Ersatz TLS discussion
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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 8th June 2022
CCCubbon wrote: "Hello Andy. Glad you enjoyed Shadowlands by Matthew Green as much as I did.Just finished Newcomerwhich i liked for his spare way of writing [bookcover:Newcomer
Hope all well with y..."
Many thanks for your detailed review ccc.
Best wishes for a quick recovery and return to reading.
I’m trying to read a few with Booker Longlist potential, though I expect to be disappointed as regards to what I hope might make it onto the list. Such a book I have just finished, the wonderful The Colony by Audrey Magee.
On a nameless rocky island in the Atlantic Ocean in 1979, with a population of just 92, arrive two foreigners to spend the summer, a painter and a linguist. Mr Lloyd, a landscape artist from England, is inconsiderate and hard to please, and has come to capture the island’s natural beauty, it’s cliffs and seabirds, and to complete one huge canvass he will consider as his masterpiece. Frenchman Pierre Masson, of Algerian descent, is finishing a five year study into the speaking of Gaelic on the island, and is immediately antagonist towards Lloyd.
They have paid board with an island family, though both of the impression originally that they were to be alone. Following the death of three men of the family, the three generations of women hold island life together. Portrayed with an unexpected worldly sense of acuity, and gentle humour, they differ in their response to the incomers. Young widow Mairéad sleeps with the Frenchman and allows the artist to paint her nude. Her son, 15 year old James, who has recently lost his father, is greatly influenced by Lloyd, and develops an ambition as an artist. The interactions between James and Lloyd, especially late in the book, are particularly powerful and incredibly well written.
Interspersed between the rugged beauty of the chapters is the steady rhythm of murder as the factions on the mainland bomb, shoot and maim. The contrast could not be more stark, the unhurried pace of island life with its own squabbles and hardships, to the carnage in the rest of the country.
Magee’s writing is a deep exploration of the impacts of colonisation and the different attitudes and responses to cultural change, a timely reminder of the real world implication of British involvement. But it is the intensity and warmth of her characters that make the book special and so much pleasure to read.
The Island by Ana Maria Mutate(1959), won two of Spains most prestigious literary prizes in the year it was published and i can see why.For a short novel it is alive with brilliant imagery of the Balaeric summer, the glittering sea and the sights and smells of the towns, churchs and houses. The precocious female narrator, a teenage girl,rebels against the staid pro-Franco side of her family she is staying with, having been expelled from her convent school.
The civil war is everywhere and nowhere it seems, under portraits of Royalist ancestors, her grandmother laments the anti-catholic violence on the mainland, her uncle is fighting somewhere over there, his whip and his weapons decorate the walls.
I wouldnt call it a modernist novel but its construction and approach are quite modern, while no explicit anti-Franco sentiments are voiced, there is disquiet and disgust with the violence that has immersed the larghest of the Balaeric Islands.
Of the Balaeric Islands only Menorca remained anti-Franco during the war, Majorca saw an attempted Republican landing but an Italian and Spanish Fascist forces defeated this attempt early on and Ibiza and Formentera were captured by FRranco forces.
Robert wrote: "Another Italian trial that rather baffled me was the prosecution of Mehmet Ali Aga for the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II. A shadowy Turkish gunman attacking the Pope? A story out of Ches..."This reminded me of Amanda Knox. I bet she will never visit Italy.
Nothing like a murder contrived to look like a suicide. And nothing like a police procedural to warm the cockles of my heart.Somewhere on the net I saw a recommendation for The Hanging Captain
by Henry Wade which I found on my mystery shelves. Its copyright date is 1933.I'm about halfway and am enjoying it - stately home with police (at least initially) tippy-toeing around the medium high and mighty; that is, until Scotland Yard enters the picture.
I sometimes wonder if my time as a systems analyst predisposes me to like the unraveling of a police procedural.
We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SATURDAY THROUGH MONDAY...After an unusually cool and wet spring, a rapid warm-up is
expected late this week, with temperatures peaking Saturday
through Monday across western Washington. Most lowland and
mountain valley locations will see temperatures peaking in the
80s to around 90 degrees by Sunday.
This would no doubt be a relief to places like Phoenix, but here where few (me included) have air conditioning, it's hot! I may have to spend time in the basement (where there is always work to be done).
