Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello, all!




First off, I'm sorry to report that Anne has decided to step down from her role here at Ersatz.  I know we'll all miss her great thread-openers.  Let's hope she'll drop by to see us now and again.




Anyone interested in taking on the task of starting new weekly/bi-weekly threads?  Please contact me with a private message through Goodreads if so. (You'll need to be on my 'friends' list to use the GR mail, so send a friend request if necessary).




In the meantime, here's a new thread....  I'll do my best to get some posts about books together soon.  You wouldn't know it from my posting, but I do still read a book now and again.  😉

@Anne: I will miss your lovely personal intros.
I sincerely hope you are well.

Hello, everyone. I'm sorry to say that I've decided I simply have too much going on at the moment, and I'm failing to keep on top of it all. I expect to contribute to both ersatz TLS and What We're Reading again in the (hopefully, near) future, but for now I need to focus on other priorities. Not goodbye, then, merely an au revoir. Keep well, everyone.

Made my first trip to London since January 2020 today, met friends in Battersea or a thai meal which was delicious, the pollution and the smells of london not so welcome and vivid after 2.5 years of country air

Sad to see you have stepped back Anne but thanks for all your work

I am dogsitting tommorow, even further into the shires(and for 10 days in August), its my brothers 4 yr old labrador bitch, a delightful little thing called Daisy. So if i'm AWOL in mid August, its probably due to appalling wifi and lots of dogwalks!

Anne wrote: "Hello, everyone. ..."

Thank you, Anne, for the great intros. Looking forward to seeing you back when you've got more time.

Thanks Anne for your hard work. And Lisa too of course.

For @CCC - about cataracts. I had mine - 2 (six-weeks apart) quite a while ago. Before that surgery, I had worn glasses since 4th or 5th grade - nearsighted.

After surgery, I still wear glasses when driving because one of my eyes is now classified as 'lazy'. Unfortunately, I point the finger for that at my eye doctor and that he may have waited a little too long to do the surgery.

I also have a pair of readers in almost every room in the house as they are quite inexpensive and seem to go 'walkabout' on their own otherwise.

One further thing, I had my surgery done without any happy juice at all which really pissed off the nurses in recovery (Surgery was done at local general hospital.)

Thank you MK . it seems we each have a different kind of problem.
I couldn’t quite understand why nobody else mentioned the almost complete lack of sight in the affected eye.
My son had his done fairly recently to counteract increased pressure / glaucoma and that has been successful.

Anne wrote: "Hello, everyone. I'm sorry to say that I've decided I simply have too much going on at the moment, and I'm failing to keep on top of it all. I expect to contribute to both ersatz TLS and What We're..."

Thankyou Anne, for your great intros, and kindly shepherding of us all. Much appreciated by me, and hoping to hear back from you when 'stuff' settles down a bit. I am well acquainted with the 'stuff' that intervenes... in every day life... anyway take care and hope to hear from you, on either Ersatz, or WWAR, in the not too distant future.

Anne wrote: "Hello, everyone. I'm sorry to say that I've decided I simply have too much going on at the moment, and I'm failing to keep on top of it all. I expect to contribute to both ersatz TLS and What We're..."

Good to hear that you will still be contributing, and thanks for your work on this - it's been great!

CCCubbon wrote: "I couldn’t quite understand why nobody else mentioned the almost complete lack of sight in the affected eye."

No first-hand experience of this, but for my mother - the right eye (the better one) was operated on for a cataract 10 years ago, and the eye lens was replaced... her sight was poor in that eye before the op, much better afterwards - she went on driving until age 95. By now, it's finished for that eye because of macular degeneration - light and shade only.

The second eye - which was 'lazy' - was only operated on this year, by which point the lens was so cloudy the retina was no longer visible to opthalmologists - and at which point she could not distinguish facial features with faces looking like blobs. The lens was removed but not replaced, and she was fitted with aphakic spectacles... eyesight now 6/36 (macular degeneration in that eye, too, but still treatable). Light and colours now much more visible, and she can now read the very large letters in 2 or 3 lines of an eye chart, as well as lettering on the TV show 'Countdown', so long as she sits on top of the set - which she has done for the last 3 years or so.

Hope that helps.

All this talk of eyes - went for my annual eye test yesterday. Really kind optician went through the results of the scan I had and stated quite firmly that I did not have AMD. Have to have stronger lenses as a result of the developing cataracts but I still have better than 20/20 vision wearing the specs, so delighted and grateful.

Not so delighted at the cost of the new pairs of varifocals and sunglasses!

