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What are we reading? 6/01/2024
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "When The Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad by Mona Yahia(2021), is an autobiographical novel about being a young girl in Iraq between the late 1950s and late 1960s, as slowly the last 3,0..."with Trump in power for next 4 years, Netanyahu can do as he likes, the UN will have no effect on Trump or the arab countries. Netanyahu has been waiting for Trumps return as he knows he will be given permission to be as aggressive as he likes. While Trump in recent weeks has made a lot about Oct 7th, he has said nothing about the Gazan population and that wont change, they are cannon fodder to him
scarletnoir wrote: "Although many of us (most?) I suspect feel that Netanyahu's behaviour in Gaza is inexcusable, the history of the Jews both recently and in the more distant past does serve to explain why a good number of Jews do support his refusal to take the foot off the throat... He should, though - but almost certainly won't."When you have a country imposed on the region against its will there are bound to be massive problems. Add the Israeli's illegal take over of more land (although I guess their reason, not excuse, is in the name Golan HEIGHTS) pitted against an organisation whose raison d'être seems to be the extermination of Israel and the Jewish people, without consideration for their own people, then you will need the wisdom of Solomon to solve the problem.
Sorry we should perhaps stick with books!
giveusaclue wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Although many of us (most?) I suspect feel that Netanyahu's behaviour in Gaza is inexcusable, the history of the Jews both recently and in the more distant past does serve to ex..."not much of Hamas left now, Hezbollah in total collapse, i see the new President of Lebanon, who under the constitution must be a Christian, has already started to prepare for removing Hezbollah as a state within in a state, starting with making sure the Lebanese army has supremacy as a defence force
Syria is a strange one right now, with the fall of the two most secular arab states(Syria and Iraq) in last 20 years,now Islam is back in full control in both nations. I hope the Sunni majority can respect the Druze, Christians and Alawi's in Syria but i remain sceptical , what happened in Iraq is a sign of what may come, the historically reliigously diverse Nineveh region (North Iraq), still significant into the 1990s has been totally changed by the ISIS debacle, the Yezidis and Christians being decimated.
(In 1957, the Nineveh-Mosul region was 81% Muslim/12% Christian/7% Yezidi. Incredibly diverse, of all other Iraq regions only Baghdad was less than 95% Muslim)
giveusaclue wrote: "Sorry we should perhaps stick with books!"When it comes to Israel and its enemies, I'm afraid you're right. All we can do is wring our hands or tear our hair and feel powerless. It would be great if some sort of sanity and peace were to break out, but it never seems likely to happen - or to last.
scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Sorry we should perhaps stick with books!"When it comes to Israel and its enemies, I'm afraid you're right. All we can do is wring our hands or tear our hair and feel powerles..."
I didnt expect Hezbollah to collapse like a paper bag, although i was aware they were a corrupt, venal mob. I do wonder what Netanyahu will do with Trump giving him a green light, i would suggest settling gaza with israeli's again will become a possibility and for the West Bank, Trump is really bad news, he is firmly pro settler
It also looks like a war on wokery and diversity is coming to the USA as well, Trump will try and eliminate the woke and diversity programs from federal institutions and universities. Zuckerberg and Musk will do the same with twitter and meta
Mod
the West Bank ..."
Concerning the West Bank, I recommend the documentary No Other Land which I've written about in the Films and Series thread.
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Sorry we should perhaps stick with books!"the West Bank ..."
Concerning the West Bank, I recommend the documentary No Other Land which I've w..."
I will look for that and watch it, thanks GP.
The West Bank is a tragedy really, Oslo offered so much but what so many forget is the settler movement was already merging fast by that period and starting to chronically disrupt these Palestinian lands, the christian biblical villages, the towns and the wide open spaces.
I find the whole settler situation very depressing, these militant Israelis who encroach on foreign land and then the more violent extremists who even go beyond the land they settled on and try to displace shepherds, orange and fig groves and also desert areas.
While i accept the state of Israel and its lands as sovereign(which does not for me include the West Bank and Gaza). I'm not anti-Israeli at all but i feel its been long overdue for the West Bank to become "Palestine"(Gaza remains more complicated due to its geographical situation but it is Palestinian land). It seemed hopeful in the 1990s, it seems utterly remote now.
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A flood of fact and incident is rendered in effortless flowing prose. It comes to Ms Castor so easily that you think she must inhabit the world six centuries ago as if it were the present.
