What are we reading? 12 June 2023

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "Archers Prison Diary Vol 2"

Does Jeffrey Archer admit in his diaries that he committed perjury, and that this is why he was sentenced to prison? (He won £500,000 in a libel case:

Archer resigned as deputy chairman (of the Conservatives) in October 1986 due to a scandal caused by an article in The News of the World, which led with the story, "Tory boss Archer pays vice-girl", and claimed Archer had paid Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, £2,000 through an intermediary at Victoria Station to go abroad.
Shortly after The News of the World story broke, rival tabloid the Daily Star ran a story alleging Archer had paid for sex with Coghlan, something The News of the World had been careful to avoid stating directly. Archer responded by suing the Daily Star. The case came to court in July 1987. Explaining the payment to Coghlan as the action of a philanthropist rather than that of a guilty man, Archer won the case and was awarded £500,000 damages. Archer stated he would donate the money to charity.)

Archer - who appears to be something of a fantasist - has featured regularly in the columns of Private Eye over the years, just like a more recent and prominent Tory politician. It feels somewhat out of character for him to 'fess up. The damages awarded in that case resulted from a carefully constructed lie:

The novelist showed no reaction as he stood in the dock to hear the verdicts against him.

Mr Justice Potts told Archer before sentencing him: "These charges represent as serious an offence of perjury as I have had experience of and have been able to find in the books."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/j...

Did he really give the money to charity? I wonder.

If anyone cares to google 'Jeffrey Archer's lies' they will get a great many hits linking to newspaper articles and TV programmes! I have no time for these charming chancers.

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Archers Prison Diary Vol 2"

Does Jeffrey Archer admit in his diaries that he committed perjury, and that this is why he was sentenced to prison? (He won £500,000 in a libel case:

Ar..."

he seems obsessed with a kurdish charity fund scandal which i have forgotten the details on, it was a running theme in vol 1 and vol 2, with his wife lobbying for him externally

i wouldnt say he comes accross as an innocent man, i have never liked him but the diaries are much better than i expected

[MK]

I am now down to 1 NYT gift link, but I did want to share some mysteries now out in the States and perhaps where you are as well.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/bo...

[Bill]

scarletnoir wrote: "I read an article this week which said that people are avoiding 'depressing news' in order to preserve their mental health - a sensible attitude IMO"

I can understand that readers living in the UK, especially those who have personal experience in Northern Ireland, would want to read books dealing with the history and present situation of that country, but even though I have a fair amount of Irish ancestry, I don’t feel at all personally involved in its sectarian divisions, at least in so far as they’ve extended into the 20th and 21st centuries.

My lack of desire to read about these foreign conflicts is not so much an avoidance of depressing news, but rather a feeling that my concerns lie closer to home. My own country has a lot of problems, the ubiquity of guns, widespread racial intolerance, and the second-class status of women are the three that first come to my mind and that tend most to concern me. There’s more than enough reading in the history and present manifestations of these problems to take up and exhaust my concern without crossing oceans to find other conflicts and injustices.

I don’t want to especially pick on Colum McCann, since I know it upsets Lisa, but since we’ve been discussing Apeirogon (no way I can remember that title – I always have to copy and paste it) I’ll start with him, an Irish writer who has been a long-time resident of the US. He nevertheless decided to write about the Israel-Palestine conflict, inspired by the efforts toward peacemaking of two bereaved fathers on opposite sides of the conflict – perhaps he felt that their coming together gave an aura of hope to a story about what seems, certainly to me, an objectively irresolvable cycle of violence.

The second review I posted by Julie Orringer includes a quotation from the book that gives an emotionally devastating account by the Palestinian father, Bassam Aramin, of experiencing and living with his daughter’s death. Though the account would provoke sympathy and frequently tears in almost any reader, the context puts a distance between a typical US reader and the violence itself; I see it as a kind of “othering” of the violence – it happened “over there” as a result of a conflict with a long history between two foreign peoples. The fact is that the same experience of violent, sudden, and irrecoverable loss happens to US parents EVERY DAY, in many cases several times a day, as a result of insane gun policies.

I have little tolerance for writers that ignore or downplay the devastation that guns have wrought on this country, especially when their writing seems to walk up to the issue and then, somehow, not see the horrifying reality that lies in front of them. That’s why I thought The Accidental Tourist was a deeply flawed novel.

One last book on this overly long post. A few years ago I read Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads by Paul Theroux in which Theroux recounts several trips he made through the Southern US over the course of a year or so.

