What are you reading now?

[waldo]

I’m halfway through Ray Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein. It’s exemplary and very helpful in tracing how he changed his mind, as well of course as conveying a real sense of quite how overwrought he was in general.

Years 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........

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Years 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........

- and wasn't there a story of his pulling a girl's hair and having to hide from her father?

[waldo]

Something like that. I seem to remember he slapped a girl and made her ears bleed..........

[muzzer]

Yes, plenty of that. Mind you, I was taught by a master known to throw board rubbers at recalcitrant pupils. But he didn’t produce the Tractatus etc

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Something like that. I seem to remember he slapped a girl and made her ears bleed..........

Like you, it is many years ago that I read the book (about 25!) but the tragi-comic episode stuck in my memory of Wittgenstein making the "noble" gesture of giving up academic philosophical research in order to teach Maths to village primary school children, and really not having a clue why they found the subject difficult.

A huge volume, but marvellously well-written and easy to read - I should do so again.

[french frank]

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.

[Padraig]

I haven't read this as it is out on loan at the moment:

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2018/0920/994884-book-of-durrow/

Reading this, Bob Woodward Fear: Trump in the White House

[Petrushka]

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.

[verismissimo]

Just embarking on vol 3 of Powell's Dance to the Music of Time - The Acceptance World.

Powell himself may have been a snob, but I don't think his writing is. He writes about the sorts of people he knows and continuously makes fun of them and their prejudices.

[muzzer]

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.

[gradus]

The Templars by Dan Jones, rather good narrative history.

[LMcD]

The British in India by David Gilmour.

[Pabmusic]

I'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.

[gradus]

I'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.

I've always had difficulty with it but perhaps I should try again. Really though I much prefer Smollett - more or less the same period.

[Richard Tarleton]

The Templars by Dan Jones, rather good narrative history.

though it takes some of the fun out of things like Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, whch he mentions on page 412