What are you currently reading?

[Florestan]

Paul Feval - The White Wolf

Not a great writer, to be sure, but a damn good story-teller.

Actually, I take that back. Within his domain he is great. After all, if you disregard all digressions and asides from, say, Balzac's or Hugo's novels, you are more often than not left with plots, characters and actions not unlike Feval's. Not to mention that his style is almost classical compared to the latter's, what with their turgid and mawkish prose.

[SimonNZ]

Finished:



Starting:

[Florestan]

Alexandre Dumas - Antony

Yet another piece of Romantic trash: if you passionately love a woman married with child, the best way to show your love is to stab her to death, because love is about you and you only: if you can't have the woman you love, nobody else should have her.

Truly and irrefutably, Romanticism is a (psychic) disease.

[ritter]

Alexandre Dumas - Antony

Yet another piece of Romantic trash: if you passionately love a woman married with child, the best way to show your love is to stab her to death, because love is about you and you only: if you can't have the woman you love, nobody else should have her.

Truly and irrefutably, Romanticism is a (psychic) disease.

A disease you seem strangely attracted to, Andrei!    Why keep reading this kind of "trash"?

A good evening to you.

[Florestan]

A disease you seem strangely attracted to, Andrei!    Why keep reading this kind of "trash"?

Because both Antony and Chatterton were repeatedly and insistently cited in the Louis Maigron book I referred to above as having heavily influenced a whole lot of French youngsters around 1830.

My interest in this kind of Romanticism is strictly clinical. 

Muy buenas noches, Rafael!

[ritter]

...
My interest in this kind of Romanticism is strictly clinical. 
...

Yeah, right!    I see.

[Florestan]

Switching between these two:

 

[Mandryka]

[Todd]

Defining Strategic Stability: Reconciling Stability and Deterrence, by Elbridge Colby.

[pjme]

I'm only half way, but find this novel already outrageously good. It is very cruel, witty, very sharp, full of fantastic byways and helps me think of the meaning of life....

[AnotherSpin]

A gripping spy thriller in which Mossad, personified by the fearless and endlessly resourceful Gabriel Allon, casts a web so cunning it ensnares none other than Putin's closest confidant, and more importantly, his wallet. Said wallet, it turns out, is stuffed with zillions of roubles spirited away from the good people of Russia.

Meanwhile, Allon casually saves American democracy, as one does, though I may be veering into spoiler territory here. Let's not ruin the fun for anyone who still intends to read it. In truth, the whole thing unfolds with smooth elegance and steady intrigue, perhaps a touch too smooth if we're being picky.

Almost forgot, the narrative is richly seasoned with references to serious music, the names of distinguished performers, and similar cultural flourishes.

[Florestan]

Switching between these two:

 

The precedent book on Romanticism I've read (authored by a French writer) made it look like an asylum and the French Romantics like the most dangerous lunatics therein. This Safranski (German writer) book makes German Romanticism and Romantics look weird but rather inoffensive and ultimately likeable. 

My love-hate relationship with Romanticism continues --- and it probably will never be settled. 

@ritter, you are vindicated. 

[ritter]

...

My love-hate relationship with Romanticism continues --- and it probably will never be settled. 

@ritter, you are vindicated. 

Sarna con gusto no pica...  

[Florestan]

Sarna con gusto no pica...  

I wonder what Spanish Romanticism has in stock for me. 

(I just love Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's poetry*, so maybe they are saner the French and less weird than the Germans...  )

*which I discovered while staying at Hotel Bécquer in Sevilla and wondering why on earth would an Andalusian hotel bear a German name (Becker). 

[Mandryka]

[Florestan]

Anatole France - The Gods are Athirst

[Mandryka]

Abandoned due to lack of interest - irritating neurotic Jewish à la Woodie Allen.

Abandoned due to lack of interest. Too much stuff about irredeemably boring things like stamp collecting

[Mandryka]

Very much enjoyed Rabbit Run, so . . .

[SimonNZ]

[Elgarian Redux]

I'm a great admirer of the wood engravings of Gwen Raverat, and when I discovered that she'd designed the jacket for the original edition of Elizabeth Goudge's The Bird in the Tree (1940), I bought one mainly for the sake of the dust jacket (though it is not typical of Raverat's work).

But now I'm halfway through reading the novel, and it's quite unlike anything I've ever read.  It's written in lovely, lyrical prose that took me 20-30 pages to get used to, but I have the feel of its rhythm now, and I'm reading more slowly than I normally would. Certain sentences stand out, and I have to stop and think about them, and the insight they offer. The tale itself seems to be about a special house, a family who've made it a deeply loved home, and an intrusion into this seeming perfection by one member who has fallen for a woman who, in a number of ways, does not fit. How it ends I can't say, but it is a haunting read. Not quite unputdownable, but I carry it away with me in my head in between reading sessions.