What Are We Reading? 14 Dec 2020

[Bill]

Andy wrote: "Is there anything from outside of the US?
Isn’t that a bit embarrassing, to announce you’ve read nothing else?"

I didn't understand it as meaning he'd not read anything from outside the US (though that might be the case), but nothing he thought was very good (and newly published, which seems to a requirement for making the list). Personally, rather than lack of national variety I’d feel bad about the conformist nature of the list; most of the books on the it were pretty widely talked up in US literary journalism over the past year.

[AB76]

Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Bill wrote: "Barack Obama's favorite books of 2020:
[bookcover:Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents|51152447..."

72 books read as it stands in 2020 so far, from 30 different countries, it was 59 books in 2019 from 27 different countries

I think lockdown added a dozen or so books, should hit 76 by Dec 31st

[Andy]

Bill wrote: "Andy wrote: "Is there anything from outside of the US?
Isn’t that a bit embarrassing, to announce you’ve read nothing else?"

I didn't understand it as meaning he'd not read anything from outside t..."

We’re on the same page Bill.
98% of the Best Books of the Year lists have the same ones.
I’m seeking the ones that don’t.

[Andy]

AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Bill wrote: "Barack Obama's favorite books of 2020:
[bookcover:Caste: The Origins of Our Discont..."

That’s a pretty good proportion AB, more than I would have predicted having followed your comments and reviews.
Each year I want to read wider.
I’ve read more than ever this year.. but I’ll hold off with the numbers until the end of the month.

[Bill]

[Lljones]

Andy wrote: "Is there anything from outside of the US?..."


Obama listed some non-US authors on last year's list.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...

[Lljones]

The Morning News 2021 Tournament of Books Shortlist was announced today...

[Justine]

Andy (191) wrote: "Each year I want to read wider.."

That's a great plan, Andy. I fear that this year in lockdown I read far fewer books in translation. Think maybe I'll devote 2021 to seeing how many different countries I can cover.

[Justine]

Lljones (194) wrote: "The Morning News 2021 Tournament of Books Shortlist was announced today..."

Do you have any favourites?

[Bill]

PaleFires wrote: "I didn't realize that Eckhart Tolle still figures conspicuously in the public consciousness"

The list was from 2017, so I don't know how much he's a part of the current Zeitgeist. I first heard of Tolle when Oprah picked one of his books; I never bothered to look into him any further than that (after disgust with a previous Oprah pick of a "spiritual" book - The Secret). I see he and Oprah subsequently did some sort of podcast / TV series together.

[AB76]

Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Bill wrote: "Barack Obama's favorite books of 2020:
[bookcover:Caste: The Origins o..."

i'm always on the hunt for novels from different cultures, in last 3 years i am reading a lot more english language novels from USA, British Isles, Ireland Australia and Canada. My tdeveloping world reading has declined quite significantly, i havent read an Indian novel for about 5-6 years which suprised me when i checked

[AB76]

Am going to finish THE ICE SAINTS this morning, in the end it hasunderwhelmed but that doesnt mean its not worth a read. Curiously its "humour" seemed very hit and miss to me but i dont read novels for humour usually

Next up is Kiplings "Traffics and Discoveries",mixing poetry and short stories by the great writer... Its a well thumbed penguin classics version i picked up from my parents place, when babysitting a niece last year. Cant remember if it was my mothers copy or my grandfathers.....

[AB76]

Alwynne wrote: "Noticed people posting best of 2020 links. Here are two from Paris Review, contributors and then staff picks:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2......"

Machado De Assis is a very interesting author, like Lima Barretto, a black-brazilian writer from the late 19th and early 20th century.

I have read Don Casmurro by De Assis and it was a good read, i am less keen on this tale of an eccentric nobody but its worth a go

[AB76]

Have finished Solzhenitsyns 1975-76 speeches entitled "Warning To The West". A slim volume published by Vintage last year. The apocalyptic tone portending a great western collapse seems informed by the fall of Angola and the Portuguese "Carnation Revolution". What is jarring is how wrong he was, its a suprise to find this approach, he lived in the west as an objective critic, which i admire but seemed to read something far too simple into a culture that was working hard on "detente". It wasnt indifference, it was the west trying to find a way foward out of the Cold War sinking sands

Next up "The Vinland Saga's", only 90 pages, most of that contextual notes but am interested in the Icelandic Sagas ands this travel memoir about the landings in the North America will be interesting

[Bill]

Machenbach wrote: " I think of you as the kind of guy that would enter a bookshop and ask the sales assistant to pick out a book that no-one's bought a copy of since Kennedy got shot."

