Reading the 20th Century discussion

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Archive > What books are you reading now? (2024)

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message 751: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments Patrick wrote: "Maxwell Bodenheim (1892-1954) cut a memorable Boho figure in Chicago and New York between the World Wars, but spiraled downward to a Cornell Woolrich finish, murdered along with his wife in a Manha..."

Sounds fascinating, thanks for highlighting it.


message 752: by Patrick (new)

Patrick ^ I’m very interested in semi-forgotten writers like Bodenheim. I chose Blackguard to start with because it is out of copyright and I could download a PDF from the Internet Archive.


message 753: by Patrick (new)

Patrick I recently finished two novels with deeply frustrating / infuriatingly obtuse male protagonists, Edith Wharton’s Hudson River Bracketed and Olivia Manning’s The Great Fortune (the first in her Fortunes of War series, about World War II in the Balkans and the Levant).

Wharton’s Vance Weston is supposed to be a brilliant young novelist, but it is difficult to credit that based on his thoughts (and we basically spend 500 pages in his POV). As for his actions, well, he doesn’t make a single good decision in the entire book, not one.

I am pre-committed to continue Vance’s adventures in the sequel, The Gods Arrive, but the guy drives me crazy. The same for Manning’s Guy Pringle, one of those individuals who needs a sycophantic audience and collects people to that end.

I am as yet undecided whether Guy Pringle is simply obtuse, or something much worse than that. The Great Fortune is mainly told from his frustrated wife Harriet’s POV.

Both the Manning and Wharton novels are very expressive on the theme of “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” Guy and Harriet Pringle barely knew each other; the same for Vance Weston and his insipid wife Laura Lou. The resulting pictures are not pretty.


message 754: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I finished two episodic books I've been dipping into for a while.
Hisashi Kashiwai's The Restaurant of Lost Recipes second in a hugely-popular series but fine read as a standalone. Light, entertaining with a slightly bittersweet tinge. Good for anyone who loves to cook and wants to know more about Japan's diverse food culture.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I also finished Irish academic Miranda Corcoran's Haunted States: An American Gothic Guidebook a potent mix of travel memoir and cultural analysis centred on the ways in which different areas of America have influenced writers producing American Gothic - Bennington and Shirley Jackson, Poe in Virginia, Anne Rice and New Orleans etc Corcoran's treading a fine line between making this sufficiently academic to count as research and appealing to a broader readership. The first chapter may be a bit dry for general readers but the rest is exceptionally readable. It's a fascinating depiction of America's bloody past and difficult present. Engaged, provocative and insightful.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 755: by Patrick (new)

Patrick Just finished the first of six volumes of George Bernard Shaw’s Complete Plays with Prefaces (Dodd, Mead, 1963), including Pygmalion, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, The Doctor’s Dilemma, Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, The Man of Destiny, and Buoyant Billions.

One’s chances of seeing even Shaw’s most famous plays in adequate stage productions these days is slight. Heartbreak House, for example, requires 10 top-notch actors: Not cheap or easy to assemble.

So reading is the way to go, but even among confirmed readers of the classics, plays (outside of Shakespeare) don’t seem to get the attention they merit. It is too bad. Shaw is hardly just dialogue - his stage directions are exquisite and enable one to readily visualize a production.

The same thought occurs to me as I read each of these Shaw plays, and indeed when I read almost ANY classic play: Where would the audience for this be found today? Because the demands on the audience are pretty intense: A rapt level of attention, an intense sensitivity to verbal nuance, a high level of cultural literacy and sophistication, the willingness to work for the art instead of just letting it wash over you. 


message 756: by Roman Clodia (new)

Roman Clodia | 12029 comments Mod
Patrick wrote: "Where would the audience for this be found today? Because the demands on the audience are pretty intense: A rapt level of attention, an intense sensitivity to verbal nuance, a high level of cultural literacy and sophistication, the willingness to work for the art instead of just letting it wash over you."

That sounds rather reactionary and as if you're suggesting there are no such things as cultured, sophisticated and engaged audiences today as there were in the past - surely not your intention?


message 757: by Patrick (last edited Oct 06, 2024 09:44AM) (new)

Patrick ^ Certainly it is my intention! You can read my words. I’m not meaning to pick a fight about it (maybe you are?), but that is my opinion, take it or leave it. “Reactionary” is a pretty nasty word to use, but “traditionalist” fits me OK. I don’t know why you would be so confrontational with a returning member, but I’ll make note of it. If you posted something, and I wrote,”That sounds rather loony leftist”, how would you take it?

