[jegreenwood]

Ice Shirt would not be a bad one to start with. The Atlas is a book of short stories that would be another good entry. I have read Europe Central and all the published Seven Dreams books along with some of the nonfiction - Imperial, Poor People, the condensed Rising Up Rising Down

Well, I had enough credits to get Europe Central for free on my Kindle. I usually buy physical copies of literary works, but a new paperback was going for $25. If I I love it - maybe if I love the first 200 pages - I'll cough up the dough.

 

[Pat Fairlea]

Percy Scholes 'How to Listen to Music'.

Delightful!

 

[Bwv 1080]

Well, I had enough credits to get Europe Central for free on my Kindle. I usually buy physical copies of literary works, but a new paperback was going for $25. If I I love it - maybe if I love the first 200 pages - I'll cough up the dough.

the Clean Hands chapter in EC is one of the best things I have read, if it seems to start slow, skip to it (its stands alone from the other narratives in the book)

 

[Ingélou]

Alice Thomas Ellis: Unexplained Laughter (1985)

Another book from our local library. I used to enjoy Alice Thomas Ellis's trad-Catholic whinges in The Catholic Herald. I read the first fifty pages of the book and gave it up as smart-aleck rubbish. But then, at a loose end, I came back to it and stopped reading it as a story and started just enjoying the satire and the jokes about men, the Welsh, theology, & suburban mores. It was a pot-pourri of Dylan Thomas, Evelyn Waugh & Stella Gibbons, telling the story of Lydia arriving with her friend Betty at her Welsh weekend cottage after being jilted and how she gets on with the locals. There is a crazed girl Angharad who moons around eavesdropping. Lydia keeps hearing mocking laughter and speculates that it's 'Stan' - her adapted name for the devil. There's a randy local doctor, a bourgeois gift-shop owner & her cutesy daughter, a frustrated farmer's wife, a minister-in-training, a picnic, a rock-frieze of priapic drawings & other delights. In the end I did relish it, though it may be the only one by this author that I'll ever read.

 

[Bachtoven 1]

 

[aligreto]

Sophia Craze: Charles Russell

I have recently re-read two early Steinbeck novels depicting Man’s relationship with a hostile environment. The settings and atmosphere in both of those books brought to mind my memory of the paintings of Charles Russell. Charlie Russell was active in and around the same time as the settings of those early Steinbeck novels. I gave it another read and I was delighted to reacquaint myself with his wonderful paintings. This is a large format book which greatly assists with the appreciation of the quality reproductions contained therein. His works are very detailed, even being praised at the time for their detail and accuracy by the "Indians", or ****** as he himself called them, he painted. I also like the way in which his subjects are often set in the midst of the wild landscapes Russell was so familiar with.

 

[Nedeslusire]

Étienne Gilson's "La philosophie au moyen-âge" (Philosophy in the Middle Ages). Having never invested extensively in a proper, personal library of medieval theological and philosophical masterworks, this monumental 700 page history of medieval philosophy (& theology) comes as a great benediction, tracing the whole intellectual evolution of Western thought from the Apologetic Fathers of the 2nd century AD to the end of the 14th century. The author is a renowned French scholar, specialist in medieval philosophy and member of the Académie française.

I got a bit stuck at 150 or so pages into it to be honest, but I'll soon resume this marvel, hopefully 😁

 

[Barbebleu]

The World - Simon Sebag Montefiore. One volume history of the world. Fascinating idea of a book full of anecdotes, history and prurience and all related in a non-judgemental way. Totally absorbing.

 

[aligreto]

Hardy: Far From The Madding Crowd

I devoured Hardy’s novels when I was a young man but it has been many years since I have attempted to re-read any of them. He was an excellent writer of character and he was also particularly able in describing doom and misfortune when it descended upon his characters. This one is no different but it is perhaps, because it is a relatively early novel, a little bit more optimistic than some.

 

[Waehnen]

Beethoven — Anguish and Triumph
by Jan Swafford

To my great embarrassment I had no idea Beethoven had a grandfather named Ludwig van Beethoven who was a succesful court musician in Bonn!

I did know the grandfather was Flemish, though. From somewhere between Brussels and Antwerpen.

What an excellently written and interesting biography this is!

 

[alinkner1]

Robert Lopez: A Better Class of People, a novel in stories

 

[Chat Noir]

A New Life - Bernard Malamud. I've actually finished it and it wasn't until about a third into it that I realised I've read it before! I thought I'd only read The Assistant and The Fixer, but no. The silly thing is that I picked up this paperback and then found I already have a copy covered in brown paper. It's a great novel from a great novelist.

I remember that when I was reading The Assistant I kept thinking I'd read it before, but it was actually that it had a lot of similarities to the Rod Steiger film The Pawnbroker. Incidentally the music for that film was by Quincy Jones.

 

[Blancrocher]

I've been reading the complete novels and stories of Charles Dickens, in more or less chronological order. It's been fun to revisit a novelist who's never really been a favorite, this time reading him alongside biographies by Ackroyd, Tomalin, and Slater, and some of the earlier criticism, with more attention to the original contexts of print publication. Now that I can't help thinking about the author's life experiences and (probable) psychology, I can't help enjoying the reading and I think I'll probably continue rereading him.

 

[Montarsolo]

Kierkegaard biography

 

[littlejohnuk1]

So, just finished reading Danya Kukafka's epic Notes on an execution. WOW! What an HONOUR to read such literature. Best novel I've read since Small things like these.

 

[SanAntone]

I just bought this book and look forward to starting it ...

Charles Ives's Musical Universe: Unlocking the Code… Reassessing his Provenance

just as soon as I finish these two:

Jack Hinson's One-Man War

Why Patti Smith Matters

 

[aligreto]

Galsworthy: Five Tales

Galsworthy is a Nobel Laureate. He is a writer who, in these stories, paints wonderful word pictures and who also describes wonderful characters who are filled with the essence of real life.

 

[Rogerx]

A Terrible Kindness (2022)
A novel by Jo Browning Wroe

Stunning, a very young boy becomes undertaker

 

[aligreto]

Solzhenitsyn: One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

This is a Classic spawned under the rule of a brutal regime. As is universal with the human condition both the best and the worst of human nature are on display here. The book is about survival in the harshest of conditions, physical, psychological and emotional. It is bleak on many levels.

 

[jegreenwood]

The screaming first came across the sky 50 years ago today. (Some say it was yesterday.)