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What are we reading? 20/05/2024
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Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "just watched Trumps incredible 40 min fact free nonsense from Trump Towers...oh my, he is just away with the fairies"Oh, man, I couldn't bring myself to listen to any of it. I'd rath..."
you made a wise choice bill, it was almost a parody, a SNL sketch. to think he calls Biden old and stupid...pot and kettle
Gpfr wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "really need a good history book to lift things...."What about The Crusades Through Arab Eyes? I read this in French (Les Croisade..."
coincidentally i picked up a penguin book called "chronicles of the crusades" by two french knights from oxfam last month!
there are some good books out on the Cromwellian era to explore, one by Paul Lay
Mod
If you can go one step forward from the Wars of the Roses, a book I enjoyed recently (on audio) was Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn. The reviews you can see on Amazon are not exaggerated.
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Logger24 wrote: "I don’t think we should expect too much from politicians. They are the people we pay to deal with contentious issues on our behalf, because we want to do other things with our lives and don’t want ..."good points!
giveusaclue wrote: "really need a good history book to lift things...."My single favourite would be Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. Through the life of one man, Tuchman tells the history of England, France and much of Europe in a disasterous century. Filled with fascinating detail and a fine sense of irony, it really is a masterful portrait of an age. I've listened to it twice and read it once.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
Icould recommend many others, but for anyone living through hard times, and that is most of us at the moment, Tuchman's book gives some perspective. The best overview I have read of the medieval mind.
Gpfr wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "really need a good history book to lift things...."What about The Crusades Through Arab Eyes? I read this in French (Les Croisade..."
Thanks, I"ll have a look for that too.
Logger24 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Norman/Medieval/Plantagenet/Wars of the Roses in particular, though I am happy to stray backwards too! ..."If you can go one step forward from the Wars of the Roses, a book I ..."
I read the Thomas Penn book a year or two ago. Henry wasn't shown in good light! But it was a fascinating book.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "really need a good history book to lift things...."My single favourite would be Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. Through the life of one ..."
Thanks to you too, for the recommendation. I am going to be busy!
FrustratedArtist wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "really need a good history book to lift things...."My single favourite would be Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. Through the life of one ..."
"Yet change as always was taking place….Monarchy, centralized government, the national state gained in strength...Seaborne enterprise liberated by the compass was reaching toward the voyages of discovery that were to burst the confines of Europe….Times were to grow worse over the next fifty odd-years until at some imperceptible moment, by some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected."
This is from one review on GR's. I'm interested in reading Tuchman's book, but what was the moment where this new perception broke out? And what brought about the change, and is it covered in her book?
Thanks for all the recommendations. Should keep me occupied.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "I... came across this quote from Jane Austin (Northanger Abbey"That's an excellent quote... I have never read Austen, but agree with all she says here.
Robert wrote: "You might enjoy Millar's How Like an Angel, a good mystery."Possibly, but maybe not. TBH, the 'puzzle' part of a crime story is not something I get excited about - and abhor those books which have involuted plots but zero characterisation or psychological consistency of behaviour and are poorly written. Millar, of course, is much better than that, but her style and lack of humour didn't engage me all that much. Plus, some scenes didn't ring true and some dialogue was clunky to say the least!
giveusaclue wrote: "On the plus side, the hip is feeling great now. I can tie my shoelaces again without using the sock aid..."Good health is a prerequisite for us to enjoy life as opposed to enduring it... I'm pleased to hear this.
But what on earth is a 'sock aid'?? (I can guess - rhetorical Q - but never heard of this gadget before!)
Paul wrote: "Does Great Britain have any natural resources other than mutton and wilted greens?"Well, we have a lot of wind and rain! Already Labour intends to speed up the transition away from using fossil fuels for electricity generation (their target is probably too ambitious, but it's definitely a move in the right direction). This will increase security by reducing dependence on imported fuels. (Cameron got rid of the "green crap" in his day.) Onshore wind farms - much cheaper than offshore ones to build - have until now been thwarted by a lot of nimbyism. Changes in planning regulations should help there.
As for water - we are not going to suffer from drought any time soon, unlike many other countries.
Logger24 wrote: "I don’t think we should expect too much from politicians. They are the people we pay to deal with contentious issues on our behalf, because we want to do other things with our lives ..."The problem in democracies is that since politicians want to get re-elected every 4-5 years, their policies all too often look to the short term. If Cameron had the foresight to realise that depending on cheap imported fossil fuel was not a good idea, he would not have ditched the "green crap", but would have invested heavily in renewable energy sources. He decided to "save money" so he could spend it elsewhere - probably on tax cuts for the already wealthy! And that is another weakness - politicians need funds to fight elections, and so are often in hock to people or companies which give them the cash to do so. Those people - and the press barons - do not have the interests of the 'common man' at the front of their minds, but the preservation of their own billions.
