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Weekly TLS
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What Are We Reading? 16 Nov 2020
Georg wrote: Did you read Machenbachs comment? He wasn't too impressed by the 3rd PM book. I'll go for the first one, on your and his recommendation.3rd PM book, even if below par, still sounds attractive to me.
I just finished American Negro Short Stories, a 1966 anthology edited by John Henrik Clarke, containing about 30 stories from the late 19th century through the mid-1960s. Most of the well known names are here - though the editor couldn’t get permission for any story by Ralph Ellison – and many that were new to me, including two names I’ve seen regularly at used book sales, Frank Yerby and Ernest J. Gaines, who I didn’t know were Black. The rural South and urban North dominate as settings, though one very interesting story takes place on a French steamer stopping at ports along the African coast. There’re a variety of situations described, some stories set in purely Black milieus, others involving the mostly antagonistic relations of whites and blacks in the US; one story humorously depicts the white fetishization of Black music. For those interested, my review contains the titles and authors, and a brief summary of each story (my standard practice when reviewing anthologies).
FrancesBurgundy wrote: Georg, your review was in perfect English (I can’t believe it’s not your mother tongue) and it was as professional a review as those you see in print. You do not need to be a self-doubter where books are concerned.Agree with FB 100%.
I'm fascinated by Goodreads average scores. What is the highest average score you've seen for a novel? In my books, The Grapes of Wrath has the highest, at 4.5.
Scientists are supposed to report even on failed experiments - even though they sometimes don't, because it looks bad, or because their company doesn't want negative news published.It's in the spirit of the 'honest scientist', therefore, that I'll comment briefly on two failures - books I couldn't finish.
First - Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo... I wrote a comment on the Guardian's (penultimate?) TLS about this one, so won't repeat it here. It's not bad, but hardly compelling - the style is nothing special, and the stories failed to hold my interest. It was getting to be hard going, so I took a break to read Mankell's excellent After the Fire, where the characters actually surprise you, at times. When I tried to resume the Evaristo - I just couldn't do it. It seemed like drudgery rather than pleasure, so I have given up. The contrast was too great, probably.
Then, for a bit of light entertainment, I turned to a thriller... The Cartel by Don Winslow. Ho, hum... this concerns a former agent, and a Mexican drug baron. At one point they were friends, apparently - so that the Mexican could help the agent to get rid of his commercial rivals. Now, they are bitter enemies; the Mexican is in a USA prison, and plots his revenge. (I see that the poor style of the book is infecting my review, mais passons....)
Anyway - we know that the Mexican is a 'very bad man', because he has been 'responsible for hundreds of deaths', some of which are mentioned very briefly - no need to waste the reader's time feeling any sympathy for these pawns - only one is named, another agent tortured 'for weeks'. We are not told anything else about him - so a 'named pawn', which is, I suppose, a step up in the hierarchy of death.
The Mexican (I'm sorry, but I have forgotten his name, and that of the agent, so one-dimensional are the characterisations - and I can't be arsed to look them up) is languishing in this US prison, but with a bound he is free... he rats out all his commercial drug baron competitors (again) and the authorities agree to let him serve his sentence in Mexico (as if). All this is described in a couple of pages. Presumably, he'll soon escape from his Mexican cell (I didn't get that far) and the blood feud with the agent will continue...
So - what we have here is a book with one-dimensional characters, plus a wholly incredible plot. Why is this drug baron able to bribe and intimidate the prison guards in Mexico, whereas all the other (presumably equally ruthless) barons can't? Answer comes there none. Why does the agent not summarily dispatch the baron, when he had a gun to his head in (I assume) an earlier book? No idea - but a Reacher or a James Bond would have finished it then and there, making this farrago unnecessary.
I think you may take it that I was not impressed. I read 4%, and that was more than enough.
AB76 wrote: "It suprises me how many people misunderstand "lacite", glad. I have been a keen follower of the french system all my life and i can see what it means but for the more multicultural anglosphere, it seems to be wilfully misunderstood."Thanks a mil AB. I'm a big fan of laïcité too.
