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What are we reading? 3rd August 2021
Morning veufI cannot cope with big cities these days, cannot cope with lots of people but I have never visited Liverpool. I read that they are maybe taking the Heritage site award away because of modern development by the water.
Hasten to add not people per se just my eyesight - not quite sure where everyone is. Glad you got some books. I think that’s what I miss most, holding a real book, browsing.
Really enjoyed the climbing in the Olympics, open mouthed at the speed of ascent.
AB76 wrote: "I only read it when waiting for the dentist."Back in the day, dentists used to offer the Readers' Digest or National Geographic, for some reason. Nowadays, I have noted the incursion of the Daily Telegraph...
Is this progress, I wonder?
Robert wrote: "Relief on a day of heat:https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=......"
Funny - but the kid needs to learn how to use a ruler!
Veufveuve wrote: "...a reaction to being in Liverpool city centre on a Saturday - a sense of abandonment to the pleasures that seemed Hogarthian."I see the locals hankering after a premature return to the 'good old days' in your comment. I wonder where is a 'good place' these days? I used to like the Grapes, or away from the centre, the Philharmonic is worth a visit if only for its stained glass windows and marble urinals...
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUse...
scarletnoir wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "...a reaction to being in Liverpool city centre on a Saturday - a sense of abandonment to the pleasures that seemed Hogarthian."I see the locals hankering after a premature retu..."
Ah, now you have made me all nostalgic for all the places I loved and probably wouldn't recognize anymore: the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Lime Street Station, Bold Street, the Albert Docks, the Bluecoats gallery....
Georg wrote: "Ah, now you have made me all nostalgic for all the places I loved and probably wouldn't recognize anymore: the Philharmonic Dining Rooms..."I know what you mean... I have only visited Liverpool once since leaving in 1979, and we actually managed to get lost in some awful shopping centre which didn't exist back then - once inside, it proved almost impossible to get out again!
The Philharmonic didn't seem to have changed much, though, and the Tate Liverpool was interesting... I quite liked what 'they' have done with the Albert Dock. The loss of Bramley Moore Dock appears to have been the last straw leading to loss of World Heritage Site listing:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-....
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "his aussie papers were very good on a weekend too"I think he pretty much dominates the industry in this country. A previous Prime Minister called for a Royal Commission into it a whi..."
i agree, he may have wanted to conquer other Anglo-Saxon bastions of print but his influence in Oz is still huge
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I only read it when waiting for the dentist."Back in the day, dentists used to offer the Readers' Digest or National Geographic, for some reason. Nowadays, I have noted the incursion..."
definitely not! Nat Geo is better than any right wing rag! I've never read Readers Digest!
My dentist is a very pious Afrikaaner and the variety now includes a bible,some other christian works and numerous rugby books in the waiting room, i see that as a library almost!
Georg wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "...a reaction to being in Liverpool city centre on a Saturday - a sense of abandonment to the pleasures that seemed Hogarthian."I see the locals hankering af..."
I just finsihed
which - while fiction -has some of the characters based on real people. But I digress, I don't remember the first year that Bletchley Park opened to visitors, but I was there. It was on the decrepit side with some buildings unsafe to enter. I went on an tour which was led by a volunteer which was fantastic. Several years and much in the way of restoration funds spent, more buildings were accessible and contained information placards, but it was just not the same experience. I preferred its earlier state when there was less commercialization.The same holds true (but to a lesser degree) for the Charterhouse. Very limited visitors when I first went, then they received a lot of lottery money, did an upgrade (added a museum space and now have daily tours of buildings and gardens).
On a side note for the Charterhouse, one of the residents told me that they had had to get the money because the place was falling apart and the museum space and tours were required to get the cash.
Nostalgia, but if delta goes away and I get my passport renewed, the Charterhouse will be on my to-do visit list for maybe a year from now.
