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Weekly TLS
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What Are We Reading? 5 July 2021
Just caught up with Damien Boyd's latest book
I have to say the last three books have been really enjoyable.
On, I think , CCC' s recommendation I tried Helen Dunmore's Exposure but unfortunately just don't feel it the mood for it. Might try again in due course.
Bit of a busy time choosing, buying and getting a new laptop set up, which always winds me up. Stupidly I suppose. The old one was literally falling apart. Don't suppose it helped when I dropped it! That, getting the fridge freezer repaired and the visit to the optician....but at least all's well that ends well. But feel as if I need another holiday having just come back from one. Wimp or what?
Bill wrote: "I guess I read a fair amount of crime fiction, though very seldom in the form of detective novels (broadly defined to include the various varieties of amateur sleuths, PIs and police). Most of thos..."Have you read Hammett's Red Harvest? The Op from the Continental Detective Agency visits a mining town, with gangster tensions overlaid on the remains of a bitter labor war. Several strong characters, not least Dinah Brand, a western gal who's both tough and resourceful-- and fascinated with money.
MK wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Bill wrote: "In regard to mystery series:I am very fond of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and though they are in their way embroideries of Poe’s Dupin trio, I feel Conan Doyle p..."
I have two collections of Holmes stories in the house, one a collection of Holmes through the first two collections of stories, the other a collection of late stories, both readily browsed.
giveusaclue wrote: "Good news from the optician yesterday. had been told I had amd but he told me it was drusen which is not the same thing and, in my case no need to worry. Helpfully showed me photos to explain. Also..."Helpful news from a doctor? A welcome event.
Robert wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Good news from the optician yesterday. had been told I had amd but he told me it was drusen which is not the same thing and, in my case no need to worry. Helpfully showed me pho..."Absolutely!
Robert wrote: "Have you read Hammett's Red Harvest?"I've liked the three books by Hammett that I've read: Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, and The Glass Key - though each can be considered crime fiction, I appreciated the fact that they were nevertheless quite different from one another in their settings and plots.
Hammett's The Dain Curse is good, too.
scarletnoir wrote: "I was hoping to enjoy a few scathing reviews of Martin Amis, but either there aren't any of his novels 'Money' and 'London Fields', or I couldn't find them!."You are more likely to find hatchet jobs for The Pregnant Widow or Yellow Dog.
CCCubbon wrote: "Bill wrote: "Georg wrote: "You are a music buff. What about Schubert's Lieder?"As I suggested, musical settings can often serve me as a kind of non-verbal Explication de Texte for poetry – and if..."
Here I sit having mistakenly deleted the final track of
which i borrowed from the library. I will have to put in on hold once again and wait because I expect there are lots in line.The reason I am tacking this on CCCs post is the patterns mentioned. The Rose Code is centered around Bletchley Park during WW2. I would classify it a historical thriller, if there is such a thing. Dilly Knox appears in the book (such a lovely man - because he thought girls/women were much better breaking codes than that other sex) as the rather eccentric mathematician he was. Among other things music is mentioned as a device in discovering patterns.
If I were one to give stars, this book certainly receive at least four stars for seat-of-the-pants suspense.
While I wait for my number to come up at the library, I'll have to dig out my Bletchley souvenir book. Darn!
Robert wrote: "Hammett's The Dain Curse is good, too."oooh, can't agree with you there: one of his worst books, in my opinion. So obviously cobbled together from a bunch of sub-standard short stories.
The other Hammet novel to look for besides the ones Bill has already rad is The Thin Man, and then a good collection of the short stories.
MK wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Bill wrote: "Georg wrote: "You are a music buff. What about Schubert's Lieder?"As I suggested, musical settings can often serve me as a kind of non-verbal Explication de Texte fo..."
I have ordered TheRose Code to be downloaded thanks to you.
Music is not so important to me, I don’t listen over much but know that if it jars my senses that the pattern has a fault in it.
