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What are we reading? 13th April 2022
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The Canadian prairies have always fascinated me..."About a year ago, I read A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale. It takes as its starting point the story of his great-grandfather, ..."
Canada offered hope for many families from england in the 1880-1935 period, i think with my ancestors the great depression led them back to the UK, i think a business failed in early 30s, or some venture didnt work out, linked to farming, due to 1929
Thanks for all the good wishes for 'the treatment'... We will just have to wait and see. At least it hasn't spread to other organs as yet, so the consultant is optimistic. I was followed by a jay yesterday. I feel like I'm being staked out by corvids!... Does anyone know if they are all entitled to parliaments, or is that only for the crows?
Mod
An unkindness of ravens
My thoughts are with you and yours Tam.AB, re: Canadian prairies, have you read Wallace Stegner's "Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier." You might enjoy it.
Finally, utterly dismayed at the news out of the US this. A terrible step backwards, and only the first or many, I fear.
Veufveuve wrote: "My thoughts are with you and yours Tam.AB, re: Canadian prairies, have you read Wallace Stegner's "Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier." You might enjoy it. ..."
no i havent Veuf, i thought Stegner was a Yank, or is just generally prarie related? thanks for the tip...noting it now.
as for the draft leak, i just pray there is a step back but the sly actions over Merrick Garland nomination in 2016 by Slime McConnell and then RGB dying in office have dealt real blows to any balance in the SC
Sappy pollen drenched air in the Shires, i'm not a hayfever sufferer but i do notice a little reaction in May that i didnt have before my 40s, which is interesting.Current reading is:
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (1964)
highly rated tale of a nonagenarian matriarch looking back on her life,
Nietzsche in Turin by Lesley Chamberlain (non-fiction)
a gem, a real gem of 6-7 months in the life of Freddy Nitch and his period of life in Turin and Switzerland in 1888
The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison (1981)
NZ sci-fi, which so far reminds me a little of the Omegaman,Harrison has an interesting style, observational and precise
Rambles in Eirinn by William Bulfin (1907)
found this via a McGahern short story, volume one of a travel book round Ireland by bicycle
AB76 wrote: "Sappy pollen drenched air in the Shires, i'm not a hayfever sufferer but i do notice a little reaction in May that i didnt have before my 40s, which is interesting.Current reading is:
The Stone ..."
Were you educated in a public school?
CCCubbon wrote: "I think it comes from a French Limerick
“Il y avait un jeune homme de Dijon
Qui n’aimait du tout la religon.
Il dit: “Eh ma foi;
Je deteste tous les trois,
Le Pere, et le Fils, et le Pigeon”.
which, roughly tranlated, is:
There was a young man of Dijon
Who had no time at all for religon.
He said: “As for me,
I detest all the three,
The Father, the Son and the Pigeon”."
Thanks CCCubbon, I'm sure that must have been the reference the character in Murdoch's novel was making.
@Gpfr - Glad you’re enjoying The Banquet Years. Your comment a couple of weeks ago reminded me to put The Man in the Red Coat on the TBR list.
@AB – You’re welcome!
@AB – You’re welcome!
Follow-up to my post about Serhii Plokhy's book - Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe. While one cannot go from cause to effect, it is interesting to note that the Chernobyl explosion happened on April 26, 1986. The Party denied and delayed for 18 days and generally dragged their feet over everything - like evacuation and how large an evacuation circle should be. And let's not even consider any of the costs involved (with the USSR being close to broke then) whether it's people or mothballing the blown-up plant, much less making sure no radioactive discharge made it to any river.Ukrainians remembered how Moscow delayed and denied when they voted to exit the USSR just over 5 years later only a few months before there was no more USSR. As I said, there is no direct line, but . . .
