Ersatz TLS discussion

Re French Canada from the old thread:

whats also interesting is that the bloodline was "improved" by the 800 french women sent in 1663-1673 by The Sun King called "The Kings Daughters". It seems that 80% were from paris, normandy and western france. as they were held to high standards, they may have been exceptional physically, though it seems that many were of non-noble origin

The Shires are mired in the second quite long, severe cold snap of the last 8 weeks, as with the December coldsnap, no snow has fallen but the flooded fields have frozen expanses of water and the ice lies in the shade all day....

As for reading, its all going well with the following reads:
When Women Kill by Alia Traubucco Zeran (non fiction)
Butchers Crossing by John Williams(1960) (novel)
Jerusalem Embattled by Harry Levin (1950) (non-fiction)
Flotsam and Jetsam(Stories) by Aidan Higgins 1960-90 (short stories)

The account of the Holy City under siege (Levin) gets better and better and is a wonderful find. I can find almost nothing about Harry Levin, though he writes in english and died in the mid 1960s. Whats so wonderful is the literary touch to his writing, finding the beauty in the Holy City, amid the pressure, fighting, rations and death. He conjures up the desperate feeling among the 97,000 Jews in the city as the Arabs attack, Mizrahi, Ashkenzai, Sephardi native born Jews and then survivors of the Nazi camps, all fighting desperately to save the idea of Israel.

Greetings, all!

January is nearly finished, but not winter, at least not here in the PNW. Hope you’re all keeping warm and cozy.

I didn’t hear from anyone about taking on ownership of our bi-weekly threads, so I thought I’d just put the request out again. Please let me know if you’re interested…

In the meantime, here are five literary-related links, for those who find themselves with an empty TBR list:

From Literary Hub:

The Ultimate Best Books of 2022 List
https://lithub.com/the-ultimate-best-...

-----------------------------

Thanks to @Gpfr for this one:

Ambassadors Recommend the One Book to Read Before Visiting Their Country
https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/22...

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From NBC’s Today Show:
41 new books we can't wait to read in 2023
https://www.today.com/popculture/best...

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The 2023 ToB tourney opens 8 March 2023:
Announcing the 2023 Tournament of Books
https://themorningnews.org/article/th...

--------------------------------

And again from Literary Hub:

A Modernist’s Modernist: On the Brilliance—and Influence—of Katherine Mansfield
https://lithub.com/a-modernists-moder...

My bff has been reading Mansfield lately, making me want to revisit her.

AB76 wrote: "The Shires are mired in the second quite long, severe cold snap of the last 8 weeks, as with the December coldsnap, no snow has fallen but the flooded fields have frozen expanses of water and the i..."

About cold snaps, I just put up a photo stolen from this a.m.'s FB scroll - Ice Dancing on Cley Marshes. Just so you won't feel alone in the cold snap.

MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The Shires are mired in the second quite long, severe cold snap of the last 8 weeks, as with the December coldsnap, no snow has fallen but the flooded fields have frozen expanses of wa..."

love that pic!

from Jan to November 2022 in the shires, we barely had 5 days of frost, with a summer of record temps, so the last 8 weeks have been a bit of a shock, two 10 day cold spells and frost every night, so thats 20 frosts in that time!

my fear is a slow trend of extremes in the shires, hotter, longer heatwaves(already a feature since 2020) and now these colder, longer coldspells...

First thoughts are for Greenfairy and Tam - I do hope that any health problems prove to be not too serious (Gf) and treatable (both of you) - and good health to all others on the forum.

scarletnoir wrote: "First thoughts are for Greenfairy and Tam - I do hope that any health problems prove to be not too serious (Gf) and treatable (both of you) - and good health to all others on the forum."

Seconded by me.

Did you read my last post on dragon boats? If not here it is:

https://archive.ph/k6EYz

scarletnoir wrote: "First thoughts are for Greenfairy and Tam - I do hope that any health problems prove to be not too serious (Gf) and treatable (both of you) - and good health to all others on the forum."

i second that!

giveusaclue wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "First thoughts are for Greenfairy and Tam - I do hope that any health problems prove to be not too serious (Gf) and treatable (both of you) - and good health to all others on th..."

