What are we reading? 3rd August 2021

[AB76]

Miri wrote: "Does it have a bad reputation? I have been interested in their translation programmes in the past.

To be frank, I'm surprised I'm so lenient re Ishiguro's style myself because normally I'm quite i..."

i havent enjoyed any works by its major graduates, though i do like Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson

[MK]

Francis wrote: "Anne wrote: "I have to read The Secret Place by Tana French for a book group. I'm at page 50 and finding it unreadable, not just because the content isn't my sort of thing (it isn't..."

I'm having visions of book group dynamics. Since I am reading yet another British Library Crime Classic police procedural (Checkmate to Murder), I have some questions:

1. How is the decision made what book to read? Does the choice rotate among members? Is it a general consensus?

2. Who will be upset if another group member trashes the book? And will it matter to the group?

Now I want to be a fly on the wall for this review session.

All said tongue in cheek because I am essentially a loner and read what I read and have not ever been a member of a book group.

[Lass]

Am endeavouring to read, and possibly finish, several books I’ve happened upon over the years. Some more, successful than others, and a few may be getting the old heave ho. Currently on Sarah Churchwell’s Careless People, about the Jazz Age, Scott Fitzgerald and co. Long overdue, too, are the final chapters of Michael Rosen’s The Disappearance of Emile Zola, about his time in Hampstead following the fallout from the Dreyfus affair. Heaven knows I was enjoying it, before I put it to one side. It deserves my attention.

[Tam]

Miri wrote: "If people aren't gnashing their teeth and rendering their garments (Russian novels), setting out a string of expletives re their emotions (American), or making incredibly depressing jokes (Irish) t..."

Ha! but a trope or a cliche would not be recognised, as such, if there wasn't a smidgeon of truth about it. Personally I really quite like the well crafted put-down, but only if really well deserved. I think that Dorothy Parker must have been one of the past masters/mistresses of the trenchant put down. But she was equally hard on herself.

'Your parents they fuck you up' as Phillip Larkin famously said. I was interested, along time ago, to read that there was a far higher average to there being talented writers that came from either a tragic/difficult childhood background, than in other professions. But it isn't only the parents, as Larkin neglected to say, but many others who are often responsible, that have power over young children, and can warp them for their own gains. Is it better to be happy, or creatively inspired? I don't know. Hopefully a person can be both...

There is me off into La La land again...

[scarletnoir]

Miri wrote: "Does it have a bad reputation?"

On the contrary - it enjoys a very good reputation, with Ishiguro, McEwan and Enright being the star alumni... it's just that something creeps me out about the whole notion of a 'creative writing course' (We'll teach you how to be creative!), and I suspect, rightly or wrongly, that there is a risk of uniformity in the end product.

It's certainly the case that I am not an admirer of any of the alumni I have read in the Wikipedia list - but that's a small number.

Maybe, too, my reservations stem from the fact that the course was set up by Malcolm Bradbury (and others) whose execrable novel The History Man enjoyed considerable success in the 1970s. It is, apparently, meant to be funny - well, having attempted and failed to watch a Bradbury-scripted adaptation of Cold Comfort Farm only yesterday evening, either I am seriously missing something or Bradbury is one of the least funny 'humorous' writers who ever lived...

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "Miri wrote: "Does it have a bad reputation?"

On the contrary - it enjoys a very good reputation, with Ishiguro, McEwan and Enright being the star alumni... it's just that something creeps me out a..."

i am wondering if we might have a UEA alumni shadowing the TLS!

[Robert]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Anne wrote: "I have to read The Secret Place by Tana French for a book group. I'm at page 50 and finding it unreadable, (...) because it really really needs an editor. There are ove..."

Once, when my book group was assigned a book I found unpalatable, someone volunteered which page she was on when she gave up. It turned out that three of us had burned out at about the same point, and two had flipped forward and found that it was still bad....

[Robert]

A comment on leadership:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=...

[Robert]

MK wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "A "bird colonel" wears metal eagles as insignia. He outranks anyone below the rank of general."

Thank you - quite a big shot, then - and that explains the name!"..."

When I visited my Dad at the armory, he had that table of ranks posted on the wall. He got only as far as Lieutenant Colonel (which some wags call a "Light Colonel," but never made full Colonel, which some called "Full Bull."