Theroux spends some of his weekends, as do many Southerners apparently, visiting travelling gun shows featuring multiple merchants that are set up for two or three days at various rental venues in different states (including here in Pennsylvania). He enjoys attending these, perhaps mainly because they give him an atmosphere in which he can get into extended discussions with a number of people, attendees and merchants.

Between two of his trips through the South, the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre took place in Connecticut, neighboring Theroux’ home state of Massachusetts. In his subsequent trip South, Theroux again visits a gun show, but he never makes a single reference to Sandy Hook, an outrage which is undeniably the tragic fruit of the gun culture celebrated weekly at these shows.

This may be the only case where I felt I hated an author after finishing a book.

[Gpfr]

MK wrote: "I am now down to 1 NYT gift link, but I did want to share some mysteries now out in the States and perhaps where you are as well.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/bo......"

Thanks for that, I hadn't seen that there's a new Martin Cruz Smith.

[MK]

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I read an article this week which said that people are avoiding 'depressing news' in order to preserve their mental health - a sensible attitude IMO"

I can understand that read..."

I have just finished listening to Jeffrey Toobin's . At the end of the book Toobin takes on the absence of this country's political leaders will to face extremism and link the local crimes to a nationwide problem. He comes close to excoriating Merrick Garland who was heavily involved in the Oklahoma Bombing case.

It doesn't seem that the US can stem white extremism without tackling guns. There is not the political will. Even here in so-blue Seattle, there is seldom a day when I scan the local paper that there isn't a shooting and/or a killing somewhere nearby. So sad.

[MK]

Gpfr wrote: "MK wrote: "I am now down to 1 NYT gift link, but I did want to share some mysteries now out in the States and perhaps where you are as well.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/bo......"

I hope you scanned the comments, too. I often find authors/books I'd missed there. Of course, it goes without saying that I need more books like I need 10 pounds or even a couple of years.

Be Shot for Sixpence: A Perennial British Mystery by Michael Gilbert was a delicious find Saturday at the library friends book shelf. It's in excellent shape, and my outlay for this paperback was 50¢ (which warms the cockles of my thrifty heart).

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I read an article this week which said that people are avoiding 'depressing news' in order to preserve their mental health - a sensible attitude IMO"

I can understand that read..."

makese sense Bill when you remark on the situation in the USA, where the gun culture is polarising further every decade, with the NRA and the fiery passion for the 2nd amendment making me wonder if the USA has progressed at all since the 1990s

always make me wonder why the 2nd amendment wasnt scrapped, the federalist papers evokes the orthodoxy that reigned supreme in 17th century england , no standing armies or militias, yet here we have a 1791 amendment when the USA needed such militias , still in force but since, say 1860s(maybe since 1812), the USA has been safe in its own borders and therefore, there is no need for a "right to bear arms"

[MK]

As they say - My Bad.

I stayed away from the Fremont neighborhood (home of a huge Lenin statue originally in Czechoslovakia ) Solstice Parade. But I did upload a couple of photos just in case someone wants to visit on the Saturday nearest the Solstice. Note that Fremont tries very hard to keep up its idea? motto? of quirkiness.

[Bill]

MK wrote: "It doesn't seem that the US can stem white extremism without tackling guns. There is not the political will. Even here in so-blue Seattle, there is seldom a day when I scan the local paper that there isn't a shooting and/or a killing somewhere nearby. So sad."

O man!
The world is set for you as for a king!
Paradise is yours in loveliness
The stars shine down for you,
for you the angels sing,
yet you prefer your wilderness.
You hug the rack of self,
embrace the lash of sin,
pour your treasures out to bribe distress.
You build your temples
fair without and foul within;
you cultivate your wilderness.
-Eric Crozier / Benjamin Britten, Saint Nicholas

[Gpfr]

I enjoyed David Hewson's 2 series of crime novels, Nic Costa and Pieter Vos (recommended by giveusaclue). I think she gave up on this one. I'm about a third of the way through and it's rather stodgy and slow-going, but for now I'm persevering!
A retired archivist, living in Venice gets caught up in a murder. The victim, a flamboyant TV historian, was the leader of the "Gilded Circle"who were at university at the same time as our hero. This group are all present in Venice for the revelation of who was really the historical Medici murderer and the subject-to-be of the next TV show.

