Ersatz TLS discussion
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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 1/07/2024
Logger24 wrote: "Tam wrote: "... He doesn't directly state a particular theory but the assumption seems to be that it is tied into the separate areas of the brain that record different factors from the image. .."..."
My ongoing eye condition has made me most aware of visual acuity and different areas of the brain. A kind friend, a neuroscientist did send an explanation a few years ago but I have mislaid the info. Visual distortions were very confusing for some time. Things that I saw with one eye were very different with the other - houses for example were taller an d thinner, lampposts leaning at impossible angles. To add to the confusion when looking with both eyes things moved around changing. The colours that I see with one eye are different from the other - depending on how far away the object was.
This led to marked double vision. With both eyes open I would see two cars identical side by side coming towards me, one actually coming through my seat and I would find myself ducking.
I think of my retina rather like the sky on a cloudy day with the odd blue patch and other clouds being blown around obscuring parts then moving again letting light through. A constantly changing sky scape letting info into my brain via the optic nerve a bit here a bit there. Because two ( or more) pieces of info were being sent my brain cannot prioritise one over the other and so I see two images
Since my sight deteriorated further the d.v. And distortions are not so troubling for I simply cannot see them but I am still never quite sure where things are or distances involved and this is what makes life outside my house so very difficult.
I am thankful that reading close up with one eye is still possible . It is seven years now that this battle has been raging.
CCCubbon wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "Tam wrote: "... He doesn't directly state a particular theory but the assumption seems to be that it is tied into the separate areas of the brain that record different factors from..."So sorry to hear of you continuing problems. It must be very scary. It makes me appreciate even more the fact that my hip problem could be so successfully resolved.
CCCubbon wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "Tam wrote: "... He doesn't directly state a particular theory but the assumption seems to be that it is tied into the separate areas of the brain that record different factors from..."sad to hear this CCC but i applaud your determination not to let it get you down and to keep on keeping on!
But the way visual acuity and the human brain interact is fascinating.
Robert wrote: "I've heard that the turnout in France is much higher than last time. People don't normally turn out in large numbers to vote for the status quo..."Indeed not. Turnout in the UK varied a lot depending on the country and constituency - it was quite low in Wales, since Labour have run the Welsh Senedd since its inception. Even so - the 14 Tory MPs in place since 2019 are all gone!
There has been some bleating from the right wing about Labour only getting 34% of the vote... but voters are not stupid and chose to vote tactically to get rid of the dreadful Tory government. They voted, often, for 'anyone but the Tory', which hugely benefited Labour and the Lib Dems. (As I pointed out to someone, IF the Tories didn't approve of FPTP as a system, why did they oppose the Lib Dem referendum on the subject during their coalition? Because it didn't suit them then - that's why. Typical hypocrisy.
The same point about tactical voting is reinforced in France - voters sometimes find it easier to identify what they DON'T want, rather than what they do:
The French have said it again: they do not want the far right in power.
They gave them a big win in the European elections; they gave them a big win in the first round of this parliamentary election.
But when it came to a vote that really counted, just as in the presidentials, they drew back from the brink.
This surprise upset which has reduced the National Rally (RN) to third place – with perhaps 150 seats compared with predictions a week ago of nearly 300 – is due entirely to voters turning out in large numbers to stop them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c...
Alice Munro - Nobel prize winner - knew that her husband had sexually abused her daughter, but chose to stay with him regardless, according to the victim Andrea Robin Skinner. Some quotes:Skinner revealed the allegations in an essay and a news article... writing about how her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, began sexually assaulting her in 1976 when she was nine years old and he was in his 50s.
She alleged that Fremlin got into a bed where she was sleeping at her mother’s home in Clinton, Ontario, and sexually assaulted her. Skinner told her father, James Munro, who she says did not tell Munro.
Over the following years, Skinner says Fremlin propositioned her, exposed himself to her, and “told me about the little girls in the neighbourhood he liked”. Skinner said he stopped assaulting her when she became a teenager, but she developed bulimia, insomnia and migraines, which she attributed to the abuse.
