Ersatz TLS discussion
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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 15/01/2024
Time for a smirk - because we KNOW BETTER! (NYT gift link) - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/st...
Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "An article from the Guardian by Tim Dowling... "Shelf-absorbed", in which he writes about bookshelves...https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...-..."in my small-ish house, i have 1798 era construction issues with unstraight walls and kinks in floors, so some rooms are not conducive to a bookshelf that is freestanding
i have six bookshelves in the frontroom(only one large one) and recess shelving, in the "tv" room, just one small bookshelf and in the room above that just one smallish bookshelf. none in the bedroom,bathroom or kitchen, though i intend to install one into the bedroom as come possibly the end of 2024, all the bookshelves will be full.
I have no real criteria or plan for my sorting of books, though fiction and non-fiction are 70% seperated. Having the front room painted in september was hugely disruptive in a book kind of way and i didnt spend as much time unpacking books back in, as i did packing them to remove them, leaving some disorder
oh and i forget in the frontroom i have five piles of TBR books, neatly stacked, taking up as little room as possible, with two boxes of other books
I have no e-books and never read any
I'm not sure if Amitav Ghosh has been mentioned here, but my local newspaper just had a list of new books, and his Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey through Opium's Hidden Histories was there. Of course I now have my hold in place at the library.Opium has played such a huge roll in Britain and the East India Company and the far east that I look forward to reading this account.
AB76 wrote: "great that you still have your grandfathers books in place, some of them must go back even before 1911, or am i ageing your Grandfather and you ?.."Not at all - he was born in 1876 and I would assume already had his doctorate by 1911 (he spent a few years in Germany for study at Marburg). I don't actually know which is the oldest of his books here, but I do know that there are quite a few in German Gothic script.
MK wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "MK, if I remember correctly, you also like Tony Hillerman's novels about the Navajo police. "I dont have TV per se, just a monitor screen hooked up to a dvd player. I hate the commercials and hate is not too strong a word.
MK wrote: "I'm not sure if Amitav Ghosh has been mentioned here, but my local newspaper just had a list of new books, and his [book:Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey through Opium's Hidden His..."Sounds interesting.
Mod
Agreed with you and MK about commercials, but now with replay functions I almost never see any if I watch TV.
I'm scrolling through today's Guardian, and what do I see- Review finds libraries in England suffer ‘lack of recognition’ from government
Not a surprise especially from one who reads and listens to books from libraries in addition to buying many, too many of them.
When my more local library (I have access to 2) decided to forego fines, I was skeptical. But then I thought about it - where does the money come from to feed the kids tonight? can you pay the rent this month? how will I get to work if the car breaks down?
I'm sure you can think of more, so I say politicians ought to wise up (but they may be happy and/or oblivious to the need). Books are the great equalizer and, I expect one of the many ways those with little resouces can end up with more resources.
So you Brits here with the coming election, go after your representatives, twist their arms, and get them to promise, promise, promise bunches of pounds for community libraries. I don't care a whit if that hits those who can afford 'personal libraries'. So there.
Gpfr wrote: "Ruby wrote: "I dont have TV per se, just a monitor screen hooked up to a dvd player. I hate the commercials and hate is not too strong a word...."Agreed with you and MK about commercials, but now..."
Me too G, I rarely watch live tv except for sport.
Ruby wrote: "O what fun! Off the top of my head; will delve deeper when I run out of quick-to-remember names.-Robin Miles, a Black woman with a rich voice--she can do white voices, as well as Black dialects.
..."
Grover Gardner is also a favorite reader. One of the reasons I miss Andrea Camilleri is the loss of more titles where I can listen to Mr. Gardner. I'm too lazy to look up how many Montalbano books there are, but if you are interested in the vagaries of Sicilian life with a death as a fulcrum, head to your local library (fingers crossed they realize the importance of audio) and see if Montalbano is there for you.
My history with audio is long. Even before I crossed country in 1994 with a bunch of 'books-on-tape' from the Herndon, VA, fortnightly library, I was listening to audio. Back in that day when I was more active (retirement must have made me lazy), I would sling a cassette player in my fanny pack and walk the neighborhood. Now I tend to use them as a companion while doing those household tasks that become mindless over time. I expect it is lucky that I live alone without even a 4-footed creature to intervene in my life.
But for those of you new to audio downloads, I suggest you check out your local library because audio is across genre. Today, I am litening to JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall as I had previously liked hisEmbers Of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam.