I think of myself as the kind of guy who would, when talking to a bookstore clerk, refer to November 22, 1963 as the day Aldous Huxley died.

[Hushpuppy]

Bill wrote (#208): "I think of myself as the kind of guy who would, when talking to a bookstore clerk, refer to November 22, 1963 as the day Aldous Huxley died."

😂. Yes, famously eclipsed, as was CS Lewis's one.

You two are on form.

[Hushpuppy]

Russell wrote (#186): "MB (166), glad (174) – When I thought about it I actually decided to buy it [A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths], as mrs vermontlogger is very interested in the general subject as well"

Excellent, so you and inter will be able to report further! I actually think this is a winner for my f-i-l's birthday in May, even if it's a paperback...

And thanks to @Francis as well, that's very helpful.

Mach wrote (#155): "Indeed, he postulates that for many non-fundamentalist or non-extremist Christians and Jews, the relationship between religious belief or practice and the content of the Bible can be envisaged as two sets in which the intersecting area is surprisingly small."

For those West Wing's fans (or those who will be one day): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CPjW...

[AB76]

When i started out as a serious reader around 21 years ago exactly, i was still a youthful iconoclast, looking for rebellious not "set" texts to exorcise GCSE and a level english literature crimes of boredom

I was leaping from enfant terrible to enfant terrible, worshipping Knut Hamsun and Strindbergs plays, slowly my reading widened and turned towards colonial emanicipation novels and then back into rebels and european non-english language novels

Now, in middle age, since 2018 with less of the luxuriant hair i used to have (sighs...), i am returning to some kind of orthodoxy. To gentler, kinder writers and to novels where things are less about strident views and more about subtle hints and dark frayed edges. I am also re-embracing the great english language canon of the late victorian-edwardian era "Conrad, MR James, Meade Falkner, Trollope and Kipling)

Kiplings religious ideas fascinate me as i look at "Traffics and Discoveries" on my table. This icon of the last Imperial hurrah was less of a conformist than many would think. Methodist parentage but a slighly vague Deism defined his world, he would be an interesting South Bank Show study in 2020 i think.....

20 years ago Kipling was no-no-no for me but then we all make mistakes in youth.......(sighs....)

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "Bill wrote: "I didn't understand it as meaning he'd not read anything from outside the US (though that might be the case), but nothing he thought was very good (and newly published, which seems to ..."

i agree with that Mach....Bill would be looking for something gathering cobwebs in the vault of a bookshop and so would i!!

I still avoid the big word of mouth classics doing the review rounds 9 times out of 10 but if it popped on TLS>..i would give it more thought. (an example is "Stoner", 6-7 years ago everyone from the eccentric fella who walks round my town in a wooly hat all year to Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson was hyping this novel, so i have stayed away, i will read it when its obscure again. the fella in the wooly hat was last seen trying to eat a raw turnip out of a skip, i asked him what he was reading now and he yelled "Gramsci" before wandering off)

[Francis]

Gladarvor wrote (#211): "For those West Wing's fans (or those who will be one day): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CPjW..."

I frequently use this clip as well!

[Justine]

Machenbach (213) wrote in reply to me re Barton Bible book): " you might possibly find it a bit basic, 'though you might enjoy it as a refresher."

I've read a bit round the subject, but unfortunately (or, in some ways, fortunately) my brain is now so sieve-like that much of it will probably seem new again.

Gladarvor (211) I'll try to finish it before May. A number of open-minded and scholarly biblical scholars are, as they say, 'from the Catholic tradition'.

[Justine]

AB76 (214) wrote: "When i started out as a serious reader around 21 years ago exactly, i was still a youthful iconoclast, looking for rebellious not "set" texts to exorcise GCSE and a level english literature crimes ..."

One of the nicest things about being a reader is observing how one's tastes and interests develop and meander. One never runs out of new paths to explore.

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote [215] : "... I still avoid the big word of mouth classics doing the review rounds"

I regularly admonish myself for being over-susceptible to the charms of new books and the persuasion o..."

i think there may be safety in these woke times in a 2020 reading list, if you are unsettled by realities and unpleasent pasts, a contempary woke list can be comforting and renewing. Not something i would ever do mind you

[AB76]

Justine wrote: "AB76 (214) wrote: "When i started out as a serious reader around 21 years ago exactly, i was still a youthful iconoclast, looking for rebellious not "set" texts to exorcise GCSE and a level english..."

