What are we reading? 26/02/2024

[CCCubbon]

While looking up a different book I came across a crime series set in Istanbul - the Inspector Ikmen series by Nadal first one called
Balshazzar’s Feast.
Has anyone read any? Twenty plus in series.

[AB76]

CCCubbon wrote: "AB76 wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "@MK
I was tethered to a drip for some time - I gave it a silly name, forgotten for the minute as I trailed it around as if it was a dog. MrC had minor op on his scalp ..."

i'm with you CCC, not a likeable character!

[Gpfr]

CCCubbon wrote: "While looking up a different book I came across a crime series set in Istanbul - the Inspector Ikmen series by Nadal first one called
Balshazzar’s Feast.
Has anyone read any? Twenty plus in series."

I've read them and like them.

[Tam]

I picked up from the library today 'They Divided the Sky' by Christa Wolf, a novel set in 1960/61 East Germany. "A Time of Gifts' by Patrick Leigh Fermor. The start of his travels walking across Europe in the 1930's and 'Border' by Kapka Kassabova. So hopefully these will launch me back into more book reading, which has been sketchy at best, over the last six months or so. I do seem to have jumped into a world of looking at what constitutes borderland territory. Somewhere I usually feel myself to be quite at home...

[AB76]

Tam wrote: "I picked up from the library today 'They Divided the Sky' by Christa Wolf, a novel set in 1960/61 East Germany. "A Time of Gifts' by Patrick Leigh Fermor. The start of his travels walking across Eu..."

i highly recommend the Wolf novel, opens the eyes to many things, set in Halle, one of the largest cities in East Germany

[Robert]

AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm reading John Reeves' Soldier of Destiny, a biographical study of Ulysses S. Grant. The author focuses on a particular period of Grant's life-- from the beginning of the Civil War..."

Once I was at a bookstore, with a new biography of Jefferson Davis on the counter.
The clerk behind the counter was staring at me. "It's something that happens to middle-aged American males. At some point, we study the Civil War." A man behind me said "With me, it's the Napoleonic era."

[AB76]

Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm reading John Reeves' Soldier of Destiny, a biographical study of Ulysses S. Grant. The author focuses on a particular period of Grant's life-- from the beginning of ..."

i love that, i'm middle aged but not a yank, maybe it works on this side of the pond too!

[Bill]

Are there any Marilynne Robinson fans here, or have they all migrated back to The Guardian? If I had a dollar for every time I‘ve seen or heard Gilead praised or recommended, I’d have enough money for a First Folio (in facsimilie, anyway).

I’ve been following the fortunes of her latest non-fiction book, Reading Genesis. I’ve started reading several of her articles on religion in the NYRB, but have generally been unable to work my way to the end of them. James Wood nails my problem in his review in the current issue of The New Yorker:

Officially, Robinson understands Genesis to have been written by human beings. In effect, since free story is hemmed by unfree Providence, and all stories are God’s, she reads the Bible as Scripture (a word she always capitalizes)—as revelation. So, in turn, you learn to read her book in a spirit of wary doubleness. There is an official text and a shadow text. In the official text, there’s nothing out of order about a commentator writing such things as: “the Lord has an intention for the world that is to be realized through history.” Or: “It is not always obvious that God does love humankind as such or that He should, but this is, of course, a human view of the matter.” Such glosses are merely the patient commentator doing her best to see things from the world view of the Bible itself.

But at some point the shadow text extends its ghostly hand, and you realize that Robinson is not merely paraphrasing the text’s sacred premises; she is sermonizing about an actual God and his actual Providence. She is not only speaking of God but for God. That last quoted sentence is an odd one. It isn’t obvious, Robinson says, that the God of Genesis does love us—but then, she qualifies, this is a rather limited, “human view” of the matter. The oddity here is not theological but literary. One is, after all, reading a book by a modern novelist about a collection of human stories. And what else could the Bible be except a series of writings that reflect “a human view of the matter”? In the Bible, there is literally no other “view of the matter” except the human one.

It is, in truth, very hard to remember, if one has been brought up in a religious tradition of any kind, that the God of the Hebrew Bible is not God himself but a collection of human approximations and reckonings and inspired fictions. I have spent much of my life hating the God who replies to Job, the God who bullies and blusters out of the whirlwind, when calm rationality should remind me that this God speaks words written by a human or group of humans. From a literary point of view, it makes no more sense to hate this God than to hate King Lear. In both cases, human beings, writing with an ardor and an inspiration that indeed seem sacred, went to the edge of the knowable. And, in both cases, these writers use words and characters to bring back the great treasures of their literary pilgrimages. It is an extraordinary thing that a human being saw fit to describe the creation of the world from the point of view of God himself. I share Robinson’s reverence for the endeavor. But the tale is itself a creation.

He concludes the review with praise for Robinson the novelist, somewhat at the expense of Robinson the theologian.

The true miracle, it seems to me, is not to be found in the pages of Robinson’s new book or in the pages of Genesis. It is hiding in plain sight elsewhere. It is that Marilynne Robinson, loaded up with the severe paradoxes of her religious tradition, is a novelist at all. But she is, and a great novelist, too. This is one miracle that, having seen it with my own eyes, I’ll happily believe in.

