Originally posted by muzzer
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What are you reading now?
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Originally posted by waldo View PostYears since I read that, but there are some terrific stories in there. I particularly liked the section where he gives up philosophy and becomes a school teacher in some little Austrian village (and gets into trouble for smacking the kids........[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
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Originally posted by waldo View PostSomething like that. I seem to remember he slapped a girl and made her ears bleed..........
A huge volume, but marvellously well-written and easy to read - I should do so again.[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
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And on the subject - a lighter (but not trivial) biographical work is Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War, first published in 2008, and appearing quickly thereafter in paperback. A lot about brother Paul too.It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.
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I haven't read this as it is out on loan at the moment:
Trinity College Dublin has announced that one of Ireland's most important and ancient manuscripts, the Book of Durrow, is to go on loan to the British Library for a landmark international exhibition next month.
Reading this, Bob Woodward Fear: Trump in the White House
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I'm currently reading A Brilliant Little Operation by Paddy Ashdown, the story of the famous 'Cockleshell Heroes' raid on ships in Bordeaux harbour in 1942. I read the Lucas Phillips book on the same story many years ago and the 1955 film is well known. Ashdown's book is a tremendous and riveting read, astoundingly well researched, superbly well written and, as the cliche has it, impossible to put down. Can't recommend this book too highly.
Coincidentally, I have a CD of Schubert's Great Major given in a live performance by Wilhelm Furtwängler and the BPO on December 8 1942, the first day of the above raid, as Hasler and his men were paddling their canoes up the Gironde estuary. The same CD includes a performance of the Der Freischütz Overture which took place on March 21 1944 - the very day of the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III."The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink
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I think everyone who loves long yarns and has even a passing interest in the Britain of that lengthy period covered by the Dance should give it a go on principle. I read it as part of my degree with a tutor who was most definitely from the other end of the spectrum politically but I remember discussions being none the less informed. I certainly would not have read it otherwise at that age.
I’m catching up very belatedly with the fiction of Jonathan Coe, which records a later period in the 20th, and then 21st, century, and who is I think rightly seen in a similar way as Powell, if it’s not too soon to say so. But, and it’s a bit but for me personally, I can’t quite decide if the fluidity of the prose and the familiarity of the material detracts from its overall force and meaning. I’ve just bought a ticket to hear Zachary Leader talk about the second volume of his Saul Bellow biography, and I’m excited about that because Bellow’s prose excites me in the way that I think great prose should do, as much by its language than its subject matter, I lived through the eras described by Jonathan Coe but Bellow’s romanticism is more attractive, possibly of course because I did not experience his era directly. I don’t want to mark Coe down purely because, for example, I can cringe with him, but I want the freedom of not feeling directly committed to a novelist’s subject matter. Objectivity from distance.
Please excuse this prolix post. My ‘to be read’ pile is heaving. And plural.
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Originally posted by Pabmusic View PostI've recently finished The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy for the third time (1st when I was 16, then when I was about 40). I still don't quite get it all, but it holds a fascination for me. Wonderful stuff. Sort of an 18th-century Monty Python.
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