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What are we reading? 25th October 2021
giveusaclue wrote: "Cabbie wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Of course, 'y' is also a vowel in Welsh - we should challenge our English friends to pronounce 'Ynysybwl'!"And of course there are differences in accent/pronunc..."
Czech also lacks a lot of vowels,. i remember staying somewhere near Brno where the town was unpronouncable to me, its called Bystrc
AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Cabbie wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Of course, 'y' is also a vowel in Welsh - we should challenge our English friends to pronounce 'Ynysybwl'!"And of course there are differenc..."
Bet a Scouser would be able to pronounce it!
I am at a loss to understand why
was deemed to be worthy of the Prix Goncourt.It was well written and moderately entertaining until he seemed to run out of ideas how to pull it all together in the last part.
The idea is all but original, the characters left me cold and I found the (intended) "philosophical" dimension skin-deep at best.
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Cabbie wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Of course, 'y' is also a vowel in Welsh - we should challenge our English friends to pronounce 'Ynysybwl'!"And of course there ..."
if you mean the czech town, when i was there i inserted my own letter i, to pronounce it as Bystr "i"c(Brystreetch)
Georg wrote: "I am at a loss to understand why was deemed to be worthy of the Prix Goncourt.It was well written and moderately entertaining until he seemed to run out of ideas ho..."
do you read the French language as well as you do English? Or was the Gallimard edition the only copy of the book on Goodreads?
Gpfr wrote: "except for the last bit: ty gwyn."Ah, you almost speak Breton then, as that'd be 'ti gwenn'!
(Honestly, I actually had no idea this was Welsh Mach had written 😂! I thought I was making a - cheap - joke, and that it was just a way Mach had to express some grumbling, the way one would write some random letters, or symbols %&*~£$@.)
This phonetic entry is quite helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IP....
But @scarlet/@MB, do you not have "u" pronounced the French way (y in phonetic, confusingly - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IP...) in Welsh?
PS@Webber: thanks for explaining further!
Serendipity. I tend to download and print stuff from the Net which results in piles on my desk/PC stand. Periodically I shuffle through stuff and find an - ooh! I want that book. Several days ago I did a dive and found a 2019 Michael Dirda column. The reason I kept it was the mention of
.It's pricey for me, so I thought maybe I'll gift it to myself as a holiday present. Then today I was thumbing through https://hbswarehousesale.com/ and found it at a several-dollar lessor price than Amazon even with shipping costs. So statesiders here might want to peruse the sale - just in case. (I'm not including others because I fear the shipping costs might outweigh even the sale prices.)
A quick catch-up on what I’ve been reading..Devils in Daylight by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki , translated by J. Keith Vincent.
Leaning heavily and without apology on Hitchcock, for plot and style, and Poe( The Gold-Bug), for detail, this novella from 1918 is a highly enjoyable indulgence.
Takahashi, an author who has been working through the night to meet a deadline, receives a call from his wealthy and self-indulgent friend, Sonomura, who he knows suffers from mental illness. What he tells him certainly sounds bizarre, though Sonomura is only willing to reveal so much over the telephone. Sonomura claims that "A murder is going to be committed..”, later that day, and that he wants to go watch. The claim is wild enough both for Takahashi to not only be concerned about his friend’s state of mind, but also to intrigue him sufficiently to agree to meet up.
This is a tale of voyeurism, madness and fantasy; a question of what is real and what is not. Unsurprisingly, it is an exceptionally cinematic novel, full of deception, and the games the mind can play. In terms though of explanations, there is absolute clarity, and its disturbing nature is the real appeal of the work.
The Union of Synchronised Swimmers by Cristina Sandu
Sandu has translated this short novel herself, which tells the story by way of a collection from each of six women from an unnamed Eastern European country. They find their joy and escape from their jobs at the local cigarette factory in the nearby river, working on synchronised swimming routines and are soon ‘discovered’, and in due course, form the national team.