In 2005, Skinner went to the police. Fremlin, then 80, was charged with indecent assault against Skinner and pleaded guilty. He received a suspended sentence and two years’ probation. Munro stayed with Fremlin until he died in 2013.
Skinner wrote that she first told her mother about the abuse in 1992, when she was in her 20s, writing her mother a letter after Munro voiced sympathy for a character in a story who was sexually abused by her stepfather.
However, Skinner said that Munro “reacted exactly as I had feared she would, as if she had learned of an infidelity”.
Munro temporarily left Fremlin, who admitted in letters to the abuse but blamed it on Skinner. “If the worst comes to worst I intend to go public,” he wrote, according to Skinner. “I will make available for publication a number of photographs, notably some taken at my cabin near Ottawa which are extremely eloquent … one of Andrea in my underwear shorts.”
“She said that she had been ‘told too late,’ … she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children and make up for the failings of men,” Skinner wrote. “She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.
“I … was overwhelmed by her sense of injury to herself. She believed my father had made us keep the secret in order to humiliate her. She then told me about other children Fremlin had ‘friendships’ with, emphasising her own sense that she, personally, had been betrayed. Did she realise she was speaking to a victim and that I was her child? If she did, I couldn’t feel it.”
Skinner distanced herself from her family in 2002, after telling Munro she would not allow Fremlin near her children. But after reading an interview where Munro spoke positively about her marriage, Skinner took Fremlin’s letters to the police in 2005.
“He described my nine-year-old self as a ‘homewrecker,’” she wrote, adding that he accused her of invading his bedroom “for sexual adventure”.
“The silence continued” even after Fremlin’s death, Skinner wrote, because of her mother’s fame.
“I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother,” she wrote. “I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”
(I ended up copy/pasting nearly all of the piece at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/art... )
I'm not going to get into the discussion of whether we 'forgive' bad behaviour by artists we admire here - that's a wide and complicated one. I will say, though, that after Munro won the Nobel I sampled her work via her collection Dear Life. I didn't care for it, in part because the 'stories' felt like fragments without shape or ending, but also because of the *(what I felt to be) creepy attitude to sex in several stories. I especially disliked the tale of a woman who was travelling on a train - by inference, to marry a man she'd never met but had hitched up with via a newspaper ad or some similar method. Said woman takes a fancy to a guy on the train - and goes to the toilet with him for a quickie. Why not? Well, in the meantime, she left her young child ( a daughter, I think) on her own.
Perhaps she was displaying self-knowledge, but no parent who behaves like that deserves anything but contempt. IMO, of course. (From the report, it's clear that Skinner's father was also culpable - perhaps even more so.)
Edit: I'm a bit annoyed that the Guardian refers to Skinner as 'alleging' this and that, when her stepfather actually confessed and was convicted. WTF is that about?
Second edit: Having a look at Wikipedia, I came across this:
Skinner reports that she and Munro became estranged decades later when, while pregnant, she told her mother that Fremlin could not be around her children. “And then she just coldly told me that it was going to be a terrible inconvenience for her (because she didn’t drive)."[47]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_M...
It would almost be grimly funny, if it wasn't so tragic - and disgusting.
Bill wrote: "The literary corners of X-Twitter and Bluesky are blowing up today over an article in the Toronto Star My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay wit..."Just saw a related article in the Guardian, Bill. Comment above.
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That is a grim situation, CCC. I echo the comments of giveus and AB. How dangerous and distressing life can be without dependable sight.
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Great artists are sadly not always great people ...
Gladarvor commented in The G that she's seen a similar story about Louise Erdrich.
Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Bill wrote: " Alice Munro ..."Great artists are sadly not always great people ...
Gladarvor commented in The G that she's seen a similar story about Louise Erdrich."
sad to hear this story, i have read some Alice Munro, though not one of my favourite Canadian writers
For some reason this memory from facebook came through this morning, from 8 years ago, which made me laugh!I'm getting more exercise at the moment, as every time I hear Tony Blair speaking on the radio I have to get up to turn it off! I think I have 'forgiveness' issues!....
