What are you reading now?

[french frank]

I don't have the short stories, but The Razor's Edge is another important one, which I might look out to read next. I'd probably rate it as his best, ahead of Of Human Bondage and the Moon and Sixpence.

[Jonathan]

Andrew Taylor - Waiting for the end of the world. Not my usual sort of thing but very good.

[Petrushka]

I don't have the short stories, but The Razor's Edge is another important one, which I might look out to read next. I'd probably rate it as his best, ahead of Of Human Bondage and the Moon and Sixpence.

Not read it myself, but The Painted Veil is another WSM book that comes recommended.

[vinteuil]

Not read it myself, but The Painted Veil is another WSM book that comes recommended.

... I remember liking the film when it came out -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Painted_Veil_(2006_film)

.

[Sir Velo]

Save yourself a trip to the attic. 25 titles available on Project Gutenberg to download. Looks rather appealing.

[french frank]

(Re)reading The Razor's Edge which I had quite forgotten.The last reprint in my Penguin copy is 1970 so I probably bought and read it then. I had certainly forgotten the narrative device in which Maugham frames it as being semi-autobiographical by making the narrator a writer by the name of Maugham who published a novel called The Moon and Sixpence in 1919 (this being now 1944) ... Not an original idea of Maugham's and I wonder what it adds to the fiction.

[smittims]

...self-publicity? It reminded me of a remark Cybill Shepherd made in a radio interview: '...I mention this experience in my autobiography Cybill Speaks' . I expected her to add '..available today from all good booksellers proce £19.99'.

[french frank]

...self-publicity? It reminded me of a remark Cybill Shepherd made in a radio interview: '...I mention this experience in my autobiography Cybill Speaks' . I expected her to add '..available today from all good booksellers proce £19.99'.

I wouldn't have thought so in the case of Maugham who already had a very distinguished writing career. I'm not sure that this article in Wikipedia is very illuminating, but literary 'self-insertion' seems to have a long history. When I've read more of The Razor's Edge I'll possibly get a better idea as to what it contributes (if anything). Could just be an author's amusing novelty experience as I don't think he'd used the device before.

[smittims]

Anthony Trollope occasionally put himself into his novels as the 'literary gentleman' present at a fox-hunt. Maugham often appears as a passive narrator who without naming himself, is shown to be 'a writer'.

[smittims]

Thanks for the link to the Folio Woodforde, vinteuil. I saw a copy in Oxfam Shrewsbury last time I was there.

I'm told Folio society books are favourite itmes in second-hand bookshops, but I've never known anyone who collects them.

[Ian Thumwood]

Andrew Taylor - Waiting for the end of the world. Not my usual sort of thing but very good.

Jonathan

i tried ' A Royal.secret' a couple of years ago and it is one of the few books i have given up with. I think i got halfway through and found it really irritating. The 17th century is not my favourite period of history and this book was turgid. I found the writing to be very effected and , in the end, it was so annoying that i binned in.

I did finish a Rose Tremain novel about a composer in Denmark in the same century and did not enjoy that either although i struggled to the end. I will not be returning to either Taylor or Tremain. Both were a massive disappointment .

i think historical novels are often mixed at best. I rate Harry Sidebottom as a historian but was shocked how dreadful the one fiction book of his i have read. It was terrible.

[smittims]

'India Conquered' by Jon Wilson (Simon and Schuster, 2016).

This evidently thoroughly-researched book seems to me part history and part polemic.He seems to be trying to prove that the chosen methods of British rule in India produced chaos. But It's not clear to me whether he thinks it would be better done otherwise, ( and if so how?) or not at all. He doesn't paint a flattering picture of India without the British . I'm wondering if he's yet another writer wanting to make a name by disagreeing with his predecessors. I've seen a lot of this 'you all thought this, didn't you? But wait, I'm the one who shows you that it wasn't so!' .

Hmmm... maybe there's already a book claiming 'Jon Wilson is wrong!'..

[Alain Maréchal]

I did finish a Rose Tremain novel about a composer in Denmark in the same century and did not enjoy that either although i struggled to the end. I will not be returning to either Taylor or Tremain. Both were a massive disappointment .

i think historical novels are often mixed at best.

The Tremain novel is 'Music and Silence' and I am sorry you did not enjoy it. I have read it twice, and a relative who borrowed it (and has failed to return it) also enjoyed it. The level of disappointment must depend on the initial expectations. The conceit is that the protagonist replaces Dowland at the court of Christian iv after Dowland left the court without permission (a fact) and whose duties include playing for the king through the night. Christian suffered from melancholy and insomnia. There is much more to the novel. I have read one or two other Tremain novels with pleasure.

I'm not sure what constitutes a historical novel. If a novel is set in the past, is it historical? The definition would include Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities, and many other Dickens works (the clue would be how many coach journeys appear). In fact the only novel set in his own time, I suggest would probably be Hard Times.

Having seen a recommendation, I am currently reading Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski. The protagonist, not a likeable person, is searching for his presumed orphaned son in the ruins of France in 1945. Not an easy read, the subject is painful, and like Simenon's "Romans Durs" there is a sense of doom, but the overarching theme is the almost complete collapse of everyday civilisation in postwar France.

[Ian Thumwood]

Alain

i used to akeays refuse to give up on a book but gave realised there is simetimes no sense continuing. I disliked tge Taylor book and there have been others like rhe Essex Serpent which annoyed me sufficuently to give up.

i prefer more literary writers but hate protentious authors. Once i stumble on someone whose prose works for me , i stick with them. Love Ian McEwan , william Boyd, Kate Atkinson , Phillip Kerr, Ian Rankin etc. I would not be tempted by Teemaine again. No prejudice against female writers...
some are good others the writer of the Shetland series pretty hopeless.

[Jonathan]

Jonathan

i tried ' A Royal.secret' a couple of years ago and it is one of the few books i have given up with. I think i got halfway through and found it really irritating. The 17th century is not my favourite period of history and this book was turgid. I found the writing to be very effected and , in the end, it was so annoying that i binned in.

Hi Ian, l don't often read historical fiction and I've not read "A Royal Secret" but this is a detective story set in the 2000s. It seems he writes various books set in differing time periods! His Lydmouth series, set in a fictional town in Dorset (IIRC) in the 1950s are all excellent and involve a detective solving local murders. I do have a couple of his other books but I haven't got round to them yet and I don't know if they are in the same series as the one you gave up on!