What are you reading now?

[johncorrigan]

Various people have approached Hamlet as if it were an Agatha Christie: one thinks of John Dover Wilson What Happens in Hamlet?
It is not always the most fruitful approach.

I've often felt that Adam McNaughton's four minute version 'Oor Hamlet' to the tune of the Mason's Apron was a great way to approach the Prince of Denmark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPclD-m64Tg

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

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.

[DracoM]

Barnaby Rudge

[vinteuil]

... am on my hols. and am re-reading Tristram Shandy and Mrs Dalloway.

When I first had to read them, they seemed so difficult, impenetrable. And now, so good and easy to read...

[Don Basilio]

Barnaby Rudge

I read it this spring. I hadn't re-read any Dickens for ages, and was swept up. It's not his best by any means, but I went on to re-read Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop. Not only does the formal heroine of Rudge (Emma) not have any character, she doesn't even have any dialogue.

[Richard Tarleton]

I 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!

Am51, 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 - oh dear. So much for reviews. My loss is Oxfam's gain.

I'm cleansing the palate with Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac" - an American wilderness classic to stand alongside Thoreau and Muir.

[Richard Tarleton]

Not only does the formal heroine of Rudge (Emma) not have any character, she doesn't even have any dialogue.

This and Tale of Two Cities my favourite Dickens - his 2 historical novels. My favourite character was Grip the raven.

[hackneyvi]

Am51, 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

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. On reflection, although it's readable, I felt Never Let Me Go was a pompously-maudlin, teenage fantasy but compared to Howard Jacobson it's Tolstoy.

[french frank]

Hard 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.

Is it a lesser work? It's probably my favourite because I found the background to it very interesting. Also Great Expectations, because I liked the background to that too.

[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.

[french frank]

Sorry, ff. I must have edited just as you quoted.

Now you see it ..., now ...

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.

[Colonel Danby]

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.

[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

A friend who was reading this for her book group reported similarly when she was about a quarter of the way through. It was "badly written"; she couldn't " understand how it had won the Booker" etc etc. Then a week later she rang again having finished it, full of praise for it

I think it may be what's called 'a slow burn'

[johncorrigan]

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."

[Don Basilio]

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.

F R Leavis reckoned it was the only Dickens novel in his Great Tradition, but he came to a greater appreciation of the rest of Dickens later.

Hard Times is the one I haven't re-read at all, and it also, uniquely for Dickens, has no scenes in London.