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What are we reading? 15 August 2022
Robert wrote: "MK wrote: "I'm thinking of changing my name here to Shirley. I saw 3, count 'em 3!, yellow cars today. Two on the way to a Doctor's. appt, and 1 on the way home. However, rest assured that seeing y..."So true! Cliff Mass keeps tearing them to shreds over global warming. I had to check with Google this a.m. to see if La Nina years mean drought for the SW, and the answer is Yes.
And it looks as if we are heading into year 3!
Gpfr wrote: "
This is tempting:https://www.theguardian.com/books/202......"
AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Excited to have my Ernesto Sabato novel lined up now, its been tempting me all year and am going to start it soon
On Heroes and Tombs was written in 1961, re-issued in..."
Well, I bought - only $18 at bookdepository. I roll my eyes - as if i need another book!
I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Can this really be true?? Do people here read Galbraith (I don't), and do you contemplate reading such a doorstop with equanimity?
Heather Cox Richardson and her How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America is leading me down a new garden path as I read about the myth of the cowboy and western individualism.I remember someone here suggested reading The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains which I have added to my basket at Powells. But in the meantime, I've just finished The Last Mountain Man which I found surprisingly good.(I've always thought of Westerns as being read by grizzled old men (white, of course) sitting in porch rocking chairs). Lots of nastiness like tying a naked bad guy down next to an ants nest - and then adding honey as their (the ants) treat.
But it does give me a better sense of the unreality of Gunsmoke, John Wayne, et al.
Perhaps I should note that I purchased
at a used bookstore in Battleground, WA. It is the home of the recently defeated Jaime Herrera Butler and is definitely in a red slice of WA. As I mentioned above, I have a basket full awaiting me at Powells when I next visit. (Unless they have a sale first, of course.) When I do go, I will swing back by that used bookstore to see if they have the next few of the Mountain Man series. William W. Johnstone is about as prolific as Earl Stanley gardner was.
Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Can this really be true?? Do people here read Galbrait..."I tried one and gave up. And 1024 pages?
Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Can this really be true?? Do people here read Galbrait..."It helps for me if I can split it up, into three for example. Then just consider it as 3 books.. but I would need plenty of recommendations.
I really like to be able to finish a book within 2 days, especially if it’s good.
I guess that’s a sign of being retired, having time to do it..
There’s a crime novel that Tom Mooney’s recommended as one of the best reads of the year, Vine Street, more than 600 pages.
I’ve just got to get my mental approach right, then I’ll start it..
giveusaclue wrote: "Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Can this really be true?? Do people here ..."Thanks for the 'head's up!' The idea just makes my arms ache. I long ago gave up on Elizabeth George and Lynley/Havers because I think she needs an editor with a will stronger than hers. This is even though I really liked Barbara Havers.
Maybe the same holds true for J. K. Rowling.
I already said on here some time ago exactly the same thing about JK Rowling needing a good editor. I enjoyed the TV series but her last book I had on audio and it was interminable. I really became aware of how much you can skim over while reading that you can’t while listening. There was so much unnecessary guff and padding…..what they ate, for example. And the repetition! It did my head in. I thought it was a pretty average crime novel,as well. Just all very self indulgent. Mind you, she is not the only author these days who could do with a good editor.
Re: the differing attitudes of Imperial/colonizing nations toward their colonial/colonized subjects I am currently nearing the end of Peter Gatrell's excellent "The Unsettling of Europe: The Great Migration, 1945 to the Present," which - among many other things - unpicks the tangled ramifications of those varied attitudes in the age of decolonization (and subsequently, down to this day). In any case, as I said, an excellent book.
Andy wrote: "I admire his research, but as something only a little more than a beginner in this field, I was soon overwhelmed, and soon after it becomes all too much, and interest is lost..."That's a pity... I'm not much of a lover of bugs (in general), but in summer do like to hear the bees humming in the flowers - this year, there is a serious dearth of bees - and other insects. I'm feeling pretty worried about this, though I suppose that (in theory) such small creatures can increase their populations rapidly when environmental factors are favourable. I don't know if it's the heat, drought or something else that is responsible for this year's tiny number of flies.
Andy wrote: "and, The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles Bukowski
Reading Bukowski is like no other reading experience..."
Haha! I did like 'The telephone'... I was saying to my wife only yesterday how much I dislike the instrument, as it always interrupts me when I'm doing something else - maybe physical (washing dishes, so wet hands) or often 'just' mental - reading, or thinking about something. The peremptory ringing always feels like an intrusion: "Shit!" I say - nearly every time.
Of course, on rare occasions the call is from a friend and we then happily natter on for an hour or so, but that's unusual. In any case, the initial response is always one of irritation!