Logger24 wrote: "Thanks again to giveusaclue for recommending The Eagle and the Hart, which I have now finished. It was a ripping read. It gave an unforgettable picture of a self-obsessed Richard II, whose rule was..."You are welcome Logger, I'm glad you enjoyed it as much ad I did.
Now you should try Dan Jones' non fiction books if you haven't already. As I mentioned earlier, Helen Castor was his supervisor at Cambridge. And:
https://www.instagram.com/authorfantr...
On Leave by Daniel Anselme(1957) is a french classic rediscovered and newly translated in 2014Right away i am enjoying its direct but intelligent prose as three servicemen from the Algerian War enjoy 10 days leave in Paris. An affluent city, well fed and liberal, light years from militarised Algiers or Oran.
Its sedate and thoughtful but with the ugly head of war rising into the narrative at stages. One soldier on leave asks a doctor friend "when and how is it going to end" and repeats it even louder, we know what he means.
i include in the photo section an extract from the lisbon english paper of 1836 on the UK press....i thought it was a fascinating findTop press circulation of London papers 1836, from a larger section, over 10 months:
Bells Weekly Messenger 542,000
The Observer+Bells Life 761,212
The Age 301,669
John Bull 187,000
The Examiner 145,750
The Times 112,000
The Spectator 104,500
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That's interesting to read.
Mod
Nous ne les verrons plus
C’est fini, ils sont foutus.
I have to confess I’ve never read anything else by her, not The Mandarins, not The Second Sex. I had this idea that she was just too earnest and too prolix and too dated. How wrong I was. Her style here is lively and attractive, and she conveys it all with immediacy – the reawakening of the literary world and the theatre, the épuration, the trial of Brasillach, and then an invitation to give a lecture in fascist Madrid, where, in contrast to the shortages and general shabbiness in France, she is dazzled by the abundance of food and clothing, and the bourgeois comfort. Back in Paris, in the thick of the existentialist uproar, she laughs along with being called La grande Sartreuse.
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I've read most of her writings, memoirs, novels, letters and as you
might guess, enjoy them. I started reading her memoirs in English when I was a student, also some of her novels including The Mandarins, then went on in French. I do prefer her memoirs to her novels.
However, I've never read The Second Sex ...
My daughter gave me a book called VOYAGER AVEC S. DE BEAUVOIR - TOUT CONNAITRE DU MONDE, which collects texts about her travels taken from her autobiographical writings and correspondence.
Voyager Avec ... is a series of the travel writings of a variety of writers including Virginia Woolf, Simenon, Philip K. Dick ...
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Dalva is a 45-year-old woman who has been living a full and varied life but is now going back home to Nebraska. She wants to find her son , born when she was a teenager and given up for adoption. She is part Sioux and the journals of her great-grandfather who set out to teach the Sioux about agriculture, form an important part of the book. The first and last sections of the book are narrated by Dalva and the middle one by her sometime lover, historian Michael who hopes to gain tenure by writing about the journals. I was wary of this change in narrator, finding Michael an unappealing character; but in fact it works.
I loved it. I've now seen that there is a sequel, The Road Home.
It was included in a Guardian series of articles on overlooked classics in American literature: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Gpfr wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "I’m enjoying La force des choses by Simone de Beauvoir, her memoir of the Liberation and after, which I had started on a while back..."I've read most of her writings, memoirs, no..."
i have yet to read any De Beauvoir, i have read quite a lot by Marguerite Duras but De Beauvoir has not appealed to me so far but i enjoy Sartre always
Mod
I've read most of her writings, memoirs, novels, letters and as you
might guess, enjoy them...
Thanks, Gp, that gives me a good steer.
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I loved it. I've now seen that there is a sequel, The Road Home.
It was included in a Guardian series of articles on overlooked classics in American literature..."
That sounds good, and talking about overlooked classics, at least overlooked by me, I’ve just today been reading a piece in an old NYRB about a novel from the 1850s called The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts, a fugitive slave. It is described as astonishing, and written with a powerful energy and a love of language, combining the gothic, the sensational, the domestic and the satiric. It became a best-seller when discovered and published in 2002, before we came to live here, which I suppose is why I wasn’t really aware of it. Anyway, clearly one to catch up with.