If one recites a well known poem out loud, say something from Auden’s best, then the music within is immediately apparent and I would contend that’s what makes it memorable. One knows instinctively if there are too many stresses, a jarring sound just as one knows that the poem is not singing, speaking to you, the pattern is wrong.
I think, maybe, that this is the problem with some modern poetry.
When I was little, a wartime child there were few toys but I did have a kaleidoscope - it’s those Changing patterns again, there’s a link with Art, too.
I have been messing about with a ghazal poem, with nosuchzone’s help and I posted it on photos - tell me if there is a jarring note.
Mod
Guido Guerrieri is walking "dans la ville battue par un vent froid". It's 11 pm. He is starting to feel sorry for himself, "I've always detested people who feel sorry for themselves. So I decided to go and buy a book".
There is a bookshop which opens from 10 pm till 6 am - the owner is incapable of sleeping at night.
It's always busy at Osteria del Caffelatte. Not very busy, but all the time. Some weird people, of course, but mostly normal people. Who are stranger than the others because they buy books at 4 o'clock in the morning.
The bookshop has three tables and a small bar.When you feel like it, you can have a drink and a piece of one of the cakes that Ottavio makes in the afternoon. In the morning, it is possible to have a breakfast consisting of the same cakes and a milky coffee.
After greeting Ottavio and browsing for a while, including reading a few pages of The Man Without Qualities, (as he's been doing for years "with Musil and especially with Joyce's Ulysses") , "I was starting to feel much better. Bookshops act on me like anxiolytics and antidepressants."
Wouldn't it be lovely to go there when like me this morning it's 4 o'clock and one can't sleep?
This is from Gianrico Carofiglio's Les Raisons du doute. My translation of the French translation by Nathalie Bauer.
Ragionevoli dubbi, Reasonable Doubts
Gpfr wrote: "I was woken up by loud voices outside at about 4 o'clock this morning. Not managing to go back to sleep, I put the light on and started reading.Guido Guerrieri is walking "dans la ville battue pa..."
which town/city are you in?
The Puritan by Liam O'Flaherty is superb so far
The master of 1920s and 30s Irish free state fiction mixes in all his usual themes. A deep distrust of the theocracy developing in the Free State, suspicion of the new men of government and politics, alongside the sly hypocrisy of public opinion
O'Flaherty has created a great character in fiction with Francis Ferriter, a willing foot soldier of the puritanical blinkered Catholic church that strangled the Free State for decades, leading to a strange moral nightmare for the new citizens. Many facets of which have been uncovered every decade since.
I read a very good sociological study of Ireland from the 1920s-1960s that i purchased at a famous Dublin bookstore, it was a brilliant read but i cant remember the title
Mod
"which town/city are you in?"
Paris
The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and the Northeast Passage by Erika Fatland, translated by Kari Dickson.
This is travel writing at its best, a blend of history, reportage and memoir. Though 550 pages, it can easily be enjoyed in small chunks, and maybe best like that, as some of the journey as an inevitable sameness.
Her earlier book, Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, was compelling, and also superb travel writing, but for me at least, visiting the 14 of Russia’s neighbours and 3 breakaway republics (as well as the North-east passage) is of (even) more interest.
What materialises is a hauntingly lyrical meditation to the eventualities of history, the utter arbitrariness of dividing lines and border posts, of namesakes long forgotten and again remembered, and of successful and unsuccessful wars; so much war, so many dead.
There are anecdotes aplenty, and her research is meticulous.
I’m excited by what project Fatland will embark on next. An anthropologist by trade, and speaking 8 languages fluently and at just 38 years old, the world may indeed be an oyster, but one with a large part of it quite familiar to her. She is prepared to ‘rough it’ but in a limited way, for a few days. This journey took three years and involved many thousands of euros of funding. Certain places, for example Dnipro in the Ukraine (Soviet Rocket City) and North Korea, were only accessible to her by expensive small-group organised tours. As much as I would like to read her delve into Siberia and Kamchatka, I’m not sure it’s her thing.
