What Are We Reading? 7 June 2021

[AB76]

Lljones wrote: "AB76 wrote: how long does it take LL?..."

Distance between Seattle and Portland is about 170 miles, depending on which end of either town you're headed for. Should be easy to make the trip in unde..."

oh dear, traffic congestion in the UK and USA is such a problem

[Robert]

Lljones wrote: "Hey everybody, apologies for the late notice: I'm going to leave this week's page open for a second week. I'm deep in the throes of packing up to return to Portland tomorrow and I've had a mad week..."

Mario is a born supervisor. Of course, cats always want to stay on top of things when their human is getting ready to move. Will their stuff move too? Have a safe journey.

[Cabbie]

Tam wrote: "Is Mach out there? As I think he might enjoy this, on Radio 4, A disquisition on 'unreliable narrators', by Stewart Lee, on radio 4, (archive on Radio 4, Saturday, 8PM, (12th June).
It has everyone..."

I listened to this the other day. It was very good. Big fan of Stewart Lee and his "meta" work.

[Robert]

AB76 wrote: "Lljones wrote: "AB76 wrote: "no problemo LL, hope the weather is not too hot for all that movement!
..."

No heatwave here - it has been raining and cool in Seattle and Portland for 3 days now. Tom..."

Portland dry? Er, no. Everything between the mountains and the shore gets soaked, Portland included.

[AB76]

Gpfr wrote: "Ll, as others have said, there's no need for apologies & I rather agree with CCC that the length of time the discussion stays open can be variable.


There are ..."

is there an english translation?

[AB76]

Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Lljones wrote: "AB76 wrote: "no problemo LL, hope the weather is not too hot for all that movement!
..."

No heatwave here - it has been raining and cool in Seattle and Portland for 3 ..."

i thought it was drier in summer? i thought i read somewhere that while its part of that wet NW region, it was drier than Seattle and the Temperate Rainforest region...i guess "drier than seattle" is relative
Like saying Edinburgh is drier than Glasgow...lol

[Gpfr]

AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "L'art de perdre - Alice Zeniter"
"is there an english translation?"

Yes - the body of my first answer to this disappeared, just showed the book cover. Maybe punishment for having been a little sarcastic. 😔
Even stranger, on looking more attentively, the book cover showing was something about numerical analysis. The heat must be getting to goodreads - or to me!
The Art of Losing Alice Zeniter

[SydneyH]

Lljones wrote: "Hey everybody, apologies for the late notice: I'm going to leave this week's page open for a second week."

@LL, I really appreciate your maintenance of the site.

[SydneyH]

I found this article about goodreads interesting: https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/a...
I thought it might be of interest to others here.

[CCCubbon]

SydneyH wrote: "I found this article about goodreads interesting: https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/a......"

I found it an interesting Sydney and was surprised to learn that Goodreads has 100 million members - no wonder it is a tad clunky! .
Here’s an excerpt
‘Goodreads is clearly not just a commercial phenomenon, and not just a platform for political activism. Readers also use it to share their experiences, their aesthetic, emotional and moral responses to books, with an implied community of other readers that is imagined as intimate and non-hierarchical’

I thought his point about 75% of readers presenting as female and this giving a perspective not usually heard very much ( women in the audience, men on the stage talking) was revealing. If this makes publishers take note it’s about time.

[Hushpuppy]

Russell wrote: "L’homme aux cercles bleus – Fred Vargas

I don’t know when I last read a detective story that was quite so funny and beautiful, along with the gore."

Yey, another convert! Glad you liked the first of the Vargas vtlogger/Russell.

[Hushpuppy]

AB76 wrote: "..."

Hi AB, just a general note, because I can see you worry sometimes (like me!) about people who go missing. More often than not, they're just busy and "lurk" instead of actively participate. But you can see that they have stopped by by looking at the Members list, and order it from last online (sorry @Reen!). So @Col has dropped by only a few days ago for instance. And you thought there was no activity on Sunday, which was mainly true on the main thread, but there was a nice chat going on the Special Topics - A place for a poem.

In other news, I don't have anything very positive to report from the Guardian I'm afraid. A lot of the return of TLS/RG in a similar guise was resting on Sian at the books desk being able to apply her vision to the online content of the books section. Some people may have seen that some changes are happening throughout the G and Observer at the moment. [Edited out] Unfortunately for us (perhaps a positive for her?), she's announced that she's moving onto another role within the Guardian. So we'll have to see if whoever replaces her has some similar ideas - and is even made aware of the distress these "pauses" have caused. I've written to the Head of Membership about that, but haven't received any answer yet. I think they're getting embarrassed about the multiple delays. And who knows, maybe it's now a different person who holds that Head of Membership position anyway. It's all in limbo... 😔

[giveusaclue]

CCCubbon wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "I found this article about goodreads interesting: https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/a......"