Georg wrote: "It might not be a good book, but that doesn't seem to matter much for the Booker as long as it is "experimental". As if that were an achievement per se, irrespective of the outcome of an experiment."Georg, you and other Booker sceptics may enjoy Edward St. Aubyn's Lost for Words, a comic novel take on the
Reading is going well, as it has for almost 95% of 2021.Am reading:
The Ship by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra(1970) - a cerebral analysis of emigration and exile among a group of Arab and European travelers sailing round the Med on a cruise liner
A Kindness Cup by Thea Astley (1974) - an aussie classic about a massacre of the aborigine population near a small town in Northern Queensland and the reaction to it of its inhabitants 20 years afterwards
Bloc Life by Peter Molloy - a collection of interviews with various personalities from the days of communist evil, including Ceaucescu machine gunning Pelicans in the Danube Delta...
Veufveuve wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Morning give."No problem Veuf, no harm done. Thanks for responding.
scarletnoir wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "...a reaction to being in Liverpool city centre on a Saturday - a sense of abandonment to the pleasures that seemed Hogarthian."I see the locals hankering after a premature retu..."
No nostalgia from me (and I was an incomer anyway and a woolyback, at best). As a historian I know change is the only constant. Liverpool has always known this too. There's a reason the Bluecoats is the oldest building in the city centre and it's not all down to the Luftwaffe. Particularly in the business district, which I adore and have written about, if it was outdated or got in the way, then C19th Liverpool tore it down. This is where I disagree with UNESCO's decision to remove world heritage status. Liverpool is not a city that is meant to be preserved in aspic.
But I can't think of much great Liverpool based literature. Large chunks of Melville's "Redburn" are set there. I think some, or much, of Beryl Bainbridge's work must be, though, to my shame, I've not read her. On a minor note, Elizabeth Coxhead's "One Green Bottle" has a significant Liverpool element - the kind of book AB might enjoy, perhaps? I welcome more suggestions.
Veufveuve wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "...a reaction to being in Liverpool city centre on a Saturday - a sense of abandonment to the pleasures that seemed Hogarthian."I see the locals hankering af..."
My interest in "Redburn" was the Liverpool settings, the novel overall was rather dissapointing but the Liverpool sections were very interesting and in the King George 3rd collection (online and f free), i found some paintings of Liverpool on the eve of its emergence as a major city from the 1770s onwards. Radically different to even Victorian Liverpool but still majestic.
Some paintings here:
https://asenseofplace.com/2013/01/17/...
Liverpool Sailors Home was an amazing building
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpo...
The only other Liverpol novel i can think of is Marryats tale of strikes on the docks "A Fair Days Work" which i have yet to read.
Will check out the Coxhead book, thanks Veuf! Seems rather out of print sadly ..
Veufveuve wrote: "I welcome more suggestions."Not easy, actually - I have perused a Wikipedia list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
but have little familiarity with any novelists named (and I don't even care for Bainbridge).
Liverpool, for whatever reason, appears better suited to producing musicians (any number of popular groups), poets and playwrights. Alan Bleasdale and Willy Russell wrote for both stage and screen, for example, with the Everyman theatre being an important venue in developing their careers and those of many prominent actors.
AB76 wrote: "Good essay on the hubris of We Work in the NYRB. Astonishing to see the way that Neumann managed to get investors to part with huge amounts of funds, for a kind of hippy, unicorn style start-up. The creepy woman who fooled people with Theranos falls into a similar category."It was not uncommon at one time to put intellectuals in their place by asking, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" This seems to beg the complementary question, "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?"
I read the article you mention - I tend to have a hard time following the various issues with venture capital, IPOs, and other features of modern investment. I was assured that the stock options offered to employees at the company where I used to work were structured in such a way that they were a sure way to make money, but I never understood them well enough to take them up on the offer; the same guy also touted 401K contributions and the company match, which I did understand and took advantage of.
Earlier this year, I tried to read a book about Bernie Madoff (Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History), but had to take the unusual step (for me) of abandoning it because, with all the financial jargon the author used I found it incomprehensible - no doubt my problem also involved difficulty in comprehending the concepts behind most of the jargon.
