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What are we reading? 26 June 2023
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My latest bedtime book is the latest in the Indian series by Massey names the mistress of Bhatia House This series has been discussed recently and this book follows the earlier in being centred on women’s issues - this one mostly (so far) about childbirth, abortion as a criminal offence, the status of female servants, women not allowed to speak in court, mensuration……
Don’t think it would appeal to you Scarlet!
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Yes, you and Diana started off, and then Paul kickstarted it again!
Once one has commented on the thread, it's easy enough to find by going into My account / Comments and replies.
But of course people who might be interested later on, won't come across it. Unless they read unthreaded I suppose.
I didn't always follow the party line (partly through devilment, I admit) Then on an interview with Daniel Radcliffe I posted a comment about his behaviour towards J K Rowling. When it got modded I had the temerity to question it and got put on pre-mod for months. Tried to open another account and that is a capital crime apparently!As AB and I have mentioned in the past, they are more than happy to leave in the most vicious and insulting comments in made towards folks who disagree with their philosophy. Freedom of speech,
harruummpphh!
I don't know if anyone here is interested in the details of how the US legal system works, one using Trump as the example. If so, you can find answers here - https://open.substack.com/pub/joyceva...I find these really intersting and it's always good to see something icky about Trump.
giveusaclue wrote: "I didn't always follow the party line (partly through devilment, I admit) Then on an interview with Daniel Radcliffe I posted a comment about his behaviour towards J K Rowling. When it got modded I..."@Clue - just in case the devil gets the best of you while you are at the library, you could set up a new G name while there. (I'm thinking that the G is keying on your home IP address.) If you did that, I wonder what the G would do when you posted with your new name from home, as I don't know how clever they are.
BTW, I don't know about anyone else here, but I am so over 'progressive'. I think it's time to toss it in the trashcan labelled 'old words'.
CCCubbon wrote: "My latest bedtime book is the latest in the Indian series by Massey names the mistress of Bhatia House This series has been discussed recently and this book follows the earlier in being centred o..."
Thanks CCC for that update. I just postponed the download of this book. Of course it also matters that 6 audio books are ready for me now and, of course, I am not.
One that I will download is the latest David Rosenfelt Andy Carpenter 'doggie' mystery -
which are great fun to listen to, but otherwise have little redeeming value - but who cares.
CCCubbon wrote: "Don’t think it would appeal to you Scarlet!."Oh, I don't know - I enjoyed the one I read recently and would certainly consider reading another in the series!
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You probably know, but just in case you don't, I was pleased to see there's a new DI Skelgill: Murder on the Farm.
Gpfr wrote: "@giveusaclueYou probably know, but just in case you don't, I was pleased to see there's a new DI Skelgill: Murder on the Farm."
Thanks G. I am a few books behind that in the series but will no doubt be catching up in due course. I do enjoy them.
I am currently reading:
Set in New Zealand. Interesting to learn something o f the Maori culture of which I am woefully ignorant.
Here's a clip from a New Yorker Books email. I have to go to the library early next week and am thinking of picking up the copy that's on the shelf now (and maybe then, too). The Best and the Brightest
by David Halberstam (Ballantine)
Nonfiction
David Halberstam’s classic “The Best and the Brightest” is often and justly celebrated as one of the finest books on the origins of the Vietnam War. And there is plenty here about French colonialism in the aftermath of the Second World War and the complicated politics of nineteen-sixties Saigon. But the real reason to read Halberstam’s book is that it is a great Washington book, and as a result it remains strikingly relevant long after the run-up to the war in Southeast Asia it describes has been succeeded by the foreign-policy failures of more recent generations. The haute Wasp hegemony that Halberstam so memorably skewers has faded in the capital—there aren’t so many Groton boys or Harriman scions running around at the upper levels of the State Department, or anywhere else. “The Best and the Brightest,” though, endures because it is one of the sharpest cautionary tales about the dangers of miscalculation in Washington when it comes to parts of the world it little knows or understands—in other words, a perennial hazard of American foreign policy and not one by any means limited to history. Rereading it today, I was struck all over again by how thoughtful, confident, and deeply reported Halberstam’s book is—especially considering that it was published in 1972, when the United States was still embroiled in exiting Vietnam, and had yet to fully examine how it it had got there in the first place.
—Susan B. Glasser
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "Still in World War II mode. I returned the recent De Gaulle bio-- it's in the local library, and I'll be back for it later-- but, wouldn't you kn..."i agree the Katyn killing(inc the guy in the butchers apron), is something that chills the blood, i guess i would explain it as a group of killers de-sensitized to death and the value of human lives. when the beast in man emerges from the patchy veneer of civilisation, though when its cold blooded, you always question how low mankind can sink. Fighting for your life, on the battlefield is one thing, but dingy cellars rigged for killing, death at point blank range....ugh.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "...i agree that dementia gets bandied about when its very different to occasional forgetfulness.My mother doesn't have dementia despite her considerable age (101) but she does repeat..."
we do have a lady called diana(87) who has a touch of menace about her, towards other women,. to the small group of male staff/volunteers she is sweetness personified, she always welcomes me with a smile and thanks me at the end of the day, even if she grumbled to various staff at times
but with other women, she is sharp and very direct!