Not that autocracies do better wrt green energy, if what I have read about China and coal powered generating of electricity is (still) correct.
Tam wrote: "what was the moment where this new perception broke out? And what brought about the change, and is it covered in her book?"It's covered in the Epilogue, which is basically about the 15th Century, Henry the Navigator, Jan Huss and the fateful year of 1453:
"In the same year as Castillon [peace treaty with France, ending the Hundred Years War], madness overtook Henry VI, precipitating the same contest for control of the English crown that had so damaged France. Unemployed soldiers and archers returning to England took service with the baronial factions, adding their violence and weapons to the civil Wars of the Roses that now took the place of the war in France. In the same fateful year of 1453 the formidable defenses of Constantinople fell before the siege guns of Mahomet II. The Turks brought a siege train of seventy pieces of artillery headed by a super-bombard hooped with iron, drawn by sixty oxen and capable of launching cannonballs weighing 800 pounds. The fall of Byzantium has supplied a conventional date for the close of the Middle Ages, but an event more pregnant with change took place at the same time.
In 1453–54 the first document printed from movable type was produced by Gutenberg at Mainz, followed in 1456 by the first printed book, the Vulgate Bible. “The Gothic sun,” as Victor Hugo put it with fitting grandiloquence, “set behind the gigantic printing press of Mainz.” The new means of disseminating knowledge and exchange of ideas spread with unmedieval rapidity. Printing presses appeared in Rome, Milan, Florence, and Naples within the next decade, and in Paris, Lyon, Bruges, and Valencia in the 1470s. The first music was printed in 1473. William Caxton set up his printing press at Westminster in 1476 and published that still unsurpassed work of English prose, Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, in 1484.
With the Tudors on the English throne, a formal settlement between England and France was eventually concluded by the Treaty of Etaples in 1492, a year more significant for other reasons. The energies of Europe that had once found vent in the crusades were now to find it in voyages, discoveries, and settlements in the New World."
scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "On the plus side, the hip is feeling great now. I can tie my shoelaces again without using the sock aid..."Good health is a prerequisite for us to enjoy life as opposed to end..."
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Putting-Elde...
Works brilliantly!
giveusaclue wrote: "Works brilliantly!"Well, thanks - I can see that from the video!
I sometimes use a shoe horn which serves a similar purpose, though that is to protect the heels of my more expensive pair rather than because I can't manage otherwise. The 'sock horn' I may need later on! ;-)
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What a great read this was, one of the best in the cycle, full of incident, full of human emotion, full of knowledge of how a piece of financial chicanery begins and builds, draws in investors, becomes a mania, and then collapses in scandal and calamity. Anticipating La Débâcle, he uses the language of a military campaign to describe operations on the Bourse – attack, defence, reinforcements, flanking movement, massacre, déroute. He bases the story on the later, real case of Union Générale, which foundered in 1882, and invites us to think of it as a metaphorical trajectory for the Second Empire itself. And amid a slew of grasping, money-driven characters on the one hand, and ineffectual types on the other, there is one capable lady who despite all her trials can never remain sorrowful and always emerges with a smiling love of life - and who, said Zola (as Flaubert of Emma), was “moi.”
Logger24 wrote: "L’Argent – Emile ZolaWhat a great read this was, one of the best in the cycle, full of incident, full of human emotion, full of knowledge of how a piece of financial chicanery begins and builds, ..."
It's years since I read it, so I don't remember all the details, but I seem to remember the man at the centre of the bank scam is Aristide Saccard, who was behind the property scam in an earlier novel, La Cureé (the Kill). But your description makes me want to revisit it. It also reminds me of another great 19th century novel of a fraudulent investment scheme - Trollope 's The Way we Live Now, which I heartily recommend. Especially the audibook read by Timothy West, - a perfect pairing of reader and writer. I think Trollope intended this as a kind of "state of the nation" novel after returning to Britain following a period in Australia.
Logger24 wrote: "L’Argent – Emile ZolaWhat a great read this was, one of the best in the cycle, full of incident, full of human emotion, full of knowledge of how a piece of financial chicanery begins and builds, ..."
i read this a long time ago and realised that Theodore Dreiser wrote an american novel on the same topic, i think it was The Financier. your mention of the Zola novel, has sadly reminded me that finding the Dreiser novel may be quiet a hunt, the depths of the attic possibly...will save that for a rainy day!
