Horizon

Well, I'm currently reading With Santa Anna in Texas, but I doubt it would interest the rest of you quite as much.

Likewise, I'm reading Gathering Evidence by Thomas Bernhard, which is now out of print in this country and anyway probably not up everyone's alley.

Waiting in the queue are A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke and The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald. Though I haven't read them yet they don't seem Horizoney.

We could read some short stories. I wouldn't mind something from Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry. (That's not the edition I have, but that one is inexpensive.)

I think I'd be up for Red Cavalry.

That introduction is hair-raising. Well, I might be up for it.

On the other hand I've got a big pile of bought-but-not-read over here. Anyone willing to consider Jonathan Raban's Bad Land, Robert Hughes' Fatal Shore, Suetonius, Primo Levi, Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own, or the Olivier Todd biography of Camus with that fetching Writer With Cigarette photo on the cover?

I've got an unread copy of Fatal Shore, so I might be up for that as well. I haven't read all of Suetonius myself, but have bought copies for friends, and so I should warn you that translations vary immensely. The Penguin version bowdlerizes the racier bits about Tiberius, while the Loeb translates it directly.

This is pretty interesting. What does everyone else have in their to-read stack?

Proposed limitation: Books must have been either acquired or abandoned in the last couple of months, and must be in English. An exemption is granted for books purchased due to recommendations made here.

Re: Suetonius, dammit, I've got the Penguin. Fordham has it in a text that looks to have been successively Bowdlerized and de-Bowdlerized but reading long texts in digital form isn't much fun. Oh well.

Ben has a good idea: probably it's more fun to list our Currently Not Yet Reading than to agree on a text?

Actually I was thinking that we'd select a Currently Reading from the lists, but the lists seem a good end in themselves. Besides, I need an excuse to start shelving.

Oh, heck, let's select something too, then. May as well change the picture in our upper right-hand corner once in a while.

Further to Governor Allport's Perfect Thriller question, what *I'd* like to know is what books he would select for a desert island list if he *was* trying to impress someone? (Do people really pretend about this sort of thing?)

I think Mr. Allport should be put on a desert island with the Sherlock Holmes stories until he reads them, and so there.

Realized today I've got a spare copy of Fatal Shore (also unread). I'd be happy to mail it to anyone interested.

Re Gov. Allport:

Indeed. How can a body *re-read* Frederick Forsyth and never have touched Sherlock? It's a mad world and Al's got lots of O levels an all...just goes to show what I've always said.

Easy does it, now. In all decency we don't want to give him an aversion to the Sherlock stories before he's had a chance to sample them. That'd be as bad as inoculating kids against Orwell by making them read him in school.

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Seriously, anyone want to Currently Read the Hughes book? It's such a brick of paper I haven't quite had the courage to start it on my own so shall we try safety in numbers?

Anyone want to Currently Read the Hughes book?

I've already read it, so it's fine by me.

I've already read it, so it's fine by me.

So is it good?

I see a *Fatal Shore* icon has gone up at upper right, so I gather we're reading the thing now.

Considering which, would anyone like my spare copy?

Easy does it, now. In all decency we don't want to give him an aversion to the Sherlock stories before he's had a chance to sample them. That'd be as bad as inoculating kids against Orwell by making them read him in school
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Funnily enough, a little excerpt of Orwell at school--idly read and not forced--stayed with me.