I have my fingers crossed that the NY Times has a 'freebie or two' for any here interested in this - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/22/op...
Talk about scathing. 😎
CCCubbon wrote: "TamBe thinking of you and hoping all well.
I have to have another injection before it can be done, maybe in Aug/Sept. Losing the sight in bad eye means fewer rushes of double vision and distortion..."
Good luck for your op.
And thank you for the John Donne biog review That went from my "want to read" to my "really really want to read" list straight away. Though I'll have to wait for the pb.
Paul wrote: "Italian justice is so nefariously inefficient that the police don't even bother issuing tickets 9 times out of 10 because they know it will go nowhere. There are serious issues with the process, 3 levels of almost automatic appeals, a fundamental lack of the presumption of innocence, the capacity for the state to appeal a finding of innocence... that all boil down to a state-driven tyranny that is kept inefficient to keep it from becoming overtly fascistic.It leads to a society of criminality and/or criminal acceptance. If you know that the magistrates won't be able to deliver you justice, you're better off just not seeing the mafiosi. Bars that don't issue receipts (and hence don't collect sales tax), dentists that offer you lower prices if you want a receipt. Professors who hire their nephews.
From an Anglo point of view, it's very much the dark ages here. State-sanctioned banditry at levels only modestly lower than in Russia."
Is there much difference from north to south? I remember there was a northern separatist movement a few years ago, though I haven't heard much about it lately. They seemed to see themselves as less corrupt and more "European" than the rest of Italy.
Berkley wrote: "Paul wrote: "Italian justice is so nefariously inefficient that the police don't even bother issuing tickets 9 times out of 10 because they know it will go nowhere. There are serious issues with th..."As a resident Paul probably knows more than i on modern italian north v south divisions.
Robb quotes the historical difference as being the southern italian regions below Rome being part of patrician empires for hundreds of years, with endemic neglect ,fuedalism and corruption, versus the network of democratic city states in the north and the austrian regions of the north east. Naples was the largest city in Italy up till the 1930s, yet totally neglected and in decay, like a backwater
In my travels in the North, i found an affluent and well organised place, with a lot in common with Austria and Southern Germany. Some of the northern regions are the richest in the EU.
I remember a similar division with Serbia and Croatia within Yugoslavia. The Croats had been austrian influenced for over two centuries, with an educated populace and relative affluence compared to poor, mostly rural feudal Serbia which had been divided between the Ottoman Empire and the austrian frontier
MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SATURDAY THROUGH MONDAY...After an unusually cool and wet spring, a rapid war..."
oh dear, i hope it doesnt go as mad as summer 2021, i really felt for you guys, never thought i'd see a temperate coastal region get so hot in my lifetime at that latitude. The Shires may be slowly warming but we have never had extreme heat like Oregon, Washington and BC in Canada suffered in 2021
Gpfr wrote: "Tam & CCHope all goes well for both.
I'll be thinking of you today, Tam."
Just seen those posts - I second your best wishes to Tam (for the immediate future result) and to CCC for a few weeks' time.
CCC…hope all goes well, and that you have someone to look after you.
scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Tam & CCHope all goes well for both.
I'll be thinking of you today, Tam."
Just seen those posts - I second your best wishes to Tam (for the immediate future result) and to CCC for a few weeks' time.."
Yes, I echo the good wishes.
Mod
After an unusually cool and wet spring, a rapid war..."
Same here in Portland, MK. Sixty to ninety in 48 hours or less. My first attempts at a garden plot in my community's community garden seem doomed. For so long the soil was too wet to work, then I got a few bean plants started, then the rabbits ate those shoots, now the bean seeds I replanted will have to face the heat. Sigh.
Tam wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Hello Andy. Glad you enjoyed Shadowlands by Matthew Green as much as I did.Just finished Newcomerwhich i liked for his spare way of writing [bookcover:Newcomer
Hop..."
Good luck.
Paul wrote: "Robert wrote: "Another Italian trial that rather baffled me was the prosecution of Mehmet Ali Aga for the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II. A shadowy Turkish gunman attacking the Pope? A st..."I've heard that the tern "nepotism" comes from the Italian word for "nephew."
Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SATURDAY THROUGH MONDAY...After an unusually cool and wet spring, ..."