I hadn’t meant to get into this, but my politics are center-right - my Profile page is explicit about that - and if that offends anyone, well so be it, but there is really nothing I can do about it but try to be civil in conversation. I’ve had the experience in groups new to me of expressing an aesthetic opinion that might be so construed, and immediately getting called on it, as if I had no RIGHT to have such an opinion. But I must insist that I do.

Your phrasing is interesting. First, accusing someone of not meaning to say what they just clearly said is to take a hard knock at their intelligence / writing ability. Second, using the rhetorical “Surely you don’t…?” readily suggests the conclusion “…have an opinion different than mine, which is obviously the correct one?”


message 758: by Roman Clodia (new)

Roman Clodia | 12029 comments Mod
Patrick wrote: "using the rhetorical “Surely you don’t…?”"

That is a misquotation of my words: what I said was 'surely not your intention?' which was proffered as an invitation for you to reflect on the sweeping generalisation of your assertion that, essentially, people in the present are too inattentive, insensitive to verbal nuance, and simply not culturally literate and sophisticated enough to appreciate Shaw.

Instead, you have chosen to double-down on this: "^ Certainly it is my intention! You can read my words" and to do so in a confrontational and aggressive way.

People in this group are, as in any public group, on a spectrum of political views. My suggestion of the term 'reactionary' was in response to your assertion that people were more intelligent/cultured/literarily sophisticated in the past and that, therefore, the past was somehow superior to the present. This seems to be to be a standard usage of the term and not necessarily political.

You and I have now posted twice on this matter and we should draw a line under the discussion and allow the chat to move on.

However, as a moderator of this group, I would stress that we expect all members to keep things polite and collegiate at all times. Not everyone is willing or able to speak up against a male member posting so aggressively ('I’m not meaning to pick a fight about it (maybe you are?), but that is my opinion, take it or leave it... but I’ll make note of it.') and I would ask everyone to be self-aware and careful about the tone of posts, as we usually are.


message 759: by Sonia (last edited Oct 06, 2024 11:09AM) (new)

Sonia Johnson | 277 comments Patrick wrote: "Just finished the first of six volumes of George Bernard Shaw’s Complete Plays with Prefaces (Dodd, Mead, 1963), including Pygmalion, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, The Doctor’s Dilemma, Captain ..."

Reading Shaw's plays has given you a unique, perhaps pure experience of his writing. It is the right experience for you.
My experience of Shaw is watching old black and white films of his plays as a teenager. My recollection of these decades later is of an enjoyable Sunday afternoon stretching my legs out in front of the fire and being absorbed in the storytelling.
As readers or viewers we all come to books, plays or films with different expectations. For some it will just be the enjoyment of the time spent, for others it will leave them with characters that will stay with them for a lifetime. Some people will pay attention to the art, others will let it wash over them. The world is made up of different people.


message 760: by Patrick (last edited Oct 06, 2024 11:12AM) (new)

Patrick Roman Clodia wrote: "Patrick wrote: "using the rhetorical “Surely you don’t…?”"

That is a misquotation of my words: what I said was 'surely not your intention?' which was proffered as an invitation for you to reflect ..."


Your invitation to me to “reflect” on my sins, and become more “self-aware”, and calling me out as a male, tells me a lot. If as a male of European ancestry with the particular set of aesthetic and political opinions that I have, and who emphatically does not subscribe to current progressive ideologies, I am unwelcome in the group, just tell me so. If I stay here, I am going to continue to speak in my own voice. I know from experience that can sometimes seem provocative. Surely not your intention to silence a contrary voice? 😏

Somewhat preferring the past to the present in a group devoted to the 20th Century doesn’t seem too much of a stretch, but maybe I am wrong about that. 🤔

I would carry on with you by private message, but you don’t accept them.


message 761: by Roman Clodia (new)

Roman Clodia | 12029 comments Mod
I repeat: 'You and I have now posted twice on this matter and we should draw a line under the discussion and allow the chat to move on.'


message 762: by Patrick (last edited Oct 06, 2024 11:26AM) (new)

Patrick Sonia wrote: "Patrick wrote: "Just finished the first of six volumes of George Bernard Shaw’s Complete Plays with Prefaces (Dodd, Mead, 1963), including Pygmalion, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, The Doctor’s D..."

I appreciate your thoughtful response!

