Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello! With sadness - and hope - we mark the end - or pause! - of the Guardian 'Tips, Links & Suggestions, our long-time literary home, and the transfer to Goodreads.

First of all, our thanks to Lisa Jones, who has set this site up and worked out so many details with great skill. Although we all recognize GR's limitations and hope for a return to the Better Place, we'll try to make this as comfortable as possible for everyone.

The general idea is for this particular 'discussion' to act as much like the old TLS as possible. So book reviews and chats should come here. Alas, I am no Sam Jordison and this isn't really 'above the line', but if you want me to do so I'll pick out five or six book comments each week from the precious week's thread. Only if.

As for me, I am currently reading Barbara Noble's The House Opposite, a London Blitz novel published in 1943, with an eye on a probable next reading of Matthew Kneale's Pilgrims (recommended by Magrat) and Martin Puchner's The Language of Thieves (tip thanks to Carmen 212).

Now I turn this discussion over to you ....

Justine wrote: "Now I turn this discussion over to you .... "

Thanks inter. I've managed to cry several times last night (blast that @nosuchzone lad, and the hippo, and MsC, and...), and some more this morning.

But onwards and, hmmm, lateralwards. I for one would love for you to pick a handful of review snippets, but only if this is something you'd enjoy and not a chore.

I missed the cutoff on the previous ersatz TLS thread, so I'll reply here: glad that you and @Mach could find some female Irish writers' names to investigate further.

And @Swelter, I'd very much like to hear what you make of Chess Story!

I am enjoying Snow by John Banville very much, delighting in the language used and the almost hidden gems. The story, and I am only a quarter of the way through, seems at first to follow an old ‘country house’ murder that one would expect from a Sayers but I perceive it to be more than that, touching on the religious difference between Catholic and Protestant in Ireland and sharp observation of human nature and all its foibles.
At odd times I return to learn more about Crocodiles, have indulged in Dylan Thomas’ poetry and pondered on the creation of the universe.
Here’s a snippet, lovely description, from Snow to enjoy
Rounding a bend, they almost ran into a flock of sheep, tended by a boy in a coat that was far too big for him and belted at the waist with a twist of yellow binder twine. Reck stopped the van and the two men sat stranded amid a moving sea of dirty grey fleece. Strafford idly studied the milling animals, admiring their long aristocratic heads and the neat little hoofs, like carved nuggets of coal, on which they trotted so daintily. He was struck too by their protuberant and intelligent-seeming shiny black eyes, expressive of stoical resignation tinged with the incurable shame of their plight, avatars of an ancient race, being herded ignominiously along a country road by a snot-nosed brat with a stick.

I picked up this link on my last, sad look through the old TLS: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

I hope as many as possible can support this!

Hello,
I will inaugurate my GR posts in this group with the book I am reading at the moment: In Love and War by Lesley Lokko. I was prompted to read it by an article I read in the G on Lesley Lokko who recently resigned as dean of the faculty of architecture from a NY university but especially because she is half Ghanian and half Scottish and was born in the same place as me! I chose this book of hers (she has written several novels) because it is set in the Arab Spring and I am obsessed by the Arab world. Unfortunately I find it little better than a Mills & Boon novel (do those still exist?) The parallel stories of a charismatic, brilliant, intelligent, brave and of course sexy TV journalist and her adventures and an Egyptian family caught up in politics past and present meet (that's where I've got to, so far, with loads of details of the media world, Arab exiles, beautifully furnished homes, from London to Zambia... it's OK I suppose but if it were a paperback (I have it on Kindle) I wouldn't keep it, my book space is too valuable for books like this. A bit diasppointed really...

