Reading the 20th Century discussion
Buddy Reads
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Buddy Reads
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Mid-March - The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig by Stefan Zweig (Buddy read)
Mid-March - The Human Factor by Graham Greene (Buddy read)
Plus, our Virginia Woolf biography is still on-going.
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Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead by Paula Byrne
Paula Byrne set out to write this book because she believed that Evelyn Waugh had been consistently misrepresented as a snob and a curmudgeonly misanthropist. A terrifically engaging and original biography of one of England’s greatest novelists, Evelyn Waugh, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched, and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited. Fans of The Mitfords, D.J. Taylor’s Bright Young People, and Alexander Waugh’s Fathers and Sons will find much to savor in Paula Byrne’s wonderful Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead .
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Mid-March - The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig by Stefan Zweig (Buddy read)
Mid-March - The Human Factor by Graham Greene (Buddy read)
Plus, our Virginia Woolf biography is still on-going."
We're going to open this month's Buddy Reads on...
Thursday 15 March 2018
See you there.
A bit more about both books:
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The Human Factor (1978) by Graham Greene
The Human Factor (1978) is Greene's most extensive attempt to incorporate into fiction what he had learned of espionage when recruited by MI6 during World War II . . . What it offers is a veteran excursion into Greene's imaginative world . . . Sometimes seen as a brooding prober into the dark recesses of the soul where sins and scruples alike fester, he is equally at home in sending a narrative careering along at break-neck pace . . . Raising the demarcation line between 'serious' fiction and fast-plotted entertainment, Greene ensures that components of both jostle energizingly together in his pages."
From the Introduction by Peter Kemp
'Graham Greene's beautiful and disturbing novel is filled with tenderness, humour, excitement and doubt.' (The Times)
'It is beautifully done, a pleasure to read, a succession of deft, unobtrusive, yet masterly touches.' (The Guardian)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0044XV5N...
In his 1980 autobiography Ways of Escape, Greene wrote that his aim with this book was "to write a novel of espionage free from the conventional violence, which has not, in spite of James Bond, been a feature of the British Secret Service. "I wanted to present the Service unromantically as a way of life, men going daily to their office to earn their pensions." Writing in his 70s, Greene drew on his own experience in MI6 and explored the moral ambiguities raised by his old boss, legendary Soviet double agent Kim Philby, although Greene stated that Castle, the main character in the novel, was not based on Philby.
Another theme Greene explored was what he considered the hypocrisy of the West's relations with South Africa under apartheid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum...
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The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig includes Burning Secret, Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, and Journey into the Past
A casual introduction, a challenge to a simple game of chess, a lovers' reunion, a meaningless infidelity: from such small seeds Zweig brings forth five startlingly tense tales-meditations on the fragility of love, the limits of obsession, the combustibility of secrets and betrayal.
An eminently manageable 384 pages
Antonia Fraser in the New Statesman on her favourite books of 2017....
The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig (Pushkin Press), which I had never read despite a long and ardent admiration of Zweig, includes Burning Secret, about a boy and childish passion, which wrings the heart.
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I own a different Zweig collection A Game of Chess and Other Stories - it has one story in common with the buddy read. I think it could still be interesting to see if there are any common themes so I will read my collection and chip in where I can (without spoilers for the other stories of course).
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Mid-May - The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (Buddy Read)
Mid-May - Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes (Buddy Read)"
Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes is currently available for £4.99 from Audible....
https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Fiction/...
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To Sir, With Love
In 1945, Rick Braithwaite, a smart, highly educated ex-RAF pilot, looks for a job in British engineering. He is deeply shocked to realise that, as a black man from British Guiana, no one will employ him because of the colour of his skin. In desperation he turns to teaching, taking a job in a tough East End school, and left to govern a class of unruly teenagers. With no experience or guidance, Braithwaite attempts to instill discipline, confound prejudice and ultimately, to teach.
This book was the inspiration for the film, starring Sidney Poitier.
If you are interested in joining in, please post here and, remember, we are always keen to help members start Buddy Reads of books that interest them and will facilitate you in helping to set up threads, etc. if you need/want help.
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Oh yes I'd love to read that. Good suggestion Greg. May is looking exciting here!
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April 2018
Mid-April - Hearts and Minds by Jane Robinson (or the book of your choice related to women gaining the vote in 1918) (Buddy Read)
Mid-April - The Bell by Iris Murdoch (Buddy Read)
(Ongoing - Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee (Buddy read) (Jan - April 2018))
Remember, if you want to read a forthcoming book, an old favourite or some poetry, or you feel a book is too expensive/new to nominate as a monthly read, or you'd like to tackle a whole series/author's work from the beginning and read it, all the way through, with some company, then feel free to...
Suggest a book, poem, biography or pre-order, and see whether anyone would like to read along with you.
And, coming up in future months....