As for Bukowski - never read his poetry, but did enjoy Post Office and Ham on Rye, which are the two novels of his I definitely read.
giveusaclue wrote: "Sorry if I wasn't clear. Guess I should have said don't try to change history, understand it more yes by all means."Thanks for the clarification - the other phrase sounded suspiciously like something a Tory politician would come out with - meaning: "We've already written the history we like, so don't try to reinterpret or re-evaluate it!" But history is always being reinterpreted in the light of current ideas about what constitutes correct or 'moral' behaviour.
Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Can this really be true?? Do people here read Galbrait..."I have read them, but TBH they could do with being a lot shorter! Easy reads, not my favourite by any means though. I prefer the TV adaptations.
Edit: just to clarify - I read stuff like this on a Kindle, so no heavy weight to hold... anything read purely as entertainment and unlikely to be re-visited goes on the Kindle if it's cheaper (sometimes I go second-hand). More 'serious' books and I'll buy a paper copy if it's available.
Mod
Andy wrote: "Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Can this really be true?? Do people here ..."how are the midges up there?i would imagine the summer is turning quite quickly that far North, though in my scando summer trips it never really felt like summer, apart from the endless light
Mod
The other two 'daughters of China' are her grandmother whose feet were bound and who was the concubine of a warlord before marrying a doctor, and her mother who, like her father, became a committed and high-ranking communist official.
The book was first published in 1991 and was a huge bestseller with very favourable reviews. It is certainly extremely readable and an interesting account of a family history through this most turbulent period and the author's gradual disillusionment. It has been suggested (in a GR review) that Jung Chang's depiction of her role as a red guard is less than accurate — maybe so...
I now want to re-read Hand-Grenade Practice in Peking: My Part in the Cultural Revolution by Frances Wood. In 1975, some foreign students were admitted to China. This book is based on the letters the author wrote home during her one-year stay. Like Jung Chang, one of the things she describes is training to throw hand-grenades with wooden models.
On Heroes and Tombs(1961) by Ernesto Sabato has started well, a park in central Buenos Aires, a boy and a girl and a sense of gloom and dread.As an opening for a novel its quite original, there seems to be a story to be told but we have started two years before that story and its all rather shady and rather dark and unsettling...
scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Sorry if I wasn't clear. Guess I should have said don't try to change history, understand it more yes by all means."Thanks for the clarification - the other phrase sounded sus..."
I don't think that is limited to any particular party!
giveusaclue wrote: "I don't think that is limited to any particular party!"I may be mistaken - and would be interested to see any examples - but there is no question but that the Tory party was far more interested in re-writing the school curriculum (including History) in the 30 years or so I spent as a teacher.
Gpfr wrote: "I've just finished reading Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, which I picked up from one of the book exchanges near my home. The other two 'daughters of China' are her..."
You may care to look at this one:
Told from an American's point of view, but I found it very interesting.
Gpfr wrote: "I've just finished reading Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, which I picked up from one of the book exchanges near my home. The other two 'daughters of China' are her..."
I read this soon after publication, and found it excellent. (I am no expert in Chinese history, though.)
scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Sorry if I wasn't clear. Guess I should have said don't try to change history, understand it more yes by all means."Thanks for the clarification - the other phrase sounded sus..."
Educational indoctrination is a sinister thing, i think all national education schemes have some elements of this but in a benign way, based on values and morals that may mean more to some and less to others.
But in places like Russia and China, North Korea, Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, children were fed the usual invented nonsense about national myths and fables.
Although the UK hasnt done well with its national myths and fables since the brexit bollocks, a nation looking backwards and sinking into the mire
Well, my 'real' deal on Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year at Book Depository is no more - received a refund notice this a.m. So I went to see what the price is today - $4+ more than yesterday.Before deciding whether to bite again there, I went to Blackwells to see their price - not quite as much as my original deal at Book Depository. So I ordered from them and will wait to see if it holds.
scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I've just finished reading Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, which I picked up from one of the book exchanges near my home. The other two 'daughters of C..."
How about a Shanghai Police Procedural Series? Qiu Xiaolong of the Inspector Chen books which begin with Death of a Red Heroine.
Interesting as he has to sometimes walk softly so as not to upset officials.
Mod
Yes, I like them. I'm waiting for the prices of the latest 3 to go down :)
@Gpfr. Jung Chang’s Wild Swans is excellent, isn’t it? I had a copy, which I enjoyed. Met her years ago at a book signing. Lovely, gentle, charming. Kept the book for many years, but it seems to have been moved on in one of my hopeless “ Let’s reduce the number of books” sessions.. Oh, dear!
