RussellinVT’s Comments (group member since Apr 11, 2024)

RussellinVT’s comments from the Ersatz TLS group.

Happy New Year, everyone.

For many years the village library here has sponsored a New Year’s Eve Bach solo cello concert, free and open to anyone. Last night it was Suites 1 and 3, a beautiful performance. What a perfect contemplative way to round out the year.

The Eagle and the Hart arrived and I started reading it straight out of the package. Already I’m glued. The family trees look like electrical wiring diagrams, but Ms Castor takes you through the complexity with ease.

Reading has been a bit sporadic with me too. Quite apart from all the cooking and eating and the football and some other viewing (Band of Brothers, always utterly gripping, and, complete contrast, Summer Holiday), we were travelling for a few days, and over Christmas we had the use of a wonderful quirky cabin high up in the snowy woods three hours north of where we are. It was built above a tumbling brook. At night, lights came on under the house shining on the water as it rushed down among boulders and branches laden with snow. The effect was magical.

We stopped at an exceptional used book shop and I picked up several that caught my eye, all very moderately priced:
- Chivalry in France (1957), an excellent essay on how martial qualities, religious obligations and courtly love grew and fused over the centuries, not overburdened with notes, by Sidney Painter, a professor at Johns Hopkins.
- A slim book in the lovely Collins series Britain in Pictures - there must have been 30 of them sitting there in a box on the floor (in the depths of Vermont!) - from which I chose the one on British Romantic Painters (1940) by John Piper who as well as being a prominent painter himself is no slouch when it comes to writing attractively. In 48 strong pages, plus some two dozen plates, he mixes his own penetrating comments with lively quotations from contemporaries, e.g. the bit from Hazlitt that Turner’s landscape paintings were pictures of nothing, and very like – which Piper duly assails.
- A book in the Hale series of Portraits of British counties and regions, this one a Portrait of Humberside (1983) by Ivan Broadhead, again very attractively written, even if for my taste he lingers too long on the north bank of the river.
- Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed, which I never read before, and which will continue the story nicely once I finish Edmund Wilson.
- A couple of Folio classic novels in good condition, from 2-3 shelves of books in French.

While there I stood and read several pages of something else I thought rather exciting, The Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia by Suzanne Massie, which came out in 1980. For the cultural history, Figes’ later Natasha’s Dance was excellent but this looks highly enjoyable too. They only had a heavily foxed HB and a tatty PB, so I hunted around on line when we got back and have ordered one in nice condition.

I read Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story (1937) in the British Library series, by J. Jefferson Farjeon. The intro says it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers. Myself I would say it was no better than all right – an efficient piece of plotting that is not enlivened by any special wit or charm in the writing.

I read and enjoyed about half of the Dino Buzzati Contes de Noël. Decided now to save the other half till next Christmas.

I’ve started on a thick volume entitled Reprobates: Cavaliers of the English Civil War (2011) by John Stubbs, and the early pages have really got my attention – a deftly written description of the bad relations between Sir Matthew Carew, a Master in Chancery, and his unsatisfactory middle son Thomas Carew, who is unrepentant about being dismissed from a diplomatic position for writing rude things about the ambassador’s wife. His fame as a poet arose only after his father’s death.

I picked that up knowing that I also wanted to go on to Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade 1649-1660 by Alice Hunt, just out, which I saw someone describe as the most enjoyable and instructive read of the year, and which seems to be good on the political thinking, not just the personalities. It’s a period where I always feel my knowledge is inadequate – it was somehow skipped over in my history courses in school.

The Eagle and the Hart is arriving, and a particular Christmas present was The Price of Victory: A Naval History of Britain 1815-1945, the concluding volume of NAM Rodgers’ magisterial trilogy.

So as we turn the page going into the New Year I feel buzzy about all these different reading avenues I have in front of me, not to mention getting to grips with some literature in Italian.

Dylan Thomas’ reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales was engaging. I was surprised at the absence of a Welsh accent. Did he assume the accent of the educated English upper classes only when he spoke in public, or was that his natural voice?

