What are you currently reading?

[Irons]

Going to England in 5 weeks, so starting a run of historical and classic English literature!

Emma (Jane Austen)
The Long View (Elizabeth Jane Howard)
The Giant O'Brien (Hilary Mantel)
The Corner That Held Them (Sylvia Townsend Warner)
The Slaves of Solitude (Patrick Hamilton)
Adam Bede (George Eliot)
The Go-Between (L.P. Hartley)

If I finish it all, I'll switch to a few eclectic works of English non-fiction:

Hons and Rebels (Jessica Mitford)
James Acaster's Classic Scrapes (James Acaster)
Londoners (Craig Taylor)

Good to see Patrick Hamilton on your list. Plenty of reading you have lined up but if time for one more I recommend London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins.

Hope you enjoy trip.

[Ganondorf]

Very close to finishing Middlemarch. A great book although I prefer Silas Marner, Mill on the Floss, and especially Daniel Deronda which is a crown jewel in George Eliot's aka Mary Ann Evans's output. I like the vast humanity of Eliot's characters. They are no caricatures. The only character by Eliot whom I could categorize as evil is Grandcourt from Deronda but still he is no caricature. He's very realistically portrayed. Kind of more interesting version of Dickens's Mr. Murdstone.

[vers la flamme]

Reading a paperback of four plays by George Bernard Shaw: Mrs. Warren's Profession, Arms & the Man, Candida and Man & Superman, which I've just started. First time reading anything of his. I'm liking it all so far, but this last one I think must be the best.

[Florestan]

Siegfried Kracauer - Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time

[ritter]

Siegfried Kracauer - Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time

The author was a very close friend of T. W. Adorno... 

Good day, Andrei.

[Florestan]

The author was a very close friend of T. W. Adorno... 

Really? Well, this book is as un-Adornian as it gets, what with its complete lack of philosophical analysis and the author's palpable sympathy for its subject matter. 

Good day, Andrei.

To you too, my friend.

[ritter]

Really? Well, this book is as un-Adornian as it gets, what with its complete lack of philosophical analysis and the author's palpable sympathy for its subject matter. 
...

https://www.suhrkamp.de/rights/book/correspondence-1923-1966-fr-9783518584965

I started reading Kracauer's Streets in Berlin & Elsewhere several years ago, but lost interest and didn't finish it. Perhaps I should try again...

[Ganondorf]

Reading a paperback of four plays by George Bernard Shaw: Mrs. Warren's Profession, Arms & the Man, Candida and Man & Superman, which I've just started. First time reading anything of his. I'm liking it all so far, but this last one I think must be the best.

Mrs. Warren's profession is one of the most outrageously funny plays I've ever read.

[ritter]

Bought in Leakey's in Inverness (a wonderful second-hand bookstore —allegedly the largest of its kind in Scotland— housed in what used to be a church), and already more than halfway through it:



Lawrence Durrell's Antrobus Complete brings together the humorous stories of diplomatic life previously published in Esprit de Corps, Stiff Upper Lip and Sauve qui peut (books I remember from my earliest childhood, a they were in my parents' library).

Perhaps a bit dated on occasions, but mostly hilarious and well-written.

[JBS]

Bought in Leakey's in Inverness (a wonderful second-hand bookstore —allegedly the largest of its kind in Scotland— housed in what used to be a church), and already more than halfway through it:



Lawrence Durrell's Antrobus Complete brings together the humorous stories of diplomatic life previously published in Esprit de Corps, Stiff Upper Lip and Sauve qui peut (books I remember from my earliest childhood, a they were in my parents' library).

Perhaps a bit dated on occasions, but mostly hilarious and well-written.

I know Durrell only via the Alexandria Quartet, read in high school (the opening volume was actually assigned reading for 11th grade English).  This sounds rather different.

[Irons]

Picked up a copy of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier as a potential read on an upcoming break. Good or not?

[Mandryka]

[Florestan]

[Pohjolas Daughter]

What do you think of the book?

[Florestan]

What do you think of the book?

I'm only on Chapter Two sofar, covering his Naples Conservatory years. The book is well researched and written in an eminently readable style. I like it.

[BWV 1080]

a belated discovery, great space opera - sort of Star Trek for adults

[DavidW]

I read a couple of his novels.  Banks was highly imaginative!

[JBS]

Bought this today in paperback.
Her translation of the Iliad is coming out next month.

Read some long passages at random: reads rather fast and down to earth, and much of it manages to be good English poetry as well a good translation of poetry originally written in a foreign language.

[Brian]

Picked up a copy of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier as a potential read on an upcoming break. Good or not?

Unapologetically soap operatic and over the top emotionally, but a great success at that I think. If you understand it to be stylish pulp - Gothic horror a la the 1800s - you will enjoy. And the Hitchcock adaptation is terrific.

[DavidW]

Picked up a copy of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier as a potential read on an upcoming break. Good or not?

I really like it, but Jamaica Inn is my favorite by Du Maurier.  Rebecca was the inspiration for the re-emergence of gothic lit which eventually led to the birth of modern horror.  There are many knock offs of Rebecca.  I don't think that it is a masterpiece though, but definitely influential and an enjoyable read.