Me, too. I really don't like the 'daily act of worship', which is a legal requirement in schools in the UK (except Scotland)... and, believe me, in Wales they stick to this, as many teachers come from a church or chapel background. It was quite a palaver to get one of our daughters excepted - at her request - and even then, tricks and intimidation were attempted to get her to conform. (In my day, I was not aware that it was possible to 'ask out', so I had to endure it.)
In more general terms, too, it's clear that church and state should be separate. I'm sure that most people in the UK are not that religious, but it's not an issue that annoys many of them, for some reason. So, the daily brainwashing sessions go on...
Last night I finally managed to post the illustration by van Dongen of Nectaire playing his flute to the animals in photos.Maybe not many of you have read The Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France and here is a passage from where he plays his flute to the fallen angels in the garden.
It was a beautiful starlight night. The gardener was silent.
"Nectaire," said the beautiful archangel, "play to us on your flute, if you are not afraid that the Earth and Heaven will be stirred to their depths thereby."
Nectaire took up his flute. Young Maurice lighted a cigarette. The flame burnt brightly for a moment, casting back the sky and its stars into the shadows, and then died out. And Nectaire sang of the flame on his divine flute. The silvery voice soared aloft and sang:
"That flame was a whole universe which fulfilled its destiny in less than a minute. Suns and planets were formed therein. Venus Urania apportioned the orbits of the wandering spheres in those infinite spaces. Beneath the breath of Eros—the first of the gods,—plants, animals, and thoughts sprang into being. In the twenty seconds which hurried by betwixt the life and death of those worlds, civilizations were unfolded, and empires sank in long decline. Mothers shed tears, and songs of love, cries of hatred, and sighs of victims rose upward to the silent skies.
"In proportion to its minuteness, that universe lasted as long as this one—whereof we see a few atoms glittering above our heads—has lasted or will last. They are, one no less than the other, but a gleam in the Infinite."
As the clear, pure notes welled up into the charmed air, the earth melted into a soft mist, the stars revolved rapidly in their orbits, the Great Bear fell asunder, its parts flew far and wide. Orion's belt was shattered; the Pole Star forsook its magnetic axis. Sirius, whose incandescent flame had lit up the far horizon, grew blue, then red, flickered, and suddenly died out. The shaken constellations formed new signs which were extinguished in their turn. By its incantations the magic flute had compressed into one brief moment the life and the movement of this universe which seems unchanging and eternal both to men and angels. It ceased, and the heavens resumed their immemorial aspect. Nectaire had vanished.
MK wrote: "Now I have to put Len Deighton on the never-shrinking TBR list.Thanks for posting that quote from John Crace's column - it seems as if my early reading almost completely overlapped with Crace's, as it happens - Blyton, Biggles, Hammond Innes (who rarely gets a mention in TLS, if ever), Deighton etc.
I think you'll find that, as Crace says, early Deighton is better than the later stuff... his first, The Ipcress File, is a classic of the 60s spy genre, with our protagonist (called Harry Palmer in the Michael Caine film, though unnamed in the book) being a sort of anti-Bond - unglamorous, cynical, just getting by and living on his wits. The mood is captured brilliantly by the original book cover:
https://www.pinterest.cl/pin/20758848...
which shows a dirty teacup with a dog-end in the saucer, a couple of paper-clips - and a gun.
These earlier books paid some attention to characterisation; in the later ones, Deighton seemed to lose interest in that, and focused purely on plot, so they became less interesting... he is an excellent storyteller, though, and an unusual character. In addition to his fiction, he wrote and illustrated a weekly cookery strip, and published several historical works on air warfare - Fighter and Bomber, for example. "Proper" historians may turn up their noses at these, but they're an enjoyable read, and perhaps take more interest in the technical aspects of aeroplane design and air warfare than your typical academic. (Deighton served in the RAF during his national service.)
Let us know what you think... it's a long time since I read the books.
Thanks to CCC, Glad, Mach and others for your discussion on Kees van Dongen - I knew the name (but little else), and checking some of the images convinced me that I must have seen some of van Dongen's works somewhere... perhaps at the Pompidou, which has at least one of his works.Of more interest to some of you, though, may be this link to van Dongen's cats... (+ women in many cases!). Sometimes, browsing Wikipedia to research a subject brought up in TLS pays dividends...
https://www.thegreatcat.org/the-cat-i...
