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What Are We Reading?22 November 2021

Hushpuppy is o.k. about my putting a link to a Guardian thread here as regards her giving up of efforts regarding reinstated Guardian TL&S and Reading Group - she trie..."
such a shame, the lack of communication and effort has been poor from the Guardian. i sometimes wonder if they realise how annoyed us paying members are with their strange way of doing things...

good stuff Anne,, i am indeed gripped by the novels i am reading!


I watched the documentary on the Irish famine, on Arte.de. Thanks for that Georg. It was a wierd alternative way of me reintegrating with my 'Irish' side, and now citizenship. I thought it was going to be a celebration of some sort, in an Irish pub!... as I was up for 'a bit of the craic'.
It was so sad and harrowing and made me feel truly ashamed of the other English half of my heritage.. I had long known about Jonathan Swifts satire for solving the 'Irish' famine problem...
In his most famous piece of satire, “A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick,” Swift called attention to the plight of the Irish by proposing an outlandish plan to help Ireland’s poor, in 1729..
He suggested that the Irish poor could live very well by eating their own, numerous children!... “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.”
Well I did not realise that 120 odd years later that this is precisely what some of the starving poor resorted to, those who had been tossed out of their hovels by the British government instituting a tax on all the landowners that had peasants living on their land... I am irate... as well as Irish now, it seems.
The politics of the rulers of the British Empire, of those days was truly something to be ashamed of. I feel like tossing them all into the river.... including the current lot in power... who seem hell bent of removing protections for the ordinary British citizen, and giving themselves vast new powers in order to avoid public scrutiny of their own machinations...
Anyway Georg it was an odd introduction to my new Irish identity... I find myself wondering quite what Swift would have thought? That his stirring satire would actually become an undreamed of reality...120 odd years later...


i was reading Swift only last year and he sums up the Anglo opinions on the Irish within the "pale" (the anglo settlements around Dublin).
The terrible thing about the 1840s famine and also in the decade earlier was that as the poor of Ireland struggled and starved, wheat and other exports were heading to England, during a famine, its incredible to countenance such folly. The Scots did suffer a famine too but the extent was much less and it seems the majority of the coastal Highland families had plentiful fish and other dietary alternatives, which the Irish didnt have and there was also fundraising and assistance from England
It is also important to remember that the population of Ireland around 1845 (8.5m) was 3 times that of Scotland(2.6m)


I wrote some stuff on the Irish famine, many years ago. One of the problems with Ireland, and why it was so much worse for the Irish, compared to the Netherlands, France and Belgium, and Scotland is that Ireland had a single clone of the potato, whereas the other countries had more diverse potatoes genes and were not so badly hit by the potato blight.
The problem with the Irish peasants is that they had no relief, and being made homeless, they had to sell everything they had, to eat, and so lost the means to fish or gather other foodstuffs to keep them going. The documentary covers this point quite well. The British government gave some monetary aid, mostly to build workhouses, but were making a vast fortune from continuing to import wheat and other foodstuffs from Ireland. There was no shortage of food, just food that the poor could afford. Many of the Irish middle-classes, and upper classes made a fortune from exploiting the famine.
As someone so inclined to love historical data, as you are. the monetary data from that time tells a story all of its own... and a shameful one I think...


thanks for that Tam, i defer to your detailed knowledge and i had forgotten that fact about the actual potato crop diversity!
any links to articles on the monetary data or will a simple google suffice?


I don't have the data, just what I picked up from watching the documentary. It is well worth a watch to my mind. I was writing about the Irish famine only in the context of writing about birth/population control, as a possible future 'ecological' sustainability issue, so it wasn't my main focus at all, So my knowledge is incidental as such and based on quite limited research in that area. This was why it came as such a shock to me to see something of the real depravations that these poor people suffered, and the horrendous disregard of the British parliamentarians, and land holders, of those times...


https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/092114-...
here it is... I hope...

I still handwrite shopping lists and tuck them into my phone case. Despite having a smartphone, the reminder function rarely gets used - it needs to go off when I need to remember what needs done. Again a piece of paper tucked in to the phone case does the trick nicely. I'll know when I'm well and truly stuffed when I forget to do the reminder!


Just popping in for a minute to share my delight with Michael Frayn's Headlong, which had been a recent recommend by Georg and Mach - many thanks to you b..."
Oooh, that looks interesting. And I do like Brueghel.

I’m the same. I am regarded as by far t..."
Do you keep separate notepads/notebooks for different things? I have separate ones for book quotes, booklists, drawings/doodles, foodie stuff and lastly household banalities. The quality and style of notebook declines - household stuff at the moment is on scraps of paper. I need to get another notebook.