Origins of dragon boat festivals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_...

AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "First thoughts are for Greenfairy and Tam - I do hope that any health problems prove to be not too serious (Gf) and treatable (both of you) - and good health to all others on th...

i second that!"

Thirded, here.

LLJ... thanks as ever for the intro, and the links, one of which I had missed.

Reporting on two reads from the last few days..

Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs by Greil Marcus

I don't have much interest in Dylan's music after Desire, 1976, so only four out of the seven songs used as chapters for the book were engaging personally. Fortunately, these four are by far the longest.

There are few bigger Dylan fans than Greil Marcus. Four of his nineteen books concern him, and he writes frequently in the press and in magazines about him also. His knowledge and research of everything Dylan-related, no matter how obscure, is impressive indeed.

The test, I read, of a piece of non-fiction such as this, is would it be appreciated by someone who wasn't a Dylan fan, and indeed, someone who was totally unaware of him. I think the answer is, only in a very limited way. The book assumes some knowledge, though does send the reader scurrying for the CDs.

I've closely followed Dylan since I was a teenager, when I used to listen to certain of his songs repeatedly to the point where now they have been a little spoilt.. Hurricane, for example.
These days my favourite of his varies from day to day. Late on a Saturday night with a glass of Talisker I'll dig for something on YouTube from the Newport Folk Festival, for example, North Country Blues from 1963.
Or something from Rolling Thunder, like Romance in Durango.

Certainly Marcus gives interesting information about the lyrics which I was not aware of before. There are also plenty of references to musical sources and resources used by the author. I didn't, however, find his writing style particularly compelling, there is a habit of going off on tangents, but the main problem I had, was that in certain sections it feels like Dylan is a mere bystander as Marcus digresses into his own personal musings.

Though chapters like Blowin' In The Wind rarely verge away from the song and its lyrics, others do, for example, Jim Jones, in which it is 36 pages until the song is even mentioned.
Desolation Row barely mentions the 1965 gem.

Its a nice idea, a biography told through the work of a particular artist. By limiting himself to seven, the task was made harder; the chosen songs are not chronological, and neither is the narrative, which makes it harder again. I am left with the feeling that it could have been so much better.

Here's a clip from early in the book, when my hopes will still high..

There are people in this song. There are birds. There are mountains. There is the ocean. There is the wind. There are questions, and there are answers. Why is the world the way it is? Why is there war, cruelty, and hate? Will this ever change?
So today, whenever people feel they are being treated unfairly -
Whenever they know other people only see what they look like, and not who they really are -
They can listen to "Blowin' In The Wind."
They can say,
Yes. I am in that song. That song is about me, too.

and, The Burial of Monsieur Bouvet by Georges Simenon translated from the French by Eugene MacCown.
(also called Inquest on Bouvet )

This is an obscure and out of print Simenon, not a Maigret, and not a romans-durs, so a stand-alone, and, though invesigated by the police, certainly not the usual sort of detective novel or police procedural.

On a fine August morning at the Quai de la Tournelle, on the banks of the Seinse close to Notre Dame, an elderly man browsing cheap colour prints at a stall drops dead. Though M. Bouvet is well known and has lived there for many years he has never spoken of a family or of his past.

That would appear to be the end of the matter, but by chance, a student took a photograph of the scene including the dead Bouvet, and sells it to a newspaper, which prints it. Bouvet is recognised by an American woman who goes to the police with information that this man was her ex-husband, Samuel Marsh, who owned a gold mine in Congo. This is just the start of the unveiling of the many different faces of the so-called 'Bouvet'; a pimp, a criminal past, and an undercover intelligence officer in the war.

The past of the elusive Monsieur Bouvet has eventually caught up with him, but only after his death... he really was some guy..

Its a good plot, but Simenon novels set in Paris, and especially on the banks of the river, have a particular atmosphere to them that is very special, a trait of his that few others, if any, have matched.

The Dylan book is on my list now Andy, and thanks all for the good wishes (⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)

Andy wrote: "Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs ..."

Thanks for this, Andy. Every time I think I've read all I need to read about Dylan, something else comes along.

Andy wrote: "Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs..."