SydneyH wrote: "Andy wrote: "I’m really surprised it was long listed for this year’s Booker."Hmm, that's a shame - I thought it looked like one of the more promising ones on the list."
Don’t let me put you off Sydney.. You may get far more out of it than I did..
I’m reading A Passage North currently, and finding that even harder work.
On Lighthouses by Jazmina BarreraFor me, lighthouses are something I have relatively recently been fascinated by. It began when I read The Unremembered Places: Exploring Scotland's Wild Histories by Patrick Baker, and continued as I researched about the Lighthouse Stevenson’s and visited several on a recent trip to Scotland. This book was in the bibliography of Baker, and also the excellent Scottish Lighthouses by Sharma Krauskopf, a bit light on text, but what there is, is fascinating.
My steer was in the right direction, a progression to this wonderful book. Barrera has that obsession shared by Krauskopf, and it is contagious. Her writing is as alluring and arresting as the landscapes and stories it conveys. It is an addictive mix of memoir and literary history.
She is originally Mexican, this written in Spanish, and beautifully translated by Christine McSweeney. She finds herself living in a dim New York high rise with a view out of her window of a wall, a metre away. She becomes interested in lighthouses through her reading, and decides to ‘collect’ them by a series of visits.
It is though her deceptively simple prose that completely drew me in, made me slow my reading pace down, and savour a unique mix of curiosity and culture, and of intimacy and history.
Amongst the bizarre and particular details she unearths and relates, this was one of my favourites..
In Poe’s story the keeper had no name but the dog did, Neptune. ‘Large as he is,’ says the lighthouse keeper, Neptune ‘is not to be taken into consideration as ‘society’. Would to Heaven I had ever found in ‘society’ one half so much faith as in this poor dog:- in such case I and ‘society’ might never have parted’. Neptune is the name of the Roman god or the seas, the dog in Pope’s story is a water dog, the keeper’s only companion. He doesn’t take the place of society, he exceeds it. He is unadulterated company. Pure company..
She actually goes a bit further with Poe’s unfinished work by suggesting how it might have ended.
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Good essay on the hubris of We Work in the NYRB. Astonishing to see the way that Neumann managed to get investors to part with huge amounts of funds, for a kind of hippy, unicorn style..."What i really dislike is when these small time snake oil merchants then extract monies from their ill gotten gains. That should never be allowed, the owner is hardly as described if 80% of his assets were loans or investments from somebody else. In the UK Phillip Green was a master of slowly filching money off companies he purchased, when 80% of it was never his to filch. By all means invest money in buildings, staff and ideas but not in your own selfish needs...
Jargon is a lazy approach to writing in my mind, the layperson should always be in mind if you are trying to sell a concept via a book or a non-fiction account.
Andy wrote: "On Lighthouses by Jazmina BarreraFor me, lighthouses are something I have relatively recently been fascinated by. It began when I read The Unremembered Place..."</i>
<i>Andy wrote: "[book:On Lighthouses by Jazmina Barrera
For me, lighthouses are something I have relatively recently been fascinated by. It began when I read [book:The Unremembered Place..."
did you see the Guardian photo story on the last man operated lighthouse in France, on the Gironde esturary? Some great images and that lighthouse had a chapel in it!
scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Relief on a day of heat:https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=......"
More relief needed:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=...
The book on Hitler's invasion of Russia led me to Andrew Roberts' Churchill biography (it is very interesting) and to Peter Longerich's biography of Goebbels. After Churchill became British Prime Minister, Goebbels devoted considerable attention to studying Churchill's personality. The propaganda chief noted in his diary that Churchill was "a strange mixture of heroism and triviality. If he had come to power in 1933 we wouldn't be where we are today. Moreover, I believe that he will be a hard nut to crack."
The Churchill biography's index has some interesting clues as to the man's traits: entries for alcohol consumption, sense of destiny, rhinoceros hide, self-mythologizing (side by side with some self-mocking), stubbornness, energy, ruthlessness... Churchill's father was a bad, bold man, who troubled the political establishment before his impulsiveness sank him. Winston was a bad, bold, brilliant man, which they liked no better.