So - take the plunge. I hope audio will extend your book pleasure.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "great that you still have your grandfathers books in place, some of them must go back even before 1911, or am i ageing your Grandfather and you ?.."Not at all - he was born in 1876 a..."
interesting times to be in Imperial Germany..
MK wrote: "I'm not sure if Amitav Ghosh has been mentioned here, but my local newspaper just had a list of new books, and his [book:Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey through Opium's Hidden His..."I'm high in the queue for Ghosh's new book. I liked The Great Derangement a lot but my two times with his fiction were underwhelming. what a word!
About opium, Imperial Twilight The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age by Stephen R. Platt was very good, imo.
Ruby wrote: "MK wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "MK, if I remember correctly, you also like Tony Hillerman's novels about the Navajo police. "I dont have TV per se, just a monitor screen hooked up to a dvd..."
Hillerman's stories appeared in book form before the TV series. Have you looked at any of those?
I've just finished reading Celia Dale's "Sheep's Clothing" (1988), following the paths of two women, one middle-aged, the other younger, who met up in Holloway Prison and continue their lives of crime, now together, in a scheme to deceive elderly women living alone (in London) and remove their valuables. We are privy to their thoughts and feelings and witness their treatment of the vulnerable: authentic malice! We are drawn into the domestic settings, the mundane lives of the victims and perpetrators. Someone referred to it, aptly I think, as "quietly sinister", but it is not completely bleak. Celia Dale was 76 when she wrote this, her final novel! I will certainly read more of her work.
I was just scrolling through FB and came upon this piece from Jacqueline Winspear. I went to a talk of hers here several Maisie Dobbs novels ago, and found her to be a likeable and sincere person - this said from someone who lived too long in DC and am as skeptical as hell.·
Hello Everyone!
When I write a post for my Facebook page, it’s usually with news I’m excited to share or it’s about something that has caught my attention or is close to my heart, and the words just slip onto the page with ease (every writer loves that fleeting feeling). This message, however, is both exciting and more than a little emotionally difficult to write.
As you probably noted, the banner heading this page has changed, and now gives information on THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS, the new novel in the Maisie Dobbs series, which will be published on June 4th on both sides of the Atlantic, in Australia and New Zealand and other countries around the world.
However – and here’s the tough part ….
… it is Maisie Dobbs’ final bow, the closing novel in the series.
I know this news will sadden many of you who have read every single book and those of you who have read the entire series several times over. And it was a difficult choice for me, not least because immersing myself in the world of Maisie Dobbs and her fellow characters – and undertaking the depth of research necessary to create a series reflecting the time and its people – has defined my life for some 24 years, since Maisie Dobbs first walked into my daydreams while I was stuck in traffic in February 2000. In June 2003 MAISIE DOBBS, my first novel, was published, and I have been so incredibly fortunate to have written and published another book every year since then, including two non-series novels, THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF LIES and THE WHITE LADY, plus a memoir, THIS TIME NEXT YEAR WE’LL BE LAUGHING, and of course the book and journal, WHAT WOULD MAISIE DO?
I know you will be wondering why I have chosen to end the series at this point, but the truth is that right from the beginning, when I realized I had the making of a series rather than just one novel, I took time to consider what I really wanted to create. I knew there would be an arc to each story, dictated not only by the mystery – that archetypal journey through chaos to resolution – but by the events of the day and, indeed, what it means to be human in the face of good news and bad. I knew I would move my characters through time, and I knew there would be an overall arc to the series. I wanted to follow characters who had lived through one war and then another, with the Depression in between along with the war in Spain. I wanted to see those characters grow and change, as we all grow and change, impacted by our work, our fears and loves and not least by the way in which our lives are touched by events in the wider world. I was given the opportunity to do that in a single novel with THE WHITE LADY in 2023, which followed a woman through two world wars – THE WHITE LADY will be published in paperback on March 14th in the US. It is already available in paperback in the UK and Commonwealth.
With the Maisie Dobbs series, I followed three key characters and their families through what was arguably the twentieth century’s most tumultuous time – Maisie Dobbs and her loved ones, and to a lesser extent Billy Beale, his wife and children, and Priscilla Partridge, her husband and their sons. And how did I do that? Well, in a way you did it for me, for without readers a novel or series doesn’t’ stand a chance of enjoying a long life. For your support and returning to the series time and again, I am forever grateful.