My other book of the moment, which I think will be more rewarding, is Frances Larson's Undreamed Shores: The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology. The 5 women she writes about were among the first to study at university and were Britain's first female anthropologists.

[scarletnoir]

Bill wrote: "My lack of desire to read about these foreign conflicts is not so much an avoidance of depressing news, but rather a feeling that my concerns lie closer to home."

Thanks for your detailed post.

What you say about 'concerns nearer home' is entirely understandable. Like most europeans (I think), I'm baffled by the gun law situation in the USA. I understand that a majority would be in favour of stricter rules... is legislation blocked by the Senate where the smaller 'red' states have a disproportionate influence?

My own reading about such incidents, and drownings of immigrants/refugees in the Channel and the Mediterranean, tends to be in news reports rather than in novel form... and as I suggest, there are moments when there is so much grim news that the headlines suffice. It's difficult to read about this stuff in detail and yet feel powerless to change anything.

At one time I read quite a lot of Paul Theroux - both his travel writing and his fiction - but went off him some time ago, though I can't remember or pin down a specific reason. Writing about gun shows without referring to gun crime does seem in very poor taste - to put it mildly.

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "Bill wrote: "My lack of desire to read about these foreign conflicts is not so much an avoidance of depressing news, but rather a feeling that my concerns lie closer to home."

Thanks for your deta..."

i enjoy reading Paul Theroux and picked up one of his hard to find novels from the 1970s from Oxfam. That book you mention Bill is one i have been meaning to read but it seems he abdicated his responsibilities in regards to southern gun culture

i think Hollywood has a lot to ansa for gun culture too, a whole indsutry based around people who know guns and love guns, firing guns non-stop endlessly. That American Sniper movie was almost a homage to guns

[AB76]

Sad to see the death of Daniel Ellsberg, a military-govt insider who revealed the real depth of disaster that the Vietnam War was. Having just read about Dien Bien Phu and the American covert involvement in the french battles in Indochina, that region was a western disaster from WW2 to 1975.

[scarletnoir]

Gpfr wrote: "MK wrote: "I am now down to 1 NYT gift link, but I did want to share some mysteries now out in the States and perhaps where you are as well.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/bo......"

Thanks for that, I hadn't seen that there's a new Martin Cruz Smith.

Thanks from me, too... I could not open the link, as I'm up to the limit for freebies. I like Cruz Smith's thrillers, but by the look of it I've missed a few in the Renko series. If I can figure out which they are, I'll try to fill in the gaps.

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "Sad to see the death of Daniel Ellsberg, a military-govt insider who revealed the real depth of disaster that the Vietnam War was."

Indeed. The Guardian published a good opinion piece in addition to a more traditional obituary:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

[Gpfr]

scarletnoir wrote: "by the look of it I've missed a few in the Renko series. If I can figure out which they are, I'll try to fill in the gaps...."

You can find the list here:
https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/mar...

[Georg]

Bill wrote (#154): "scarletnoir wrote: "I read an article this week which said that people are avoiding 'depressing news' in order to preserve their mental health - a sensible attitude IMO"

I can understand that read..."



Your post about gun violence made me revisit a book I bought some years ago in a charity shop




The author went on a road trip to find people who were prepared to answer a simple question: "Why do you own a gun?"

The answers make the only comment to the photographs he took. Gun owners with their families and their pets (lots of pets in that book) and their weapon(s) in the privacy of their own home
.
With a very few exceptions all look so ordinary. Some pose with their guns, more often you have to look for them.
The vast majority say it is for sports, or hunting. Some say self-defense, also if need be against a government, or claim their "Godgiven" right. Only about two r three sound/look a bit dodgy.

It is the normality that is so disturbing. At least for me who grew up in a very different culture. In Germany you'd be hard pressed to find a toy gun since cowboys-and-Indians went out of fashion because no responsible parent would even dream of letting their child have a toy weapon.

When I read another report of a child that inadvertently killed their sibling with a gun that was lying around I wonder what the parents feel. Would such a tragedy change their views on guns? The cynic in me says: fat chance.

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Sad to see the death of Daniel Ellsberg, a military-govt insider who revealed the real depth of disaster that the Vietnam War was."

Indeed. The Guardian published a good opinion piece..."

cant remember if it was you and i discussing the ghostwriting of Mein Kampf, so will ask a general question, did Rudi Hess get any royalties from helping write Mein Kampf? he would be a seriously rich Nazi if he had, cos that book was a bestseller

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "cant remember if it was you and i discussing the ghostwriting of Mein Kampf..."