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What a great read this was, one of the best in the cycle ..."
It's years since I read it, so I don't remember all the details, but I seem to remember the man at the centre of the bank scam is Aristide Saccard, who was behind the property scam in an earlier novel, La Cureé (the Kill). ..."
Exactly so. I also agree the Trollope is tremendous, one of his best. I don’t know the Timothy West reading, though I do remember a TV version with a gripping central performance by David Suchet as Melmotte.
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i read this a long time ago and realised that Theodore Dreiser wrote an american novel on the same topic, i think it was The Financier
Not sure I’m that tempted! I struggled to get through Sister Carrie.
AB76 wrote: "Its a shame the US constitution is so flawed and relatively un-modified in the last 200 years, on this side of the pond i cant remember any President in my lifetime save Obama who struck me as a gr..."I suppose that Obama looks greater if viewed from far away... but really, how many great premiers or prime ministers are there? There are generations that produce one mediocre leader after another.
And a truly great leader (de Gaulle, either President Roosevelt) may tackle problems others have avoided, while creating problems in his wake.
Prosecutor Bragg is as great a menace to a republic as we can stand.
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Getting around central Paris is starting to be a bit complicated (Olympic Games). Yesterday morning I went with my grandsons to Smith&Son — getting there proved quite an obstacle course!
Logger24 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "L’Argent – Emile Zola ..."i read this a long time ago and realised that Theodore Dreiser wrote an american novel on the same topic, i think it was The Financier
Not..."
i',m suprised, Sister Carrie was my first Dreiser and i loved it, 15 years ago
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Its a shame the US constitution is so flawed and relatively un-modified in the last 200 years, on this side of the pond i cant remember any President in my lifetime save Obama who stru..."the danger is that the Trump attempt to frame his trials as political gains traction, it does seem the Bragg went for this trial after originally declaring it wasnt worth it and i wondered what changed. On the other hand, a crime is a crime...
Gpfr wrote: "A dreary start to June. The last few days have been wet and chilly, and yesterday afternoon I ended up getting out my huge really-cold-weather polo-neck jummper. The temperature is supposed to star..."its been cool here too, usually late May can start the summer warmth. i dont mind cool weather in May-Sept, its usually a blessing the way summers are going in northern europe but its strange to have so little sun in last 7 days
I have done some very interesting delving into the small but diverse Jewish community in Greece (roughly 75,000 strong) before the Holocaust, where 80% were killedThe majority were Sephardic Jews, speaking Ladino, concentrated in the large port city of Salonika. In the northern region of Epirus, especially in Janina, they were Romoniate Jews, Hellenised since Byzantine days and Greek speaking.
On the Greek islands like Corfu, Crete and Rhodes they were a mix of Romoniate, Italian Jews and Sephardi. Rhodian Jews were majority Sephardi.
Amongst all the communities were smaller Ashkenazi numbers but the Greek Jewish population in 1930s is a wonderful mix of the Eastern Jewish populations. Its of course, a tragedy that barely 10,000 survived by 1945.
Salonika was roughly 23% Jewish in the 1930s, Janina was 9% Jewish, with Corfu having the largest islands Jewish community
Mod
The majority were Sephardic Jews..."
AB - Not to put you to any trouble, but do you have anything similar on Jews in Bulgaria? I’m reading The Broken Road, the third volume of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s trilogy, following the discussion 3-4 weeks ago, and at the moment he’s in Bulgaria, where there seems to be an unbelievable mix of different ethnic communities. In a passage on the town of Plevdiv he talks of the lively (Sephardic) Jewish community that existed, at least in the early 1930s, and how they got there, via North Africa and Andalusia under the Moors, then Tuscany under the Medici, and then the eastern Balkans, especially trading ports like Salonika, under the Ottomans.
I wasn’t sure this volume had the same wonderful spirit as the first two, but it is livening up.
AB76 wrote: "Salonika was roughly 23% Jewish in the 1930s..."The fate of the Jews of Thessaloniki (as it's now called) is covered in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novel Greeks Bearing Gifts
by Percival EverettEverett is a fascinating and brilliant writer... currently (I think) just about my favourite of all living authors writing in English. This is the third novel of his I've read in short order, and is "perfectly structured" as it says on the cover.
The first-person narrator Kevin Pace is an artist; the book starts with a disquisition on the 'dimensions' of space and time... because, as we soon see, the chapters are so organised. 'Home' covers significant events over the years in and near Pace's home in the USA - at least, until near the end. 'Paris' describes his affair with a young French girl when he was already middle aged and successful; And '1979' recounts a crazy trip to El Salvador with his friend Richard to find and recuperate Richard's druggy brother Tad. These chapters are interspersed seamlessly to carry the narrative forward.