Edit: checking the link, I noticed that one of his works is entitled 'The Reader' - in which a woman reads (Rabelais), while a cat... sleeps (apparently). Perfect!
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "It suprises me how many people misunderstand "lacite", glad. I have been a keen follower of the french system all my life and i can see what it means but for the more multicultural ang..."i think oddly in the UK,the seperation has broadly been unofficial but i remember a friend who worked for a london council where before every councillor meeting there was public prayer
Religious attendance in UK remains very low but is high among immigrant populations(especially the Polish Catholics and Muslims from around the world). However religious attendance in 1851, supposedly the years of religion as a pillar of society was pretty low, the 1851 census suggesting a maximum of 25% of society attending a regular service in England, a bit higher in Wales (30-35%) and Scotland at 20-25%
Mod
What a year 2020 has been(not....), my best reads of the year(Unless next six weeks unearths a classic), which i recommend to all are:Classic Fiction -As Strangers Here (Janet McNeill)
Non-fiction-: Confederate Cities
Diaries: Victor Serge
No modern fiction decided yet but the Yeshoshua novel is likely to be up there
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "It suprises me how many people misunderstand "lacite", glad. I have been a keen follower of the french system all my life and i can see what it means but for the more multicultural ang..."Really? I had no idea that there was a" daily actof worship" in the UK. There are places in the USA that continously TRY to create something of the sort, but the separation of church and state has generally been more tightly policed. Although I expect John Robert's Supreme Court to blur that boundary in the coming years
Mod
Schools are supposed to start their day with an assembly - when I was at school we had prayers, a bible reading and sang a psalm. In the 1944 education act, religious education was the only compulsory subject. Of course, parents could choose for their children not to attend. The religious education classes we had were more like history lessons than anything else. Nowadays, with a more mixed population, morning assemblies and religious education classes tend to be different.
The daily collective act of worship is still a legal requirement but more than three quarters of secondary schools fail to meet it and are in effect breaking the law. The 1988 act added the proviso that such worship should be "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character", which does not reflect the diversity of beliefs in contemporary society.
In recent years governments have become more concerned about strengthening children's sense of national identity and feeling of 'Britishness' in the face of this multiplicity of worldviews. Butler's concern with spiritual development, then synonymous with Christianity, now should become more focused on a form of civic education such as has long been in the case in other countries like France.
https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion...
Paul wrote: "I had no idea that there was a" daily act of worship" in the UK."The law was first introduced in the 1944 Education Act, which in many ways was an excellent and progressive instrument - apart from (IMO, of course) the requirement for the daily act of worship. By now, non-compliance is widespread, but in Wales (especially) we have some teachers and heads who take it very seriously. I got into trouble a few times for 'non-appearance', as I preferred to spend my time preparing lessons, checking that equipment was available and working, etc. No serious consequences occurred, though! The law has been updated a few times - from Wikipedia:
Section 70 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 stipulates that pupils of community, foundation or voluntary schools in England and Wales must take part in a daily act of Collective Worship,[1] unless they have been explicitly withdrawn by their parents.[2] The same requirement is applied to academy schools via their funding agreements,[3] so it is true to say that all maintained schools in England and Wales are subject to the same rules. However, in practice there is widespread non-compliance with the legislation...
AB76 wrote: "However religious attendance in 1851, supposedly the years of religion as a pillar of society was pretty low, the 1851 census suggesting a maximum of 25% of society attending a regular service in England, a bit higher in Wales (30-35%) and Scotland at 20-25%"However"...? I think we need to ask whether the working classes had the time and energy to attend church or chapel... it may be that, for the most part, only the wealthy and middle classes could attend. Travel was difficult, too - my grandmother had to walk 6 miles to school, and back...