I see from the New Yorker's on-line summer film preview that there's going to be an adaptation of Nella Larsen's Passing Rebecca Hall’s first film as writer and director, “Passing” (on Netflix Nov. 10, following a theatrical release), an adaptation of Nella Larsen’s classic novel, stars Tessa Thompson as a Black woman in Harlem in the nineteen-twenties whose best friend (Ruth Negga) has been passing as white.
Churchill did this painting of the Katoubia Mosque in Marrakech and gave it to Franklin Roosevelt. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=...
scarletnoir wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "I welcome more suggestions."Not easy, actually - I have perused a Wikipedia list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
but have little familiarity with ..."
I thought of one other, John Owen's "The Cotton Broker" (1921). This is not great literature - in fact, it's actually a very poor novel - but it is interesting if you're interested in Liverpool's cotton brokers, as I am. I've used it as a source more than once.
A little taster - or teaser - this morning.I am approaching the end of the second of two 'demanding' books - both by authors I like - and will review next week. So, as a reward to myself, I have selected two 'easy' reads by authors guaranteed to amuse and entertain me. (Do others 'reward themselves' for good behaviour? I do.)
The first is an ebook - The Awkward Black Man by Walter Mosley - a collection of short stories. Perfect for reading in bed, as the font can be enlarged to compensate for the subdued lighting which promotes somnolence.
The other is
by Jonathan Coe... I like Coe a lot, I like cinema, and I like Billy Wilder's films - so this one can't miss. Already, I have been amused by (and identified with) the narrator's need for comfort eating in the face of a stressful situation - Calista's weapon of choice being a Brie de Meaux fermier. Yum! Delicious! And, later, recalling her meeting with Wilder as a young girl, this exchange with a friend of the same age:'Is he famous?" I asked. This director.'
'I don't think so. He's about seventy, for one thing.'
Well, it made me laugh, anyway.
Veufveuve wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "I welcome more suggestions."Not easy, actually - I have perused a Wikipedia list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
but have litt..."
thanks veuf...will put that on my list!
Robert wrote: "The book on Hitler's invasion of Russia led me to Andrew Roberts' Churchill biography (it is very interesting) and to Peter Longerich's biography of Goebbels. After Churchill became British Prime..."
i heard a story that Goebbels always liked to read the foreign press, this was presumably between 1933-39 and that he was quite reverential about The Times, though not sure where i found this, maybe on a documentary
As for Churchill, any reading of his thoughts and commentary during the 1930s shows a man swimming against the appeasement tide, thank goodness we had him in 1940...
Apologies for being OT, but I would be most grateful if somebody could enlighten me on the use of "I" and "me".Why is it "Mr Wilder and me", rather than "Mr Wilder and I"? It doesn't sound particularly wrong, maybe because it is not a full sentence. But what about "Mr Wilder and me went dancing"? That would be wrong (in my understanding) because both are subjects and therefore nominative.
On the other hand "I" is now often used in the objective. "She didn't like my sister and I".
That seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon, I am sure (because it always makes me cringe) that I have never encountered it in a book. But there are Guardian writers who use the nominative "I" when it should be the objective "me"? It is only used when there is another object, nobody writes "She didn't like I". Which defies logic (at least mine).
Guardian writers are professionals, I am not even a native speaker, so I feel I must be in the wrong. Or that both is correct? Still puzzles me.
Georg wrote: "Why is it "Mr Wilder and me", rather than "Mr Wilder and I"? "Both could be grammatically correct, depending on the sentence, e.g. "Who likes dancing? Mr Wilder and me" - or "Mr Wilder and I like dancing".
In my view "She didn't like my sister and I" is grammatically incorrect, because you wouldn't say "she didn't like I".
