Jonathan > Recent Status Updates

A reread of this just because I feel like it

Fantastic stuff so far

Can’t decide if I like this or it leaves me cold.

Another Umbrian by the pool reread

Rereading this lovely tale whilst sat by a pool in the Umbrian hills because life is good.

God that Pageant chapter is just an extraordinary, breathtaking piece of writing. His ability to hold all those strands together, and to move so effortlessly through them, is incredible.

One of the ways this is such a work of genius is he has the rare ability to create a huge, complex work which remains an absolutely gripping page turner. His characters are so clearly delineated, alive and distinct, that it is easy to keep track of them, and easy to get caught up in the intertwining flow of their lives. And yet also he can riff on insane philosophical, spiritual and frankly nuts stuff as he goes...

This novel is what would happen if Middlemarch did magic mushrooms

Rereading this extraordinary, batshit masterpiece now it has come out in penguin. Just as wonderful and baffling and awe inspiring as I remembered

Reading whilst visiting a very hot Berlin with the family…

Rereading this for the first time in 20 years or so, and in this new translation.

For anyone who is bound only by very frail threads, threads that are scarcely palpable to him, to what other people or he himself calls life, getting up in the morning is always a hard task. Perhaps even a slight violation.

Rereading this as part of my Germany month ahead of going to Berlin

Re reading this favourite during a heatwave seems appropriate…and good god each sentence is just exquisite

Rereading this for the first time 30 years later

Enjoying this, but not loving it

Something feels suitably Beckettian about listening to the audiobook of this old favourite whilst going on a run around Brompton Cemetery on a Sunday morning.

Rereading this masterpiece as I found it has been republished and that feels like a good enough excuse…

Interestingly this took a good 50 pages or so to start to cohere, but now that it has it is excellent. I did not expect, and was not prepared for, that sort of deliberately difficult and opaque start, though should be used to it from Gass, Hawkes and others of that ilk. At present this feels like a novel by Elizabeth Taylor taken up a stylistic notch, which is not a bad thing at all.

Rereading this after seeing Gary Oldman do a masterful Krapp’s Last Tape at the Royal Court last night

The reread of classics I read 20 years or more ago and cant remember continues...

Lovely prose so far - I have read a few of hers and she was definitely extremely talented

Not loving this, I have to say, but still sufficiently invested to keep trudging on...

Never read this, but felt like carrying straight on after Lost Illusions

So so good. And loving all the connections to the books I have read by his other heteronyms

Really kicked up a gear now we are in Paris. Extraordinary stuff - and interesting hints of and references to queerness which I was not expecting.

Reading this ahead of my trip to Stockholm as part of my usual country-specific prereading I do before I go anywhere…Apparently I read this in 2014 but I literally have no memory of that at all. I did have a 2 year old son at the time so maybe that explains my brain fog….

Just for fun, one of my favourite Denning judgments - basically a short story of its own: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/...