[CCCubbon]

Miri wrote: "What I would be interested in (cos I wasn't posting here when I read it) is what people thought of the ending of "Klara and the Sun". I thought it was incredibly sad and I felt gloomy for hours aft..."
I found your post about Ishiguro sympathetic in that it was similar to my reaction to his work. I found Klara sad at the end, maybe not as devastating as Never Let me go , sad at the futility, abandonment.
As I often have found my thoughts about his work different from many others it was nice to get some similar views.
The ones that have stayed with me most , given me much to think about were. Never, Buried Giant, Klara, the one that I couldn't;t get om with was When we were orphans.
Incidentally and nothing to do with the above, your name comprises my maiden name four initials.

[SydneyH]

Russell wrote: "L’Oeuvre – Emile Zola"

This has been on my list for a while. I'm hoping it has the same sort of decadence I liked in Nana.

[Bill]

SydneyH wrote: "Russell wrote: "L’Oeuvre – Emile Zola"

This has been on my list for a while. I'm hoping it has the same sort of decadence I liked in Nana."

Those are the only two Zolas I own and I haven't yet read either.

[Bill]

scarletnoir wrote: "Malcolm Bradbury (and others) whose execrable novel The History Man enjoyed considerable success in the 1970s. It is, apparently, meant to be funny"

I regularly read novels in pairs, picking two novels with some perceived similarity in subject matter. I paired Stoner and The History Man as two novels about college professors. I though Bradbury’s novel was marvelous, far better than Williams’, and one of the funniest novels I’ve read, though also rather dark: in my review I compared it to Catch-22.

But, as @Hushpuppy said, humor is individual and cultural. On the latest Marlon and Jake Read Dead People, Jake wished Ulysses were written by Frank McCourt, because he wanted it to be funnier! Ulysses not funny! And I always say if you’re reading Ulysses and not laughing, you’re doing it wrong.

[SydneyH]

Bill wrote: "Those are the only two Zolas I own and I haven't yet read either."

Nana is a real favourite of mine. I read it because Flaubert was enthusiastic about it.

[[deleted user]]

SydneyH wrote: "Russell wrote: "L’Oeuvre – Emile Zola"

This has been on my list for a while. I'm hoping it has the same sort of decadence I liked in Nana."

I fear L’Oeuvre may disappoint in that regard. Plenty of nudity, not a lot of outright debauchery.

[SydneyH]

Russell wrote: "Plenty of nudity, not a lot of outright debauchery."

By 'decadence' I didn't mean debauchery so much as a sort of opulence in description. In Nana, there are lots of detailed descriptions of theatres and high society - a real contrast to some of the other texts.

[[deleted user]]

SydneyH wrote: "Russell wrote: "Plenty of nudity, not a lot of outright debauchery."

By 'decadence' I didn't mean debauchery so much as a sort of opulence in description. In Nana, there are lots of detailed descriptions of theaters and high society..."

Oh, well I guess that shows what I typically think about. In addition to the ateliers, there is a lot of excellent description of street life and dinner parties and cityscape views and humble villages down river. The characters here do not belong in high society. The nearest to that are the scenes at the Salon, though even here we are made to understand that the crowds are largely bourgeois.

[Bill]

scarletnoir wrote: "The women in question invariably ended up dead..."

By no means invariably. I recall only a few Bond ladies – Vesper Lynd, Jill Masterson, Tracy Draco – who come to a bad end. Tatiana Romanova comes out of From Russia With Love in better shape than Bond, who has his “Reichenbach Falls” moment at the end of that novel. As I remember Honeychile Ryder (Doctor No) is better by a nose job for her encounter with 007. And Little Nell is one thing, but certainly no author would be so heartless as to kill off a character named Pussy Galore.

[scarletnoir]

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Malcolm Bradbury (and others) whose execrable novel The History Man enjoyed considerable success in the 1970s. It is, apparently, meant to be funny"

I regularly read novels in ..."

You have in one post selected three of my least favourite novels - ones where I can absolutely not feel in tune with the authors. It proves definitively that humour is in the eye of the beholder. (As for the authors - I like some Joyce, and have sworn to never again read Bradbury or Williams.)

BTW - did you really read 'Stoner' as a comedy?

[scarletnoir]

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "The women in question invariably ended up dead..."