I know you might be wondering what might come next for me, but all I can say at this point is “Watch this space.”
In the meantime, commencing in MARCH, I will be sending out a newsletter each month until after publication day. I’ll be telling you more about THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS, and reflecting on the series and my research over the years. In the meantime, my past newsletters are all in the Newsletter Archive (link below) so you can read about previous novels published, along with the inspiration and historical underpinnings of each story. Needless to say there will be a book tour in June to mark publication of THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS – more on that nearer the time as it’s currently being planned by my publisher.
I will be back with more news soon!
Mod
I've got 3 of her books: as well as Sheep's Clothing, I've got another novel, A Helping Hand and a book of short stories, A Personal Call and Other Stories.
I've been intending to re-read them.
I want all here to know that I did my best to help both Seattle Public and King County Library reach these heights - https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...
I read
having really enjoyed the first in the series. This was a good story but could have done with some serious editing of about 70 pages. As a result I skip read the second half. A woman is targeting men through a dating app and killing them in the most hideous manner. The DI is still trying to clear her record from a previous case which went wrong. But evidence and statements keep disappearing. There is obviously corruption in force, we know who it is, but will she find out?I decided to give the next one a try
It is only 158 pages so perhaps someone has been editing!
A health update - 8 days after the op I am now walking round the house without crutches! Can't believe it. Given the icy weather my walks today have been limited to 10 minute blocks of walking backwords and forwards from the front door to the kitchen sink.
giveusaclue wrote: "I read having really enjoyed the first in the series. This was a good story but could have done with some serious editing of about 70 pages. As a result I skip ..."good progress!
In the excellentDissent or Conform?: War, Peace and the English Churches 1900-1945
, the author Alan Wilkinson explores many facets of Christianity in Britain and Germany during the 1919-1945 period.The chapter i am currently reading looks at relations between British Anglican clerics, Non-Conformist clerics and the German Protestant Churches under the Nazi's. The figures of Niemoller and Bonhoeffer are key players in the tricky debates about the intentions of Hitler towards the churches in 1933 and then as repression heightened towards the mid 1930s
Wilkinson also exposes, via church journals from the time some deeply questionable Anglican views on the Nazi;s and the Jews, always a minority but not helpful in the context of progressive Christian views. A few clerics were used by the Nazi's and invited to Germany to provide their slightly odd commentary on the "Kirchenkampf" in Nazi Germany.
Bonhoeffers Confessing Church was seen by British non-conformists with some disdain as it recieved state funding and wanted to have a place in state affairs. It seems the German seperation of state and church was seen as a negative, in that it led the church to remain passive or collaborative with the German regimes from 1871 to 1945. Its conservative, loyal nature was an anathema to the British tradition, where almost 50% of all Protestants were still "dissenters" and not part of the state church (ie Anglicanism).
On the subject of dissenting Protestants, my reading over the last 20 or so years shows me that only in the British Empire and the USA did the dissenting Protestants remain a significant or majority % of Protestants. In Lutheran Europe, dissent was marginal officially, in Calvinist Europe it was the same story, though many of the small dissenter numbers emigrated to the USA in the 18th and 19th centuries. (One area without a clear number attached to it within Lutheran Protestantism was Pietism, hugely influential throughout, more evangelical than mainstream Lutheranism but never recorded or counted it seems. The Calvinist population in Germany never exceeded 4-6% of the population and was ironically strongest in the Catholic majority Rhineland)
Ruby wrote: "O what fun! Off the top of my head; will delve deeper when I run out of quick-to-remember names.Oh, audiobooks...
This is a subject dear to my heart, so much so that it's forced me out of a long period of hibernation in which I've been lurking on Ersatz TLS but not actually posting anything here.
I've been enjoying audiobooks for the last 15 years or so, and when they are good - when the publisher chooses the right actor / narrator for the book - they are very very good. Again and again I have found that a good audiobook allows me to enjoy a challenging classic I'd always avoided. It's like a magic key.
To hear Anton Lesser reading Paradise Lost - which is how I began with audiobooks back in 2009 - is a thrilling experience. The same actor, reading Little Dorrit - an immersive experience, all 35 hours of it.