Absolutely, its a fascinating journey, however if you look at the years 1999-2020 (my years of serious application to reading), the huge absence is fiction written in those years, i have just never been able to get into more than a few modern/contemporary novels. But then i read a lot of non-fiction about contempary issues...

[Andy]

AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Bill wrote: "Barack Obama's favorite books of 2020:
and certainly Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line.

[Bill]

Gladarvor wrote (211): "For those West Wing's fans (or those who will be one day):"

I thought at first that the clip was addressing the “Dr. Biden” brouhaha. President Bartlett failed to mention the requirement for women to be isolated during menstruation, which was one of my favorite pieces of Bible trivia to cite in high school (I think perhaps a number of my female classmates did not detect the irony underlying my citations of Leviticus 15:19).

[Bill]

Machenbach wrote (218): "What reason is there other than fashion? Perhaps a little zeitgeist tapping, but otherwise it seems quite irrational."

I think I’ve actually read more books published in the current year (6) than I have since the turn of the century

(in addition to 3 from 2019 on my list for this year).

I’m not sure what the reason for this is; the only “must reads” for me on the list were Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, maybe Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War. and probably A Children's Bible, as the reviews made me really want to read it. The others were read out of fairly mild curiosity aroused by one thing or another.

[Bill]

Why Are There Dead Birds on Victorian Christmas Cards?

[Tam]

Bill wrote: "
Why Are There Dead Birds on Victorian Christmas Cards?"

I think it is a warning card. The birds are getting drunk, and the cat is waiting in the wings for them to be incapacitated enough to fall prey to him/her. Classic wry warning not to over-do it at Christmas!.. perhaps?

[Justine]

Bill (226) wrote: "
Why Are There Dead Birds on Victorian Christmas Cards?"

It throws a new light on all those cosy Dickens- / Prince Albert- / "'T'was the night before Christmas'-inspired images we feel we have to reproduce,

[MK]

Against my better judgment I finished listening to Snow by John Banville. It was hard going. Just looking at a few reviews on Amazon, I see that readers either give it 4 or 5 stars or 1 or 2. I'm in the 1 star group. I find absolutely nothing redeeming about whatever kind of sex (you name it, it's likely there) one finds in the '50s in a Roman Catholic country like Ireland. Once again I'm writing off books set in Ireland.

[Storm]

I’ve just finished Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami and I am not sure exactly what I think of it. Anyone else ever feel like that?
I didn’t dislike it. I am more a bit discombobulated. The book has been a sensation in Japan and I was intrigued. Kawakami has much to say about the situation of women in Japan and the book is in two parts, the first I found less interesting than the second. The main character Natsuko’s sister comes to visit with her daughter and is obsessed by getting breast implants which she thinks will make her life complete. The second part looks at Natsuko’s growing desire to have a child by artificial insemination and bring it up herself. I think it is the frank discussion of the lives women lead, particularly working class women, and their concerns and criticisms of men that has really exploded this book on the male dominated literary world in Japan.
When I read Japanese fiction, I feel a certain disconnect, à feeling that I am missing something, that I haven’t quite understood. I am sure there are subtleties in the language that cannot be easily conveyed in translation. But it is the responses and actions of characters that can create this disconnect and I do not know if this is due to cultural differences or if Japanese readers would also find Natsuko a bit odd.
I read a few professional reviews and found it interesting that they all emphasised different aspects of the book, making me wonder if my confusion is shared by others.

[Anastasia]

Machenbach wrote: "I'm not especially bothered or surprised if people mainly want to read books written by authors of their own country "

Funnily enough this rarely applies to Ukrainians. The book by a Ukrainian author needs to be really good for someone not too overly patriotic to check it out. There have been some changes in the past few years, but generally there has been a huge prejudice against the authors of the same nationality as they're "up to no good, low quality copycats of some other Russian or European author", which sadly had been the case quite often.
Hello :)

[Hushpuppy]

Alwynne wrote (#231): "Gladavor (209) haven't watched the clip but assume it's about the right-wing radio host who stayed seated. Love that scene for various complicated reasons had to stay with a group of extremely hard-core evangelicals at one point and wish I'd said something as eloquent as that in response to some of the things they pestered me with."

You would be right! Yes, it is that fist-pumpingly good scene, which comes at the most unexpected moment (something not captured in that short clip). Very reminiscent in its essence of another, beautifully subdued scene between Toby and his rabbi, in that heart-breaking episode about a death row execution, something esp. topical at the moment, tragically.

