What are you reading?

[LinMM]

I must admit Melody I do think everything is becoming more the same on the high street.

 

I was in a Monsoon shop last weekend .......admittedly in a very noisy and crowded shopping complex which didn't help.....and I stood in the shop for a minute thinking I could be in any other clothes shop on the high street.

 

There was a time when their clothes had a certain quality to them and were quite distinctive .......you may have liked them or not but you knew they were Monsoon type clothes with good quality materials etc.......not any more.

There is an irony though. In the past I could only afford their clothes in the sales but these days they do seem to be cheaper......in all respects!!

Perhaps I had better read that book then.

 

I'm on one of my comfort type reads at the moment : the Child's Child by Barbara Vine......who is also Ruth Rendell.

It's a while since she has written a book under this pseudonym and it's a very absorbing read covering the topics of un married mothers (in the past) and homosexuality and the extraordinary secrets people kept from the world even from other close family members.

Can highly recommend anyway.

[Petunia]

Thank you for mentioning Barbara Vine! I've read most of her books but this one has escaped me till now!

 

I'm reading "The Virgin in the Garden" by A.S. Byatt right now. I loved "The Cildren's Book" and "Possession"!

 

Yesterday I got "Different Drummer", MacMillans Biography, I will start to read it alongside. What a brick of a book.

[Jan McNulty]

While I was culling the links this morning I picked up this feature about a novel that may have some dance interest:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/happyeverafter/2015/01/06/back-to-before-excerpt-tracy-solheim/21295519/

 

It's available from Amazon:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Before-Second-Chances-Tracy-Solheim-ebook/dp/B00KWG9N64/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1420531798&sr=1-1&keywords=tracy+solheim

[Dance*is*life]

The book of the Book Thief was much better than the film, which was really watered down.  Sometimes it's a problem  seeing a film of a book.  I prefer reading the book after seeing the film - that way it doesn't annoy me that they've changed the story line and I can imagine the characters as I saw them in the film!  An author I have recently discovered and find excellent is JoJo Moyes.  Brilliant writer - her best one I think is The Girl You Left Behind, but I have read three or four other of her books and all have been well written and enthralling.

[alison]

Haven't really got anything going just at the moment, but I've recently finished Rod Laver's biography - a good read if you're interested in tennis, and fascinating to see what the sport was like 50 years ago.

[Melody]

Having seen The Imitation Game a couple of weeks ago, I'm reading the biography the movie was based on, "Alan Turing: The Enigma" by Andrew Hodges. I've only just started it so I'm not sure what it's like yet, but hopefully it'll be interesting. It seems to have really good reviews, so I'm hopeful.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Melody

[Fiz]

I am hesitating between reading Tess Gerritsen's new book Die Again and Karen Aminadra's Wickham. Karen takes minor characters from Pride and Prejudice and constructs a new Jane Austen type novel around them. She's very good.

[Fiz]

I went with Tess. She never lets her readers down. ????

[Fiz]

I am reading Jane Hawking's beautifully written book "Travelling to Infinity" on which the film "The Theory of Everything" is based. Highly recommended.

[Ann Williams]

I'm getting through Anne Enright's "The Gathering"; it's a tough journey but its getting easier.  Enright is a truly gifted writer - she skilfully and delicately blends intricate memories with l present day reality; her story of family life after the death of her beloved younger brother (memories) and her troubled marriage and relationships with her chidren (reality) make for a riveting read.

[alison]

Well, I'm currently reading books on building regulations, so I won't bore you further ...

[ballettaxi]

Laughing with you on that one Alison.

 

I'm currently reading 'How to Pass National 5 - Biology'  along with my DD who is in the midst of her Nat 5 Prelims.  We've just gone through English  , Maths   & French   and then we'll start on Modern Studies  , History   & Drama.

 

All of this to help her prepare her Study Plan for the big exams which start at the end of April - ah, the things we do for our children!!  (Yes the emoticons are to indicate my levels of comfort with each of these subjects - think there's definitely a trend showing my strengths & weaknesses!)

 

I am looking forward to getting back to 'real' books post the end of the exams in May!!

[porthesia]

Castle - Marc Morris.  Was supposed to read this before my Medieval Architecture and Archaeology course.  An interesting insight into the fascinating buildings which litter these Isles

[Fiz]

I am currently reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I can't think how I missed it when it was published originally. I watched the television series which we both loved. Having been very unwell this week with near anaphylaxis on three separate occasions, I intend to finish this book and then read Jurassic Park which I also missed but we saw the film on T.V. on Sunday so that joined my reading list.Books, tennis and tea sound like heaven at the moment.

[Jan McNulty]

I've just finished Simon Scarrow's Hearts of Stone.  It is a departure from his Roman Legion series being set (mostly) on the Greek island of Lefkas just before and during WW2.  I enjoy his books tremendously and this was no exception.

