Ersatz TLS discussion

Happy New Year to all, and welcome to 2021! The less said about last year the better, I guess, but a new beginning always means new possibilities - and new reading experiences.

There were, of course, wonderful examples of the latter right through the final weeks of December, works – some not so well known – well worth adding to our 2021 TBR lists.

Slawkenbergius, for one, revives The Return, by Walter de la Mare, originally published in 1910, ands calls it ‘one of best books I've read in the course of this ghastly year’:

I guess most people would categorise this novel as one belonging to the fantastic genre that characterises so many of De la Mare's ghost-themed short stories, but this book is something else.

Arthur Lawford is a middle-aged man living in a London suburb who is recovering from a recent bout of influenza. Strolling across the lanes of an old cemetery he sits beside the tomb of a French huguenot suicide named Nicolas Sabathier and dozes off. After waking up and returning home he discovers to his great astonishment that his face has changed considerably. The transformation progresses over the next few days - he becomes thinner, his voice also turns harsher and even his handwriting shows an unsuspected inflexion. […]

Everything is ethereal, atmospherical, suggestive; the narrator's most employed terms must be 'shadowy' and 'reverie' and in a way they reflect handsomely the whole tone of the novel. References to the ghostly world and gloomy presence of unseen traces abound but one cannot be sure of any of those elements; though The Return tells a story of how an average, dull and boring man discovers a new spiritual existence after being 'possessed' by the spirit of a dead man the narrative is left open to a variety of interpretations. […]

The author clearly wants to convey a story in which the frontier between life and death, the worldly and the otherworldly, gets ingeniously hazed with clouds of misty disquietude, and the theme of metempsychosis is more than merely hinted at. […]

Slawkenbergius adds, enticingly, ‘and a big part of its literary worth is rendered by the absolute gorgeousness of De la Mare's writing style.’

A book we’ll undoubtedly hear more about is Jack, by the esteemed, if ever controversial, Marilynne Robinson. Clare de la Lune was clearly impressed:

To those unfamiliar with [Robinson’s] work this is the fourth book in this series - Gilead, Home and Lila coming before and each painting a different view of the Boughton family.

It's an emotional weight of a book filled with personal torment. It is also a book of undisputed love and the power and strength that can bring to people who least expect it to arrive on their doorstep. […]

Jack Ames Boughton is white.

He's canny. He's a gentleman; A thief; A ne'er do well; A poet; A liar; A charmer; A bum; An intellectual; A destroyer.

He's always had these qualities of character and his place in the world suits him just fine. No responsibilities. Alone. Unaccountable.

But he has a family, some of whom love him. A preacher father who was constantly forgiving him, praying for him. A brother who occasionally funds him. They are there in the background. Jack's rocks. […]

Meanwhile, AlbyBelieverhas discovered The White Umbrella by Brian Sewell:

It's a wonderful, generous, funny novel about a British historian who, in Pakistan to film a documentary, spots a maltreated donkey foal through the van window, leaps out, and refuses to leave her side. The novel follows their journey, on foot, trains, cars and vans from Peshawar to Wimbledon.

As an animal lover, I'm an obvious target for this sort of book, but I have a low tolerance level for exploitative, moist-eyed schlock. Luckily, this is beautifully written and sceptical enough to avoid being saccharine […]

Another interesting find was reported by Machenbach: The Visitor, by Maeve Brennan,

a slender novella (or longish short story) which was discovered amongst her archived papers a few years after the republication of her stories had brought her back into the public eye. It centres on a 22-year-old woman, Anastasia King, who returns ‘home’ to her paternal grandmother’s house in Dublin six years after having moved to Paris to join her mother, who herself had previously fled the house and the marriage in order to escape the grandmother’s malign influence on the marriage, but who has recently died. […]

The grandmother is a terrifically underplayed study in Irish Catholic matriarchal monstrosity – cunningly controlling, coolly vindictive, artfully self-righteous, and yet, at the same time, and to all appearances, an upstanding member of the community. The Visitor quietly, but devastatingly, exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of de Valera’s Catholic-conservative Ireland […]

A collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie receives scarletnoir’s recommendation:

[A]nyone who is interested in Adichie's topics will find something to please them - the difficulty of relationships between black Africans and African-Americans, or white Americans, and the misunderstandings and different cultural norms which can apply - for example. […] My own favourite story is “A Private Experience”, in which a riot breaks out at a market in a Nigerian town (people are killed) […] [T]he story concerns itself far less with the riot, and more with both its immediate and its longer term consequences. Two women escape the violence together, and find shelter in an abandoned shop. As they hide, they develop a bond despite one being a young 'Christian', whereas the other is a middle aged Muslim. They help and support each other during the many hours in which they lie low, and a degree of understanding develops. This is a sensitive and fully realised tale of how people can sympathise across cultural divides. It is excellent, and memorable.

