Just started to read Jack Fairweather’s The volunteer. The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz.
Truly fascinating.
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I didn’t take part of this thread so far, because I didn’t read a book in the last 12 years and I thought I wouldn’t have time to do it again, unless daughters will come of age at least! 
But I was wrong.
I felt the urgent need to read again some loved books and my choice eventually was the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.
I really loved first novel when I read it and was still feeling that love many years later. So I read again the first and second novels, finding out that I didn’t recall the best part of them.
It was rewarding. I really enjoyed it.
Now I go for #3: Endymion.
I hope to read them all quickly, even though I’m having sight issues and reading is very exhausting, at least unless I buy new glasses.
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One of the positive consequences of the corona crisis is that I not only read more but also buy more books at my favourite independent bookshop.
Love to go there. Hardly ever with a specific book in mind, but love to browse and open up to something new.
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I had a similar, begrudging, liking for The Scarlet Letter when I read it in my Junior-year high school English class. Despite the Hippie revolution, we students back then were uncomfortable talking around the sexual side of the book. I suspect I would appreciate the book more if I reread it today.
The Screwtape Letters is a wonderful, ingenious book worthy of multiple readings. The edition I read has endnotes that correlate the text with relevant biblical passages, greatly enhancing understanding.
So delightful to hear that this thread could provide such an inspiration! Time is indeed such a scarce commodity in adulthood. My reading has declined by 2/3s since taking up go again (and especially moderating). I hope to change that when I retire, perhaps next year. The Hyperion series is high on my “To Read” list.
As noted above, I’m reading much less these days, although telework due to COVID has allowed me to reclaim some reading time. Unfortunately, local used book stores are disappearing due to rising real estate prices and COVID. Five years ago we had 8 stores within 25 miles; today we have 4, and one of those is largely a consignment shop, which makes trading impractical.
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I’m almost done with the collection of Dickens’ ghost stories and Huntington’s difficult but absorbing study of civilization change, but I recently interrupted it with a quick read of The Kingdom of Matthias by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz. This study of an early 19th-century cult leader, Robert Matthews, was quite an eye-opener. Although I knew about the Millerites and a few other 19th-century cults, I had no idea of the Protestant ferment of the 1820s-1830s period. This ferment involved an extraordinary empowerment of women, which laid the groundwork for the later Women’s Suffrage movement. Learning about such connections between events is, for me, one of the great attractions of history.
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Same here (Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Europe) but internet second hand book shop are doing quite well. Only interesting if you know what you are looking for, but not for discovering a treasure by accident.
And love the combination of serendipity and book stores 
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A song on the subject.
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I wish I had the time to read something non-classic again. I’m still stuck with Herodotus and Xerxes’ march against Hellas, occasionally reading Daphnis and Chloe and some plays by Euripides inbetween. It’s alright, but as the French say, trop d’ ski tue le ski. ’ too much skiing kills the skiing’. That’s also the reason why there was no skiing in the early Soviet union.
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What about something medieval-classical to break things up?
Perhaps Ysengrimus (aka the first installment of Reynard the Fox, ca. 1150) or the Suda (10th century)?
As for myself, I’m trying to read the bilingual Latin / English Loeb translation of Natural History – “trying” definitely being the operational word, lol – because I already own about the first twenty books (collated into five volumes).
I’d like to collect a few more books of “practical Latin prose”, like De Agricultura, De Re Rustica, and De Aquaeductu.
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nah, I need something light now. My exam about Herodotus, Euripides and the others in in December; after that I’ll read some of those Bergdoktor pulp they sell at the train station’s kiosk for 3.50.
This looks nice!
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I greatly admire Albert Camus’s writing and have read nearly all of his small oeuvre. Earlier this evening I started to read The First Man, his last novel, published 35 years after his tragic death. It is a fictionalized autobiography that is almost impossible to put down. It commands attention not through suspense or excitement but by its simple, evocative, insightful prose. The chapter on children’s games is a delightful celebration of life that made me realize I have more in common with the kids in Algiers c.1923 than with kids in the U.S. today. Now and then I reread a page, trying to figure out how he does it—how does he combine richness with briskness?