My stand-out book of 2021 so far concerns that area, Primorye, Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl.
Bill wrote: "I guess I read a fair amount of crime fiction, though very seldom in the form of detective novels (broadly defined to include the various varieties of amateur sleuths, PIs and police)......what are the limits of the “crime novel”? The vast majority of novels feature, at some point, the depiction of acts which are technically crimes."
Thanks for the clarification.
I've read quite a few by Highsmith, and enjoyed most of them... the later Ripley books were weak, though - I didn't think much of The Boy Who Followed Ripley - though my favourite adaptation of any Ripley book remains Wim Wenders' movie The American Friend, starring Dennis Hopper as Ripley and Bruno Ganz as his fall-guy (?), catspaw (?) or friend (?)... this is an adaptation of Ripley's Game. Hopper is physically quite unlike the Ripley of the books (Alain Delon is much closer), but '(Highsmith) initially disliked Hopper's Ripley in The American Friend, but changed her mind after seeing the film a second time, feeling that he had captured the essence of the character.' (Wikipedia) - I agree with that assessment.
The other books you mention are on my very large TBR list... I think!
Gpfr wrote: "I was woken up by loud voices outside at about 4 o'clock this morning. Not managing to go back to sleep, I put the light on and started reading.Guido Guerrieri is walking "dans la ville battue pa..."
Yes, loved that bookshop! And the owner, seeing how he dealt with the man who tries to steal a book.
@AB: the Guerreri series is set in Bari.
Georg wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I was woken up by loud voices outside at about 4 o'clock this morning. Not managing to go back to sleep, I put the light on and started reading.Guido Guerrieri is walking "dans la vi..."
thanks Georg....am reading another Bari set Carafiglio right now
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I was woken up by loud voices outside at about 4 o'clock this morning. Not managing to go back to sleep, I put the light on and started reading...""which town/city are yo..."
ah, the city of light and 4am voices
Bill wrote: That is to say, I can read a poem in about a minute or two, read it again in the same time, and then what? Stare off into space thinking about it? My mind doesn’t really work that way. .... I begin to lose my whole reason for reading – which is furnishing my mind with ideas, stories, and images for future recollection. Narratives with their “this happened, then that, and as a result, this other thing occurred” create a frame for retention of the book in my memory: perhaps a book’s most important quality for me;No narrative?
What is "Erlkönig" then, if not a condensed, dramatic narrative?
Schillers ballads, e.g. "Die Bürgschaft" or "Die Kraniche des Ibykus"? Fontanes "John Maynard"? Non-narratives? Not creating a frame of retention?
To be fair: I am not sure whether these have travelled across the pond. And I don't know enough about English/American poetry. Is there nothing that is narrative?
On the other hand: I think many poems are loved because they capture one moment in time, an atmosphere, because they paint a picture. They work their magic on a subconscious level. Whether you're educated or not, whether you're intelligent or not.
Think of Eichendorffs "Mondnacht' (set to music by Schumann in op. 39)...
It is, imo, one of the most beautiful German romantic poems ever written.
How many people memorize parts of prose? How many people memorize poems?
Georg wrote: "Bill wrote: That is to say, I can read a poem in about a minute or two, read it again in the same time, and then what? Stare off into space thinking about it? My mind doesn’t really work that way. ..."i'm of same opinion Bill, though with reference to what Georg posted, from non english-american poetry, the sagas are an interest of mine, though many have been prose-i-fied or were originally in prose
The high of my reading week the Fatland above, but the low Olga Grushin’s The Charmed Wife
. As opposed to a feminist take on a fairy tale, this is a type sequel, Cinderella not finding married life all that she might have hoped it would be. I found the slant Grushin puts on an interesting premise less than subtle, and laboured. I suppose chiefly, it’s written as a comedy, but the murine humour was not for me.