I was interested to discover, in looking over the late Maggie Smith’s extensive theater credits, that she appears never to have done Shaw. How odd! She was born to deliver Shaw’s lines. Imagine the young Maggie as Major Barbara, she’d have been perfect.


message 763: by Barbara (new)

Barbara | 94 comments Your post about GBS's plays makes me want to revisit them. 60 years ago I was a huge fan but haven't reread them in years. i remember Man and Superman was a big favorite.


message 764: by Alwynne (last edited Oct 06, 2024 12:46PM) (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments Patrick wrote: "Where would the audience for this be found today? Because the demands on the audience are pretty intense: A rapt level of attention, an intense sensitivity to verbal nuance, a high level of cultural literacy and sophistication, the willingness to work for the art instead of just letting it wash over you. "

I get where you're coming from but in terms of audience I think it's worth considering the wider context. I imagine there were as many, if not more, people in Shaw's heyday who went to his plays simply to be seen - and spent most of the performance sizing up people's outfits/companions/having whispered conversations. Going to the theatre was as much a social event as it was anything else. As for cultural literacy well that's shifting and context dependent, audiences in Shaw's time would have possessed different forms of cultural knowledge simply because they would have received a vastly different type of education - an emphasis on Greek and Latin for example. That's if they'd had much education at all, many women would still have been restricted to home-schooling by overworked governesses. At the same time those who did receive a more extensive education would often have been taught in an environment of rote learning and recitation of facts rather than nuanced interpretations. So I'm not sure it's fair to assume it was necessarily better or worse just, inevitably, different.

Personally I've never thought of Shaw as an author who's particularly complex, a lot of his plays are pretty bluntly polemical, the underlying arguments/ideas aren't - imo anyway - particularly complex. It's possibly more the case that speech patterns, idiomatic phrasing, vocabulary etc have inevitably changed over the past hundred years, so requires a certain amount of digging - which is why Penguin editions of Victorian classics, Shaw etc include notes. I don't dodge Shaw's work because it's too demanding, it's more that he seems a bit peripheral, and I find some of his plays quite dull, his take on Caesar and Cleopatra for example. If you look at things like the yearly online Victober challenge, you can see that there's still a thriving, diverse readership for classic works from roughly the same era, all equally as 'demanding' if not more so.


message 765: by Patrick (new)

Patrick ^ Man and Superman is a big one! It will be coming up in Volume III of the set that I’m reading.

I am reading all the prefaces and other prose materials too. Those are sometimes nearly as long as the plays. Full of interesting ideas.


message 766: by Patrick (last edited Oct 06, 2024 12:46PM) (new)

Patrick Alwynne wrote: "Patrick wrote: "Where would the audience for this be found today? Because the demands on the audience are pretty intense: A rapt level of attention, an intense sensitivity to verbal nuance, a high ..."

I also appreciate your thoughtful response. You make good points, but you can see why I had better not address them. I have already gotten myself into enough trouble! I never intended that paragraph to be such a powderkeg.


message 767: by Patrick (last edited Oct 06, 2024 01:18PM) (new)

Patrick I tend to post a lot in the threads that are of particular interest to me, and not at all in most others; I don’t do group reads, for example, so I seldom venture into those topics. I beg your indulgence in advance for my prolificity here.

I just love the unrushed fullness of James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy, so characteristic of fiction of that era both literary and popular, what people would now call “slow” perhaps because they’ve been conditioned by film and television.

This separates Farrell decisively from the hard-boiled writers. Although his dialogue is sometimes “snappy”, the descriptive and ruminative paragraphs are anything but, they are LONG and very leisurely.

The street attitudes and language are absolutely reflective of the time and place depicted, early 20th Century Chicago. The most heinous stuff in Studs Lonigan from our contemporary perspective belongs more to the characters than Farrell himself, I believe, but even if it did belong to him, I could easily deal with that. Being a historicist and all, I prefer my past full-strength. 🙂

An interesting aspect of the protagonist here is that far from being the confident fellow that he wants to project and maybe even succeeds in projecting, young Studs Lonigan is riddled with moment to moment anxiety, a lot of it around “What are people thinking of me?” I think Farrell just sees that as a baseline human condition.


message 768: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments Patrick wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "Patrick wrote: "Where would the audience for this be found today? Because the demands on the audience are pretty intense: A rapt level of attention, an intense sensitivity to verbal..."

