Just finished "Look at me" by Anita Brookner, surely the Jane Austen of our time. Such wit and insight into human nature; this novel is very good on friendship, and how it can fail, and how false & cruel charisma can be. Now just started Kill ’Em All by John Niven, which is a bit crude beside Brookner, but is an amusing page turner and provides disquieting insights into the music business - the popular music side, the classical arena couldn't be so avaricious and haughty, could it?
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Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures Paperback, by Alfred Brendel. Fascinating collection of his writings.Comment
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Originally posted by gurnemanz View Post
Essential reading, in my view, as the DVD of his three lectures is essential viewing.
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Charles Ulrich: The Big Note. Not really a book to read through from cover to cover, perhaps, but full of fascinating information. My one quibble is with the title. Surely is should be "One Big Note".Comment
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Neil Gaiman: The graveyard book
The Year 6 class book for after half term.
Described on the front by Diana Wynne Jones as 'The best book Neil Gaiman has ever written'.
(Why the 'ever'? I'm not sure that I'd like to read much that she's ever written.
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'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith.Comment
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....a lovely lovely novel....A Piece of the World....Christina Baker Kline....an imagining of the World of Christina Olsen....a muse and model of painter Andrew Wyeth in the 30's and 40's in Maine [famous work : Christinas World]....( not the beautiful model he painted : that's Helga)....There's a pretty good UTube Michael Pallin film about Wyeth that gives good info and insight, but if I didn't know of Wyeth I'd read the book first....easy read too, full landscaspe and inner monologuebong chingComment
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The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Centenary Edition PaperbackComment
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Arthur Schnitzler: 'Vienna 1900: Games of Love and Death'
I pick this book up every few years and always find it a pleasure to read. Also recall with affection the BBC2 TV adaptation with Robert Stephens in the early 1970s with Johann Strauss' haunting Waldmeister Overture as the theme music. Sadly, not on youTube.Last edited by Petrushka; 08-03-19, 23:21."The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
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....All 3 volumes of Lawrance Thompson ;Authorised Biography Robert Frost : The Early Years 1874-1915 - The Years of Triumph 1938-1963 - The Later Years 1938-63 (1500pages in all)
I'm not a Robert Frost lover [quite the opposite] - I was interested [research] in a comment made in a very short biography where author mentioned that Lawrance Thompson said [paraphrase] that the more he found out about Frost - the less he liked him....
If I had to be held to 2 or 3 words to describe RF they might be Vengeance - Avarice - Self Centred....Early years was the best of the 3....Most vol2 and 3 seemed to be [besides sons suicide,sisters institutionised (mental), wife gradually exasperated by him, daughters giving up on him, sicophants stroking and supporting him academically him] a long and boring mentioning of 1000's of trips made, talks given, awards awarded, writen spats with other poets, critics, friendships made, friendships broken....and a great deal of him being a pompous stuff shirt....you get my drift....I'd have crossed the street if I saw him coming my way....thank goodness the books contained very little of his poetry....bong chingComment
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'Ruth' / Mrs Gaskell.
A real cracker!Comment
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Judas by Amos Oz. Highly recommended.Comment
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100 pages into Glittering Images, the first in the set of the six Starbridge novels by Susan Howatch.
I had thought that it might be a C20 take on Trollope's Barchester, but I'm not as impressed so far.
Does anyone here know and like her writing?Comment
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She wrote Penmarric. She's a middlebrow writer (then again, so was Trollope, I suppose).Originally posted by Pulcinella View PostComment
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Robert Macfarlane: The Old Ways
Engrossing and fascinating.Comment
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