Anne wrote: "Hello, everyone. I'm sorry to say that I've decided I simply have too much going on at the moment, and I'm failing to keep on top of it all. I expect to contribute to both ersatz TLS and What We're..."

Many thanks for your efforts Anne.

Thanks, Anne, for all the work you put in to make this place viable. Much appreciated!

dogsitting was fun, watching buzzards circling, swallows swooping, butterflies flitting and the countryside looked awesome with labrador in tow. managed to read some Dagerman but was mainly watching the westminster farce as the clown clings to office

for weather watchers, i hate to report that a filthy wall of heat is descending on the shires from Sunday, for a whole week, it will ruin the summer feel so far and its such a shame

AB76 wrote: "dogsitting was fun, watching buzzards circling, swallows swooping, butterflies flitting and the countryside looked awesome with labrador in tow. managed to read some Dagerman but was mainly watchin..."

Not preparing to be grumpy again are you?

giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "dogsitting was fun, watching buzzards circling, swallows swooping, butterflies flitting and the countryside looked awesome with labrador in tow. managed to read some Dagerman but was m..."

with six days of 28-30c heat.....its very likely! i dont think any books have been discussed in this thread yet either.....not that i have mentioned any...lol

Just recieved in the post my order of "Existentialism:70 Years After" by Yale Uni Press (Yale French Studies), should be interesting

Thank you, Anne, for the many great intros. Hope you will be back soon.

AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "dogsitting was fun, watching buzzards circling, swallows swooping, butterflies flitting and the countryside looked awesome with labrador in tow. managed to read som..."

Haha, good job it isn't the Guardian! I have been reading Andrew Taylor's Marwood and Hakesby series set in post Great Fire of London times. Stories are ok but descriptions of London life are interesting.

Thanks Anne and Lisa for keeping this place alive and well.

Paul wrote: "Thanks Anne and Lisa for keeping this place alive and well."

Two dedicated people to whom we owe a lot.

Robert wrote: "Paul wrote: "Thanks Anne and Lisa for keeping this place alive and well."

Two dedicated people to whom we owe a lot."

Seconded.

Thirded.

Gpfr wrote: "Thirded."

Fourthed!

Hugo von Hofmannsthal – Zweig in The World of Yesterday is almost ecstatic about his extraordinary contemporary, whom he first knew as a 16-year-old. I know him only as a librettist. There doesn’t seem to be a standard Penguin or OWC collection. Any recommendations for translations, in particular the early work?

From the last few days for me…
Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein.

There’s a lot that can be done with the ‘whodunnit’ section of the crime genre, and Lakhous’s shrewdly observant and humorous novella certainly demonstrates that.

In actual fact, the ‘whodunnit’ aspect, is far from being the main theme of this inventive piece.
Just after the corpse of a delinquent tenant, nicknamed ‘the Gladiator’, is discovered in the elevator of an apartment block in Rome, Amadeo, a friendly but mysterious man ‘from the south of the south’, goes missing. But it’s not a case of just where Amadeo is, but also who.

Ten other unreliable residents give overlapping and conflicting versions of what happened before an equally unreliable police detective arrives at two contradictory and erroneous conclusions.

What really works well here though is the ‘clash of civilisations’, or the engagement between very different cultures, and it’s not the Catholic Italian versus Muslim that might be expected.
Iranian Parviz is revolted by a girl eating pizza on the metro, ‘as big as an umbrella’. Though the battle between natives of Rome and those of Naples within the building is a greater one.

With much of the action taking place in the elevator, this is as relevant today as when it was first published in 2008, a portrait of multicultural Italian society that fits to any Western society with non-native populations. Lakhous ratchets up the tension to a satisfying finale in what is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

and Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

This is clearly going down well considering it’s media reviews. I can’t find a bad one. I’ve read quite a few from Moshfegh, but was disappointed by this.

It’s all very well using adjectives like ‘disgusting’ and ‘depraved’, but I felt the writing was watered down. To broach topics like cannibalism, torture, plague, child abuse and rape is nothing unexpected in a corrupt fiefdom of the Middle Ages. If humour is left out all together it will attract critics. But here it veers too much into Black Adder territory, and beyond, I found it funny when it wasn’t supposed to be, amused at it rather than with it. The art of weaving a tint of black humour in is a real skill, and I don’t think it works here.

It has the feel in sections, such as the cannabalistic pages, of them being added at a later stage, for shock value. For me at least, they had the opposite effect, and came across as tedious.

And .. it’s too long.