That's okay, I get the impression that Shaw has fallen out of fashion in the UK with the exception of Pygmalion and Saint Joan which seem to get performed at regular intervals. Theatre-going is also shaky but that's as much to do with funding, lack of arts funding means that theatre's become quite an expensive pastime, that's not to mention the fact that for many people they have to travel some distance to find one. So it's quite demanding in terms of time etc

It's possible that Shaw has a different reputation elsewhere, just as Gilbert and Sullivan performances rare here but have noticed them referenced in a number of American shows. And Ruth Rendell regarded as a genre writer here, a respectable upmarket one to be sure, but still not fully counted as literary, but in France her work is taken very seriously and been adapted by a number of arthouse writers.


message 769: by Patrick (last edited Oct 06, 2024 01:11PM) (new)

Patrick ^ All very true. I’m American and love Gilbert & Sullivan!

Shaw is a representative of the comparatively recent but not distant past, which often puts someone out of fashion for a while. Maybe he will be back, who knows? In any case, the books are always there.

To take my earlier example of Heartbreak House, and as a kind of imperfect barometer, there were major productions during the Seventies and Eighties on Broadway, in the West End, at the Old Vic, at the Guthrie in Minneapolis and the Royal Exchange in Manchester. Not so much since, although the Abbey in Dublin did do it in 2014.

“Straight” theater (as opposed to splashy musicals that run for years on tourist audiences) used to be much more of a thing both in New York and London. New playwrights used to at least get a try in the mainstream houses, now that is more difficult to achieve. When I read Kenneth Tynan’s collections of theater reviews from the Fifties and Sixties (Curtains and Tynan Right & Left), of both classic and then-contemporary plays, my mouth waters.


message 770: by Blaine (new)

Blaine | 2160 comments I was a huge fan of GBS in my teens but I haven’t reread any of his works in decades. You should nominate one of your favourites, Patrick, for a Group Read in the coming months. It would be fun to read one together and debate it here.

Shaw had an odd mix of beliefs, some of which were progressive, some reactionary. He admired dictators and eugenics, while being a prominent member (founder?) of the Fabian Society and outraging the conservatives of his day.


message 771: by Patrick (new)

Patrick ^ The mixture of beliefs was definitely odd - I have noticed that in reading the prefaces particularly. Major Barbara would be a good Group Read, because the matter for debate there is just enormous.


message 772: by Blaine (new)

Blaine | 2160 comments I don’t agree that Shaw is too demanding or verbally sophisticated for today’s theatre audiences. I see a lot of drama on London’s stages, and the dialogue and issues are no less complex and issue-oriented than Shaw’s. But our modern sensibilities certainly are affected by our experience of TV and the internet. We are used to conflict, multi-media, fast transitions and rapid changes in perspective. We also see inversions of expected roles and relationships in ways that didn’t exist in Shaw’s time.

Changes in taste and expectations are often misperceived as downgrades, when actually they are more closely analogous to hearing a different language, which requires closer attention, perhaps education and notes to appreciate the full meaning.


message 773: by Patrick (last edited Oct 06, 2024 03:17PM) (new)

Patrick Ben wrote: "I don’t agree that Shaw is too demanding or verbally sophisticated for today’s theatre audiences. I see a lot of drama on London’s stages, and the dialogue and issues are no less complex and issue-..."

Again, I appreciate your thoughts but I don’t want to get into those specific issues again. Anyone may simply take it that I have a different view.

I am essentially a pre-1990 guy, a fact that I probably repeat too often, by way of underlining that I am out of sympathy with most recent trends.


message 774: by Alwynne (last edited Oct 06, 2024 03:50PM) (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments Ben wrote: "I don’t agree that Shaw is too demanding or verbally sophisticated for today’s theatre audiences. I see a lot of drama on London’s stages, and the dialogue and issues are no less complex and issue-..."

I remember reading that some of his plays are unpopular with actors, long or awkward monologues that work better on the page than they do on the stage.


message 775: by Alwynne (last edited Oct 06, 2024 03:51PM) (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments Ben wrote: "I was a huge fan of GBS in my teens but I haven’t reread any of his works in decades. You should nominate one of your favourites, Patrick, for a Group Read in the coming months. It would be fun to ..."

Although the interest in eugenics wasn't that unusual, a number of writers/public figures from that era we think of as broadly progressive had ties to the movement - H.G. Wells for example, Sydney Webb one of the founders of the Fabians. They were quite vocal about limiting the breeding of so-called 'degenerates', many believed that marriage between ethnic groups produced 'defective' children, that certain members of society should be sterilised or euthanised, etc

Eugenics and the Master Race of the Left:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/...

