Trollope, Lacey

I've been reading lots of military material for professional reasons, but I also finished The Way We Live Now, which was relatively boring, and Robert Lacey's Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II. This latter book had some gory details about the royal family that I hadn't known, including the fact that George V was indeed euthanized. Anyway, it's the book on which the movie The Queen is based.

Sulivan, Mais il y a la er

Jean Sulivan is a priest who writes spiritual material and novels with a spiritual flavor. Here, he is writing about a Spanish cardinal who throws himself into the ocean. It was a short easy read, but I guess I wasn't wowed by the naturalism of the writing, which is a little vague, or the material of a cardinal committing romantic suicide. I suppose I don't think suicide should ever be romanticized....I am now reading the last of Trollope's numerous novels.

Court Society by Elias, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, Cannadine

I read both these books at top speed. Court Society is historical sociology focusing on the court of Louis XIV. I was irritated by the fact that the author did not seem to grasp the power that flowed from the Crown and explained much of everything. However, I was new to the notion that the job of an aristocrat is to match expenses to the dignity of the title or position. Decline and Fall is excellent, and I devoured its 700 pages in two days. It discusses the loss of money, land, social standing, political power, and even the role in Anglo-Catholicism through three large phases: decline, ornamentation (i.e. symbolic roles only), and gradual extinction. I thought Cannadine's conclusion correct -- that the greatest moment of the landed gentry is the fact that it went quietly, putting country before interest, unlike other European nobles. An excellent read, exhaustively researched and rich in telling detail.

Turgenev, Emmons, Lacey

I have finished reading Turgenev's novels, in recent days the shorter ones such as The Lear of the Steppes and The Priest's Story. The comments I made about his longer novels apply to his shorter one. I am glad to have filled out the Russian canon, but I didn't not find him riveting like Tolstoy, whose naturalism is so acute and whose mastery of language is so obvious. I went on to read, rather idly, Emmon's Russian Landed Gentry. I was interested by the title, which turned out to be too general -- it should have read 'The Abolitionist Movement in the Russian Landed Gentry.' I was interested to read that in the days of serfdom, it was not the land which was mortgaged, but the serfs. Their exploitation is what provided the gentry with income. I also read Robert Lacey's Aristocrats. This was also something of a puff piece about titled people who are no longer necessarily rich -- but the only people in the book are both titled and rich. Hm mm, is there is a bias here?

Marai, Turgenev

I finished reading Marai's Memoirs of Hungary, and it was as good as the first few pages, right to the end. I still recall one of the last lines: "The train began to move, and we went forward into a world where no one was waiting." Very poignant. The man is also a great anti-Communist. I also read more of Turgenev's novels: Sketches of a Sportsman, and Torrents of Spring. Torrents is merely a tale of love lost -- I am getting bored with sentimental efforts, but also these novels are the same as other sentimental 19th century novels, there is no difference, as the French would say. I enjoyed Sketches the most, I like a good pastoral, but the author recounts terrible things like the beating of a Jew or the despair of a serf with a lightheartedness unbecoming to a modern reader.