Ersatz TLS discussion
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Weekly TLS
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What Are We Reading? 18 January 2021
I can't seem to get a link that works. If interested, google:booksfordad (one word; otherwise it's all ads from Amazon etc.)
Watching an interesting documentary on Sky called "The BookSellers" in small 15 min chunks. Its about the antiquarian book market in NYC and is a fascinating study of books as objects.i remember spending a long time in the V@A library a few years back just reading the spines of these huge old volumes and wishing i could read them. Importantly however, i wouldnt want to just collect them, i would want to read them and own them, maybe thats the same thing, collectors and readers?
Justine wrote: "Here's a great-sounding project for supplying recovering Covid patients with audio-enhanced kindles: https: //booksfordad.co.uk/Started by three brothers whose 74-year-old father has just been re..."
a great story to read, 309 days and he made it back home!
And, speaking of Covid, my neighbour in the flat just under me has it, but I got my first vaccine jab today.
Justine wrote: "And, speaking of Covid, my neighbour in the flat just under me has it, but I got my first vaccine jab today."Aye Yai Yai, stay inside, you won't have any kind of protective immunity for 7-10 days, and it won't be really set and established until you get the boost (and who knows for how long?). I got mine a week ago, only a sore arm for about 24 hours.
Justine wrote: "And, speaking of Covid, my neighbour in the flat just under me has it, but I got my first vaccine jab today."my dad was vaccinated today, he is 75, said the local hospital was well organised. he walked from one large room with 4 chairs spaced out, into an even larger room with 10 tables spaced out.
on my street we have had 4 cases (1 in March 2020) and 3 in the last month. none fatal but all very unpleasent nonethless involving splitting headaches, shivers and fatigue
giveusaclue wrote: "MK wrote: "Max (Outrage) wrote: "@Georg (46)...why is there no public discussion about ethics?
Too many people think ethics is a county in the South East."
This forum so needs a 'Smiley' option..."
Max (Outrage) wrote: "@scarletnoir [59]
I don't know how to embed links with a simple 'here'!
Just above the 'reply' entry box on the right appears the legend:
(some HTML is ok)
If you click on that it gives a hand..."
giveusaclue wrote: "MK wrote: "Max (Outrage) wrote: "@Georg (46)
...why is there no public discussion about ethics?
Too many people think ethics is a county in the South East."
This forum so needs a 'Smiley' option..."
Help - right click where?
Paul wrote: "Justine wrote: "And, speaking of Covid, my neighbour in the flat just under me has it, but I got my first vaccine jab today."Aye Yai Yai, stay inside, you won't have any kind of protective immu..."
Worry not, Paul! I am Ms Super-Overcautious if anything. I wear mask and gloves in all the shared areas of the house, such as the stairwell. I've followed the development of the virus and vaccines closely, and also spoke with the doctor who gave me the shot. He reminded me that if one is older (as I am) and immunocompromised (as I also am) the protection is weaker as well. I'm not changing my hermit-like lifestyle for a very long time.
MK wrote: "This forum so needs a 'Smiley' option...""Everywhere has a smiley option on windows 😊
Windows key + full stop
(OK smart-arse, lets see if it works!)
Edit: Yes, it did. I am now officially wunnerful ✌🏼😁
AB76 wrote: "I liked Waughs WW2 triology, well the first two novels, especially "Officers and Gentlemen""I second that.
Harry wrote: "MK wrote: "This forum so needs a 'Smiley' option...""Everywhere has a smiley option on windows 😊
Windows key + full stop
(OK smart-arse, lets see if it works!)
Edit: Yes, it did. I am now officially wunnerful."
Or, as I posted earlier, right click, tap emoji and take your pick. 🖐
In the New Yorker blog, Alex Ross surveys the ruins of the Beethoven 250th anniversary year, devastated by COVID, Keep Beethoven Weird
The authors who published Beethoven books in 2020—I count at least ten—faced the task of countering received images of the composer, who is habitually conjured as a mighty, muscular figure, a hero of musical progress. Mark Evan Bonds isolates the principal issue on the first pages of “Beethoven: Variations on a Life,” a brief, bracing study that combines biography and analysis. “The first thing to get past is The Scowl,” Bonds writes. “It is hard to avoid, for it confronts us everywhere, from album covers and dust jackets to monumental statues and those little white busts that adorn upright pianos.” That fearsome visage conforms to the pell-mell drive of several of the most-often-heard Beethoven works—the “Eroica” Symphony, the Fifth Symphony, the “Appassionata” Sonata—but it belies the composer’s more playful, unpredictable, creatively subversive side, which came more to the fore as he grew older.