No - I introduced Mein Kampf as a book that 'may have changed the world' (for the worse, obviously), but the discussion about others' contribution was with another poster.

[scarletnoir]

Winter Work by Dan Fesperman

This book is set in and around Berlin in 1990, shortly after the fall of the wall. Some ageing Stasi operatives seek to save their skins by making deals with the Americans; others, including the Russians, are determined to put a stop to the risk of compromising material on their agents falling into the hands of the CIA. Some of the material is factually accurate, and a few of the protagonists are real people - though not the main players in the story.

Fesperman is a former foreign correspondent who has turned to novel writing. His books are well researched and based in part on personal observation as well. This is the second of his I've read, following Lie In The Dark which was set in siege-period Sarajevo. As with that novel, 'Winter Work' is well written and plotted for the most part (the author does revert to cliché on rare occasions), and the characters are well drawn. I enjoyed it - recommended to those who like the spy/thriller genre.

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "cant remember if it was you and i discussing the ghostwriting of Mein Kampf..."

No - I introduced Mein Kampf as a book that 'may have changed the world' (for the worse, obviously), bu..."

ah yes, it deffo changed the world for the worse. i must re-read it at some point, its been about 20 years since i have. GCSE history was my first time i studied it, dealing with the german path to ww2, in minute source details and later i purchased the book and read it

The pre-Germany section,about his life in Vienna and Austria was interesting but it wasnt entertaining, the book then just became a lot of theory, mixed with a lot of hate, most of it rabid

[Bill]

AB76 wrote: "i think Hollywood has a lot to ansa for gun culture too, a whole indsutry based around people who know guns and love guns, firing guns non-stop endlessly. That American Sniper movie was almost a homage to guns"

A recent irony in the US was the story about the killing of a crew member while filming a TV series when a real bullet was fired instead of the blank round the actor, Alec Baldwin, was expecting.

This story received nightly coverage on the national news in the week after it happened and regular updates were featured in the following weeks. This when even shootings that involve multiple victims seldom get more than a day or two of coverage, if any, not to mention the totally unreported carnage of individual victims that takes place every single day in this country.

[Bill]

Georg wrote: "Your post about gun violence made me revisit a book I bought some years ago in a charity shop

Armed America Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes by Kyle Cassidy


The author went on a road trip to find people who were prepared to answer a simple question: "Why do you own a gun?"

The answers make the only comment to the photographs he took. Gun owners with their families and their pets (lots of pets in that book) and their weapon(s) in the privacy of their own home"

I'm sure that many of the gun owners pictured in that book would consider me to be mentally disturbed if they could see the number of books I own.

[Greenfairy]

I remember watching "Bowling for Columbine" Moore was comparing gun ownership in Canada and the US , many Canadians owned guns but for completely different reasons from Americans, and used them differently.
Reading Ducks, Newburyport almost made my my hair stand on end when I got to the part about men openly carrying AKs and standing outside the supermarket showing them off to each other.
Ps. those gun owners would probably think the same about me if they saw my bookshelves, maybe a number of them would deplore the fact that a woman was reading as well...

[MK]

Greenfairy wrote: "I remember watching "Bowling for Columbine" Moore was comparing gun ownership in Canada and the US , many Canadians owned guns but for completely different reasons from Americans, and used them dif..."

I subscribe to the Seattle Times online. I wish I could say that I have kept track of gun violence because I don't remember a day where there isn't a report of a shooting, usually with a death. Today, it wasn't until I scrolled down to 'local news' that I saw 2 were dead as a result of guns - but it happened Friday and was not in the news until today (Monday). There was also news of a man who has a 'concealed carry' permit accidently discharging his semi-automatic pistol (whatever that means) in a restaurant - wounding two older patrons.

Most of the killings occur in the late evening/early a.m. hours, but one last week was in the middle of the day in downtown Seattle where a car was sitting at a traffic light. The random (shooter is said to both mental impairment and a significant criminal record) action killed a woman who was 8-months pregnant - the baby did not survive either.

Gerrymandered red states today have enough clout and elected officials to keep any sensible gun laws (oops - I just forgot our current Supreme Court which is in this mix) from being enacted. I so look forward to the day when most Republicans are a thing of the past, Fox News has had to file for bankruptcy, and we can look for a better, positive future rather than all this negative crap we face today.

Rant over.