Thanks for this, Andy. Every time I think I've read all I need to read about Dylan, something else comes along.

Good stuff from Andy on Dylan and Simenon. Best wishes to Tam and Greenfairy.

Romola – George Eliot

After about 150 pages of very placid and unengaging prose, more a historical compilation than a drama, the story is finally lifting off. An attractive, intelligent and essentially good-hearted young man, arriving friendless in Florence in 1492, makes a start on both a promising career and a promising romance – but at the expense of telling himself a convenient lie, about something which in conscience he knows he ought to be doing. At first this inward lie seems to make no outward difference, either to his life or to his love. This being Eliot, I am expecting the lie to grow and grow until the fear of discovery corrodes his heart and poisons his happiness. Savonarola has yet to appear. With 400 plus pages to go there is plenty of time yet

Andy wrote: "LLJ... thanks as ever for the intro, and the links, one of which I had missed.

Reporting on two reads from the last few days..

Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs b..."

I liked Marcus's Lipstick Traces but not sure if I want to try this one. His other Dylan books feel more interesting to me, the ones about the recording sessions for Like a Rolling Stone and The Basement Tapes; also Mystery Train, which is probably his most famous.

I too mostly stopped following Dylan after Desire, but I do like the next one after that, Street Legal, and also Infidels, with Mick Taylor and Mark Knopfler on guitar.

Re distaste for the diabolical from the last thread.

Speak of the devil. As you will recall, Goethe has an obtuse literary critic blunder into Walpurgis Night. He tries to abolish the whole thing, as it doesn't fit into his theories. A poor move...

In The Master and Margarita, Berlioz, a highbrow literary critic, takes a similar stance toward the Devil in a conversation with a foreign scholar at Moscow's Patriarch's Pond. The visitor, Professor Woland, flies into an utter fury at being reduced to an abstract idea. Uncanny moments follow.
As Poe warned, never bet the Devil your head.

edit | delete | flag

Language barriers, from the last thread:

In the American comic strip "Shoe," two journalists are in the audience, listening to a politician's speech. The Professor leans over toward his colleague. "Shoe?" "Yeah." "Did he just say what I think he did?" "Yes." "But what does it mean?" "Listen, pal, it's hard enough covering what he says without explaining it."

giveusaclue wrote: "Did you read my last post on dragon boats?"

Yes, indeed - see my reply in the last thread on 24 Jan.

Rather than Victoria being 'British', it begins to look as if Nottingham is the most 'Canadian' of British cities! ;-)

My cousin - well into her 60s - is a dragon boater... but she lives in Singapore, so maybe pretty commonplace there!

Andy wrote: "and, The Burial of Monsieur Bouvet by Georges Simenon ...Simenon novels set in Paris, and especially on the banks of the river, have a particular atmosphere to them that is very special, a trait of his that few others, if any, have matched..."

Oh, absolutely... for many years, Simenon was disregarded by the 'literary' critics, and maybe still is dissed by a good number of them - but absolutely no-one creates atmosphere better than he does - and in so few words, too. I am especially fond of all his water-adjacent books set by canals, in ports - and by rivers.

The title 'Inquest on Bouvet' rings a bell, so I may well have read it a long time ago; I don't recall the plot, but the idea of someone re-inventing themselves, or having parallel lives, recurs quite a few times in his books.

Re Dylan. I take it everyone has read The Chronicles. Vol One?

Lass wrote: "Re Dylan. I take it everyone has read The Chronicles. Vol One?"

Indeed, and well worth it.

Masaryk Station by David Downing

This is book 6 in Downing's excellent 'Station' series featuring Anglo-American journalist and spy John Russell... and the 'last' in one sense, though Downing has since written a 'prequel' - Wedding Station - set in 1933.

Here, we are in 1948: Berlin is divided into zones, and the different powers are manoeuvring for position and influence in the divided city. Against this background, Russell and his opposite number, the Russian Schepkin (both sort-of double agents) are seeking a way out of their tricky positions without either being killed or locked up.

