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What are we reading? 3rd August 2021
I’d been thinking about @Miri’s post after reading it, and since @Anne has highlighted it here, I’ll comment, with the qualification that Montefiore is British, so my US perspective on his comments may be on the wrong track.In an American context, given his age (now 56, and in his 30s when he wrote the book), I would take the misogynist similes as a flag that he’s a right-winger: there’s a tactic on the American right that attempts to delegitimize one’s opponents by feminizing them. Given that Montefiore comes from a family of apparently great inherited wealth, I would also suspect that his choice of Stalin as a subject also serves as an indirect way of discrediting Socialism and collectivism more broadly, so that the Stalinists are seen as merely one of the more extreme forms of a general political trend, against which the feminization tactic is frequently and often unreflectively deployed.
Cool weather, max of about 19c with lots of cloud but the landscape echoes with irich southern english summer colours and soundsThe Fall of Heaven is a superbly detailed study of a flawed parvenu and his slow exit from a life of delusion astride the Peacock Throne. Few books i have read pack so much detail into such a short time, the second half of the book, of 200 pages covers just 1978. While it may not be Robert Caro-esque, i love non-fiction that covers a short period but is over 400 pages. I dislike 500 page non-fiction books covering 1000 years for example.....
The Ship by Jabra Ibrahmin Jabra (1970), is a sad lament about the horrors of exile and statelessness, in a subtle and complex short novel. ( Jabra lived most of his life in Iraq, a Palestinian exile). This novel is set on a cruise ship in the med, heading from Beirut to Alexandria and then round the other ports....
Highways to a War is a mid 1990s Australian novel of Vietnam and a photographer who goes missing in Cambodia during the collapse of the regime to the Khmer Rouge. It opens in Tasmania and the geography of the island is central to themes of childhood and travel, which then progress to Saigon and the Vietnam War
Lastly Journals of Travel in Iceland 1871-73 by William Morris covers his time in Iceland. Having travelled in the far north during summer i am endlessly fascinated by the flat,white endless
light, the limits of vegetation growth and the cool, fresh weather. I did start this in June then stopped but i havent read a good diary/journal for 4-5 weeks and miss the fix of an 11pm read
Miri, if you are interested in the world of Stalin and its petty, cynical feel i recommened two books(:The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge. A brilliant novel about the rancid state of the system Stalin ran
Conversations with Stalin by Milovan Djilas. Ex-Yugoslav communist recalls various meetings with Stalin and his entourage
One i havent read is Slezkine's "The House of Government"
Bill wrote: "I’d been thinking about @Miri’s post after reading it, and since @Anne has highlighted it here, I’ll comment, with the qualification that Montefiore is British, so my US perspective on his comments..."That's a very interesting take on this Swelter! Don't know if this is what is at play here, whether consciously or not, but let's just say that when I checked his background following Miri's post, I was not surprised in the least to see where he was coming from, and to which school and Uni he had gone.
@Miri: I understand better where your "petty" is coming from, but yes, I think this kind of remarks one can make on the tone of a book should stand entirely independently of the (heavy) subject of said book. I'm very surprised that nobody has done anything about these casually misogynistic comments, esp. for a -presumably relatively recent - audiobook! (And for what it's worth, I was also shocked last year when I read Emma - sadly things have not changed that much with respect to our cavalier attitude towards travellers.)
Bill wrote: "I’d been thinking about @Miri’s post after reading it, and since @Anne has highlighted it here, I’ll comment, with the qualification that Montefiore is British, so my US perspective on his comments..."good points Bill, the right relishes any trashing of the legacy of socialism or communism, using its well rehearsed post 1979 smug rhetoric. I read "Young Stalin" by Montefiore and found it very engaging and interesting about a decade ago, i havent read any other Montefiore since
This is a reply to MK ‘s post at the end of last week’s thread.Chary Is an interesting word dating back at least 500 years.
It has four meanings:
1. careful, wary, cautious
2. fussy, very particular
3. mean, frugal, not lavish
4. cared for, precious, cherished ( This meaning obsolete now)
The antonym is unchary in every case which seems a tad clumsy.
I delved into the word maid last week over on Poem of the Week and was most surprised to find that it went back as far as the 12C when it was used for both sexes meaning young, unmarried, virgin. By the next century the domestic servant meaning took hold.
Hey there. I managed to get through a book at a non-plodding pace, having just read Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford.Having previously read and enjoyed North and South, Cranford was a bit of a let-down. It seemed a minor work in comparison.
