What are we reading? 2/12/2024

[AB76]

Gpfr wrote: "The Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr talking to James O'Brien about the Tortoise Media deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izhqm..."

thanks for this...gonna watch it now...Cadwalladr is criminally underused by tv, the BBC never show her or other channels

[scarletnoir]

It's been a tiring week of poor sleep, a few worries and a lot of minor jobs and problems to be sorted, so little time to comment and no energy to read anything demanding... but I always read something, so...

Babylon Berlin by Volker Kutscher... as recommended by GP. Thanks for that! The first and most important thing to say is that I was entertained and enjoyed it, and will almost certainly read more in the series - especially at busy or stressful periods. It was an easy read.

Gereon Rath is a young thruster recently transferred to the Berlin vice squad... but he wants to join the murder team (solving not committing, but...). He left the Köln murder squad under a cloud having been involved in a shooting, but thanks to his dad - a big shot in the Köln police with contacts in Berlin - he was allowed to make a fresh start. Despite rather resenting his dad's help, he nevertheless takes advantage of it - and also allows his ambition to lead him to try to undermine and embarrass some of the other cops, to gain promotion. He is, in short, an "arsehole" - as he is accurately described at one point by his erstwhile girlfriend. The character of this main protagonist is the main thing that might put me off reading any more!

Anyway - despite a rather limp opening (odd, considering how important it is to grab the reader's attention - and I found the same with my last read, by SA Cosby. Don't these authors attend their Fiction 101 classes any more? Perhaps it's a good thing if they don't go to 'creative writing' courses...) it soon picks up and has a good pace. I read it quickly even though it weighs in at 500+ pages. It has everything you want: murders! torture! love and sex! (not too much sex, fortunately, as that isn't well handled) Russians! paramilitaries! gold! chemistry*! office politics! (well, I don't care for that - that's a joke).

In other words, it's a bit of a kitchen sink job (as in 'throw everything at it but for... , not as in 'kitchen sink drama'). Fortunately, the narrative holds up fairly well, though there are some serious improbabilities... the way the first corpse is disposed of is absurd and done for no good reason - others are just buried in the forest. Ricochets and 'lost' rounds play a significant and near impossible part in the proceedings. One cop plays at being the Lone Ranger - it's not since the days of the Kemosabe that I've come across a character who shoots guns out of the hands of evildoers rather than simply shooting them where it properly hurts... a pure nonsense.

Not a book to be taken seriously, despite some light background on Germany in 1929 ('Steel helmets' and other paramilitaries). Our hero is determinedly apolitical - if right of centre - and we'll see how he reacts when the Nazis take over... It did provoke me into reading a bit about the background of Ebert and Noske, and their dirty deeds, though those occurred some 10 years before the time of this story.
Good fun, though.

*The chemistry/science/technology is strictly amateur hour - another improbability has to do with the transfer of gold... and if anyone reads this and thinks it is a good idea to dilute concentrated acid by pouring water into it, then think again!
https://byjus.com/question-answer/for...

[Gpfr]

scarletnoir wrote: "It's been a tiring week ...
Babylon Berlin by Volker Kutscher ... The character of this main protagonist is the main thing that might put me off reading any more! ..."

Sorry to hear you haven't had a good week, but glad to hear you enjoyed Babylon Berlin. The French title, incidentally, is Le Poisson mouillé — translation of the original German title.
I agree with you that Gereon is not a likeable / admirable character, but nevertheless i found the series worth persevering with.

[RussellinVT]

scarletnoir wrote: "...Anyway - despite a rather limp opening (odd, considering how important it is to grab the reader's attention - and I found the same with my last read, by SA Cosby. Don't these authors attend their Fiction 101 classes any more? Perhaps it's a good thing if they don't go to 'creative writing' courses...) ..."

First time I recollect seeing the name of SA Cosby on here. I read one of his a few years ago, Blacktop Wasteland, recommended by a bookstore owner. It was all right but not enough to make me want to read more of his. The opening was all action, fast and noisy, so I guess he varies his approach.

[Tam]

Him-in-doors is currently sitting in A & E awaiting blood tests results, having been taken to hospital in an ambulance after losing the ability to make much sense earlier this evening. Am staying up for a while in case he gets discharged, and I can go and pick his up.Its an odd one as he has none of the usual symptoms, if its another stroke, ( he had one 2 years ago) which is good news I guess, but I took him through some tests whilst waiting for the ambulance (111 told me to call one) and he couldn't write anything that made much sense. he seems OK though in texting me from the waiting room whilst waiting to see a doctor. In book terms he seems to have temporarily lost the plot a bit... Old age is certainly no picnic... I guess you will be pleased to know, possibly, that he volunteered, optimistically, to take the latest copy of LRB with him...

[Gpfr]

Tam wrote: "Him-in-doors is currently sitting in A & E awaiting blood tests results, having been taken to hospital in an ambulance after losing the ability to make much sense earlier this evening. Am staying u..."

I hope all is well, Tam.

[giveusaclue]

Tam wrote: "Him-in-doors is currently sitting in A & E awaiting blood tests results, having been taken to hospital in an ambulance after losing the ability to make much sense earlier this evening. Am staying u..."

Sorry to hear that Tam and hope you get some better news. Perhaps it was a TIA? As you say. old age is no picnic. But we got there.