AB76 wrote: "Sappy pollen drenched air in the Shires, i'm not a hayfever sufferer but i do notice a little reaction in May that i didnt have before my 40s, which is interesting.Current reading is:
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (1964)
highly rated tale of a nonagenarian matriarch looking back on her life,
Nietzsche in Turin by Lesley Chamberlain (non-fiction)
a gem, a real gem of 6-7 months in the life of Freddy Nitch and his period of life in Turin and Switzerland in 1888
The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison (1981)
NZ sci-fi, which so far reminds me a little of the Omegaman,Harrison has an interesting style, observational and precise
Rambles in Eirinn by William Bulfin (1907)
found this via a McGahern short story, volume one of a travel book round Ireland by bicycl"
We had to do The Stone Angel in school and, as often happens, I think I kind of rebelled against it emotionally, at a near-subconscious level, as an imposed duty. I had a similar experience with Tess of the D'Urbervilles and ended up loving it when I re-read it a few decades later, so I'm planning to try Laurence's book again one of these years.
Re other Canadian books with a prairie setting, one of the best known is W. O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen The Wind, which is well worth a look. Also, to stretch a point (as it is set in Alberta but not really on the prairies, if I remember), another Mitchell novel, The Vanishing Point, which I thought was even better.
I haven't read the Stegner book Veufveuve mentioned but I believe his family did live in Canada for some time during his childhood.
I'm adding the Harrison book to my list. British and Commonwealth science fiction is becoming a sub-genre of interest to me - some of my most involving reads of the last few years have fallen into this category: Wells, Wyndham, John Christopher, and most recently Nevil Shute's On the Beach.
Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Sappy pollen drenched air in the Shires, i'm not a hayfever sufferer but i do notice a little reaction in May that i didnt have before my 40s, which is interesting.Current reading i..."
so true berkley, i loathed Hardy at school, hated the idea of Wessex as it was drilled into me, revising Hardy on a summer holiday in Corsica was like kryponite but as an adult, i love Hardy and it helped that my grandfather was a member of the Hardy Society and while i ignored this link as a teen (could have helped me a lot in school), i embraced his knowledge in my 20s
i loved Mitchells novel, was my first prairie novel about 15 years ago, i havent read the other one though
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She's posting on WWR
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "is hush around? or on vacay?"She's posting on WWR"
ah ok
Am collecting my copy of Tommy Mann's Reflection of a Non Political Man later from Waterstones, glad to see this has been translated by NYRB classics and will be a good read i think
Georg wrote(#258): "AB76 wrote: "Sappy pollen drenched air in the Shires, i'm not a hayfever sufferer but i do notice a little reaction in May that i didnt have before my 40s, which is interesting.Current reading is..."
Apologies, AB, I had no right to ask this question.
I had a dream about you. You were about half your real age and sat on a beach reading. I nevertheless recognized you at first sight and you mentioned that in our dreamt conversation.
I don't even believe in interpreting dreams. Or so I thought....
Georg wrote: "Georg wrote(#258): "AB76 wrote: "Sappy pollen drenched air in the Shires, i'm not a hayfever sufferer but i do notice a little reaction in May that i didnt have before my 40s, which is interesting...."i've never dreamt about anyone on here.....yet.....lol
AB76 wrote: "Georg wrote: "Georg wrote(#258): "AB76 wrote: "Sappy pollen drenched air in the Shires, i'm not a hayfever sufferer but i do notice a little reaction in May that i didnt have before my 40s, which i..."Nor have I. But I must say it was quite a pleasant dream. Compared to the (thankfully very rare ones) where I have to conceal a body somebody else has murdered ;-)
Two from me, both set about the same time, the end of the war in 1945.. The Black Snow by Paul Lynch
Set in 1945 in rural Ireland, Lynch’s sad and evocative tale has a very powerful opening. Barnabas Kane and his hired hand, Matthew Peoples, rush from their fields at the sight of a fire. The shed housing 43 cows is alight. Matthew would never have entered without the hand of Barnabas pushing him, just the beginning of years of unrelenting misfortune for the family, who soon become aware that the insurance has been cancelled and are heavily in debt, with pretty much no available capital.
There are similarities to southern American writing in the brutal cruelty and evocative scenes of rural life, but whereas his US counterparts use spare prose, are masters of the colloquialism, and even employ a drizzle of humour, Lynch ponders and lingers, and his efforts at dialect often fall flat.
and, The Hermit by Iain Crichton Smith translated from the Gaelic by Edwin Muir.