An episodic book set in a rural English Amazon, populated by Wonder Women turned old biddies obsessed with whether the help was making eyes at the milkman.
The village seems to have been left to the care of spinsters (to use one of Justine's less favored words) while the men moved to market town or early grave or India. By the end of the story, it's no mystery why the Y-chromosomes are scarce.
Gaskell deosn't seem to have had a clear idea where she was going with the book, as it doesn't fit neatly into a particular "type." It has the closest brushes with success when she allows it to veer into satire. Think Diary Of A Nobody, but actually funny on occasion (for example, havingto wait for the family lace to make its way through feline intestines). Overall, Cranford felt slight and inconsequential, a "nice" book, which are not labels that could ever be lobbed towards North and South.
Now, as soon as I can manage to settle down to read, I'll try another quick British classic, Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes.
Mod
As mentioned at end of last week's thread, I've had a non-imaginary conversation with Anne and we are on the same page. Here's our plan going forward (or until we change our minds! 😉).
-- Anne will post a new "What Are We Reading?" thread fortnightly, on Mondays.*
--Anne will continue to post a one-hour warning before the old thread is due to close (brilliant idea, that, Anne).
--I'll step in to cover should Anne be unavailable on this schedule. Otherwise, I'll continue to act as tech support, moderator should that ever be necessary, and occasional contributor (if I ever get any reading done).
I can't tell you how happy I am to hand the baton to Anne - so wonderful to have her here!
*(That means this thread will remain open until August 16th).
Do let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
--Lisa
Mod
It turns out Montefiore was in the running for the Bad Sex Award in 2008. Was this really her? There he was between her legs again, doing the most absurd, lovely things to places behind her knees, the muscle at the very top of her thighs, her ears, the middle of her back. But the kissing, just the kissing, was heavenly […] He made her forget she was a Communist.
Lljones wrote: "I've chosen a color scheme for at least one of the rooms in my new abode. "
Those are beautiful flowers, put a smile on my face, so they did :)
Bill wrote: "It turns out Montefiore was in the running for the Bad Sex Award in 2008...."He made her forget she was a Communist." "
That last sentence can't be real. I strongly suspect you made it up!
That last sentence can't be real. I strongly suspect you made it up!
Bill wrote: "It turns out Montefiore was in the running for the Bad Sex Award in 2008. Was this really her? There he was between her legs again, doing the most absurd, lovely things to places behind her knees, ..."Thanks Bill, that made me laugh, much needed in this neck of the woods...
Lljones wrote: "I've chosen a color scheme for at least one of the rooms in my new abode. Well here is one to add into your tendency for 'dreaming' imaginative stuffhttps://i.postimg.cc/50YwhBTS/2-douan...
I haven't read a Marian Keyes book in years. I borrowed 'Grown Ups' from my local library. I gave up after about 60 or so pages. Some of the characters were egocentric and dislikeable, which was perhaps the point.So that was ditched and instead started Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. Immediately, I was immersed in 1980's Glasgow and the life of Shuggie Bain, his two siblings and his parents. Their lives are difficult - poverty, alcoholism and isolation feature strongly. I was hooked form the start.
Shuggie's mother, Agnes is consumed by alcoholism and I feel rather ambivalent towards her. On the one hand, I have great sympathy for her, but on the other I am annoyed by her lack of support to her children. The almost total absence of Shuggie's father in no doubt precipitated Agnes's decline.
This is a great, but sobering read nonetheless.
I'm going to make a big effort to attack my TBR pile. This may prove difficult as it will involve stopping borrowing or buying books for the foreseeable future.
Re the discussion on threads; personally I am just pleased we have the chance to talk to one another and it never bothered me what time a thread closed on a Monday, you could always copy and paste a comment you wanted to reply to onto the new thread if it was that important to you.Lisa and Anne do a lot for us, totally voluntarily and I feel grateful. Criticism seems a little churlish to me. By all means make the threads fortnightly if it makes things easier for you,
Bill wrote: "It turns out Montefiore was in the running for the Bad Sex Award in 2008. Was this really her? There he was between her legs again, doing the most absurd, lovely things to places behind her knees, ..."Oh, Bill, I love you! This was my third (and best) laugh-out-loud moment within about one hour. And for the other two (provided by Marlon and Jake in "Questions, questions") I also have to thank you.
giveusaclue wrote: "Re the discussion on threads; personally I am just pleased we have the chance to talk to one another and it never bothered me what time a thread closed on a Monday, you could always copy and paste ..."i am of same opinion, Anne and LL are doing a stellar job and keep up the good work!