May 2018
Mid-May - The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (Buddy Read)
Mid-May - Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes (Buddy Read)
Mid-May - To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite (Buddy Read)
June 2018
Mid-June - Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple (Buddy Read)
July 2018
Mid-July - Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard (Buddy Read) (TBC)
September 2018
Mid-Sept - A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan by Laura Thompson (Buddy read)
October 2018
Mid-Oct - Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark (Buddy read)
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Mid-May - The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (Buddy Read)
Mid-May - Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes (Buddy Read)
Mid-May - To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite (Buddy Read)
Here's to more wonderful literary discourse
Just got back from vacation in Boston and am looking to get caught up on all our May reads. I brought A Handful of Dust with me but it didn't suit my mood at the time. I expect to read it next when I finish The Gun Seller.
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is a kindle deal of the day today. I was musing about doing a buddy read and Roman Clodia is keen - anyone else? I was thinking of August, or perhaps later in the year, maybe November? This is a real classic and covers a fascinating period of 20th Century history.In this commanding book, Robert K Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs. Nicholas's political naivete, Alexandra's obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis's brave struggle with haemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history – the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.
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I'm game to try, but it does sound intimidating.
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Kirsten, I am absolutely hopeless at finding the 'meaning,' in books, so you won't be any more intimidated than me. What do you say we muddle through together and enjoy the journey?
Susan wrote: "Hurrah! I think we can entice Val to read Magic Mountain too."Yes, you can. I think that makes six of us here and a few more in the discuss-it group. Are you co-ordinating the timing so that we read it at the same rate in both groups?
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Can RC and I entice anyone else with Nicholas and Alexandra
in the summer? Doomed romance, tragedy, revolution and Rasputin? SO much to discuss, I promise.
Nicholas and Alexandra are on sale for 2.99 on kindle today in the US
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August 2018
The Grand Babylon Hotel - Arnold Bennett (Group Read - 1900's)
The Magician - W.Somerset Maugham (Mod Read)
Mid-August - The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childs (Buddy Read)
Mid-August - Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie (Buddy Read)
September 2018
Mid-Sept - A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan by Laura Thompson (Buddy read)
Mid-Sept - The Priory by Dorothy Whipple (Buddy read) (TBC)
October 2018
Mid-Oct - Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark (Buddy read)
Mid-Oct - Fidelity by Susan Glaspell (Buddy read) (TBC)
November 2018
Mid-Nov - As Time Goes By by Derek Taylor (Buddy read)
Mid-Nov - The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Buddy read)
December 2018
Mid-Dec - An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge (Buddy read)
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September 2018
Mid-Sept - A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan by Laura Thompson (Buddy read)
Mid-Sept - The Priory by Dorothy Whipple (Buddy read)
Mid-Sept - The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich by Lara Feigel (Buddy read)
The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich
Written by the author of The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War, which I know some of us read and loved.
The Bitter Taste of Victory looks at the aftermath of war.
As the Second World War neared its conclusion, Germany was a nation reduced to rubble: 3.6 million German homes had been destroyed leaving 7.5 million people homeless; an apocalyptic landscape of flattened cities and desolate wastelands.
In May 1945 Germany surrendered, and Britain, America, Soviet Russia and France set about rebuilding their zones of occupation. Most urgent for the Allies in this divided, defeated country were food, water and sanitation, but from the start they were anxious to provide for the minds as well as the physical needs of the German people. Reconstruction was to be cultural as well as practical: denazification and re-education would be key to future peace and the arts crucial in modelling alternative, less militaristic, ways of life. Germany was to be reborn; its citizens as well as its cities were to be reconstructed; the mindset of the Third Reich was to be obliterated.
When, later that year, twenty-two senior Nazis were put in the dock at Nuremberg, writers and artists including Rebecca West, Evelyn Waugh, John Dos Passos and Laura Knight were there to tell the world about a trial intended to ensure that tyrannous dictators could never again enslave the people of Europe. And over the next four years, many of the foremost writers and filmmakers of their generation were dispatched by Britain and America to help rebuild the country their governments had spent years bombing. Among them, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell, Lee Miller, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Billy Wilder and Humphrey Jennings.
The Bitter Taste of Victory traces the experiences of these figures and through their individual stories offers an entirely fresh view of post-war Europe. Never before told, this is a brilliant, important and utterly mesmerising history of cultural transformation.
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http://somethingaboutthebeatles.com/1...
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"Mid-August - The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childs (Buddy Read)
Mid-August - Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie (Buddy Read) "
We're open threads for both these books on Saturday 18th August 2018
See you there
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There has been some talk (mainly from me!) of fitting in 1971 - Never a Dull Moment: Rock's Golden Year
as a buddy read in October.We also have an extra special Halloween Buddy Read, which will be announced after the vote, when we announce the Mod-Led vote, so watch this space!
Lots of great reads coming up to be read in good company :)
Hello : )I'm just checking when you will be buddy-reading The Priory by Dorothy Whipple ?
The start date and finish date on the upcoming reads says 14-15 Aug 2018?
I'm really looking forward to joining in on this one, but don't think i can read it in a day ha ha
Best Wishes Karen x
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Susan wrote: "Yes, should be mid-September, Karen. That gives you a bit more time :)"Thanks Susan : )
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All our current and forthcoming reads are also listed here....