@Francis Great minds, etc.!

@Swelter Sadly, many societies still have an issue with menstruation to this day. I just learnt that it's a no-no for instance when one is doing the scenting of the tea with lotus flowers.

---

@Tam Forgot to say before: for a cat, it's "Miaou" in French.

[AB76]

Found a book that GoodReads doesnt actually have on its database:

The Congo in Flemish Literature by Luc Renders (Leuven University Press)

Its a strange short volume of literature extracts, from Flemish writers in the old Belgian Congo. I would have preferred a collection of full short stories but as the belgian congo novels are mostly untranslated, this will do

i read the first three extracts last night, the jaw dropped, i expected violence and cynicism towards the Congolese from the Belgians but instead it was like alt-reality prose. Chat about the civilising mission of the great King Leopold, a love for our african brothers, the dishonesty was absurd.

I expected a tone of cynical contempt but to try and pass the brutal reign of Leopold in the Congo as a fraternal mission really takes the biscuit. Imperial British and French narratives are similar i guess but even they recognised how bad the Belgian Congo was!

[Storm]

Reply to Pale Fire re Japanese Literature

So it isn’t just me then! There is so much to admire about Japan and the culture. I love the early literature, have read most of Genji, and loved Lady Murasaki, went on to the haiku poetry of Basho and others, have read much about Zen, loved the huge tomes of Eiji Yoshikawa, for example, Musashi and Taiko, devoured novels set in Japan, particularly historical ones, and moved on to Mishima and others. I have taught Japanese businessmen English, visited Japan, and studied Shiatsu for years. So I am favourably disposed towards much of the culture but it is this otherness, this arrogant nationalism that is both its strength and its weakness.
So when it comes to the literature I am still confused because, Beasts and Eggs is an example, the characters womble about feeling unhappy but never seem to make concerted efforts to turn their situations round so they act in ways that I personally find distinctly odd, or at least miles away from my own reactions and expectations. And this I think is important, this idea of expectations. Japanese, Korean literature are sufficiently different to jolt us out of the familiar and I appreciate that. So ultimately I would say Breasts and Eggs is a book which, despite flaws, will stay with me. I have several other Japanese and Korean books lined up so will report back on any further discombobulation.

[Hushpuppy]

Alwynne wrote (#243): "Your comments on Japanese culture could just as easily, and currently, more aptly be applied to the British."

Ah! I was just about to write that [of Breasts and Eggs] "the characters womble about feeling unhappy but never seem to make concerted efforts to turn their situations round so they act in ways that I personally find distinctly odd" embodies exactly how I feel about England at the moment, passively accepting Brexit and its shambolic consequences and Johnson's governance and its deathly consequences. No doubt I am also guilty of sliding towards stereotypes!

As for spicy noodles, I envy you. I have to refrain at the moment for health reasons from anything spicy, so out my favourite things, Sriracha, Gochujang, wasabi and of course, Dijon mustard. Oh how I do love an Asian bowl of noodle soup for breakfast.

[Tam]

Gladarvor wrote: "Alwynne wrote (#243): "Your comments on Japanese culture could just as easily, and currently, more aptly be applied to the British."

Ah! I was just about to write that [of Breasts and Eggs] "the c..."

I don't understand the 'passive' bit being applied to all us 'Brits' Glad!... I voted 'Remain', and have no idea what I could usefully do to change a thing, at least that is legal!?... What do you suggest I can do, to get around being stereotyped?....?

[AB76]

Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (238) wrote: "Found a book that GoodReads doesnt actually have on its database:

The Congo in Flemish Literature by Luc Renders (Leuven University Press)

Its a strange short volume of literat..."

hi, ok, thanks i tried with the ISBN number but nothing came up...might attempt the technical version..lol

[AB76]

Alwynne wrote: "Storm (241) wrote: "Reply to Pale Fire re Japanese Literature

So it isn’t just me then! There is so much to admire about Japan and the culture. I love the early literature, have read most of Genji..."

i'm a huge fan of japanese literature and i love the fact it seems to float in its own realm, korean literature is very different though but just as interesting

my favourite aspect of japanese literature is its free-form nature, plot is less important than a general message and for fans of quietitude, the japanese classics from Soseki and Tanizaki are a great place to start. Mishima and Kawabata were slightly more modern but there also a good few other writers from that time like Ogai, Akutagawa, Dazai and Kafu to explore

Taiwan also has a few great pieces of literature from the colonial era when it was Japanese Formosa "Orphan of Asia" and short stories by Lao Ho

The best way to find classic Korean lit is to look at the "Library of Korean Literature" series by Dalkey Press. there is a good span of titles.