I won't say more about the plot in detail -if anyone is interested, they should start with book 1 (Zoo Station) and work their way through. Many of the same characters reappear, including Russell's now-wife Effi, and he travels to several other cities and towns to carry out his duties and plans, including Trieste, Vienna and Prague. The usual fair-mindedness is on display - characters come in shades of grey - and although Russell (like some readers) is thoroughly disillusioned with Soviet communism, he is not a cheer-leader for US-style capitalism either. It's an intelligent take on the genre.

Overall, I'd say that Downing has certainly improved as a writer over the course of the series. There was a certain stiffness in the opening book which by book 6 has given way to far more fluidity and fluency. Indeed, I'd say this 'final' volume is the best of the lot. DD will never be the world's greatest stylist, but he writes well and plots carefully; the characters are believable and have convincing motives for their acts. In addition, what he succeeds in doing above all else is to make the reader understand what it must have felt like to live (mainly) in Berlin during that period from 1935-48. It's a history lesson minus the boring bits (for me, anyway).

The only -very slight- reservation about this final volume is the sheer number of characters - I think in such cases the author, editor or publisher should always include a 'dramatis personae' list somewhere. In this case, as I had the Kindle version I was able to check many names on X-ray, but sometimes this links to some well-known person of the same name from Wikipedia instead. Probably there is a way around this, but I'm not sure what it is!

Lass wrote: "Re Dylan. I take it everyone has read The Chronicles. Vol One?"

Yes - I liked it and found it interesting.

re all things Dylan: I am going to see The Girl from the North Country in March and am looking forward to it

Lass wrote: "Re Dylan. I take it everyone has read The Chronicles. Vol One?"

[in authoritative voice]: Of course, though I preferred Vol Two.

Greenfairy wrote: "re all things Dylan: I am going to see The Girl from the North Country in March and am looking forward to it"

Absolutely my favourite Dylan song, bar none, from the brilliant 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' - though others come close:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJCmg...

I'm not much for musicals, but the soundtrack should be good!

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Did you read my last post on dragon boats?"

Yes, indeed - see my reply in the last thread on 24 Jan.

Rather than Victoria being 'British', it begins to look as if Nottingham ..."

Well Nottingham has a large Asian student population so I owuld guess a fair share come from SIngapore

Lass wrote: "Re Dylan. I take it everyone has read The Chronicles. Vol One?"

Errrr no.... but I do have Bryan Ferry's Dylanesque cd

Big news in the PNW! Today the sun will set after 5:00 p.m. (5:01 and tomorrow - 5:02) This is SO-O-O big it is noted in the newspaper.

MK wrote: "Big news in the PNW! Today the sun will set after 5:00 p.m. (5:01 and tomorrow - 5:02) This is SO-O-O big it is noted in the newspaper."

its about the same here, though a foggy, wet day means its almost dark before then, on a bright day it can feel almost springlike

i prefer the dark winter evenings though....

I don't know about anyone else here, but I often write book titles on pieces of paper - ones that should have been tossed out. So today before I tossed, I looked to see if the library had it. Sure enough, I am now on the hold list.

Here's the book- Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor.

@clue. Saw Dylan in Glasgow a few years ago, on the same bill with Van Morrison. Two famously grumpy but talented blokes! As for the “Lounge Lizard..sighhh. Two C Ds, Roxy Music. 20 Greatest Hits, and his dreamy solo album of classics, As Time Goes By. Not seen him live, but of course saw The Beatles in 65. 🤗

Lass wrote: "@clue. Saw Dylan in Glasgow a few years ago, on the same bill with Van Morrison. Two famously grumpy but talented blokes! As for the “Lounge Lizard..sighhh. Two C Ds, Roxy Music. 20 Greatest Hits, ..."

Never understood how Jerry Hall could drop him for Mick Jagger, but then look at who she picked next. Taste definitely getting worse if not her bank balance!

@ Lass. Saw Bryan Ferry live in about 1972 at what used to be called the Empire Pool, Wembley. One of the most exciting concerts I ever went to. A friend knew the promoter and he bumped us up to seats in the fourth row. There was a long, long, long instrumental opening from Roxy Music, and then Ferry slow-danced onto the stage dressed in an American airman’s tan shirt and slacks, tie tucked under the third button, looking like the coolest cat alive. You can imagine the roar.