A bad summer for Pacific Northwest gardeners. Will it be warm enough for things to ripen?
The Snares of Memory by Juan Marsé (trans. Nick Caistor)Juan Marsé Carbó (8 January 1933 – 18 July 2020) was a Spanish novelist, journalist and screenwriter who used Spanish as his literary language. In 2008, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, "the Spanish-language equivalent" to the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Wikipedia)
In this novel, it is 1982 and Spain is cautiously emerging from Francoist dictatorship to the early years of democracy. An author is struggling with his latest novel, so he accepts a commission to write the preliminary treatment for a film to be made about a notorious ‘true story’ - the murder of prostitute Carolina Bruil Latorre in Barcelona in 1949.
But… Marsé had already published a novel entitled ‘If they tell you I fell’ (Si te dicen que cai, published in Mexico during Franco’s period in power), which told of the notorious murder of real-life prostitute Carmen Broto in 1949. (This novel was filmed, not very successfully, by Vicente Aranda in 1989. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098324/ )
So… the ‘true story’ in this book isn’t one AFAIK, but doubtless the earlier book and actual murder provided the springboard for Marsé to play around with notions of truth and memory - which he does brilliantly. The novelist/narrator, then, isn’t Marsé (but could be understood as a version of himself), and the ‘true story murder’ isn’t a true story.
This is the tricky basis for a wonderfully intricate and amusing story, consisting of interviews, excerpts of the film script and more conventional narrative. The book opens with a one-sided interview giving only the ‘author’s’ responses to questions about the scriptwriting which we don’t ‘hear’… chronologically, this takes place midway through the book when the process is underway. The author is told that the murder was committed in the projection room of a cinema, and that the murderer - the projectionist Fermín Sicart - has forgotten why he killed Carolina, but is willing to be interviewed. As the narrative proceeds, the author continues to chip away at the murderer’s recollections in an attempt to clarify his reasons, but is also at the same time attempting to ‘improve’ the story… the producer also has his own ideas on how that may be done.
I enjoyed Marsé’s story very much indeed… the differing styles from chapter to chapter, the many humorous views of the film-making process and the ideas of the director and producer made it an easy read. In addition, serious points are made about the Francoist period and its consequences… I found this point on (self-) censorship fascinating:
“… recently not even in my own writing have I found words easy to come by. For some reason, when evoking the past, I still felt the weight of a castrating official censorship that paradoxically by 1982 no longer existed: the insidious injunction not to call things by their name. It was as if certain words that had been avoided and stored away for too long were still affected by the plundering and disrepute suffered for so many years, so that they suddenly lost their point of reference and changed meaning - they hid their true significance and treacherously turned their backs on me. I had the impression I was painfully dragging them up from the depths of a black well. The words were there on paper, and yet they remained in disguise, looking in another direction and persisting in their falsity…”
I also much liked this comment:
“The writer’s true homeland is not his mother tongue, but language itself.”
In that context, I’d like to praise the translator Nick Caistor, who seems to have done an excellent job - the text reads fluently and the humour feels intact.
Any reservations? Only a minor one - the final section is more conventional than much that went before, and the ending - perfectly in keeping with the rest - is nevertheless a slight let-down. But I’ll definitely read more by Marsé, and have already bought The Calligraphy of Dreams.
(Thanks once again to AB for recommending this.)
I've continued reading The Private Diaries of Sir H. Rider Haggard, 1914-1925. World War One is over and the old boy is exasperated by a railway strike. The more things change....
scarletnoir wrote: "The Snares of Memory by Juan Marsé (trans. Nick Caistor)Juan Marsé Carbó (8 January 1933 – 18 July 2020) was a Spanish novelist, journalist and screenwriter who used Spanish as h..."
glad you enjoyed it Scarlet, spanish literature is strong, so much to choose from and Marse was one of the veteran authors from that nation
Robert wrote: "I've continued reading The Private Diaries of Sir H. Rider Haggard, 1914-1925. World War One is over and the old boy is exasperated by a railway strike. The more things change...."loved the nepotism/nephew reference Robert and also the occasional serialisation you are giving us of H Rider Haggards diaries
I really enjoyed reading "She" last september
I was rather surprised last night to read the following excerpt from Portable Magic by Emma Smith which is all about books and their readers.All this time I have been seduced by the European myth that The Gutenberg Bible was the first printed book and that moveable type originated in Europe.
