Comments on: What book are you currently reading?

By: Tyro Rex

Tyro Rex — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:52:46 +0000

In between my study of Sallust, I started to read Melvyn Bragg’s ‘The Adventure of English’ having enjoyed the series on TV last year. I find it’s very interesting so far. I enjoy Bragg’s BBC radio podcast of ‘In Our Time’. Speaking of radio didn’t anyone else hear this week they’re cutting Law Report, Religion Report, and Media Report from ABC Radio National and replacing them with some populist rubbish? It’s a disgrace I tells ya.

I’ve not decided what fiction I’ll read over summer – modern science fiction is generally terrible – but there is at least one unread (by me) modern J.G. Ballard in the house I might give that one a go.

By: Nabakov

Nabakov — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:29:54 +0000

Given these are historical if not quite yet hysterical times, I’ve been amusing myself by rereading some good histories. Especially Barbara Tuchman and Jan Morris – both of whom employ footnotes with Gibbonesque aplomb*.

* It’s always the weird and fun bits you can’t fit into a structured narrative and are left in footnotes that end up adding real character to yer work. And then when your readers twig to how much is being left between the lines, slap a semi-apposite latin tag on the end. Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est baby!

But aside from wallowing in sardonic macrohistory, I’ve also been enjoying some microhistory like:

The Havana Mob by TJ English – a beautifully researched and written account of the Lansky/Batista/Castro nexus between 1955 and 1961 with some excellent photos, including the young Fidel Castro as a dapper ruling class playboy in a superb suit.. Damn, the Tropicana in Havana in 1958 would have to have been the the most glamorous nightclub ever.

Ornamentalism by David Cannadine – a persuasively argued thesis about how the British Empire artfully employed honours, ranks and other trappings of empire to lock local tribal leaders into having a vested interest in the ongoing pageant. And with photos of George Nathaniel Curzon in full New Romantic mode.

Victorian Science edited by George Basalla, William Coleman and Robert H Kargan – “A Self-Portrait from the Presidential Addresses of the British Association for the Advancement of Science” ie: the anti-Royal Society lobby bankrolled by Victorian technocrat entrepreneurs like Brunel et al. A probably too seminal steampunk text.

A most entertaining English translation of Apollinare’s Les Onze Milles Verges. Chapeux doffed to Nina Rootes for what must have been a long, subtle and frequently exasperating job of rendering an dashed off French erotic novel by a jovial proto-surrealist into unsolemn
English.

Splash One by Ivan Rendall. A history of jet fighter combat written with the flair, research skills and eye for the telling point that Deighton brought to Fighter and Bomber. Again some great photos.

Astra and Flondrix by Seamus Cullen. Basically an seventies attempt to sex up Cabell’s jJurgen – which didn’t need it anyway ‘cos half it’s charm was in the eliding and alluding. Then along came Angela Carter who completely maxed out that particular sub-genre . Anyway Astra and Flondrix is now one book I have no particular plans to finish.

And just reread the Great Gatsby. It’s quite startling how some of its observations about what big money does to people and vice-versa still have immense currency now. And it remains one of the most beautifully written books in the English language.

Now I’m off to reread Moominland Midwinter, one of the most haunting and melancholy books ever translated into English. I can’t believe it was ever read to Scandinavian children without them leaping out the windows to be impaled on a passing reindeer or Minister for Rural Housing, Alcohol and Young Human Development.

By: rainbowdog

rainbowdog — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:24:07 +0000

Thanks PC, I’d love to see that adaptation of W & P. How does one find something like that to look at? (Start with Google?)

Have you read ‘The Pages’? It’s got a little bit of Adelaide in it. At least one Adelaide joke.

By: Adrien

Adrien — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:30:56 +0000

What is it about the Skool Story that so fascinates American writers? is it because it allows them to address their taboo subject, class?
.
The class in American schools is often not just socio-economic but subcultural. As in Heathers it’s a sexual-physical-intellectual hierarchy reflecting the Darwinian nature of American society.
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Now that I think about it I can’t remember much by way of ‘skool stories’ set in schools that aren’t elite in some way. Except the talented teacher rescues born losers sub-genre. But the earliest example I can remember of that style of story was ER Braithwaite’s To Sir With Love. In most of these tales however including Special Topics in Calamity Physics the students are always impossibly smart. This is funny because it directly contradicts the facts that says that Americans are gettin’ dumber and dumber and dumber.
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I love Heathers: The same day you win the lottery aliens land and announce they’re gonna blow the world up in two days what do you do?
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Well I’d just slide that wad over to my dad. ‘Cause he’s like the top stockbroker in Ohio.
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And of course: “Football season was over. They had nothing left to offer the school but date rapes and AIDS jokes”.

By: Pavlov's Cat

Pavlov's Cat — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:03:36 +0000

Rainbowdog — if you’ve not seen it before, you would probably really enjoy the vintage TV adaptation of War and Peace from the early 1970s, starring the 34-year-old (and, then as now, mesmerising) Anthony Hopkins as Pierre. It was wonderful.

By: rainbowdog

rainbowdog — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:21:03 +0000

I’m not trying to one-up anyone but I’ve just finished reading ‘War and Peace’ – new translation, 2007 (Viking). I wasn’t working so I had the time to read it in one sitting, so to speak. Took me a fortnight. I’ve read it before – way back in the dim, dark distant past- but I’m very glad I’ve done it again with the new translation. It was fabulous: I cried real tears, also laughed and was deeply affected by it; rather like a love affair. Thinking about it daily. It’s so vast and touches on so many moods and ideas that it often comes to mind. I don’t remember much about my response to it when I was young except it must have radicalised me for life I think, especially the way Tolstoy completely trashes the idea of ‘the great man’ in history.

I planned to read the Booker shortlist and had the books waiting at the library but Tolstoy’s spoiled me for them now. Give me fifteen hundred pages of translated Russian written 140 years ago, but I just can’t undertake a modern doorstopper right now (sorry Steve Tolz). I may just be able to manage a re-read of one of Henning Mankell’s Wallander books, possibly ‘Faceless Killers’ coz it’s short and I like the title.

‘The Pages’ by Murray Bail is also short and quite refreshing.

By: sublimecowgirl

sublimecowgirl — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:16:46 +0000

Just had a clean out of books from my undergrad days, and got rid of a bundle of ‘em including my still unread An Imaginary Life. I already regret a few i let go esp. my hardcover Steinbeck, but figure they’re not about to go out of print for a while.

Apologies if someone else mentioned it ( i’m in Cairns and havent been near a comp for a week), but heard Graham Perrot on RN today talking about his book the Twelfth Fish. Anyone read it yet?

As for me, i’m kinda on holiday-ish – so i’m reading Firmin (the rat book). Its quirky and cute.

By: Helen

Helen — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:32:31 +0000

Adrien
What is it about the Skool Story that so fascinates American writers? is it because it allows them to address their taboo subject, class? (as in Upper Class, not Math Class).

By: Graham Bell

Graham Bell — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:48:59 +0000

Tigtog and All:

Been far too busy to read anything much lately [hence my comment on the I Won't Condemn , XXVII topic].

Last book I read was one recommended by Mark Bahnisch: David Blackbourn’s The Conquest Of Nature …. on the remarkable ecological and economic transformation of Germany and parts of Poland over a few centuries.

By: Paul Burns

Paul Burns — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:21:09 +0000

Now reading Berhard Knollenberg’s Origin of the American Revolution 1759-1766. If the introiduction is any indication it has some of the stuff I’m looking for about the 18 C Royal Navy in North America. Seems a wel-written well researched history. I have great hopes of it. (published 1960.)