Despite the awful prospect of Mondays inauguration of a convicted criminal as US President, its been a good reading month so far(my nephew, on his 6th birthday summed up the situation with Trump by saying Trump will become president in my birthday month...not nice!)War Without Hate is almost exactly what i was seeking in a well told narrative of the western desert battles of 1940-42. The fluid fast changing run of skirmishes and sieges has now ended up with both sides settled near El Alamein and Monty is preparing his huge offensive
Weber's vocation lectures are a NYRB classics gem, intellectually vigorous and interesting, superbly translated, it is sad to think that the great man only lived two more years after the second of these lectures, dying of spanish flu
On Leave by Daniel Anselme(1957), is a mid 50s algerian war themed novel, recently translated by Penguin Classics. a trio of soldiers spend 3 days leave in wintry Paris. The style is lively and its an impressive debut novel by the author who served in the resistance during WW2
Lastly When The Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdadis a 2001 novel by Iraqi Jewish author Mona Yahia, who has lived in Germany for three decades. She tells the story of her own childhood in Baghdad, as slowly the tide turns against the 3,000 or so Jews left in the country.
I have had a terrible time over Christmas for reasons I cant really go into at the moment as I am still processing it all, but it has put the mockers on quite a lot of what I would refer to as my normal life for the moment. On top of that, having expected to be away in Spain for Christmas just before we were due to go, the main kitchen drainage system completely clogged up. I thought I would get it sorted when we got back, but as we didn't go in the end I spent the entire Christmas doing all the washing up cooking etc. with having to take all the used water upstairs, in bowls, to the bathroom. I am truly aware now how much water is consumed in making a Christmas dinner!...
I did finish 'Apeirogon' though and really enjoyed, though that isn't the right word for it, appreciated it maybe. And I have just finished Alan Garner's 'Treacle Walker' which I really did not understand at all. I could not see any link at all to quantum theory, but I did enjoy some of the language in it. I have not heard the words 'me ol' mucker' since I lived in Manchester as a late teenager. Has anyone else here read it, and perhaps can enlighten me as to what I am missing?
I did very much like his 'The Owl Service' (pub. 1967) which I read many years ago. It is interesting that modern reviews of it point out stuff that was blissfully unaware of back then, that the female young character, Alison, (and her family) are 'unfortunately too middle-class' and 'too passive to be readily identifiable with'!...
Well being a teenager in the late sixties I think that for the majority of teenage girls, in a very class ridden society, it was very hard to be anything other than what was expected of you, back in the day!...
Hope all is good with everyone out there....
Tam wrote: "I have had a terrible time over Christmas for reasons I cant really go into at the moment as I am still processing it all, but it has put the mockers on quite a lot of what I would refer to as my n..."oh dear Tam, sorry to hear this
Tam wrote: "I have had a terrible time over Christmas for reasons I cant really go into at the moment as I am still processing it all, but it has put the mockers on quite a lot of what I would refer to as my n..."Oh no Tam, I am so sorry for your problems and I hope things soon get back onto an even keel.
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Sorry to hear of your travails, Tam.
A book from the 1960s about a family that was “unfortunately too middle class” sounds like something I would absolutely identify with - and feel grateful for, in retrospect.
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I'm sorry to hear you're having a hard time, Tam.
AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Sorry we should perhaps stick with books!"When it comes to Israel and its enemies, I'm afraid you're right. All we can do is wring our hands or tear our ha..."
Biden didn't give Netanyahu a green light-- at least he said he didn't-but the Israeli prime minister did what he wanted, anyway. Unlike Biden, Trump is in a position to call in favors from Bibi, and has, according to the G.
As for Biden, that senile bravo has declined to give Trump any credit for anything. So who can be certain where Gaza will go next?
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Sorry we should perhaps stick with books!"When it comes to Israel and its enemies, I'm afraid you're right. All we can do is wring our hands o..."
As for Gaza, keeping Hamas out of any new set up will be nigh on impossible, they will exist in whatever fractured version of Gaza is re-made. UNRWA millions will re-build Gaza to look like it did before Oct 7th but i am not sure anything will really change.
The Oslo progress is so far gone, realistically Gazans will live in poverty and be governed badly, while Israel sits and watches, in 360 vision 24/7, watch-towers and drones, things will return to exactly as they were. Its sad
AB76 wrote: "i include in the photo section an extract from the lisbon english paper of 1836 on the UK press....i thought it was a fascinating findTop press circulation of London papers 1836, from a larger se..."
Remarkable. I wonder how many people subscribed to the early Punch.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i include in the photo section an extract from the lisbon english paper of 1836 on the UK press....i thought it was a fascinating findTop press circulation of London papers 1836, fro..."
it does seem like a very well read city back then!