Someone may have proved through research that the figures truly reflect the proportion of the population who were 'believers', but I'm not sure the data is there. It would be interesting to know.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "However religious attendance in 1851, supposedly the years of religion as a pillar of society was pretty low, the 1851 census suggesting a maximum of 25% of society attending a regular..."the compiler of the 1851 religious census was aware of the urban crisis with faith, in some british cities attendance was as low as 13% and he pointed towards work and the industrial age as factors. the worst cities in england for attendance were the big industrial towns, where poverty and lack of education were endemic. There is an annex to the census on education and the author calculates millions of working class children who are outside the reach of schools
this is the only in-depth religious study conducted in the UK and yes, it does come with huge statistical issues and can only be seen as a kind of "indicator of a snapshot in time". I managed to cobble together similar data based on adherence for the next 50 years and nothing much changed until post-ww2, it was then that attendance started to drop steadily from about 20% of the population after WW1
Thank you, AB76 - I think it must be difficult to draw any firm conclusions based on data collected in that period.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "However religious attendance in 1851, supposedly the years of religion as a pillar of society was pretty low, the 1851 census suggesting a maximum of 25% of society attending a regular..."another point about church stats is that "membership" was usually a far lower number than attendees (not with the 1851 census as that recorded numbers in church). Famously in the Dutch Republic in the golden age, calvinism was never a majority of the population but there were many staunch supporters of the calvinist church who gave money but did not attend services
From my observations, in smaller towns and rural areas where the non-conformists were high in numbers, attendance was slightly higher but the opposite for cities with high non-conformist populations, in these, attendance remained low (max 20%)
scarletnoir wrote: "Thank you, AB76 - I think it must be difficult to draw any firm conclusions based on data collected in that period."yes, the only conclusion i can come to is that church attendance was never quite as uniform as legend has handed down to us. Of course if you total the three services AM, Afternoon and evening recorded in the 1851 census, the numbers are pretty good for attendance but you cant be sure some people didnt attend all three or two of these services
Its a far better census than the 1686 Compton Census, which was known to be rather patchy and of course back then, Catholics were unlikely to want to proclaim their faith. As a document of a time, 1686 is fascinating though and i have the large hardback copy of it
AB76 - you got me there - folk memory (or family tales) don't go back to 1686!
Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man(1964) In fewer than 160 pages, Christopher Isherwood takes us through the day of George, a middle-aged Brit and long-time resident in the US, professor of English at a state college in Southern California, gay, grieving for the loss of his partner Jim, who was killed some months earlier in a road accident. If person and place are very specifically identified, so too is the time, the moment in history when this day passes. Mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis places the action later than October 1962, but even in conversation with a fellow escapee from the UK, there is no mention of the Beatles or any of the other manifestations of an emerging ‘Swinging England’. Girls still back-comb their hair into ‘beehives’; George feels uneasy about dressing down in ‘an army surplus store khaki shirt, faded blue denims, moccasins, sweater’. Styles of the King’s Road and Carnaby Street are yet to be born.
The day begins and ends close to the body. At the start, barely awake, George is made aware of responses in ‘the vagus nerve’ and then ‘the cortex, that great disciplinarian’:
Obediently, the body levers itself out of the bed – wincing from twinges in the arthritic thumbs and the left knee, mildly nauseated by the pylorus in a state of spasm – and shambles naked into the bathroom.
As the hours pass, he moves through his life: teaching a class, driving through the hills and mourning the gradual disappearance of the wild landscape under the pressure of human development, followed by a hard-drinking session with his neighbour Charlotte/Charley, then more drinking in a beachside bar and an extended encounter with a male student who has sought out his company. Change, memory, loss and youth vs. age are constant themes. The student tells George that he and his classmates are fed up with the academic focus on the Past. And they don’t much care for the Present, either. So, says George, ‘you’re stuck with the Future; you can’t sneeze that off.’ With a shrug, the young man agrees, yet is puzzled when George points out that the Future inevitably means Death.
For the older man, loss necessarily includes the loss of youth as it’s recalled in wartime memories of The Starboard Side, an unsavoury drinking establishment:
You pushed aside the blackout curtain and elbowed your way through the jam-packed bar-crowd, scarcely able to breathe or see for smoke. Here, in the complete privacy of the din and the crowd, you and your pick-up yelled the preliminary sex-advances at each other. You could flirt but you couldn’t fight; there wasn’t even room to smack someone’s face. For that, you had to step outside. Oh, the bloody battles and the side-walk vomitings! The punches flying wide, the heads crashing backwards against the fenders of parked cars!