" presenting as female" now there is a phrase for the times if ever there was one!! 😀

[CCCubbon]

Yes, it conjured up all manner of pictures in my head, give!

[MK]

giveusaclue wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "I found this article about goodreads interesting: https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/a......"

Me, too. Made me think of an online police sting where some male officer poses as a 13-year-old female to catch someone with nefarious purposes.

I never post reviews on GR - mostly because I don't want to do anything to promote Amazon, plus doing that takes such time and effort.

[Georg]

Hushpuppy wrote: But you can see that they have stopped by by looking at the Members list, and order it from last online (sorry @Reen!). So @Col has dropped by only a few days ago for instance.

Thanks for that info. I never thought that anybody/everybody could track my every move in GRs. Makes my abstinence from other social media platforms for privacy reasons look rather naive.

[Sandya]

The Satapur Moonstone. Sujata Massey

The second in the Perveen Mistry series and one I enjoyed immensely. This mystery is set in the princely states of India, with Perveen being called in as the only female lawyer, and thus able to meet personally with two Maharanis living in purdah to discuss the education of the Maharaja, a young boy. The Princely States are not well known in the US, though 40% of India was always ruled by its own Kings and Princes. Viceroy Lord Curzon, with typical arrogance, insisted on calling them “chiefs”, but they were in fact consecrated, legitimate, kings and princes.

The author has done her research and at the end cites her sources, several of which I own (Maharanis by Lucy Moore), and a number of which she doesn’t cite but which are essential for understanding what is going on. Primary among these are “Lives of the Indian Princes” by Charles Allen and Sharada Dwivedi, which has an entire chapter on Life in the Zenana. If you are in PA, also check out from the Allen Library at Penn a short film called “Zenana”, made by a faculty member at Temple University, Jayasinhji Jhala, who happens to be a prince. It is about his mother’s life as a Maharani living in purdah in the zenana and is absolutely fascinating.

I don’t want to give away the plot but the book also describes the relationships between the Princely States and the Brits. The Brits put a Resident official in every princely state and arrogated to themselves the right to dictate who the princes should marry, amongst other things. Nothing could be done without the local British Resident’s agreement.

There is a family tree at the start, and the brides are from the real former princely states of Dewas Sr. and Bhor. Both states are featured in the Allen/Dwivedi book in the form of interviews with princesses. The Bhor interviews are particularly interesting because the princess in question, Padma Lokur of Bhor, saw what the traditional way of life did to her mother and opted out completely by marrying a commoner. Another wanted to go to medical school but had to marry a maharaja as a teenager and felt her life was wasted.

I found it hard to read about the internal conflicts in the zenana between the Dowager Maharani and the Junior Maharani, her DIL, because this stuff is what put me off having an arranged marriage. Many interesting characters, a more than usually sympathetic British Resident, and a great picture of the juxtaposition of ancient and modern in 1920s India, with several characters bridging both extremes. All the reasons why I do not like monarchies. But still-these were our legitimate rulers, and the Brits had no right to sweep them aside. Wonderful!

[AB76]

Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "..."

Hi AB, just a general note, because I can see you worry sometimes (like me!) about people who go missing. More often than not, they're just busy and "lurk" instead of actively pa..."

thanks hush, good to see they are about but behind the scenes

do we still not have an official reason WHY they dropped TLS, was it money based? i am not impressed that no reason was ever given, a somewhat Lenino-Stalinist erasure of something as if it never existed is disappointing

[Sandya]

Sandya wrote: "The Satapur Moonstone. Sujata Massey

The second in the Perveen Mistry series and one I enjoyed immensely. This mystery is set in the princely states of India, with Perveen being called in as the o..."

And if anyone wonders where the princes of India are today-well, a lot of them sit in the Indian Parliament and many are on FB and are friends of mine.....

[Bill]

giveusaclue wrote: "" presenting as female" now there is a phrase for the times if ever there was one!!"

You wouldn't say that the 19th century Georges, Eliot and Sand, presented as male in their choices of noms de plume?

[Hushpuppy]

AB76 wrote: "do we still not have an official reason WHY they dropped TLS, was it money based?"

It came about because [Edited out].