Photo from one of my happy places, to the two of you for keeping open another mostly happy place:
Thank you so much, MrsC and LL/Lisa. I am especially grateful to you, LL/Lisa, for keeping up the good work on your own for quite a while!
Russell wrote: "Bill wrote: "It turns out Montefiore was in the running for the Bad Sex Award in 2008...."He made her forget she was a Communist." "That last sentence can't be real. I strongly suspect you made i..."
He didn't!
Mod
Ha! Not only are some of those colors on the list, I'm in the process of needlepointing a detail of that fabulous Rousseau!
Thank you all for the really interesting comments and AB76 for the reccomendations (added to the notebook). And thank you (?) to Bill for that very... err... interesting quotation. I wonder if the so-good-at-shagging-you'll-forget-you're-a-communist thing works for all ideologies ("the kissing was so great she forgot she was a fascist/MAGA supporter/vegan/monarchist etc etc")?I understand what people mean by the generation thing. I'm not sure if I would call myself woke - I'm left of centre or left leaning on most issues, I think, although there are some things where very, very left people would probably accuse me of being centrist (or even right leaning). I am admittedly a boring feminist, though.
I think my main problem is that such casual generalisations don't really add anything and are a bit clichéd. And clichéd is alright, I guess (it's a little boring, though), but comparing things to "women" is too broad. If for example, some people were described as being gossipy like a group of school girls; or vain like a prima donna pop star... it would still be clichéd writing but at least a little more specific.
And I think some of my annoyance/bemusement comes from what Machenbach said. It sort of (unintentionally) acts as if the reader is a bloke where women are some weird "other" category.
I’m probably repeating m’self, but heigh ho, nothing new there. A couple of nights ago we re-watched the film, Tea With Mussolini. An absolute delight, with a terrific cast, including Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. Set in San Gimignano, where we spent a blissful holiday some years ago, there were scenes in the Uffizi Gallery, which set off a train of thought. No, not the one where I was almost ejected after snorting over a portrait of a curly haired Florentine merchant who bore a striking resemblance to Kevin Keegan. The recollection brought to mind Margaret Forster’s excellent biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and her days in Florence, which in turn reminded me of her novel, Keeping the World Away, about the artist, Gwen John. I do miss Margret Forster, her novels and biographies were always a pleasure to read, and indeed, reward re-reading. Anyway, apologies if I’ve trotted out the same anecdotes.
Did you know that Hans Christian Andersen wrote quite a few travelogues?I did not.
Have now acquired Pictures of Travel. in Sweden, Among the Hartz Mountains, and in Switzerland, with a Visit at Charles Dickens's House, Etc. A Translation of "I Sverr
(in this version: Schattenbilder von einer Reise in den Harz, die Sächsische Schweiz etc. etc. im Sommer 1831). I have read a few random passages - the tone is lively and entertaining, the narrator seems curious and open, something I appreciate. (While William Lithgow's Rare Adventures & Painful Peregrinations, in their unrelenting cantankerousness - often with good reason! -, provide fun reading, too, Andersen's enthusiastic tone on the Harz might be more suited to current needs. Lithgow missed out on the Harz, of course. Poor him!)
Have to say I am relieved by Andersen's approach to travel. I find his fairy tales very depressing, painful reads (as I remember them).
@Miri, am with you regarding your reaction. It is annoying to be viewed as a separate, generalizable species. I am always tempted, in these instances, to mirror what is being said by stating something equally 'helpful' about men as a category. It usually takes a while until people catch on, though - if someone does not know me, the irony seems hard to spot... need to work on my eyebrow quirk!
I enjoyed the lovely new words, composites and favourites in last week's thread.
Very much enjoying reading this one, too.
Mod
Thanks for the reminder, Lass; I saw Tea with Muss...when it first came out, not since so I must queue it up for a re-watch.
Have you seen Tea with the Dames? Watched with Lucia and we both loved it!
I wanted to share this extract from Ancestors by Alice Roberts with you for I had not thought about it before and will never be able to look at a plastic skeleton or one in films in the same way again. The display she mentions is one in one of the Cheddar caves in Somerset.