[Storm]

Japanese discussion 1

I am not bracketing Japanese and Korean literature as the same generic output and am well aware of the contempt the Japanese have for Koreans (and most other nationalities) but I suppose I was trying to be both specific and culturally appropriate. Oriental is a word which is both old-fashioned and patronising in this context, and Far East etc suggests that the centre is here in the West which is a very Eurocentric approach.
If anyone watches BookTube, can I recommend the Poptimist, à Korean-Canadian who often talks in a most engaging and interesting way about (mainly modern) Korean literature (as well of course about general fiction). He expounded on a book that has, like Breasts and Eggs in Japan, caused a sensation in Korea. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo. Kim Jiyoung is the typical Korean woman, a girl when the in-laws wanted a boy, passed over by her parents in favour of the son, an excellent employee passed over again for promotion because she is a woman, a wife who is struggling with domesticity and who finally cracks. This has really struck a chord in Korea in the way Breasts and Eggs has in Japan. Women seem to have had enough and are being vocal and these appear to be seismic movements in these societies.

[Storm]

Re British nationalism
While there are numpties in every corner of the UK, can we perhaps put the blame where it lies, mainly with English nationalism. And to be fair, English nationalists of particular stripes. Not all English people are taken in by the jingoistic nonsense. The trouble with the English is that their nationalism is based on the wrong things. There is much for the English to be proud of, but instead, it is focused on memories of war and imperialism, and a colonialism that is fondly imagined to have been thoroughly welcomed by those colonised, while much of what made Britain, such as stable democratic government, à sense of fair play, and an open society with a decent legal system and the like are currently being trashed and obliterated by those same English nationalists.

[Storm]

https://youtu.be/iyK70vHW5pY
An excellent review of the book Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by a Korean-Canadian reviewer.

[AB76]

Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (248) wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "Storm (241) wrote: "Reply to Pale Fire re Japanese Literature

So it isn’t just me then! There is so much to admire about Japan and the culture. I love the early ..."

yes..did it go elsewhere?

[AB76]

Kiplings first short story in "Traffics and Discoveries", entitled "The Captive" starts on the beach at Simonstown in the cape and becomes the narrative of a yank fighting with the Boers

Its not his best work due to the endless slangy nature of the yank narrator, which sounds totally un-american but there is as usual good details and a real skill with language helped by a spell as a journalist on Kiplings familiar style.

[Greenfairy]

Now reading Jane Boleyn by Julia Fox, I found this book reccomended by Hilary Mantell in the acknowldgements to The Mirror and the Light.
I have not read much of it yet but so far I can't say better than the review at the start of the book from Scotland on Sunday:
"Although Jane Boleyn is written with scrupulous regard to fact, it has the pace and colour of a historical novel.
The reviewer is correct , it fairly zips along and wears it's excellent scholarship very lightly.

[AB76]

Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (256) wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (248) wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "Storm (241) wrote: "Reply to Pale Fire re Japanese Literature

So it isn’t just me then! There is so much to admire about Japan..."

ah gosh...if i had known that i would have not sent it....LOL

gosh thats interesting, korean, my oldest niece is half-chinese (mother from KL) and she was trying to teach me pinyin last xmas, i found the notes this morning and sadly, her uncle was not up to the task!

Learning Korean would be well beyond me!

[Storm]

https://youtu.be/K9CqZ952y8c

A review of Grass, a graphic novel depicting the life of Lee Ok Sun, one of the many Korean « comfort women ». Something I definitely have an issue with.
I am not sure Alwynne what you are criticising me for? I believe that all countries and cultures have stains on their consciences. Britain and Japan are both guilty. I stated in my first post how I admire much about Japanese culture but there is also much I do not admire.
The above vidéo is a book review which also mentions some of the recent negotiations between Japan and South Korea on the topic of comfort women which was as he states widespread government sanctioned rape. The shocker is that Japan continues, despite paying money in reparation, to deny much of what happened, suggesting these sex slaves were willing participants; they forced the removal of a statue to these sex slaves in S. Korea and are trying to erase the history of this shameful period by aiming to get statues in other countries removed as well as witness records from world National database. There is in fact a hostel called The House of Sharing for these women, and Lee Ok Sun, despite being in her 80s continues to agitate for justice.
Not such a shocker, but equally sad, is that these women were not even consulted about these negotiations and the books I have referenced today are expressions of revolt against misogyny.