Sorry to hear your tale of eyesight failing CC, it sounds like a huge trial to cope with. I wonder what it is you would paint, if you painted what you saw? Have you ever tried to? The human brain is truly quite a complicated entity. I should point out, as my son Ollie did to me, that Zeki's book is actually quite old, 1999, whereas my copy looks almost brand new. So, I am sure that understanding of how the brain works has probably advanced very much since then. What I am not sure of is that there are that many neuroscientists that are very interested in how the brain perceives art, so maybe, on those grounds, he is possibly a one off!...
In Kiplings memoirs, he is now in late 1890s Sussex, living near Rottingdean, close to his cousin Stanley Baldwin and the Burne-Jones's. He writes of picnics on the downs with many children of theirs being wheeled up and down smeared in jam..and he recalls with a shudder at the time he is currently writing (early 1930s), that now Rottingdean to Newhaven is basically "all one suburb", not a good thing
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Tam – Checking Zeki on the net I came across a massive wiki page about “Neuroeshetics” which you might be interested to look at.
Logger24 wrote: "Tam wrote: "...What I am not sure of is that there are that many neuroscientists that are very interested in how the brain perceives art..."Tam – Checking Zeki on the net I came across a massive ..."
I very much would like to read it. Can you send me the link, so that we are on the same page!...
scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "I've heard that the turnout in France is much higher than last time. People don't normally turn out in large numbers to vote for the status quo..."Indeed not. Turnout in the UK var..."
What stopped them voting Labour?
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The link’s a bit funny, but here is what worked for me -
:/wiki/neuroesthetics
AB76 wrote: "In Kiplings memoirs, he is now in late 1890s Sussex, living near Rottingdean, close to his cousin Stanley Baldwin and the Burne-Jones's. He writes of picnics on the downs with many children of thei..."Different Tory Prime Ministers wanted to offer Kipling a title, but he always turned the honor down.
Berkley wrote: "Bill wrote: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ...I’ve never understood why the self-evident weakness of that ending hasn’t undermined the book’s status as one of the greatest Ameri..."
Twain was as attracted to colorful characters as Dickens, and he much pleased his Victorian audience. When I read Huckleberry Finn as a teenager, the attraction was the trip downriver. The ending went on too long, but didn't reduce the book as a find.
Logger24 wrote: "Tam wrote: "I very much would like to read it. Can you send me the link, so that we are on the same page!... ..."The link’s a bit funny, but here is what worked for me -
:/wiki/neuroesthetics"
I am rather hesitant to support the idea that the pleasures of art are reducible to scientifically proven phenomena, such as neural pathways, that affect how the brain perceives things. I think we are all so different that there is not a single definition of what beauty consists of. One of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen was a picture of an elderly aboriginal man whose actual face defied more or less every convention as to what would be considered attractive, at least to most of us here, in the West. Of course there is the well known area of 'good design', and most people would prefer windows out into the world, house plants, restful colours etc. if they want to feel relaxed. If they want to be stimulated however, then they have to go for something else, and that is the pleasure of encountering something that is novel and exciting, a new way of 'seeing'!... bold, brash, lively etc. and dare I say 'challenging' as well!
A lot of what humans are taught is sociological, and what we end up with is custom, and fashion, and we are preprogrammed to fit in as well, which was hinted at, in the article when it mentioned tribalism. Still it was worth a read. I think its main value, as something worth studying is in finding new ways to get people to communicate. The stuff about art therapy, and PTSD in one interesting direction that this kind of research could take. Many years ago I wrote a piece in our newsletter 'Renew' and I forget the particular context, but it was reporting on a convention of neuroscientists, from all over the world, in Miami, in Florida. One well regarded speaker stood up after hearing the synopses of various 'Papers' that had been submitted, and rather stole the show by declaring that "sometimes you can be so open-minded, that your brain falls out!"...