How wrong can one be? The said bible was rather a flop financially Gutenberg going bankrupt. The impetus for the development of printing was driven by anti Islam politics after Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman empire in 1453.
The British Library has a five-metre scroll of Buddhist scripture, The Diamond Sutra, printed in 868 (according to the Western calendar). Found in north-west China at the beginning of the twentieth century and comprising columns of characters and an illustrative frontispiece, it is the earliest dated example of block printing. Chinese and Korean pioneers of print pre-dated Gutenberg by centuries, and the relatively low cost of bamboo-fibre paper in East Asia meant that early print was a less elite technology in these regions. Chinese print technology developed movable type, made of clay and used to make an imprint on paper without a press. Paper technology was also refined by Chinese innovation during the Later Han period (by the second century CE): of course, Buddhist, Jain and Hindu book cultures would not adopt parchment, the skin of young animals, including cows. The paper pioneer Cai Lun (died 121 CE) reported that ‘silk is dear and bamboo heavy, so they are not convenient to use’, and had the idea to use tree bark, hemp, rags and fish-nets to make ‘silk-like writing material’. Paper availability and widespread literacy drove commercial printing in China by the Tang Dynasty (seventh–ninth century CE), and the first woodblock edition of the canon of Confucian classics dates from the tenth century. The oldest datable book printed using movable type is written in Chinese by a Korean Buddhist monk.
Mod
All this time I have been seduced by the European myth ..."
I did know this, but I can't remember now where I read it.
Ah, yes, I can, having just had a thought and checked. It was in Martin Latham's The Bookseller's Tale.
The last three books I have read all have adolescents as protagonists. A convincing portrayal of a teenager is a difficult thing for an author to get right, and these books demonstrate that well. An example of how not to do it, was Paddy Crewe’s My Name Is Yip. It smacks too much of an adult writing about a child. I worked with teenagers for more than 30 years, Crewe just couldn’t convince me with his character.
In Audrey Magee’s The Colony 15 year old James has not long ago lost his father. The arrival on the island of the artist Mr Lloyd is timely for James, seeking a role model and a type of father figure. Despite the carnage of war on the mainland, James puts up a front, and lives his life. Magee’s description of the boy is a highlight of the book.
And the book I am reporting on now O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker which captures the short life of Janet so wonderfully well.
Janet is born in Edinburgh during the Second World War, but soon move to a sprawling old castle in the desolate north of Scotland called Auchnasaugh. Her preoccupied and eccentric parents, who have alternately teased and tolerated their daughter, then leave her to her own devices, increase their brood fourfold, then favour the younger ones. By the time she is sent off to boarding school Janet is curious mix of the mischievous and the bookish, unable to grasp the behaviour of the adults in her world.
Magee evokes the unyielding chill of Calvinism and the Highlands climate to underline Janet’s isolation and loneliness, who, quite unsurprisingly, seeks refuge in the birds and the beasts of the estate.
One of the reasons the book works so well is the contrast of the darker hints of mortality mixed with the innocent escapades of the children. But more than anything, Barker uses an appealingly naughty style of humour that encapsulates the passions and pains of adolescence so well.
We know from page one that Janet is dead at sixteen, but the climatic final pages still come as a shock in a very witty and atmospheric tale.
I read Barker compared to Shirley Jackson, something that attracted me to the book in the first place. But that isn’t fair to either writer. I see Barker as more in the vein of Barbara Comyns, with three aspects of her writing to really enjoy, the sinister, the wit and the period. This was her first, and unfortunately only, novel, published when she was 51. She died in April of this year, at 82.
Here’s a few rather wonderful clips..
(With the excuse of exchanging Christmas presents in the city, Janet, at 14, visits Lila in the asylum, who is asleep, but an inmate from a neighbouring room calls past…)
She snatched the package and ripped it open. “Knickers, knickers, knickers. Knickers, knickers, knickers. These are for me, seein I’ve nane.” She pirouetted, lifting her skirt. Janet averted her eyes. Nudity had no part in her life. “Please do have them, if they’re any use to you,” she began. “Oh, Lady Bountiful, oh, how too too kind.” Beakface was mimicking Janet’s voice; then she resumed her own. “I’ll have them whether you like it or no. Milksop!” she yelled and ran out of the room.