It is sometime after that the women write, and though it is never revealed, there is suspicion is that they may have defected. The women, now scattered around the world, are each in different locations and at different places in their lives. In common is the theme of dislocation, and of trying to survive and of a striving for connection in their new lives.
And, Requiem for a Soldier by Oleg Pavlov, translated by Ann Gunin.
This is the last in the excellent trilogy, Tales from the Last Days, previously there were Captain of the Steppe and The Matiushin Case. The earlier two are extremely dark and quite wonderfully written, though never easy reads. The books loosely form a trilogy; only so, as they draw on Pavlov’s own experiences as a prison guard in what is now, Kazakhstan.
This isn’t as dark, or quite as good I think, though always interesting, set as it is, in the last days of the Soviet Union.
Alyosha, a soldier who has completed his army service in a faraway and desolate land, is now serving in a military infirmary waiting to finally get 'the finest steel tooth' as an 'eternal' gift promised by his deaf commander, who is on his way out, and aware that he will need the tooth no more.
The opening scene here, in a camp on the wind-lashed steppe in November, as winter begins to grip, promises much, but this doesn’t dive into the depths of despair that his earlier two books did.
Andy wrote: "A quick catch-up on what I’ve been reading..Devils in Daylight by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki , translated by J. Keith Vincent.
Leanin..."
i wasnt aware of the Tanizaki novel and i'm a fan of his, thanks Andy!
AB76 wrote (294): "Georg wrote: "I am at a loss to understand why was deemed to be worthy of the Prix Goncourt.It was well written and moderately entertaining until he seemed to run o..."
I've read the Geman translation. The English one, afaik, will be published later this month. Watch the G for (probably gushing) reviews to come.
Lljones wrote: "Friends invited me to join them at a movie theater Monday, for premiere of "The French Dispatch". Despite vaccination record & mask requirements, I didn't feel ready for such an outing yet, so decl..."Me also LLJ. Big Anderson fan.
Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: @Shelflife - I've only read 1 and 2 of The Copenhagen Trilogy (which I insist on regarding as auto fiction). I have 3 ... but in Danish, which I bravely/foolishly said I would atte..."A lot of A Gentleman in Moscow is in a hotel.
Much darker, is an unsung favourite, an Australian novella..Into Bones like Oil by Kaaron Warren
And a coming of age novel I recall, a fair bit of which, is set in a hotel in the Italian Riviera..
Portofino by Frank Schaeffer
scarletnoir wrote: "After all the highbrow hotel novels, may I lower the tone a bit by proposing Agatha Christie's At Bertram's Hotel, featuring the irrepressible Miss Marple?"Lower the tone? Not at all..
I read so much Agatha Christie as a teenager. I think she really liked using hotels as a setting.
The Pale Horse is one of my favourites. The TV production with Julia McKenzie is excellent also.
AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "A quick catch-up on what I’ve been reading..Devils in Daylight by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki , translated by J. Keith Vincent.[bookcover:Devils in Daylight|303..."
It’s very short AB. But lots of fun.
Really enjoyed reading the Hotel recommendations. Lots of contributions. Thanks for introducing it Shelflife..
Just searched through my back pages..
Billiards at the Hotel Dobray by Dušan Šarotar
Atlantic Hotel by João Gilberto Noll
Hotel Silence by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
The Hotel of the Three Roses by Augusto De Angelis
The Dead Mountaineer's Inn by Arkady Strugatsky
The Green Man by Kingsley Amis
The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis
The Blue Room by Georges Simenon
Maigret and the Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon
My reviews should be at the links.
Slawkenbergius wrote: "Lev Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (translated by Rosamund Bartlett) 
"Big 'like'. I'm eyeing off the Maudes' translation. Constance Garnett's translation doesn't seem to be commonly used for critical editions.
@ Slawkenbergius: Great review there! I can see I should have read Anna Karenina ages ago.-----
Love the hotel titles, too, so much to discover! Thanks from me as well for all the pointers.