(The completeness of the ribcage and pelvis in displays like these – and indeed in any number of horror and adventure films – always irks me. When bodies rot, soft tissue – including cartilage and ligaments – decay. The ribs, once bound to the sternum by long rods of costal cartilage, then exist as separate bones, and collapse in a heap. The two bones of the pelvis eventually fall apart from each other at the front, where they were once joined by fibrocartilage, and away from the sacrum at the back, where the sacroiliac joint once existed. Plastic skeletons, with costal cartilages helping to keep the thorax three-dimensional, and complete pelves, abound in films, standing in for skeletons which really should be just bones. Now you know about this, it will irk you too.)
Lljones wrote: "Here's our plan going forward (or until we change our minds! 😉)."Thanks Anne and LL. I really appreciate the time you put into this - whatever arrangement works for you is fine by me.
AB76 wrote: "Highways to a War is a mid 1990s Australian novel of Vietnam and a photographer who goes missing in Cambodia during the collapse of the regime to the Khmer Rouge."I hadn't heard of this (though I've probably seen it before). How did this come onto your radar? Were you looking through Miles Franklin winners?
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Highways to a War is a mid 1990s Australian novel of Vietnam and a photographer who goes missing in Cambodia during the collapse of the regime to the Khmer Rouge."I hadn't heard of t..."
Actually, i was a huge fan of the Peter Weir film "The Year of Living Dangerously" and about 15 years ago found the novel by Christopher Koch and read it. I noted down a few others of his and then returned to them this year and chose Highways to a War
For sakes of tidyness,, i erased the books i read from Oct-Dec on here (the time of the Guardian TLS closure), so i have a record of all books in 2021, without the overlap. (i record all the books i read anyway and have done in detail since 2016ish, so nothing has been lost)Its a funny year 2021, about 80% of classic fiction has been from existing piles, much higher than previous years.. (The trend was usually i would set out a vague reading plan but then 60% of the plan would change)
I also am starting to find the joy of new writers and classic novels is getting less frequent but that could be the inevitability of being 45 not 25 or 35 when i was still discovering so many new writers.
I wish i could embrace modern fiction as much as the majority of members in here do but its been such a poor return overall, i would say that is unlikely.
Interested to know any opinions from folks, especially on finding less and less new discoveries with age or the opposite...
Miri wrote: "I wonder if the so-good-at-shagging-you'll-forget-you're-a-communist thing works for all ideologies"From my limited reading in popular culture of the Cold War, there definitely seems to be specific gender roles associated with the different ideologies: the Western Capitalist male as heterosexual dynamo (see James Bond as well as the heroes of Ayn Rand) and the Soviet agent as seductress sent to weaken and subvert vulnerable males in positions of power and influence (I don’t know how her current cinematic incarnations are explained, but Marvel’s Black Widow first appeared in the comics as a Soviet sexual lure assigned to seduce industrialist Tony Stark (Iron Man’s alter ego)).
In a way, From Russia With Love presents a sexual / ideological contest between the heterosexual Bond and the lesbian Soviet agent Rosa Klebb for the both affections and political adherence of agent Tatiana Romanova.
AB76 wrote: "I wish i could embrace modern fiction"With older texts, quite a bit of the hard work has been done to sort the special ones from the not-so special. In theory, standards for publishing should be tougher today than they have been historically - yet the volume of books being published has probably increased just the same. It's also worth noting that it's usually white blokes who feel that the golden age of the novel has passed - for women and various minority groups, the literary culture of today is surely the best ever.
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I wish i could embrace modern fiction"With older texts, quite a bit of the hard work has been done to sort the special ones from the not-so special. In theory, standards for publishi..."
Good points, classics tend to have a lot of additional kudos/translation work/context and other source materials to back up the original text
Totally agree that for women and minority groups the patriachy dominated past must seem offensive and stuffy compared with that the last 15 years can offer, in terms of variety and volume
I feel very white blokeish now...lol....
AB76 wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I wish i could embrace modern fiction"I didn't intend it as a put down, it's just an observation that in the media writers like Banville, Self, Delillo occasionally talk about the death of the novel and offer a very bleak view of the future. It to me seems a little short-sighted. Still, it's obviously true that the novel isn't the popular genre it once was, and this is likely to have impacts on writing. I sometimes feel that there is a greater trend to a 'conversational' style in contemporary fiction, which I don't really like.
With so many TBR concerns on this site, I have posted a timely warning in Photos.
