Originally posted by vinteuil
View Post
What are you reading now?
Collapse
X
-
I'm half-way though "The Quest of Ben-Hur" by Karl Tunberg & Owen Walford. It's a sequel to Lew Wallis's classic. Ben Hur is a kind of Forrest Gump of the classical world. He meets Nero, Agricola, Boudicca, St Peter and other biblical characters.
I recall that there was a plan to film this book in the 1980s, with Charlton Heston again in the title role.
Comment
-
-
Originally posted by DracoM View PostBarnaby Rudge
Comment
-
-
Richard Tarleton
Originally posted by amateur51 View PostI greatly enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale as the novel but not as the opera by Poul Ruders where I found the high tessitura meant that the all-important words got lost. Keep going, Richard!
I'm cleansing the palate with Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac" - an American wilderness classic to stand alongside Thoreau and Muir.
Comment
-
Richard Tarleton
-
hackneyvi
Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View PostAm51, I tried and failed. couldn't get on with it at all. In fact my last 3 for 2 turned out to be an unmitigated disaster - after this and Never Let Me Go I tried Booker Prize-winning Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question
Comment
-
Originally posted by hackneyvi View PostHard Times is a favourite of mine; I believe it's thought of as a 'lesser work' but, if it is, I'm blind to its faults.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.
Comment
-
-
hackneyvi
Sorry, ff. I must have edited just as you quoted.
I've spoken to a couple of literary types who were too well-mannered actually to sniff at it but reserve made their feelings known.
Can't claim I've ever studied anything, beyond the occasional cheque, but I read Hard Times for A level when I was 16. I think one has special relationships with really good books encountered at that age and Hard Times was one of the ones, for me, which 'lit the lamp' for literature.
Comment
-
Originally posted by hackneyvi View PostSorry, ff. I must have edited just as you quoted.
Well, Hard Times is a lesser work in the pantheon, I suppose, because it doesn't come in the top five (whatever they are), barely in the top ten of Dickens' novels. I imagine it's not been very popular because it's especially lacking in hope, light and loveliness.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.
Comment
-
-
I'm currently re-reading Lewis Forman's superb account of the life and times of Arnold Edward Trevor Bax on Scolar Press: fortunately on the second edition so I don't have to look at Harriet Cohen on the front cover every time I take up the book: I really cannot stand the woman.
This in preparation for a performance of his marvellous second symphony at the proms, which I shall try to attend.
Otherwise, I have started to re-read Anthony Powell's wonderful 'Dance to the Music of Time': it will be the 9th time I've tackled this immense tome of British life in the 20th Century, and I'm sorry to say my copies are falling to bits: when I get some money together, I shall invest in hardback copies of each book in the series.
Comment
-
-
amateur51
The Finkler Question. Oh, boy! I bought that on impulse without having read a line of it and couldn't get past the empty first page. I suppose it might have got better but no good writer I can think of ever published prose as poor
I think it may be what's called 'a slow burn'
Comment
-
I've just been reading 'Endurance' by Alfred Lansing the story of Shackleton's ill-fated journey to cross the Antarctic on foot. If you fancy reading it, make sure you get the version with Frank Hurley's wonderful photographs which add so much to the story. It's an incredible tale - the fear in the ship trapped on the ice. The part of the book detailing the journey in a small open boat from Elephant Island across the Southern Ocean, looking for South Georgia, was mind-blowing for me. Lansing gets right into the story from the word go and tells it with all its twists and turns brilliantly.
Apparently it is reported that the advert in the paper read: MEN WANTED: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. Sir Ernest Shackleton."
Comment
-
-
Originally posted by french frank View PostWell, Hard Times is a lesser work in the pantheon, I suppose, because it doesn't come in the top five (whatever they are), barely in the top ten of Dickens' novels. I imagine it's not been very popular because it's especially lacking in hope, light and loveliness.
Hard Times is the one I haven't re-read at all, and it also, uniquely for Dickens, has no scenes in London.
Comment
-
Comment