It has also made me meditate on the advantages of third-person fictionalized autobiography, which liberates the writer from the vain Fates of autobiographical writing: I, me, and my. Furthermore, it frees the writer from an enslavement to unnecessary details, strengthening the narrative, though at the expense of history. But what do we want? The feeling of a time, a place, a life, or the fact that he had toast for breakfast?
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I am rereading the books of James Herriot with great pleasure.
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We read some James Harriot stories when I was younger and I love them. I especially remember “Only One Woof” and the one about the dog who always chewed on an older dog’s ear, but then the older dog died, and then the remaining dog became depressed and stopped eating and the owners expected it to die to, but then they got another dog, and the depressed dog walked slowly over, and started chewing on its ear, much to the new dog’s annoyance. Then the dog started eating again because it wasn’t alone anymore, but I don’t remember the title.
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On youtube I watched all the episodes a few years ago. Loved it, lot of nostalgia and really enjoying the Yorkshire countryside.
Early seventies my parents brought the first Herriot book (If only they could talk), back from an English vacation. Over the years I collected the rest of the series.
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When I was a child living in the dales, we were driving once over the hills between Swaledale and Wensleydale. They’ve got gates across the road you have to open and shut yourself to keep the sheep in. A guy stopped us and asked us just this once not to shut the gate. We did as asked, wondering why. I noticed a 1930’s style car and thought, “Oh, I bet there filming something”. When “All Creatures Great and Small” came on, I realised it must have been that (and even thought I recognised the bit of road in the credit sequence).
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I’ve been rereading Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. It was published in 1790, just before an already ugly situation became absolutely appalling. The book was not well received initially. Then, as now, readers tended to cherrypick, and so Burke was reviled by the left as an apologist for the worst excesses of the French monarchy, but adopted by the right as a kind of standard bearer for measures and attitudes that he never endorsed.
Burke was a pragmatist, open to the spirit of reform, but within existing power structures. Progress occurs when people are willing to hold conflicting ideas in their head and grapple with them as honestly as they can. There’s nothing magical about it. They undertake the process knowing that it’s long and difficult and often exasperating. But this is how it’s done. Nobody comes riding in on a white horse. The things that need to get done are painstakingly hammered out, point by point.
Clearly there are those who want no part of this, and we see it today as Burke did in his day. His reflections can be described as a cautionary tale about what happens when the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bath water. He isn’t always entirely objective. In particular, his defense of the royal family, and especially Marie Antoinette, will seem overly sentimental. But it doesn’t invalidate the main thrust of his argument. If you’re looking for a measured but lively analysis from a big picture perspective, you can hardly do better than what Burke presents here.
But take warning. If you’re going to read this, be prepared for a lot of parenthetical language in sentences that can run on for a third of a page or so. It’s not easy reading, but if you’re up for it and you proceed patiently I think you’ll find it rewarding. Certainly it’s as relevant now as ever.
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Burke’s Reflections has been on my To Read list for several years now. Always good to be reminded.
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The first thing I read by Camus was his story collection Exile and the Kingdom. I read it in the original French, which is to say it took me forever and a day. But the effort paid off. I was so struck by the thing you alluded to, the author’s ability to convey so much with so few brush strokes. The opening story, La Femme Adultere, about an urban dwelling woman accompanying her salesman husband on a trip into the vast and mysterious desert country had me hooked from the get-go. Maybe it was all about first impressions, but Exile and the Kingdom remained my favourite work by Camus, though it’s hardly his most celebrated.
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I, too, have a high opinion of Exile and the Kingdom. My favorites are The Plague and The Rebel, which are among my favorite 20th-century books.
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I’m finally reading Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon”, which inspired the omonimous movie, one of my favourite.
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