Tuesday 29 March 2016

What I've Been Reading Recently

It's been a while since I last did one of these, so here's what I've read since late December. Knock yourselves out.

The Commissariat of Enlightenment by Ken Kalfus
My Ear At His Heart by Hanif Kureishi
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
State, Power, Socialism by Nicos Poulantzas
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurev
Penguin Lost by Andrey Kurev
Thunderbird by Jack McDevitt
Marx's Theory of Crisis by Simon Clarke
Washington Square by Henry James
Reclaiming the F Word by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune
The Aspern Papers by Henry James
Feminist Sociology by Sara Delamont
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Storm by Vince Cable
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Credit Crunch by Graham Turner
Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
The Diamond As Big as the Ritz and Other Stories by F Scott Fitzgerald
Essays in Social Theory by Steven Lukes
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Some proper classics in that there list. What have you been reading?

5 comments:

Robert said...

Been reading John Grigg's series on LLoyd George. Grigg died before he could finish it and the fourth book ends just before the end of the First World War. Would have loved to see what he made of the Versailles peace and Lloyd George's downfall in 1922 after the peerages scandal.

Howard Fuller said...

The Romanovs 1613 to 1918-Simon Sebag Montefiore
The War in the West (Germany Ascendant 1939 to 1941) -James Holland
And a real classic:
Dan Dare: The 2000AD years Vol 1

Anonymous said...

Re-reading Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music of Time. Like the bourgeois reactionary that I am.

asquith said...

I endorse Howard Fuller's stance, I adore Simon Montefiore and I'm going to see him give a speech in Birmingham in April.

Say what you like, but I'm reading the latest Dominic Sandbrook. I love him, somehow he got his index past the editors and resulting in:

hissy fits- see Schama, Simon
Tolkien- sneered at by misfits
Bennett, Arnold- sneered at by upper-class weirdos

As an ex-Catholic I understand Tolkien (and CS Lewis) immediately. and as a Stokie I laud anyone that gives Arnold Bennett his due, far too few of those.

After this I'll be reading The Regent by Arnold Bennett and re-reading Dominic Sandbrook's oeuvre and making my way through Arnold Bennett.

Limited reading due to having been on a long-distance walk and coming back to a pile of work, but I'm hoping to get back in the house with the above.

I also keenly await the next William Dalrymple.

Alex Ross said...

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is the source of Benjamin Britten’s finest opera (IMHO).

Have been reading Paul Le Blanc on Lenin – desperately (and sincerely) trying to gain some grain of understanding as to why anyone finds Lenin appealing - but I really still don’t get it at all!! Isaiah Berlin on “The Soviet Mind” (not his best work?). Michael Haas on “The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis” which is utterly phenomenal, and provides a very complex picture of the dynamics of anti-semitism in Germany from the early 19th century to the Third Reich. "The Invention of Russia" by Arkady Ostrovsky is also very interesting (an examination of the techniques of Russian propaganda under Putin by a Russian journalist with deep experience working in the country). And also exploring Pietro Aretino...a 16th century Italian literary pornographer!! (he's initially quite funny...but there is only so much talk of fists being in places where fists don't really belong before it all gets a bit boring!!).