Unfortunately, there isn’t room for all the brilliant fiction suggestions made over the last fortnight, so I do urge you to scroll through the pages to locate others. I also want, however, to include a couple of nonfiction notices. Giveusaclue very much liked Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Writings of the Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, by Lauren Mackay :

I was amazed at the amount of information still available from the Chapuys' letters to the Spanish King. It appears that he suffered from lack of remuneration from his boss in much the same way as the Percys did with Henry IV.

I enjoyed reading the history of the times from the perspective of an outsider and the personal touches such as when his lodgings burned down and he lost pretty well everything except the clothes he was wearing and how others such as the merchants came to his aid. His role as a mediator between the traders from various countries and his personal concern and care for Katherine of Aragon and Mary stand out [..]

And it’s probably no surprise that CCCubbon is finding A Little History of Poetry by John Carey to be ‘a real treat’:

Carey takes as his starting point the Iliad and the Odyssey , with the former being about the brutalities of war, a tragedy and the latter tales of adventure which have continued to be retold in various forms down through the ages […]

John Carey is very readable. He is enticing me to go back and read these epic poems.

The following chapters in the book range from Anglo Saxon to War Poets to Poets who cross Boundaries, forty different poetic times to savour, even should you not be a lover here is a book for anyone interested in the arts.

And for those who read these pages, but hesitate to join in, CCC has opened ‘A Place to Start’ under Special Topics, which is … a place to start! That is, if you’ve found the GR set-up makes life confusing when there are a number of conversations going on at once, here's a quieter space on offer.

So now: let's look forward to further brilliant book discoveries: please continue to share them!

Thanks Justine. @LL, thank you as well for all your Ersatz TLS work in 2020.

Thanks, Sydney. And I ought to have thanked all of you who've hung in here and kept this going!

Thanks Justine, and happy new year to you.

I have missed a great deal here over the past month so happy to see mention of Mach's review of Maeve Brennan. I have read about her on and off over the years without actually reading her so this will propel me to seek her out.

A very stylish lady she was, whose taste for preposterous sunglasses I share. A funny, if dark, anecdote at the end of this piece from The Irish Times...

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/he...

A Happy New Year to all the book lovers that browse here!
There have been some really interesting book reviews over the Christmas and New Year break and I'm looking forward to adding some to my ever extending TBR pile.
Thanks for the efforts from everyone to keep this site rolling on.

Reen (4) wrote: "Thanks Justine, and happy new year to you.

I have missed a great deal here over the past month so happy to see mention of Mach's review of Maeve Brennan. I have read about her on and off over the..."

What a tragic story. A talent, a wit, destroyed. By alcohol, as usual! Maeve Brennan is a writer I definitely hope to catch up on as soon as the library reopens

I was rather intrigued by Slawkenbergius‘ report about qThe Return When first I read it and now, reading your account, Justine, can no longer resist.

Happy New Year, let it be much better than last. Good start to the day with the first Oxford vaccines taking place. Hey, and I got a mention atl. 😀

Justine wrote: "
Happy New Year
to all, and welcome to 2021! The less said about last year the better, I guess, but a new beginning always means new possibilities - and new reading experiences.

There were, of ..."
Hi - yes, still alive, still around, just not very active (also not very active on the Guardian forums, so that is that).
I have to admit defeat to my goal of 24 books per year for last year.
I was given two books for Christmas - Terry Pratchett, a collection of stories (from 2012) Blink of the Screen (or so), and also a book about the lockdown.
My new cooking device (a crockpot) brought me a 1001 recipe-collection for crockpots. Well, I wished for it, I got it - and I was slightly disappointed. Not only did it use a lot of ready made ingredients (like chicken-cream-soup) - it was also counting every ever so slightly variety of a recipe as a new recipe.

For 2021 I have my usual goal of reading two books per month. I am two thirds through the Pratchett stories. Quite like them. Not all fall into Discworld humour category (though I like that, too, I hasten to add!)

Let's hope this year is really going to be better. Japan is postponed until 2022 at least (first the vaccination has to be common and the Olympics have to be done and dusted, and then I'll see).

I might not post often, but I try to show up at least once a month. Given that I am not reading that much, that might be enough.

(Might still lurk in the background and read your contributions)

Have you all seen the book/author quiz in the Guardian on the 19th of December? I just found it today.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
And got a measly 25 out of 55 right …

FranHunny wrote: "Justine wrote: "
Happy New Year
to all, and welcome to 2021! The less said about last year the better, I guess, but a new beginning always means new possibilities - and new reading experiences.

