What are you currently reading?

[SimonNZ]

That looks very interesting.  I think I'll get a copy of that.

It really is excellent.

It would have been all too easy for a one volume overview of history writing through the centuries to have been just a once over lightly string of not much better than wikipedia entries and following the simplistic thumbs up or down the current fashion assigns them.

But this is immediately clearly the work of a  professional historian at the end of a long career taking stock of a lifetime thinking about his craft. He is tellingly sympathetic to all of his subjects and the examples he chooses and connections he makes are highly individual. And even though I majored in history at university there are many works previously unknown to me that get signposted along the way.

I was particularly impressed by his section covering the now unfashionable Macauley, and I'll need to find the four-volume Heron edition of his history of the Glorious Revolution I used to see in every secondhand shop but of course is now nowhere to be found.

]


I hadn't heard of that book The Vanquished before. I'll grab a copy when I see one.

[JBS]

It really is excellent.

It would have been all too easy for a one volume overview of history writing through the centuries to have been just a once over lightly string of not much better than wikipedia entries and following the simplistic thumbs up or down the current fashion assigns them.

But this is immediately clearly the work of a  professional historian at the end of a long career taking stock of a lifetime thinking about his craft. He is tellingly sympathetic to all of his subjects and the examples he chooses and connections he makes are highly individual. And even though I majored in history at university there are many works previously unknown to me that get signposted along the way.

I was particularly impressed by his section covering the now unfashionable Macauley, and I'll need to find the four-volume Heron edition of his history of the Glorious Revolution I used to see in every secondhand shop but of course is now nowhere to be found.

]


I hadn't heard of that book The Vanquished before. I'll grab a copy when I see one.

I remember references in my college reading to Macaulay complaining about his alleged bias to the Whigs.

Amazon US has a copy of the Heron edition listed at $299.99 US.

There's a Penguin abridged edition: Hugh Trevor-Roper was the abridger/editor.

TD
Spending the evening with an old friend, Jane Austen's Persuasion.

[Karl Henning]

I've decided it's time I made good on reading Geo. MacDonald's Phantastes.  I don't exactly know how much I read before ... made a good-ish bit of progress, but certainly did not finish it. No good reason.

[SimonNZ]

I remember references in my college reading to Macaulay complaining about his alleged bias to the Whigs.

Amazon US has a copy of the Heron edition listed at $299.99 US.

There's a Penguin abridged edition: Hugh Trevor-Roper was the abridger/editor.

TD
Spending the evening with an old friend, Jane Austen's Persuasion.

300us? Yikes! I better grab that listing I can see on a local site for 25nz.

I've actually had the Penguin abridgment sitting on my shelves for a long while, and yesterday I got it down and had a look and decided that the 50-page introduction by Trevor-Roper could be interesting, but the unusual way the abridgment was done is for me at least going to make it a more not less difficult read. And at any rate after reading Burrow I'd like to experience the uninterrupted flow of Macaulay's thoughts and style the way Burrow describes it.

[Elgarian Redux]

I've decided it's time I made good on reading Geo. MacDonald's Phantastes.  I don't exactly know how much I read before ... made a good-ish bit of progress, but certainly did not finish it. No good reason.

I re-read Phantastes a few months ago too, Karl. It used to be one of my favourite books, though now I'm not so sure about it. But then, I had come at it, this time, straight after reading William Morris's The Well at the World's End which, despite being a fantasy, has a medieval robustness to it that made MacDonald seem a bit watery. Could just have been a mood thing. Still, I must say that the episode where Anodos sits down to rest by a tree - the Beech, I think it is - is unforgettable, and changed my whole imaginative attitude to trees when I first read it in the 1970s.

[Karl Henning]

I re-read Phantastes a few months ago too, Karl. It used to be one of my favourite books, though now I'm not so sure about it. But then, I had come at it, this time, straight after reading William Morris's The Well at the World's End which, despite being a fantasy, has a medieval robustness to it that made MacDonald seem a bit watery. Could just have been a mood thing. Still, I must say that the episode where Anodos sits down to rest by a tree - the Beech, I think it is - is unforgettable, and changed my whole imaginative attitude to trees when I first read it in the 1970s.

Yes, an especially touching encounter. I've now reached the place which was as far as I had read before: after visiting the cottage of an ogress, Anodos is dogged by his shadow ... his deliverance feels near.

[LKB]

I just received Robert Massie's Dreadnought for Christmas, so I'll be cuddling with that tiny little thing for a few days... 

[Artem]

Compass was very poetic, dreamy, lyrical, encyclopaedic at points. Love story and an ode to the Middle East. Not an easy read, but worth it.

Tesson was a miss for me. A self-help kind of book about living alone with nature.

Labatut was more interesting, although the first half feels like an embellished wikipedia article on physics and scientific discovery.

[Mandryka]

Compass was very poetic, dreamy, lyrical, encyclopaedic at points. Love story and an ode to the Middle East. Not an easy read, but worth it.

Yes, very good. There's another one by him which I liked, called in French Zone.

