Mike’s Comments (group member since Oct 28, 2021)

Mike’s comments from the Never too Late to Read Classics group.

ForestGardenGal wrote: "For those of you who got this for £1 or less, you will find this hilarious: I got this as an interlibrary loan because my local library didn't have a copy. Picked it up today. Note on it from lendi..."

Now we know how libraries deal with budget cuts! :P

I read this a few years ago and was utterly captivated by it. I was familiar with E.M. Forster from studying A Passage to India during my History A-Level but had no idea that he had written science fiction or short stories. I happened across The Machine Stops for a mere £1 in a bookstore and took a punt. I had been dismissive of short stories before reading this, always preferring the thickest books I could find, but this book started a fascination with short stories. Time for a re-read!

Take care John, I hope to see you soon.

I too stopped reading the news, and disengaging from facebook, after a combination of realising that they were always making me feel down and the publicity around the release of the book Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life by Rolf Dobelli. When this came out, Dobelli had said that he hadn't read/watched the news in 10 years and yet he still became aware of major events without all the rest of the drivel.

I realise that I've been paying a lot more attention to the news the last year, following the events of the Titan, Ukraine, the Wagner Mutiny, the forest fires throughout North America and now Israel/Palestine. I'm appalled by the actions of both sides and feel helpless with worry that ties of loyalty will prevail over good, God fearing moral sensibility.

I've ordered Dobelli's book, I need to kick myself off the news.

The Dreyfus Affair features very prominently in this yet I only have a passing familiarity with it. Every couple of hundred pages I find myself refreshing my memory by reading the Wikipedia entry. I read a bit more than the summary this evening and was rather impressed. After 12 years of being wrongfully imprisoned, Dreyfus returned to the very army that had betrayed him and served for many more years, including the entirety of The Great War and living on to 1935. Perhaps it's a small blessing that, having suffered a miscarriage of justice due to antisemitism, he passed before the Holocaust.

I'm up for Barnaby Rudge. Amazon UK sells the Wordsworth Classic edition for £3.99.

I heartily recommend Invisible Man! I read it last year and thoroughly enjoyed it giving it 5 stars.

Nidhi wrote: "I finished the second book Within the Budding Grove. I liked it much more than the first because there are many new characters introduced and sketched elaborately by Proust. The second half is more..."

I found the same, and I too enjoyed the descriptions of Elstir's paintings. I fear that I was picturing English sea side towns rather than French, but close enough!

I'm happy for it to continue too. I had expected to easily finish all six in a year but certainly didn't anticipate the year I've had. I'm about a fifth into the fourth volume and expect to finish it in November.

Samantha wrote: "In 2020 we did a Lovecraft reading and discussing his stories as the..."

Ah, not long before I joined this group, should've done my homework. Oh well, I can always add to the existing conversation.

I'd like to vote for Pushkin and Chesterton.

I'd like to put forward The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft.

Piyangie wrote: "Can I take your interest in The City of God as a supportive vote, Mike?"

Yes you can, and I'll also add my support to Tolstoy's Resurrection. It's yet another book I already have in Penguin Classics that I've not yet read.

I would love to read all three hefty books, and even have them all in Penguin Classics. If I were to do so next year, I doubt I'd read much else!

I'd like to suggest Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, a hefty coming in at 1232 pages. I have not seen the musical and personally know little about this but it's been on my TBR for sometime.

My other suggestion is The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, another hefty weighing in at 1248 pages. This is an epic poem written in Elizabethan English, in which Shakespeare wrote and is used in the King James translation of the Bible.

I've been reading Patrick Stewart's memoirs, Making It So: A Memoir and learned that he was in a couple of BBC adaptions in the 70's before his more famous roles in Dune and Star Trek. One is North and South, which I read last year. Second hand DVDs are en route.

The other is called "I, Claudius" and is based on the Robert Graves' novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God. I've been meaning to read these for years so I went ahead and bought them both and will hunt down the DVDs once I have.

Penelope wrote: "Have you read Jonathan Coe’s Bournville?. Fiction but excellent insight into the area, people, factory and so on. Too recent for our classic reads but could be a classic one day."

I haven't, thanks for the recommendation! Perhaps it will one day join the ranks of Kenilworth which is also a locale not far from me.

Bournville is indeed a dark chocolate (the best in my not so humble opinion) but it is also the name of the town that the Cadburys built around their factory in the 19th century. As staunch Quakers, the Cadburys felt obliged to provide everything for their employees from housing and education through to healthcare and recreational activities. Birmingham has grown a lot in the intervening years so Bournville is now one of Birmingham's many suburbs.

I came away from the factory shop with a 1kg bar of Dairy Milk and a huge Toblerone. The admission included 4 chocolate bars, 2 Dairy Milks, a Caramel and a Twirl.

I took the whole family out, our first such trip since everything happened, to visit Cadbury World in nearby Bournville, Birmingham. We all had a great time and came home with plenty of chocolate. This morning we went to a new church and felt very welcomed and even saw some familiar faces from a church we used to attend moons ago. Now for a relaxing afternoon of laundry and reading while the children wear themselves out on the trampoline in the garden.

Carol wrote: "And radiators rattle and clang. They demand notice. They can also melt things on or nearby them."

Perhaps radiators inspired Robert Munsch to write Mortimer's refrain:

"Clang Clang Rattle Bing Bang, Gonna make my noise all day!"

As someone who has lived on both sides of the Atlantic I can attest to North America's superior central heating. Central Heating in the UK is usually hot water through metal radiators. Yes, they're as inefficient as they sound. They take forever to heat the place and when the house reaches the desired temperature, it takes forever for the radiators to cool this further warming the house. It's a constant cycle of too hot to too cold all winter long.