Morning all, breezy in SE England, the rain clearing and autumn well advanced

I am fascinated by "Arab Travellers in the Far North", a penguin collection of tales from the 8th-12th century, regarding arab travel to the northern climes(mostly as far as the Ukraine). Ibn Fadlan narrates the first account and the Viking "Rus" section was fascinating, he describes the "tall, fair" people, as tall as date palms who are filthy and dirty. They do not wash their bodies and have public communion with their ladyfolk, in fact the public communion(ie sex), seems to be non-stop with the Viking "Rus". One Rus tells him via a translator "you arabs are fools, you leave your great men in the dirt, we burn them"

The Refuge by Kenneth Mackenzie, is a slow burn thriller and confession, wintry sydney, a dead jewish refugee,her killer is possibly the narrator but its wonderfully paced and nothing is clear

Thanks for getting us off to a great start, Justine!

I finished Apeirogon last week, and now I'm doing my best to promote it as THE BEST BOOK of 2020, or most any year. I'll just repeat what I posted on the real TLS a few days ago:

I am aware that the Nobel Prize for Literature is not awarded for an individual title, but I do believe Apeirogon is the book that will get Colum McCann on the winner's list someday. It is simply stunning.

And Bassam and Rami should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

...

Not sure what I'll choose next. Sitting in my brother's house with 5,000+ books to choose from and I can't focus on anything but the election. Pray to some god or another for the USA, won't you?

I'm currently reading "A Rising Man" by Abir Mukherjee and will post a review soon. I have been very unfocused by the closure of tLS and also quite busy with work, so things are taking longer than usual. As a result I am rereading a couple of old favorites for distraction-Rebecca was one-and I might post something on that too.

AB76 wrote: "Morning all, breezy in SE England, the rain clearing and autumn well advanced

I am fascinated by "Arab Travellers in the Far North", a penguin collection of tales from the 8th-12th century, regard..."

I have read a number of Arab travelers, accounts from their POV of the Crusaders and it is very interesting to see how they viewed Westerners. The Arabian Nights also contains an interesting story describing this meeting from the Arab point of view, "The Master of the White Mare" being the one I had in mind. This story is also a very early and creepy vampire story!!

Sandya wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Morning all, breezy in SE England, the rain clearing and autumn well advanced

I am fascinated by "Arab Travellers in the Far North", a penguin collection of tales from the 8th-12th ce..."

i'm very interested in the arab world, these accounts date from when the arab world stretched to Northern Spain as well, the mighty days. The Alhambra and the Generalife in Granada is possibly the finest preservation of that era...am sure you have visited them. (i went from the Alhambra at midnight about 15 years ago...in august...it was 29c, beautiful to see against the night sky

AB76 wrote: "Sandya wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Morning all, breezy in SE England, the rain clearing and autumn well advanced

I am fascinated by "Arab Travellers in the Far North", a penguin collection of tales from ..."

went ROUND not from the Alhambra at midnight!

AB76 wrote: "Morning all, breezy in SE England, the rain clearing and autumn well advanced

I am fascinated by "Arab Travellers in the Far North", a penguin collection of tales from the 8th-12th century, regard..."

In my medieval studies phase, I read some Arab Viking accounts some are gruesome!

Justine wrote: "Hello! With sadness - and hope - we mark the end - or pause! - of the Guardian 'Tips, Links & Suggestions, our long-time literary home, and the transfer to Goodreads.

First of all, our thanks to ..."
I had to peek at TLS. There were 1197 comments last week which seems high to me. It is still sitting there but is now closed. Ugh.

AB76 wrote: "Morning all, breezy in SE England, the rain clearing and autumn well advanced

I am fascinated by "Arab Travellers in the Far North", a penguin collection of tales from the 8th-12th century, regard..."

Finding much at all about Kenneth Mackenzie beyond the basics is tricky but just found a 100 page University of Western Australia quarterly special edition about him from 1966...what a find, in PDF format

Lljones wrote: "Thanks for getting us off to a great start, Justine!

I finished Apeirogon last week, and now I'm doing my best to promote it as THE BEST BOOK of 2020, or most any year.

Not sure what I'll choose next. Sitting in my brother's house with 5,000+ books to choose from and I can't focus on anything but the election. Pray to some god or another for the USA, won't you?
"

I second your thoughts on Apeirogon, I loved it. And may wisdom prevail tomorrow. I think most of the world is holding its breath.