Georg wrote: "Apologies for being OT, but I would be most grateful if somebody could enlighten me on the use of "I" and "me".Why is it "Mr Wilder and me", rather than "Mr Wilder and I"? It doesn't sound partic..."
my mother, a retired speech therapist always maintains that you say "my brother and i " not "my brother and me". She is rarely, if ever wrong, so i have followed a lot of her advice(though not all)..lol
Mod
Mario and I hate the heat.
No one hates the heat more than Mario and me.
Lljones wrote: "AB76 wrote: "my mother, a retired speech therapist always maintains that you say "my brother and i " not "my brother and me"..."Mario and I hate the heat.
No one hates the heat more than Mario an..."
hahaha!
EASTERN BLOC LITERATURE(1950-1990)Im still quite suprised at how there isnt a huge pile of Eastern Bloc lit on the market
Back in 2000, i was so fustrated with the lack of good novels from within that period, while aware it wasnt due to scarcity either.
Since then i have managed, via scouring bookshops and the net to gather quite a variety but there are still only a few or just a single novel by some authors in translation. Its been very good to see Christa Wolf has been well translated and bucks this trend, alongside Kundera but am not sure why more arent in circulation. More Skovrecky, Kouhout, Heym,Hein,Konrad and Polish authors would be good
Lljones wrote: "AB76 wrote: "my mother, a retired speech therapist always maintains that you say "my brother and i " not "my brother and me"..."Mario and I hate the heat.
No one hates the heat more than Mario an..."
How about adding a little smoke? After I go to the Dentist this a.m. I will be spending the rest of the day in the basement. I expect it to be sparkly clean or at least picked up by the time all returns to 'normalish' here on Sunday.
This has really been our summer of discontent.
In hindsight I see I completely missed the point. Unfortunately, that is often the case - being late to the party.
AB76 wrote: "Georg wrote: "Apologies for being OT, but I would be most grateful if somebody could enlighten me on the use of "I" and "me".Why is it "Mr Wilder and me", rather than "Mr Wilder and I"? It doesn'..."
Can I blame texting for this degradation of the English language?
On the lighter side. Each week I try to read - https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/03/ny...
(If you are not a NYT reader but have peeked too often already this month, and you have access to another browser, you might be able to take a peek that way.)
scarletnoir wrote: "So, as a reward to myself, I have selected two 'easy' reads by authors guaranteed to amuse and entertain me."I haven't read anything by Jonathan Coe, but based purely on his having written a biography of B.S. Johnson, I had assumed that he would belong in the category of "demanding" authors.
Didn't Anne say she liked thrillers? Here's one - OOPS - Amazon is in the dark! So here's a different link - https://www.waterstones.com/book/one-...PS - I got my e-audio from my local library in Amazon's hometown.
I had Marcus Aurelius Meditations on audio initially, but the narrator's voice was verging on the unctuous and it was like being read a sermon. I found myself nodding off after about ten minutes of it so I have now got a book. I will keep the audio version in case of insomnia...
Anne wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: "I have never read any Ruth Rendell. Any advice of where to start if I come across one?."I don't know Rendell's work very well at all, but she wrote her more straightforward cri..."
Robert wrote: "Anne wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: "I have never read any Ruth Rendell. Any advice of where to start if I come across one?."
I don't know Rendell's work very well at all, but she wrote her more straig..."
A Judgement in Stone is one of her best, The Wexford series are more straightforward crime novels with a social awareness which reminded me somewhat of the Beck series .
MK wrote: "Didn't Anne say she liked thrillers? Here's one"I don’t know about other readers, though from the comments of others here I suspect I am fairly rare in that I divide my reading into exclusive sub-genres, so that I think of “thrillers” (which I read on occasion, though by no means extensively) as stand-alone novels, in which the protagonist is involved in some sort of criminal or life-threatening situation which gets resolved in the course of the story (usually, but not necessarily, in the protagonist’s favor); think Gone Girl (which I have TBR), which I believe indulges in some elaborate and tricky plotting, or, in “classics”, which are more to my taste, Rogue Male, a more straight-forward type of manhunt thriller. Though the book you linked to is described as a “thriller”, for me the description makes it obvious that it is an installment in a detective series, a genre I almost completely avoid reading since having broken my addiction to
However, given the line “Think Villanelle - but she's on your side,” I cannot figure out what One Got Away has to do with poetry or why villanelles would not be on my side, as I rather like the form.
