Current Reading - Books best thread

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just started The Humans by Matt Haig. Very funny so far, and reminds me a little of Vonnegut.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

trimster wrote: For a look at Napoleon that doesn't conform to the "Great Man" theory, you should take a look at Philip Dwyer's recent two volume biography. They are called "Path to Power" and "Citizen Emperor". I've just finished reading them. He basically says that Napoleon was a nasty, unscrupulous little shit who created his own myth with crafty PR manipulation.

Well that's interesting. Roberts spends a fair bit of time working in the opposite direction - looking at origins of where nasty rumours about Napoleon cam from, why particular accounts were likely biased/made up, etc. Would be interesting to compare the two (though tbh not sure I could stomach another two volumes).

I don't think Roberts would necessarily shy from "unscrupulous" as a description, at least of some of his actions ("opportunist" is probably the term he'd prefer, though). And nasty? I mean, I suppose you can't conquer Europe without having a bit of a nasty streak, but he wasn't Attila the Hun.

[Borracho]

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Vicarious Thrillseeker wrote: A short message for those who bought 'A Brief History of Seven Killings' but haven't yet got round to reading it yet. It's great - dense, dark and full of Jamaican patois, but a fantastic fictional history of the events around the attempted assassination of Bob Marley and the subsequent move of Jamaican gangs into the States, taking over the drugs trade.

I started on this last night and am about four or five chapters in. It's very good so far, though I have to confess I find some of the Jamaican dialect bits a pain in the arse to wade through. But obviously there's no other way in which he could have done it.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished The Humans; very good indeed, funny and moving in equal measure. Next up I think will be Outline by Rachel Cusk, which I shall start in a little while when my girlfriend goes to bed.

[Anton Gramscescu]

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OK, so I asked this question on the twitters and I got some interesting replies so I thought I would ask it here as well. I feel deficient in pre-WWII European (incl. English) fiction. I mean, I'm probably deficient in post WW-II as well, but I feel more of a need to engage with classics at the moment.

So, extremely small Books hive-mind, what should I read? What are your reccs? (No Russians, please: I've more or less got them under control)

[Levin]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Do you mean pre-WWII in it's totality? Or just 20th C pre WWII?

Roth (esp. the Radetzky March).

How small is small?

[Anton Gramscescu]

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18th, 19th, 20th. Don;t think there is much before 18th I;d be all that interested in (that I haven;t already read or dipped into)

Small? There can't be more than a dozen of us down here, can there?

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Anton Gramscescu wrote: OK, so I asked this question on the twitters and I got some interesting replies so I thought I would ask it here as well. I feel deficient in pre-WWII European (incl. English) fiction. I mean, I'm probably deficient in post WW-II as well, but I feel more of a need to engage with classics at the moment.

So, extremely small Books hive-mind, what should I read? What are your reccs? (No Russians, please: I've more or less got them under control)

Skylark by Dezso Kosztolányi might fit the bill.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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So under 200pp then...

The Man Who Was Thursday — GK Chesterton

The Vicar of Wakefield — Oliver Goldsmith

Just So Stories — Rudyard Kipling

Death in Venice — Thomas Mann

Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

The Sorrows of Young Werther — JW von Goethe (more of historical importance than general interest probably)

A selection of Herman Melville's novellas:
Billy Budd,
Bartleby,
or Benito Cereno
(especially the latter.)

One of Charles Dickens Christmas Stories, eg:
A Christmas Carol
The Cricket on the Hearth

I think Silas Marner might fit the bill, but I don't have a copy to hand to check.

[Levin]

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I'm struggling to come up with short books...

Antal Szerb is good Journey by Moonlight
Lots of Joseph Conrad
All Quiet on the Western Front
Ford Maddox Ford but they may be a bit long
The Kill is a decent Zola

[matt j]

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Crusoe wrote:

OK, so I asked this question on the twitters and I got some interesting replies so I thought I would ask it here as well. I feel deficient in pre-WWII European (incl. English) fiction. I mean, I'm probably deficient in post WW-II as well, but I feel more of a need to engage with classics at the moment.

So, extremely small Books hive-mind, what should I read? What are your reccs? (No Russians, please: I've more or less got them under control)

Skylark by Dezso Kosztolányi might fit the bill.

I love this book. That's probably understating it too. I stumbled across it wandering the stacks at the University of Texas libraries and have probably raved about it on here before. I'd recommend it to just about anyone. Kosztolanyi is one my all-time favorite writers. NY Review of Books link: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/04/08/quiet-shattering-perfect/

(Anna Edes is very good too.) (Both are also short, btw.)

Kosztolanyi's contemporary Frigyes Karinthy wrote one of my favorite non-fiction books A Journey Round My Skull. Also highly recommended.

Karel Capek is also quite fun, if you're looking for other of that era. (War with the Newts is fucking timeless.)

(I have a very soft spot for turn of the (last) century Central European literature.)