[MK]

One thing leads to so many others. Yesterday, I wrote that I am reading Serhii Plokhy's where I am now awaiting Kennedy's speech about the missiles in Cuba. I certainly remember the Berlin Airlift and the Wall, but I have been surprised how heavily Berlin and its status initially appeared to affect Kennedy when this crisis arose. So I went to Google only to get distracted by https://9to5google.com/2021/06/14/doo...

Had to get out a Kleenex. Now back to Checkpoint Charlie, et al.

[Sandya]

Bill wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "" presenting as female" now there is a phrase for the times if ever there was one!!"

You wouldn't say that the 19th century Georges, Eliot and Sand, presented as male in their ..."

Don't forget the Brontës.

[Hushpuppy]

Georg wrote: "I never thought that anybody/everybody could track my every move in GRs."

Yes, Goodreads is very much a social network in that aspect (and the whole friends/follow/etc.), unlike the Guardian.

Not only can you see when somebody last got onto GR (not necessarily to read Ersatz, but if one is concerned about the welfare of somebody missing, that's enough reassurance), but, while you're logged in, GR* also collects data from other things you might be doing on the side, and also use the data you've given here (e.g., what I type right now) to third parties. I used to be more conservative and log out/in every time, but I'm getting sloppy.


*That's of course true not only of GR, but also of google, gmail, Amazon, Yahoo, etc. (The worse culprit being Google and gmail.)

[CCCubbon]

I was looking through the list of poets in The Oxford book of twentieth century verse the other day and it struck me how the vast majority were male. When I summon the energy I will do a proper count but it is very noticeable, just as it is if one looks at an author list.
There it is, plain to see. Was it because women did not write, kept their writing to themselves if they did? Why, I wonder. If this had been a book of verse from an earlier century I should not have been surprised.

[MK]

Sandya wrote: "The Satapur Moonstone. Sujata Massey

The second in the Perveen Mistry series and one I enjoyed immensely. This mystery is set in the princely states of India, with Perveen being called in as the o..."

Here's an online event (sorry if the time does not work) for her new book which especially interests me as I have just finished - (of course this is later in time).

https://www.mysterylovers.com/event/s...

[AB76]

Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "do we still not have an official reason WHY they dropped TLS, was it money based?"

It came about because everyone at the G had to reapply for their jobs, and Sam being not officially ..."

thanks hush.,..thats great and that makes it clear about the situation

[AB76]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Georg wrote: "I never thought that anybody/everybody could track my every move in GRs."

Yes, Goodreads is very much a social network in that aspect (and the whole friends/follow/etc.), unlike the ..."

what other things does it gather that you are doing on the side, i guess seeing what i'm shopping for etc?

i will never link my Amazon and good read accounts, thats for sure

[AB76]

CCCubbon wrote: "I was looking through the list of poets in The Oxford book of twentieth century verse the other day and it struck me how the vast majority were male. When I summon the energy I will do a proper cou..."

i think a lot of it is about the time men get to indulge their passions, supported by a woman doing all the things that give them time to follow their passions.it would be good to explore the number of promising female poets whose career probably fizzled out in a mass of nappies and supporting their husband, how many unsung poetic talents lost...

if all the women of the last century got a rebate for their "unpaid labour", it would probably cripple the economy. I think its still shocking that female dominated jobs like caring and nursing are still paid so badly and again, the unpaid caring and nursing has such a toll on their lives
Although as the old folks day centre i volunteer shows , women do live longer than men still...something there about resilience and harder lives i think...

[AB76]

its not book related but i loved this, daughter helps her laid off dad get a job at Costco, i'm not into "good news stories from a grim time" mania but its just a lovely tale. a working dad who wanted to get back into work and it was the local Costco..

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...

[Paul]

Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "..."

Hi AB, just a general note, because I can see you worry sometimes (like me!) about people who go missing. More often than not, they're just busy and "lurk" instead of actively pa..."

Oh that's too bad. Except for the unavoidable clickbaitiness, I really thought Sian's direction of the online books section was fantastic. The Guardian has generally done a pretty job of reviewing books outside of the normal range of zeitgeisty crap and a lot of translated fiction. The clusterfuck of how things have been prolonged at the Guardian really make me wonder what theire actual objective is, economics is one issue but if it was only about money they would have already resolved the situation, pandemic or no pandemic.

[Bill]

Sandya wrote: "Don't forget the Brontës."

To tell the truth, I was never sure what Currer, Ellis, or Acton were presenting as.

[Georg]

AB76 wrote: i will never link my Amazon and good read accounts, thats for sure

Amazon owns GR. They will do that for you, I think.

