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What are we reading? 5 December 2022
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scarletnoir wrote: "This seems as good a moment as any to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year... it is a pleasure to exchange tips and to discuss/debate/disagree in a civilised manner... not something ..."Posts like this make me wish we had a 👍 button here. But definitely not a 👎button.
I'm not religious either, just think Christmas is a good time to celebrate friends and family. But to quote someone else "why should the devil have all the good tunes," and I just love church carols. Not so much listening to any old tinny Christmas music blaring out in shops from the beginning of December. Bah humbug"
Robert wrote: "Russell wrote: "Robert wrote: "...Channon went to Berlin during Hitler's Olympics....""
Your mention of Channon being at the Games reminded me of Travelers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd, which received many plaudits when it came out a few years ago. JB spends a couple of pages quoting from Channon’s notes comparing the parties.
A book I’ve been meaning to read for an age is The Nemesis of Power by John Wheeler-Bennett, as updated by Richard Overy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it borrows from the Rauschning. Two for the New Year, I think.
Your mention of Channon being at the Games reminded me of Travelers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd, which received many plaudits when it came out a few years ago. JB spends a couple of pages quoting from Channon’s notes comparing the parties.
A book I’ve been meaning to read for an age is The Nemesis of Power by John Wheeler-Bennett, as updated by Richard Overy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it borrows from the Rauschning. Two for the New Year, I think.
Mod
Your mention of Channon being at the Games reminded me of Travelers in the Third Reich by Jul..."
I've got Travellers in the Third Reich, but haven't read it yet...
Florence Gordon by Brian Morton was a really enjoyable read. Florence, academic, and fierce feminist writer is now 75 and runs into a situation even she cannot outwit. She is unbelievably rude, makes barbed comments to anyone and everyone, does not suffer fools at all. Into the mix come her son, wife and granddaughter, working through their own problems. It doesn’t sound like much but it is an intelligent, witty funny book, filled with humanity and understanding. Good summaries through Florence and her work of feminism in the 60s and now. The ending was one of those where you are left hanging….or are you? I second guess my understanding of the book so will pass it on to friends to see what they think.
My liking for the book is because I appreciate novelists who display their human sympathy in a warm empathetic manner but without sentimentality. I suppose the best recommendation is to say I will definitely be checking out Brian Morton’s other novels.
scarletnoir wrote: "I don't recall reading any of his adult fiction, though I did read many of the kids' books to my daughters - they are often excellent stories, and pretty rude."In her article Emre devotes about equal space to the children’s books and adult books (stories and memoirs). She thinks the adult stories provide a key, in the form of a particularly male sexual obsession with size, to recurring themes in the children’s books, which she characterizes as frequently featuring things growing large, representing power, and becoming small, denoting weakness.
The last third of the article is a mostly positive examination of Matilde, a book which Emre read a number of times during her childhood. Just when it seems as if the reviewer is offering at least a partial volte-face on Dahl’s literary merits, she undercuts this by crediting just about everything that makes Matilde worthwhile to sweeping changes insisted upon by Dahl’s editor, Stephen Roxburgh. Indeed, compared with the rather Dickensian story described earlier by Emre, the summary of Dahl’s original conception of the book sounds a lot more like the adult Dahl I’ve read:
The Matilda of Dahl’s first draft was “born wicked” and most likely based on Hilaire Belloc’s poem “Matilda”: “Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,/It made one Gasp and stretch one’s Eyes.” This Matilda tortured her kind parents, declared war on her cross-dressing, mustachioed headmistress, and used her powers not to read but to fix a horse race so that her favorite teacher, Miss Hayes, a compulsive gambler, could pay off her debts.
Gpfr wrote: "Fun quiz, matching the writer & their desk:https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
I got 6/7."
Me too, sheer guesswork
Bill wrote: "She thinks the adult stories provide a key, in the form of a particularly male sexual obsession with size"Can't say I noticed any particular Freudian sub-text when reading The BFG or James and the Giant Peach, but what do I know? I'm not a psychologist, and don't have a book to sell! ;-)
I’ve been reading a Welsh author, Lucie McKnight Hardy, whose earlier book, Water Shall Refuse Them was good. This one, Dead Relatives, entertaining enough..
Iris is 13 years old and hears voices – specifically, the voices of her dead relatives. Through her eyes, the big country house she shares with 'Mammy' has a haunted, gothic quality, which obscures a far more macabre reality.
This is a pretty run-of-the-mill horror story, but stands out in the reminder it provides that in looking for horror in the paranormal, the real monstrous that emerges is in what humans do to each other in real life.
Iris's house is a 1960s mother-and-baby home, where pregnant unmarried women, rejected by society, were sent to have their children.
also, the splendid Mr. Fox by Barbara Comyns.
Amongst the many unsolved mysteries in our world is how so many of Barbara Comyns’s novels fell out of print. Often, as in this case, they are the best ones.
Thankfully now this has had a reprint, but there's still a couple, notably The Skin Chairs, I can't get hold of for anything less than a small fortune.
Another I haven’t read yet, A Touch of Mistletoe, has just had a reissue.
This was published in 1984, though most likely written years before. Set during World War II it is the story of Caroline Seymoure, and her young daughter Jenny, who have been left by her husband and due to tough financial circumstances, move into live with Mr Fox, a dodgy man with a 'fine red beard', who is involved with many shady deals, some of which see him spending short times in Brixton Prison, so much so that he knows several of the police who take him there, and the warders well, and count them amongst his friends.