Should anyone want it, here is an example of a book that captures the horrors of the Middle Ages much more convincingly, and with a more appropriate seasoning of humour...The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart.

and, The Nightwatchman Wisden Cricket Quarterly Issue 38 edited by Matt Thacker

For cricket enthusiasts these quarterly books are great. I have the whole set, of which this is the most recent, but still have probably more than 20 of them to read.

I spoke to the Editor (an old friend) when I was midway through this, whilst trying to get the powers at Goodreads to accept a book that didn’t have an ISBN. I got there… eventually…

I made the point that the June edition is always one of favourites, and Matt countered that by saying for him also, as with the Writing Competition and the Photograph of the Year highlights taking up the pages it does, it means it’s less work.

My own highlights here were..
William Dobson - Lahore’s Long Wait Is Over - having watched a Test Match in Faisalabad in 1990 whilst backpacking and being treated as a VIP,

Francis Neate on the history of the game in Italy,

and something very topical, Luke Alfred on Mark Boucher, who is about to lead South Africa as coach in England, and accusations of racism, it seems, that were brushed under the carpet.
I suspect this is going to be a fairly major issue in a few weeks time.

There’s even a rare piece of fiction, Stephen Connor’s After The Fall, about cricket in a dystopian future world.
Well, just about everything else has been imagined in dystopian world, so why not cricket?

[image error] src=https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/...

I still have a ways to go to insert an image here, but I think you - all of you - will agree with this, if you click on the link.

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/...

I put the image link between <> brackets with image between the first bracket and /image between the second.

Hope that helps. But not sure if it applies to e-books!

Andy wrote: "From the last few days for me…
Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous translated from the French (Algerian) by Ann Goldstein. [..."

Andy wrote: "From the last few days for me…
[book:Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio|3229855] by Amara Lakhous translated from the French (Algerian) by Ann Goldstein. [..."

Thanks - Unfortunately, some miscreant has lost my library's only copy. Guess I'll have to add it to my ever growing shopping cart at Powells.

Andy wrote: "and, The Nightwatchman Wisden Cricket Quarterly Issue 38 edited by Matt Thacker

For cricket enthusiasts these quarterly books..."

i have enjoyed editions of this too Andy...very well written, my last one was a few years back. As for Boucher, i think that situation will be very uncomfortable for him..

Russell wrote: "Hugo von Hofmannsthal – Zweig in The World of Yesterday is almost ecstatic about his extraordinary contemporary, whom he first knew as a 16-year-old. I know him only as a librettist. There doesn’t ..."

i think NYRB have an edition of his work but i have always found it hard to find more than this volume:

The Lord Chandos Letter and Other Writings

A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce is a delightful book. Montanari is doing an online talk here - https://www.semcoop.com/short-history...
To register, scroll down and click on the book's title.

This is just one of his Italian foodie books. Yum!

Russell wrote: "Hugo von Hofmannsthal ..."

I'm enjoying the nyrb edition right now, but I'm afraid it doesn't look like there are many other editions. The selection excludes the novella-length tales, so there is clearly room for some more translation work.

SydneyH wrote: "Russell wrote: "Hugo von Hofmannsthal ..."

I'm enjoying the nyrb edition right now, but I'm afraid it doesn't look like there are many other editions. The selection excludes the novella-length tal..."

its odd with the great Austrian writers, some have been translated twice, same novel even (see mu Zweig post in last thread), some only in last few years(Kraus), while others remain almost neglected while always referenced in every study of Austro-Hungarian literature..

AB, SydneyH – Thanks for pointing me to the Lord Chandos volume. As you say, let’s hope NYRB commission some more. I found a few pages of HvH's verse in translation in anthologies of world poetry, and an interesting-looking essay on Shakespeare's kings and noblemen in an old Penguin collection called Shakespeare in Europe.

Andy wrote: "Well, just about everything else has been imagined in dystopian world, so why not cricket?"

It can't be all that bad if there is still cricket! This must be a very mild dystopia... with luck, there'll be a place for rugby,too.

MK wrote: " src=https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/......"

Haha! very good!

Russell wrote: "AB, SydneyH – Thanks for pointing me to the Lord Chandos volume. As you say, let’s hope NYRB commission some more. I found a few pages of HvH's verse in translation in anthologies of world poetry, ..."

i would imagine google could throw up more like that as well Russ.

Have you read any of Arthur Schnitzler's novels or stories? I think he is worth reading too if fin de siècle Vienna and the 1880-1914 period interests you. My favourite of his was The Road In The Open and of course all his great plays

scarletnoir wrote: "Andy wrote: "Well, just about everything else has been imagined in dystopian world, so why not cricket?"