Just a few of my absolute favourites: Lolita, read by Jeremy Irons, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda, both read by Juliet Stevenson, The way we Live Now and Barchester Towers, read by Timothy West (he has tackled many of Trollope novels, a treat to come), and anything read by Simon Prebble (the Pickwick Papers, The Remains of the Day). And best of all, the richest reading experience of my life so far, and thanks to Sam Jordison for suggsting this in his Guardian reading group back in 2013, Neville Jason reading Proust. 140 hours of listening, a year's reading, and impossible to forget.
I generally listen to a section, then read it, occasionally the other way round or listening while reading. Just listening, without the text, doesn't really work for me. Radio programmes, yes, radio plays - another love of mine - yes, but generally not long novels or non-fiction. Although before I discovered the Kindle I listened to quite a few books in this way - it just requires more attention and a readiness to listen more than once. Sarah Waters' The Night Watch, Barbara Vine's The Crocodile Bird (another beautiful reading by Juliet Stevenson) or Sarah Perry's the Essex Serpent all stick in the memory long after I listened to them, even though I never read the book in text form.
Call me an audiobook snob, but I'm afraid I don't have much time for "amateur" audiobooks. My respect to them for putting hours of their time into reading books aloud and sharing their love of reading. But I find librivox etc. recordings rarely work.
Ruby wrote: "Berkley wrote: "One thing I wonder about is how it comes across when a male is doing a female character or visa versa: does it strike the ears in an odd way in some cases?"I've recently listened to Derek Jacobi reading Martin Chuzzlewit. Thoroughly enjoyable, although even the American sections of the novel did grate a bit. I think Jacobi's American accents were a bit OTT, but so is Dickens' satire. As for the female characters - well, his Mrs Gamp is suberb. Some of the younger and prettier female characters are a bit one-dimensional, but that's more about Dickens than Jacobi.
Anyway, as I see it, it's all about conveying the feel of the character, rather than actually imitating a female voice. Often it works very well.
Francis Stuart, Irish writer, was one of a group of controversial Nazi sympathisers from Eire in WW2. Not overtly Nazi, like many IRA members in the late 1930s and during WW2 he lived in Germany and was in contact with Abwehr agents in Dublin in the 1930s(linked to Irish independence)He is also a brilliant but difficult writer and thinker, as he never seems to have apologised for his stances or his complex morality makes them part of his strange position in 20th century writing.
I read his dark, unsettling novel Redemption written in 1949 about a decade ago and it was brilliant but constantly asking difficult questions, like the best literature does. I am about to start Pillar of Cloud written in 1948 which deals with Germany and the end of the war. It is set among the ruins of Nazi Germany, which he experienced and looks like another dark, unsettling read
FrustratedArtist wrote: "Ruby wrote: "O what fun! Off the top of my head; will delve deeper when I run out of quick-to-remember names.
Oh, audiobooks...
This is a subject dear to my heart, so much so that it's forced me out of a long period of hibernation..."
Lovely stuff, thank you. More to cut-out-and-keep. I’m excited to learn of Anton Lesser reading Paradise Lost.
Oh, audiobooks...
This is a subject dear to my heart, so much so that it's forced me out of a long period of hibernation..."
Lovely stuff, thank you. More to cut-out-and-keep. I’m excited to learn of Anton Lesser reading Paradise Lost.
MK wrote: "I want all here to know that I did my best to help both Seattle Public and King County Library reach these heights - https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-......"😀 well done!
I have a really shitty phone--it's free, priced for income. Now I have the chance to buy a tablet for $10. I have never been able to download anything b/c my computer is no-frills. The tablet is supposed to be podcast-able, download-able, etc. This is piggybacking on MK and how single-handedly she has made King County Library the stellar library that it is! And Frustrated and others who love audiobooks. Maybe the tablet will enable me to access books that are only ebooks in the library system. I cannot express how wonderful this will be.
I've enjoyed the King County Library since I moved to Auburn. (The Timberland library in Lacey, Washington is also good.)
Mod
At the moment, I'm travelling in the Himalayas with Erika Fatland, a Norwegian social anthropologist whose travel books Andy and I enjoy very much. High: A Journey Across the Himalaya, Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China is the 3rd of these.Because there was a cheap deal, I bought it as an e-book although this sort of book is better as a paper book — the maps are illegible. I no longer had an atlas & decided that it was time to get a new one, I do like atlases and maps in general (I know I'm not alone in this!). So I've been happily reading with my atlas open on my knees.
I can visualise very well the places and people she's writing about having seen Michael Palin's 2004 BBC series, Himalaya. Of course by 2018 there are changes. I think I'm going to get the DVDs out again.