..."

Hi Fran. Thanks so much for dropping by, and I hope we see you more often - even once a month!

Your mention of the crockery cookbook reminds me that you once mentioned a book about cakes where I think here were basic recipes but then variants on them. Does that make sense? Is it in English?

Just slipping in here, fran to wish you a Happy New Year. I have missed you and hope all well.
Crockpots can be useful but maybe dish the book!

A catch-up from me on my reading over the last few days, all of which are recommended..
Firstly, Mountain of the Dead: The Dyatlov Pass Incident by Keith McCloskey
In January 1959 nine Russian university students disappeared after a 'ski tourist' trip to the northern Ural mountains (Mount Otorten). The frozen bodies were discovered by search parties several weeks later. To this day, there is no accepted explanation of what happened to them.
The Dyatlov Incident was covered up for many years, by the Soviets and in turn the Russians. It has only recently come to the attention of Western media, with a fifth book being published last week (Dyatlov Pass Incident: The Grotesque Death Of Nine).
This was the first, published in 2013, and does a perfectly good job of explaining all the evidence, and discusssing the subsequent cover-up and investigations.
For any mystery lover it is fascinating stuff; in addition to descriptions of life in Krushchev's USSR, and the logistics of palnning an expedition into the Siberian taiga in the 1950s.
Interesting also, is the nearest town of Ivdel. Like many towns in the area they began as residences for the families of guards running nearby Gulags (mainly ex-Gulags in 1959). Then, and indeed still today, but to a lesser extent, its inhabitants were made up of released prisoners who had finished their sentences and either had no home to return to, or did not have the money to return, and their now retired guards, often living next door to each other.
McCloskey's book was used for a film made in the same year. There has just been an 8 episode mini-series (which I think has been fictionalised) on Russian TV, called Pereval Dyatlova (Dead Mountain), coming to the UK later this year.
I'm keen to read reviews of the last two books (both from 2020) to discover if there have been any recent developments to the mystery, Death of Nine: The Dyatlov Pass Mystery, and the Downey version referred to above.
The BBC made a radio production in 2019 which is available here.

And, Magnus by George Mackay Brown
This is the story of based on the life of Magnus Erlendson, Earl of Orkney from 1106 to (about) 1115.
Magnus's story is told in three Norse sagas, but here recreated as fiction inside 200 pages, by the very wonderful George Mackay Brown.
Magnus was the first son of Erlend Thorfinnsson, Earl of Orkney, who ruled jointly with his twin brother Paal, who also had a son, a joint heir, Haakon Paalsson; two heir-apparents, vying for one Earldom, of very different characters. Haakon, aggressive, quarrelsome and arrogant, and Magnus, quiet, contemplative, and a mystic, reading psalms aloud during a sea battle off the Anglesey coast.
This begins with two incredibly compelling chapters, but what follows cannot quite keep the pace. The first, as a group of 7 boys leave their homes for the first time, and wait on the Birsay shore for the tide to go out, so they can walk across to attend boarding school for two years. And the following chapter, with Magnus and Haakon now young men, on a raiding expedition in the Irish Sea, and the battle off the coast of Anglesey.
One of its most unconventional features, though considered as Historical Fiction, is that (without warning) it slips out of its twelfth-century setting. I was reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in the scene with the police interruption.
I wanted more after the first chapter as the boys attend school - the jump to adulthood seemed too sudden. But the novel is unpredictable, experimental in many ways.
There are moments and scenes which engrave themselves on the memory, it is a tantalising piece of Orkney / Norse history, relevant in the current day as the Scottish people consider their heritage, and whether they have more in common with England and Wales, than with Norway, Shetland, the Faroes and Iceland. But the voices from the Islands are few, the places much changed of course, and more than likely will not be heard.

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
These are an ideal collection of essays to dip in and out of. There is some beautiful writing, packed with intelligence and empathy.
For me, something to read before bed, and most take 10 to 20 minutes, so the ideal length.
Some phrases that Macdonald uses though, recur; more easy to spot when reading for longer periods of time.
My only other complaint, is that there is the occasional stand-out paragraph, and I like to make a note of it, which is difficult to do with the lights out, and under the sheets..
I wasn't to know that hares did not burrow, just settle in a depression, called a form, so as 'to be invisible and yet see everything'. Also, that the females can be pregnant again before birthing the previous leverett.

and finally for now, Northwood: A Novella by Maryse Meijer
I do manage to pick them... another pretty sad and depressing tale, following just after I read Vilas's Ordesa.
But this has a unique quality about it, in that it is told in short segments, often cryptic, often one page / two page pieces of poetry, and other times in a block of text that reads like a usual page of fiction.
Struggling mentally with her father's suicide and her mother's terminal illness an artist decides to spend a year in a secluded cabin in the wilderness. She comes across an older man, and studies his figure. The man is abusive, and at first the artist is enchanted by this.
I'm pleased I read this, though I did struggle to interpret the meaning of the language at times, and consequently for me, it had its highs and lows. Its a style of writing I can certainly admire, but without falling in love with..