All the while I have been luxuriating in Trollope’s A Small House at Allington, one or two chapters at a time. What a pleasure for winter evenings.

giveusaclue wrote: "Finally finished reading The Eagle and the Hart.....Highly recommended for any other history nerds here."

Looks like a definite read for me. Out of interest, did the book say anything about whether, afterwards, Henry felt any gnawings of doubt about the justice of his usurpation?

Ruby wrote: "Happy trails to the forest dwellers. Remember that?"

Good one, Ruby.

96 or 97 must be about double what I have managed this year.

Just to finish off on A Child’s Christmas in Wales, I was in the village library today to take a look at whichever edition they had, only to find it was out on loan – but, they said, we do have it as an CD audio book, read by Dylan Thomas himself. What??!! I didn’t even know it existed, and what could be better when I believe I may be receiving a Walkman-type CD player for Christmas, mainly for use in the car (since they don’t come with CD players any more, never mind tape players). Interestingly, the case the CD comes in uses a half-dozen of the illustrations by Ms Hyman (which, I have to admit, have a small town look about them), including the beautiful one of the boy standing by himself on the sea shore. The CD also has DT reading five of his poems, one of them Fern Hill, a particular favourite. What a treat to look forward to.

Robert wrote: "Ah, Sadness. I looked at the Guardian's book quiz, and discovered how few of the entries I'd read, or even heard of. Better luck next time...

Merry Christmas, everyone!"

I could have guessed at a few but knew the answer to only 4 out of 21. Number 12 made me smile. I'm hoping the first answer is the correct one

Merry Christmas to you, Robert, and everyone here.

scarletnoir wrote: "...This was possibly the first present I bought for my wife..."

The first present you bought for your wife? No wonder she married you!

Edward Ardizzone was a very fine artist, and the list of books he illustrated is little short of astonishing. I still have my own copy of Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain. For the Dylan Thomas book, though, I prefer the bolder outlines and colours of Ms Hyman.

Anyone looking for a late Christmas present for a young relative might try A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas. There’s a nice little hardback edition, not expensive at all, with illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman. (I’ve looked at other editions and hers are, imo, easily the best.) I mention it because after discovering this smaller format we got it in for the bookshop and it has sold well. We weren’t at all sure that it would, as it is so non-American and non-Disney – very 1950s Britain, not much money, young boys in shorts and wool sweaters, Meccano sets, coal fires. There’s an excellent short film version with Denholm Elliott, but the book is better.

scarletnoir wrote: "Isn't life strange? Who could, or would, have imagined that profound Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky would become an overnight sensation on - BookTok?..."

That’s a nice piece. Of the shorter novels, did you ever try The Eternal Husband? I don’t actually remember anything about the characters or the plot (from 50 years ago) – but I do remember thinking at the time it was the very essence of Dostoyevsky.

giveusaclue wrote: "...A sign of the times - Henry's wife gave birth to 6 children in 8 years "then her luck ran out" as the book says and she died in childbirth at the age of just 24 leaving 6 children who all survived to adulthood."

Which I looked up, as six adult children is a lot, and yet I didn’t remember there being many Lancastrian males after them. It turns out that of the six there were four sons and two daughters who between them produced no surviving children, or no legitimate children, or no children at all, with the exception of Henry VI and Rupert, heir to the Electorate of the Palatinate, who died age 20. The lotteries of childbirth in an age when everything depended on it!

There was a dual review in the WSJ this weekend of Helen Castor’s book and Dan Jones’ book Henry V, which, it is said, covers much the same ground by giving equal weight to the period up to his accession. The reviewer liked both of them. HC is “among the front rank of writers producing thoughtful and engaging popular history” in “clear and uncluttered prose." DJ “injects novelistic immediacy.” I’ll probably read both, eventually.

Thanks for the new thread, GP. As things stand, Apollo Crosbie does not deserve Lily Dale, nor any woman of merit. Also enjoying the Buzzati Christmas stories, each with its own particular charm, and one very sad - the fragment about parents still living in hope of the return of their son from the Eastern Front, ten years after.