Now for my highlights from last week:

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart - competently written, but failed its moral responsibility not to make this reader despair, to paraphrase something Jonathan Coe said recently. For me it was a bleak novel, repetitive in its dreariness and, in the end, original only in its specifics.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy explores the ways in which its various protagonists perceive and deal with the (nearly certain) ecological collapse that awaits. Putting aside a few needles structural complications, it was an excellent book about all the reasons, including emotional, why we need the existence of an ecosystem.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow, the relaxing adventures of three sisters (a maiden, a mother and a crone) in a world where everyone can be a witch, if allowed. The author seems to have read her Pratchett and learned a few things.

I’ve started this week with Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid. It's good so far.

Just made my first purchase from the UK instance of bookshop.org having been tipped off by an article in today’s Graun. This sounds like an excellent development which may save many independent bookshops from oblivion.

Meanwhile I have just started A Stillness At Appomattox by Bruce Catton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the final year of the American Civil War. If the first chapter is anything to go by this is going to be a sensitive and insightful rendering of a historic tragedy, albeit one with the right outcome.

Lljones wrote: "Thanks for getting us off to a great start, Justine!

I finished Apeirogon last week, and now I'm doing my best to promote it as THE BEST BOOK of 2020, or most any year. I'll just r..."


I had Cold Comfort Farm next on my list and think I'll press on with it but Apeirogon is also to hand so I'm heartened to see your reaction to it, and Adina's further down thread. Thanks.

I'm still in re-read mode and am now one-third in with K. C. Constantine's first Mario Balzic police procedural, The Rocksburg Railroad Murders. I have certain expectations for police procedurals and was surprised to have to stop and think what this country would be like if cops didn't carry guns (Chief Balzic's preference). If only that idea had taken hold in 1982 when this book was first published. It certainly is too late now.

Well, back to solving the murder - no guns involved.

MK wrote -
I had to peek at TLS. There were 1197 comments last week which seems high to me. It is still sitting there but is now closed. Ugh

Nice that it finishes with an old post of @Conedison, though there was a later post from @Cugel which has silently disappeared. I imagine him chuckling about that!

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "

Nice that it finishes with an old post of @Conedison, ..."
And ironically TLS is still appearing in the Take Part section of the Book Page.

I don’t know whether this should be posted under ‘sense of place’ or ‘what we’re reading’.... Anyway, I have access to a Norwegian e-book library and have borrowed the last book in the Barrøy quartet, written by Roy Jacobsen. However, I realised quite quickly that in order to enjoy fully the no 4 I needed to go back to no 1 (do you follow?). So I have just spent a few days in an island community in the north of Norway and now moving on with the ‘heroine’ Ingrid in her quest to find .... spoilers, spoilers... so no more info at the moment. (A useful comment to make by someone who prefers lurking to commenting...). The Barrøy quartet is a quietly and beautifully told story, the first three novels have been translated into English, ‘The Unseen’, ‘White Shadow’, ‘The Eyes of the Rigel’. Highly recommended!

From my local library I have borrowed the recently published book on Ravenna, written by Judith Herrin. I have only just started this book and won’t be able to make any useful comments on it as yet other than the fact that I really look forward to delve into a book on one of my favourite places and about one of my favourite periods.

Hi AspasiasUli. Maybe it's not the best place to post something like this but I would just like to say your words about Eça de Queirós on the Graun were very touching and I am really glad you appreciated Os Maias. It's not everyday you see such a nice review of Portuguese literature and it warmed my heart.

Here’s a popular book I’ve recently read that I don’t believe I mentioned at The Guardian: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.

The full review is here. The Readers’ Digest version:

Krakauer mostly gives us McCandless as a kind of secular saint, emphasizing the "spiritual" nature of his wilderness treks and disdain for materialism. He makes it clear that his original article on the subject for Outside drew a lot of negative comments alleging McCandless' lethal inexperience and questionable sanity and the author makes efforts to refute these claims throughout the book.