Evidently, Woods does not feel that it is necessary to read the novels with “wary doubleness”. After reading Housekeeping, I am not so sure that this is true and have resisted picking up her later novels despite the avalanche of praise and recommendation they’ve received.

For those interested, here’s a NY Times gift link to an hour-long conversation with Robinson about her new book. The interviewer has praised and recommended Gilead (as have a number of his previous guests) and, perhaps as a consequence, the interview feels fairly softball to me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/op...

[CCCubbon]

@Scarlet

Have you read this yet!
Maybe your doubts coming home but who knows.
I like the sound of wobbly spacetime! Fascinating

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "Are there any Marilynne Robinson fans here, or have they all migrated back to The Guardian? If I had a dollar for every time I‘ve seen or heard Gilead praised or recommen..."

i must read Housekeeping its been mentioned here many times

[AB76]

though logged in, the G started to shake me down for more shekels yesterday which was a bit odd, anyone else had this, a reminder to contribute even more...

[Gpfr]

AB76 wrote: "though logged in, the G started to shake me down for more shekels yesterday which was a bit odd, anyone else had this, a reminder to contribute even more..."

I haven't had this on my laptop, but I think I've mentioned before that on the app on my phone there's now a restriction to how many articles I can read. Although I contribute, I don't contribute enough to have unlimited free access on the app. I mainly look at the G on the laptop, so ... but it annoyed me.

[Gpfr]

AB76 wrote: "Bill wrote: "Are there any Marilynne Robinson fans here, or have they all migrated back to The Guardian? If I had a dollar for every time I‘ve seen or heard Gilead praised..."

I have read Housekeeping, but I'm afraid I don't remember much about it. It didn't prompt me to seek out her other books.

[Gpfr]

If you enjoy Tom Gauld's cartoons in the book section of the G, you might like to see these from the New Scientist:

https://www.newscientist.com/author/t...

[Gpfr]

I quoted Javier Marías, regarding his Written Lives, saying that he had written his brief biographies of writers with affection and humour.

I've just read James Joyce et ses airs where I didn't find a trace of either. Looking back at the" Prologue", I see that Marías acknowledges that affection is lacking in his depiction of Joyce, Mann and Mishima. However he thinks that humour is present in all the texts.

James Joyce semble être l'un de ces artistes qui se donnent tellement l'air du génie qu'ils finissent par persuader leurs contemporains et plusieurs autres générations qu'ils sont en effet et ont été des génies sans conteste.
James Joyce seems to be one of those artists who give themselves such an air of genius that they end up persuading their contemporaries and several other generations that they are indeed and have been unquestionably geniuses.

I'm not seeing the humour but the description of Joyce is unremittingly unpleasant.

[Tam]

Gpfr wrote: "If you enjoy Tom Gauld's cartoons in the book section of the G, you might like to see these from the New Scientist:

https://www.newscientist.com/author/t..."

As we are going off piste this morning I thought some might enjoy this bit of medieval music by Guillaume de Machaut. 'My end is my beginning'

I was listening to Cerys Matthews, this week, on her radio 4 programme, 'Add to Playlist' and she talks about it on there. It is designed as a 'ronde', with apparently mathematical reversals of the notes. These things are beyond me somehow, but I do love some medieval music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VMsk...
I'm not knowledgable about what he wrote about music. My experience of him was through his writings and poetry. And the wonderful illumination of the paradise garden
The ‘Mysterious Garden’ from Guillaume de Machaut’s Poetical Works, ca. 1355 - 60 https://i.postimg.cc/q7RVKD98/Machaut... but the title brings to my mind T S Eliot's 'Four Quartets', East Coker: and his quote it it 'in the end is my beginning'. I wonder if T S Eliot read Machaut?

Gp, is their any news of the possibility of a print of 'The Mysterious Garden' perhaps? I loved the New Scientist cartoons...

[MK]

Gpfr wrote: "If you enjoy Tom Gauld's cartoons in the book section of the G, you might like to see these from the New Scientist:

https://www.newscientist.com/author/t..."

Thanks. Always up for a chuckle. Dog (could have been the family cat) especially apt.

[Bill]

AB76 wrote: "i must read Housekeeping its been mentioned here many times"

It's a book I've argued about with Machenbach, who thinks highly of it and Robinson's other novels. I think it might have been a great novel, but to me it avoids confronting a profound darkness that seems inherent in its story. Come to think of it, I might say the same thing about Robinson's reading of Genesis, at least as far as what I've gleaned from reviews and the interview I linked to.

It struck me some time ago when reading one of Robinson's NYRB pieces that the Bible is, for her, a sacred text, which would seem to align her mindset more with Mencken's Homo boobiens or, in another context with a different text, Islamic fundamentalists, than the typical NYRB writer. It's hard for me to understand a modern reader who, in reading the Bible to any great extent, doesn't find that the book itself acts as its own de-sanctification.