Good to see Israeli hostages being released, sad that they are being exchanged for criminalsI have avoided reading about Israel-Palestine for the first time in my life since Oct 7th and i was just looking at a pile of books, fiction and non-fiction that i havent touched since then. One interesting one was oral accounts of the Six Day War and another on how Israel was on the wrong path in 1979
AB76 wrote: "Good to see Israeli hostages being released, sad that they are being exchanged for criminalsI have avoided reading about Israel-Palestine for the first time in my life since Oct 7th and i was jus..."
Some of us can actually remember the 6 day war!
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Good to see Israeli hostages being released, sad that they are being exchanged for criminalsI have avoided reading about Israel-Palestine for the first time in my life since Oct 7th ..."
lol
i vaguely remember the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, as it was same year as the Falklands....
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AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Good to see Israeli hostages being released, sad that they are being exchanged for criminalsI have avoided reading about Israel-Palestine for the first time in my..."
I can recommend:
Waltz with Bashir (Hebrew: ואלס עם באשיר, translit. Vals Im Bashir) is a 2008 Israeli adult animated war docudrama film written, produced, and directed by Ari Folman. It depicts Folman's search for lost memories of his experience as a soldier during the 1982 Lebanon War and the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
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Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Good to see Israeli hostages being released, sad that they are being exchanged for criminalsI have avoided reading about Israel-Palestine for the fir..."
its a brilliant film
Gpfr wrote: "I'm leaving this thread open another week."Good idea G, things might pick up a bit now we are over Christmas and the New Year. Thanks for looking after us.
I have just finished reading The Last ThrowA series, as I have said before, is based in South Wales. The story follows on from the previous book, with an obnoxious reporter who is in cahoots with the killer not caught in the last book. A young female detective is ordered by her bosses to meet up with said reporter to talk about the previous case. Killer kidnaps her. The race is on to find her and the killer.
A very enjoyable series. I do have to resort to google translate for some of the Welshisms though! I am sure you would enjoy them G.
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Thanks, I'll have a look.
2 books I've just read have annoyed me a bit by leaving the story or a sub-plot unresolved — making sure people get the next book in the series! The Ghost Orchid and The Grey Wolf.
giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I'm leaving this thread open another week."Good idea G, things might pick up a bit now we are over Christmas and the New Year. Thanks for looking after us."
it has been quiet in here, for the first time since Ersatz opened in 2020ish, has suprised me.
Just finished When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad by Monia Yahia (2001)
Its been a wonderful companion, this book, in the first few weeks of the new year, the early weaknesses in the digressions soon faded as a strong family tale of the tumultous 1950s and 1960s in Baghdad for Jewish Iraqis emerged.
Bittersweet and sometimes very funny, it shows how poison dripped into the well of a people who had been a significant part of Baghdadi culture for thousands of years. The period after WW1 saw the first changes and then after WW2, being Jewish became a real hazard. Emigration became the sole desire of the 3,000 or so Jews left in the mid 1950s, after the airlifts to Israel reduced the Jewish population tenfold
Tensions began with 1948 and the victory of Israel in the war, coup and counter coup brings relaxed tensions and then violence, leading to repression against Jews and limitations on movement.Iraq begins its descent into Ba'ath rule.
Smuggling accross the snowy mountains of Kurdistan or the waterways of the Shat Al Arab, both leading to Iran is the favoured mode of leaving Iraq, into the arms of a welcoming Shah.
I recommend this, its a long novel but worth the read. I also found a documentary film called Remember Baghdad on Netflix about the Jews of the city, which i will watch tonight
Logger24 wrote: "I’m enjoying La force des choses by Simone de Beauvoir, her memoir of the Liberation and after, which I had started on a while back. She captures the feeling from the very first lines – ..."I've also read Gp's response...
FWIW, and from what little I've read of SDB (except...) I also was much more impressed by her Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter than by her novel The Blood of Others. The memoir struck me as truthful, sensitive and well written. The novel tried too hard for effect. (Now, I read both nearly 50 years ago, so that's from memory.)
As for except.. I did read The Second Sex - yes, all the way through... and felt that she had many good points but could have expressed them far more succinctly (!)
If anyone wants to read a good (and short) feminist manifesto, and if it carries any weight coming from a man I'd recommend Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie instead. (I may have read an early version of this rather than the full thing as the title was different.)