Mod
I'm also re-reading Dorothy L. Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon. Harriet Vane has finally agreed to marry Lord Peter Wimsey, but their honeymoon isn't quite what they were expecting ...I think I'm going to watch the excellent TV series with Harriet Walter and Edward Petherbridge again, A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery (available on YouTube).
I'm currently reading and very much enjoying Nick Rennison's Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography (2005). I am impressed by how the author integrated the Sherlock stories into historical events and connected the fictional villains with actual crimes.
I had never taken any interest in Conan Doyle's writing until a member of the SheDunnit Book Club recommended the BBC radio adaptations of Sherlock Holmes's work (as a recent audiobook), which I have since listened to. I'll try the stories read by Stephen Fry next (included in my Audible membership!).
I became fascinated by The Sherlockian Game, after reading a pastiche by S.C. Roberts "The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts" in Murder by the Book (British Library Crime Classics). We have been reading the collection in the SheDunnit Short Story Club.
SheDunnit, the podcast and its Bookclub, focuses on Golden Age Detective writing (including, of course, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gpfr... ) but one thing leads to another ...
Gpfr wrote: "After well below average temperatures, including -4° yesterday morning, the temperature is starting to climb today and the forecast for the coming week is well above the seasonal average.[bookcov..."
Weather nerd here. We, too, are warming up here in the PNW from our record-breaking cold spell. (Boy, I will be cringeing when I see the next heating bill.) And actually getting warmer than normal with the temps supposed to be in the mid-50s by next weekend. A pleasant change, especially if we (okay I) get to see the sun on one or more days (more is better) as I will also get to get outside and spend a little time in the yard where there is always something to be done.
MK wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "After well below average temperatures, including -4° yesterday morning, the temperature is starting to climb today and the forecast for the coming week is well above the seasonal avera..."milder here 11c but very windy as Storm Isha travels over from Ireland(watched the rugby from Limerick last night as it was really howling wind and rain). walking with my father and my brothers dog before lunch, it felt so mild compared to the 3-4c we have had for three weeks in the shires
yes, after the past week it felt almost balmy!
@Diana if you do a little literary hunting it is amazing how many murders take place in bookstores - the retail equivalent of the Midsomer villages?Weather here is much warmer too but the wind is getting up now. I managed my remedial walk today - just over half a mile, which I cut short yesterday because it was freezing. It took longer than it should have because neighbours kept stopping me to ask how I am doing, which is really nice.
@gpfr I remember when I was reading a series of murder novels set in Oxford in the mid 1300 I think it was Frances Burgundy who gave me a link to a map of the city at the time. I printed it off and kept it by my side as I read them. Some of the lanes are still there now! I keep my ebooks on my laptop too and have been known to copy some maps onto a word document and print them off.
Now lying in bed at 0.50 a m. being kept awake by the howling wind. My neighbour has already rescued my dustbin earlier in the evening along with a line prop that has fallen. Hope it will calm down a bit tomorrow as I am supposed to walk for around 30 minutes each day. I am now walking around the house without any crutches or sticks. I still can't believe it to be honest, so please forgive me rabbiting on about it. I have moved on to
the next Jay Nadal bookA homeless vagrant has found a hand and arm amongst a mountain of fly tipping. The previous ones in the series have had some rather gruesome murder scenes which I skipped over a little.
Does anyone else have bouts of binge reading a series?
Some browsing in the Auburn Library's new book section. Matthew Longo's The Picnic, about a grass-roots protest in Hungary in 1989, has a well-written opening chapter. The protest went viral, as we'd say now, and it's a pleasure to remember it.
MK wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "After well below average temperatures, including -4° yesterday morning, the temperature is starting to climb today and the forecast for the coming week is well above the seasonal avera..."I've been bundling up lately.
About the weather - I saw an interesting article in the Conversation about how climate change may be leading to colder winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. Here (in Moscow) we have had quite a few nights with minus 30 and daytime temperatures of -20 for a lot of the New Year. A good 5 - 10 degrees lower than normal for this time of year. https://theconversation.com/extreme-c...
In fact, I think climate instability or change is a better term than global warming or even global heating to describe what we are experiencing.
Mod
Does anyone else have bouts of binge reading a series?"
I do!
We're supposed to get the tag end of Isha now — the forecast said from this morning, but there were some strong gusts yesterday evening.
