What are you reading now?

[Beef Oven!]

Empire of Things - How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First. Frank Trentmann.

A true page-turner.

[verismissimo]

My first Schindler: 'Mother and Son'. Novella? Short story? 70 pages.

Filled with intrigue.

[LMcD]

Re-reading (after Heaven knows how many years!) 'Far, Far The Mountain Peak' by John Masters. The central character, Peter Savage, is a truly marvellous creation - though not in a good way....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

"Fire and Fury" about the Trump regime and his advisors. I'm less than a quarter of the way through it, and I can't believe the rest can be equally catastrophic. But I'll probably be proved wrong.

I may nip it in the bud, as I've just bought Daphne du Maurier's "Rule Britannia", about Britain leaving the EU.

[Angle]

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole, the first book I have read for years which is by an American. A most entertaining view of what life can do if one has a talent to steer a downhill course while always being infinitely superior to everyone else.

[verismissimo]

Short stories by Willa Cather concerning opera singers in the early 20th century.

[gradus]

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler. Better if anything than The Tobacconist, of novella length and first rate.

[verismissimo]

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler. Better if anything than The Tobacconist, of novella length and first rate.

So good, Seethaler's A Whole Life!

[LMcD]

Currently readings 'Hemingway's Chair' by Michael Palin.

[Pianorak]

Rimsky-Korsakov: My Musical Life - his autobiography. What a fascinating insight into "The Mighty Five", Borodin, Moussorgsky, Balakirev et al. Rimsky comes across as a very likeable, self-deprecating yet realistic chap, fully aware of his own shortcomings, but also standing up for his achievements. A wide-ranging insider's view of Russia in the mid 19th century.

[Stanfordian]

I'm an inveterate reader of WW2 escape books. This is one of the best:

'Human Game: Hunting the Great Escape Murderers' by Simon Read

[Petrushka]

I'm an inveterate reader of WW2 escape books. This is one of the best:

'Human Game: Hunting the Great Escape Murderers' by Simon Read

Me too! I have all the classics of the genre starting with when I read Eric Williams' 'The Tunnel' and 'The Wooden Horse' when I was 11 in 1965. It took me many years to get hold of a rare copy of 'Stolen Journey' by Oliver Philpot (the third man in the wooden horse escape) but it was well worth it once I got it a couple of years ago. One of the very best of its kind is 'A Crowd is not Company' by Robert Kee (ex 1970s ITV newsreader). If you haven't read it you must put that right asap! Same camp (Stalag Luft III), different escape.

One of the most astonishing WW2 escape stories I've ever read (first time 50 years ago) is 'You'll Die in Singapore' by Charles McCormac. Once read never forgotten.

[Richard Tarleton]

Airey Neave - They Have Their Exits.....

[Petrushka]

Airey Neave - They Have Their Exits.....

Indeed. I naturally also have Pat Reid's two Colditz books, 'Boldness be my Friend' by Richard Pape and Paul Brickhill's 'The Great Escape' to complete the classic line up. Also well worth reading are two books by John Nicol and Tony Rennell, 'The Last Escape' and 'Home Run'. A long standing family friend, now deceased, was captured at Arnhem in 1944, taken prisoner and was one of those on one of the forced marches westward in 1945. Alas, he would never talk about his experiences and his memories died with him. In addition, a director at one of the companies I worked for in the 1970s was imprisoned in Colditz during the war.

Why were so many escapers RAF types? Perhaps they showed so much more imagination than their Army colleagues.

[richardfinegold]

I just finished Phillip Kerr’s latest Bernie Guenther novel, Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts . I think it’s the best of them all.