From Wikipedia:
Dear Ijeawele is prefaced by Adichie's "two 'Feminist Tools'", of which the first is:
your premise, the solid unbending belief that you start off with. What is your premise? Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not 'if only.' Not 'as long as.' I matter equally. Full stop.
Gpfr wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I have just finished reading The Last Throw... I am sure you would enjoy them G ..."Thanks, I'll have a look.
2 books I've just read have annoyed me a bit by ..."
The Rhys Dylan one's don't usually do that and this didn't grate with me. So don't let it put you off. I did read The Grey Orchid and can't remember it bothering me, I do like the series. Gave the book 4* which is praise for me!
As regards Louise Penny - I read quite a few then found they got rather strange and gave up on them. Same with Elly Griffiths series with the ongoing love me love me not saga.
Gpfr wrote: "Dalva by Jim Harrison (with thanks to gladarvor / hushpuppy). Dalva is a 45-year-old woman who has been living a full and varied life but is now going back home to Nebraska..."
Interesting. I had an exchange with glad/HP some time ago, as we often liked the same authors - but this writer didn't work for me, at least not in the collection I got... Legends of the Fall. The story - or stories (?) seemed to have absurd premises... a Mexican (I think) drug lord who has a lot of blood on his hands is friends with his American tennis coach - who cops off with the wife, and therefore is liable to die... it was melodramatic and silly.
Maybe that book was a pot-boiler and Dalva is much better? Whatever, it unimpressed me so much that I gave up on Harrison at that point. Possibly a mistake, but on the rare occasions I've given authors a second chance I have tended to feel that my initial reaction was justified! I know perfectly well I could be wrong about this one.
(Looking at the order details again, I suspect the story I refer to was the one called 'Revenge'. It put me off so much, I may not have got to the "good stuff'!)
AB76 wrote: "Despite the awful prospect of Mondays inauguration of a convicted criminal as US President..."Can anyone explain why the BBC is devoting 2 1/2 hours of afternoon coverage to this, and ITV 2h? I don't recall any such coverage of previous US inaugurations (except maybe Obama?).
Surely, such brown-nosing isn't justified.
Tam wrote: "I have had a terrible time over Christmas for reasons I cant really go into at the moment as I am still processing it all, but it has put the mockers on quite a lot of what I would refer to as my n..."Sorry to hear this - I hope things are improving by now.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Despite the awful prospect of Mondays inauguration of a convicted criminal as US President..."Can anyone explain why the BBC is devoting 2 1/2 hours of afternoon coverage to this, an..."
Well, I for one am no watching it. Although I have to say that I do approve of him banning men from women's sports.
ITV are putting on a 2 hour programme later.
Robert wrote: "I wonder how many people subscribed to the early Punch..."My grandfather read an awful lot... and bought far more books than he could actually read (many are still on the shelves here, as I have 'returned' like a bad penny to the old home.)
Anyway... one of the odder objects in the house as I grew up was a custom-made low and mobile bookshelf full of Punch annuals. It was octagonal (four long sides, four short 'corners') and not much good for anything else except, perhaps, as a coffee table. It seems that the bookshelf, which was on castors, was given away free with the purchase of the set of annuals!
giveusaclue wrote: "Some of us can actually remember the 6 day war!"Indeed. Coming from a small town in west Wales, I had no idea how one was supposed to identify 'Jews' back then. I knew a fair amount about WW2, the Holocaust etc. but no actual Jewish people as far as I knew...
After school, I went to Manchester to work for a year as a lab tech. before uni. The Six Day War broke out... I was very surprised that another young lad doing the same as me - a year out before uni. - was glued to his transistor radio every time the news came on.
His name was David Rose, and if you are into that sort of thing, he had dark, curly hair...
I figured it out... eventually. (Embarrassed to remember this degree of ignorance, but there you go.)
Robert wrote: ".I can recommend: Waltz with Bashir."Brilliant and moving.
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
Blood of the Isles: Exploring the Genetic Roots of Our Tribal History (other topics)New Finnish Grammar (other topics)
The Clues in the Fjord (other topics)
Myth in Malmö (other topics)
The Liar (other topics)
More...
The Silent Death by Volker Kutscher is the second Gereon Rath mystery. Set in 1930, Inspector Rath has to find who is killing silent screen actresses... not great literature, melodramatic, with a protagonist who is a bit of an arsehole... but just the thing for when you are not feeling 100% as it's entertaining if you like crime genre novels. I'll probably just carry on with book 3 and tackle something more demanding when I get better!