I like that hotels are such inbetween spaces: People on holiday, people maybe lost in translation, people doing their business (...), people observing others and taking their time, maybe taking illicit time with others - generally having a not everyday outlook on life. (Unless they live in a hotel, of course, as some writers did, I think!) And then you can also get the various takes of the employees, which produce largely divergent points of view.
Love your quote selections, gpfr.
@ Andy and link servivce: That's wonderful, many thanks!
I see that Bill's shelves bring an impressive hotel harvest as well.
I will have a hunt this weekend at the latest, but I am sure there aren't that many here!
Hushpuppy, you are right, many of Zweig's texts are set in hotels, on ships or on journeys of all kinds.
____
I also enjoy learning about Welsh.
(I learnt Scots Gaelic for a while, which attracted more attention than I expected in Highland pubs. Must have been the unusual accent!)
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Georg wrote #257:
the equivalent of a cold shower:As an ex-Catholic only believing in the beneficial effects of cold showers as far as saunas are concerned, I should stress that I would certainly never want to cool down Mach, as the addressee of my anecdote for his files (that's the why), in this rude manner - nor anyone else here!
Can't give any more details on which book/ person, sorry...
Why? Respectively: why not?
As to the why not: Knowing someone really well who knows the author well in their turn, I was approached by this person, who was happy for the author, but also a bit puzzled about the commission. They asked me, as I am a little knowledgeable (though no expert!) on the subject, whether I thought this a feasible approach. I replied as you read (probably in slightly colourful speech bubbles!), and was interested enough to follow up on this and read the book when it came out. Not feeling like naming names, for this reason of an, if indirect, personal connection.
Having finished all of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock texts, I’ve acquired the Oxford University Press Gothic Tales. Sherlock Holmes was a great rationalist, and so if he encountered supernatural phenomena he would restrict his investigations to what was ‘actually possible’. These stories are sometimes in a different mode. There are some genuine ghost stories in the collection, which makes sense, considering that Conan Doyle became a spiritualist in later life. The Edgar Allan Poe influence is recognizable at times, though Conan Doyle is unquestionably a better writer (the texts are all written in Conan Doyle’s euphonious Victorian style). The quality varies, understandably, considering that they are written over a very long stretch of time. My favourite is probably "The Beetle Hunter", a story beginning with a mysterious job advert, a bit like "The Redheaded League".
This collection isn’t as good as the Sherlock canon, but I still enjoyed it (the introduction to the volume is also good – I was unaware that Conan Doyle received his knighthood for military propaganda). I grieve once again finishing with Conan Doyle. @Bill, can you recommend anything for me to investigate?
I’m now turning to the greatly anticipated Pnin by Volodya Nabokovikins
SydneyH wrote: "@Bill, can you recommend anything for me to investigate?"If you’re looking for more Conan Doyle, the non-Holmes books I’ve read are:
Tales of Unease - This seems to be a subset of Gothic Tales, though it doesn’t include “The Beetle Hunter” (which I haven’t read – guess I have to hunt down the larger collection) – I found the final story, “The Nightmare Room” quite interesting, a kind of riddle-tale, like Daphne Du Maurier’s “The Old Man”.
The Complete Professor Challenger Stories - I really enjoyed these SF tales, my favorite Conan Doyle next to Holmes, except for the final one, The Land of Mist, a work of full-out Spiritualist propaganda.
The Maracot Deep – A Challenger novel in all but name, but not quite on the same level – undersea adventurers encounter the survivors of Atlantis.
Brigadier Gerard: The Complete Collection: The 18 Adventures / Uncle Bernac / A Foreign Office Romance – These are good stories, but I didn’t find them particularly memorable; Conan Doyle puts on the persona of a French officer under Napoleon. A number of readers are more enthusiastic about them than I was.
The White Company and Sir Nigel – Enjoyable historical novels of medieval knighthood. The first book contains a scene in which the heroes are duped by a seller of relics – a surprisingly skeptical take from a future believer in Spirtiualism.
I’ve also read two non-fiction Spiritualist works - The Coming of the Fairies and The Edge of the Unknown, the former inspired a lengthy review from me, the latter is a collection of articles on fantastic events, haunting and séances and such, that tend to “prove” the tenets of Spiritualism.