AB76 wrote: "i agree the Katyn killing(inc the guy in the butchers apron), is something that chills the blood..."As was mentioned earlier, this atrocity was covered in Philip Kerr's 'The Man Without Breath'... Once again I find that, without intending to, I have blundered into a story covering more WW2 mass murder... The Small Boat of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman tells of a (fictional) attempt to apprehend a war criminal who had an important role in a mass murder carried out by Croatian Ustaše, and also introduced me to the Jasenovac concentration camp run by them. I expect you know about this but it was new to me - the one extermination camp not run by the Nazis themselves, it grew to be the third largest during the war and so
Jasenovac lacked the infrastructure for mass murder on an industrial scale, such as gas chambers. Instead, it "specialized in one-on-one violence of a particularly brutal kind",[8] and prisoners were primarily murdered with the use of knives, hammers, and axes, or shot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenov...
Not a good weekend for lovers of the arts... as well as Milan Kundera, we also lost singer and actress Jane Birkin - best known for her collaborations with one-time husband Serge Gainsbourg - and the long-time film critic of the Guardian Derek Malcolm, who may not be known to those of you outside the UK.You may think that Malcolm would be the least interesting of the three, but his life was 'unusual' to say the least - years before his birth his father murdered his wife's lover (but got away with it at the trial), and he was told later that his 'father' wasn't really his progenitor at all...
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023...
Kundera I have yet to read but I imagine I'll try something eventually out of curiosity. Jane Birkin I've long been familar with through listening to Serge Gainsbourg's music but I also saw her for the first time as an actress just a year or two ago when La Piscine (The Swimming Pool) played at a local cinema. Great movie, BTW, with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon both fantastic as co-leads. A very young-looking Birkin was good in her supporting rôle but it's really Schneider and Delon who carry the film and make it a classic.
As scarletnoir predicted I've only vaguely heard of Malcolm but I might have a look for one of his collections of film reviews, as I like that kind of thing, more to browse through from time to time than to read cover to cover.
Mod
I like that kind of thing, too.
Two that I picked up second-hand are A Year in the Dark: Journal of a Film Critic 1968-1969 by Renata Adler and Alexander Walker's It's only a movie, Ingrid: Encounters on and off the screen.
I've also got 2 volumes of opera reviews by the former music critic of Le Monde, Jacques Longchampt: Voyage à travers l'opéra. De Cavalieri à Wagner and Regards sur l'Opéra. De Giuseppe Verdi à Georges Aperghis.
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When I was first here, I taught in a newly-opened language school in the 6th arrondissement which had a social club run by a local woman who hoped to make it a feature of Parisian life. She organised an exhibition of work by a well-known photographer and sternly lectured all us teachers about dressing smartly for the opening and particularly no jeans as we would be mixing with chic and influential people. Birkin and Gainsbourg came to the opening and guess what they were wearing ...
Although I came to think of her as in many ways a very silly woman, it still makes me sad.
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scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i agree the Katyn killing(inc the guy in the butchers apron), is something that chills the blood..."As was mentioned earlier, this atrocity was covered in Philip Kerr's 'The Man With..."
The Ustashe specialised in face to face ritual murder of innocents, there was a Catholic Priest who did unspeakable things to people without emotion and described it all later, bestial, absolute murderous violence, like from the middle ages
Berkley wrote: "I've only vaguely heard of Malcolm but I might have a look for one of his collections of film reviews, as I like that kind of thing, more to browse through from time to time than to read cover to cover..."You may like to take a look at his '100 films' choice which is online at:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/seri...
I've bookmarked that for a proper look later... of the 10 listed on the first 'page', I have seen four - Fritz Lang: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt; Wim Wenders: Kings of the Road; Jean Renoir: Boudu Saved from Drowning; and Gillo Pontecorvo: The Battle of Algiers. I'd have chosen another Wenders, but the others are excellent choices.
Gpfr wrote: "Birkin and Gainsbourg came to the opening and guess what they were wearing ...Although I came to think of her as in many ways a very silly woman, it still makes me sad."
She was no intellectual, for sure, but had some decent 'instinctive' things to say, such as:
“Accidents are the best things in existence. They force you to leave a route that seemed to be mapped out, and it’s often when you branch out that you meet some incredible guy who changes your life or an unusual project that turns your career on its head. It’s often when things aren’t going well that we are forced into doing them differently and they suddenly become interesting.”
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/cult...
It seems to me that she was brave, optimistic and possibly a bit reckless.
(I never saw Birkin; we did espy Gainsbourg with his latest girlfriend in a queue for the Action Christine cinema, once upon a time...)
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
It's only a movie, Ingrid: Encounters on and off the screen (other topics)A Year in the Dark: Journal of a Film Critic 1968-1969 (other topics)
The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (other topics)
The Best and the Brightest (other topics)
Murder on the Farm (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
David Rosenfelt (other topics)Philip Kerr (other topics)
Richard Taruskin (other topics)
Richard Taruskin (other topics)
Matthew Dallek (other topics)
More...
Of the Wells novels I’ve been reading this is the first that has had me hooked from the start. I don’t care whether it is or isn’t a true-to-life portrait of the supposed model, Amber Reeves, whose liaison with Wells caused such a scandal. It’s the story itself that is gripping. A clever young woman of 22 who is eager to be independent, and to pursue her science studies, and to experience Life, is stifled at home by a widowed father, who believes her place is there with him in the suburbs until she marries. He regards her as a piece of his property, and thinks himself entitled to her obedience. Wells views it all from her point of view. We watch as she battles, against all the odds and her own inner uncertainties, towards a decision not to conform. You feel it’s a story that has been told a hundred times and yet here it is, from 1909, absolutely fresh and energising.
Until a few months ago I had never heard of this book. I would now put it at the top of my list of recommendations for anyone looking to explore Wells’ work, followed closely by The History of Mr Polly.