[AB76]

giveusaclue wrote: "Tam wrote: "Him-in-doors is currently sitting in A & E awaiting blood tests results, having been taken to hospital in an ambulance after losing the ability to make much sense earlier this evening. ..."

i have heard of TIA's quite a lot recently, i hope you get some good news

[AB76]

Possibly my last novel of 2024, as things get busier in next 2 weeks, will be Ernst Junger's On The Marble Cliffs , his 1939 novel with themes of the dangers he saw inherent in Nazism, in a fantasy world.

I've been wanting to read it for two decades and finally NYRB have produced a new translation. Junger, while being a right wing conservative, was never at home with the Nazi's, refused various posts and remained anti all his life. I have his war diaries on the pile for 2025 and i must explore why he served in that ruinous war, in his 40s, i would imagine he had no choice if he was on the officer reserve lists

[Tam]

AB76 wrote: "Possibly my last novel of 2024, as things get busier in next 2 weeks, will be Ernst Junger's On The Marble Cliffs , his 1939 novel with themes of the dangers he saw inherent in Nazism, in a fantas..."

I quote Junger in an article I wrote many years ago 'The Eleventh Hour'. At the time of writing I believed that we had reached a time in mankind's evolution, at the end of WW-I, where the heroic ideal was withering on the vine. I am far less certain of this now, as from what I have read and written about since then, it just seems to have popped up, and changed format, and has reappeared in many more diverse ways, not all of them for the 'Good'. Are we hot wired for attempting 'heroic expression', 'for good and ill', against all odds? Have you read 'Storm of Steel'?

'A study of the various aspects of these artists’ portrayals of their experience of war and its aftermath, makes it clear that the visual climate fundamentally changed after the war. This change was brought about by the awareness of the destructive power
of modern technology and the resultant damage done to human society, but also the philosophical and political changes that consequently ensued from this Nationalist struggle. After the war, critic Ernst Jünger, in 1924, speaks of the end of the Homeric hero and also of the ‘storms of steel’ that condemned the heroic ideal to historic obscurity:

“while the sensations of the heart and the systems of the mind may be refuted, there is no refuting the world of objects - and the machine-gun is just such a “thing”... This was the fundamental experience that shaped the approach known as the Neue Sachlichkeit, a sobering realization of the power of things.”

However, his summary turned out to be somewhat presumptive. ‘Things’ were not immutable. The emergent post-war Bauhaus movement was based on the idea of reclaiming the power of ‘things’. This power that had been put to terrible destructive use in the war, could be turned towards the good of society.'

[Tam]

Thanks for the good wishes.

Picked up Dave from the hospital at 4 AM this morning. He seems relatively back to normal. They believe it was a TIA. At one point, when the paramedics, who were lovely, and wonderfully diplomatic, unlike me, were assessing him, he went into a long rant accusing me of stealing his toothbrush... There is not much you can do when faced with complete irrationality, which I fear is on the rise everywhere, and becoming increasingly politicised...

[AB76]

Tam wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Possibly my last novel of 2024, as things get busier in next 2 weeks, will be Ernst Junger's On The Marble Cliffs , his 1939 novel with themes of the dangers he saw inherent in Nazism,..."

yes, i read Storm of STeel in hardback, very rare for but it came at a time when a lot of German literature was out of print and scarce. I enjoyed it

Like many German writers of that period, Thomas Mann comes to mind, they have complex trains of thoughts and ideas that are hard to easily categorise. Mann was very wrong about WW1 which he supported but right about the Nazi's. I wonder with Junger if while he didnt like the lower class, rabble like Nazi way of doing things, he quietly liked the things that were done or more accurately the higher ideals), i need to read more to explore this of course

[AB76]

Good words by Michael Hofmann in the latest NYRB on Trumps election, i have calmed down a lot about the dismal November news but he made me froth again in a good way, i hope all those who voted for him are prepared to be very very dissapoiunted!

[giveusaclue]

Tam wrote: "Thanks for the good wishes.

Picked up Dave from the hospital at 4 AM this morning. He seems relatively back to normal. They believe it was a TIA. At one point, when the paramedics, who were lovely..."

Hope the good news continues Tam. xx

[RussellinVT]

Very sorry to hear that, Tam. Best wishes to your husband for a good recovery.

[scarletnoir]

Gpfr wrote: "I agree with you that Gereon is not a likeable / admirable character, but nevertheless i found the series worth persevering with..."

Indeed... after seeing that the remaining four e-books were available at a fairly low price, I bought them. It's always useful to have 'easy reads' available when life is too tiring to read the harder stuff, or if the current book is dragging...

[scarletnoir]

Logger24 wrote: "First time I recollect seeing the name of SA Cosby on here. I read one of his a few years ago, Blacktop Wasteland, recommended by a bookstore owner. It was all right but not enough to make me want to read more of his..."

I read a sample of that one a while back... it was OK but not good enough to make me buy it - but it was a marginal decision. As with the Gereon Rath book I just reviewed, I may well get it now as a fall-back easy read! I doubt that much heavy (mental) stuff will be consumed over the holiday period... ;-)

[scarletnoir]

Tam wrote: "Thanks for the good wishes.

Picked up Dave from the hospital at 4 AM this morning. He seems relatively back to normal. They believe it was a TIA. At one point, when the paramedics, who were lovely..."

Sorry to hear about your worries... I suppose as irrationality goes, 'toothbrush wars' are far less damaging than (say) MAGA fanatics!

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "i hope all those who voted for (Trump) are prepared to be very very disappointed!."

Let's hope so, though true believers tend to be victims of 'blind faith'... even though some Brexit voters now realise the magnitude of their error, many still claim it was 'the right thing, but done in the wrong way' or some such nonsense.