Two very different books so far this week/year, so I'll split the comments.

First up: The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths - this is the eleventh book in the Dr Ruth Galloway series, and deals with the crime solving exploits of Ruth and her sometimes lover, the married DCI Harry Nelson. This is an enjoyable and unpretentious police procedural series, where our cop Nelson frequently has recourse to the expertise regarding unearthed bones of Dr Galloway - a forensic archaeologist.

The narrative concerns itself at least as much with the relationships between the friends, colleagues and lovers as it does with the murders and (in this instance) a child abduction. This may sound as if it'll slow down the pace, but in fact it simply makes for believable characters - not the one- or two-dimensional cut-outs all too common in the genre. The dialogues are entirely convincing, and there is a fair amount of humour - not 'jokes', but wry observations and asides - which are presented from the various points of view. Even the plot - which as in almost all these books has its far-fetched elements - is more believable than in most novels of the kind.

It also contains those elements frequently missing from books of this type- the characters have children and pets (Ruth has a cat, which may appeal to some!), so when they are called away, child-minding, cat-feeding and hamster-adopting have to be taken care of. It just sounds more like real life than most series.

For me, the only jarring note comes when the DCI speaks to a medium, whose vague advice proves not too far off. I really would prefer it if writers of crime fiction dispensed with this sort of thing entirely - what's the point? - but it is a tiny part of the book.

The whole series is strongly recommended to any who like the genre - it would probably be better to start at the beginning, but this book, and probably the others, contains potted biographies of the main recurring characters at the back. It is also well researched, with a number of factually correct points in amongst the invented story.

(Interestingly, the alchemy which - for me - works so well in this series, with a fully formed world and cast of characters, is less successful in Griffiths's Brighton mysteries, set in the early 1950s. Something in the only one I read didn't quite ring true - the period setting felt a bit forced, and the characters didn't engage. Perhaps I'll try another, to see - or perhaps not.)

Andy wrote: "And, Magnus by George Mackay Brown
This is the story of based on the life of Magnus Erlendson, Earl of Orkney from 1106 to (about) 1115.
Magnus's story is ..."

I believe that as hares seemed to ‘disappear’ while really they were crouching in a form gave rise to the long held belief that witches could change themselves into hares at will.
Certainly, Harry, my old Somerset companion, spinner of tales by the river, spoke of this ability. The witch in question was supposed to be living in an old rather remote cottage that stood well back from the lane close to the river. Harry would say that the hare would disappear as the woman then would wave from an upstairs window.
Hares are magical creatures. MrC swears that he saw a black hare one morning , early, by the lakes when his eyesight was still sharp although naturalists say no black hares. Once I came across a large group , well several together is a large group for these solitary animals. They were in a kind of circle facing one another as if in a meeting, dashing away immediately, the snapshot imprinted in my memory.

My second book of the year - so far unfinished - is Romain Gary's autobiographical Promise at Dawn. There are no prizes for guessing why I am reading this particular book - sorry!

In fact, I am reading it in the original French - La Promesse de l'Aube - which I would think translates better as "The Promise of the Dawn", but there you go. It is a strangely misleading title: does it not sound rather wonderful, with a life opening before us? I certainly thought so - and expected a description of an upwardly mobile Gary, triumphing in his chosen fields of war, literature, diplomacy and female conquest.

Gary does not take long to disabuse the reader. We soon discover the tale of a young boy who is alone with a mother obsessed with the idea that he will become a 'hero' in some field or another - music, mathematics (a Nobel prize!), dance ("You will be Nijinsky!") etc. He is placed under intolerable pressure, to live up to the unbounded ambitions of his mother - whose boundless love is as unquestioned as it is oppressive, stifling and unhealthy. This is how he explains the phenomenon of mother love - or his mother's love - in Ch. 4 (my translation):

(His first conquest tells him):

- There will never be another woman in your life who will love you like she does. That's for sure.

It was certain. But I didn't know it. It was only when I approached forty that I began to understand. It's not good to be loved so much, so young, so early. That gives you bad habits. You think, that's it. You think that exists somewhere else, that you can find it again. You count on it. You look, you hope, you wait. With mother love, life makes you a promise at dawn that it can never keep...