Harry wrote: "They're so lucky to have us 🤷🏼♂️😄"¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bill wrote: "the composer’s more playful, unpredictable, creatively subversive sideI don't know much about music (history), but the 6th (Pastoral) Symphony - my favourite - is definitely 'playful' with its birdsong and storm... uplifting stuff - just what is needed at the moment.
Bill wrote: "In the New Yorker blog, Alex Ross surveys the ruins of the Beethoven 250th anniversary year, devastated by COVID, Keep Beethoven Weird The authors who published Beethoven books in 2020—I count at ..."
My first contact with the Beethoven story was in a children's book, a collection of 'great composers' lives'. The Beethoven one made me cry. Way back in January 2020, friends and I planned to attend a series of commemorative recitals of all the piano sonatas here in London. I made it to two.
I never cease to wonder at Beethoven's evolution as a composer, his endless creativity and discovery of new possibilities in music.
Two quotes from Marina Tsvaeteva in "Earthly Signs" caught my attention. The collection of diaries and notes published by NYRB Classics, covers the years from 1917-22. Fragmentary snippets and descriptions of the many jobs she had to do mixed with observations and some humourOn the Russian Revolution:
"the main thing to understand from the first second of the revolution: All is lost! Then everything is easy...."
On altruism after a solid middle class life till 1917:
"Before, when everyone had everything, i still managed to give, now, when i have nothing, i still managed to give"
Paul wrote: "Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, ever so slightly fails to live up to the pants-dropping oddity its title would suggest it to be.I expected a surrealist acid-trip ..."
Paul wrote: "Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, ever so slightly fails to live up to the pants-dropping oddity its title would suggest it to be.
I expected a surrealist acid-trip ..."
I think I did get the surrealist acid trip you mention when I read it not all that many years ago - not that I've ever been a surrealist or done an actual acid trip: tried and failed on both counts, I suppose one could say - but that does sound like a pretty fair description of my memory of reading Carter's etc, Hoffmann.
Having typed that last bit out of laziness, do you think it was Carter's Hoffmann, as in inspired in any way by ETA Hoffmann?
scarletnoir wrote: "I doubt that I'd enjoy Waugh, nowadays."I did pause before beginning to read The Loved One but not because of Waugh's racism, of which I wasn't aware. My main concern was rather that he was a privileged writer, generally the only class of English writer before the latter half of the 20th century. That's not to diminish his skill - his reputation as a writer puts him on many reading lists, but I like to read authors with a better understanding of the working/lower classes as they better reflect my own background. So far in The Loved One I've not noticed the racism and am enjoying it for its lampooning of Hollywood and the funeral business.
AB76 wrote: ""Officers and Gentlemen" which was made into a good tv series."I remember the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited in the early 80's. Everyone I knew watched it and loved it. All I can recall now is that one character had a teddy bear.
Berkley wrote: "Having typed that last bit out of laziness, do you think it was Carter's Hoffmann, as in inspired in any way by ETA Hoffmann?"Oh yeah that's a good point that hadn't occurred to me. The only ETA Hoffmann I've ever read is The Sandman, and that has definitely got to be a huge influence. It's been 25 years or so since I've read it, but I remember the automaton love interest and the madness of the protagonist and the evil doctor who tortures the innocents. Jeez, yeah that seems really obvious now in retrospect
Mod
Japan through Yoko Ogawa's La marche de Mina
and a book on Hokusai.London with Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
which I mentioned on A place for a poem. This led me to getting out Virginia Woolf's Street Haunting, an essay about walking the streets of London
Italy I often have fiction and non-fiction going at the same time, and my next non-fiction read is Italian Hours by Henry James in Stanfords Travel Classics series.
Holland and particularly Amsterdam: A Cold Death in Amsterdam by Anja de Jager
The heroine is a police officer working on cold cases and her current cases have worryingly personal implications. It's the first in a series, but I'm not far into it yet.
