What is your current "read"?

I've started using this site:

Bookshop

It is, at present, only available in the UK and US, though they are looking at expanding to EU countries. The books are sold through independent bookshops all over the UK, so this is a much better way to support these shops than the evil Amazon empire.
 
There are several books that come into the "how come I haven't read that?" category. One is Machiavelli's The Prince, but I am reading it now.

I can't yet say what I make of it because I have only read the introductions and translation notes thus far. This is a worthwhile exercise; this is a book that has been translated myriad times. The translator of my edition is Tim Parks, an Englishman who has lived in Italy since 1981 and is, to put it mildly, a prolific author. Helpfully, he sets out a few paragraphs from other translations against his own, so you get a sense of how he goes about things.

I wonder if there was ever a more misleading title for a book. There is, no course, no "prince" involved. Its original title, at least in a basic English translation, was On Principalities. And we must also be careful to consider that the norms of the time were rather different to what they are now, although it is always difficult not to view things through a modern perspective.
 
I've only just found this thread. One of the earliest posters shared that they only read when they were eating and so it always took them a long time to read a book. I read the rest of the posts on that page, then went back to reply to that post, but couldn't find it. I wanted to say that I was the same with reading, but a) I couldn't find the post and b) I discovered the thread was started in 2017.

I don't read just when I am eating and I like to have variety in what I read, so have several books on the go, including Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day by Captain Tom Moore, his autobiography. He was the WW2 veteran who became famous by raising money for the NHS by walking round his garden.
 
Duck59 said:
I've never read Calvino, though I've been intending to get If On A Winter's Night A Traveller one day, so perhaps this should spur me into action. I was, though, reminded that one book I enjoyed was Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo. Not, I'd imagine, everybody's cup of tea and no great surprise that Svevo and James Joyce were close. Svevo had a great influence on Joyce and you can see it in this novel.
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While it may appear a little odd replying to my own post of some five months ago, there is method in the madness.

I now have a copy of If On A Winter's Night A Traveller and have just started it. I have a minor irritation already, with the publisher rather than the author. Being from the UK, I would use the word "traveller" and that is how it is printed on the cover. However, in the text, we seem to veer between "traveller" and the US spelling "traveler." Surely an organisation as mammoth as Penguin/Random House can manage a little consistency? Evidently not.

Having got that out of the way, perhaps I can now move on and enjoy the novel.
 
Not that I've read the book for some time, but I was reminded of the classic work Diary of a Nobody the other day. The protagonist is, of course, Mr Pooter. His wife is named Carrie and one of his neighbours is a Mr Cummings, with whom he has a disagreement at one stage.

Life, art. Who can distinguish?
 
I'm re-reading a Bill Bryson book, and he always has the most succinct little quotes, and many times not flattering at all, but that's part of his charms.

This morning's made me laugh a little:

"Eating in Sweden is really just a series of heartbreaks."
 
I have a bit of an attention deficite disorder..can't get into stories or novels, so I read other types of books.
Right now I am re reading Ekhart Tolle The Power of Now...helps me change my thinking patterns and keeps me from delving into negativity...you can read a page or two and put it down for a while..there is no plot or it isn't progressive or anything you really have to remember..according to my GF, paying attention isn't one of my strong qualities..
 
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I've got to the last of the Wodehouse Blandings novels, as far as I can tell anyway. In many ways, they are all pretty much the same. Chap wants to marry girl but has no money, well-meaning old buffer (sometimes Gally but this time Uncle Fred) gets involved, people impersonate other people, someone tries to steal Lord Emsworth's pig, etc. You sometimes get the feeling that if a modern author tried the same tricks, they would be criticised for simply repeating an old formula, but somehow it works for Wodehouse and he rarely fails to amuse.
 
Keeping with the detective fiction theme
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