What are you reading now?

[Barbirollians]

I've just finished Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, a historical novel about the German Romantic poet Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). PF is a recent discovery, and I'm going through all her novels. I like her concise, ironic and unrhetorical style (none of her novels is over 250 pages) and the amount of background detail is amazing (Donald Macleod would be envious ). Others of hers I've enjoyed are The Beginning of Spring, set in Moscow before WWI and The Gate of Angels, set in Cambridge in 1912. Does anyone else like her work?

I have only read The Beginning of Spring which I thought was enchanting . I have the Blue Flower though which is now looking at me reproachfully from the bookcase .

[Mandryka]

I much enjoyed 'Beware of Pity'.

Not everyone is such a fan of Zweig -

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n02/michael...micular-dither

I found that depressing reading, as I have always admired Michael Hoffman's Joseph Roth translations.

[french frank]

Not everyone is such a fan of Zweig -

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n02/michael...micular-dither

I enjoyed the succinct comment below: "One is tempted to ask why Hofmann chooses to dish the dirt so prolifically when a simple sentence of hatred would have sufficed."

I have several of the novellas in French, in which they read quite well: they made quite light travel reading, much like Hesse's shorter works, though more emotional (La Confusion des sentiments, Brûlant secret, Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d'une femme). I also read The Post-Office Girl in English but was less impressed - I think I decided to put it in the charity bag. It sounds as if Beware of Pity might be a cut above most of them? (There's also The Chess-Player which was dramatised on R3 a little while back - quite intriguing.)

I think the huge popular success of Zweig accounts for the contempt of some of his critics. Plus not being quite as profound as they would wish...

[Mandryka]

I enjoyed the succinct comment below: "One is tempted to ask why Hofmann chooses to dish the dirt so prolifically when a simple sentence of hatred would have sufficed."

I have several of the novellas in French, in which they read quite well: they made quite light travel reading, much like Hesse's shorter works, though more emotional (La Confusion des sentiments, Brûlant secret, Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d'une femme). I also read The Post-Office Girl in English but was less impressed - I think I decided to put it in the charity bag. It sounds as if Beware of Pity might be a cut above most of them? (There's also The Chess-Player which was dramatised on R3 a little while back - quite intriguing.)

I think the huge popular success of Zweig accounts for the contempt of some of his critics. Plus not being quite as profound as they would wish...

I remember once seeing Tom Paulin absolutely tear into a Louis de Bernieres novel (post-Captain Correlli) on Late Review, in a manner that suggested Paulin held a personal grudge against de Bernieres and bitterly resented (and perhaps envied?) his popular success. Strange that Hoffman directs his ire at a long-dead novelist who never had that much of a following outside his home territory, anyway.

[Beef Oven]

'This is not the end of the Book'. A dialogue between Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere on the impact of the 'digital revolution' on the book. Bought last year, only just got around to reading it. Sixty pages into it and I think it's one of the best books I've picked up in years!

[Petrushka]

Currently reading for the umpteenth time The Tunnel by Eric Williams to be followed afterwards by The Wooden Horse, the story of Williams' Second World War POW experiences culminating in his famous escape. My copies are 1950's editions signed by the author and picked up at Foyles a few years ago.

I love reading POW memoirs and these are two of the best. Aside from these my favourites are A Crowd is Not Company by Robert Kee, The Colditz Story by Pat Reid, Stolen Journey by Oliver Philpot, Boldness be my Friend by Richard Pape and The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill.

Any other fans out there? Am I missing any famoue ones?

[EdgeleyRob]

Sir Alf, A Major Reappraisal of the Life and Times of England's Greatest Football Manager / Leo McKinstry (again).
A fascinating read even if you are not a football person.
How appallingly this man was treated by the media and the FA (I don't suppose much has changed really).

[Beef Oven]

Sir Alf, A Major Reappraisal of the Life and Times of England's Greatest Football Manager / Leo McKinstry (again).
A fascinating read even if you are not a football person.
How appallingly this man was treated by the media and the FA (I don't suppose much has changed really).

I remember this saga very well while it was happening. A friend and I were only discussing the poor treatment of Sir Alf two days ago. I must check this book out.

Might change my signature to "you've beat them once, now go and do it again" in his honour!

[Richard Tarleton]

Just finished "Gustav Mahler - Memories and Letters" by Alma Mahler. An odd book, I don't know what to make of it. The original publication date is given as 1940 but in an undated preface she says "I wrote this book many years ago". Was the preface written much later, or was the book written earlier and only published in 1940? Lots of anecdotes, vignettes, snapshots of people but I'm left unclear as to her feelings for Mahler then or later - the Freud anecdote near the end is probably the most revealing. Being Mrs Mahler was clearly not a barrel of laughs. There are a few glimpses into her soul but one cannot tell how candid she is being. No mention of Walter Gropius

The Orchestra of WNO is doing an Alma-themed concert on 18 January - Zemlinsky Maeterlinck Lieder, Berg violin concerto (in memory of Manon Gropius, her daughter), four of Alma's songs and the adagio from the 10th.

Oh yes - she seems in no doubt about the order of the movements in the 6th (the work she writes most interestingly about) -

In the third movement he represented the unrhythmic games of the two little children, tottering in zigzags over the sand

She says it was the "most completely personal of his works, and a prophetic one". She hated Kindertotenlieder.

[vinteuil]

"Another constant attendant was her brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, whom she found particularly valuable in parliamentary affairs. Arthur Clough, the poet, also a connection by marriage, she used in other ways. Ever since he had lost his faith at the time of the Oxford Movement, Clough had passed his life in a condition of considerable uneasiness, which was increased rather than diminished by the practice of poetry. Unable to decide upon the purpose of an existence whose savour had fled together with his belief in the Resurrection, his spirits lowered still further by ill-health, and his income not all that it should be, he had determined to seek the solution of his difficulties in the United States of America. But, even there, the solution was not forthcoming; and when, a little later, he was offered a post in a government department at home, he accepted it, came to live in London, and immediately fell under the influence of Miss Nightingale. Though the purpose of existence might be still uncertain and its nature still unsavoury, here, at any rate, under the eye of this inspired woman, was something real, something earnest: his only doubt was—could he be of any use? Certainly he could. There were a great number of miscellaneous little jobs which there was nobody handy to do. For instance, when Miss Nightingale was travelling, there were the railway-tickets to be taken; and there were proof-sheets to be corrected; and then there were parcels to be done up in brown paper, and carried to the post. Certainly he could be useful. And so, upon such occupations as these, Arthur Clough was set to work. “This that I see, is not all,” he comforted himself by reflecting, “and this that I do is but little; nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.” "