Whereas the tones of the events covered in 'Home' and 'Paris' are fairly consistent - the currents in a long marriage and some serious domestic crises (Home), and the tenderness of a love affair (Paris), '1979' manages a significant shading. The early chapters read like a brilliant version of Charles Portis in his 'Dog of the South', but as the outbreak of civil war looms, events become dangerous and much darker. Everett manages to move from laugh-out-loud farce to tragedy so gradually that there is no disconnect or falseness. Superb writing.
At the centre of the story are Pace's secrets: he is painting a huge canvas, which he refuses to show to anyone - not even to his wife or his friend Richard. Diane Arbus is quoted in an epigraph as saying: "A picture is a secret about a secret" - and the book is a perfect demonstration of that. It also shows how one person can live different lives - depending on the specific time and space.
(Did I mention that Pace is black and Richard is white? No? That's because it hardly matters - most of the time. In his novel 'Erasure', Everett makes it pretty clear that he's a "writer who happens to be black", and not a "black writer", i.e. a writer who deals specifically with the 'black experience' as opposed to those experiences which are common to us all. Just so's you know.)
Gpfr wrote: "A dreary start to June. The last few days have been wet and chilly, and yesterday afternoon I ended up getting out my huge really-cold-weather polo-neck jumper..."Better here in Wales - it's not warm, exactly - the wind is from the north-west - but at least it's been clear, dry and fairly sunny. Madame was delighted yesterday to be able to eat outside in the garden - a barbecue for her and daughter Colette, and aubergine parmigiana for veggie me (bought 'home-made' from a local Italian deli - it would be too much trouble to try to make ourselves).
Today should be dry, too, so I'll have to mow my mother's lawn before the rain returns tomorrow (this has been an absurdly wet period in autumn, winter and spring...)
Logger24 wrote: "Trollope is tremendous, one of his best. I don’t know the Timothy West reading, though I do remember a TV version with a gripping central performance by David Suchet as Melmotte...."That was an excellent series - I can't compare with the book as I haven't read it. The adaptation was by screenwriter Andrew Davies, who has many brilliant adaptations to his name.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0203577/?...
AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Its a shame the US constitution is so flawed and relatively un-modified in the last 200 years, on this side of the pond i cant remember any President in my lifetime save..."I've been burrowing in the court's charge to the jury. The opening sections are general: the roles of the judge and jury, the rules of evidence. In substance, the same instructions I was familiar with in California, and much the same language.
Then we come to the crimes. All of the counts are based on the same three prosecution legal theories. The counts are in identical language: they vary only in that each is tied to a particular document or ledger entry.
The specific laws? There's the rub. For example, the judge's instructions on the prosecution's first theory, goes into detail only on the Federal Election Campaign Act. A state court has no authority to prosecute under this federal act, and no authority over elections held in other states. The court also refers to a campaign contribution made by "a third party." What third party? Wasn't Trump allegedly contributing to his own campaign? And since the jury was instructed that the prosecution needed to prevail on any one of three theories, would this instruction confuse or mislead the jury?
Same problem with the prosecution's third theory, violation of tax law. The judge mentions federal, state, and local law without going into the specifics of any of the three. He simply states that it is a violation of these laws to "submit materially false or fraudulent information in connection with any tax return." The New York State court has no jurisdiction over a violation of federal tax law, and the judge's instructions allude to no evidence that the information was submitted to any tax authority. These two flawed theories were lumped together with a third theory, falsification of other business records.
Which of these theories was relied on? A bad and confusing charge to the jury.
scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "A dreary start to June. The last few days have been wet and chilly, and yesterday afternoon I ended up getting out my huge really-cold-weather polo-neck jumper..."Better here in Wale..."
Here in the wilds of Auburn, we've had days of socked-in clouds, with intervals of rain and high wind, and a couple of hot clear afternoons. In short, a Puget Sound spring. The weather never really heats up here until July.
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scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "A dreary start to June. The last few days have been wet and chilly, and yesterday afternoon I ended up getting out my huge really-cold-weather polo-neck jumper..."Better here in Wale..."
Was a beautiful day yesterday here in the Midlands. Spent some time demossing the block paving and hoping to finish the job today after I have been to the dentist. Exciting or what?