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "In Kiplings memoirs, he is now in late 1890s Sussex, living near Rottingdean, close to his cousin Stanley Baldwin and the Burne-Jones's. He writes of picnics on the downs with many chi..."thanks for that robert. the man is grown to be a titan of writing in my mind since about 2017 and reading Plain Tales. I expected something completely different but found darkness, horror, cynicism and comedy that enthralled me, it was as if a new Kipling arose from long forgotten childhood days or teenage rejection of this "pillar" of the nation.
since then, everything i have read has had that same mix, his appalling ,abusive early childhood seems to have created an adult writer of the darkest kind in many ways, though in his memoirs he is slightly more "stiff upper lip" than i expected. Although what he hints of mental abuse from the woman who looked after him in Southsea and probably sexual abuse from her son is as dark as they come
from his childhood i think he shows a certain kind of resilience embodied in the poem "If" and an example for many people of either overcoming or coping with hard times
Robert wrote: "Twain was as attracted to colorful characters as Dickens, and he much pleased his Victorian audience. When I read Huckleberry Finn as a teenager, the attraction was the trip downriver. The ending went on too long, but didn't reduce the book as a find."I wonder how many or what sort of flaws readers here might tolerate in a book without considering it, on the whole, a failure. I certainly think that most of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was superb; but that ending fits so ill with the excellence that precedes it that I sincerely wonder whether Twain knew what he was about.
Appropriate endings are important to me and I'm generally disinclined to read more of authors that fail to stick the landing. I have perhaps been spoiled in this regard by Dickens who always seems to have known where he was going with his storytelling (well, maybe not in Pickwick) and often put hints about the ending in his early chapters. Even with the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the basic outline of the entire book exists like a phantom limb in the chapters that were finished.
An obstacle to concentration. Our Northwest summer has arrived early. Hot, humid, little wind. I've posted a Victorian salute to summer under pictures.
Another Huckleberry Finn question: was it acclaimed as a Great American Novel at any point before Hemingway's famous comment about its central place in American literature or only afterwards? Not that this is necessarily relevant to where any individual reader ranks it, but I'm curious.
Reading Robertson Davies's Tempest Tost and I'm pleasantly surprised at how good it is - though I don't know why I should be, since I've been very impressed by everything else of his I've read. Probably there was some unconscious feeling that, since he never received much acclaim until Fifth Business, and there was a longish gap between that book and this earlier trilogy - they were published in the 1970s and 1950s, respectively - that he might not have found his way as a novelist until late in his career. But I think he's already quite an accomplished stylist in Tempest Tost. The style, the treatment of its narrative material is a bit more arch and humorous than in the later books, but for the most part it goes over well - which is a compliment, because I think a light comic tone is something that can very easily fail to please, and when it does fail to please it often provokes a more hostile response than other kinds of prose failures - for example, a failed attempt at serious writing often provokes only boredom.
Thanks to everyone Gpfr and everyone else who mentioned this book recently: without that reminder, I wouldn't have thought of this book at all when I was trying to choose which 1950s book I wanted to read next.
giveusaclue wrote: "What stopped them voting Labour?"Nice to have an easy Q to answer!
Under FPTP, the winner is the person who gets the most votes in each constituency. In theory, it would be possible to win with only 10% if the next highest candidate had only 9%, and there were lots of candidates with a smaller share of the vote.
Most people in the UK were thoroughly fed up with the Tories after 14 years of scandals, mismanagement, corruption and the trashing of the economy - as well as the pointless and divisive culture wars stirred up when they realised they could not win on their dreadful record in government.
So, what happened? Many people in most constituencies took an 'anyone but the Tory' decision - regardless of their convictions, be that Labour, Lib Dem, Green or whatever - and voted for the party/candidate most likely to beat the Tory. Hence the result, with loads of Labour and Lib Dem MPs.
FYI - only once since 1918 has a party won more than 50% of the popular vote in the UK - in 1931. So, basically, that just doesn't happen under the system we have:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/7...
If anyone 'out there' is unhappy with the system, they can change it - but only when they are in power. Naturally, parties tend to be reluctant to scrap a system which allowed them to win. In 2010, part of the agreement between the Conservatives and Lib Dems (to allow for a coalition government) included the promise to hold a referendum on the voting system - FPTP or AV (alternative vote). In the event, the Conservative party campaigned for the retention of FPTP, the change was defeated - and 13 years later, the chickens came home to roost!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Un...
(Glad to have been given the opportunity to explain that to you.)
