What are you reading now?

[muzzer]

I think you might struggle to find one single tome for that......

[muzzer]

Though I'd recommend The Austrian Mind by William Johnston and Fin de Siecle Vienna by Carl Schorske if you've not read them.

[Petrushka]

I think you might struggle to find one single tome for that......

I know because I've looked. To a large extent the narrative can be pieced together from books such as Hitler in Vienna by Brigitte Hamann and biographies of young Stalin, Mahler and such like but it's a subject that's fascinated me for years and it deserves to be told.

[Petrushka]

Though I'd recommend The Austrian Mind by William Johnston and Fin de Siecle Vienna by Carl Schorske if you've not read them.

Thanks for the Schorske recommendation which looks promising and of which I've not heard. Duly ordered.

[muzzer]

Arthur Schnitzler's memoir My Youth in Vienna I also enjoyed.

[verismissimo]

Also good for Vienna pre WW1:

Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday
Edward Crankshaw, The Fall of the House of Habsburg
Eduard Hanslick, Vienna's Golden Years of Music 1850-1900
Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918
Tim Bonyhady, Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900
George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna

The first and last most essential IMO.

[Richard Barrett]

I started into Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, the first of her four-part "Neapolitan Series", and I've found it completely captivating. I'm a few pages from the end and feeling highly relieved that there are another three books to go. I'm not sure it's going to be enough.

And it wasn't. I can't think of another work of imaginative literature from the present century that comes near the scope of this series.

[pastoralguy]

I've been reading a boom called. 'Absolutely on music', a book of conversationS between the novelist Murakami and the conductor Seiji Ozawa. There are few nuggets but, IMHO, it's a lot of pretentious twaddle.

[Petrushka]

Also good for Vienna pre WW1:

Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday
Edward Crankshaw, The Fall of the House of Habsburg
Eduard Hanslick, Vienna's Golden Years of Music 1850-1900
Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918
Tim Bonyhady, Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900
George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna

The first and last most essential IMO.

I've got the Zweig and Clare books, both, as you say, most essential. The Vergo and Bonyhady books are unknown to me and worth investigation.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I've been reading a boom called. 'Absolutely on music', a book of conversationS between the novelist Murakami and the conductor Seiji Ozawa. There are few nuggets but, IMHO, it's a lot of pretentious twaddle.

If that's the Murakami of 1Q84 then that doesn't surprise me. Do they talk about the Janacek Sinfonietta at all?

[Richard Barrett]

I've been reading a boom called. 'Absolutely on music', a book of conversationS between the novelist Murakami and the conductor Seiji Ozawa. There are few nuggets but, IMHO, it's a lot of pretentious twaddle.

I wouldn't call it pretentious but I was quite disappointed by it, particularly the fact that Ozawa doesn't really have much to say and what he does have to say seems rather superficial.

[DracoM]

Am reading Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White.

[greenilex]

I was delighted to find in my local library a new translation of a comic novel by Andrea Camilleri: The Brewer of Preston.

People who enjoy his Montalbano stories will also be amused by this one, I think, though it is more farcical. The title refers to an opera due to be performed in his Sicilian town.

[Globaltruth]

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine.

One of the best books I have read this decade.

A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of a single woman's reclusive life in the Middle East."

from the book jacket.

For once, I'm inclined to agree.

Here's a link to the books mentioned in the book:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/97936.Books_mentioned_in_the_novel_An_Unnecessary_Woman_by_Rabih_Alameddine

If you have enjoyed any of those, then it is possible you may enjoy this book too.

[Stanley Stewart]

Euphoric to receive my copy of Nicholas Hytner's, Balancing Acts: Behind the Scenes at the NT, this afternoon. He tells the inside story of twelve years at the helm and candidly covers its failures as well as many of its spectacular successes. Should be a good companion to the Peter Hall Diaries, 1983, and its turbulent years in the seventies, followed by Richard Eyre's, National Service, 2003; both a constant reference source for me. Pleasing to know that it has been selected as Book of the Week with extracts on R4, from Monday-Friday, next week.

Alan Bennett: 'Riveting..."Nothing makes me happier," Hytner writes, "than to throw a party and choose to sit on the edge of it." It was a party, often a triumphant one, but he was at the heart of it. As was someone else: Shakespeare, about whom he writes superbly. Speaking for myself, I've never had so much fun as working with Nicholas Hytner. This book explains why'





Retail price, £20, but I got a discounted offer of £17 + from the river people...Exit, pursued by a bear...