And,
Among the swirling daffodils the old labrador lay out, in the teeth of the gale. Her head was raised, her ears were pricked; alertly she snuffed the air; she watched the world turn, the new season approach. Looking at her Janet thought in sharp sorrow, “I will never see this again,” for now the labrador could scarcely walk; her hind legs were emaciated and she had to be helped in and out and up and down the stairs. Yet she was crouched there, unafraid, welcoming with dignity of whatever was to come, among the reckless, gaudy flowers whose time was even briefer. “Fair daffodils, we weep to see you haste away so soon.” Fair labrador. Sometimes Janet thought that life’s sole purpose was to teach one how to die. As in most spheres, so in this, animals did better than people.
The jackdaw..
“Nos contra mundum, Claws,” she told him. She wondered whether she could teach him to say this. But first he must learn to say “Nevermore”. If she were given any money for Christmas, she planned to spend it on lengths of purple taffeta which she would nail to her walls as a start to redesigning the room in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe.
(*Nos contra mundum - Those with some Latin background?? You and me against the world? )
Robert wrote: "Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SATURDAY THROUGH MONDAY...After an unusually cool ..."
My neighbors are avid backyard gardeners. (I shudder at their water bills as sewage fees are added as a percent of water used) and especially plant several varieties of tomatoes. What with the late start summerwise I will be surprised if there are any leftovers for neighbors this year.
We are lucky. though, that we have an over abundant snow pack this year which should help diminish wild fires.
LLJ - at least we are only expecting mid-80s here. I wish it didn't get so darned hot in Portland because the people there are nicer than around Seattle. But for the heat, I'd rather live there.
MK wrote: "Robert wrote: "Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SATURDAY THROUGH MONDAY...After an ..."
whats the diff between Portland and Seattle people?
The Wainwright Longlists are here.. https://wainwrightprize.com/Looks like some decent stuff to get on the tbr list..
AB76 wrote: "MK wrote: "Robert wrote: "Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SATURDAY THROUGH MONDAY......"There is a saying- Seattle Freeze. It's been my experience that some natives don't speak plainly and prefer to avoid anything that might be considered at all close to confrontation. For some reason this reticence is lain at the feet of the Nordic residents. Seattle - especially the Ballard neighborhood - has a history of Swedish, Finnsh, and Norwegian settlers. Ballard also celebrates May 17th (a Norwegian Holiday) with a parade and party.
As an Eastcoaster I find the `beating around the bush' quite frustrating and superficial. Therefore, I've learned to keep my own counsel and my nose in a book.
I bet you didn’t expect such a long reply!
MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "MK wrote: "Robert wrote: "Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SATURDAY THRO..."thats a very interesting reply MK, i think these newer cities on the WestCoast(newer as in they were founded or populated later than the east coast cities), are almost like a new america in my opinion. They seem far less religious than eastern,older cities especially Portland and Seattle but i may be wrong as it could be just a word of mouth theory.
For @Andy(*Nos contra mundum - Those with some Latin background?? You and me against the world? )
absolutely.
I always chuckle when I read Americans saying backyard which to me conjures up my grandparents' slabbed area with a coal house and long drop outside toilet in a terrace in Burnley. Not a flower or a vegetable in sight!
giveusaclue wrote: "I always chuckle when I read Americans saying backyard which to me conjures up my grandparents' slabbed area with a coal house and long drop outside toilet in a terrace in Burnley. Not a flower or ..."Ah, slang. I have a similar reaction when Conan Doyle calls a shed an "outhouse."
MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "MK wrote: "Robert wrote: "Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SATURDAY THRO..."There used to be a saying that if you saw a car with a seatbelt dangling from the driver's door, you knew you were in Ballard.
Re Portable Magic by Emma Smith 2The next chapter told me about the Armed Services Editions , paperback books which were issued to soldiers in WW2 by the US.
Thought this policy of giving books to servicemen was marvellous - more that 1300 titles, 122 million books , all genres, fiction, non-fiction, including classics, poetry, best sellers, crime…..everything.