@LL. oh, yes. Tea With the Dames was an absolute joy.,
LL/Anne - I think the fortnightly plan makes a lot of sense. Like everyone else, I can't say enough to thank you both for what you do to keep this little group going.
CCCubbon wrote: "This is a reply to MK ‘s post at the end of last week’s thread.Chary Is an interesting word dating back at least 500 years.
It has four meanings:
1. careful, wary, cautious
2. fussy, very par..."
Thank you - I had no idea. I have a - long! - chary story.
Back in the Reagan era when the Defense Dept. was awash in a sea of money, I worked for a USAF organization whose mission included the care and feeding of standardized computer systems for the Intelligence Community. Think secure communications, for example.
In a way our parent organization was the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). DIA decided they wanted some fancy new system and tasked my group to get it done. The problem was - it was not doable. So an USAF Captain in our open plan office was charged with writing a 'thank you, but no thank you' letter for the boss (Bird Colonel) to sign. He was having a difficult time with the letter. So I suggested (twisted his arm) to include that we were chary of this assignment.
The completed letter went to the Colonel to sign. And came back for a rewrite which included the deletion of chary. Damn! It would have been so good. Of course it was probably too rare a word.
Mod
😉
Bill wrote: "It turns out Montefiore was in the running for the Bad Sex Award in 2008......'He made her forget she was a Communist.' "
Sounds as if Montefiore read too many James Bond books in his pimply youth!
@LL and @Anne... Thank you so much for your efforts. Whatever suits you is fine by me, though maybe the threads could be allowed to develop over a fortnight rather than a week. I'll go along with what you decide.
MK wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "So an USAF Captain in our open plan office was charged with writing a 'thank you, but no thank you' letter for the boss (Bird Colonel) to sign. He was having a difficult time with the letter. So I suggested (twisted his arm) to include that we were chary of this assignment.The completed letter went to the Colonel to sign. And came back for a rewrite which included the deletion of chary. Damn! It would have been so good. Of course it was probably too rare a word."
I am currently well into a book about the experiences of a US Army unit in the Philippines (One to Count Cadence by James Crumley), and one problem I have is the frequent use of army acronyms, names or terms which mean nothing to me - and which occasionally appear to be so much of their time that they can't even be tracked down by Dr Google! The term 'Bird Colonel', though, is one I have seen a few times over the years, with no clear idea what it means.
As for 'chary' - I would not have thought of it as an especially rare word, in the first sense listed anyway... somehow, it feels like something that would be said in the North of England - Yorkshire or thereabouts - but maybe that's just some sort of crazy idea or prejudice!
Last night I settled down to watch a film adaptation of Cold Comfort Farm - a title I know, but not a book I have ever read. The cast was excellent, and I was looking forward to a treat.Well! What a disappointment. After the first 5-10 min in which there was some amusing interplay between the lovely Joanna Lumley and Kate Beckinsale in an opulent London home, things went rapidly downhill when Beckinsale's character Flora Poste travelled to the country. Here we found a mishmash of gurning yokels from central casting (but played by excellent actors!) spouting gibberish (made-up supposedly 'agricultural' terms).
The whole thing felt dreadfully misjudged, and I did wonder whether the author had ever set foot outside the North Circular... Not having read the book, I can't say whose 'fault' this was - the author's (Stella Gibbons), the screenwriter's (Malcolm Bradbury) or the director's (John Schlesinger).
What a mess! I stopped watching well before halfway...
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I wish i could embrace modern fiction"With older texts, quite a bit of the hard work has been done to sort the special ones from the not-so special. In theory, standards for publishi..."
Good points... books from a while back have 'passed the test of time' as they say, so readers should in theory be spared the very worst... though beware of the rediscovery of so-called 'lost masterpieces' which, in my experience (naming no names!) were 'lost' for a very good reason...
Books published 'now' are products as far as the publishers are concerned, and they want to turn as fast a buck as possible - hence the incredible OTT hype which surrounds a few books every year. Book prizes are also used to ramp up public interest. I rarely read hyped books until a few years post-publication - if the subject seems of interest - and prize-listed books seem to be disappointments more often than not, so I avoid those for a while, too.
I also think that with age comes a greater number of points of reference - you have read more books, and can more quickly and with greater certainty distinguish what is good or bad - in your own terms, of course. This curmudgeonly attitude saves a lot of time, and allows you to discard books rather than feeling some obligation to finish them regardless.
