What are you currently reading?

[SimonNZ]

Found that so fascinating that I read it in one sitting some years back. It is, admittedly quite a short book, but I'm quite a slow reader and that doesn't happen often.

TD: still loving - and highly recommending - Bird Lives! and from the author's background detail of the Kansas City jazz scene in the 30s realise I'm going to have to hunt down his book length study of that subject.

[SimonNZ]

"Kreutzer sonata" is a quick read but many hate it because it is Tolstoy in his puritan preacher mode. The best of his shorter prose is probably "The Death of Ivan Ilich", an utterly brilliant piece, psychologically infinitely more subtle than Kreutzer sonata.

I keep meaning to get around to "Hadji Murat", whose reputation as a key Tolstoy work has increased steadily in recent decades - especially since getting a big puff in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon.

[FelixSkodi]

On a humorous note, reading the title of that book, and the blurb on Amazon, I was reminded of an anecdote that has become famous here in Spain: when bullfighter Rafael "El Gallo" was introduced to José Ortega y Gasset and told the latter was a philosopher, someone tried to explain to him what a philosopher actually did. The bullfighter's response was "Hay gente pa tó"—loosely translatable as "It takes all sorts (to make a world)".   

Lol. Love that story. When folks ask what I do, I simply say I'm a teacher (will be a professor come to December, then I'll say that)

Found that so fascinating that I read it in one sitting some years back. It is, admittedly quite a short book, but I'm quite a slow reader and that doesn't happen often.

It has one of the best openings ever, and the case she covers is endlessly fascinating (eventually evolved into satanic conspiracy with noted conspiracist, now gone, Ted Gunderson).

[Jo498]

I keep meaning to get around to "Hadji Murat", whose reputation as a key Tolstoy work has increased steadily in recent decades - especially since getting a big puff in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon.

It is also good but IMO in no way such a deep psychological "key" work as Death of Ivan Ilich or maybe some others. Very roughly Hadji Murat seems a more mature treatment of topics he did earlier with "The cossacks" and similar stories from the wars in Caucasus or at other borders of the Russian Empire.
I don't know about free kindle or other options (and I was reading the stuff in German translation, you will probably in English, not Russian) but often one finds all or most of the shorter/middle prose pieces by Tolstoy collected in one or two volumes. This is a worthwhile addition for any bookshelf and one can read as many stories as one feels like.

[SimonNZ]

Penguin Classics have three or four useful roundups of the shorter works for the English reader.

The Tolstoy I really want to go back to, one I read in mid teens but can barely remember now is the Sebastopol Sketches.

[Mandryka]

Penguin Classics have three or four useful roundups of the shorter works for the English reader.

The Tolstoy I really want to go back to, one I read in mid teens but can barely remember now is the Sebastopol Sketches.

Have you read Orwell's Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool?

I have read War and Peace (though I left out the didactic chapters on Philosophy of History), and I read Anna Karenina (which I very much enjoyed.) But everything else, including Hadji Murat, didn't make an impression, least of all the later works. War and Peace is good because Pierre Bezukhov is such a sympathetic character -- the way he's always losing his glasses etc.

[Mandryka]

I finished Moby-Dick. Now what am I supposed to do all day long - work?!

Try Billy Budd!

[SimonNZ]

Have you read Orwell's Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool?
.

No....I've read most of Orwell but that ones not familiar. You'd recommend it?

If we're going to play this game: have you read Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying? It's a favorite of mine and one that I continually recommend to anyone who'll listen.

[Mandryka]

No....I've read most of Orwell but that ones not familiar. You'd recommend it?

Very much so. Orwell's journalism, essays and letters are well worth exploring.

If we're going to play this game: have you read Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying? It's a favorite of mine and one that I continually recommend to anyone who'll listen.

Yes I have, very good.

[ritter]

Last night, Henry de Montherlant's play Port-Royal (followed the 1960 TV production with the text in the Pléiade edition):

 
This one-acter, set in the Port-Royal convent in Paris during the Jansenist controversy of the 1660s, deals with the nuns being forced to choose between their convictions—which interestingly don't seem to emanate from a deep knowledge of the principles they're supposed to be based on—and power (papal and royal) that they also acknowledge and respect. Quite powerful, IMHO, and rather moving.

[vers la flamme]

It really etches in one's mind and heart. Try Demian if you haven't done so already.

Glad to hear someone feels similarly. I read and loved Demian, but not since high school, I ought to reread it now that I understand life a little bit better. 

[SimonNZ]

A couple of interesting lists from Literary Hub:

The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Under 200 Pages

The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages

edit: I should include the list that led me over to them:

The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade

[aligreto]

Turgenev: Three Short Novels





Asya
First Love
Spring Torrents

[Brian]

A couple of interesting lists from Literary Hub:

The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Under 200 Pages

The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages

edit: I should include the list that led me over to them:

The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade

Thanks for these! I confess between 200 and 500 pages is my sweet spot for novels, but probably also much more common and would be a far longer list. Lots on the nonfiction list that looks really good.

[arpeggio]

I'd be interested to know.

I will chance it:

Charles Sykes How the Right Lost its Mind
David Frum Trumpocarcy: The Corruption of the American Republic
Rick Wilson Everything Trump Touches Dies

The above works are by conservatives that one of our members describes as clowns.

The Mueller Report

E. J. Dionne Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism-from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond

[SimonNZ]

I'd be interested to know which you'd recommend or any other thoughts.

Barry Goldwater is someone I'd like to understand much better. How much coverage does he get in that lasy book?

[arpeggio]

I'd be interested to know which you'd recommend or any other thoughts.

Barry Goldwater is someone I'd like to understand much better. How much coverage does he get in that lasy book?

I liked all of them.  The Sykes, Frum and the Wilson all say basically the same thing.  Any one of them would be good.

As far as Goldwater he wrote a great book: The Conscious of a Conservative.  Reading it shows how dramatically the conservative movement has changed in the past forty years.

[SimonNZ]

Thanks. I'll add it to the wishlist.

[Daverz]

I'd be interested to know which you'd recommend or any other thoughts.

Barry Goldwater is someone I'd like to understand much better. How much coverage does he get in that lasy book?

There's also Perlstein's Before the Storm, which I only know by reputation: 

[asin]B0087GZE32[/asin]

[SimonNZ]

For a second I thought that was a parody thing, but I see its well reviewed.

I'll try and check it out. Thanks.


unrelated:

as I clean out my bookmarks etc I see there's another book list that people might perhaps find worth a glance:

Well-read in No Time: 100 Short Nonfiction Books