I have heard really good things about Grushin, who is Russian but writes in English, so will at some stage, try reading her again. Recommendations appreciated if anyone has enjoyed her writing.
Mod
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/wha...
Don't miss the first live streamed performance of Romeo & Juliet.
Join us online later today to watch a live streamed performance of our fearless new production of Romeo & Juliet direct from the Globe Theatre to wherever you are in the world.
Tickets start at £10 per household and are available to buy up until 6.00pm BST today, with the stream starting at 7.00pm BST.
13,5% into
Determined to get to the end of the second story. About ten pages left, will take me two days at least.
I will be most relieved to abandon it there and then
CCCubbon wrote: "MK wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Bill wrote: "Georg wrote: "You are a music buff. What about Schubert's Lieder?"As I suggested, musical settings can often serve me as a kind of non-verbal Explication ..."
It's interesting what you said about seemingly unrelated modes of entertainment (reading poetry, art, music and, for those who have a love and/or understanding of maths). It wasn't until I left school until I realised how intertwined these areas are.
Unfortunately, I still don't 'get' poetry (I'm sorry to all the poetry lovers out there). From my own experience, I was a little distracted at school from the ages of 13-16, so didn't always pay attention in class, but I also found that curriculum delivery had a negative impact on my ability to learn - I always found rote learning of poems very difficult.
I still shudder at the memory of a Maths teacher calling me up to the board to complete homework questions and being shouted at. Then I usually froze and couldn't think...
Mathematics is quite abstract; the penny finally dropped when I could see how maths is applied, especially in the sciences (a lot of calculus. Physics is mostly maths based too). Oh, and I do love a good fractal!
A book in my TBR is Mathematics for Life by Ian Stewart, I might just go and dig it out and have a peruse.
There have been some great comments about the crime genre. funnily enough, I've never read an Agatha Christie book and have no interest in doing so (but read about the poisons she uses in the rather brilliant 'A is for Arsenic' by Kathryn Harkup).This genre, for me, is the great escape. I'm really enjoying Ian Rankin and John Connelly and their respective detectives John Rebus and Harry Bosch. Other authors I like are Karin Slaughter and James Ellroy.
I gave up on Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell a long time ago. Their plotlines became increasingly predictable (even by my standards) and ridiculous 'Pathologist saves day, yet again' - where do they get the time?
A rather sobering thought I had recently was that there is not enough time to read. This more than the usual gripe of being tired/long work hours/fuzzy brain. I'm middle aged. The sandtimer is now bottom heavy. Between the books I have, the books I want, plus the allure of enticing new books in the future, I fear I will never conquer all that I want to read.
Mod
This brings back memories! My father was in the army and with the moves and changes of school I was ahead of or behind the other children in the class. In my 2nd to last year at primary school, we moved during the year and my new teacher was a terrifying woman. I was well behind in maths and every day began with a problem written up on the blackboard. I never had a clue how to do them. I remember so well the sinking feeling every morning sitting there hoping for a miracle.
Fuzzywuzz wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "MK wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Bill wrote: "Georg wrote: "You are a music buff. What about Schubert's Lieder?"As I suggested, musical settings can often serve me as a kind of non-ve..."
For six formative years (11-16) I had a math's teacher who was not only useless but also a sadist. He started every lesson by calling one of us up for an extempore examination. He would open his little book with all our names in and build up the tension. Moving forward and backward with his pen until he found the victim of the day. These oral exams influenced your grade. Got a 3 in your written exams? Might turn out to be a 4. in the end (grading: 1-6, 6 being worst).
The orals used to get most of us a 5 or 6. He made them so. The math cracks weren't spared either. He wouldn't have given a 1 to Einstein.
I do not tend to hold grudges, but on the rare occasions I think of him I do hate him.