Krakauer quotes extensively from books that McCandless read, which gave me the impression of him as a kind of young Don Quixote, his head turned not by chivalric romances but by Thoreau. Tolstoy, and Jack London. Krakauer also cites a number of accounts of past explorers, several of whom never returned from their expeditions, to further normalize McCandless as an American type, and a generally admired one at that. The book feels a bit padded because of these tangential narratives, but Krakauer makes whatever material he concentrates on fairly interesting for the most part.

The book opens with an account of the abandoned bus - originally placed to house workers for a road construction project that was never completed - where McCandless starved to death in the Alaskan wilderness. While reading, I found myself often thinking of the bus driven by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters with its destination placard of "FURTHUR".

Slawkenbergius wrote: "but I would just like to say your words about Eça de Queirós on the Graun were very touching and I am really glad you appreciated Os Maias. It's not everyday you see such a nice review of Portuguese literature and it warmed my heart."

Aww...


Maybe it's not the best place to post something like this

I think if it's not a Special Topic, and if it is not about Ersatz TLS itself, then it is something that should be put here 😊.

To Slawkenbergius

PS: You might also want to say who you are to AspasiasUli flinty, in case she's missed it (although it might be pretty darn obvious from the content of your email)!

Thank you Justine and LL, I can't 'like' posts, but I'm still enjoying them. I'll finish Tuff by Paul Beatty soon, I'll try to do justice to it.

Lljones wrote: Pray to some god or another for the USA, won't you?

AspasiasUli wrote: "Should we just check in with Magrat, who is a day ahead of us, and ask her how it all turned out?"

I like how your mind works Aspasias! If only that were possible, maybe the worst could be avoided. I hope there is zero complacency on the side of the liberals and everybody will do their darndest to go out and vote for Biden. We've seen what a bit of complacency can lead to everywhere, from the B----t vote, to the previous presidential vote in the US, to seeing the Le Pen, père et fille, on the second round of the French elections...

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Nice that it finishes with an old post of @Conedison, though there was a later post from @Cugel which has silently disappeared. I imagine him chuckling about that!"

Yes, not only he got moderated (my brain is still twitching at the idea of writing the 'm' word in a post), but he got disappeared, the one thing that is apparently not supposed to happen.

It almost feels like a private joke the moderator is making!

Adina wrote: "Now for my highlights from last week: (3 books follow)"

*Sigh*, so Adina you are yet another one of those who's able to read several books a week!

I am 'enjoying' A Brief History of Seven Killings, but it is the kind of book that requires a bit of cognitive effort (to me at least, like some Ellroy or Faulkner), and its disjointed nature and length make me think that'd be me done for the rest of the year. I might have to switch to feel like I'm making any kind of progress in my reading...

Talking about xx books a week, where's Andy/safereturn btw?

Slawkenbergius wrote: "Hi AspasiasUli. Maybe it's not the best place to post something like this but I would just like to say your words about Eça de Queirós on the Graun were very touching and I am really glad you appre..."

I'm a huge Eca De Querioz fan, my favourite novel is "The Crime of Father Amaro" set in 19th century Lieira

For any fans of Hardy-eque 19th century realist novels by european nation, here is my quick list, these novels all share a realistic, semi-naturalistic style, with progressive commentaries on the societies they depict:

Eca De Querios (Portugal) - start with "The Crime of Father Amaro", i loved it 14 years ago
Benitos Perez Galdos (Spain) - a huge choice, he is like a "Hardy of Madrid"
Leopoldo Alas (Spain) - the master of the North, "La Regenta" is the best spanish novel i have read, set in Oviedo
Giovanni Verga (Italy) - sicilian short stories or his best work "Don Maria Gesualdo"

The French and British alternatives are well known but Gissing is worth exploring along with Theodor Fontane in Germany

Of course the religious tone of the Iberian novels is much more marked than Hardys rural british traditions but these writers all form progressive fronts in the late 19th century