[Anton Gramscescu]

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Sorry...when I said small books hive-mind, I wasn;t asking for small books, I was saying the hive-mind of the Books section was small because so few of us come down here.

But carry on, this is great. Thanks!

[Levin]

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In which case, Tom Jones is a must.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

If you're into 19th century British/Irish politics, then Anthony Trollope's "Pallisers" series should keep you going for a few flights. Six novels, all fairly hefty by an insider.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Oh yes I've heard of those. Have you read them? Are they actually any good? My fear is they are like the Jeffrey Archer/First Among Equals of their day.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I have read them, though many moons ago. They're a substantial cut above Archer et al. Trollope worked most of his life in the upper echelons of the civil service, so observed the workings close up, without any obvious personal axe to grind. You have to be patient, as with many 19th Century series there's lots of detail, and events unfold gradually. But Trollope has a dry wit and his characters are by no means stereotypical.

I started in the middle of the series, with The Eustace Diamonds, which can be read separately and is significant as an early example of a British crime story.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I finished reading Macbeth on Sunday, which was definitely written before WWII so I suppose it could be a recommendation for Gramsci, if he's not read it before.

It's a weird one, isn't it? It wasn't one of the plays I studied, and I haven't seen it either, so this was my first experience of it. Having looked it up on Wikipedia, I learn that the version that survived to the present day was solely from the First Folio, probably prepared from an actor's copy, and seems to have been substantially fiddled about with. None of this surprised me much. In particular, for a Shakespearean tragedy it's remarkable how one-dimensional all the characters are apart from Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Obviously it's still magnificent, mind you. The first couple of acts reminded me of nothing so much as the first season of The Wire.

I'm two-thirds of the way through Outline, which is a book notable mostly for containing an awful bloody lot of very long sentences. I don't mind a few, but there are a very high number of sentences in this one that go on for a third of or half a page or more. It's making it bloody hard to get through quickly.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished Outline after a conscious decision to sit down and get the last fifty pages out the way this afternoon. I was finding it really quite annoying by the end.

I've decided to jot a few thoughts on each book I read this year down on one of my long-dormant blogs, incidentally. So, in the hope that the regulars on this thread don't mind me linking as I finish each book, here are my thoughts on Outline.

Next up: probably All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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Peter Ackroyd's biography of Blake at the mo. Most of his books, biography or fiction, seem to be about London, and this is no different. That's not a criticism BTW, but it does mean they share a particular geographical approach.

I'm only about 100 pages in so it's early days. Good stuff on the beginnings of the Royal Academy. Biggest surprise so far, learning that Blake was well into street music, tavern ballads and such — 18th century pop music basically — and would regularly sing his own verses at social gatherings. The Songs of Innocence and Experience were exactly that. Makes Allen Ginsberg's settings of Blake to music seem less eccentric.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I read that, about ten years ago. I can't remember a lot of the details now but I do remember coming away from it with the sense that Blake was even more of a mad genius than I'd already thought he was.

[Crusoe]

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Crusoe wrote: Tried reading A Brief History of Seven Killings but gave up about a third of the way through. It's not difficult or dull, just unremittingly grim.

Tried again. It's still grim, even grimmer than at that point, but I'm glad I finished it this time. I don't think enjoyable is quite the right word, but it was a worthwhile read, a book that kept me wanting to read more.

[Crusoe]

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Just about finished with Andy Beckett's Promised You A Miracle: UK 80-82. Like his previous book on the 1970s it's very rich and varied with some interesting backwards-looking interviews, not at all dry or dusty, although that does mean there are some odd gaps and overlong tangents.

Chapters are organised more by topic than chronology: Ron Arad chairs, the Metro, Charles & Diana, cricket, Chariots of Fire, monetarism, Toxteth, nuclear bunkers, the GLC, Right to Buy, the LDDC, the Iranian Embassy siege, the Falklands, changes in musical tastes, Channel 4, Greenham Common, etc. Immensely readable stuff.

[via vicaria]

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Have just finished Street Without a Name by Kapka Kassabova, which is something of a memoir about her youth in communist Bulgaria, followed by her emigration as communism fell. The book is largely about her return to travel through Bulgaria and see how things have changed.

Kassabova is a writer of both novels and poetry, and there are some nice lyrical flourishes in the book, as well as the subject matter being really compelling. A quote from Jan Morris on the cover was what 'sold' it to me if I'm honest, as I'm quite a fan of hers, and it didn't disappoint - a really great book.

[WOM]

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Stranger Than We Can Imagine; An Alternative History of the 20th Century by John Higgs has done something that's virtually impossible. It's made history dull.

I made it 1/5 of the way through before packing it in, and this book was so 'me'...from the very premise to the cover art. But no...just plain boring.

[Levin]

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Human Acts by Han Kang is amazing, it's about the Gwangju uprising, each chapter focusing on a different character as the book moves from 1980 to the present day.