Logger24 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I have done some very interesting delving into the small but diverse Jewish community in Greece (roughly 75,000 strong) before the Holocaust, where 80% were killedThe majority were S..."
interesting you ask Logger, indeed i do. In 1930 there were 46,431 Jews in Bulgaria, 89% of which spoke Ladino, which would indicate they were majority Sephardi. and i would suggest a close link to the Salonika Jews. That area of Greece has strong links with Bulgaria to the North, especiallty during Ottoman times. The info i have concentrates them mostly in Sofia(approx 18,000) and Plovdiv with around 6-8,000 Jews. Among Bulgarian Jews there was a Romaniate and Azhkenazi minority, the Romaniote's being the oldest Jewish settlers in the eastern balkans
(Language records in censuses are so interesting, you can dig into minority communities, hence i found the Janina Rominaite jews were greek speakers, as opposed to the Salonika Sephardi;s who spoke Ladino. Similarily the Polish census of the 1930s is useful in picking up Yiddish and Hebrew speakers among Polish Jews)
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Salonika was roughly 23% Jewish in the 1930s..."The fate of the Jews of Thessaloniki (as it's now called) is covered in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novel [book:Greeks Bearing Gifts|..."
thanks scarlet, Salonika changed entirely after WW2 due to the holocaust. suddenly one of the largest Sephardi communities in the Balkans was decimated, changing Salonika for ever. i dont think any other nation had such a concentration of Jews in one place as Greece did, one could maybe say Amsterdam in Holland )
TLS has a good 4-5 pages on Kafka this weekI read and enjoyed his diaries a decade ago but i see Penguin have a new edition out, any thoughts opinions on this? Worth buying? or is it just the old diary republished with a new translation?
It looks longer (704 pages) and seems to be what i would call the full caboodle, rather than edited...sadly the price £20 in paperback means i will wait till it comes down in 18 mths
AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Salonika was roughly 23% Jewish in the 1930s..."The fate of the Jews of Thessaloniki (as it's now called) is covered in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novel."
I'm not sure of the numbers, but from reading about Romain Gary it's clear that Vilnius and Lithuania generally suffered an incredible amount of killing, shared between the Red Army and the Nazis:
The war had irreversibly altered the city – between 1939 and 1949, Vilnius lost almost 90% of its population, through murder, deportation, or exile, and many buildings were destroyed.[98] The Jewish population had been exterminated in the Holocaust, while most of the remaining ones were compelled to move to Communist Poland by 1946.
And:
Before the German invasion, the Jewish population was estimated at 210,000.[3] The Lithuanian statistics department says there were 208,000 Jews as of 1 January 1941.[4] This estimate, based on the officially accounted-for prewar emigration within the USSR (approx. 8,500), the number of escapees from the Kaunas and Vilnius ghettos, (1,500–2,000), as well as the number of survivors in the concentration camps when they were liberated by the Red Army, (2,000–3,000), puts the number of Lithuanian Jews murdered in the Holocaust at 195,000 to 196,000.[4] The numbers given by historians differ significantly, ranging from 165,000 to 254,000.
(The city changed its name, and the borders of the country - and its status as independent or not - changed a lot over the centuries.)
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Salonika was roughly 23% Jewish in the 1930s..."The fate of the Jews of Thessaloniki (as it's now called) is covered in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther ..."
Yes, Vilna was a major Jewish city, good spot and Riga in Latvia may be another one. Vilna/Vilnius had a strange history between WW1 and WW2,it became part of the new Polish state was a Polish majority city, despite being the largest city in old Lithuania and then post WW2 became Lithuanian majority for the first time in its history/
I notice Alma Classics have issued some new editions of novels by Albert Maltz an American author who fell foul of the 1950s anti-communist witch hunts. I read a volume of his short stories about 5 years ago and was impressed
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Thanks, AB. It looks as PLF got it broadly right.
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Interesting, Robert. It was always bothering that the second crime could not be specifically articulated. You would think they could have done a proper job at least on NY state tax. Perhaps they did and the judge just didn’t go into that degree of detail.
Logger24 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "... interesting you ask Logger, indeed i do. In 1930 there were 46,431 Jews in Bulgaria, 89% of which spoke Ladino,..."Thanks, AB. It looks as PLF got it broadly right."
and i just by chance happened on the Ottoman 1831 records fore Plovdiv(i was researching Salonika) where the Jewish population(males only) was larger than in Sofia
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Books mentioned in this topic
So Much Blue (other topics)Greeks Bearing Gifts (other topics)
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (other topics)
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (other topics)
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jon Fosse (other topics)Judith Butler (other topics)
Judith Butler (other topics)
Richard Wagner (other topics)
Arthur Conan Doyle (other topics)
Oh, man, I couldn't bring myself to listen to any of it. I'd rather read Boris Johnson's proposed book on Shakespeare.