2018 Autumn: The Rise and Fall of What Are You Reading Now?

I made a fairly serious attempt to read The White Goddess many years ago, mainly because it was a big thing for Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and I was very interested in them at that time. I maybe managed about a third of it. It was unreadable tosh. Putting it mildly, Graves's gifts did not include a capacity for logical argument or the marshalling of evidence.

I've recently finished Cassandra at the Wedding, which on the whole I enjoyed even though it turned out to be a bit weirder and less good than it promised in the early pages.

Now reading The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann.

Aimless, not to be a pedant but Jansson was Finnish, not Swedish (though she did write in Swedish). Seconding The True Deceiver, that's an amazing novel, but of course it's also very weird for me to imagine someone coming to her work without first having read the moomins books.

After My Brilliant Friend I'm switching to a different epic series and the second volume of Miklo Banffy's Transsylvanian Trilogy. Was quite worried I wouldn't remember enough from the 500 page first volume which I read more than a year ago but it only took a few pages for the characters to feel like old friends. These books are so good you guys.

Seconding the Banffys here.

I seem to be ending the year on a Simenon/Maigret binge, catching up before the last year of new translations starts.

I got <i>My Friend Maigret</i> for x-mas! Also watched the first of the Jean Gabin adaptations, a story I had previously seen acted out by Mr.Bean.

There's a late 50s version of The Man Who Watched the Trains go by with Herbert Lom.
Think it's quite good but it is a long time since I saw it.
That's Simenon but not Maigret.

It is time for the Winter 2019 WAYR thread to arrive. If there is not such a thing already in place later today I'll try to spawn one.

Here it is: 2019 Winter: The What Are You Reading thread that came in from the cold. Have at it.