The best thing I read over the weekend was an Italian book called Time On My Hands by Giorgio Vasta, translated by Jonathan Hunt.
It’s a powerful and occasionally disturbing debut novel set in the Sicily of the late 1970s, and concerns three 11 year old boys. Palermo of 1978 is rocked by the news of the kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigade. Everyone is stunned by the murder as the media obsesses about revolution being in the air, and despite their tender age, so are the boys. They shave their heads and adopt new names, they invent their own language and physically train so as to be ready for action. The narrator gives the novel its real chill, self-named “Nimbus,” self harms with rusty barbed wire, tortures animals, sniffs the TV to analyze people onscreen and calls his parents Stone and String. Vasta uses the boys to parody the wild-child actions of the Red Brigade and soon the boys beging to plan incidents of terror.
There is ambiguity in the subversive outlook of boys, which is convincing, but with a depth of political thinking that isn't (for 11 year olds).
There is a slow build-up, but after midway the novel reads like a page-turning thriller. It is an unsettling portrait of poverty in Palermo that throws up many questions about age of responsibilty, and the influence of acts of terror in our society.

I’ve just finished Antoine Laurain’s latest, The Readers’ Room, translated by a ‘team’ from Gallic books.
At the heart of it is a love of books and authors, and that in itself is very satisfying. In fact, it provides the best moments in what is a mystery, about a mystery.
The director of a readers’ room at a Parisian publisher, is confident that a debut crime novel she has discovered, will be a big hit; actually it goes on to be shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt. But, it’s author cannot be traced, even by the Rouen crime squad when two murders occur, copies of those in the novel.
It lacks Laurain’s trademark dry humour, and the plot which starts well, meanders into the territory of contrivance, but the writing is always good, and there is plenty to enjoy in literary scene of Paris.

Also, over the last week, Ghosts: A Natural History: 500 Years of Searching for Proof by Roger Clarke, which was recommended by @Dylan a week or so ago. As often in this type of book, it’s a very full history, so some bots of detail are of less interest, but the majority of it is fascinating.
A good accompaniment to Kirsty Logan’s series of Radio 4.

And, OT (with apologies..) I want to recommend the film, Relic which I watched on Saturday. These days horror needs to do more than have scary bits..and this certainly does that. It’s a really clever and sensitive view of Alzheimer’s. I can’t stop thinking about it, and keen to discuss it with anyone else who may have seen it..

Justine wrote: "Hello! With sadness - and hope - we mark the end - or pause! - of the Guardian 'Tips, Links & Suggestions, our long-time literary home, and the transfer to Goodreads.

First of all, our thanks to ..."

Thanks Inter. I’m keen on Noble. Let us know how it goes.
Re Blitz.. really enjoyed Graham Joyce’s The Facts Of Life not so long ago.

Lljones wrote: "Thanks for getting us off to a great start, Justine!

I finished Apeirogon last week, and now I'm doing my best to promote it as THE BEST BOOK of 2020, or most any year. I'll just r..."

I do like Mukherjee..got #3 coming up soon..

Gladarvor wrote: "To Slawkenbergius

PS: You might also want to say who you are to AspasiasUli flinty, in case she's missed it (although it might be pretty darn obvious from the content of your email)!"

Indeed. Slawkenbergius = Captain_Flint (Flinty) = Vasco

The Postscript Murders Harbinder Kaur #2
Having read most of Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway series and The Stranger Diaries I looked forward to reading this follow up. Unfortunately, I found it disappointing. It was entertaining enough I suppose but should perhaps be put in the Cozy Mysteries classification; amateur sleuths, long dead brothers turning up, hints of Russian spies came together to make a pretty improbable story I am afraid.

AB76 wrote: "I'm a huge Eca De Queiroz fan, my favourite novel is "The Crime of Father Amaro" set in 19th century Leiria"

Yeah, that's a famous one, although I've never read it myself. Other books of his that I enjoyed were The Illustrious House of Ramires and The City and the Mountains.
Cousin Bazilio and The Relic are humorous novels that I intend to tackle whenever I get the chance.
His fantastic novella The Mandarin is also famous and a story that Borges particularly liked.

AspasiasUli wrote: "Gladarvor wrote: "Lljones wrote: Pray to some god or another for the USA, won't you?