Oddly, I saw a car in town today - some sort of low-cut Mercedes - with the number-plate DDR1.
I paused to wonder whether..."
Along the same vein, a favorite of mine was the red Porsche (Carrera, I think) whose license plate read - ROT EIN.

Looking at what I've read this year (on my 41st now), it does seem to be mostly Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin books. I'm currently reading Angels Flight by MC in which Harry Bosch is the lead investigator into the killing of a lawyer who brought cases against the LAPD. Good stuff so far.
I guess these type of stories are the equivalent of 'comfort food' for my brain - not too much of a challenge to digest and addictive to boot.

According to the documentary "only"around 100 000 people died as a consequence of the potato blight in the Netherlands, Belgium and Prussia. One reason was that they weren't as dependent on the potato, the other was that their governments swiftly introduced measures to limit the loss of lives, first and foremost by banning the export of food.
I do not think "folly" comes even close to describing the actions of the English government.

When mysteries of this type also include a little something more, they are extra special. Along that line is Michael Pearce's Mamur Zapt series which are set in British-ruled Egypt and provides knowledge along side the mystery - think the use of corvee as an example.
And Tony Hillerman's Navajo mysteries with Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee where I learned about Checkerboard Reservation, among other tidbits.
What I am getting to is that somewhere I picked up


Looking at what I've read this year (on my 41st now), it does seem to be mostly Michael Connel..."
Take a look at Kinsey Millhone -



thanks!

Looking at what I've read this year (on my 41st now), it does seem to be mostly Michael Connel..."
My triumvirate of American crimewriters:
Tony Hillermann
Sara Paretsky
Michael Connelly



I am on page 366 of Dan Jones's Powers and Thrones, a sweeping journey from the collapse of the Roman Empire through to the 16th century. Spent the afternoon avoiding the gloomy weather and reading about the gloomy period of the Mongol expansion. My goodness, they were a murderous lot. I never learned about them in school so never quite realised they were responsible for so many millions of deaths, not to mention the destruction of so much cultural heritage.
It amazes me how authors can accumulate so much information and get it down into a readable book. I just wish I could remember it all after reading!

[bookcove..."
How would you define your "modern novel category"

Here is another though not quite up to the Grafton ones:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/ja...
Fuzzywuzz wrote: "Do you keep separate notepads/notebooks for different things?..."
Certainly do - notebook for annual household budget, notebook for weekly household expenditure, list of books I've read this year, bulging file of book tips (reviews, TLS, best-of-year round-ups) occasionally reduced to order, ditto recipes, garden project list, garden production list, running shopping list, official-type stuff-to-do list, cholesterol test results list (getting worse, but cheese is so difficult to resist), people to notify when I die list, etc. My family reputation is well-founded.
Certainly do - notebook for annual household budget, notebook for weekly household expenditure, list of books I've read this year, bulging file of book tips (reviews, TLS, best-of-year round-ups) occasionally reduced to order, ditto recipes, garden project list, garden production list, running shopping list, official-type stuff-to-do list, cholesterol test results list (getting worse, but cheese is so difficult to resist), people to notify when I die list, etc. My family reputation is well-founded.

This was why it came as such a shock to me to see something of the real depravations that these poor people suffered, and the horrendous disregard of the British parliamentarians, and land holders, of those times...
Well, it's good to know that nowadays the government doesn't cheat the population by increasing taxation on the low paid, or reduce their benefits, in order to transfer billions of tax-payers hard-earned cash into the pockets of their cronies, who in turn fund the Conservative party, get ennobled etc. Or that they use an emergency situation to justify the lack of scrutiny of those contracts. Or that they ignore the findings of various commissioners and other bodies scrutinising their behaviour. Or that they would plan to introduce a new law to allow ministers to ignore judicial decisions they don't agree with...
Oh, hang on...

My triumvirate of American crimewriters:
Tony Hillermann
Sara Paretsky
Michael Connelly."
In response to Fuzzywuzz - I'm a bit fed up with my current books, and may well follow you into a few crime novels for a while - I have a lot of previous!
Georg - I've read all three - I loved the early Paretskys, but felt that in the last two or three she had moved away from storytelling with a social conscience to preaching with story as a secondary consideration... I don't care for that balance (it's why I gave up on le Carré). By all means make some political points, but only within a gripping story... that's my view, anyway.
Hillerman - I read one - not bad - haven't read any others, yet, but may do so.
Connolly - I have read a couple of Mickey Haller books - again, not bad, but I wasn't hooked completely... recently, following a free Prime month, I have been watching the Harry Bosch TV series, which is well done. So, I may read a few of those, to see.
My own list of top American crime writers would no doubt change with mood, but ATM looks like this:
Walter Mosley (Easy Rawlins series)
Elmore Leonard
James Crumley (for quality of writing, not clarity of plot!)
Patricia Highsmith
Jim Thompson
Maybe we should do the same for the Scandis next week!
giveusaclue wrote: "Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote:
Just popping in for a minute to share my delight with Michael Frayn's Headlong"
"Oooh, that looks interesting. And I do like Brueghel. ..."
Seconded. I obviously missed earlier recommendations, am going to buy it right now!
Just popping in for a minute to share my delight with Michael Frayn's Headlong"
"Oooh, that looks interesting. And I do like Brueghel. ..."
Seconded. I obviously missed earlier recommendations, am going to buy it right now!