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/v...


message 776: by Patrick (new)

Patrick ^ That I can easily believe. I have often thought while reading the plays that the memorization process for the actors must be frightful.


message 777: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I finished Yōko Tawada's Suggested in the Stars second in the trilogy that began with Scattered All Over the Earth. Some intriguing choices, some bold ones too - sometimes too bold! I had some issues with representation of the queer character Akash, and with representations of disability - still puzzling over what related to the author, what to the translator, and what might have been intended as satire.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 778: by Patrick (new)

Patrick Because I read a lot of books “at once”, I can make fun juxtapositions. For example, at the moment I am reading both the first volume of Anaïs Nin’s Diaries (the 1966 edition) and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. I’m only just started on the Miller, but well into the Nin, which is impressing me greatly. I put off trying Nin for years because I thought she wouldn’t appeal to me, but I was flat wrong. Terrific writer. Admittedly, the l’amour fou angle in the Anaïs-Henry-June triangle kind of sails past me because it is foreign to my sensibility and life experiences - I have never been into big old passion * - but that is only one strand of the Diaries.

* I recently read a chapter of John Cowper Powys’ A Glastonbury Romance that is all mystically revelatory sex - the earth moved, the mystery of life was revealed, etc - and as with the similar passages in D.H. Lawrence, I felt way outside the text. From my POV, orgasm is nice and all, and that’s about it. I have never thought to freight it with such significance.


message 779: by Jan C (new)

Jan C (woeisme) | 1653 comments I started listening to Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love by Laura Dern and her mother Diane Ladd. Tapes of their talks together on their walks as Dern worked to pull her mother back from the brink of death. Must have worked since I don't believe she passed yet. Audible/Audio seemed the way to go with this book as it is their voices you hear.


message 780: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I was fascinated by Aharon Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939 so thought I'd try the second of his novels recently reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic Katerina as a novel I thought it didn't quite work but worth reading as social history. It's a glimpse into the brutal treatment of Jewish communities in what's now Ukraine from the late 19th century up to the Holocaust. Unusually it's told from the perspective of a local 'peasant' woman who reluctantly goes to work for a Jewish family.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

And as October reading I finished a 1960s children's book by Ruth M. Arthur A Candle in Her Room aka The Witch Doll featuring a cursed doll and three generations of women in Wales.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 781: by G (new)

G L | 702 comments I just finished the audiobook The Great Poets: The War Poetry of Wilfred Owen read by Anton Lesser. It's really well done, and a welcome relief from the string of horrid audio performances I hit in late August and September. I often read something related to WWI about this time of year, and I sort of just stumbled on this on Hoopla. I'm glad I did.
My thoughts about the recording:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 782: by Renee (new)

Renee M | 207 comments I love Anton Lesser. He does a beautiful job with poetry!


message 783: by Alwynne (last edited Oct 10, 2024 06:29AM) (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I was completely fascinated by artist and ground-breaking author Renee Gladman's My Lesbian Novel A wonderfully inventive take on the writing process, on authorship and identity, and a highly original take on a lesbian love story.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 784: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I finished Polish artist and critic Józef Czapski's Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp a fascinating take on Proust's life and work. Obviously not as substantial as the excellent Inhuman Land: Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941-1942 but still worth the time.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 785: by Roman Clodia (new)

Roman Clodia | 12029 comments Mod
I've just read the new Han Kang, We Do Not Part, which is harrowing but also beautifully constructed:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/6887037882


message 786: by Tania (new)

Tania | 1240 comments I have finished Lady Living Alone by Norah Lofts, which is the latest book in the British Library Women Writers series. Norah Lofts is well known as a writer of historical fiction, but she wrote a few novels under the pseudonym Peter Curtis, which have been described as murder mysteries; this one is more of a thriller, and it reminded me of Celia Fremlin, who I know has a few fans in this group.


message 787: by Jan C (new)

Jan C (woeisme) | 1653 comments I've finished listening to Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love by Laura Dern and her mother, Diane Ladd. I enjoyed it and found it quite moving. Diane had a lung disease caused by spraying insecticides. Her dog had previously died from this pollutant and doctors said her days were numbered. Dern took it on her self to take her mother for walks to force her lungs to work and to get her mother to talk before it was too late. It was quite funny, too.


message 788: by Alwynne (last edited Oct 15, 2024 04:33PM) (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I finished Yūko Tsushima's Wildcat Dome a slippery, complex and challenging piece that connects the treatment of the mixed-race offspring of Japanese women and American servicemen born after WW2 to wider rifts and issues facing Japanese society.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 789: by Jan C (new)