[Duck]

I've just finished Virginia Woolf's The Waves, and I am glad that the recent ballet "Tuesday" by Wayne McGregor & based on the book remained non narrative. As challenging as reading the book was at times, the importance however of water and its recurring movement of ebb and flow really became clear (see the corps movement in "Tuesday"). Towards the end of the book, there is even a reference to drops falling of a candle (see the posters for Woolf Works), and the last about ten pages centre increasingly on (Bernard's) impending death. I've rarely highlighted so much text in a book as, with the ballet being non-narrative, I was constantly on the look out for which parts of the book might have given input to the ballet.

[Fiz]

I am currently reading the series of novels by Tasha Alexander,the Lady Emily novels. She is a reluctant detective in London and other places. The novels are set in the Naughty Nineties and are historically accurate and fun if you are interested.

[Lisa O`Brien]

I`m reading Hope in a Ballet Shoe by Michaela and Elaine DePrince. Powerful stuff.

[FLOSS]

In the last few weeks i have read George Burrow's The Bible in Spain. His account of his time with the London Bible Society selling Spanish translations of the gospel. Why? Because I thought I should.It reads like a picaresque novel rather than an earnest account of his struggles with the church and local government. He clearly read a great deal of eighteenth century literature as a youth and while he admits to a love of Defoe I think that like Dickens he must have read a lot of Tobias Smollett.

 

Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov which tells of the experience of a young writer and playwright with a Moscow theatre, its star director.and his acting method. All of which is a thinly disguised account of the author's own experiences  with the Moscow Arts Theatre and Stanislavsky.I can't recommend it highly enough. 

 

Arnold Bennet's The Old Wive's Tale. I am not sure what I was expecting. It tells of the lives of two sisters who are born into the family of the man who owns the best haberdashers in a town in the potteries which is clearly a very thinly disguised Burslem.The story covers most of Queen Victoria's reign. One sister stays in the town,marries one of the shop staff and with her husband takes over the running of the family business the other runs off with a travelling salesman who visits the shop on his rounds.The story of the sister who stays in the town is enlivened by a domestic murder committed by her husband's cousin.which leads to her husband's death.The runaway ends up in Paris where she is abandoned by her husband and ends up running a boarding house.She survives the Siege of Paris; is successful in business and eventually returns to her hometown. The characters are well drawn and credible.All in all it is a fascinating account of life in a provincial town. The Paris section while interesting feels slightly more contrived and the result of careful research than the account of life in a town in the potteries.

 

Finally Solzenitzyn's August 1914 which has sat, unread, on a bookshelf for more years than I care to admit. The first fifty pages are heavy going because they are exposition enabling the reader to meet the characters both fictional and historic who stalk the pages of the novel.It is their experiences in the first ten days of the war which are the theme of the book.The book deals with the battle of Tannenberg which was a crushing defeat for the Russian army caused by lack of preparedness and the total incompetence of the generals on the ground and the High Command. The whole thing is held together by the presence of a colonel from HQ whose job is to find out what is happening on the ground. Meanwhile the generals are more concerned that they do nothing that will put them in danger of being blamed and prevent them being promoted and collecting their gongs. It really is a good read

 

Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to why there were so few books by non English speakers on the BBC list? There were plenty I had not read but not for want of trying. I tried the Handmaid's Tale and it was not for me;ditto Little Women and quite a few more.Why no Bulgakov or Evelyn Waugh?

Edited September 17, 2015 by FLOSS

[Fiz]

I loved The Old Wives Tale which I read at university.

[taxi4ballet]

Currently reading Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece by John Pinsent (no, I'm not entirely sure why I'm reading it, but I got it for 10p at a boot fair and thought it was worth a go!); and A suitable Vengeance by Elizabeth George, one of the Inspector Lynley mysteries.

[Duck]

Having been to Monk's House in Rodmell and Charleston Farmhouse recently, I am currently reading The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. My thanks go to Woolf Works as this ballet introduced me to Virginia Woolf.

[Melody]

In between reading Arbella by Sarah Gristwood and Isabella: Braveheart of France by Colin Falconer (and starting Bronislava Nijinska's memoirs), I just took time out to read the new Princess Diaries book, Royal Wedding (which of course led to a binge-read of the previous 10 books in the series). Compared to the books, the first movie is so, so awful (the second movie is stand-alone awful, doesn't even have to be compared with anything).

[FLOSS]

Nijinska's autobiography is extremely interesting and it is a great pity that the second volume never saw the light of day.There are some real gaps on the ballet front as far as biographies are concerned.I am hoping that the Petipa bicentenary produces a well written standard biography as well as more of his letters.

 

Am I being too critical but I am tired of badly written books particularly biographies where the author forgets that he/she is writing a biography and either turns novelist or pseudo social historian either telling the reader what the subject of the book was thinking or feeling at key points or describing the society in which the subject was working. A prime example of the creative writing genre of biography is the recently published account of Balanchine's early years in Russia. In  which the author spends a great deal of time telling you what George must have thought and felt. I suppose it could be that the book ended up as it did because the author found that there was not enough material on which to base a traditional biography but I would have happily settled for a slimmer volume about Balanchine and his forgotten muse.