I took me decades to discover that I am not bad at maths. I think I am now quite good when it comes to statistics because I find analysing them really fascinating and interesting
SydneyH wrote: "You are more likely to find hatchet jobs for The Pregnant Widow or Yellow Dog."The only reviews of Amis I can find are of one memoir, one book of criticism, and one fiction apparently loosely based on fact. Either there are not many reviews of Amis available on that site, or I am failing to understand how to search it.
Fuzzywuzz wrote: "There have been some great comments about the crime genre. funnily enough, I've never read an Agatha Christie book and have no interest in doing so (but read about the poisons she uses in the rathe..."Ah, so did I. Kathy Reichs lasted a bit longer than Patricia Cornwell. Whose protagonists were not overly sympathetic to start with and deteriorated into being obnoxious very early on. Especially her bloody niece.
Gpfr wrote: "Fuzzywuzz wrote: "I still shudder at the memory of a Maths teacher calling me up to the board to complete homework questions and being shouted at. Then I usually froze and couldn't think..."This ..."
I fume inside when I read of your experiences, sadly they are all too common and frighten pupils from learning. I believe that they stemmed not from the child’s inadequacy but the teachers’ fear of the subject and their efforts to hide that fear.
Primary school teachers have, to teach all subjects, or used to in my day, to classes of nearly forty ( my largest was even more no teaching assistants, frequently the level of mathematical understanding was little more than the pupils. I am hoping things have changed now.
For a few years part of my work involved helping people who didn’t have any maths qualifications but needing them for their chosen profession, nursing, for instance, and stories such as yours were commonplace.
Here’s a little Auden poetry from Four Weddings and a Funeral
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDXWc...
Georg wrote: "13,5% intoDetermined to get to the end of the second story. About ten pages left, will take me two days at least.
I will be most relieved to abandon it there..."
I managed around 3 1/2 stories...
Oh, and about your maths teacher - my wife also had one of those, and another for physics. Whenever I try to explain something to her in those subjects, her mind just shuts down - I think it's called "aversion therapy"!
She did listen to one 'lesson' from me though - when she started teaching, she needed to convert pupil scores into percentages. The trendy maths courses in France following 1968 had omitted the teaching of anything so basic, and because she needed to know how to do it, she listened and mastered the skill. 'Needs must', as they say.
Georg wrote: "Fuzzywuzz wrote: "There have been some great comments about the crime genre. funnily enough, I've never read an Agatha Christie book and have no interest in doing so (but read about the poisons she..."I quit Cornwell more than 25 years ago when I lived in Virginia. All I remember is that the Commonwealth of Virginia would not countenance Scarpetta's antics.
I do like some reality in my mysteries and remember quitting one author (name long forgotten) who used a Christmas hurricane as a plot device. I mean, dammit how hard is that to verify?
Georg wrote: "Fuzzywuzz wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "MK wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Bill wrote: "Georg wrote: "You are a music buff. What about Schubert's Lieder?"As I suggested, musical settings can often serve me a..."
My downfall in 'sexual awareness' probably came from the Biology teacher at my high school. He was well-known for berating girls in class, so I skipped Biology. Avoidance is always better than confrontation in my book.
(And of course at home such subjects were just not discussed.)
Gpfr wrote: "I was woken up by loud voices outside at about 4 o'clock this morning. Not managing to go back to sleep, I put the light on and started reading.Guido Guerrieri is walking "dans la ville battue pa..."
I'm delighted to see that some of you are developing a taste for Guerrieri/Carofiglio. As for Paris - a great place to live - we spent four years there - though cities are not for codgers, so I'm pleased to now live in a small seaside town!
SydneyH wrote: "I’ve finished Legends of the Fall, a collection of three novellas by... Jim Harrison... But the work is excellent... ‘Mexican Gothic’... is probably appropriate for the first novella “Revenge”, in which the protagonist has an affair with the wife of a gangster."I know that this author is a favourite of HP, whose views I respect... I read that first story, and although the style was decent, the plot was so incredible (in terms of human behaviour) that I have not persevered, to date. Tennis pro befriends gangster, and falls for his wife? What were they thinking? If people are able to be around gangsters (as wives or friends) surely they don't expect a free pass if they are found out. Would they risk it? I doubt it. (The same goes double for The Night Manager, BTW.)