SydneyH wrote: "Having finished all of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock texts, I’ve acquired the Oxford University Press Gothic Tales. Sherlock Holmes was a great rationalist, and so if he encountered supernatural phenomen..."
I have Gothic Tales on my TBR list, looks like a mighty volume...400 pages i think
AB76 wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "Having finished all of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock texts, I’ve acquired the Oxford University Press Gothic Tales. Sherlock Holmes was a great rationalist, and so if he encountered super..."
Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales is good for those in an uncanny mood.
Machenbach wrote: "Seems like all you have to do to win the Booker is write a ‘Tour de Force’; they always seem to win. Remarkable more writers haven’t twigged to this really. Idiots."i read a Galgut novels about 20 years ago and i wasnt that impressed, i love most south african literature but less the modern wing of it(though Zakes Mda is fab and Andre Brink has written some of the best novels i have read, which were "Devils Valley" and "Rumours of Rain")
Devils Valley(1998) is a strange, unsettling Afrikaner tale of a valley lost in time and its inhabitants which could chill the blood
Rumours of Rain(1978) was just a superb "state of the nation" tale of apartheid and its impact on white africans, with an unsympathetic narrator, a man who opposes the South African system but rarely voices it and his struggles with his family and his son, a veteran of the Angolan wars. (This was on a Booker shortlist). My youngest brother who rarely reads novels, loved it
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My entire relationship with the Booker List changed last year.
Machenbach wrote: "Lljones wrote: "My entire relationship with the Booker List changed last year. .."Who won last year again?
Edit: Ok I looked it up. Haven’t read it yet though I have a copy."
Jesus, I thought last year was the whole Atwood-Evaristo Solomon nonsense, but nope, that was 2 years ago of course... A few (e)TLS people have actually said a lot of positive things on Shuggie Bain.
Machenbach wrote: "I wonder if the tie is what Jonesie was referring to nevertheless."I suspect so...
Machenbach wrote: "I wonder if the tie is what Jonesie was referring to nevertheless."If we're speculating on what "Jonesie", who I prefer to designate as Our Illustrious Moderator, is referring to, my guess is that it's the neglect of Apeirogon, which was eliminated in the long- to shortlist round.
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Agree, though I don't often reach for the 'uncanny'.
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Nor I.
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I've replaced the term 'pandemic' with 'suspended animation'.
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That too. Mostly, though, I was referring to the whole annual eight-week exercise of tallying the "Not the Booker" event for 6+ years.
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"Big 'like'..."
Big 'like' from me too. I will seek out the Bartlett translation when I next take on AK.
Bill wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "If you’re looking for more Conan Doyle, the non-Holmes books I’ve read are ."Wow, what a list! Good to know I have plenty more to investigate.
AB76 wrote: "I have Gothic Tales on my TBR list, looks like a mighty volume...400 pages i think"500 - I'm not going to lie, I was keen to go onto my next read.
Machenbach wrote: "Haven’t read any of them. In fact I haven’t read many South African writers at all: some Coetzee"I could be on the Coetzee train again before long (also stops at Nomates station).
Machenbach wrote: "Seems like all you have to do to win the Booker is write a ‘Tour de Force’; they always seem to win. Remarkable more writers haven’t twigged to this really. Idiots."Perhaps some day they'll give the Booker to a champion cyclist by mistake: "What? He won the Tour de France? I thought you said he wrote a Tour de Force! "
CCCubbon wrote: "I meant to ask before, what sound does y make in Welsh?"As Mach says, the vowel sounds vary. In the place-name Ynysybwl, they are all 'uh'.
A common word is 'dyn' = man - there, it is pronounced 'ee', so 'deen'.
Bill wrote: "Eight "hotel" books on my shelves, not all novels, only one of which (Grand Hotel) I believe has been mentioned.Hotel
Hotel Bemelmans
[book:Hotel de Drea..."
I'm a bit surprised by the Hailey - or maybe he's a better writer than I imagine, not having read him!