And so forth. It was here that he first met his lover Jim, but now the bar is merely depressing, and scheduled for redevelopment.
A Single Man, however, is not depressing, even with sadness and yearning always in the background and occasionally more up front, as they are in most lives after a certain point. Graceful writing, wit, irony, sharp observation, moments of kindness and nuanced self-deprecation carry the reader forward, and George remains agreeable company to the end.
Mod
In fewer than 160 pages, Christopher Isherwood takes us through the day of George, a middle-aged Brit and long-time resident in the US, professor of Eng..."
Excellent book - and a great review! I also liked the film with Colin Firth.
Justine wrote: "Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (1964) In fewer than 160 pages, Christopher Isherwood takes us through the day of George, a middle-aged Brit and long-time resident in the US, professor of Eng..."
this book is circulating a lot on here and i'm interested, will make a note of this. I read his berlin stories and his south american travel book but none of his anglosphere set novels
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 - you got me there - folk memory (or family tales) don't go back to 1686!"haha
What the 1851 census does show is a good picture of the protestant diversity in early victorian england with about 40% of all the people recorded belonging to non-conformist groups, with Methodism the second denomination in england, calvinism dominates in scotland. The main stronghold of Methodism is Cornwall, indeed its the only county where membership of the Anglican church was lower than of Methodism in England. (Wales is more non-conformist than England, the majority if its church membership was non-conformist)
Gpfr wrote: I'll be damned, I had no idea such a state-mandated construct still existed in the UK. No wonder they have such a problem with the concept of laicite. It sounds positively Mississippian. This is precisely the reason why I've long been an ACLU supporter in the USA, because like hell....
More or less the same system functions here in Italy where there are compulsory religion lessons which complement catechism. However, they can't legally make you attend it. My child, being in a large city, gets alternative lessons, generally civics and history. However, his cousins living in the countryside simply get dismissed from school for that afternoon.
i attended a secular school (private) in UK from 11-18 and was basically outside any religious education system, in a mildly Anglican family (minus my dad, a non-believer), however as an adult i remain moderately religious and respectful of the Anglican church, despite never having been confirmedi think where i remained relaxed about religion was the home environment where it was never forced on at all, outside school, despite my mother being a regular churchgoer.
I do support the french idea but not sure if seperation of church and state would work in the UK and it would have strong opposition. Of course the welsh anglican churches was disestablished in 1914
Mod
Please take a look at the Suggestions folder for a recent conversation between Georg and me. I encourage everyone to offer suggestions for improving our home away from home.
Our beautiful Heroine (La Belle Hortense) by Jacques Roubaud.Pure escapism and a lot of fun. Dubbed a crime novel (don't let that mislead you!) you'll find a cast of parodic characters, no story as such, rather an author hopping from here to there to anywhere. It is meta-something (I am not intelligent enough to grasp, let alone explain the ins and outs of meta-somethings) in that the author, the narrator, or even the publisher adress the reader.
There is a prince from an imaginary country, Poldevia, who has gone missing. But we, the readers, can easily spot him in his disguise...
There is an aristocratic Poldevian tomcat, Alexandre Wladimirowich (a name never to be shortened) who has been entrusted, as a baby, to the leering grocer's wife( to clarify this: it is the grocer, who is leering, not his wife)...
There is a library acting like a malevolent being by thwarting the users (enemies!) at every step....
The whole thing is bonkers, silly, absurd. Roubaud makes it sparkle with his imagination, his seemingly endless ideas (did you ever think of shelling eggs to get an equilibrium of the mind? Not cooked eggs, mind, they must be raw)
Fun to read and, I have no doubt, fun to write.
@CCCubon: Margaret, I think you might be interested in Roubaud. He was a professor of mathematics and, later, a professor of formal poetry. In his mind, and he went back to ancient Greece (Pythagoras) up until medieval times, they were inseparable.
scarletnoir wrote: "Of more interest to some of you, though, may be this link to van Dongen's cats... (+ women in many cases!). Sometimes, browsing Wikipedia to research a subject brought up in TLS pays dividends...https://www.thegreatcat.org/the-cat-i...