The way the story plays out is equally improbable, with someone helping 'our hero' to spy on said gangster - at, one would think, a significant risk to his life - just because he is a friend of a friend. Somehow, none of this struck me as being in any way believable on any level. The poor woman is nothing more than a cipher - her character is not developed at all.
I may try another one, eventually, but was left feeling discouraged...
CCCubbon wrote: "...I feel that there is a strong link between, poetry, music and mathematics.I believe that it has to do with pattern in various forms, the sounds and stresses that a poem makes when read aloud, the rhymes, repeated words and so on in poetry, the melody patterning in music that pleases our ears and there is a vast amount of patterning in mathematics that makes it so beautiful if one can see it."
I would not disagree with any of this, and as I implied earlier, I am far more receptive to poetry when read out aloud (by others) than I am when attempting to read it myself off the page. The problem with 'reading' poetry, for me, is that I can't find any flow as I read, as I am simultaneously attempting to understand or interpret what was written - which detracts greatly from the pleasure I get from reading something fluent. Stop-start reading doesn't work, for me. (No doubt this is one of the reasons I can't read 'Ulysses', either.)
I can still remember a stand-out reading of Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle into that good night' as performed by one of our sixth formers, though - nearly 60 years ago. He may well have gone into that good night, by now.
Fuzzywuzz wrote: "There have been some great comments about the crime genre. funnily enough, I've never read an Agatha Christie book and have no interest in doing so (but read about the poisons she uses in the rathe..."Fuzzy, thats sad about lack of time to read and brain fuzz, have things changed as the unlock kicked in or have you been too busy throughout the pandemic?
Georg wrote: "No narrative?What is "Erlkönig" then, if not a condensed, dramatic narrative?
Schillers ballads, e.g. "Die Bürgschaft" or "Die Kraniche des Ibykus"? Fontanes "John Maynard"? Non-narratives? Not creating a frame of retention?"
Did you read all of my earlier post? In the first paragraph I explicitly said:
I note that Schubert also set a number of narrative poems, perhaps Erlkönig being the most popular: tell me a story, whether in prose or verse, and I’m willing to lend an ear.Note also that my statements you quoted were prefaced by the explicit statement that I was talking about lyric poetry – think Schubert’s “An die Musik” or Schumann’s “Du bist wie eine Blume” (or “Mondnacht” for that matter). Sorry, read on the page such things may fleetingly impress me, even move me, but it requires a musical setting to give them any kind of mental staying power. I’ve never willingly memorized a poem (though I could probably make a fair guess at about 80% of “Jabberwocky”) – and in fact Heine’s “Die Lorelei”, assigned for memorization by a German teacher, is the only one that I recall being forced to memorize. On the other hand, as came up with the Dylan discussion in earlier weeks, memorizing song lyrics is another matter, even when they also happen to be poems as well, as with “Erlkönig”, which I can recite as long as I retain the music in my mind.
I am acquainted with Schubert’s Schiller ballad settings. In recent months I’ve been reading and listening to the songs of Carl Loewe, who composed a good deal of that sort of thing. He also did a setting of “Erlkönig" which is interesting but not, I'm afraid, one that would lead me to memorize the words.
CCCubbon wrote: "It may sound rather odd to you but I feel that there is a strong link between, poetry, music and mathematics."I’ve been think about this, and while I agree about math and music, unsurprisingly I’m not on board with the inclusion of poetry.