Nadifa Mohammed in The Fortune Men is creating a wonderful tension in her novel of Tiger Bay, Cardiff in the 1950s.One can feel the strange low light ambience of dingy, wet winter weather, the cheek by jowl existence of people from all over the empire, crammed into these few street close to Cardiffs port, at the time one of the most diverse places outside London
I have just finished re-reading Agnes Grey and was going to say a little about it but our old cat has died and I can't really engage with much for now ..
Mod
That's sad — it's always so upsetting.
Greenfairy wrote: "I have just finished re-reading Agnes Grey and was going to say a little about it but our old cat has died and I can't really engage with much for now .."Oh so sad for you Greenfairy... our animals friends are true helpmates in life... may she rest in peace
Thank you, he was 15, and despite meds and a special diet he just became very skinny, we were with him when it finally happened
scarletnoir wrote: "Andy wrote: "I admire his research, but as something only a little more than a beginner in this field, I was soon overwhelmed, and soon after it becomes all too much, and interest is lost..."That..."
We’ve had less in the Lakes also.
And up here in the Finnish Arctic the mosquitos are gone already.
A bonus speaking purely selfishly, but locals struggle to recall their demise being so early.
scarletnoir wrote: "Andy wrote: "and, The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles BukowskiReading Bukowski is like no other reading exp..."
This was my first experience of his poetry.
It’s worth getting out of the library and dipping into from time to time.
AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Can this really be true?? Do..."Just wrote to SN that the mosquitos have gone already.
I tried to plan it that way, but expected mid-September.
There are still some midges around but nothing too bad.
I had a couple of regrettable experiences in Sweden on humid evenings.. but all my own fault, without socks, or long trousers.. asking for trouble..
Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Can this really..."good to see they have gone, they can be a torment in the northern summers, as far south as Scotland
where are you now? Skelleftea or further north?
Just about to start Spy Artist Prisoner by George Tomazu, a memoir of being on the wrong side of the Nazi's and the Communists from 1930s to 1950s in RomaniaI found it via Booklaunch magazine and the cover is a wonderful design, mimicking accurately a wartime airmail envelope in the Romanian language, published by Envelope Books
https://www.envelopebooks.co.uk/
I see the prolific Dan Jones had tried his hand at fiction and the Hundred Years War. Essex Dogs
PS - We had a smidge of rain last night, and it is definitely cooler for a few days. Then of course the darkness and ever grey will begin. Never satisfied!
MK wrote: "I see the prolific Dan Jones had tried his hand at fiction and the Hundred Years War. Essex DogsPS - We had a smidge of rain last night, and it is d..."
Looking forward to trying his foray into fiction, I have enjoyed all his books so far.
AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime genre novel! Ca..."I’m quite a bit further north now AB, in the Arctic now.
Up not far from Muonio at a National Park in Finland.
Turning much colder next week.. autumn is here.
Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a regular crime ge..."yes, that far north and the summer is fading fast by now, reading William Morris last summer(his Iceland travel memoir)and he was getting snow and sleet by 25th August, not settling but cold
areyou aiming to get up to Inari or right up to Norway, Kirkenes is a very odd town and very, very close to Russia....dont get nabbed by the FSB!
Doubling up with my comment on the G, "Pan" by Knut Hamsun would be a great read for you Andy
Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, a hunter and ex-military man, lives alone in a hut in the forest with his faithful dog Aesop
Mod
Looking forward to it!
Mod
I've seen two marvellous exhibitions of Finnish painters in the past few months, both were well-known abroad in their lifetimes, but now only famous in Finland: Albert Edelfelt (1854 - 1905) and Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 –1931).
The latter has a painting in the National Gallery which is apparently often chosen as people's favourite:
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/pa...
Gpfr wrote: "Andy wrote: "a National Park in Finland..."I've seen two marvellous exhibitions of Finnish painters in the past few months, both were well-known abroad in their lifetimes, but now only famous in ..."
they are both remarkable painters GPFR, capturing finlands nature and the working people in the 19th century
Am really enjoying The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed am one third of the way throughThe setting of a multi-cultural suburb of Cardiff (Tiger Bay) long before the culture wars and uneasy multi-cultural messings of the 1980s and 1990s is fascinating. Pockets of true diversity abounded in 1950s Britain, attitudes were more racist and the poverty endemic but this is now almost 70 years ago and while Mohamed has cast her writing back, long before she was born, she captures the period well.
The real life basis of the story is interesting too and the different cultures are well depicted without it becoming a popular cliche and ticking boxes.
Mod
Ray, French, from Algeria, arrives in New York in the mid-sixties and after doing a few different jobs gets a job as a doorman in an apartment building on Park Avenue, is given a studio at the top of the building to live in, and stays there for 40 years. He is observant, discreet, empathetic and we live those 40 years with him, encounter the inhabitants of the building and see some of the incidents a doorman is faced with, learn some things about his past, his family and Oran, but above all accompany him on his explorations of New York. His main free-time activity is to walk, for the first years with his friend Salah, a Palestinian, who chooses their itineraries.