Edit: checking the link, I noticed that one of his works is entitled 'The Reader' - in which a woman reads (Rabelais), while a cat... sleeps (apparently). Perfect!"
Very nice link, thanks scarlet! I particularly like the one where he refers to Foujita.
Like Paul, and despite living in the UK, I had no idea how 'bad' from my pov the non-separation of church and state was in schools. I'm quite shocked tbh. I wonder why @AB thinks the French idea of laïcité would have a strong opposition. On what grounds...? Surely not on those raised by people actually practicing religion, the numbers seem spectacularly low, like in most Western Europe. So what, a certain idea of what the country should hold on to?
For those interested, I have updated the Who's Who visual directory, in Photos https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group.... There are now 7 pages in total, sprawling page 2 and 3, Edit: with the new comers on the 7th and last page (apologies to Jon who arrived after I was done with the update). (I will leave the same comment on the TLS Who's Who thread.)
Justine wrote: "Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (1964) ."
I noticed the cover of this book on your GR review: Is there actually surfing in the novel? The bit I've read about the book and movie didn't tend in that direction.
I note that, in the year the film would have been eligible there was a rumor that members of the MPAA mean to nominate it for best picture, but in confusion about the title ended up nominating the Coen brother's A Serious Man instead.
Georg re Rouband📗I found a book emoji !
Thank you for the information. You’ll laugh but first I typed Rouband into the search space, couldn’t find Rouband an author at first but did discover and watch a YouTube clip on mixing wet sourdough by a Georges Rouband. You may remember that it is one of my little passions, I am always tweaking the recipe and this Rouband made it look so easy (it’s not)
Then I went back an put in the proper author’s name and read up on Jacques Rouband and his books. I don’t think the books are quite for me but I shall try to find some of his poetry.
Regarding his careers as mathematician and poet, they do seem to go together in my mind although I am sure nsz would disagree. When I read or write poetry it has to ‘sing’ in my head for it to satisfy. Sadly some of the very modern poems do not satisfy for their one or two word lines I find jarring but they work for others. Mathematics, in a similar way, is about rhythm and , for me, melodic singing too. Both math and poem have to feel right. I hope that makes some kind of sense
Thank you again for thinking of me,.
I have a new poet to explore and another method of mixing flour, water salt and sourdough starter flopping it around the bowl.
I
CCCubbon wrote: "Georg re Rouband📗I found a book emoji !
Thank you for the information. You’ll laugh but first I typed Rouband into the search space, couldn’t find Rouband an author at first but did discover and w..."
Thanks for making me smile! But you must turn that 'n' upside down (or downside up) ;-)
GeorgCurses I didn’t see but I did look the name up correctly. I only found one of his poems, called Amsterdam Street which I rather liked for it is really about never ending real numbers from zero to infinity, up and down the street, up and down the number line, although infinity itself isn’t a real number of course. Reminds me of all those proofs that such and such is true for n+1........
I try to spot my mistakes but missed that one and use the edit - I go around in a foggy haze waiting for another injection.
SydneyH wrote: "I'm fascinated by Goodreads average scores. What is the highest average score you've seen for a novel? In my books, The Grapes of Wrath has the highest, at 4.5." 📚
In my experience 4.5 is unusually high for a widely read book like The Grapes of Wrath. Often such books are class assignments and students take out their displeasure in the ratings.
It helps when it's a book with only a few ratings or a specialized appeal.
For instance, my most recent book currently has 4.62. I have a couple on my TBR shelves that have a 5.00 for similar reasons, such as Looking far West : the search for the American West in history, myth, and literature
Bill wrote: "Justine wrote: "Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (1964) ."I noticed the cover of this book on your GR review: Is there actually surfing in the novel? The bit I'v..."
No, there's no surfing, and nothing about it or anything like it. I just used the first reference I found on GR to the title, and my eyesight is such that I didn't see the ridiculous picture. In fact, I read a library copy of the 1964 first British edition.
Bill wrote: "Justine wrote: "Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (1964) ."I noticed the cover of this book on your GR review: Is there actually surfing in the novel..."
PS: I'm surprised you haven't read A Single Man. There are definite elements of the 'campus novel' in it.
