What are you currently reading?

[ritter]

Well, Soldati clearly was a bon vivant. He received the Premio di Letteratura Gastronomica in 1959, and compiled a 829 page book on his travels through Italy in search of well-known or obscure wines (initially in three volumes between 1969 and 1976)

[SimonNZ]

Finished / started:

[AnotherSpin]

The recently deceased Frederick Forsyth's novel is an effortless read, but you can tell it's built on some seriously solid ground. He did his homework. The way he lays out how power actually works in Russia feels uncomfortably accurate — detailed enough to make you forget you're reading fiction. Real political names from the '90s pop up not just for flavour, but to give the whole thing a near-documentary weight.

But the real kicker? This was written in the mid-90s, and yet there's a character — a fascist-leaning strongman, obsessed with total control — who looks an awful lot like a certain present-day bunker-dweller. Either Forsyth had a crystal ball, or (more likely) he just understood how Russian politics operates. When your options are fake reformers on one side and shady sadists on the other, it's only a matter of time before a dead-eyed ex-KGB type slides into power. If it hadn't been Putin, it would've been someone just like him. The system was always going to cough up that kind of monster.

The book takes its time, but it builds a pretty grim picture: Russia as the battleground between good and evil, with noble, Russian-speaking Anglo-Saxons slyly manipulating the few honest locals into standing up to the soulless machine. All good, as far as moral tales go. But here's the thing — and for me, it's the one key correction: the real dividing line between good and evil doesn't run through Russia itself, but rather, snugly along its borders.

[Mandryka]

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level undernéath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!


Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!


No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

[DaveF]

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-...

Can I recommend that your next reading should be

 

[JBS]

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level undernéath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!


Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!


No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

I've not encountered that poem before, but knew instantly who the poet was. Hopkins' style is unique.

[AnotherSpin]

I like the quote from Hopkins - "What I do is me: for that I came"

[Mandryka]

I'm about to do a course on The Windhover, that's why I'm reading it. It's all pretty clear to me until the sestet then it's like, wtf does he mean?

It must be real hard for someone who's first language isn't English to read Hopkins!

[Mandryka]

I like the quote from Hopkins - "What I do is me: for that I came"

Have you read this one? He had a terrible life in a way

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
 With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.


 I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
 Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.


It's like Philip Larkin's Aubade

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/aubade-56d229a6e2f07

[Cato]

For newer members: if you are looking for a "summer-reading book" either for yourself or for an adolescent of your acquaintance  , please consider this book, suitable for ages 12 and up!



Many thanks in advance, if you decide to give it a chance, or to purchase it as a present!

I know some of you have read this book, when it was published in three smaller volumes, and I thank you again for your support!

The story has now been reissued in one volume: please consider buying this as a Christmas present.

If you have not read the book, please consider doing so!   

From a 5-star review:




A Diary Found at Lynchburg

See:

A Diary Found at Lynchburg

[SimonNZ]

"Texan Reads His Electric Bill Like Its A Faulkner Novel"