BOOKS 3/20/2019

I’ve recently changed to a longer subway commute, which sucks in many ways, but which resulted in one benefit — more time to read in the mornings.  (I try to read all the time, but let’s face it, the internet gets in the way.)

Some books I finished recently that I loved:

• Loitering With Intent – Muriel Spark
• A Nervous Splendor – Frederic Morton
• Beware of Pity – Stefan Zweig

Loitering With Intent is really everything I ever wanted in a historical fiction centered around an intelligent, young, female author.  The book positively effuses with the atmosphere of the postwar London literary scene, and the cast of characters are all wonderfully bizarre.  The mystery at the center of it is among the most unique I’ve encountered in a long time.

Nervous Splendor and Beware of Pity are both centered around the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the, really, the end of an era.  Nervous Splendor specifically tells the tale of the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf, but also gives a vivid account of the culture of Vienna at the end of the 19th century.  The story is so fantastic and the prose so lurid that the book may as well be fiction.

Beware of Pity is a chilling account of the tragedy that unfolds when a soldier takes pity on a young crippled girl.  Not kidding when I say it’s chilling.  A+

Some books I read recently that I disliked:

• Transcription – Kate Atkinson: Love Kate Atkinson, but this book was honestly so boring and its excessive use of parentheticals, which Atkinson is usually so good at it, is entirely grating.   Loitering With Intent is probably what this book wanted to be.
• The Post-Office Girl – Stefan Zweig: I read this right after Beware of Pity.  I get it, but it’s really a slog, especially the second half.

Books I’m currently reading:

• Thunder at Twilight – Frederic Morton: Sequel of to Nervous Splendor.  Fascinating look at the lead-up to WWI, especially because all of the characters of WWII were also gathered in Vienna around this time.
• Dracula – Bram Stoker: Funny I’ve never read this book.  Recently read The Historian, which was excellent for 500 pages and then sucked for the last 100.  Anyway, I’m intrigued about the story of Dracula now, and quite I like it so far.

Books I intend to read:

• Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
• Pale Fire  – Nabokov