Well, we know how it ends, even if Gary did not when he wrote these words - he put an end to his days, aged 66. And who can be surprised?

scarletnoir wrote: "Two very different books so far this week/year, so I'll split the comments.

First up: The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths - this is the eleventh book in the Dr Ruth Galloway series,..."

#17 - If you are interested in hearing Elly Griffiths talk about her latest Ruth Galloway (#13) - Night Hawks sign up (you have to buy the book) at https://www.jarrold.co.uk/events-diar...

There are also events listed for Elizabeth Haynes (free) and Rachel Hore (buy book).

PS - the Elizabeth Haynes book involves a windswept Scottish island (the theme is getting as ubiquitous as the snowed in country manor).

Andy wrote: "And, Magnus by George Mackay Brown
This is the story of based on the life of Magnus Erlendson, Earl of Orkney from 1106 to (about) 1115.
Magnus's story is ..."

#14 - I am only up to circa 500 CE in The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings and it is both fascinating and so well written that I am already willing to recommend it. Note: 509 pages of text, then references.

Also see: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

Looks like Magnus (already checked and library has one copy sitting there just waiting for me) will subsequently go on the TBR list.

I'm thinking there must be some film buffs here and those interested in science and crime, as well. I suggest taking a peak at Gresham's online events - https://www.gresham.ac.uk/attend/

Some are even in the evening (6 p.m. London is 10 a.m PST). I have signed up for - What Makes a Film Classic? with Professor Ian Christie FBA

@Paul Thanks for your comment on my pic of the Bouquinistes https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group...! I hope it's ok to reproduce it here since nobody else can see it (including me unless I go to the notifications) because of that stupid GR bug.

"I remember when my companion was making knockout mice at the Institut Curie for 6 months in the long gone days before children. I made frequent bimonthly trips to Paris to visit her, I spent hours and hours and hours wandering through the Bouquinistes. She was cloning, I was browsing, wandering over to Saint Chappelle or watching the sun screens change at the Institut de Monde Arabe. It's too bad they are struggling, I remember picking up Sartre's Age Of Reason Trilogy and my first batch of the Rougon-Macquart novels."

There is something beguiling in the Institut du Monde Arabe. I lived not far from there (a bit higher on the hill of 'Montagne Sainte-Geneviève', actually very close to Institut Curie), and I'd see teens exchange/buy/sell geeky cards on Saturdays just around the corner from the Institut du Monde Arabe.

@interwar/Justine I know you put aside Wuthering Heights, but I forgot to say that I found the first 2-3 chapters (can't remember exactly) very clumsily written. I could not follow who was whom, where the houses/buildings were in relation to one another, or even the different rooms in a given house. A mess, in short. So if you abandoned re-reading it on the basis of these first chapters, it might be worth pushing past them, to when the housekeeper starts telling her 'tales'.

@vermontlogger/Russell Agree about the housekeeper indeed. If at least her (convenient for the narration) disagreeable nosiness had been coupled with some wisdom, this might have proven helpful in preventing a lot of the harm that came the way of Heathcliff, and ultimately to the Ernshaws and Lintons. Have you read these reviews that interwar/Justine posted? https://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/r... The Atlas one in particular is bang on for me.

@Booklooker À toi aussi!

@Franhunny Good to see you again. I had done that quiz too, and ended up with a 36 (with some lucky guesses thrown in for good measure).

scarletnoir wrote (#19): "My second book of the year - so far unfinished - is Romain Gary's autobiographical Promise at Dawn. There are no prizes for guessing why I am reading this particular book - sorry!"

How's the French reading going scarlet? How far are you in the book roughly? Yes, it must have been so wonderful and equally terrifying and suffocating to be on the receiving end of so much unconditional love and blind hope.

I have re-assessed what I thought of Gary's suicide. It seems to have been very much a contented act, of somebody who had a healthy approach to death and who knew from very early on that he would not want to become old. Gary seemed to have grown bored with his life and of the way he was constrained by his own status. He managed to reinvent it and himself for a while under the Emile Ajar masterful trickery, but this deceit too had become full of constraints. He had a nice, enjoyable meal with his editor, wrote his letter, and then departed.

The one I feel sorry for is his son, who had the double blow of (likely) two suicides by his parents, although the circumstances of both are very different of course. He also had a mission given by his dad of publishing the story of the Ajar deception, only for it to be taken away from him by his cousin, who was 'playing' the role of Ajar and broke the news himself (as a vengeance). All a bit sad really, but curiously, not the suicide itself, if you get what I mean.