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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Nigeyb wrote: "I believe there is such a thing Susan - I am drowning in a sea of too-many-books at the moment"I am fortunate to have a life vest, but would be in the same situation without one. ;-)
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is available on kindle unlimited and is a reasonable £2.99 on kindle, if anyone wants to join in and the book is not available in their library.
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Aiding and Abetting a future Muriel Spark novel, is based upon the real life case of Lord Lucan, so I think this will really add to the read, if people don't know the background.
My lovely library has both books (not my branch, which is quite small, but else where in the county).
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They are:
The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
- this is the thread:https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
and The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich
by Lara Feigel. This is the discussion thread:https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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I''m really looking forward to reading more by Muriel Spark, and especially this novel inspired by Lord Lucan's disappearance.....
First, a bit of history: The seventh Earl of Lucan disappeared on November 7, 1974, leaving behind the battered body of his children's nanny and a beaten wife. Widely covered in the press, his sensational story has had a surprisingly long half-life, and the speculation about his whereabouts has never quite died out. In this book, Muriel Spark toys with several provocative issues arising out of the case: identity, class, blood ("it is not purifying, it is sticky"), and the dynamics of psychiatry ("most of the money wasted on psychoanalysis goes on time spent unraveling the lies of the patient").
Aiding and Abetting opens sometime late in the 20th century, when an Englishman in his 60s walks into the Paris practice of famed Bavarian psychiatrist Dr Hildegard Wolf and announces that he is the missing Lord Lucan. Yet Hildegrad is already treating one self-confessed Lord Lucan. And what's more, both patients seem to have dirt on her--for isn't she really Beate Pappenheim, a notorious fraud who used her menstrual blood to fake her stigmata? Fearing for her safety, Hildegard flees to London, where her path inevitably crosses that of two British Lucan hunters.
Aiding and Abetting contains more than its share of broad farce and bitter irony. But it remains a strange, slight affair, its unspoken tenet being that the Lucan case still preys on the communal mind of the British public, its details (like the perpetrator's penchant for smoked salmon and lamb chops) indelibly printed there. For anyone under 30, that's a difficult argument to swallow. As one wise character puts it: "Few people today would take Lucan and his pretensions seriously, as they rather tended to do in the 70s." Times have changed indeed--and perhaps that's Spark's point after all, that the "psychological paralysis" of the not-quite-swinging '70s is long gone. --Alan Stewart
Aiding And Abetting by Muriel Spark, is one of our mid October buddy reads. The rest are.....
Mid-Oct - Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark (Buddy read)
Mid-Oct - Fidelity by Susan Glaspell (Buddy read)
Mid-Oct - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Buddy Read)
Mid-Oct - The Snow Was Dirty (aka Dirty Snow) by Georges Simenon
As you may know, we have moved As Time Goes By by Derek Taylor back until December 2018
The full list of current and forthcoming buddy reads is below...
September 2018
Mid-Sept - A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan by Laura Thompson (Buddy read)
Mid-Sept - The Priory by Dorothy Whipple (Buddy read)
Mid-Sept - The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich by Lara Feigel (Buddy read)
October 2018
Mid-Oct - Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark (Buddy read)
Mid-Oct - Fidelity by Susan Glaspell (Buddy read)
Mid-Oct - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Buddy Read)
Mid-Oct - The Snow Was Dirty (aka Dirty Snow) by Georges Simenon
November 2018
Mid-Nov - As Time Goes By by Derek Taylor (Buddy read)
Mid-Nov - The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Buddy read)
December 2018
Mid-Dec - An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge (Xmas-y Buddy read)
Mid-Oct - 1971 - Never a Dull Moment: Rock's Golden Year by David Hepworth (Buddy Read)
Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
Sexus (other topics)Tropic of Cancer (other topics)
Lolita (other topics)
The Enchanter (other topics)
The Gift (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Henry Miller (other topics)Joyce Carol Oates (other topics)
Christopher Isherwood (other topics)
Christopher Isherwood (other topics)
John Le Carré (other topics)
More...
March 2018
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (Group Read - George Orwell)
The Last Man in Europe: A Novel by Dennis Glover (Mod read - George Orwell)
Mid-March - The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig by Stefan Zweig (Buddy read)
Mid-March - The Human Factor by Graham Greene (Buddy read)
Ongoing - Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee (Buddy read) (Jan - April 2018)
April 2018
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold - John le Carré (Group read - 1960s)
The Trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover by Sybille Bedford (Mod read - 1960s)
Mid-April - Hearts and Minds by Jane Robinson (or the book of your choice related to women gaining the vote in 1918) (Buddy Read)
Mid-April - The Bell by Iris Murdoch (Buddy Read)
Ongoing - Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee (Buddy read) (Jan - April 2018)
May 2018
Mid-May - The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (Buddy Read)
Mid-May - Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes (Buddy Read)
June 2018
Mid-June - Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple (Buddy Read)
July 2018
Mid-July - Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard (Buddy Read) (TBC)
September 2018
Mid-Sept - A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan by Laura Thompson (Buddy read)
October 2018
Mid-Oct - Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark (Buddy read)