[Bill]

MK wrote: "The random (shooter is said to both mental impairment and a significant criminal record) action killed a woman who was 8-months pregnant - the baby did not survive either."

I'm sure that most Americans never contemplate the probability that they live within 10 miles or less of a potential Adam Lanza or Robert Bowers and that the whims of this stranger can determine whether they or their family members will live for the next 24 hours.

[Bill]

scarletnoir wrote: "At one time I read quite a lot of Paul Theroux - both his travel writing and his fiction - but went off him some time ago, though I can't remember or pin down a specific reason."

Deep South was the only Paul Theroux book I've read or am likely to read. He seemed so clueless in several of his interactions with Americans (some of which I describe in my review), I'd be highly suspicious of his assessments of countries with which I am unfamiliar.

[AB76]

MK wrote: "Greenfairy wrote: "I remember watching "Bowling for Columbine" Moore was comparing gun ownership in Canada and the US , many Canadians owned guns but for completely different reasons from Americans..."

gerrymandering in the supposed land of the free is a so damaging and its so sad to see the extent that politicians go to. but its not just that which helps keep the NRA so visiible as lobbyists its also lots of under populated gun states getting too much representation in the senate

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "At one time I read quite a lot of Paul Theroux - both his travel writing and his fiction - but went off him some time ago, though I can't remember or pin down a specific reason...."

his book about travelling round the coast of the UK in 1982 The kingdom by the sea was very accurate, capturing a dying neglected periphery with faded or non existent train links and laden with poverty but then i was very familiar with the subject matter.

generally like his travel writing and find him very perceptive, i must read Deep South and see if he has lost that knack, thanks for the sort of non-recommendation Bill and i agree with all your points

[scarletnoir]

Bill wrote: "Deep South was the only Paul Theroux book I've read or am likely to read. He seemed so clueless in several of his interactions with Americans (some of which I describe in my review), I'd be highly suspicious of his assessments of countries with which I am unfamiliar."

Theroux in his travel books almost certainly 'made things up', or so it seemed to me when I read them, but those inventions were intended to make the tales more entertaining and were iirc perfectly harmless, unlike his apparent attitude to gun ownership.

Theroux is a US citizen but travelled a lot and lived outside the USA for many years, including a spell of nearly 20 years in London.

(His son Louis is a talented interviewer and documentary maker; his speciality is to present himself as harmless and inoffensive, often allowing his interviewees to expose themselves in anything but a positive light.)

[Bill]

scarletnoir wrote: "(His son Louis is a talented interviewer and documentary maker; his speciality is to present himself as harmless and inoffensive, often allowing his interviewees to expose themselves in anything but a positive light.)"

This sounds kind of like the interviewing style of The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner.

https://www.newyorker.com/contributor...

Paul's brother Alexander Theroux is a novelist whose work I'm pretty sure you'd dislike, @scarletnoir.

[Bill]

A rule of thumb when reading the Penguin edition of The Faerie Queene: the more pages of endnotes a Canto has, the more boring it's going to be.

[Georg]

Bill wrote: "Georg wrote: "Your post about gun violence made me revisit a book I bought some years ago in a charity shop

Armed America Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes by Kyle Cassidy


The author went o..."


Maybe you should get a gun, Bill. There might come the day when the book police is knocking at your door...

[[deleted user]]

Bill wrote: "A rule of thumb when reading the Penguin edition of The Faerie Queene: the more pages of endnotes a Canto has, the more boring it's going to be."

This can only mean Book Four is a downer.

[Bill]

Russell wrote: "This can only mean Book Four is a downer."

It was going great guns - all kinds of knightly adventures: monsters, maidens in distress, jousting, etc. - until I hit Canto 10, which ends with a description of the temple of Venus. That section, too, had some battles and peril, although the figures were decidedly more along the allegorical lines encountered in Book 1 and there were a number of symbolic figures elaborated once entrance to the the temple was gained.

Now Canto 11, which I'm about halfway through, features the marriage of the Thames and Medway - two personified English rivers - with an endless list of guests (a very modern problem if the letters to the NY Times etiquette columnist are any indication). I didn't so much mind the various gods of the sea and their monstrous progeny, but now every goddamn river in England is given a personified walk-on.

[Bill]

Georg wrote: "Maybe you should get a gun, Bill. There might come the day when the book police is knocking at your door..."

I can see the interview going along the lines of reporters interviewing gun owners.