 

I also had difficulties with the new Markova biography because the author felt the need to turn social historian to tell her readers about English society at the time.The problem was that I was not entirely convinced by her account of early twentieth century London and theatre.I tried not to get sidetracked by this or by her style of writing but I did not always succeed.Of course having found her something of an unreliable narrator as far as the background that she gave I felt less inclined to accept what she was saying about  Markova.I thought it was a great pity that Markova did not have a better writer as her most recent biographer.

Edited September 18, 2015 by FLOSS

[alison]

The book deals with the battle of Tannenberg which was a crushing defeat for the Russian army caused by lack of preparedness and the total incompetence of the generals on the ground and the High Command. The whole thing is held together by the presence of a colonel from HQ whose job is to find out what is happening on the ground. Meanwhile the generals are more concerned that they do nothing that will put them in danger of being blamed and prevent them being promoted and collecting their gongs. It really is a good read

 

Talking of which, I'm intermittently struggling through Catch-22.  It sounds as though there are a fair few similarities between them.

[Ja Sm]

I have just fallen upon this wonderful thread. I keep a notebook where I record all the books I read and a few impressions, otherwise I can never think of anything when someone asks if I can recommend a good read! In the back I note the books I want to read, so I am going to look back through this discussion and the countless books mentioned. As for me I can thoroughly recommend the Gone series if you like good teenage fiction, by Michael Grant. And I have just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns. And yesI cried openly in a cafe! So many great books out there.

[Jan McNulty]

I sobbed and sobbed over Splendid Suns. Have you read The Kite Runner by the same author?

[Ja Sm]

Yes, also fantastic and harrowing. My daughter saw the play, said it was really well done.

[Jacqueline]

I was in Waterstones this morning to collect a book I had ordered. I had stopped buying books but have got into the habit again. For me, there's nothing more relaxing than reading. I get my novels, thrillers and suchlike from the library.

But recently I have bought The Stars - the definitive visual guide to the cosmos. A History of Pictures by David Hockney and Martin Gayford and Psychobook which is full of fascinating information, tests, games and questionnaires. All three are beautifully produced on good quality paper and worth every penny. Recommended for Christmas presents if anyone is seeking inspiration.

While I was in the bookshop, I noticed a book called Under the Tump. It turned out to be about living as a newcomer in a Welsh town.

Rather less scary than my immediate thought as to what its storyline might be, until I realised I had misread the title!

Edited December 6, 2016 by Jacqueline

[meadowblythe]

Duck (and others)

 

You may enjoy Pat Barker's Life Classes, my current read.  It appears a light and easy read, but my mind keeps straying back to it during the day.  It's set in The Slade at the outbreak of World War 1.  I think it gets darker as it progresses, but enjoying the first book in a trilogy is always a cheery thing.

 

Also looking forward to reading some Gladys Mitchell - has anyone read any and are there any particular recommendations?  I have a book voucher to spend and want to investigate her works.

[Fiz]

Good books I have read recently - Karen Maitland's The Vanishing Witch and The Plague Charmer (I find her earlier stuff too dark), The Girls by Emma Cline, Fashion by The Kyoto Costume Institute and Out of My Depth by Anne Darwin - yes, THAT Anne Darwin! I varied between disbelief, annoyance and asking myself how stupid she thought the public were. The royalties are going to the RNLI, as well they might!

[Fonty]

I read a snippet of the Anne Darwin book in a newspaper, along with various interviews she gave the press when it was published.  I felt the same as you, Fiz.  How a woman could put her children through so much pain is just beyond me.  And then she seemed totally astonished and hurt when the truth came out, and they refused to speak to her.  How did she expect them to react?

 

I am currently reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral for my book club.  According to the reviews on the back, it is a work of genius "full of insight, wisdom, ironic twists and sheer good fun".  I must be very stupid, because so far I have failed to find any of those qualities in this turgid tome.  Give me a good Agatha Christie any day.

[Jacqueline]

I read the Anne Darwin book courtesy of the library. Apart from finding the dumbness of it all annoying, the book was so badly written. His beard disguise was laughable and incredible that he wasn't recognised. But I suppose nobody expected to see him as they thought he was dead. That was autobiographical but hard to believe people could behave in such a way. Then again, maybe it isn't. I felt sorry for their sons.

There have been a number of fictional best sellers over the last few years, written by women and about women who are depicted as hopelessly weak, stupid, drunk, victims of heartless men or other women or the system or whatever. These characters can be relied on to do the most moronic thing, that puts them in some sort of peril or is just unlikely.

I know everyone makes mistakes but I do get irritated when women are depicted as whimpering, simpering halfwits. We are invited, presumably, to feel sorry for them and root for them to be strong and get there in the end. I just want to tell them to get a grip.