Gladarvor: Thanks for thinking of my WH toils! The thing is that I do know the book pretty well - have read it a number of times - have guided A-level students through it. What slowed me down was doing a very close analysis of Lockwood's opening narrative, what he reveals about himself, how he presents Heathcliff, how he perceives his own relationship to Heathcliff and the house. Maybe I'll write that up here now that I seem to have gotten my broadband situation more or less sorted (at least, a firm date for the change-over). It will bore everyone, but maybe then I can move on with the rest of the book.

Justine wrote (#25): "Gladarvor: Thanks for thinking of my WH toils! The thing is that I do know the book pretty well - have read it a number of times - have guided A-level students through it. What slowed me down was..."

Ahah, and here I was thinking it was a 'simple' second read! Will very happily read your thoughts on the opening chapters. My in-depth analysis: Lockwood is a complete muppet. Learn to read the room, man.

(How could I forget: yey for the temporary fix of the internet issues!)

Gladarvor wrote: "scarletnoir wrote (#19): "My second book of the year - so far unfinished - is Romain Gary's autobiographical Promise at Dawn. There are no prizes for guessing why I am reading this par..."

Thanks for those observations on Gary - I'll have to read more biographical details when I finish La Promesse.... It seemed to me that the immense pressure put on the young Romain must have played a part in his demise, but who knows? Suicide is rarely triggered by a single thing/event/whatever... as far as I know.

So far, I have reached the end of Ch. 5 (p.38); the edition runs to 18 chapters and 156 pages... progress is pretty good. On the average, I'd say there are 2 or 3 words or phrases which are unfamiliar per page. The only problem - I can't read it in bed, as I need the laptop handy to check these immediately!

scarletnoir wrote (#27): "It seemed to me that the immense pressure put on the young Romain must have played a part in his demise, but who knows?"

Well, it certainly predestined him to high octane life (lives). So perhaps he felt he was done with it. 66 years of his life would look like at the very least thrice as much of mine!

The only problem - I can't read it in bed, as I need the laptop handy to check these immediately!

Can't your wife play that role? ;-). Plus you can always have your laptop on the bedside table. Anyhoo - well done, and keep going!

PS: I'm surprised by "156 pages" though. Mine (this Folio https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/bo...) has got 390 pages... Even with small margins and a very small font size, I'm not sure how they can cram it all in there!

FranHunny wrote: "Justine wrote: "
Happy New Year
to all, and welcome to 2021! The less said about last year the better, I guess, but a new beginning always means new possibilities - and new reading experiences.

..."

I got 27.

Stupid quiz.

Justine wrote: "FranHunny wrote: "Justine wrote: "
Happy New Year
to all, and welcome to 2021! The less said about last year the better, I guess, but a new beginning always means new possibilities - and new read..."
The crockpot book is in English, the baking book was a German one about Muffins - or a German one about One dough (batter?), 50 recipes - all kinds of cakes from the same kind of dough, just with different fruits/nuts/ baking tins/ spices ...

Max (Outrage) wrote: "FranHunny wrote: "Justine wrote: "
Happy New Year
to all, and welcome to 2021! The less said about last year the better, I guess, but a new beginning always means new possibilities - and new read..."
Well, yes, some questions WERE stupid! What colour did the father in law of the author wear in the year after the author married their child-kind of stupid.

Now that The Great Gatsby is in the public domain, I am looking forward to finding a publisher for my series of mysteries featuring sleuth Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.

@CCubon I think the book has the odd better recipe, I am not even averse to cooking with a can of ready made soup, I just cannot get some US staples. And while I might find a way to replace cream chicken soup, I don't even know, what Americans mwan by Half and half. But more ibfuriating is when there is a pressure coojer recipe and the author still has slow cooker cooking time. Nope!

FranHunny (33) wrote: "@CCubon I think the book has the odd better recipe, I am not even averse to cooking with a can of ready made soup, I just cannot get some US staples. And while I might find a way to replace cream c..."

The book that interested me was the 'one dough 50 recipes' - but it's in German, alas. Yeah, those US terms can be confusing.

Bill wrote: "Now that The Great Gatsby is in the public domain, I am looking forward to finding a publisher for my series of mysteries featuring sleuth Doctor T. J. Eckleburg."

I look forward to those!

FranHunny wrote: " I don't even know, what Americans mean by Half and half. ..."

Half cream, half milk.

Gladarvor (#23)– Those reviews are really interesting (sorry I missed them before, Justine). The ferocity of WH is just beyond the ken of most of her urbane contemporaries, though as you say the Atlas review is insightful, and shows quite a lot of admiration. If I were to read WH again I might well find I share Atlas’s reservations too.