AspasiasUli wrote: "Should we just check in with Magrat, who is a day ahead of us, and ask her how it all turne..."

Would you really like me to do that? At this moment, let me tell you, it's 9:35am on 3 Nov and the whole country is obsessed with the Melbourne Cup "the race that stops the nation" even though they're running it without any live spectators.

A Rising Man. Abir Mukherjee

Abir Mukherjee explores an interesting new vein in detective fiction. A Rising Man, the first of his 4 novels, is set in Calcutta in 1919 at the height of the British Raj. His detective, the slightly dissolute Sam Wyndham of the Calcutta Police, and his partner, Surendranath “Surrender-not” Banerjee, work together to solve a baffling crime whose tentacles reach the very highest levels of the Raj. The book is tautly written and introduces many memorable characters, places, and organizations. You get a good picture of the machinery of power in India.

The backdrop is a detailed picture of Calcutta and its environs. In some ways it was a painful read. Many of the details were familiar to me, having survived into the Calcutta of family trips to India in the 60s and 70s. I’ve visited the city twice, but these details could be found in any large Indian city. I remember rickshaws -we always took the auto-rickshaws and I felt terrible as a child at the idea of hiring a rickshaw-wallah. We knew that pulling a rickshaw placed a huge strain upon the heart and I felt very sorry for the rickshaw-wallahs I saw.

The heavy-handed British response to demands for self-rule (swaraj) also struck a chord. My Father, the kindest and most compassionate of men, was locked up between 1942-45 for “anti-British activity”. He might have suffered the fate of the “terrorist”, Benoy Sen, who plays a major role in the story. He never spoke of it and ironically, emigrated to England, where he was very successful in air freight-he put in the entire infrastructure for transporting air cargo to India. It is extraordinary to me that the Brits ever thought they had any right to rule India, and their surprise at the pushback by Indians is the oddest part of the whole thing.

The racism was sickening. This is explored in several ways, notably through the character of Annie Grant, a beautiful Anglo-Indian with a job in the admin side of the Raj. I feel shame to this day at the way Anglo-Indians were treated. We had a number of Anglo-Indian kids in my junior school-I wanted to be one of THEM! They were uniformly smarter, better looking (gorgeous in fact), taller, stronger, and healthier than either the Indians or the English. That’s hybrid vigor for you!

The story gives you a realistic picture of the cruelty and racism of the British Raj. “Old India Hands” still flatter themselves today that British rule was good for India, but it wasn't. It suppressed India for over 300 years so the country was kept in a sort of stasis. Only now are we seeing Indians acting as a nation. You don't have to approve of what they do-they don't care and they don't have to. I loved these novels, which I read in reverse order, and hope Mukherjee keeps writing!

So, only two or three pages into Cold Comfort Farm, I find I have something in common with Mrs Smiling. Well, two, to be exact ... she is Irish and is, it seems, in perpetual search of a perfect brassiere to add to her collection. How serendipitous given I, this very night, have ordered what I hope may turn out to be the perfect one. More news as it breaks...

Reen wrote: "More news as it breaks..."

;-)

Oh my, this is just like the old TLS. Gentlemen, avert your eyes!

PaleFires wrote: "Hi Sydney, I bought a swell 'new' second hand copy of Finnegan's Wake.."
I haven't read Finnegan's Wake. But I heard about a great book club that read it as a group, so they were able to share the laughs. To me, that sounds like the way to do it. I was very taken with @Swelter's suggestion regarding Ulysses, that 'if you aren't laughing, you're not doing it properly' - and I suspect the same applies for Finnegan's Wake.

Incidentally, the way I heard about that book club was that I was reading about the influence of Joyce on the satirist John Clarke, who was a member of this little clique. I don't know much about this influence, but the fictional sport of "farnarkeling" is a magical creation.

Justine wrote: "Hello! With sadness - and hope - we mark the end - or pause! - of the Guardian 'Tips, Links & Suggestions, our long-time literary home, and the transfer to Goodreads.

First of all, our thanks to ..."