I've just read that Le Doorman won a prize: « Prix du roman d’entreprise et du travail », which is for works "relating to employment issues". Its jury is made up of sociologists, lawyers, journalists and trade union leaders. I didn't know this prize before.
Keeping to the NY theme, I've just been looking at a lovely book I was given some years ago, New York aquarelles (watercolours) by Fabrice Moireau, text by Jerome Charyn.
You can see some of it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFlqA...
AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Anne wrote: "I've just read that the new Robert Galbraith crime novel (The Ink Black Heart) is 1024 pages long. 1024 pages for a reg..."Cheers AB.
Yes, to Inari, later this week actually. I am (hopefully) picking up my visa extension (to the Schengen 90 days) there.
I don't know about Kirkenes yet, I've been there before, but a long time ago, 1980s. Certainly though to Vrado and Varanger National Park.
Gpfr wrote: "A new book by Erika Fatland, High: A journey Across the Himalayas, through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China.Looking forward to it!"
Great news GP.
I'm a huge fan.
Wonder how she was able to put it together in the lockdown years..
I had thought it would be a while until she put out something new.
I've been wandering around web rabbit holes this morning. It started with a FB click on the Boucheron Convention in Minneapolis where I saw this book The Combat Zone: Murder, Race, and Boston's Struggle for Justice
is one of the finalists for this year's non-fiction award. Since I am so weak-willed I have added it to my Powell's basket which I plan to empty next month when in Portland for a few days.Long ago I lived in Boston and have fond memories of the Garden and its swan boats, and of course going to Jake Wirth's German Restaurant before the Health Dept. made them stop having saw dust on the floor.
I'm going to have to go back and re-read the early Spenser mysteries which cover a similar time - starting with bookcover:The Godwulf Manuscript (A Spenser Mystery)|33867737]. Note - a map of Boston is a great help.
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Just finished The Disappearance of Josef Mengele by Olivier Guez.
Having won the Prix Renaudot in France in 2017 this translation by Georgia de Camberet has been published by the indie press Verso.
Guez's research is impressive indeed, but it would be good to know exactly where he embellishes.
In the sleeve notes he claims it to be of the genre 'narrative nonfiction', or a 'factual' novel. Sounds clunky.
For the full answer as to why it is written like this, it is necessary to read the book, though I'll hint at it below.
The novel is an account of the post-Holocaust years of the Auschwitz surgeon, Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death. He, along with numerous other Nazis, escaped to Argentina after the War seeking refuge under the regime of Juan Perón. For ten years or so, Mengele lived in relative peace, but at about the same time as Perón was deposed, the Mossad, frustrated by lack of action of western Europe and the US, vowed to capture and execute any remaining high-profile Nazis. For the next few decades of Mengele’s life, he changed aliases and moved often between Paraguay, Chile and Brazil as one of the most high-profile fugitives on the planet.
Understandably, the details of his life in these years are not complete, hence (in my reading of it) the requirement for it to be a novel.
For the most part Guez simply acts as a reporter, expressing no more than an obvious contempt for this most evil of men. Mengele may have been lucky in evading authorities, he may have been clever in doing so, but the novel raises as many questions as it answers as to why was able to spend so long on the run.
After the various official searches for Nazis had been abandoned, there was another surge in the 1960s, then in the 1980s a spate of Nazi hunters who managed some success.
In using the Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard's quote at the start of the second part of the book (which covers those last decades on the run), Guez does indicate some of personal feeling, which must be considerable after conducting so much research,
The punishment matches the guilt:to be deprived of all appetite for life, to be brought to the highest degree of weariness of life.
It is evident that the last decades of Mengele's life had that degree of weariness; he was never settled, he rarely saw any of his family, he was ill, he was vilified throughout the world, he barely existed, his former colleagues were captured, tried and executed. Clearly, this was no sort of a life.
But..he remained a free man. Incredibly.
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
The Disappearance of Josef Mengele (other topics)The Combat Zone: Murder, Race, and Boston's Struggle for Justice (other topics)
Essex Dogs (other topics)
Essex Dogs (other topics)
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Olivier Guez (other topics)Charles Bukowski (other topics)
Qiu Xiaolong (other topics)
Charles Bukowski (other topics)
William W. Johnstone (other topics)
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I'm not sure what this means... maybe you'd care to expand on the phrase? As it stands, it just sounds like a slogan."
Sorry if I wasn't clear. Guess I should have said don't try to change history, understand it more yes by all means.