"Do you have any books in your house?"
"What made you want to own a book?"
"Do you own more than one book?"
"What made you decide that you needed more than one book?"
"Do you take any measures to keep your books out of the hands of children?"

[Bill]

Bill wrote: "Russell wrote: "This can only mean Book Four is a downer."

It was going great guns - all kinds of knightly adventures: monsters, maidens in distress, jousting, etc. - until I hit Canto 10, which e..."

OK, I've finished Book 4. Things picked up a bit in Canto 12 - a little over half the length of the tedious Canto 11 - which involved the rescue of a persecuted virgin from the dungeons of Proteus. However, it involved no knightly derring-do but rather a kind of mythological habeus corpus.

I'm a Wagnerian, so I'm not about to be dissuaded by having encountered a boring patch. After a brief breather (reading one of Freud's lectures from Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis) it will be on to Book 5.

[Bill]

Book 4 was supposedly about the virtue of Friendship embodied in Cambel and Telamond; there's no character named Telamond, so this may be a misprint or early version of the name Triamond, who does form a friendship with Cambell (as he is called in the body of the poem), but their story takes up only about two of the 12 cantos.

As lewdness was a frequent feature of the book concentrating on chastity, so discord often occurs in Book 4's nominal illustration of friendship. The Greek goddess of discord, Ate, is one of the characters. creating strife between friends; she appears as an ancient hag who accompanies a band of less than admirable knights, along with the witch Duessa from the first book.

[Tam]

Bill wrote: "Russell wrote: "This can only mean Book Four is a downer."

It was going great guns - all kinds of knightly adventures: monsters, maidens in distress, jousting, etc. - until I hit Canto 10, which e..."

Just for the piccy of the sea monsters!... https://jediperson.wordpress.com/2023... I hope you enjoy it...

[AB76]

Interesting how little purchase my reading of The First Man by Albert Camus has got, here and on the G

Would have expected Camus to be popular among people here and this novel was acclaimed when it was published posthumously

I love the style, a very autobiographical novel of place, the city of Algiers and and an illiterate poor family based on the authors own, lost in a void of lack of memory, education and poverty. The style is superb and very different to the existentialist style of his earlier works, one wonders what it would have been like if he had not died in that car crash in 1960

It matches the strong vein of classic novels i have read in 2023 so far

[CCCubbon]

The last book by Peter Robinson - Standing in the Shadow - seems to be getting slower and slower and I am only half way through.

Maybe it’s me - I had to give up on another book recently- forgotten name - oh, I know - The Last Passenger because it was illogical. Robinson spends too much time quoting obscure records, journeys and clothing. I am determined to skip those bits now or I will never get to the end.

I was hoping to find some distraction in the book as my dog has been very ill. The vet said yesterday ‘ miracles do happen’ as he had improved a little. Fingers crossed

[Gpfr]

CCCubbon wrote: "I was hoping to find some distraction in the book as my dog has been very ill...."

So sorry to hear this, CC. Fingers crossed indeed

[AB76]

CCCubbon wrote: "The last book by Peter Robinson - Standing in the Shadow - seems to be getting slower and slower and I am only half way through.

Maybe it’s me - I had to give up on another book recently- forgotte..."

my thoughts are with you CCC...from one doglover to another..

[scarletnoir]

Bill wrote: "Paul's brother Alexander Theroux is a novelist whose work I'm pretty sure you'd dislike, @scarletnoir."

The most apt description of the novels of Theroux was given by Anthony Burgess in praise of Theroux's Darconville's Cat: "Theroux is 'word drunk', filling his novels with a torrent of words archaic and neologic, always striving for originality..." (GR Profile)

Bill, I think you are 100% correct that I would not appreciate this author!

I love words, and even started a thread on that topic within this group. I do not love writing where authors choose deliberately to use a lot of obscure terms just in order to 'look clever'. Great writing - IMO - consists of using the best and most appropriate words for the circumstances, be they commonplace or abstruse - as in chess, where sometimes great players need to play subtle and unexpected moves but at others the most obvious play is the best one.

As an example of the use of obscure terms - with justification - I give "griache" used in Tu montreras ma tête au peuple by François-Henri Désérable; this is an author who has a wide vocabulary but doesn't spray obscure words about like a blunderbuss. I had a heck of a job to track down this one, though - although I could easily guess the meaning from the context, so it wasn't done to put one over on the reader. I finally found a definition in an obscure online dictionary:

Griaches

Rigaud, 1881 : Baquet aux excréments, — dans le jargon des prisons. (Hist. des prisons, 1797.)

