What are you currently reading?

[Ratliff]

Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told, Tom Phelan



A novel telling the story of two deaths that took place in an Irish village in 1951. The tale is recounted by three people who meet in a sunroom, more than 50 years later, consisting of the coroner who presided at the inquests at the time, his wife, and a man who was a boy in the village at the time and witnessed part of the aftermath of the first death. It turns out that both deaths were homicides, and the village overlooked the circumstances of the deaths because they brought justice to the victims, in a larger sense.

A fine book, recommended.

[Ratliff]

Exactly. I just re-read Mansfield Park in January, and the thing that's a struggle is that it's just a vicious read. I'd skim over a paragraph thinking it would be boring descriptions of party planning, then my eye would catch onto a word like a fish hook, and I'd go back and discover that Austen was just seething with sarcasm. Mansfield Park is about as genteel as a knife fight. The fact of slavery hovers over everything Sir Thomas touches - and another thing, too, especially with Fanny's beau, the absolute buffoonery and uselessness of the Church of England on moral issues like slavery. Fanny and Edmund are a uniquely loserly pair of "heroes"; they wind up together because they are useless to anyone else. I don't think Austen had much love for them at all.

The enormous and lengthy subplot about staging the play was - even after I pulled up the play's Wiki and read the scandalous plot summary - not interesting.

EDIT: In her fascinating and highly recommendable (if occasionally far-fetched - but in a quite thought-provoking way) book, "Jane Austen, the Secret Radical," Helena Kelly points out that Mansfield Park received almost no reviews and comment after its publication, and even a column late in Austen's life celebrating her body of work omitted it. The general consensus has been that it's because of the book's weakness; but Kelly, and based on some comments in letters possibly Austen herself, believed it was because of the anti-Church agenda hidden behind Edmund.

It was your mention of the book here that prompted me to read the book again. Thanks!

The Mill on the Floss

Another fine book, better than Middlemarch, I think, which is usually mentioned as her best work.

[Florestan]

The Man in Revolt

[AlberichUndHagen]

Macbeth

[Brian]

Another fine book, better than Middlemarch, I think, which is usually mentioned as her best work.

Interesting! I'm about two-thirds of the way through now (their father just died); like Middlemarch, the book has an interesting inertia-driven pace - that is, at the start, it takes forever to get wound up, and then once it starts moving, it doesn't stop. Getting really engrossed.

The ending of Middlemarch is a beautiful little sermon. I hear that the ending of this one is ... rather different.

[Daverz]

   I liked that a LOT.  The first has some thriller mystery elements that I had some doubts about, and book two starts off slowly. However, when it eventually moves into the far future, it was the most fascinating and thought provoking Sci-Fi I've read (which isn't much, admittedly).  One point he makes, which I found absolutely persuasive, is that we should NOT be trying to broadcast our presence to ET life.

I enjoyed that one, particularly the historical backdrop.  But I was not able get into the sequel.

Currently reading:

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Reminds me of a jazz musician riffing on a tune they wrote earlier in their career. 

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[AlberichUndHagen]

Interesting! I'm about two-thirds of the way through now (their father just died); like Middlemarch, the book has an interesting inertia-driven pace - that is, at the start, it takes forever to get wound up, and then once it starts moving, it doesn't stop. Getting really engrossed.

The ending of Middlemarch is a beautiful little sermon. I hear that the ending of this one is ... rather different.

Now that I'm finished with Daniel Deronda I think I will move on to The Mill on the Floss as my next George Eliot project whenever that may be. Daniel Deronda was awesome, as was Silas Marner. The only minus with Deronda was that the ending felt rather abrupt and anti-climactic. However, I didn't find the two plots of the book unconnected at all.

[Artem]

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music by Rob Young

A few years ago, I got interested in folk and roots music, and its rock offshoots, and eventually I wanted to know more about the whole subject. This enormous tome (almost 700 pages) covers the UK side of things in exhaustive detail.

