisman biog. The Hitler Diaries "at most a chapter in a richly varied life. The list of learned men who have been fooled by forgeries is a long one: Johnson was deceived by Lauder; Hume by Macpherson...." It was HT-R's misfortune to come a cropper in the age of the instant mass media....

The Porterthouse episode truly shocking ...what appalling behaviour....

[verismissimo]

I was looking forward to that one too. Is it out in paperback yet?

This Shapiro focuses on the Gunpowder Plot and its many effects, including on Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleo. Santa brought me the hardback, Radio.

[gurnemanz]

Inspired by a thread elsewhere on this board, I've just started Shostakovich: A Life Remembered by Elizabeth Wilson. Fascinating insights, presented using a rather different approach to biography, by which the author introduces selected verbatim memoirs of those who new him.

[Stanley Stewart]

Sheer delight to sit in the sunshine this afternoon, albeit wooly jumper and scarf, and steep myself in Beethoven for a Late Age, The Journey of a String Quartet by Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takacs Quartet since 1993. I'm not a musician but as a thesp for 15 years, earlier in life, I was taught the technique of Laban notation by Yat Malmgren/Christopher Fettes at the RADA and learnt to adapt the group of 'intentions' to ensemble work; the nuances of performance have similar principles in group coordination and had no difficulty grasping Dusinberre's lucid exposition of tackling and discussing the choice of group alternatives in Beethoven's Str Qt, Op18, no 1. He is also candid about the necessary creative tension between individual and group expression - again I could empathise as the same demands were made in repertory theatre, even more so in a long West End run. A fascinating insight even in the first 50 pages. I came indoors to rummage my bookshelves for copies of Arnold Steinhardt's, Indivisible by Four (1988), a memoir of his longevity with the versatile Guarneri Quartet - vivid memories of their Wigmore Hall recitals - and the Takacs, too! - and must add that I had to import Steinhardt's memoir from the river people a few years ago. Also traced my copy of Married to the Amadeus, Life with a String Quartet, (1988) and their outstanding performances and recordings after internment during WW2. Must now select Beethoven recordings from each group for a late-night listening session following a deeply satisfying Spring day.

[Tetrachord]

Today I've started reading Jan Swafford's biography of Johannes Brahms. It arrived this morning from Amazon, along with Arthur Schoonderwoeld's complete Beethoven piano sonatas - on fortepiano. Am waiting on the COE/Harnoncourt complete Beethoven symphonies and a Martha Argerich recording made in the Concertgebouw in the late 1970s - at a recital which included the music of Ginastera. I first heard this performance on Radio 3 in an overnight program (during the day here) about 3 weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMnqWMyfb0I

And, wouldn't you know it, my sound system has just packed it in!!!

I've read so much about Brahms and the Schumanns and have lectured on this music and I'm eager to see what, if anything else, Swafford brings to the Brahms story. It's certainly a much bulkier tome than others I've read on Brahms, including one dull biography by one (improbably named) Ivor Keys!!