Cabbie wrote: "cae dy geggNo-one would ever tell me the real meaning of this, just not to say it in polite company."
It just means "shut up!" (literally, 'shut your mouth')... like the French 'ferme ta gueule'.
giveusaclue wrote: "Bet a Scouser would be able to pronounce it!"Not certain, as Ynysybwl is deep in the South Wales valleys, where the accent is very different to the North!
AB76 wrote: "Czech also lacks a lot of vowels..."Some daft TV programme many years ago had a sketch that stuck in my memory... the idea being that our heroes were organising an 'emergency airlift to drop a supply of vowels into Czechoslovakia...'
Hushpuppy wrote: "But @scarlet/@MB, do you not have "u" pronounced the French way (y in phonetic, confusingly - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IP...) in Welsh?"Like Mach, I have no idea about these 'official' phonetic methods of writing...
'u' is a really tricky one in Welsh, as it is pronounced very differently indeed between North and South. The N. Wales accent is very nasal, so 'u' there is similar to the French 'u' in 'tu', but even further up the nose!
In S. Wales, 'u' is pronounced very like the Welsh 'i' - you'd hardly notice the difference.
SydneyH wrote: "Bill wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "If you’re looking for more Conan Doyle, the non-Holmes books I’ve read are ."Wow, what a list! Good to know I have plenty more to investigate."
I meant to ask whether your Holmes reading included The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It's a collection of non-canonic pieces that feature or mention Holmes in passing or are Holmes-like in structure; a kind of mopping-up exercise, but all the pieces are by Conan Doyle and worth checking out for the dedicated Holmesian.
Hotels – Great topic, Shelflife. Some to add:
Hotel du Lac – Anita Brookner
Hotel New Hampshire – John Irving (TBR)
The White Hotel – DM Thomas
On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
Eloise at The Plaza – Kay Thompson
Smoke – Ivan Turgenev
Within a Budding Grove – Marcel Proust
If we can include boarding-houses:
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
A Far Cry From Kensington – Muriel Spark
If we can stretch it to include books that at least start in or near an inn:
Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer (The Tabard)
Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens (The Golden Cross)
The Gospel according to St Luke.
Hotel du Lac – Anita Brookner
Hotel New Hampshire – John Irving (TBR)
The White Hotel – DM Thomas
On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
Eloise at The Plaza – Kay Thompson
Smoke – Ivan Turgenev
Within a Budding Grove – Marcel Proust
If we can include boarding-houses:
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
A Far Cry From Kensington – Muriel Spark
If we can stretch it to include books that at least start in or near an inn:
Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer (The Tabard)
Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens (The Golden Cross)
The Gospel according to St Luke.
How about what I suspect is a strictly American phenomenon: the motel novel?The only novel that comes to mind at the moment is Psycho, but I'm sure there are more. There's also the putatively non-fiction The Voyeur's Motel, winner of the Prix Sade.
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I was surprised by this, but after a while - a rather shamingly long while - realised that my knowledge of phonetics is restricted to English sounds, so it's not so surprising that I didn't know it.
What a lot of hotel books people are finding!
I finish reading A Year in the Life of Medieval England yesterday. It was very interesting and informative, with some entertainingingly wry comments from the author. I do, however, think I will steer clear of some of the medical remedies and culinary recipes; I don't fancy blancmange as we now call it with rice, almond milk and chicken broth!
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The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin
Lljones wrote: "Bill wrote: "How about what I suspect is a strictly American phenomenon: the motel novel?..."The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin"
The characters in Thieves Like Us and Lolita spend a significant amount of time in motels.
Just the few books so far mentioned already suggest a distinctly demimonde flavor to stories set in motels rather than hotels.
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Ersatz TLS
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And of course there are differences in accent/pronunciation between ..."
scarletnoir wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "But it hasn't got any vowels!!.."
Inisibull?
And thank you all very much for your polite replies to my very insular question.
but I thought cae dy gegg was going to be a lot ruder (having googled it)!