This is a beautifully told story of life disrupted in a Scottish Highland village just after the Second World War. The actual identity of the village remains secret, though is identified as the Highlands, though also coastal, so not Smith’s own home on the Isle of Lewis.
Within its 70 pages or so, there are many discussion points; not least an indifference to strangers or those who are different in colour, or different in the language they speak.
A solitary man has arrived in the village and has made home in one of the old Nissen huts on its edge. He rides a bicycle in a very upright manner, with a long and dirty coat tied only with a rope. His purpose in leaving his hut, just to shop for the basics; bread, butter, milk.. Notably, not whisky. He will talk to nobody, not even a nod of the head.
He becomes the talk of the locals, most shaking the heads and blaming him for various bits of bad luck.
The narrator is a former headteacher, like Smith himself, and is particularly interested by the hermit. Following the death of his wife, his is a lonely existence; he fishes in remote lochs with the intention of catching nothing, he becomes infatuated by an 18 year old girl who delivers his milk, and at all hours of the day, he finds solace in the whisky bottle.
The community can be seen as a microcosm of society, the fractious inhabitants bickering over what seems so unimportant, though these internal squabbles soon forge much deeper rifts.
Translated from Gaelic, by Edwin Muir, this is a small wonder of a book. In its own right (this edition), it is out of print, but available in the collection The Black Halo: The Complete English Stories 1977-98.
I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Because there is a 'thou shall not appropriate another's photo' on the FB Peregrine page, I'll share a link here of a peregrine family portrait - https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/new-pere...
AB76 wrote: "Am collecting my copy of Tommy Mann's Reflection of a Non Political Man later from Waterstones, glad to see this has been translated by NYRB classics and will be a good read i think"I was disappointed in the NYRB edition; 100 years on, the work requires extensive annotation. Their edition has only a few pages of notes, almost all of which are dedicated to printing the German originals of the various poems Mann quotes - an inessential nicety in an edition for non-German readers. I understand that a recent German reprinting includes a significant number of notes; NYRB should have licensed a translation of that version.
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Am collecting my copy of Tommy Mann's Reflection of a Non Political Man later from Waterstones, glad to see this has been translated by NYRB classics and will be a good read i think"..."
oh i see, that is a mistake for a very good publisher, notes are essential with translations, i aim to start reading it when i finish Bulfins "Rambles in Eirinn"
Very late, but all best wishes to you, Tam, as well as him-indoors. May that dragon be slewn, if you allow (metaphoric) cruelty to animals just once.https://i.pinimg.com/474x/d1/92/18/d1...
I have just finished reading Swiss author Thomas , Hürlimann's novella The Couple (German: Das Gartenhaus). An enjoyable mixture of melancholy and very funny scenes. Who would have thought feeding a cat in secret would create such waves in a marriage?
Amusing aside: Looking for the author's name might lead you to a tractor page, as I just found out. I had to laugh quite a bit at the discovery - but don't worry, it's tractors only. https://www.huerlimann-tractors.com/e...
Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "Very late, but all best wishes to you, Tam, as well as him-indoors. May that dragon be slewn, if you allow (metaphoric) cruelty to animals just once.https://i.pinimg.com/474x/d1/92/18/d1...
I have just finished reading Swiss author Thomas , Hürlimann's novella The Couple (German: Das Gartenhaus). An enjoyable mixture of melancholy and very funny scenes. Who would have thought feeding a cat in secret would create such waves in a marriage?
Amusing aside: Looking for the author's name might lead you to a tractor page, as I just found out. I had to laugh quite a bit at the discovery - but don't worry, it's tractors only. https://www.huerlimann-tractors.com/e..."
After a quick scan, it looks like this might be the only book of his that's been translated into English. The tractor manufacturer seems to be doing better with the Anglophone market: they have a whole web-page in English!
I need to renew my library books, though I hope to explore them, soon. Currently being drawn in to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Karla and the Sun. It has taken a wee while, as dystopian novels are not usually my “ go to” reads, but it’s Ishiguro, and the observations of narrator, Artificial Friend, Karla, are drawing me in.