You may well know - though I suspect others will not - that 'chouett..."
Thanks SN. I didn’t know that.

i was mistaken about that novel....i thought it was a posthumous, unpublished Wohloo novel but he wrote the novel in 1968, it feels very prescient with a mysterious pandemic, polluted skies and lamentations about the lack of recycling.....

Hushpuppy is o.k. about my putting a link to a Guardian thread here as regards her giving up of efforts regarding reinstated Guardian TL&S and Reading Group - she trie..."
Thanks for that pointer Shelflife.
So rare they open discussion comments. But a chance when they do to catch up with a few old friends.
At least thanks to Glad this has probably the most hijacked thread yet..

My triumvirate of American crimewriters:
Tony Hillermann
S..."
Also rather fed up, I’d given up somewhat on contemporary US crime writing, but have just finished Just Thieves by Gregory Galloway, which surprised me in a good way…
My review…
There have been quite a few novels recently attempting to recreate the atmosphere of the classic days of noir. All get my attention, though usually fall flat when I get to them. So this was a pleasant surprise, perhaps as the action is second place to the personal turmoil of the protagonists.
Rick and Frank, a pair of low-level crooks and recovering addicts, are on an out-of-town job in an unnamed American city. Rick, who narrates, manages to break into the target house and find the small statue that he's been instructed to steal. Though the escape vehicle that Frank is driving crashes, the pair manage to make it to their seedy hotel…but this is noir, so their moments of calm are short, dirty work is still afoot.
The plot is perfectly sound, though the ending rather ordinary, but the characterisation is strong.
This is something of a homage to the classics, as Galloway borrows lines from some of the most well-known crime novels and screenplays and weaves them into his narrative; a dangerous move if you don’t do your own thing well, but fortunately he does.

My triumvirate of American crimewriters:
Tony Hillermann
S..."
Thanks for the Paretsky warning, scarlet. Haven'r read any from the last~10 years. Do you happen to remember the titles?
From your list I've only read Highsmith (a long time ago) and Mosley (The Little Yellow Dog), which I liked very much. I suspect the others are also "noir"?
Tony Hillermann is one of the two favourites I have "completed".
I like his characters, and I love the main character: the place.
Re Michael Connelly: the first I read is still my favourite: Blood Work
Maybe we should do the same for the Scandis next week!
Hm...the Scandis probably make up the bulk of my crime reading over the decades. Most were good, few were bad. Yet there is no author distinctive enough to make it into my top 10.
But I like the idea, so do go ahead!

My triumvirate of American crimewriters..."
for me Chandler is the Daddy of Crime, though i was interested in quite a few of Mankells books of the 2000s. I like the idea of social commentary and crime going together, a more cerebral crime novel.

From your list I've only read Highsmith (a long time ago) and Mosley (The Little Yellow Dog), which I liked very much. I suspect the others are also "noir"?
Tony Hillermann is one of the two favourites I have "completed".
I like his characters, and I love the main character: the place.
Re Michael Connelly: the first I read is still my favourite: Blood Work...
I'm not sure now when I felt Paretsky's standard had dropped, but possibly after Total Recall (2001)... glancing at some of the more negative reviews on Amazon (2*), they are nearly all by Paretsky fans who feel this or that book was not up to scratch. I had thought that she was semi-retired, but now see that she has produced ten VI books since then, and one other... we can hope that there are some later books which are shorter and more tightly plotted, like the early ones. Don't take my word for it!
I like Mosley a lot, especially the Easy Rawlins series...he's an interesting character. One of the great joys in the books (for me) is to see Easy out-manoeuvring the racists or the privileged he comes across. It's not profound stuff, but neither is it superficial. And it is entertaining!
As for Hillerman and Connelly - thanks for giving me a push in their direction. I need to read something straightforward ATM!

In wintry Petrograd, 1919, various characters try and survive the cold and the hunger. They number some pitiless agents of the "Reds", cynical profiteers, aged professors and other people trying to get by.
A bundle of newspapers is recieved from Vyborg, including "the Manchester Guardian"....

must have caused havoc, only thing i noticed was goodreads as i dont have alexa or netflix!

must have caused havoc, only thing i noticed was goodreads as i dont have alexa or netflix!"
Caused chaos for Amazon as the drivers couldn't access their routes to deliver parcels!
Hushpuppy wrote: "News: there is now an update on my update about TLS there"
Good work, Hush. It doesn't look unrelated to me.
Good work, Hush. It doesn't look unrelated to me.