I've just read The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. She is a writer who varies her style and subject matter, which I think is to her credit, though she's not always entirely successful. However this, her latest novel, is just wonderful. Usually I loathe the expression 'I could not put it down', but I finished it in two sessions.

'The Pull of the Stars' translates as 'influenza'. It's 1918 and Dublin nurse Julia Power (who has had the flu and recovered) finds herself in sole charge of a tiny annexe to the maternity ward, for expectant mothers who also have Spanish influenza. Over three days commencing on 1 November, in a brilliant recreation of a lost Irish world, Julia copes - sometimes in explicitly gory detail - with birth and death and the quirks of human nature. One character is real, Dr Kathleen Lynn who, after being briefly imprisoned for her involvement with Sinn Féin, went on to found a children's hospital and campaign for better conditions for the poor.

SydneyH wrote: "Incidentally, the way I heard about that book club was that I was reading about the influence of Joyce on the satirist John Clarke, who was a member of this little clique. I don't know much about t..."

I have the pleasure of possessing a copy of Tinkering: The Complete Book of John Clarke. Before a collection of press clippings featuring the exploits of the mighty Dave Sorensen he explains that farnarkeling is engaged in by two teams whose purpose is to arkle, and to prevent the other team from arkeling, using a flukem to propel a gonad through sets of posts situated at random around the periphery of a grommet. Arkeling is not permissible, however, from any position adjacent to the phlange (or leiderkrantz) or from within fifteen yards of the whiffenwacker at the point where the shifting tube abuts the centre-line on either side of the thirty-four-metre mark, measured from the valve at the back of the defending side's transom-housing.

Magical indeed! Just in case anyone was wondering...

The Beginning of Spring- Penelope Fitzgerald

This is my second of Fitzgerald's books,. after having read The Blue Flower at the end of 2019, Ms Carey recommended that I make TBoS the next one I read. And it to make it snappy.

So, snap I did. Of the two, I would have to say that I prefer by a good long way TBoS. While the The BLue Flower was a well-told historical novel, TBoS was an entirely original story in a historical setting. Plus, while i enjoyed the both of them, only TBoS conjured up meditations in my mind.

The book pissed me off from the get-go, when Frank Reid's wife leaves him, for no apparent reason, and takes the kids with her. As a father, the literary construct of "Wife kidnapping her children" makes me seethe. Luckily, Fitzgerald undid that situation within a few pages, otherwise this was headed for the skeet shooting pile.

What did follow was a book that wore it's meticulous research lightly, and that cast its pictures and shadows with a thrift of words. Fitzgerald writes slimly, economically, but ungruffly. There is a warmth to her prose that keeps it from going into the Hemingway newspaper print style. Her writing is like a woodcut, fine little lines and crosshatches to imply shade, large areas of emptiness to show unknowability, forced perspective to show depth.

All in all, I really enjoyed The Beginning of Spring. It was a book that made me question a lot of assumptions:
The role of fathers in child-rearing even 120 years ago.

The outposts of the British Empire, maintaining little realms of influence even in countries as big as Russia, where they dared not send the army.
The definition of citizenship in countries without ius soli (TLSers will know where I stand on this issue).
The relevance and perniciousness of "blood culture" (i.e. why would one ever call oneself British if they were born in Moscow and had only rarely visited the muddy isles?). Which led me to think about authors like Kipling and Lessing and Ballard and Thackeray, how easy was it for them to transition into being "British" and how much of that was an artifice?

The book ended where it needed to, but to be honest I would have liked Frank to have just one time woken up and slammed the front door and hollered "Hit the road."

Magrat wrote: "Arkeling is not permissible, however, from any position adjacent to the phlange"

Marvellous!

Gladarvor wrote: "*Sigh*, so Adina you are yet another one of those who's able to read several books a week!

I am 'enjoying' A Brief History of..."

It depends on the books, I suppose, at some point I've spent 3 months reading A Brief History of Seven Killings and didn't manage to finish it. Best of luck with it!

Paul wrote: "The Beginning of Spring- Penelope Fitzgerald..."

Aaahh...such a satisfying write-up, Paul. Thanks.