Mod
I don't remember where I saw a reference to this site recently (here? elsewhere?) — I thought it looked interesting and bookmarked it, but haven't explored yet.
Mod
Yes, that's a good solution, I've never accessed my e-books other than on the e-reader.
For this particular case, High: A Journey Across the Himalaya, Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China, I'm enjoying going along with the maps in the atlas. It's making my reading rather slow, but that doesn't matter!
Mod
No need to apologise for keeping us up to date with your walking progress — I think we're all glad to hear it!
Gpfr wrote: "@giveusaclueNo need to apologise for keeping us up to date with your walking progress — I think we're all glad to hear it!"
Thank you.
The wind has now slackened but is still bitter. I may delay my walk until later in the day!
giveusaclue wrote: "@Diana if you do a little literary hunting it is amazing how many murders take place in bookstores - the retail equivalent of the Midsomer villages?Weather here is much warmer too but the wind is..."
Yes, maybe, give..!
My reading of bibliomysteries has been restricted so far to BLLC publications from the first half (more or less) of the 20th century but I see that they have become a very popular genre.
In addition to the collection of short stories I mentioned previously, I've read the following:
Ferguson, John (1937) Death of Mr Dodsley :
Farmer, Bernard J . (1956) Death of a Bookseller .
Both killed among books in their bookshop or their library!
Lorac, E.C.R. (1935) Death of an Author also fits the category of bibliophile murders.
The theme for the SheDunnit Book Club in April 2024 is Bibliomystery and members have chosen
Lorac's (1937) These Names Make Clues , also republished by BLCC.
It's fascinating to see details of life during this period (social history not so long ago - the older you get, the more you realise how quickly our lives have changed!).
FrustratedArtist wrote: "About the weather - I saw an interesting article in the Conversation about how climate change may be leading to colder winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. Here (in Moscow) we have had q..."over the last decade in SE England i have noticed a few changes to the usually flux like mild-ish weather we usually have:
More intense rain, not the drizzly weeks of old but concentrated massive downpours throughout the year but interspersed with very dry months
Autumns are now almost extensions of summer, september has been a summer month for me since 2019, less storms in october and only in late november do temps start to fall
Plus every summer since 2016, extreme heat for more than a week, at least twice a summer.,with the comfort levels really unpleasent, usually setting records
(the only pattern that was normal (as i remember from the 1990-2010) period was Jan-May in 2023, where no heatwaves before June occurred and it was generally quite cool.
Ruby wrote: "I have a really shitty phone--it's free, priced for income. Now I have the chance to buy a tablet for $10. I have never been able to download anything b/c my computer is no-frills. The tablet is su..."I hope a charger comes with it.
Hey Ruby, I just fired up my Windows 7 laptop and it works. If you have a way (modem) to connect to the internet, I'm sure I could get it to you. Let me know as I haven't used it for ages.
A Pillar of Cloud
by Francis Stuart...is an enthralling read, set in the French Zone of Occupation, South Baden, written in 1948 and covering the desperate life in the ruins of an Irish poet, two refugee sisters, the french occupation forces and German localsI feared a slightly sleazier and more voyeuristic novel of exploitation at first, standards are set high for post-war fiction set in the ruins of Germany after reading Pigeons On the Grass by Wolfgang Koeppen last year. But its suprisingly chaste and cautious a novel, companionship is there, people tossed and buffeted by the end of the war.
There are refugees who experienced the camps, torture, rape and violence, ambigious Nazi collaborators like the narrator who is questioned by the French but then released, the french soldiers who run the place and the German locals who pine for "old times"
Stuart seems keen to see hope in the abyss of WW2, which he spent in Berlin working for Nazi propaganda but so far it lacks the sting of his lifelong lack of contrition which makes his morality complex and troubling.
giveusaclue wrote: "I read having really enjoyed the first in the series. This was a good story but could have done with some serious editing of about 70 pages. As a result I skip ..."Hi ya! That's great news about your operation. Hopefully the recovery will keep progressing.
Fuzzywuzz wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I read having really enjoyed the first in the series. This was a good story but could have done with some serious editing of about 70 pages...."Thanks very much. Funnily enough the book I am reading now had am chopped up murder victim who is going to be identified by the serial number of their hip transplant
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great that you still have your grandfathers books in place, some of them must go back even before 1911, or am i ageing your Grandfather and you ?