What are you currently reading?

[Florestan]

Well, this is the shelf in my library with books on (or by) Marcel Proust (and Reynaldo Hahn). The "canonical" works, in the Pléiade editions --6 volumes--, are elsewhere in my library, as are the oversized items (e.g., facsimiles of the annotated galley proofs of Combray or of the manuscript of the madeleine episode).

Have you read them all in their entirety?

[foxandpeng]

Well, this is the shelf in my library with books on (or by) Marcel Proust (and Reynaldo Hahn). The "canonical" works, in the Pléiade editions --6 volumes--, are elsewhere in my library, as are the oversized items (e.g., facsimiles of the annotated galley proofs of Combray or of the manuscript of the madeleine episode).


Good luck with the move. I hope you get nicely settled in your new home...

I am incredibly impressed! Not just with your ability to read Proust with benefit, but with your commitment to thinking and understanding on more than just a superficial level. I have less patience with this particular author, but wish I could have just motored on through each book and finished them. There is an achievement in scaling a mountain, but this is one peak too far, for me.

Thanks for your kind words - we are more than ready to move now, but are still awaiting a final date due to outstanding paperwork! 

[ritter]

Have you read them all in their entirety?

Several times over... 

No, seriously, I've read many (but not all) of them. Isn't the point of having a library at home the notion that you have books at your disposal, even if you have no concrete plans to read them?

For instance, I recently readd volume 1 of George D. Painter's biography of Proust, and then decided to leave volume 2 for a future occasion.

Some of these books are also simply "browseable", and not meant to be read in one sitting.

[foxandpeng]

Several times over... 

No, seriously, I've read many (but not all) of them. Isn't the point of having a library at home the notion that you have books at your disposal, even if you have no concrete plans to read them?

For instance, I recently readd volume 1 of George D. Painter's biography of Proust, and then decided to leave volume 2 for a future occasion.

Some of these books are also simply "browseable", and not meant to be read in one sitting.

Yes!! Aspirational bookshelves!

My kind of library.

[Florestan]

Isn't the point of having a library at home the notion that you have books at your disposal, even if you have no concrete plans to read them?

Quite. I too have in my library many books that I've never read, or have only browsed occasionally.

Some of these books are also simply "browseable", and not meant to be read in one sitting.

True as well.

I'm curious: what writer, irrespective of nationality, do you have the most books about (about, mind you, not by)?

[ritter]

...

I'm curious: what writer, irrespective of nationality, do you have the most books about (about, mind you, not by)?

Boulez, Proust, Wagner (not just writers, obviously).

[Florestan]

Boulez, Proust, Wagner (not just writes, obviously).

Well, Wagner can be rightly considered a writer, and even a Proustian one given his prolixity. 

(I know, I know: O ciel etc.) 

[nico1616]

600 pages in the Magic Mountain and it is not always an easy read. The main story is compelling but the pages and pages of philosophical discussions are not always easy to follow. It reminds me of some other big classics like the Name of the Rose or The Brothers Karamazov. Great novels but quite hard to swallow at times.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Love, Life, Goethe. John Armstrong.

[atardecer]

The Brothers Karamazov. Great novels but quite hard to swallow at times.

Read that last summer, and that matches with my experience. Dostoevsky novels I find are always worth the read but I sometimes find sections tedious. In Crime and Punishment it was all the dialogue in the police interviews. In Brothers Karamazov it is all the legal wrangling at the end. Brothers Karamazov is the only book I've read where I was somewhat underwhelmed at the end of the final chapter, only for everything to be completely redeemed by the epilogue.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I like Dostoevsky but I'm not a fan of Brothers Karamazov, which is a little Tolstoyesque.

[atardecer]

Of the Dostoevsky I've read so far, the one that seems to me the best written technically, excellent in form is 'The Eternal Husband'.

I'm currently reading Dante's Inferno, translation by Anthony Esolen.

[atardecer]

I'm currently reading Dante's Inferno, translation by Anthony Esolen.

Prior to that I read 5 books of Oscar Wilde. Everything was worth reading, much of it containing brilliant insights, but he sometimes gets carried away to me. A great artist in whatever genre is like a chef, knowing the right amount of this ingredient and the right amount of that. With Oscar Wilde it seems he sometimes goes 'oh this tastes good, lets dump a bunch of this in' it's too much. He suffers from this especially in his poetry. Where Wilde exceled in my view was in his stage plays. Those works I love without reservation. 

[Karl Henning]

I like Dostoevsky but I'm not a fan of Brothers Karamazov, which is a little Tolstoyesque.

Interesting. Apart from the famous Grand Inquisitor passage, I've yet to read this one. When I have an opening, I want to re-read The Idiot and The Devils.
TD: Although I foundered two or three times before, I am at last sticking with Geo. MacDonald's Phantastes.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Interesting. Apart from the famous Grand Inquisitor passage, I've yet to read this one. When I have an opening, I want to re-read The Idiot and The Devils.
TD: Although I foundered two or three times before, I am at last sticking with Geo. MacDonald's Phantastes.

I love Devils, Crime, and Idiot. Dostoevsky is my favorite author, but Karamazov is not for me.


Post-ed: I remember you liked Kurosawa's movie adaptation of Idiot!

[SimonNZ]

There's an excellent 10-episode Russian tv adaptation of The Idiot as well.

TD: starting:

[JBS]

I've read Crime and Punishment, Bros Karamazov, and Idiot. Idiot was the only one that actually engaged me.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I've read Crime and Punishment, Bros Karamazov, and Idiot. Idiot was the only one that actually engaged me.

Nastasya Filippovna is so vivid and lively.

[ultralinear]

Darkenbloom by Eva Menasse

Set in a small Austrian village on the Hungarian border, where secrets going back to wartime lie buried - both figuratively and literally - and by common consent remain undisturbed, I can see how this might have more resonance for an Austrian readership living with this kind of legacy, but for me it failed as a novel to live up to the expectations raised.  You get 300 pages of scene-setting, cutting back and forth in time and dropping a lot of heavy hints about things that might or might not have happened in some place or other at some time or other involving this or that person, followed by 150 pages of more-or-less linear narrative that - spoiler alert - ultimately fizzles out with nothing resolved.  The book ends with the line This is not the end of the story.  It certainly isn't.  Glad I got this from the library as I can't imagine wanting to read it again.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

There's an excellent 10-episode Russian tv adaptation of The Idiot as well.

TD: starting:

I think you're talking about this drama. It looks very interesting and I may purchase the dvd soon.