There are very few contemporary writers whose books I await in the
certainty that I'll enjoy them... only Anne Tyler springs to mind, and I'm afraid she may not be around much longer. (Of course, she may outlive me, which would solve the problem!) To a lesser extent as they are more hit and miss - Jonathan Coe and Julian Barnes. I may have forgotten others, of course - old age does nothing for the memory, even if it sharpens the critical faculties - or perhaps increases the taste for criticism!
(As for John Banville, he has done a good job of trying to kill the novel, judging by the one book of his I have read.)
scarletnoir wrote: "As for John Banville, he has done a good job of trying to kill the novel, judging by the one book of his I have read.."Which one, just out of interest? He has become increasingly obnoxious in the media, though I've read quite a bit by him.
SydneyH wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "As for John Banville, he has done a good job of trying to kill the novel, judging by the one book of his I have read.."Which one, just out of interest? He has become increasin..."
It wasn't, strictly speaking, a 'John Banville' book... he published a crime story entitled Christine Falls under the pseudonym 'Benjamin Black'. (The first of a series - he must think that it's easy money, but lacks the talent to write in that genre.)
It was so bad, I have written in these columns more than once that it removed any desire I may have felt to read any of his 'literary' efforts.
scarletnoir wrote: "a crime story entitled Christine Falls under the pseudonym 'Benjamin Black'"Ah, I may have seen those comments. I believe a writer can't really succeed in a genre they don't respect.
scarletnoir wrote: "MK wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "So an USAF Captain in our open plan office was charged with writing a 'thank you, but no thank you' letter for the boss (Bird Colonel) to sign. He was having a difficult..."A "bird colonel" wears metal eagles as insignia. He outranks anyone below the rank of general.
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I wish i could embrace modern fiction"I didn't intend it as a put down, it's just an observation that in the media writers like Banville, Self, Delillo o..."
The modern fiction i like best is the "autofiction" trend(unless its Knausgaard), the best modern novels have involved the mix of a factual event with the authors musings on it.
I try to be open minded about modern fiction but the "ughhh" factor is so common when i ditch the book. When i was commuting pre-covid, i only read modern novels on the commute and that worked fairly well but often i would be 15 mins into the mind shredding vacuum of heat and lack of space to find the latest modern novel left me cold and then exposed to the hellish commute, rather than absorbed in a book!
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I'm reposting here @Miri's comment which she left just a couple of hours ago on the old thread. @Miri was @Cardellina at the Guardian TLS thread and it's great to see her again. Her post was so close to the cut off that I'd hate for her to miss any discussion that might arise from her reviews.
@Miri's post:
"Hello everyone :-) It's been a while. Hope everyone is well.
Yesterday I finished "The Queen's Gambit" by Walter Tevis and found it utterly gripping with that clean, precise American prose style that I love so much. I hadn't watched the Netflix show (I'm watching now and while it is a fascinating and gorgeous adaptation, it is a little odd how they tweaked things to make things more ridiculous and melodramatic). I don't have the kind of tactical, analytical brain for chess (my mum said when she tried to teach me I would just play imaginary games with the pieces like figurines), but Tevis' confident, accessible style and clear passion for the game drew me in and I read over the games feeling the tension of a thriller. A lovely gem of a book.
My audiobook this week is "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I re-watched Ianucci's "The Death of Stalin" recently, one of my favourite films of the past few years, and wanted to know more about the petty and horrifying dynamics of Stalin's inner circle. It is extremely interesting so far (especially for me - I never got to study Russian history at school, and my exposure has been mainly through Russian novels and films).
However, I have a small and possibly petty question about Montefiore. He constantly slips in... - I don't even know if they're misogynist, because they're so casual and mild - completely unrelated and unchallenged generalisations about women that I find bizarre. They keep jarring me from the book. Is this something he often does in his writing?
To give examples: he will talk about a Bolshevik magnate who exercises or wears a corset and will comment "so and so was vain like a woman". Or he'll talk about the petty personal fights of Stalin's comrades and add somehing like "they gossiped like women". These references are so casual and add nothing, I was surprised no editor got rid of them. It seems he's going for a casual charming wittiness that I don't see the need for in an interesting historical biography.
Furthermore, if these macho Soviets are doing all these "womanly" things so frequently, maybe these things are universal and not "womanly" at all? For example, this book is about a man who had his portrait hung in every important building throughout the USSR. This was a man who had former friends tortured or killed for perceived personal slights. If that doesn't prove that vanity is not the sole province of women then I don't know what does."