[Artem]

Whishlisted now. Thank you for the suggestion. It feels like the best contemporary literature is being written in French these days.

[Artem]

First book of the year is by a contemporary author from Colombia. A brutal realistic tale of attachment/non-attachement.

[SimonNZ]

These on the go:

[SonicMan46]

Well, some new books - first a hardcover from the History Book Club (member since 1970s) and others new on my iPad (Kindle purchases):

A Brave and Cunning Prince (2021) by James Horn - centers on the Powhatan chief Opechancanough (relative, possibly brother, of Powhatan of Pocahontas fame) - the majority of the relatively short book is about Jamestown (1607), the first permanent English settlement on the North American continent (for those unfamiliar with American history; the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620).  Having read many books on this topic, this new one is well done, concise, and recommended.

The Dawn of Everything; A New History of Humanity (2021) w/ David Graeber and David Wengrow - just getting started and indeed a different approach; expect to enjoy but for more and plenty of reviews check Amazon HERE.

Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 (2021) w/ Alina Chan and Matt Ridley - have not started yet, but 5* Amazon comments and 4.5/5 ratings on Goodreads (review attached for those interested); since the start of this COVID pandemic, I've been reading 2-3 books per year on infectious disease, and viruses in particular.   Dave

   

[Spotted Horses]

Faulkner, Mosquitoes.



This is an early Faulkner novel, his second published, which predates his focus on the weight of history on Southern culture.

It is a novel that satirizes artistic culture in New Orleans. A wealthy widow plans a four day yachting excursion, inviting members of the New Orleans artistic community - a painter, a sculptor, a novelist, two poets, a literary critic, as well as a friend who is a hanger-on to the artistic community. Also invited is the widow's neice and nephew. The morning of the departure, the niece invites a perfect stranger, a girl she met "downtown" who brings along her boyfriend.

The novel satirizes the hypocrisy and foolishness of the artists, who spend their time getting drunk, lusting and scheming after the young, attractive "non-artistic" passengers.

I enjoyed the book a lot.

Having finished the novel I realize I made a big mistake. I read a Kindle Edition without realizing that passages removed by the publisher because they were too sexually explicit for 1927 sensibilities were restored in the print version I also have. Now I am debating whether I should read it again.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Drive My Car- the movie based on Haruki Murakami's novel- wins Golden Globe for best non-English film.

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/01/93f1b0f499eb-japans-drive-my-car-wins-golden-globe-for-best-non-english-film.html

[Artem]

That's pretty cool. Will this make Haruki Murakami even more famous?

[ritter]

First approach to the work of Jean Anouilh, with arguably his greatest success, Antigone.


This wartime version of Sophocles' play is thought by some to be an "anti-Greek tragedy". It follows the original quite closely, but introduces new characters (Antigone's wet nurse) and although somehow set in antiquity, introduces modern language and customs (they even drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, drive cars   ). In any case, it's beautifully written and must be very effective onstage.

It's surprising the author and original producer, André Barsacq, got away with presenting this in the last months of the German occupation of Paris —it was premiered in February 1944– as it is a clear glorification of revolt against injustice.

[Mandryka]

It's really good fun when he's in Waterloo -- reminds me of Voyage au bout de la nuit. The battle is complete chaos!  But Waterloo's over now and I'm asking myself, do I want to go further. It looks like an action novel, but occasionally I think there may be more to it than that (Fabrice seems to be trying to "find himself" maybe.)


Actually looking at Gallimard's blurb I think I'd better press on

Un livre unique, une somme romanesque, un livre dicté en moins de deux mois et qui est le sommet de l'improvisation, un récit sur Bonaparte, Waterloo, l'Italie, un grand ouvrage politique, que dire encore en faveur de ce qu'Italo Calvino appelait «le plus beau roman du monde». Une comédie humaine, un itinéraire spirituel, plusieurs histoires d'amour enfermées dans une petite ville d'Italie, avec le passage du temps, le charme de la mémoire, les «paysages sublimes», le paradoxe d'un héros qui trouve son paradis en prison, toutes les vertus et toutes les lâchetés, il faudrait tout citer. Manqueraient encore la merveilleuse brièveté de la phrase, et le sens de l'humour. Toute la littérature française en un volume.

Stendhal's prose is good: limpid, lively.

[Florestan]

It's really good fun when he's in Waterloo -- reminds me of Voyage au bout de la nuit. The battle is complete chaos!  But Waterloo's over now and I'm asking myself, do I want to go further. It looks like an action novel, but occasionally I think there may be more to it than that (Fabrice seems to be trying to "find himself" maybe.)


Actually looking at Gallimard's blurb I think I'd better press on


Stendhal's prose is good: limpid, lively.

Go ahead, it's a fabulous book. Gallimard is spot on.

[Ganondorf]

This relatively unknown gem from H.P. Lovecraft is really really good. I think it is one of my favorite stories from him, ever. The guy was certainly a crazy racist lunatic but he was a genius cracy racist lunatic. What an imagination the guy had.

Also, by Lovecraft's standards, this doesn't exactly reflect the lowest low of his racial prejudices although they most certainly are there.