Light reading

A lovely light fluffy book about being a secret musicals fan, called What would Barbra do? Charming and silly and very readable, although it felt a bit like stretching a concept for a feature article into an entire book. The only quibble I have is that she spends a lot of time writing about very, very famous musicals: Oklahoma!, Guys and Dolls, even the Sound of Music. Surely the people reading her book will already be musicals fans and know a bit about Oklahoma!? It would have been more fun to hear about some of the madder musicals of the MGM golden age... [13]

Gah. Every time I try and put a link in this post it deletes everything following it. An exerpt from the book was published in the Guardian Weekend magazine a few weeks ago and is available here:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/story/0,,1994563,00.html

I also finished Alan Furst's Kingdom of shadows which I have now written about twice and had blogger delete it for me so I'm not writing it out again. Gah. [14]

Quick catch-up

I haven't been keeping up to date with what I've read recently, so here is a quick catch-up:

Alan Furst's Blood of victory - it says a lot about Furst that while I vaguely remember enjoying this, I can't remember what it was about, just the noir-ish atmosphere and a couple of characters. His WW2 thrillers are enjoyable enough, but very samey and unmemorable after a while. [72]

Rabbi Lionel Blue's autobiography A backdoor to heaven. I loved this, as I adore Rabbi Lionel Blue (he does Thought for the day on the Today programme). Such a funny, human man. I wrote him a fan letter to say how much his TFTD cheers me up. [73]

Two texts by Kant, for my course: What is enlightenment? and Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View. I've written about these for my course and will try and dig it out and post it on here at some point. [74] [75]

Further German philosophy: extracts from Herder's Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity and from Hegel's Lectures on the philosophy of history. And oh boy, the Hegel is hard. [76] [77]

More fun is V. P. Brady's Love in the theatre of Marivaux which I'm reading for my French enlightenment course and really enjoying. I'm beginning to appreciate Marivaux more: the lightness, the elegance, the wit. It's like good, non-tragic ballet. [78]

Less interesting was Jonathan Wolff's Why read Marx today? which is short and easy and nothing I don't already know. [79]

Quick fire

Four quick, trashy, indulgences: To the nines, Ten big ones, Eleven on top and Twelve sharp, the last four instalments of Janet Evanovich's crimes series about slacker bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. The dialogue is snappy and the novels are still entertaining, although losing their edge a bit now that she has written so many of them. Still, the set-ups are funny and silly and not predictable, and it makes a nice change to read something that requires no effort. [37] [38] [39] [40]

I've also very much enjoyed Alan Furst's The world at night and shall be reading more of him. It was a wonderful escapist read, all atmospheric Paris by night and haunted, beautiful women, brutal but charming Nazis and a world-weary, sophisticated hero who finally has to choose to fight for what he truly believes in... [41]