[Georg]

Hushpuppy wrote: while you're logged in, GR* also collects data from other things you might be doing on the side

Does that mean they keep track of other websites I visit while I'm logged in? Ok, I can guess the answer....

Time to get more discipined I think :-(

[Hushpuppy]

Georg wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: while you're logged in, GR* also collects data from other things you might be doing on the side

Does that mean they keep track of other websites I visit while I'm logged in?"

Yes (to you and AB), I'm afraid it does. I used to be disciplined too... I am in particular with Yahoo mail (although as I've mentioned, it's nothing compared with the data harvesting by gmail) and log in and out each time I visit. I'll try to do the same again with GR. Another freaky thing is that if you use different computers/devices, it can link information across these too (true of anything that requires signing in: Amazon, gmail, yahoo mail, Goodreads, instagram, facebook, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, etc.).

[Hushpuppy]

Paul wrote: "The clusterfuck of how things have been prolonged at the Guardian really make me wonder what theire actual objective is"

Yeah, good question. I think they're in over their heads with that one. [Edited out] Sadly, I think that in this context, the restoration of our little literary refuge(s) is far from their mind.

[AB76]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Georg wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: while you're logged in, GR* also collects data from other things you might be doing on the side

Does that mean they keep track of other websites I visit while I'm lo..."

thats very interesting and probably explains why things i have discussed here seem to pop up on searches and suggestions, like they are auto-filling my first few words

how they do it accross devices and computers is intriguing. my phone is almost a totally different world to my computer as i rarely use(apart from whatsapp) and as yet nothing in common spans those devices. However i am not logged in to anything on my phone save google, on my pc i never sign in to google

[Sandya]

MK wrote: "Sandya wrote: "The Satapur Moonstone. Sujata Massey

The second in the Perveen Mistry series and one I enjoyed immensely. This mystery is set in the princely states of India, with Perveen being cal..."

Ooohhh!! Nice! Thank you! I will look out for it.

[Andy]

Just a quick review of what’s been filling my reading time in the last few days, and only one ‘review’..
That being Georges Simenon’s Striptease, translated by Robert Brain.
This is one of Simenon’s romans-durs that has been out of print for many years, and is just waiting for a publisher to give it life again. It certainly deserves it.
It’s the usual grim situation that Simenon describes, with vulnerable, dislikeable and unglamorous characters. As ever, he manages to fit a huge amount into the few pages, with memorable descriptions of the seedy side of Cannes at night and the squalid world of the nightclub, the Monico.
Specifically it concerns the lives of four ageing striptease ‘artistes’ struggling with problems of weight and cleanliness, when an attractive nineteen year old turns up at the nightclub door.
At times the descriptions put me in mind of the women portrayed in The Deuce with its exploration of life behind the prostitution and pornographers, and their day to day struggle to survive.

And, Happiness Is Easy by Edney Silvestre, a Brazilian novel about a young boy kidnapped by mistake,
Second Harvest by Jean Giono, a story of the French countryside,
Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti, Italian short horror stories of varied quality,
and, Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli, a philosophical work about the only man left alive on the planet.

I watched two very interesting and relatively new movies at the weekend, both romances, but very different to the usual, and that I can recommend..
Dinner In America about a young punk band member on the run from the law, falling for the most unlikely girl,
and, with a mouthful of a title, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, a Hungarian film about brain surgery... but with a really clever mystery element to it, and a wonderful soundtrack.

[CCCubbon]

AB76 wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "I was looking through the list of poets in The Oxford book of twentieth century verse the other day and it struck me how the vast majority were male. When I summon the energy I wil..."
Well, I set to and counted, checking up those only given initials. There are 207 poets recorded, 182 men, 24 women, 1 unknown, making it 11.6% female poets made it into the book.
Disgraceful!

[Francis]

Lljones wrote: It once took me over 9 hours to make the trip, 7 of those hours spent getting from Seattle to Tacoma, 25 miles south."
All being well, we may end up in Santa Clara next Summer for a Conference, and I was half thinking about a road trip between Seattle and San Francisco (not sure in which direction as yet).
7 hours between Tacoma and Seattle (although no doubt in this case an extreme situation), would give me some pause at least.
Just how crazy would that idea be (giving somewhere +/- 10 days for the road trip)?

[Tam]

CCCubbon wrote: "AB76 wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "I was looking through the list of poets in The Oxford book of twentieth century verse the other day and it struck me how the vast majority were male. When I summon the..."

I think it would be a more heartening tale if you instead counted women poets from the late 1970's onwards. My brief forays into attending 'The Poetry Society' events in the early 70's were all male to the best of my memory. The Liverpool poets were in ascendency then, again all male, but at least the class barriers were being broken somewhat. So if you do a tally from 1980 onwards I think you will find it more cheerful news.. perhaps?