[Berkley]

i must read Housekeeping its been mentioned here many times"

I find myself uninterested - I think more or less for the reasons Bill mentioned, but perhaps something in addition as well, because I'm reading a book right now written by a believer, a book in which Christian theology and tradition plays a crucial rôle, and it doesn't seem to bother me - Charles Williams's War in Heaven .

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i must read Housekeeping its been mentioned here many times"

It's a book I've argued about with Machenbach, who thinks highly of it and Robinson's other novels. I think it might have ..."

interesting point re the bible and its factual basis i see the bible as a collection of stories told by human hands, of interesting literary value(KJB, original classical anguages) but far less important than the forces that may guide us and that we know little about, which includes the idea of a deity

so anything based around the bible as a text to guide us makes me rather suspicious and the fundamental american right show how dangerous it can be to be guided literally by the bible, likewise the Koran, for obvious reasons

[Bill]

Berkley wrote: "I'm reading a book right now written by a believer, a book in which Christian theology and tradition plays a crucial rôle, and it doesn't seem to bother me - Charles Williams's War in Heaven ."

I read Williams' All Hallow's Eve and never felt proselytized. As I noted in my review

... he assumes that his reader shares his theological understanding. The fact of Christian salvation is alluded to in the text as casually and self-evidently as any of the mundane events in the story: paying the driver after a taxi ride or a character walking in the rain arriving at her destination soaking wet.

I think my main problem with the novel is that the main villain, who was supposed to be the Antichrist or something close to that, seemed rather lukewarm in his evil acts, and barely competent in those he did undertake.

[Gpfr]

Tam wrote: "Gp, is their any news of the possibility of a print of 'The Mysterious Garden'..."

I'm afraid there doesn't seem to be one — I think all that's on offer is to buy a digital version.

[AB76]

Berkley wrote: "i must read Housekeeping its been mentioned here many times"

I find myself uninterested - I think more or less for the reasons Bill mentioned, but perhaps something in addition as well, because I'..."

i think i have a williams novel on the pile...

[AB76]

Tokyo Express....what a great read!!

So intricate and well worked, always in a clipped precise style that let in elements of japanese culture and geographical knowledge. From a few lines about a mongol invasion at Hakata, i found some wonderful paintings of the samurai defeating the Mongols and learnt something new

No spoilers ofc, for future readers but its so good that Penguin issued a modern translation of this 1958 classic, brilliant!

[Robert]

Berkley wrote: "i must read Housekeeping its been mentioned here many times"

I find myself uninterested - I think more or less for the reasons Bill mentioned, but perhaps something in addition as well, because I'..."

War in Heaven? An unusual and interesting book.

[Robert]

Bill wrote: "Berkley wrote: "I'm reading a book right now written by a believer, a book in which Christian theology and tradition plays a crucial rôle, and it doesn't seem to bother me - Charles Williams's War ..."

If you want a really capable black magician, I recommend James Blish's Black Easter. Not one but three Faustian bargains.

[Robert]

AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm reading John Reeves' Soldier of Destiny, a biographical study of Ulysses S. Grant. The author focuses on a particular period of Grant's life-- from th..."

Part of the fascination comes from the individual decisions by such a cross-section of people. Men who had no idea of going into an army before secession rubbing shoulders with military professionals. Politicians turned general. Failed generals like Floyd and Pillow stealing off by boat in the night, abandoning their own troops. Grant, whose early army staff was more a group of small-town cronies than a military staff-- though it much resembled his Western army volunteers.

[Berkley]

Robert wrote: "If you want a really capable black magician, I recommend James Blish's Black Easter. Not one but three Faustian bargains."

Thanks, I have a copy and had been planning to read it but was a little disappointed with the last Blish I read, A Case of Conscience (not a bad book, I just didn't take to it as much as I'd been hoping) and thus was beginning to consider putting off Black Easter. I'll put it back on my classic-SF-to-read list.

[AB76]

Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm reading John Reeves' Soldier of Destiny, a biographical study of Ulysses S. Grant. The author focuses on a particular period of Grant's l..."

and quite a few who were friends and classmates at Westpoint i would imagine

[Gpfr]

Resurrection Walk
If anyone unfamiliar with Michael Connelly's books wants to try them, I wouldn't recommend starting here — go back to the beginning of the Harry (short for Hieronymous) Bosch books. I enjoyed this well enough, but it's not as good as the earlier ones.

Harry, undergoing treatment for cancer, is working for his half-brother, Mickey Halley, the "Lincoln lawyer". They are going through cases of people who claim they are wrongfully imprisoned and, if they believe them, are trying to get them released.

[Robert]

There were West Point graduates on both sides in the Civil War. Confederate General Longstreet had been best man at Grant's wedding. After Lee signed the surrender document, Grant turned to Longstreet. "Pete, why don't we have a game of brag for the old times?" (Officers addressed each other by old school nicknames. Grant's West Point nickname was "Sam." For a shy young cadet whose initials were "U.S." the tag must have seemed a natural.)
When Custer raided a Confederate camp, he left a sarcastic note for his old friend Fitz Lee.
There were officers on both sides who thought that they'd been knifed by the old boy network of the West Pointers.