Fox is a fascinating character, given to mood swings and possessing an explosive temper, his relationship with Caroline has as many bad times as it does good. When the war arrives he becomes heavily involved in the black market, trading in pianos and grandfather clocks amongst other things.
Though Caroline leaves for a job outside London as a housekeeper, she returns when it doesn't work out.
On the one hand this is a remarkable first hand account of living through the War; the fear, the loss, the quandry of wondering whether to send your child away, and the effort to live a normal life and keep cheerful. And on the other, a witty yet dark tale written in Comyns's inimitable style, told with that ‘innocent eye which observes with childlike simplicity the most fantastic or the most ominous occurrences’.
scarletnoir wrote: "Can't say I noticed any particular Freudian sub-text when reading The BFG or James and the Giant Peach, but what do I know? I'm not a psychologist, and don't have a book to sell! ;-)"Without going into great detail, Emre quotes a passage from Dahl's story "Bitch", at the climax of which the male narrator is exposed to
a top-secret perfume called Bitch, a fragrance made from sexual stimulants so intoxicating that any man who smells it will proceed to have wild and possibly—no, probably—nonconsensual sex with the first woman he sees.In describing its effect on him, the narrator says, "Bigger and bigger grew my astonishing organ".
According to Emre,
It is no longer possible for me to read “Bigger and bigger grew the peach” without hearing its echo, thirteen years later, in “Bitch.”(By the way, the title of Emre's review is "Making It Big".)
Russell wrote: "Robert wrote: "...Another unusual perspective comes from Henry "Chips" Channon's Diaries 1918-1938...."Very interesting. I think I'll have to read those diaries, at least the ones from the late 1..."
Channon's narration of George VI's coronation ceremony is excellent: he would have made a good journalist.
I don't believe I've never read Roald Dahl, unless there's some short story that I've come across long ago in an anthology and since forgotten, so my feelings towards him as an author and as a person are pretty much neutral, but I do wonder about the motivation behind the critique Bill tells us about above: does the critic think Dahl has an overblown reputation as a writer in terms of skill and craft? Or does she find both him and his work morally reprehensible in some way that she finds has not been noticed until now? I had a vague impression that Dahl's personal conduct was already considered somewhat questionable, perhaps that's why I'm slightly puzzled over the appearance of this new piece, but I'm speaking from nearly complete ignorance on the subject.
Just finished a re-read of Walter Scott's Marmion, probably best remembered now for the famous lines,O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
which comes towards the end when Marmion, the villain of the piece (though nearly an anti-hero in some respects), is trying to remember all the things he has to do to keep his evil scheme going.
But there are many other fine passages and quotable lines - for example, I like this bit, from the Introduction to Canto Fifth (as Scott titles it): "What few can practise, all can preach".
It was very famous in its day and for the next hundred years or so, both in itself and also for the Lochinvar song or ballad in "Canto Fifth". I'd recommend this to anyone interested in Scott - his narrative poems made him famous long before the Waverly novels - or in historical or adventure fiction.
One reason I read Marmion again was that I'm currently reading Thomas Moore's biography of Byron and remembered that Scott was one of the latter's favourite writers, though this factoid hasn't yet been mentioned by Moore. I've reached the year 1808 in the bio and that's when Marmion was published. I already have a few other things picked out to read as I follow though the years of Byron's life - some related to Byron, directly or indirectly, e.g. more Scott, Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon (1816), perhaps some of Moore's own work - but also some of the German literature from the same period that i've been reading in translation, e.g. Hoffmann, a colection of German stories that were translated into English around that time, La Motte Fouqué's Sintram, etc. So I have lots on my plate for the next several months!
Berkley wrote: "Just finished a re-read of Walter Scott's Marmion, probably best remembered now for the famous lines,O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
which comes towards the end..."
i am a big fan of Scott, for me he is father of the British novel more than Richardson, his works predate Dickens, Trollope,Thackeray, Hardy and other great British novelists.
I am musing over which of his to read next, i have The Antiquary on the pile
Mod
"Scott, for me he is father of the British novel more than Richardson"
Don't forget Fielding — Richardson and he are all the same considerably earlier than Scott.
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Just finished a re-read of Walter Scott's Marmion, ...""Scott, for me he is father of the British novel more than Richardson"
Don't forget Fielding — Richardson and ..."
yes, fielding is someone i am fond of and i almost see Defoe as the first novelist of British literature, though his style of writing and approach is marked more by age, i think |Fielding made that leap before Scott and am sure he influenced Scott
Berkley wrote: "Just finished a re-read of Walter Scott's Marmion, probably best remembered now for the famous lines..."
Marmion is indeed well worth re-visiting, though I was surprised to find recently that it starts with a long section on the deaths of Pitt and Fox.
Marmion is indeed well worth re-visiting, though I was surprised to find recently that it starts with a long section on the deaths of Pitt and Fox.
Mod
Berkley wrote: "Just finished a re-read of Walter Scott's Marmion, probably best remembered now for the famous lines,O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
which comes towards the end..."
In Jane Eyre, St. John Rivers gives Jane a copy of Marmion, which is, I think, the only place I've previously encountered the title. (Jane's description of the poem as "a new publication" has caused numerous commentators, including Joyce Carol Oates, to assign the novel's action to an earlier date than is possible given other internal evidence.)
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
Marmion (other topics)Jane Eyre (other topics)
Mr. Fox (other topics)
The Skin Chairs (other topics)
A Touch of Mistletoe (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Joyce Carol Oates (other topics)Barbara Comyns (other topics)
Lucie McKnight Hardy (other topics)
Stephen Roxburgh (other topics)
Roald Dahl (other topics)
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
I got 6/7.