La Rue, 1894 : La tinette, dans les prisons.

Virmaître, 1894 : Seaux qui étaient dans les cellules des prisonniers et dans lesquels ils faisaient leurs ordures. Ce terme était employé dans les prisons vers 1790 ; on le trouve dans un rapport sur la Conciergerie, adressé au roi, qui voulait détruire l’horrible infection qui empoisonnait les malheureux (Argot des prisons).https://www.russki-mat.net/find.php?q...

Why use this word and not something more common? Because the prisoners who would later be taken to the guillotine were being held in the Conciergerie, and because this was the term currently in use in that prison. It's the right word in the right place at the right time: no more, no less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concier...

(I'm assuming basic French is sufficient for all who are interested to understand what the meaning is, though if anyone doesn't understand I can provide a translation!)

[scarletnoir]

CCCubbon wrote: "I was hoping to find some distraction in the book as my dog has been very ill. The vet said yesterday ‘ miracles do happen’ as he had improved a little. Fingers crossed."

Sorry to hear this - Teddy (our very mixed mongrel) sends his best wishes to your friend.

[CCCubbon]

AB76 wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "The last book by Peter Robinson - Standing in the Shadow - seems to be getting slower and slower and I am only half way through.

Maybe it’s me - I had to give up on another book r..."

It all happened so quickly. We thought he’d eaten something that disagreed. Our vet thought we should let him go on Sunday. We were devastated for such a lovely friend but he’s rallied and we hope. Vet said pancreatitis at first then kidney failure…..bit better today and managed to get him to eat a tiny meal. He is nearly eleven and a border terrier named Lucky.

[Bill]

AB76 wrote: "Interesting how little purchase my reading of The First Man by Albert Camus has got, here and on the G"

Back in the days when I participated in Michael Dirda’s weekly on line book chats, one of the other contributors wrote a post in which he listed a number of characters from literature (I don’t recall the point he was making). I could identify all of the characters, including those in books I hadn’t read, except Meursault (this was before The Meursault Investigation was published).

He was rather surprised that I hadn’t read The Stranger and highly recommended it. So, at the next used book sale I attended, I picked up a copy and also found a 50 cent edition in French (which I have no hope of reading, but thought I could use to check individual passages if anything in the English translation struck me as, well, strange).

That was years ago, and I still haven’t managed to read that 150 page book. I can’t say why this is. I could blame the particularly ugly cover, I suppose. ((Shudder) Mimes!)

But it may be some instinctive resistance to French literature – I haven’t read any of the works of Flaubert, which I bought after reading Flaubert's Parrot, and which have sat on my shelves unread for much longer than the Camus.

From France, I’ve read one Modiano novel and a few Simenon romans dur and, fairly recently, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Complete Claudine, and Nana. I didn’t especially care for the last one, though I still intend to read The Masterpiece.

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Interesting how little purchase my reading of The First Man by Albert Camus has got, here and on the G"

Back in the days when I participated in Michael Dirda’s weekly on line book cha..."

i think you will find L'Etranger very readable and thought provoking but it is the master of all detached novels, the settings are all sun and sea of the White City(Algiers) but the events are unsettling and hard edged. for me it defined my reading as 19yo and drew me into a world of books i wanted to read (after being fed novels i didnt want to read at school)

Pieds Noirs are an interesting people, a collection of Spanish, Italian, Jewish, Maltese and French immigrants roughly 50% french at most. Camus had Spanish ancestry on his mothers side. By late 1950s, there were one million Pieds Noirs in Algeria. Oran in the West had a significant Spanish minority.

I re-read it on a hot afternoon about 8 years ago and it seemed even better.....

what did suprise me was i didnt like a collection of Camus pieces on Algeria that was published a few years back, something about it felt wrong and i never really found out why. He was a pieds-noir, algerian born, he knew the land better than many in France but the essays were a let down

Simenon is an interesting one as a belgian writer but with almost 90% of his novels set in France. he must be a sort of adopted Frenchman and possibly the best Francophone Belgian writer

i loathed Flauberts Parrot..

[Berkley]

The only Camus books I've read are L'Étranger/The Outsider (twice in English, once in French, all three readings separated by many years) and La Chute/The Fall (in French). I rate them both very highly and plan to read more Camus. I've been finding myself lately tempted to re-read La Chute, even though it's been only a few years since I read it the first time.