What are you currently reading?

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Started the first volume. So far, so good. Mann's themes are recognizable, albeit on a smaller scale than in his novels --- the main one, which I think was his obsession, being the conflict between art and life, aesthetics and ethics. When I was younger, I was decidedly in favor of art; now that I just turned 50, I am decidedly in favor of life.   

While Death in Venice is great, Tonio Kroeger is very good as well.

[Bachtoven]

A dark, gritty, and violent novel about revenge. The title suggests this is not a fun, light read, and it isn't, but it's still very compelling.

[Brian]

I have read a couple of novels by Jenny Erpenbeck recently. Very powerful stuff with a strong connection to central European history.

Thank you for this recommendation. I am just on the final chapter of Visitation (in German, Heimsuchung). Her style is powerful, the stories are very emotional even with a somewhat detached tone. There is a way in which one is like the other, so that the first ones are best and most surprising (before you understand that each one contains a tragic mystery fully revealed at the end). But it has been a memorable reading experience. At only 150 pages, it has the strength and importance of something much longer.

[Mandryka]

I love the book, movie, and movie soundtrack, but didn't know about this!

Revisiting it last night I felt that it was really difficult, all the stuff about writing especially. I'd quite like to read some secondary literature but I don't know what's good and what's not. Maybe @ritter has some ideas.  She didn't approve of the film - I've not seen it.

It also made me think how poor other writers of autofiction are by comparison - Annie Ernaux especially - I can't understand how Ernaux deserves a Nobel Prize.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Revisiting it last night I felt that it was really difficult, all the stuff about writing especially. I'd quite like to read some secondary literature but I don't know what's good and what's not. Maybe @ritter has some ideas.  She didn't approve of the film - I've not seen it.

It also made me think how poor other writers of autofiction are by comparison - Annie Ernaux especially - I can't understand how Ernaux deserves a Nobel Prize.

Yes the story is fragmented and dispersed. But I liked her views and expressions. I watched the movie before reading the book, and probably Jeanne Moreau's narration helped me. I respect Duras disapproval, but the movie is fairly excellent by the standard of European and American popular films today. Good cinematography, nice music, and again, good narrations from the original book. Chopin Waltz is effectively used at the end of the movie.

[Artem]

My exposure to Annie Ernaux has been very limited so far. I read only one of her novels translated into Russian language. I've been very much impressed by her direct writing style. Happening was easily one of the best books I read this year.

[Mandryka]

My exposure to Annie Ernaux has been very limited so far. I read only one of her novels translated into Russian language. I've been very much impressed by her direct writing style. Happening was easily one of the best books I read this year.

"Direct writing style" is the right phrase.

[Spotted Horses]

My exposure to Annie Ernaux has been very limited so far. I read only one of her novels translated into Russian language. I've been very much impressed by her direct writing style. Happening was easily one of the best books I read this year.

Just acquired the Kindle Edition (English translation).

[relm1]

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus

[Jo498]

While Death in Venice is great, Tonio Kroeger is very good as well.

When I was in school around 1990, Tonio Kroeger was the "standard" assigned reading for Thomas Mann. I guess, DiV was a bit "too gay" for some tastes at the time, but it was probably read as well in some schools.
The longer novels were usually way too long for a standard German literature class (although some more advanced/specialized classes could have done one of them as well).
Among the shorter stories and novellas there are a few very funny ones, e.g. "Das Wunderkind" (The child prodigy), also "Wälsungenblut" (almost a satire on Wagner, it used to have a few antisemitic undertones that might have been purged in more recent editions).

[Herman]

Having watched the Baumbach movie I am rereading, after all these years, Don DeLillo's White Noise.

[Valentino]

Ring Resounding
again.

[SimonNZ]

Started:

[LKB]

Ring Resounding
again.

That one's a lot of fun. Love it when Culshaw recounts the recording of Das Rheingold's coda.

[Valentino]

There's always a harp problem in Vienna. 

[Spotted Horses]

In the past I've read a lot of Joyce Carol Oats, but sort of saturated. Everyone once in a while I miss her "story coming at you like a firehose" style and return. Just finished a collection of macabre stores, "The Doll Master." Impressive.

[Brian]

On January 1 I started a "project" read, Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

[SimonNZ]

Along with a couple of other things on the go am half way through this excellent and blood-boiling book:

[Spotted Horses]

Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Another Steinbeck novel that I had never read. It is the story of two men traveling in depression era rural California, working as itinerant ranch hands. George is small and intelligent, though uneducated, Lenny is large, strong and intellectually disabled. The story reaches a climax when they tangle with the insecure, slightly sadistic son of the owner of the ranch where they are employed.

[vandermolen]

Schadenfreude