Math and music create structures working entirely within self-contained systems, using axioms and theorems in one case, tones, rhythms, and sonorities in the other. These elements need have no reference to anything outside of their own realm. On the other hand, poetry uses words which are inevitably associated with meaning; words are like shadows thrown on the page by things outside the realm of words. In reading poetry I am continually trying to determine what it is that is casting these shadows, that is to say the meaning of the words to the poet. (And yes, I am aware that there are occasionally poems like this.)
I'd be guilty of neglect if I didn't combine the two topics I've commented on this week, poetry and crime fiction, by mentioning the narrative poems of Joseph Moncure March, The Wild Party & The Set-Up.
Fuzzywuzz wrote: "There have been some great comments about the crime genre. funnily enough, I've never read an Agatha Christie book and have no interest in doing so (but read about the poisons she uses in the rathe..."Katherine Harkup also wrote Death by Shakespeare which you might find interesting.
Georg wrote: "13,5% intoDetermined to get to the end of the second story. About ten pages left, will take me two days at least.
I will be most relieved to abandon it there..."
Georg, are you deliberately picking books you're not going to like? As with Apeirogon this is another book that, regardless of the critical acclaim, I knew was not for me, perhaps because I read Adam Roberts' Booker shortlist twitter thread back in 2019.
Characters are described, great slabs of telling-not-showing, and talk at one another rather than to, with a range of talking-point eloquences markedly *un*like how real people actually interact in life: ‘Afro-gynocentricism caused a femquake tonight!’ one character declares.
Bill wrote: "Georg wrote: "No narrative?What is "Erlkönig" then, if not a condensed, dramatic narrative?
Schillers ballads, e.g. "Die Bürgschaft" or "Die Kraniche des Ibykus"? Fontanes "John Maynard"? Non-narr..."
Sorry, Bill. You are right. I should have been more diligent in reading your post.
Almost finished the majestic Rebel Richmond looking at the Confederate capital between 1861 and 1865Using a rich variety of sources, including official documents, diaries and literature, every facet of medium size southern town, turned capital of a rebellion is studied. He avoids the military conflict altogether and focuses on the city "intramuros", as it struggles with every situation in a slow war of defeat.
Whether the city held 150,000 or 100,000 souls by 1864(swollen by Maryland, Louisianian and other refugees from the Northern Virginian areas), it had become grossly outsized from a 40,000 strong urban centre. Ash notes that while protests and unrest grew, especially as the war dragged on, the huge military presence in the city meant any uprising was never likely to suceed.
Life was very different for the slaving aristocracy, merchant classes and the working poor, with huge swathes of the men at the front and Union lines so close to the city.
Ash remarks that disorder spread rapidly as the Confederate Army left the city in April 1865. Mobs plundered the business districts and retreating Confederate soldiers set many parts of the town on fire. When Union photographers reached the city in late Spring 1865, much of the centre was smoking ruins....
I've just finished The Year of the Flood, and discarded the initial plan of moving on to the final part of the MaddAddam trilogy. As much as I loved pretty much everything about Oryx and Crake, I could barely work up the mojo to finish the sequel. The narrative drags on as soon as you hit the halfway mark and the whole thing is so anticlimactic it hurts. I've now picked up Normal People and Factotum, and it's a strangely enjoyable combination
Anastasia wrote: "I've just finished The Year of the Flood, and discarded the initial plan of moving on to the final part of the MaddAddam trilogy. As much as I loved pretty much everything about Oryx and Crake, I c..."i must read some Sally Rooney, i avoided the UK adaption of the novel so as not to spoil it, though my last modern Irish female read was the appalling "Milkman" by Anna Burns. It was such a let down a few years back...
Same here, haven't seen the adaptation, so... will report back :) I think Milkman left quite an impression among the TLSers, and it wasn't a good one
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As I suggested, musical settings can often serve me as a kind of non-verbal Explication de Texte for poetry – and if..."
i agree with music, so much of its basic creation is based on maths. i was watching an online tutorial on how to play the Freddy Washington bassline from "Forget Me Nots" and there was mathematical pattern in the structure.