By no means invariably. I recall only a few Bond ladies – Vesper Lynd, Jill Masterson, Tracy Draco – who come to a bad end. T..."

Yes, I know - I was exaggerating... I plead guilty.

(The girl in 'Dr No' was not ever linked with the 'bad guy' as far as I remember...)

[Robert]

Miri wrote: "If people aren't gnashing their teeth and rendering their garments (Russian novels), setting out a string of expletives re their emotions (American), or making incredibly depressing jokes (Irish) t..."

I once teased my Russian friend that her countrymen Ilf and Petrov were right-- melancholy really is a Russian cultural trait. She: "You live in a country where it snows nine months of the year and we'll see how optimistic you are!"
Now the heat is on, the permafrost is getting soggy... I wonder if the country is less melancholy? Probably not; it's steeped into the culture.

[Robert]

I hope that this site can continue.

[CCCubbon]

Help!
Someone recently mentioned something about UEA and this site being ‘stalked’ . Maybe I am mistaken, meant to go back and check the threads but have tried and failed. Does anyone remember?

[Greenfairy]

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..."
I agree, this does seem to be a right- wing trait. Witness Bolsinaro making light of Covid saying it was nothing, and to " stop dying like women". Montefiore does come from a time when boys were brought up to act tough and casual sexism abounded.

[AB76]

Robert wrote: "I hope that this site can continue."

am sure it can, what made you wonder if it cannot?

[AB76]

CCCubbon wrote: "Help!
Someone recently mentioned something about UEA and this site being ‘stalked’ . Maybe I am mistaken, meant to go back and check the threads but have tried and failed. Does anyone remember?"

twas me CCC! being a bit mischievous that we could have UEA alumni boiling with rage at my comments!

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "The women in question invariably ended up dead..."

By no means invariably. I recall only a few Bond ladies – Vesper Lynd, Jill Masterson, Tracy Draco – who come to a bad end. T..."

when Sean Connery died, the BBC re-ran the clip from Goldfinger with the Pussy Galore introduction and it still makes me laugh Connery's expression....

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Malcolm Bradbury (and others) whose execrable novel The History Man enjoyed considerable success in the 1970s. It is, apparently, meant to be funny"

I regularly read novels in ..."

i like that reading in pairs tactic Bill, i must try it

[Hushpuppy]

CCCubbon wrote: "Help!
Someone recently mentioned something about UEA and this site being ‘stalked’ . Maybe I am mistaken, meant to go back and check the threads but have tried and failed. Does anyone remember?"

I see AB has replied now, but worth remembering for next time that you can search for this by entering e.g., "UEA" in the box at the top right of this page, below the Ersatz tabs (Photos, Members, etc.): "Search discussion posts".

[Fuzzywuzz]

Billy Summers by Stephen King is out now. I'm very tempted. I've got 4 days off work and a bit of time on my hands. The lure of the bookshop is very hard to ignore.

I'm also going to the library today to collect an Ian Rankin Book, Strip Jack.

It's my MIL 80th birthday this weekend. It's almost a year since I saw her last. My sister-in-law is organising a family get together and I'm a bit nervous about being indoors with 10+ persons.

Mini-fuzzywuzz will be getting her A-level results next Tuesday, so there's a bit of anxiety about that.

Strange times. Coffee, something sweet and a good reading session is my plan for today.

[Greenfairy]

Anne Seba; Ethel Rosenberg:
What happened to the Rosenbergs was little short of human sacrifice.
Seba writes of a woman who just didn't fit with the ideas of what in '50s America made a perfect wife and mother.
Ethel could had a glittering career as a singer but when she met and fell madly in love with Julius- who loved her in return - she dedicated herself to her children. Having been on the recieving end of poor parenting herself she was always fearful of not measuring up as a mother.
She had little interest in fashion, or the money to dress well and this was highlighted at her trial as the way She was dressed marked her as " other". Her trial was a travesty which would probably be thrown out of court today ( one hopes so anyway)
The book made me ponder why we allow monsters like Hoover,
McCarthy and the likes of or own Enoch Powell or Farage to create folk devils for us? Is it enough just to get their poisonous views widely publicised?