Gladarvor wrote: PS: I'm surprised by "156 pages" though. Mine (this Folio https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/bo...) has got 390 pages

Indeed - well, you are confirming my suspicion: the edition I was sent is clearly a textbook, with notes and explanations - and it says "premier partie" on the cover. (The notes 'usefully' explain who Vronsky, Anna Karenina, Ibsen and Sarah Bernhardt were, as well as 'obscure' words such as 'recel' and 'quarantaine' - for example! By and large, the explanations manage to miss those words and phrases I don't know...)

I don't think my wife would appreciate being used as a dictionary in bed, and I don't think the presence of a laptop would help me get off to sleep, either!

Lljones wrote: "FranHunny wrote: " I don't even know, what Americans mean by Half and half. ..."

Half cream, half milk."

How disappointing.

The Dutch take on 'half and half' is much more to my taste:
https://wynand-fockink.nl/nl/producte...

scarletnoir (39) wrote: "Lljones wrote: "FranHunny wrote: " I don't even know, what Americans mean by Half and half. ..."

Half cream, half milk."

How disappointing.

The Dutch take on 'half and half' is much more to my t..."

I had to be 'of legal drinking age' to enter that site!

Justine wrote:I had to be 'of legal drinking age' to enter that site!

Indeed - and in a very ungallant way, they ask for your birth date, not just a statement that you are 18+ (or whatever it is in the Netherlands)!

FranHunny (9) wrote: "Justine wrote: "
Happy New Year
to all, and welcome to 2021! The less said about last year the better, I guess, but a new beginning always means new possibilities - and new reading experiences.

..."

About crockpots. This is going to sound crazy, but they are a sort of inverted pressure cooker - they take three times as long to cook something as in a conventional moderate oven (2 hours takes 6), while a pressure cooker takes one third the time (2 hours becomes 40 mins). The pressure cooker also has a bit of extra time coming up to pressure.

The point is that both devices are suited to the same sort of recipes for braises, casseroles and soups. There are some very good pressure cooker recipe books, get one and use that.

Anyway, Happy New Year, we hope! You poor sods in the northern hemisphere may not be quite safe yet.

May I add my thanks to Justine. I don't pop in much as I find it all a bit difficult to navigate, but I'm very grateful it is here.

Just finished The Irregular by HB Lyle. It is a bit daft but hugely entertaining, and, it turns out, some of it is based on real characters and events of the time.

A young rascal escapes a brutal childrens home in early 20th Century London and while becoming streetwise and observant is befriended and mentored by Sherlock Holmes, who pays him and his gang of urchins to be his eyes and ears on the street.

From there he gets mixed up with the formation of the secret service as well as Russian criminals and anarchists, German spies and a quite wonderful femme fatale.

Its well written, pacy, not without humour and does not romanticize, the grimness of life for the underclass of well, the world really.

Good enough that I'll read another.

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a peaceful holiday, despite the circumstances.

I'm so sorry to show up after a while away and immediately nag everyone with a request, but does anyone have good recommendations for Australian non-fiction books focusing on Aboriginal and/or Settler society? History books are preferred but I'd welcome books on contemporary issues too. I recently listened to the "Wrong Skin" podcast, which examined a specific crime in Kimberley in Western Australia in the 1990s and it was really interesting. It was a region I knew nothing about. I would love a good Australian history book to listen to as an audiobook, but I'm not sure where to start. I'm sorry to be a massive pain but thank you in advance if you have any recommendations for this clueless British person!

I'm reading "Killers of the Flower Moon" by John Krakauer, about the murders of oil-rich Osage Nation men and women in the 1920s. It's extremely readable in that "lean-prose re-telling of history as if it were a thriller" sort of way, but the people and history involved in the story are so interesting that sometimes I wish Krakauer wouldn't be afraid to make the pacing suffer to go into some more detail.

Lljones (36) wrote: "FranHunny wrote: " I don't even know, what Americans mean by Half and half. ..."

Half cream, half milk."

What we call evaporated milk (not condensed milk, which is sweet).

Brings back awful memories of my trip to the US and Canada in 1976. Asking for white coffee got slightly suspicious incomprehension, asking for coffee with milk would get you black coffee with a glass of milk, the usual thing was a little container of haf 'n haf. When I got coffee on Air Canada and it came with real milk I nearly burst into tears.

Miri (44) wrote: "Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a peaceful holiday, despite the circumstances.

I'm so sorry to show up after a while away and immediately nag everyone with a request, but does anyone have goo..."

These days there's plenty of Aboriginal history, and Aboriginal historians. However you could try starting with just about anything by good old Henry Reynolds, the original white expert consciousness raiser.