[Justine]

In Elmer Gantry, published in 1927, Sinclair Lewis has created a double satire: one on religion in the United States from the beginning of the 20th century to his own time, the other on the personality and development of a false leader. While aspects of the first of these may be outdated, the second could not be more relevant for our own times.

The Roaring Twenties provide the perfect backdrop – Prohibition and speakeasies, short skirts and revivalist preachers, those making money hand over fist versus others stuck in the grim streets of industrial cities or agricultural poverty. Despite the Constitutional separation of Church and State, Protestantism and its ideologies dominate the country. Lewis takes in just about the whole spectrum, from the outliers (Catholicism, Judaism, Christian Science, ‘New Thought’ and so forth) to the main denominations: Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Unitarians. Their rivalries, doctrinal similarities and differences, appeals to different social groups and mentalities are dissected, noting that in the end the one intolerable position is open, honest doubt and questioning.

From his early days as a Baptist student at Mizpah Theological Seminary, Elmer Gantry is revealed to be of weak character: given to drunkenness, bullying, sentimentality (he loves his mother!), dishonesty, disloyalty. Lazy and crudely spoken, he is easily swayed by others such as his sceptical friend Jim, but is just as happy to turn against them when it gets him out of trouble or advances his career. He seduces a young woman, then makes sure she is forced to marry someone else. His moods and even his beliefs rise and fall on waves of emotion, but what he loves most is

holding an audience, playing on them. To move people – Golly!

The one woman he manages to love, just about, the evangelist who calls herself Sharon Falconer, is also his equal in hypocrisy and inspiring a gullible crowd. She convinces him to give up drinking and smoking (vices which he replaces with a devotion to ambition, although ‘he could never keep from an interest in waitresses’). There is nearly a break when she catches him in another woman’s bedroom, but ultimately she reestablishes their bond by calling on one of their shared talents:

“Oh lie, lie, go on lying! Tell me a good strong lie that I’ll believe!”

Later, when Sharon is no longer in his life, Elmer learns to clear the path to status and power by shifting alliances, toadying to well-placed supporters and enablers, ruling by dividing, working up audiences and the press to states of excitement and fervour, escaping from the threat of scandal by the skin of his teeth – and always with a sense of being hard-done-by:

Nobody appreciated the troubles of a man destined to be the ruler of America …

Elmer Gantry is a novel well worth taking a closer look at, far more prescient, I believe, than Lewis’s more explicit anti-fascist warning of the 1930s, It Can't Happen Here. On finishing, the reader is left chilled by the echo of Gantry’s voice booming his final sentence:

"We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!"

[[deleted user]]

“The First Four Georges” – JH Plumb (1956)

A quick and enjoyable re-read. Is there any modern historian with a punchier prose style? I don’t think so.

George I. Hated his wife, Sophia. She and her lover planned to elope. The lover disappears when George is conveniently away in Berlin. The body is never found. She is divorced and then shut up in a castle for 32 years until her death. She does not see her husband or children again. Sinister.

George II. Loved his wife, Caroline of Anspach. She, intellectual and plumply alluring, implores him on her death-bed to marry again. He, sobbing: “No, no, I couldn’t possibly… I’ll take mistresses.”

George III. Indifferent to his wife, Charlotte. Even so, applies himself dutifully. His count of 15 legitimate children is a record for a British monarch. In politics “a national disaster” but in the end the first of the Hanoverians to achieve popularity.

George IV. Felt ill on first meeting his official wife, Caroline of Brunswick, who never washed. Called for brandy. At the wedding, looked like a corpse. That night was their first and last. A good mimic. An early Janeite. Witty, extravagant, flamboyant, deplorable. Then, a decaying hulk.

The main business is to chart the decline of the king’s influence in affairs of state. There’s space for portraits of Walpole, Chatham, North, Fox and Pitt. Also the Regent’s appalling brothers.

Space too for a good sketch of the age outside the royal-ministerial circle, from smallpox and gin to factories and railways. A society marked by both its refinement in style and its brutish tolerance of cruelty.

It all ends with a riotous account of relations between the stinker from Brunswick and her pitiful spouse. The debacle makes today’s royals look painfully dull.

Even for someone with a decent knowledge of the period, this was compulsive reading.