[CCCubbon]

Thank you AB and Husgpuppy.
I did know that I could use a search facility but I was looking in the wrong place foolishly. Tested it out and shall use it again now.
AB it occurred to me that it might be where the Justine and Blackbird poems are wandering but it seems I was mistaken.
Must be dear Justine still working her magic (421, 380 views respectively now)

[CCCubbon]

Some may be interested to spend a few minutes over on A place for a Poem reading Robert Frost’s monologue poem called A servant to Servants.
It is fairly long , a woman talking about her life, housework, cooking;

‘It’s rest I want–there, I have said it out–
From cooking meals for hungry hired men
And washing dishes after them–from doing
Things over and over that just won’t stay done.’

Yes, cooking, washing up, cooking, washing up……..
And it’s about the treatment of mental illness, uncle who wouldn’t keep his clothes on, confined in a cage in a room, the cage made from hickory poles…
It’s an interesting read

[Lljones]

Machenbach wrote: "Men usually tend to be depicted with their books - often sat in their library, hand on an open book, staring off into the mi..."

All three of my copies of Kertész's On Reading are in a box somewhere, so I can't get the male/female ratio at the moment.

[scarletnoir]

CCCubbon wrote: "Help!
Someone recently mentioned something about UEA and this site being ‘stalked’ . Maybe I am mistaken, meant to go back and check the threads but have tried and failed. Does anyone remember?"

I am pretty sure it was a joke by someone, because I had posted a disparaging comment about the whole notion of teaching "creative" writing, and because I dissed Malcolm Bradbury, who set up the UEA course.

I honestly don't think the thought police were involved... yet, anyway!

[scarletnoir]

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "Strange times.

Indeed. I wish you and yours the very best.

Our rather minute 'core family' of 6 has been able to meet on and off for some time, either outside in the garden or with some absurdly tricky indoor seating/masks/open windows etc. Madame greatly regrets not being able to return to France for nearly 2 years, now.

Hard times, for practically everyone...

[scarletnoir]

Machenbach wrote: "Russell wrote: "One thing that strikes me is that they are all women! ."
Men usually tend to be depicted with their books - often sat in their library, hand on an open book, staring off into the mi..."

Mach, that's an interesting hypothesis - do you know if it's ever been studied academically?

In an attempt to check its validity in a quick/crude fashion, I Googled some useful terms - and indeed, there were more women depicted reading than men. On this website, the few men included a boy and an African-American, so presumably individuals lacking the power of the wealthy white male:
http://www.amreading.com/2017/01/18/o...

[Fuzzywuzz]

scarletnoir wrote: "Fuzzywuzz wrote: "Strange times.

Indeed. I wish you and yours the very best.

Our rather minute 'core family' of 6 has been able to meet on and off for some time, either outside in the garden or ..."

Thanks, scarletnoir. Masks and open windows are a certainty, but would happily sit outside if weather permits. Hopefully covid will recede enough for safe travel.

[Fuzzywuzz]

Good things....

I went to the library to collect the Ian Rankin book I had reserved and was thrilled that it was, in fact a trio of novels in one: Strip Black, The Black Book and Mortal Causes.

At the book shop, a member of staff was telling me he has been up since 5 am this morning because his cat decided to wake him up. I fondly remembered the two moggies, KitKat and Bandit that were pets during my teenage years. They used to torment my Mum by using her head as a paw and claw cushion. It used to drive her bonkers being woke up in that manner...

[[deleted user]]

Machenbach wrote: "Russell wrote: "One thing that strikes me is that they are all women! ."
Men usually tend to be depicted with their books..."

That explanation is highly persuasive and insightful.

[[deleted user]]

SydneyH wrote: "Russell wrote: "Plenty of nudity, not a lot of outright debauchery."

By 'decadence' I didn't mean debauchery so much as a sort of opulence in description..."

Thinking about it, a good option for scenes of opulence is one of the earlier novels in the sequence, “La Curée” (The Kill), if you don’t mind the rapacity of the newly-rich.

[[deleted user]]

“Possession”– A.S. Byatt (1990)

Capacious, intricate and inventive, a portrait of two Victorian poets immersed in the high culture of their age, the woman reclusive but with a soul that is harsh and fierce, the man expansive and, so it appears, self-admiring. It is full of pastiches, quotations, and half-stated references, which the reader is flatteringly assumed to recognize and understand – Milton, Tennyson, Ruskin, E.B. Browning, Lyell, Goethe, Balzac, Sand, to name but a few of the many.