MK wrote: "Just checked the 'loon situation' which means I'll have to wait 'til later this month when an egg or two are laid! in the meantime, here's the link - https://loon.org/looncam/"Loons, eh? I have only one experience of loons... a few years ago, we stayed for a few days in a very impressive wooden cabin in Canada, north of Ottawa - a generous 'return loan', as we had loaned our French place to the Canadians so they could visit their ailing relative - a friend of ours. Anyway, every day some crazy loons would land on the lake in front of the cabin - what an amazing cry! Oddly to my way of thinking, there appeared to be very few other birds about - the pine(?) forest didn't seem conducive... though the bins were covered with warnings to close properly, in case of bears (!)
The 'lawn' (or just grass) leading down to the lake was teeming with frogs... after my own shock, it proved amusing to watch the other family members' alarm as they reeled from the moving carpet as they approached the lake... madame, being the last to arrive, got the biggest laugh from the rest of us.
PS I'm sure we bought a souvenir with a loon design, but I don't recall what or where it is!
scarletnoir wrote: "MK wrote: "Just checked the 'loon situation' which means I'll have to wait 'til later this month when an egg or two are laid! in the meantime, here's the link - https://loon.org/looncam/"Loons, e..."
Forget those dumb lanyards and the sing-a-longs, my favorite memories from Camp Wayaka (Girl Scouts) are hearing the loons especially at night and gunneling (where two people balance on the gunwales at opposite ends of a canoe and try to upend each other so that only one lands in the lake).
I'm in the middle of WWI with Jane Ridley's George V: Never a Dull Moment
. It's an interesting read (history lover here) and has already caused me to order The Strange Death of Liberal England
as I am woefully ignorant about the Home Rule question and votes for women which seem to have been temporarily subsumed by the war.On the paperback for reading in bed front, I've just begun The Private Sector
by Joseph Hone. I'm only a few pages in this spy novel, but I like the author's style so far. It looks promising.
Mod
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/20...
MK wrote: "Had to share - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-n...It's a bird thing!"
Beautiful, and there'd more:
https://hawkandowltrust.org/web-cam-l...
I'm off on holiday tomorrow to near Scarborough and hope to see the puffins at Bempton Cliffs, if my nerves hold and my knees don't shake too much!
Mod
Have a great holiday!
Gpfr wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I'm off on holiday tomorrow to near Scarborough..."Have a great holiday!"
Thank you, at least the weather is warming up a bit!
@clue. Hope God’s Own Country is living up to expectations and the weather is kind. So long since I was last in Scarborough…..never did find the cardie I left on the beach more than half a lifetime ago!
Lljones wrote: "Anyone need a cat?"
Oh dear. And sorry, we have quite enough already.
I finished last Tom Kristensen's "Havoc" last night. I won't give a full review now but I will say that I enjoyed it a great deal - sardonic and seedy! "Hangover Square" might be one reference point, though more in subject than the specifics of style. Anyway, that's my third mammoth (600-800pp) Danish novel in the last couple of months. Give me something short!!!
Lljones wrote: "Anyone need a cat?"
I'll have him. Glad I could help. Though I don't think Mario and my cat will see eye to eye.
MK wrote: "...(where two people balance on the gunwales at opposite ends of a canoe and try to upend each other so that only one lands in the lake)Didn't need to try that - on our first attempt at canoeing on the Canadian lake, my wife got in first, then I... clumsily tipped the whole thing over and we both ended up in the drink.
She has not allowed me to forget it!
(She now reminds me that our souvenir is a rather nice print of a loon - quite tasteful, I think!)
Veufveuve wrote: "I finished last Tom Kristensen's "Havoc" last night. I won't give a full review now but I will say that I enjoyed it a great deal - sardonic and seedy! "Hangover Square" might be one reference poin..."impressive Veuf.....!
Berkley, you mentioned reading The Stone Angel as a set book at school, , was this novel quickly part of the north american set texts after being published in 1964? or was this school in the 1990s or 2000s?
Veufveuve wrote: "Lljones wrote: "Anyone need a cat?"
Oh dear. And sorry, we have quite enough already."
Has he been a devil all day?