What a wonderful idea.
All personnel were issued with a book as they embarked on the DDay landings. The books were small enough to fit in your pocket.
giveusaclue wrote: "I always chuckle when I read Americans saying backyard which to me conjures up my grandparents' slabbed area with a coal house and long drop outside toilet in a terrace in Burnley. Not a flower or ..."Me too! But I think they're correct - we still use graveyard, churchyard, vineyard, farmyard (doubtful?) and although I haven't checked this I assume garden and yard come from the same root?
The more interesting question is when did 'yard' in the UK start to mean something paved or concreted over?
AB76 wrote: "MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "MK wrote: "Robert wrote: "Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 2022 EXPECTED SA..."For many years, Portland's outside influences came from New England-- generations were educated by teachers brought in from the Northeast.
While in Seattle, outside influences came from Scandinavia. Seattle's old money was Norwegian, Swedish, or Danish. People who valued privacy and didn't make much display of wealth.
From The Private Diaries of Sir H. Rider Haggard, 1914-1925Entry for 15 November, 1920:
When I was a boy of nine, now some 55 years ago, I was sent to a private tutor, the Rev. Mr. Graham... who died, an old man, within the last five years. Mr. Graham wore a thick gold ring engraved in a curious, but rather conventional, frieze pattern with symbols in it that may have been meant to represent the sun. He told me that an old friend of his who had business in Peru or Central America had opened some burial place and in it found a chamber wherein, round a stone table, sat a dead and mummified man at the head and about a dozen other persons ranged round the table.... All that I can recollect of the rest of the story is that the man at the head of the table wore this ring upon his hand and that the discoverer of the tomb took it thence and gave it to Mr. Graham in later years. (I seem, however, to recall that... after the tomb was opened all its inmates crumbled into dust....)
The tale made a deep impression on my youthful mind and, in fact, first turned it toward Romance. I used it in King Solomon's Mines....
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "although I haven't checked this I assume garden and yard come from the same root?"A good spot - I didn't realise that:
A yard is an area of land immediately adjacent to one or more buildings. It may be either enclosed or open.[1] The word comes from the same linguistic root as the word garden and has many of the same meanings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yard_(l...
Robert wrote: "From The Private Diaries of Sir H. Rider Haggard, 1914-1925Entry for 15 November, 1920:
When I was a boy of nine, now some 55 years ago, I was sent to a private tutor, the Rev. Mr. Graham... who ..."
Excellent stuff - I read King Solomon's Mines as a kid, and it left a deep impression... Mummies do have a habit of crumbling into dust, don't they?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7Emb...
Interestingly - and deservedly - the Nazis also developed this habit a few millenia later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA7J0...
FWIW, the passage that always stuck in my memory was the way Gagool was crushed under a stone door, though - oddly - it doesn't appear to be on YouTube (Spielberg, again, used/stole this idea, probably more than once...)... but here is the text:
By now we are running down the passage, and this is what the light from the lamp shows us. The door of the rock is closing down slowly; it is not three feet from the floor. Near it struggle Foulata and Gagool. The red blood of the former runs to her knee, but still the brave girl holds the old witch, who fights like a wild cat. Ah! she is free! Foulata falls, and Gagool throws herself on the ground, to twist like a snake through the crack of the closing stone. She is under—ah! god! too late! too late! The stone nips her, and she yells in agony. Down, down it comes, all the thirty tons of it, slowly pressing her old body against the rock below. Shriek upon shriek, such as we have never heard, then a long sickening crunch, and the door was shut just as, rushing down the passage, we hurled ourselves against it.
I do like that 'crunch'!
http://www.telelib.com/authors/H/Hagg...
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I always chuckle when I read Americans saying backyard which to me conjures up my grandparents' slabbed area with a coal house and long drop outside toilet in a terrace in Burnl..."Good point Frances!
giveusaclue wrote: "FrancesBurgundy wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I always chuckle when I read Americans saying backyard which to me conjures up my grandparents' slabbed area with a coal house and long drop outside toil..."The word 'backyard' has a particular connotation in the UK nowadays, as in 'not in my backyard' or NIMBY for short... used for example to describe people opposed to power stations using coal or nuclear, but dead set against any wind power generators in... their backyard.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "MK wrote: "Robert wrote: "Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "We have a weather alert from the National Weather Service telling us we can expect - FIRST HEAT WAVE OF 202..."thans for that robert...very interesting
AB76 wrote: "Awful news from accross the pond: Roe Vs Wade overturned, i did think after the leak the judges may backtrack but i am astonished that in the modern world, the USA has drifted back into darkness an..."I don't think any of us realized how much staying in power meant to white men and their cohorts. In earlier days I would have said WASPs. While my days of worrying about abortion are long gone, I understand this is more about where some want women to fit into society.
