Mike > Recent Status Updates

Full of interesting extracts from music critics, and there's lots of information, but I'm virtually halfway through and there's no sign of the 'forbidden music' as yet.

Pretty grim so far!

I don't see me finishing this book. Many of the 'facts' about Biblical matters aren't facts at all, for one thing, but apart from that it has very little suspense for a thriller. Disappointing.

The first half of the book is the biography: Quilter remains a somewhat elusive figure, generous, insecure, perhaps a hypochondriac, successful musically, but on a rather small scale.
The rest of the book looks at his work in detail.

Finding this book hard going at times...too much name-dropping, too much about his travels and religious stuff and not enough about the music...

This is a comprehensive, well-argued and thought-through but very readable book on this difficult subject. I'm enjoying it greatly...if 'enjoying' is the right word!
The often-very subtle arguments have to be read very slowly for a slow brain like mine, and I'm not even sure then that I pick up all the nuances!

This is a comprehensive, well-argued and thought-through but very readable book on this difficult subject. I'm enjoying it greatly...if 'enjoying' is the right word!

Enjoying the mix of historical research and fiction; the former is well integrated into the story.

Thoroughly enjoying this. Though the subject matter is familiar, it's well presented and there are interesting things along the way that add to my sense of reading in greater depth.

This is very well written, but Elizabeth Barrett Browning comes across as a neurotic, and Robert Browning, when he finally appears, and is deeply in love with her, almost seems to encourage her frailty and neuroticism. She goes from a domineering but protective father to an overly protective husband, and seems to give into both of them. And after two years in Italy neither of them has written any poetry!

This is the second time I've read this book, and this time I'm reading it more carefully. It's outstanding in so many ways. Donovan attempted to cut away the accretions of cultural thinking while working as a missionary, and was generally very successful.

Started off a little slowly but has been zipping along at a great pace ever since.

This is a book full of ironies, and vivid presentations of the Congo and its people, and of six people of an entirely different culture trying to make the best of it each in their own peculiar ways.

I've read this book at least twice before, but it remains as readable and enjoyable as ever.

Thoroughly enjoying this. One of Hill's best in the series.