Mod
Has he been a devil all day?"
All day, every day. First real damage I can remember, though.
I must have liked this enough once to keep it for an eventual re-read. I could remember nothing about it.Elizabeth and Her German Garden
A garden that has not been tended to for many years, a copse of birch trees. A woman who loves to live in the middle of nowhere because she prefers, by and large, to be on her own and has no need of anything a city has to offer.
Well written, with gentle humour I really enjoyed it. Until page 50, when Elizabeth pushed me off my cloud in a rather ungentle way.
She started to talk about their seasonal workers, recruited in Russia and Poland. Of course they weren't treated well. But there were some intersting details: their quartes were guarded at night by officials for the first 1-2 weeks. Nevertheless on more than one occasion as many as fifty managed to escape on the first night. To work on farms nearby where they could expect to be paid a penny or two more per day. Two pennies more would have only been 1% more than the best-paid men were earning on von Arnims estate. While this would surely not be disregarded by a poor person it still begs the question whether it was the only reason they preferred to work for somebody else.
I've read the German translation, so the following is not a quote, rather a "re-transfer" (in brackets are my additions)
I suppose it was my own over-civilisation that made me pity them, when I lived among (certainly not!) them for the first (!) time. They live crowded together like animals and do the work of animals; but in spite of the armed overseer (he had a loaded pistol and a fierce dog by his side), in spite of the dirt they live in and the rags they wear, the potatoes they wash down with diluted vinegar(they got as many potatoes as they wanted but apparently nothing else), I am gradually coming to the conclusion that they would heavily protest against soap, and they certainly wouldn't want new clothes, and I hear how they come home at nightfall, singing. They are like little children or animals in their incapability to picture their future; and, in the end, if one has worked all day under God's sun and the evening comes, one is agreeably exhausted and in need of rest and not inclined to bemoan one's fate (she herself is exhausted after spending two days doing the Chritmas decorations)
She goes on to profess her empathy for the women. They only take some hours off work to have their babies:
She gave us a cheerful smile and curtseyed. The overseer mentioned that she had just been at home to give birth
And she is worried about the women who are beaten by their husbands. Whereupon her husband gives her a lecture: a woman needs to learn her "calling" in life. It is her only way to happiness, because she will then be content with her station. Beating her regularly, like once a week, even without (perceived) grounds will be highly beneficial for both.
Elizabeth's response? She teases him, saying he is not a real man then because he doesn't beat her.All a bit nauseating.
I thought about ditching the book at that point. All the lovely garden writing would invariably been tainted from now on. I continued. And it wasn't. Because the garden was hardly mentioned after that.
The main part of the rest of the book was about three weeks over Christmas and New Year and three women: Minora, a guest Elizabeth only invited to do an old friend a favour, Idais, a friend who invited herself because she didn't fancy staying with her unwell husband. Minora is described as a pain-in the-butt. Elizabeth and Idais gang up against her. The former is catty under a thin veneer of politeness, the latter openly, even offensively, so. Elizabeth's gross husband throws in a lecture about women (should be put into one drawer with children and imbeciles) for good measure. Altogether it made for very unpleasant reading.
Throughout the book Elizabeth styles herself as somebody special/superior (as opposed to ordinary/boring). In the end she came out,for me, as a typical member of her class, the landed gentry. Spoiled, entitled, arrogant, ignorant, looking down at anybody and everybody who does not belong to their circle, counting the poorest not even as human beings.
People I despise.
@gprf: you enticed me to re-read this. I sincerely hope I haven't injured your feelings. If I have: remember my first sentence.
SydneyH wrote: "Lljones wrote: "Anyone need a cat?"
I'll have him. Glad I could help. Though I don't think Mario and my cat will see eye to eye."
Just uploaded a comic for Mario.
Lass wrote: "@clue. Hope God’s Own Country is living up to expectations and the weather is kind. So long since I was last in Scarborough…..never did find the cardie I left on the beach more than half a lifetime..."Thanks Lass, doubt if the cardie will still be there but I'll have a look!
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Haha, MK guess you will remember the loss of his wife so I am presuming he is on the way to a replacement?