Also a plausible portrait of the in-fighting among modern academic researchers when two of them find buried treasure, a cache of previously unsuspected love letters passing between the two poets – which elicit an intense textual analysis to discover the answers to intimate questions.

The poems show their character and provide clues. The style of Christabel is concise and image-laden - rhyming couplets or triplets of two, three or four feet. Randolph by contrast is discursive and looping. He writes page after page of diffuse blank verse, as if he has no rhyme in him. The poems are not especially remarkable, until we come to the long central piece, The Fairy Melusine, a fragment of a chivalric romance by Christabel. It has to show, for the plot, a merger of the two styles. It is brilliantly done, and memorable on its own.

So, if some of the pastiches are too Victorian-thorough, others succeed very well. I liked the Grimm-ish fairy story The Glass Coffin with its melodious twanging, and the mocking rendition of an almost unintelligible research paper, and the Breton tale of the dancing sailor with his long long legs and his laughing mouth.

I also liked the topographical descriptions, e.g. of the North Yorkshire Moors, and this of the Lincolnshire Wolds:

“The valleys are deep and narrow, some wooded, some grassy, some ploughed. The ridges run sharply against the sky, always bare. The rest of the large, sleepy county is marsh or fen or flat farmed plain.”

One theme of the book is that the value of close critical analysis is exaggerated. Not wrong, because analysis points the way on the trail, and ABS herself places clues everywhere. Just not the be-all and end-all. An important late character, asked about the meaning of the Breton tale, says at a point which feels like the crest of a wave: “The stories come before the meanings.” Christabel agrees: “Reason must sleep.”

A greater theme is the primacy of love. All the principal characters are initially unsympathetic to some degree, at least to this reader. We have been led to judge too soon. We find as we go forward that there are private sorrows even the scholars cannot penetrate, and that we are reading not just the love story of the poets but several others as well, threaded together. The dénouement is wonderfully accomplished.

Overall, a very satisfying read and a worthy winner of the Booker. I think it will be one of the modern novels that survives the filtering process and becomes a classic.

Footnote: The plot involves a vital legal snag which is not much known, pertaining to the ownership of copyright in letters. It looks as though ASB took careful advice on the issue.

[Bill]

scarletnoir wrote: "BTW - did you really read 'Stoner' as a comedy?"

I didn’t read Stoner as a comedy: I paired it with The History Man purely on the basis of the academic settings and the main characters being college professors; in fact, it wasn’t entirely clear to me before reading it that Bradbury’s book was a comic novel.

I would say that Stoner, backed up by The Secret History, and later confirmed by Real Life, has led me to believe that novels set in academia need to take an essentially comic approach to be successful.

[Georg]

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Bought for 10 cent this book has been lingering on a shelf for some years. I love long books, if the story is good I do not want it to end.
When Marlon James said in the podcast WSS would be the book he would take to a desert island I thought: What? But that book is only 150 pages! That made me want to read it.

While I personally would still take Bleak House I can understand why he singled it out.
WSS is a book where "Show, don't tell." is executed in an exemplary way. The history of the setting is fundamental, yet JR only alludes to it. History is embodied by her characters, who have been shaped by it. The same goes for Rochester, who has been shaped by his cultural background.

What I had not expected was that the first-person-narrative would be shared between Antoinette and Rochester. What a great idea.

I do not think I have ever read a book that leaves so much room for the reader's imagination and interpretation.
I am generally most reluctant to use the word "masterpiece". With WSS I am tempted...

Re "tandem books": Jane Eyre and WSS would seem to make the most natural tandem. Having read Jane Eyre many years ago I am not sure at all whether that tandem would be good or should rather be avoided.

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "Russell wrote: "One thing that strikes me is that they are all women! ."
Men usually tend to be depicted with their books - often sat in their library, hand on an open book, staring off into the mi..."

i like that theory Mach...very true

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "Fuzzywuzz wrote: "Strange times.

Indeed. I wish you and yours the very best.

Our rather minute 'core family' of 6 has been able to meet on and off for some time, either outside in the garden or ..."

hard times if you are sensible, i agree. i think a lot of careless people are following every commandment by our clown of a PM and putting people at needless risk...

[giveusaclue]

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "Billy Summers by Stephen King is out now. I'm very tempted. I've got 4 days off work and a bit of time on my hands. The lure of the bookshop is very hard to ignore.