Glad to say that women's rights are protected in Washington State. (Some are already worrying that somehow Idaho may try to sue WA when women there cross the border for medical help.
What a world we live in.
Mod
Just watched it - most enjoyable! Have you seen it yet?
Two things happened to me today, one positive and one negative pertaining to bookish things.The positive was that I was mistaken for a member of staff working in a second hand book shop (well, to be fair I was sitting on the ground trying to take out Michael Connolly books from a tower of crime books - almost like Jenga in reverse), even if I was a bit embarrassed because my stomach was making quite loud gurgling noises.
The negative thing is going to make me sound like a grumpy curmudgeon. I was sitting in a bookshop cafe engrossed in my book when my peripheral vision caught a human shape coming in my direction. The next thing I knew, the tray holding my coffee was pushed, another set down and a woman sat down on the chair opposite my own....
This woman said "I do like sitting in these chairs". I looked up, frowning and then the woman asked "was anyone sitting here", to which I firmly replied "I am". Still, the woman sat there, so I then uttered "I'm just happy sitting here by myself, in my own company". She got up to leave, but rolled her eyes at me as she did so. This cafe was at best one third occupied by other coffee guzzlers.
Mr Fuzzywuzz thought I was a little harsh. I dunno, disturbing an engrossed bookreader is akin to poking a hornets' nest.
The book I was reading (and have now just finished) was Carrie, by Stephen King, a short and bittersweet story which contains the best depiction of bullying that I have so far come across.
I have been busy of late...mostly working. Last month finally got down to Cork to visit friends and family which was a great uplifting of my spirits.
Next week, my daughter is coming home from University. She finished her exams yesterday, had a good night out after (involving karaoke), but fell asleep on the Nightbus and left her phone on it. Eejit. Ah, the joys to be young and daft....
Someone asked about first bookshop? Until I went to university, I used local libraries or borrowed books from friends, so I didn't really go to bookshops. When I started buying books for myself, it must have been Vibes and Scribes in Cork and Charlie Byrne's in Galway. I shared a house back in 1999/2000 with a girl who worked in Bell, Book and Candle (also in Galway).
MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Awful news from accross the pond: Roe Vs Wade overturned, i did think after the leak the judges may backtrack but i am astonished that in the modern world, the USA has drifted back int..."sad, sad times
I highly commend the Island by Ana Maria MutateMajorca in 1936 and the mysteries of life for a 14yo girl, her extended family and the distant war that drifts into Majorcan life. I didnt feel that the answers sought as the book progressed were answered but then some things in life are never clear. Beautifully written short novel (172 pages), full of little gems of narrative writing and a subtle,lyrical tension in the storytelling
Next up is a very different beast The Day of the Jackal by Freddie Forsyth. Seen the film many times and last read the novel in the school library around 1991. Am not expecting too much as an adult but it should be a fun read
Heading to the shops on Saturday? Take a look at FT Weekend. I think it may be their Summer Books issue. Be sure and check, though.
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Isak Dinesen (other topics)Blixen Karen (other topics)
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Robb observes that when the Pope visited Palermo after recovering from the assassination he spoke to a huge crowd but never once mentioned the mafia, which suprised me as JP2 was outspoken on many other things
The deaths of Falcone, Borsellino and Dalla Chiesa have a sad, lonely feel to them, successful, principled men of justice fed to the mafia by DC factions and Andreotti. The diaries of Dalla Chiesa were used in the Andreotti trial and are pretty damming though the wily Andreotti denied it all.
Word must go to PCI politician Pia La Torre, killed by the mafia, whose work against the mafia led to anti-mafia laws including article 416. The DC politicians at his funeral were taunted by communist youths, alleging DC-Mafia connections.