[Reen]

Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "..."

Hi AB, just a general note, because I can see you worry sometimes (like me!) about people who go missing. More often than not, they're just busy and "lurk" instead of actively pa..."

Oh no need to say sorry to me; you are more alert to the analytics than I am, though I know they are there. I find the whole worrying about where people are thing a bit odd - given that people may exclude themselves from chat for all sorts of reasons and not wish to have an APB put out for them - but that's just me; perhaps others take comfort in it. I suppose I feel those who know each other well enough to care where another might be have the means to contact each other directly. Not that I don't appreciate or value the community aspect of this place, and LLJ's grace in hosting it, I do.

On a related note, I'd like to advocate for the term "browse" instead of "lurk", which seems rather furtive! Anyway, I have lurked my piece on this eve of Bloomsday and must return to work. Tooraloo

[AB76]

Andy wrote: "Just a quick review of what’s been filling my reading time in the last few days, and only one ‘review’..
That being Georges Simenon’s Striptease,[bookcover:Striptease|1..."

As usual Andy, i enjoyed your summaries from your literary roadtrips and i am now much keener to read the Morselli book than before. I read his other translated novel The Communist which was an excellent study of italian communism and tradition, via the thoughts of a conflicted old timer and that Simenon makes me wonder if there are any of his books left to translate!

Another italian dystopian novel is published by Vagabond called Fear In the World a 1930s novel

[AB76]

CCCubbon wrote: "AB76 wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "I was looking through the list of poets in The Oxford book of twentieth century verse the other day and it struck me how the vast majority were male. When I summon the..."

Extract from a study of the NYT bestseller list):

Books by women consistently made up about a quarter of the list in the 1950s. Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, female representation on the list fluctuated dramatically. The rate of books by women got as high as 38% in 1970, and as low as 14% in 1975. (Some of this was simple math: from 1963 to 1977, the New York Times capped the list to 10 books per week. This made the annual list of best sellers shorter and the gender ratio more sensitive to changes in the counts from year to year.)

This volatility didn’t result in permanent change: in both 1990 and 1950, 28% of the books on the list were written by women. In the 1990s, women finally made steady gains on the list over ten years. 2001 saw the highest ratio of all time: 50% women, 50% men, later dipping to 48% in 2016.

This is a piece of our answer, and it's good news. Among commercially successful authors in Shirley Jackson’s time, men outnumbered women 3 to 1. Now, that number is close to 1 to 1.

[Robert]

SydneyH wrote: "Lljones wrote: "Hey everybody, apologies for the late notice: I'm going to leave this week's page open for a second week."

@LL, I really appreciate your maintenance of the site."

Every volunteer organization needs someone with your commitment and thoughtfulness.

[Robert]

MK wrote: "One thing leads to so many others. Yesterday, I wrote that I am reading Serhii Plokhy's where I am now awaiting Kennedy's s..."

A minor note on the Cuban missile crisis. My father had volunteered to go back into the regular army (the crisis had been building up for months) and was in officer training in Georgia when tensions shot up.
My mother telephoned him and asked if she should take my sister and I to our grandparents in Oklahoma.
(Mother told me later that "The Russians would think of an awful lot of places to bomb before they thought of Tahlequah.")
It would have meant Mother driving through the Rocky Mountains in October with two children. Dad told her to stay put, which she did. Now, back to Jack and Bobbie, and the BIG decisions.

[giveusaclue]

Bill wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "" presenting as female" now there is a phrase for the times if ever there was one!!"

You wouldn't say that the 19th century Georges, Eliot and Sand, presented as male in their ..."

Haha, certainly not. If they had presented as themselves they may not have found it so easy to get published! Didn't Jane Austen become more famous post mortem too?

[AB76]

Robert wrote: "MK wrote: "One thing leads to so many others. Yesterday, I wrote that I am reading Serhii Plokhy's where I am now awaiting ..."

i await this books release in paperback, great story Robert!
i think that was a bigger decision in family matters than JFK and RFK lol!

[Lljones]

Francis wrote: "Lljones wrote: It once took me over 9 hours to make the trip, 7 of those hours spent getting from Seattle to Tacoma, 25 miles south."
All being well, we may end up in Santa Clara next Summer for a ..."

Ooh, I'd love to give you some travel ideas for this trip! Just landed back in Portland (event-free drive, for once!). I just peeked in here for a sec, will get back to you soon with some ideas!