Speaking of crime novels, I found this in the notes to Square Haunting (one of the five writers featured in the book is Dorothy L. Sayers):
Detective fiction found several fans among the high modernists, including Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein ... Vladimir Nabokov enjoyed Murder Must Advertise, and recommended it to his friend Edmund Wilson, a genre sceptic: "Of course, Agatha is unreadable - but Sayers, whom you do not mention, writes well."
Cabbie wrote: So far in The Loved One I've not noticed the racism and am enjoying it for its lampooning of Hollywood and the funeral business.Good - as I wrote before, I enjoyed it very much when I read the book... perhaps Waugh's 'less attractive' opinions don't make an appearance in that one. Let us know, because if it's still OK from that point of view, others may well want to give it a go.
Cabbie wrote:I remember the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited in the early 80's. Everyone I knew watched it and lov..."I'd read the book - effete English types not being my cup of tea, I gave the TV series a miss!
Thoroughly enjoying friedrich durrenmatts "Suspicion" one of his short crime novels from the early 1950sDurrenmatt is a superb creator of plots and situations, good crime writing never ages and he manages to combine a calculating objective focus alongside the mundane realities of life. Brevity is key as the master unveils his tale....
Gpfr wrote: "When will we be able to travel again? Ah well, I'm travelling through my current reading:Japan through Yoko Ogawa's La marche de Mina
and a book on Hokusai...."
travel by book....the best way to travel!
scarletnoir wrote: "Cabbie wrote:I remember the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited in the early 80's. Everyone I knew watched it and lov..."I'd read the book - effete English types not being my cup o..."
i never watched it, it was something i found irrelevant as teenager and older but having read the novel and LOVED it in 2018, i am now interested in watching the series. the lives of the upper middle class, home counties world of pre-WW2 England is an area i want to read more and more about,
AB76 wrote (#187): "travel by book....the best way to travel!"Gawd no, as much as I like books, not for me, Clive! This monologue by Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting springs to mind (done to death, but in case there is still someone here who hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adg_r...).
Re TLS/RG, I've received an update from the Head of Membership editorial team. I think covid has unsurprisingly derailed things even more, but here is what he says:
I'm sorry this is taking much longer than anticipated. But I am truly hopeful that a revival of the book group could emerge from the newly constituted culture team. It won't be a rapid thing, and I sense the impatience of the group. But there is at least the aspiration at our end to make it happen when staffing issues have been fully resolved.
Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote (#187): "travel by book....the best way to travel!"Gawd no, as much as I like books, not for me, Clive! This monologue by Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting springs to mind (done to d..."
i should have added the caveat: DURING LOCKDOWN....(doh)
Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote (#187): "travel by book....the best way to travel!"Gawd no, as much as I like books, not for me, Clive! This monologue by Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting springs to mind (done to d..."
have they ever told us WHY they ditched TLS? i get the whole covid situation but what was the criteria to end a civil and interesting discussions of books against contuinuing the flame scarred cesspool of politics and sport comments pages!
anyone heard from leathercol? hope he is ok?i know he will be missing the gym during lockdown 3
AB76 wrote: "anyone heard from leathercol?"I thought of him when I read this line in Sartor Resartus
"Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History," says Teufelsdrockh, "is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather."
AB76 wrote (#192): "anyone heard from leathercol? hope he is ok?i know he will be missing the gym during lockdown 3"
Haven't heard form him, but he's dropped by I think about a week+ ago (shortly after NatashaF did, in case people are also worried about him).
As for The G, I can't go into details, but yes, Sian explained this clearly over the phone (and I think to others here too). It was a constellation of things that did it, covid being at the centre of it.
Hushpuppy wrote:Well, that is more of a response, and more positive, than I would have expected at this point. Is Sian still on the team? It's impressive to me that you can have an issue and take it up with the editorial staff by phone. I can't see that happening with the NY Times. If they need staff, I suppose I can be pried away from the loving embrace of academia. Will work for books
Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote (#192): "anyone heard from leathercol? hope he is ok?i know he will be missing the gym during lockdown 3"
Haven't heard form him, but he's dropped by I think about a week+ ago (shortl..."
thanks hush
Paul wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote:Well, that is more of a response, and more positive, than I would have expected at this point. Is Sian still on the team? It's impressive to me that you can have an issue and take..."
its still a remarkable paper, reading Rusbridger's account of his travails (Breaking News( is quite sobering as the digital world starts to suck the life out of print but here we are with the Guardian having one of the best websites in the world and second only to the populist, rabble rousing Daily Heil for online presence in the UK
Is anyone else missing the ability to give a post a thumbs up, like clicking the up-arrow on the original TLS?