I was reading The Little history of poetry in bed last night, the chapter on John Donne and his sensuous love poetry. (MrC was fast asleep ) .
Interested I used Poetry Foundation to learn more and discovered this portrait of Donne as a young man. My was he handsome if it is a true likeness. Those wicked eyes! Reminds me of Errol Flynn, he was a handsome devil, too.


https://postimg.cc/kVpXzghZ

Donne wrote some brilliant love poems but also
Hope not for mind in women, at their best
Sweetness and wit, they are but mummy possessed. ‘

In this, mummy means ‘mummified corpses’ . Hmmm

Life and FateLife and Fate by Vassily Grossman

Wow.

Just a masterpiece that veers between devastation and the rage and fear with perfect balance and control. Clearly inspired by War and Peace, I think it might actually exceed Tolstoy if for no other reason than it is so much more current and vibrant. It's easy to see parallels between Paulus's marooning in Stalingrad and Napoleon's folly, but it's harder to empathize with the French and Russian citizens in Tolstoy's work, if for no other reason than temporal distance.

It follows the tattered skein of the Shaposhnikov family and their relations as they are pulled apart to lager, war, struggle and unmarked graves. Seemingly centered around the Russian victory of repelling the Axis forces from the Russian steppe, it's really a vehement repudiation of the Soviet state.
It really goes further than any other book I've yet read to attack and dismantle the Soviet myth. While I found myself impressed and grateful that Grossman wrote it, I can't help but see a hopeful naivety in his expectation that it would have ever seen publication in his own country. There was clearly a hope in Krushchev and the rejection and distancing from the savageries of Stalinism, but Grossman could have only hoped for the perestroika that came about long after his death. In fact, you can see brief glimpses of hope, portraying Krushchev as a dark-horse savior to pull the state out from under the thumb of Josef Vissarianovich.
Grossman doesn’t hold back. He gives Hitler moments of humanity, and Stalin moments of absolute monstrosity. He portrays the horrors of the German gas chambers, but doesn’t shy away from reflecting them in the light of the earlier pogroms that Russian Jewery had to face. He doesn’t show any difference in the fate of the Russian soldier held in German lagers with the fate of German soldiers sent to Siberia. In fact he goes one better and shows the fate that awaits all of those encircled, captured Russian soldiers when they do finally trudge home seemingly liberated.

The book circles around the maelstrom of the Soviet penal system and the weight of millions of unknown eyes and forced conformity leading to a systemic paranoia. It doesn’t have any problem labeling the purges as illegitimate and the perpetual auto-phagocytosis necessary to dispose of the past revolutionaries. When reality changes, loyalty is not allowed to be adaptive. What was right, no longer becomes expedient and arms and tails have to be sent to the Lubyanka in order for new limbs to sprout.

The parallel track of the main protagonist, Shtrum, shows the vagaries of necessity that disposed of expertise and theory when it didn’t seem to march lock-step with short-term goals. Shtrum and his inner workings is one of the best portrayals of scientific endeavor that I’ve ever read. The push-pull of insular belief and the need for recognition, the incapacity of experimentalists and theorists, the symbiotic need between those that do and those that predict, the need for- and unpredictability of basic research. Shtrum, and hence Grossman himself, were the most viable scientists that I’ve read in literature. Right up there with Sinclair Lewis’ Arrowsmith.


Life and Fate contains some of the most blood-draining horrible episodes that I’ve ever read. I’ll say only David and The Dolls, and anyone who has ever read the book will know what I mean. Or the cackling in the Lubyanka. Despite the horror, it never gets unreadable, it pulls you along, there is a magnetism and veracity from which you cannot look away. It’s an inimitable work, one that springs forth from Tolstoy and Chekhov and Dostoevsky but in many ways carves out its own place in the stars.

Thank you, Magrat, I'll look into it!

Also mea culpa - realised I said "Killers of the Flower Moon" is by John Krakauer when it is by David Grann. Double shame on me as the papernack was sitting right next to me while I wrote the post.

Thank you, Paul, for a wonderful review of LIFE AND FATE! I agree with every word! LIFE AND FATE is a highlight of my long reading life. Long is the novel too, but it doesn’t feel long. Read it some years ago, but lingers in my brain, body and blood still.

Some time soon I want to read Anthony Beevor’s STALINGRAD, from there on to Grossman’s STALINGRAD, his prequel to LIFE AND FATE, which I understand is not quite ‘up there’ with Life and Fate, but I’ll judge that for myself. And who knows, perhaps it’s time for a re-read....

NOW for something entirely different, a re-visit to the MOOMINS. Tove Jansson’s MOOMINLAND MIDWINTER. Last visited sixty years ago.
Variety is the spice of Life!