One thing I like about it is that the author doesn't really respect genre boundaries. This means he is able to discuss the folk influences and explorations of composers like Vaughan Williams, Bax and Holst as part of the same larger phenomenon as the later folk revivals and the folk-rock explosion of the 60s/70s. He also discusses how folk music in Britain was a "floating signifier" that passed through a number of stages in its significance: the recovery of 'buried" national culture in the early 20th century, the politicized working-class music of the mid-century, and the psychedelic, individualist phase from the 1960s onward.

There's so much detail here that it's easy to get lost in it, but on the positive side, I can open any chapter and learn something interesting. It's really quite an achievement, and I highly recommend it for fans of British classical, folk, or rock (or all three).

Great book, indeed. Along the line of Simon Reynolds' "Rip it up and start again", but covering a different era.

[Jo498]

Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron.
Had this on my shelves for ages but never started, so I thought prophylactic Corona Quarantine must be the time for this. The framestory is 10 people leaving plague-ridden mid-14th century Florence for a country house. For ten days (deka hemerai) everyone tells a story, so we get a 100 stories altogether. Will see how far I'll get.

[SimonNZ]

^coincidentally (or not, I guess) I'm currently doing a second read of Camus' The Plague:

[Spineur]

It is difficult to write about music and very few composers or musician succeed in conveying their artistry into text.  This is not the case for Toru Takemitsu complete writings which have been recently translated and published  into french.  Some portion of his text are also available in English.  The book contains some of his autobiographical notes, his thought about music, his inteview of other musicians, his own interviews and a few short stories of his own.  Each of them are between 3-10 pages long, so the book is easy to read, can be read in any order.  Takemitsu was a  very clear person in his music and his musical thoughts.

[Ratliff]

The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje, started before the Coronavirus hogged the horizon.



This is a great book. It starts somewhat slowly, describing thee young boys traveling by ship from Ceylon to England, where they will attend boarding school. They meet at the "cat's table," the least prestigious dining table on the ship. The book describes their adventures on the ship, interacting with a broad cast of characters, and relates these experiences to their later lives. The three boys explore the physical reality of the ship, and the reality of the adult relationships surrounding them that they only later come to understand. A central mystery of the story involves a prisoner held on the ship, his relationship with others on board, and his attempt to escape. There are flash forwards to the characters in the story interacting decades later, as adults, and coming to terms with what they witnessed on that formative voyage. It also contrasts the culture of Ceylon with that of the West and deals with the issues faced by immigrants. Just a wonderful read. A book that can be grasped upon first reading, and richly reward re-reading, I expect.

For those of you who remember The English Patient, this one is less of a puzzle. I didn't fully grasp what was going on in The English Patient until I read the book, watched the movie, the read the book again.

[Brian]

Hmmm - thank you, I'm going to wishlist that. I have a list of 25 books already in possession at home to read during this, uhhh, homestay. Last night finished Austen's Persuasion; now on to another pillar of merry olde England, The Scarlet Pumpernickel Pimpernel.

[JBS]

[Brian]

One of my favorite cartoons!

Before the current madness descended, a Dallas bar owner was planning to open an English pub called Ye Olde Scarlet Pumpernickel after the cartoon.

[André]

Pumpernickel was my father-in-law's favourite type of brot. Typical german fare. I don't dislike it, but a few slices go a long way for me. Must be sliced very thin.

[aligreto]

I have just finished reading Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva

[Kaga2]

I have just finished reading Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva

I read that over 40 years ago. Don't remember it much. Was it good?

My reading has tanked this past week. Too much time online reading about Covid, and arguing with idiots who insist it's a nothing burger. I am though getting through an old locked room mystery and a couple books of history.

[aligreto]

I read that over 40 years ago. Don't remember it much. Was it good?

My reading has tanked this past week. Too much time online reading about Covid, and arguing with idiots who insist it's a nothing burger. I am though getting through an old locked room mystery and a couple books of history.

This was a re-read for me. I also read it about 40 years ago. I did not remember much of the book to be honest but I did remember the "feel" of it. I enjoyed it again but then I do like Greene's easy writing style.

BTW, don't waste your own valuable time with the idiots. 

[Kaga2]

BTW, don't waste your own valuable time with the idiots. 

But I just joined!



Seriously, I don't actually try to convince idiots, I just try to make sure other readers see a counter argument.