Jonathan Coe’s What a carve Up, was a riot. Great fun.@ AB76. No, I’m not from York, lovely city, but was born and raised in the East Riding. Incidentally, if you fancy reading Yorkshire novelists (in particular the East of the county) the late Helen Dunmore’s books will reward your interest.
I heard from my eldest great grandchild today, excited at her exam results and looking forward to A levels, English, Maths, Business Studies, Sociology and in one way I felt quite jealous and in another wished myself back teaching as I tried to explain about Stats in all but English. Then my youngest granddaughter wrote( there’s only a couple of years between them) and I sent her Let the right one in as recommended to start and have saved the other horrors to send at intervals. Thanks everyone.
Lass wrote: "Jonathan Coe’s What a carve Up, was a riot. Great fun.Couldn't agree more. It is very "English" though, not sure what an American reader would make of it.
@Bill: I abandoned "Gone Girl" after about 20%. Let me know if I have missed a good thriller, when/if you finish it, will you?
Georg wrote: "Apologies for being OT, but I would be most grateful if somebody could enlighten me on the use of "I" and "me".Why is it "Mr Wilder and me", rather than "Mr Wilder and I"? It doesn't sound partic..."
Basically I is used for the subject of a verb, me for the object or indirect object. One way to check is:
He gave the book to John and me is right - you would say he gave the book to me,
He gave the book to John and I is wrong - you wouldn't say he gave the book to I.
Also, and more complicatedly you wouldn't use myself unless reflexively. I hurt myself is right but he hurt myself is wrong.
Clear as mud?
MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Georg wrote: "Apologies for being OT, but I would be most grateful if somebody could enlighten me on the use of "I" and "me".Why is it "Mr Wilder and me", rather than "Mr Wilder and ..."
MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Georg wrote: "Apologies for being OT, but I would be most grateful if somebody could enlighten me on the use of "I" and "me".
Why is it "Mr Wilder and me", rather than "Mr Wilder and ..."
No, you can blame bad or non-existent teaching of grammar, or "don't correct the little darlings, you may upset them"
Bear by Marian Engel
I can imagine how shocking this must have been when it was first published in 1976, but I think the thunderbolt that Engel drops, not until late in the novel, is a very small part of what is a really refreshing and cleansing story.
This has been recently reissued, and I think it’s hard to hide from ‘that’ revelation for prospective readers. But really, that isn’t the point of the novel, and in some ways, does it a disservice.
It is a story about a city dweller who is required to work in total isolation, and relishes the solitude. A premise that may sound familiar to many after the last eighteen months or so.
Lou is a librarian, and despite her city life, rather a loner. She jumps at the opportunity to spend a summer on a remote Canadian island that happens to be dominated by men. Upon the death of the last remaining member of large family, a house and it’s contents are bequeathed to Lou’s employer, and she is dispatched to catalogue the library and ascertain its value.
So this was her kingdom: an octagonal house, a roomful of books and a bear… ‘I will be happy,’ she whispered to herself.
This was a very rewarding read. Rather than controversy here, there is energy and invigoration. It’s a very timely re-release.
AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "On Lighthouses by Jazmina BarreraFor me, lighthouses are something I have relatively recently been fascinated by. It began when I read [book:The Unrem..."
I did AB, enjoyed it as well.
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
Her Heart for a Compass (other topics)Mr Wilder & Me (other topics)
Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains (other topics)
My Golden Trades (other topics)
The House of Sleep (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jazmina Barrera (other topics)Jazmina Barrera (other topics)
Marian Engel (other topics)
Jonathan Coe (other topics)
B.S. Johnson (other topics)
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I think he pretty much dominates the industry in this country. A previous Prime Minister called for a Royal Commission into it a while back - he blames the dominance of the Murdoch media for Australia being backwards on climate policy.