Jan C (woeisme) | 1653 comments I just started listening to The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty. Sally Darling is the reader and so far she is pretty good with the accents. Maybe she is from the South. She also reads one of Sharon McCrumb's books (maybe more).


message 790: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I finished a debut novel by Eliza Barry Callahan The Hearing Test which I found disappointing and insubstantial. The autofictional, minimalist narrative felt more like a prop for an array of references to the usual suspects - I'm not sure I can stomach one more novel in which references to Roland Barthes are supposed to be striking/deeply meaningful.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 791: by G (new)

G L | 702 comments I took a break from news and serious reading and listened to the Hugh Fraser narration of Partners in Crime. What fun. Tommy and Tuppence are charming as I have always found them, but I'd not read this in perhaps 40 years, and was surprised by what I found there. I'm delighted that there are at least two Christie novels that I had not realized were T & T books, and I am looking forward to them.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 792: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I finished a classic memoir by award-winning Japanese author Mayumi Inaba Mornings With My Cat Mii I found it fascinating as a depiction of Inaba's life and I admired her frank approach. But for anyone expecting cosy, cute Japanese cat lit this should probably come with a trigger warning. A great deal of space is devoted to Mii's distress, pain and protracted death - and to Inaba struggling, and often failing, to work out how to deal with this.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 793: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I finished a novel by bestselling Japanese writer Uketsu Strange Pictures The horror label's a bit misleading, true there's the odd creepy scene but this is essentially an entertaining reconfiguration of a conventional murder mystery. The structure/style are what set it apart. Uketsu is Japanese Youtube's equivalent of Banksy, a cult figure whose true identity remains unknown.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


message 794: by David (new)

David | 141 comments I've been reading Jelinek's The Children of the Dead from Yale University Press, which is 20th century in the original. It's not quite what I expected, both for better and worse. Calling it a zombie novel is I suppose correct, but it's not written with that genre in mind and I'm finding it to be its own thing entirely.


message 795: by Nigeyb (new)

Nigeyb | 15918 comments Mod
I'm currently love love loving...



Mr Loverman

by

Bernardine Evaristo



I'll be checking out the new TV adaptation when I've finished

I'm really immersed in this original and very human tale

Highly recommended



Treat yourself to this joyful, big-hearted read from Booker Prize-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo, part of our Penguin Essentials series which spotlights the very best of our modern classics

'Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life' Ali Smith

Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather - but he is also secretly homosexual, lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris.

His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away?

Mr Loverman is a ground-breaking exploration of Britain's older Caribbean community, which explodes cultural myths and fallacies and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves.

'Sublime' Telegraph

'Rip-roaring . . . she says things about modern Britain that no one else does' Guardian

'Brilliant' Independent







message 796: by Roman Clodia (new)

Roman Clodia | 12029 comments Mod
Nigeyb wrote: "I'm currently love love loving...



Mr Loverman

by

Bernardine Evaristo



I'll be checking out the new TV adaptation when I've finished

I'm really immersed in th..."


I love to hear your enthusiasm, Nigeyb! Has anyone watched the TV series!


message 797: by G (new)

G L | 702 comments I started A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City--A Diary yesterday, and wow is it good. Such brilliant writing and sharp observations not just about the writer's personal experiences trying to survive the Soviet conquest of Nazi Berlin, but also about the common hypocrisies and blindnesses that allowed people to trust (or at least survive) an authoritarian regime, and its replacement by another authoritarian regime.


message 798: by Blaine (new)

Blaine | 2160 comments That's great to hear. I'm looking forward to reading it next month when I'm back home.


message 799: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments Roman Clodia wrote: "Nigeyb wrote: "I'm currently love love loving...



Mr Loverman

by

Bernardine Evaristo



I'll be checking out the new TV adaptation when I've finished

I'm really..."


I thought Lennie James was great, and the depiction of his character and Marcus's relationship worked really well. But it could be a bit clunky/overstated in places, so did do a bit of fast-forwarding. Lovely story though.


message 800: by Alwynne (new)

Alwynne | 3553 comments I finished another October read, award-winning author Brian Evenson's latest collection Good Night, Sleep Tight a mix of horror and sf. Uneven, like most collections, but enough that was likeable to make it worthwhile. A good choice for people who prefer to steer clear of ooze and/or body horror. Macabre and eerie but admirably restrained with some interesting commentary on climate change and social inequality dotted around here and there.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


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