Very sorry to hear that, Tam. Best wishes to your husband for a good recovery.

scarletnoir wrote: "...Anyway - despite a rather limp opening (odd, considering how important it is to grab the reader's attention - and I found the same with my last read, by SA Cosby. Don't these authors attend their Fiction 101 classes any more? Perhaps it's a good thing if they don't go to 'creative writing' courses...) ..."

First time I recollect seeing the name of SA Cosby on here. I read one of his a few years ago, Blacktop Wasteland, recommended by a bookstore owner. It was all right but not enough to make me want to read more of his. The opening was all action, fast and noisy, so I guess he varies his approach.

Tam wrote: "... Hats off to Logger, I think, for reading 'Native Son' ..."

Not me actually. I did read Invisible Man, which belongs to the same era. I will give Native Son a try at some point.

Currenty I’m reading and enjoying something very different, The Small House at Allington, penultimate chronicle of Barset. Trollope’s humour is present on every page. It is so soothing, even when his characters are heading for trouble. I think this is the third time in a row I've turned to Trollope in the run-up to Christmas

Gpfr wrote: "Another letter protesting the sale of The Observer, this time from international correspondents..."

It's barely credible that the Trust would decline to hear from the immediate past editor.

AB76 wrote: "...up where you are Logger..."

It seems that way, doesn't it, but where we are in VT is in fact far to the south of the Home Counties, around the latitude of Siena. I for one tend to think of London and NY as being on a parallel, so up there from NY is up there from London as well.

I've just seen you can read nearly all of the Mike Tyson piece here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-tys...

AB/giveus – The winter here seems to be reverting to norm, after last year which was unusually light on snow. Part of the morning was spent hauling in logs from the stacks out back. That in itself gets you nicely warmed up. And on the theme of snowbound Christmases, I’m looking at a copy of Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by J. Jefferson Farjeon (1914) which I don’t ever remember getting but is there on the shelf. It’s in the British Library series. From the cover illustration it seems a train has gone off the tracks and ploughed into a snow bank. So clearly they’re all isolated miles from anywhere and there’s a killer on board. Just the ticket! I think I’ll save it until a bit nearer mince-pie time. Apparently Dorothy L Sayers admired his “creepy skill”.

Gpfr wrote: "I feel there's an overdose of "best books" in The Guardian at the moment: best books of the year, best books to give for Xmas, best books in different categories (some limited to 5, some open) ..."

Me too. It's exhausting! I’ve also got a bit tired of the annual selections by professional authors – a bit too invariably literary. The round-up I now look forward to each year is the one in the WSJ, where they ask a bunch of 40+ “friends” (a good number of writers but also business executives, musicians, sportsmen, scientists, politicians, soldiers) not what they think is the best book of the year but what they’ve been enjoying and found most rewarding during the year, which could be anything at all, from any period. They give them plenty of space as well to say what they admire about the books.

They had Mike Tyson a couple of times. I kept one of the clippings. It's eye-popping. His books were The Quotable Kierkegaard, a biography of Alexander (who "was really a runt"), and Napoleon's love letters to Josephine. He finished with Virginia Woolf, her last letter to her husband before drowning herself.

Sitting late in front of a fire here in snowy Vermont, I couldn't go up to bed until I'd finished An English Murder, where Christmas guests find themselves snow-bound at Warbeck Hall. What a treat. Has anyone read anything else by Cyril Hare?

AB76 wrote: "...i used to buy it at uni....mid 90s, always a good read, that and the Indy with the G, not all at same time ofc...."

The Independent was a must-read in its day too. At the outset, in 1986, they had an amazing series of articles, almost daily, on the Guinness/Distillers investigation, the biggest City scandal of the time. They seemed to have a source leaking info almost daily – corporate executives, investment bankers etc giving confidential evidence to the DTI Inspectors one day, and the next day it would all be on the front page of the Indy – made Jeremy Warner’s name. Also in those early days it was a must-see as well: they made a speciality of stunning, very large, b+w photo journalism, which was not seen anywhere else, but soon copied.