It can't be all that bad if there is still cricket! This must be a very mild dystopia... wi..."

when i think of cricket dystopia, i imagine a doom loop of ashes defeats on repeat,down under.....oh hang on...thats reality....

Friends question (not the soap)

do many of you get friend requests from non-Ersatzers? I am never sure how they find me and why they requested it, is it all due to that dodgy GR algorithm which matches a certain % of books you read against somebody elses?

AB76 wrote: "when i think of cricket dystopia, i imagine a doom loop of ashes defeats on repeat,down under.....oh hang on...thats reality...."

No need to be gloomy, you guys have had a big turn around :)

SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "when i think of cricket dystopia, i imagine a doom loop of ashes defeats on repeat,down under.....oh hang on...thats reality...."

No need to be gloomy, you guys have had a big turn ar..."

lol....at home its a different story syd.....away from home is where we are in the doom loop

Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Franz Werfel.

All of them Jewish, born in the 1880s/early 90s, in what was then the Austrian-Hungarian empire.

Like Ernst Weiss. Ernst Who?

Ernst Weiss was (like Joseph Roth) born in Galicia. A doctor by profession he was encouraged to pursue his writing ambitions by Franz Kafka whom he met and became friends with in 1913. In 1933 he left Berlin for Prague to look after his mother. After her death, in 1934, he emigrated to Paris. He wasn't allowed to work as a doctor and couldn't make enough money writing for emigrant publications. Like some others he was saved fom destitution by the generosity of fellow writers, in his case Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig.
On June 15, 1940, one day after the Nazis occupied the city, Ernst Weiss took his own life.

I cannot understand why he is all but forgotten, even in Germany. He might not quite have the calibre of the other four, but, imo, he is a good and original writer in his own right. If he weren't I doubt Kafka, Zweig and Mann would have endorsed him.

I just finished "Der arme Verschwender" ("The Poor Spendthrift", not translated into English), a father and son story, told by the eponymous protagonist, the son. Some stylistic flaws and could be 50++ pages shorter, but overall an excellent description of an authoritarian, manipulative father and the dynamic between him and his son who cannot help but love him.

That was the second book by Weiss I've read. The first I read over 20 years ago. Mainly because I was intrigued by the title



Letham, in cold blood, murders his wife for her money. He is caught and deported to a penal colony in the tropics. Where he soon gets the chance to work as a doctor again, part of a team researching yellow fever.
I have forgotten the details. But I remember how gripped I was, by the atmosphere and by this character. Who also had a terrible father. Does that excuse anything, make him more likeable? Do his self experiments with yellow fever atone for what he did, what he is? Not really, iirc.

I'd like to re-read it to see what I would think of it now.

AB76 wrote: "...Have you read any of Arthur Schnitzler's novels or stories?..."

I read La Ronde years ago but not any of his novels. The Road in the Open is now on the TBR list. Interested also in Georg's suggestion of Ernst Weiss. HvH for the moment, though.

Russell wrote: "AB76 wrote: "...Have you read any of Arthur Schnitzler's novels or stories?..."

I read La Ronde years ago but not any of his novels. The Road in the Open is now on the TBR list. Interested also in..."

There is some Weiss in translation available from Pushkin publishers in think Russ. I am currently reading some non-fiction by Karl Kraus which you may like too, his first essay on the Zionist movement of 1899 was fascinating

Georg wrote: "Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Franz Werfel.

All of them Jewish, born in the 1880s/early 90s, in what was then the Austrian-Hungarian empire.

Like Ernst Weiss. Ernst Who?

Ernst Weiss w..."

Weiss has a few short works in english translation but i agree, far less exposure than Franny K and the rest.

AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Andy wrote: "Well, just about everything else has been imagined in dystopian world, so why not cricket?"

It can't be all that bad if there is still cricket! This must be a very..."

At least until next year..

Enjoyed your comment SN..

AB76 wrote: "Friends question (not the soap)

do many of you get friend requests from non-Ersatzers? I am never sure how they find me and why they requested it, is it all due to that dodgy GR algorithm which ma..."

Certainly do. Usually at least one a day.
Some no question are spam.
If a friend has liked / commented on a friend (of theirs) book then it appears on your stream, and that rolls on..
Or a review of a book you’ve read.
So that’s another possible way.

As well as that algorithm you mention i look at whether we share friends.
Generally I don’t accept requests from authors. A couple of exceptions.
I’ve been offered several ARCs but don’t accept.
Except in one case, where the guy from Quebec books, who is a GR friend, made it very clear he didn’t expect any sort of review. He posted me several books.

I like to look through what GR friends are reading, and don’t want that cluttered up by too many friends when it turns out their tastes aren’t similar after all.