I am on page 366 of Dan Jones's Powers and Thrones, a sweeping journey from the..."
I have just today finished listening to Dan Jones narrate his book and a great job he does. I may even go out and buy a 2nd hand copy later. (My read was a library download.)
Who knew the there was a rebellion in the German states in 1525. He also ties odd (to me) items together - as in why Henry VIII ended up going down the church rabbit hole.

Ah, that explains the Amazon vans driving aimlessly around my neighborhood like so many flying Dutchmen.

Where do you think that happens with Le Carré? I haven't read beyond A Perfect Spy (1986) but I remember thinking that one was good. I've been planning for years to go back and pick up where I left off, but for now I'm still reading some of the earlier spy/espionage things that I've missed up to now.

And Tinder!!!!!!!!!!!
(So they tell me... ;-)
Seriously, I could never envisage using that 'service'.

I can't claim to have read all the early ones, but after finding 'The Tailor of Panama' rather dull, I really didn't care for 'The Constant Gardner' - Big Pharma is run by cynical capitalists! Who would have guessed it! (Of course, during the COVID crisis, they did an amazing job - but one company at least is now being accused of over-charging, so... plus ça change...) Besides, it was a downright depressing read... and who wants to read to get depressed?
I stopped reading le Carré after that, but after all the ballyhoo we tried to watch The Night Manager... no shades of gray here, with the unspeakably evil Hugh Laurie(!) as an arms dealer (who would have thought that arms dealers were unspeakably evil?!) and an absurd and unbelievable plot. We stopped watching midway through the second episode.
IMHO, le Carré's best book was Call for the Dead (1961) - the first Smiley. It's been downhill ever since!

Hi Hushpuppy, I just want to say thanks for fighting the good fight for TLS, and I hope your eyes are better.

Looking at what I've read this year (on my 41st now), it does seem to be mostly Michael Connel..."
Margaret Millar's How Like an Angel is a good crime novel, set in a California cult, written about sixty years ago.

I can't claim to have read all the early ones, but after finding 'The Tailor of Panama' rather dull, I really didn't care for 'The Constant Gardner' - Big Pharma is run by cynical capitalists! Who would have guessed it! (Of course, during the COVID crisis, they did an amazing job - but one company at least is now being accused of over-charging, so... plus ça change...) Besides, it was a downright depressing read... and who wants to read to get depressed?
I stopped reading le Carré after that, but after all the ballyhoo we tried to watch The Night Manager... no shades of gray here, with the unspeakably evil Hugh Laurie(!) as an arms dealer (who would have thought that arms dealers were unspeakably evil?!) and an absurd and unbelievable plot. We stopped watching midway through the second episode.
IMHO, le Carré's best book was Call for the Dead (1961) - the first Smiley. It's been downhill ever since! "
I'm still in the mid to late '50s for now, as far as this strand of my 20th-C reading goes, but hope to get into the early Le Carrés and other '60s things within the coming year. Haven't read any of them apart from the Spy Who Came in from the Cold, so I'm looking forward to exploring his work right from the beginning.
I like the idea of looking at the world of multinational business and finance in this kind of fiction, but yes, it can be a turn-off if a book leaves me with the feeling that I'm being preached to, no matter how much I might agree with the message. Le Carré's Cold War fiction admirably avoided that pitfall .
But then, things have changed, haven't they: the kind of corruption and cynical thinking that was once kept behind doors is now front-page news. We've been gradually trained to think of it as normal - which is true in the sense that it happens all the time and has always happened - but we've also been lulled into thinking that it's therefore acceptable.
Could a book be written today that delivered the same gut-punch as something like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold did in its time (and I think for at least a decade or two afterwards - at least I felt it, reading it in the '70s) ? Or would we just shrug our shoulders and say, "What did you expect?"

Ah, that explains the Amazon vans driving aimlessly around my neighborhood like so many..."
lol......must have disrupted amazon pretty badly then, i bet there was no paper alternative...plan B aka old skool
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Hushpuppy is o.k. about my putting a link to a Guardian thread here as regards her giving up of efforts regarding reinstated Guardian TL&S and Reading Group - she tried really hard (which I will be forever grateful for!), but look for yourselves:
https://discussion.theguardian.com/co...
(TL&S was mentioned as badly missed below that article a couple of days earlier and related posts received many upticks. This is Hushpuppy's update. Very sad news, though I had almost given up hope anyway.)
Corresponding book title: Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?