Berkley wrote: "Reading Robertson Davies's Tempest Tost and I'm pleasantly surprised at how good it is - though I don't know why I should be, since I've been very impressed by everything else of his I've read."I just finished Tempest-Tost yesterday and enjoyed it very much (though I did become a bit tired of Hector by the end - glad he's decided to move on from Salterton). One measure of how much I I became involved with the characters was the enjoyment I derived just from reading their extended conversations.
I thought of breaking up the trilogy by inserting some non-fiction reading between the entries, but have decided to move directly on to Leaven of Malice today.
scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "What stopped them voting Labour?"Nice to have an easy Q to answer!
Under FPTP, the winner is the person who gets the most votes in each constituency. In theory, it would be possible to win with only 10% if the next highest candidate had only 9%, and there were lots of candidates with a smaller share of the vote.
...
If anyone 'out there' is unhappy with the system, they can change it - but only when they are in power. Naturally, parties tend to be reluctant to scrap a system which allowed them to win. ..."
Very similar course of events here in Canada, where the Liberals under Justin Trudeau campaigned with Proportional Representation as big part of their platform in the election that first brought him to power and then promptly found all kinds of reasons to drop the whole idea.
I still support the idea myself, but must admit that it doesn't seem to make as much of a difference as I would hope to see in the countries that do have it - Germany, for example. But perhaps I'm missing some subtleties of the system, never having lived in anythng like it myself.
Preview of Coming Attractions.The NY Times has started a pointless exercise which will nevertheless gain a certain amount of my attention: naming the "100 Best Books of the 21st Century", including both fiction and nonfiction They are revealing 20 a day, counting down from 100. I'll post a gift link to the full list when all the books have been named, presumably on Friday.
So far, out of 60 books named I've read one-and-a-half: Olive Kitteridge and some stories (but not all) from Pastoralia. Authors can have more than one book represented. I see this weekend's revelations have not kept Alice Munroe (Runaway: Stories) off the list.
I am sure that Gilead will be in the top 10, probably number one or at least the top work of fiction.
Methodology
In collaboration with the Upshot — the department at The Times focused on data and analytical journalism — the Book Review sent a survey to hundreds of novelists, nonfiction writers, academics, book editors, journalists, critics, publishers, poets, translators, booksellers, librarians and other literary luminaries, asking them to pick their 10 best books of the 21st century.
We let them each define “best” in their own way. For some, this simply meant “favorite.” For others, it meant books that would endure for generations.
The only rules: Any book chosen had to be published in the United States, in English, on or after Jan. 1, 2000. (Yes, translations counted!)
After casting their ballots, respondents were given the option to answer a series of prompts where they chose their preferred book between two randomly selected titles. We combined data from these prompts with the vote tallies to create the list of the top 100 books.
Bill wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Reading Robertson Davies's Tempest Tost and I'm pleasantly surprised at how good it is - though I don't know why I should be, since I've been very impressed by everything else of hi..."It's hard to read just one part of a Davies trilogy.
Berkley wrote: "Another Huckleberry Finn question: was it acclaimed as a Great American Novel at any point before Hemingway's famous comment about its central place in American literature or only afterwards? Not that this is necessarily relevant to where any individual reader ranks it, but I'm curious"In the comments on the NY Times 100 Best Books list, a reader mentions a similar survey in the Times from 1914, and tireless books editor Tina Jordan uncovered the article (may be paywalled):
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/time...
The question was, "Which, in your opinion, are the six best novels in the English language?"
The survey questioned only 28 authors, most of whom I've never heard, who seem to be mostly, perhaps entirely, British and American. The only American novel in the top 9, with 4 votes, is The Scarlet Letter. Both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are further down the list with one vote each; another novel set in the antebellum South, The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life, also received one vote. Interestingly, the two books by Jane Austen on the list are Emma (2 votes) and Mansfield Park (1 vote). I also note that, despite the "English language" qualification, Anna Karenina received one vote.
scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "What stopped them voting Labour?"Nice to have an easy Q to answer
."Glad to have been given the opportunity to explain that to you.)