Justine wrote: "No, there's no surfing, and nothing about it or anything like it ... I read a library copy of the 1964 first British edition"And I was mentally hearing surf guitar music while reading your review. 🎸
Is this the one you read?
That cover strikes me as pretty odd, too. It seems kinda SF-y.
Justine wrote: "PS: I'm surprised you haven't read A Single Man. There are definite elements of the 'campus novel' in it."Oh, I'm off campus novels now and into surfing novels.
Only kidding. I had no idea A Single Man was anything like a campus novel: I don't think I've seen it listed as such anywhere. But I've now added it to my list.
Bill wrote: "Justine wrote: "No, there's no surfing, and nothing about it or anything like it ... I read a library copy of the 1964 first British edition"And I was mentally hearing surf guitar music while rea..."
Yikes! That's weird, too. My copy is covered in plain hardback boards (dark grey) with a gilt-letter title on the spine The dust wrapper was discarded when the book was accessioned by the library. Of the available covers here, I think this is best:A Single Man (I can't work out how to add the image!)
Bill wrote: "Justine wrote: "No, there's no surfing, and nothing about it or anything like it ... I read a library copy of the 1964 first British edition"And I was mentally hearing surf guitar music while rea..."
My reply seems to have disappeared. Maybe I deleted by mistake. No - that one is too weird indeed! I don't know how you transfer the image to the comment box, but of the covers available here, this strikes me as the best: A Single Man.
My copy is a hardcover in dark plain boards, with the author and title only on the spine. The dust wrapper has been discarded.
MK wrote: "A clip from John Crace's piece in the Guardian today - Marcus Rashford becomes more of a legend by the day. Having already secured free school meals throughout the holidays until at least March n..."
I'm currently reading Berlin Game. I found it on the shelves and picked it up again, I don't know why, and was surprised when I realised that I've actually not read the trilogy before. I assumed I had because It's on my shelves and, because it's Len Deighton and I always assume that I've read everything he wrote, from Spy Story to the (excellent) French Cooking for Men, but of course, I haven't. I'm really enjoying Berlin Game.
I think Deighton could have written A Small Town in Germany, but le Carré couldn't have written Bomber
Bill wrote: "It helps when it's a book with only a few ratings or a specialized appeal."Yes, I find that short story collections have very high averages. The average is probably less interesting than the distribution, which gives you an idea of the voting in general. There is the obvious sampling issue that only people who use goodreads are doing the voting, but I still find it interesting.
Lljones wrote: "The New York Times has compiled The 10 Best Books Through Time -- 2004-2019, with 2020 due in a few weeks."I was really pleased to see some of my own picks in there. In particular, The Association of Small Bombs, which I haven't heard mentioned basically since it was published, but also Swamplandia!
Charles Ferdinand RAMUZ- What If the Sun Fails To Shine (1937)An interesting take on a mysterious apocalyptic event so far, with the sun stubbornly refusing to reach a mountain village, Ramuz carefully is silent on the physicalsituation, ie, this village doesn’t see much sun anyway for six months a year.
There seems to be an old rogue who deals in herbal remedies at the heart of the issue, somehow his “books” tell him that when war comes the sun will vanish…..
Mod
Thanks so much, scarlet. Missed this earlier today, but just spent a delightful hour browsing. I like the looks of this book mentioned as well:
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Yes, I was reminded of many of my own picks, looking through that (incl. Swamplandia!)
I thought of you earlier today (or maybe it was yesterday): I ordered Down Below from NYRB. (Fell for a "40% off four titles" ad.)
Lljones wrote: "I ordered Down Below from NYRB"Marvellous. I don't think it's as good as the Collected Stories or The Hearing Trumpet, but any exposure to genius is a good thing.
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The Unremembered Places: Exploring Scotland's Wild Histories (other topics)The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix (other topics)
Memoirs of a Porcupine (other topics)
Black Bazaar (other topics)
The Death of Comrade President (other topics)
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You could do worse than following MsC's and TMW's recommendations! As for Banks, she'll always be 'Beth' from the 40-year-old Virgin to me. I've seen her in a comedic turn in a few other films, but I thought she was really quite good in Love & Mercy, the biopic about Brian Wilson, the genius behind The Beach Boys.