I'm also going to the library ..."

All best wishes for mini's A level results and the mil's party. God daughter's son (that makes me feel old!) awaits his results. Our breath is bated.

[Sandya]

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..."


Interesting. I don't read much modern fiction other than thrillers and SciFi. I am more interested in history or biography. I do enjoy classic fiction because at least it has been tested by time. In my teens, I explored modern fiction at home-my Dad had a large collection, but it was all white guy stuff and I see now had nothing to say to me. John Masters, Kingsley Amis, etc etc. As for women writers-the same seemed true-I am not interested in Edna O'Brien for example. I am not Irish and I don't care. I am tired of Americans in particular telling me Ireland, a tiny country, is more important than India, China, or Africa. Their sentimentality about Ireland is unreal.

Life is too short to read Dismal Doris (Lessing. I tried. Ugh) or even Dismaller Atwood.....

As for modern fiction by BIPOC writers, I am glad it is out there-finally- but I don't read it because I lived racism. I started White Teeth by Zadie Smith but it made my stomach turn because I experienced the events described in the 70s. The 1970s were utter hell if you were an Indian growing up in London. (I include the rock and roll world in this-they were as racist as the rest). I couldn't finish it. White people should be reading these books, not me.

Indian writers are now commonly published in the West, but I didn't grow up in India, so their books seem as irrelevant as Edna O'Brien. There isn't much written about the increasing numbers of us who live and work and try to succeed in the West-It's all about arranged marriages and a suitable boy. Yuck. I spent my teens and twenties fending that off and I don't need to read about it. Even Southall life was more interesting and diverse than this! Why not write a book about an unmarried Indian woman from Southall who got a Pilot's License at age 64, having already got the first PhD in her community? Do you think this was easy? But no-it always has to be Hindu Romeo meets Muslim Juliet blah blah blah. Majnun and Laila is a very old story and teen romance is not interesting. I prefer reading Indian history, a huge gap in my education-we learned nothing about it in school-a shocking omission that still exists.

The timing of all these was wrong for me and now I no longer care, having made up my mind on issues without benefit of validation or insight from fiction. The exceptions to this are 1) I read SciFi because it is the only genre that even attempts to deal with what we, as scientists, do and 2) I have always enjoyed and read fantasy because it provided an escape from the racism, abuse, and microaggressions I have encountered through life. I would still rather immerse myself in Mopsa the Fairy than any modern novel.

[Bill]

Georg wrote: "Re "tandem books": Jane Eyre and WSS would seem to make the most natural tandem. Having read Jane Eyre many years ago I am not sure at all whether that tandem would be good or should rather be avoided."

Well, that was one of my pairings, and I'll let you judge from my reaction whether it was advisable. I thought the first part of Wide Sargasso Sea was among the most well crafted works of fiction I’ve read, but the book as a whole didn’t hang together for me. The position of the young woman at the end of Part One did not seem to me such that any Englishman would make his fortune or even much improve his economic or social status by marrying her, thus the lack of justification for the marriage which is the foundation of Parts Two and Three undermined their narrative impact. I also had problems with (Rochester)’s behavior in general (more details in my review, where I also explain the reason for the parenthetical (Rochester)).

Boy, Marlon and Jake sure don’t care much for Jane Eyre. Jake in particular is becoming a kind of bête noire for me: I think the fact that he’s an editor for a major publisher provides some hints of one of the problems with present day fiction. He doesn’t seem willing to let a book become what it wants to be, but wants to reshape it into a similarity with something he considers more successful (in an artistic if not a financial sense). For example, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great book and Magic Realism in Gabo’s hands is wonderful, but a slight hint of supernaturalism in Jane Eyre is bad writing that needs to be corrected. In the latest episode he wishes Jane Austen had written Jane Eyre. Yikes! Better if Charlotte Brontë had written Persuasion; at least Captain Wentworth might be believable as a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars.

[MK]

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "Billy Summers by Stephen King is out now. I'm very tempted. I've got 4 days off work and a bit of time on my hands. The lure of the bookshop is very hard to ignore.

I'm also going to the library ..."

Thanks to my local library branch I do not have to spend a measly $10 for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as the library has paperbacks on 'honor return' shelves, that is, they are not checked out. So this Quentin Tarantino opus is up for my next bedtime read.