Patronising or what?
The Salterton Trilogy is great. If I weren't drowning in a sea of unfinished books already, I'd be so tempted to go for a reread.
Anne wrote: " The Salterton Trilogy is great. If I weren't drowning in a sea of unfinished books already, I'd be so tempted to go for a reread."Good to see you Anne. Will have to have a look
Robert wrote: "An obstacle to concentration. Our Northwest summer has arrived early. Hot, humid, little wind. I've posted a Victorian salute to summer under pictures."i feel your pain, concentration and humidity work against each other
summer in UK has really not started, apart from 48 hrs of heat, its been low pressure, windy cloudy days with maybe 2-3c shaved off the usual temps
Bill wrote: "Preview of Coming Attractions.The NY Times has started a pointless exercise which will nevertheless gain a certain amount of my attention: naming the "100 Best Books of the 21st Century", includi..."
i loathe lists!
Bill wrote: "I just finished Tempest-Tost yesterday and enjoyed it very much... I thought of breaking up the trilogy by inserting some non-fiction reading between the entries, but have decided to move directly on to Leaven of Malice today."I've not read that author, but can certainly identify with the experience of entering into a fictional world created by another - and becoming a mite obsessive. When I REALLY like a series I do tend to read the books more or less back to back. AB, I know, tends to limit books by the same author to one a year. That wouldn't work for me - I'd forget all the context. It helps the old memory cells to read series in rapid succession, at my age!
Not many authors manage to appeal to that extent, however.
Berkley wrote: "...perhaps I'm missing some subtleties of the system, never having lived in anything like it myself.There are many different versions, which is one of the problems about replacing FPTP with something which ought to be 'fairer'.
If I understand correctly, the systems for electing members in Wales and Scotland are roughly similar - there are 'constituencies' which use FPTP, and then a 'regional list' covering a wider area. If parties get a low number of FPTP members, then so long as their regional vote justifies it they can get a 'top-up' of members in that way.
It's one of the oddities of life in the UK that the main Westminster parliament uses a really old and in most views unfair system, whereas the regional parliaments do not. The only good thing I can say about it WRT the recent election is that it kept the extremely unpleasant 'Reform' party down to 5 seats. PR would have given them far more.
giveusaclue wrote: Patronising or what?"H'm.
Well, memory is not my strong point.
I assumed from your question that you don't live in the UK, in which case the question deserved a detailed answer.
I would have further assumed that if you DID live in the UK, you would have been fully aware of the extreme unpopularity of the Tory government (well deserved), and of the huge amount of attention given to the possibility of tactical voting to 'get rid of the local Tory' during the campaign. In which case, you didn't need to ask the question in the first place - unless you are one of those who feel, once a game has finished, and your side has lost, the rules were somehow at fault. (Please note in particular the point that ONLY ONCE since 1918 has a party won more than 50% of the popular vote. This did not include the governments of Thatcher, Cameron, May, or Johnson. PMs invariably claim to have a 'mandate' for their policies regardless of the % vote they have been granted. This is easy to verify. )
I don't know which it is, really!
Bill wrote: "The NY Times has started a pointless exercise which will nevertheless gain a certain amount of my attention: naming the "100 Best Books of the 21st Century... (Yes, translations counted!)
"
1. I'm with you and AB on the notion of lists, which are clickbait - and yet I do tend to scan them quickly in case something I've not heard of appeals to me.
2. Translations should be included in any list of 'greatest' novels, if we're playing that game. Can you imagine a similar list for the 19th C. without Dostoyevsky (or name another favourite according to taste...). Surely, FD (or another translated writer) would have more about them than the 100th 'best book' written in English? The only problem with translations lies, precisely, in the quality of the translator; apart from that, I've never understood the concept of uni. courses based on literature written in just one language, as for me the ideas matter more than some simple juggling with language. But that's the world we live in - apparently.