Hushpuppy (189) wrote: "Re TLS/RG,"Thanks for the update, Glad!
Hushpuppy (189) wrote: "Re TLS/RG,"
If we return to the G. is it possible for A place for Poetry and the Photos to keep going?
CCCubbon wrote: "Hushpuppy (189) wrote: "Re TLS/RG,"
If we return to the G. is it possible for A place for Poetry and the Photos to keep going?"
That's for inter and LL to decide as this will require some work for them, but I can't see why not otherwise! That[Edit: a partially maintained Ersatz TLS]'d also be a good place to vent about intempestive moderation 😋.
@inter: you're welcome!
@AB: that's the first I'm being called by my new moniker rather than my usual one - I like the diminutive 'Hush' (being a big Buffy fan - people who like the TV show will know what I'm on about)
@Cabbie: yes, quite a few of us miss the uptick option, although it could sometimes be used (by me included) as a way to support certain points of view, often at the expense of others, de facto increasing 'division'...
@Paul: and you'd do a brilliant job at it too! Sadly, I think they're looking at downsizing, not recruiting more people... Yes, I did appreciate very much Sian taking the time to call me to explain the complexity of the situation. We also got to talk about quite a few other things, it was just a nice chat! Very much like that the Head of Membership contacted me too (the very next day from sending the letter). They're paying attention.
Cabbie wrote: "Is anyone else missing the ability to give a post a thumbs up, like clicking the up-arrow on the original TLS?"Yes 👍
Cabbie wrote (198): "Is anyone else missing the ability to give a post a thumbs up, like clicking the up-arrow on the original TLS?"I miss it terribly. I loved upticking posts and I loved having my posts upticked (mostly because I then knew people were reading them and appreciating the effort I'd put in).
I still feel anything I post here (and I know there's not been much recently, sorry) might be skimmed over in people's haste to get to the next bit in a 'politics' discussion or something, so I'm not as motivated to post here as I was on TLS.
AB76 wrote: "its still a remarkable paper"It could be, if it stopped trying to court the left and went back to being middle-of-the-road.
Creatures like Lexit Larry Elliot should just be taken out and shot.
Compare and contrast to Sam's treatment...
Also they need to sort the CiF moderators out. Too many of them are biased (normally too far left, and too ready to "put words in commenters mouths" so to speak.)
"Comment is free..." no it really isn't, and it's shocking what they get away with - downright censorship.
(rant over) 😉
f we return to the G. is it possible for A place for Poetry and the Photos to keep goingThat'd also a good place to vent about intempestive moderation
Sorry, glad, for me that would destroy it.
CCCubbon wrote: " f we return to the G. is it possible for A place for Poetry and the Photos to keep goingThat'd also a good place to vent about intempestive moderation
Sorry, glad, for me that would destroy it."
Not in the same place. In the Moderation section, where we have already done so!
Harry wrote: "Creatures like Lexit Larry Elliot should just be taken out and shot.I disagree with more or less everything Larry Elliot says.
But this is a disgusting comment. To put it politely.
Harry wrote: "AB76 wrote: "its still a remarkable paper"It could be, if it stopped trying to court the left and went back to being middle-of-the-road.
Creatures like Lexit Larry Elliot should just be taken out..."
i agree about the CiF moderators, they used to pop up on TLS, which was like a mild vicars tea party compared to the politics and sport CiF sections. We did have a few ramblers for a while but they werent offensive and amazingly the brilliant Carmen was censored a few times....or moderated
Georg wrote: "But this is a disgusting comment. To put it politely."
And this is hyperbole. To put it mildly.
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
Kipps (other topics)V2: A Novel of World War II (other topics)
The Last Wilderness, A Journey into Silence (other topics)
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (other topics)
Pastors and Masters (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Neil Ansell (other topics)Jonathan Franzen (other topics)
Started by three brothers whose 74-year-old father has just been released from hospital after more than 300 days.