Probably the wisest course is to avoid these lists altogether, though I'm not sure that I will do so!
scarletnoir wrote: "Bill wrote: "The NY Times has started a pointless exercise which will nevertheless gain a certain amount of my attention: naming the "100 Best Books of the 21st Century... (Yes, translations coun..."
i really dislike summer reading lists, where expensive hardbacks are the ones listed...
scarletnoir wrote: "Probably the wisest course is to avoid these lists altogether, though I'm not sure that I will do so!"These kind of lists are somewhat like the various literary awards or best seller lists: the imposition of a competitive framework unto an activity which is, by its nature, non-competitive.
I tend to keep up with the literary world in a kind of arms-length relationship: I read reviews and news of new publications, but hardly ever read the books themselves (out of the first 80 in the list of 100, so far I've read two and a half books).
Lists of this sort tend to be so stuffed with "the usual suspects" that I don't expect to find much, if anything, that I hadn't heard of. I tend to think of them as a kind of measurement of the state-of-the-taste among taste-makers or "literary luminaries" as the Times dubbed their polling sample.
As a teaser for the full list, here's a Gift Link giving a sample of the ballots the Times made public earlier this week, with the agreement of the respondents.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...
I note that at least two authors, Stephen King and Annette Gordon-Reed, included one of their own books on their ballot.
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We're outside Troy, the armies are meeting and fighting, 17-year-old Achilles, Aristos Achaion (best of the Greeks), is in the forefront:
'Are you frightened?' I asked ...
'No', he answered. 'This is what I was born for.'
The story is narrated by Patroclus, a young prince exiled in disgrace, who became the companion, friend and lover of Achilles.
At one moment I was reminded of Katherine Hepburn In The Philadelphia Story. The voyage to Troy has begun: "The ship we sailed on was yare, tightly made ..."
The other book I'm reading is a biography, Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster. I generally enjoy Margaret Forster's books and this is no exception. I've realised I knew very little about du Maurier.
Gpfr wrote: "At the moment I'm reading and thrilling to Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles. I read and loved Circe a few years ago (and I think I still prefer it, though this..."@Gpfr, you recently reminded me of the unread Robertson Davies books on my shelves, which I'm now enjoying reading as I haven't enjoyed anything for some time. Now, this post causes me to recall that I have a copy of Christa Wolf's Cassandra, which I think would make a good contrast once I finish The Salterton Trilogy.
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Glad to hear that!
AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "In Kiplings memoirs, he is now in late 1890s Sussex, living near Rottingdean, close to his cousin Stanley Baldwin and the Burne-Jones's. He writes of picnics on the down..."Rider Haggard's diaries have some interesting views of Kipling during the First World War.
I've gone back and forth on my favorite Davies-- What's Bred in the Bone and The Manticore have rotated at the top, but The Cunning Man is a treat too.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "In Kiplings memoirs, he is now in late 1890s Sussex, living near Rottingdean, close to his cousin Stanley Baldwin and the Burne-Jones's. He writes of picnic..."ah yes, i remember you mentioning the diaries, thanks robert
After 4 lovely kid filled days, the mind yearns for reading...lol...i missed anything topical or news based in that period, catching up on Starmers visit to NATO HQ.So i will be resuming Pressburgers interesting mid 1960s novel The Glass Pearls and the brilliant essays by Octavio Paz on India In Light of India
i have kinda shaken my cold but it remains in the sinuses annoyingly, the weather remains 20c max, the coolest July i can remember, probably since i was at Uni, late 1990s
As promised, here is a Gift Link to the NY Times “100 Best Books of the 21st Century”. I should note that the list is interactive: it allows you to check those you’ve read and those you want to read. It also contains further reading suggestions (not necessarily from other books on the list) based on books you’ve liked. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...
In addition, the article is open to reader comments (over 2000 so far), which contain further suggestions and are often very entertaining in themselves.
I’ve read six and a half books on the list (the half being about half the stories in Pastoralia). The best of those was far and away The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration; the five others were all fiction: Atonement, The Corrections, Lincoln in the Bardo, Olive Kitteridge, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I imagine most posters here will have exceeded that count.
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
1984 (other topics)The Three-Body Problem (other topics)
Frankenstein (other topics)
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (other topics)
The Employees (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Hanya Yanagihara (other topics)Michael Gorra (other topics)
Thought you meant for Sunday lunch!