Picking up an Aidan Higgins short story omnibus Flotsam and Jetsam i expected a set of tales about Ireland from the 1960s and maybe something similar to John McGahern

I was wrong, so far all the stories are set far from Ireland, in fragmentary locations where the names of the places seem more important than physical description and the plots are light with the imagination strong. Berlin is Berlin cos Higgins names Berlin locations, likewise Heidelberg or the Eastern Province coast in South Africa.

Its my first Higgins read and i can see he was a singular talent, quite different to contemparies like McGahern or Edna O'Brien.

A couple of quotes. One from a poem and the other reportedly said at a funeral. Who wrote the poem and what is it called? Whose funeral was it?

Tis strange - but true; for Truth is always strange,
Stranger than Fiction

I always watch the lips and mouth: they tell what the tongue and eyes try to conceal.

Almost dead in here over the last 48hrs....hope y'all ok

I finished When Women Kill by Traubuco Zeran, a very interesting latin-american version of work by Bedford and West on real crime but this time focused on female murderers and the world they inhabited in conservative, chauvinistic, class ridden Chile of the 1920s-1960s. Zeran writes well and its an excellent translation.

Next up is We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 , which looks fascinating, always loved the work of Finty O'T ever since my regular reading of his Irish Times articles. Oddly i havent seen this reviewed anywhere, yet its a new book

Thanks to a tip in Ron Charles' newsletter, I just enjoyed an episode of the podcast If Books Could Kill about the egregious The Secret.

I was afraid that the hosts were going to fail to mention that the book was boosted by Oprah, but that debacle is discussed toward the end of the episode. It was her promotion of this book that pretty much confirmed the doubts I had about Oprah's book recommendations.

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...

CCCubbon wrote: "A couple of quotes. One from a poem and the other reportedly said at a funeral. Who wrote the poem and what is it called? Whose funeral was it?..."

The first: (view spoiler)[Byron, Don Juan (hide spoiler)]
And the second I had to look up: (view spoiler)[Byron again at Shelley's funeral (hide spoiler)]

This is said to be the last in Norwegian Anne Holt's Hanne Wilhelmsen series. I'd read the rest and not realised there was another until looking up the Selma Falck books recommended by CCC.
Hanne is in a wheelchair following events earlier in the series and works from home on cold cases helped by a very bright young detective, Henrik. She has become more and more anti-social, liking no-one apart from her wife, her daughter — and Henrik.
Now they are concerned with one cold case and one current one, complicated by the fact that they have not been instructed to investigate either.

Must admit I was surprised by the poet of the first quote as I hadn’t realised that this quite common quote came from there. The quote cropped up in a book and that’s how I picked it up. Watching on old Morse on tv he mashed up the second quote a little and I looked that up. The ‘watch the lips’ bit intrigued me as usually one hears that eyes give things away.

I have just finished the third book by Vaseem Khan The Lost Man of Bombay - it’s as good as the first two. A body of a white man found in a cave in the mountains sets Persis off unravelling the mystery which takes her to different places in India. I learned a little about temples, priests and gods. What I like about these books is that Khan keeps the plot changing/ twisting almost to the last page.
There is another book in the series out in August this year.

Butchers Crossing by John Williams is impressing me so far, like with recent novels/stories about the wild by London and Buchan, i am learning about the various methods and techniques that are used.

One thing i had never come across was a buffalo hunt, Williams describes the killing fields with real care and intelligence, the art of the kill and the skinning and eating of these huge beasts. They seem almost docile in the face of guns blazing, hunters calmly positioned picking off the herd.

I almost feel tired in sympathy everytime i read the novel though, due to exertions of the hunters as they head west and the demands of the warm climate, which is slowly turning to winter, another demand on them!

CCCubbon wrote: "Must admit I was surprised by the poet of the first quote as I hadn’t realised that this quite common quote came from there. The quote cropped up in a book and that’s how I picked it up. Watching o..."

I've been re-reading some of the earlier works of that poet as I make my way through his biography. Didn't recall that particular line from his last major work, although I have read it years ago. And I didn't know about the funeral quote either. I'm curious to see if it will come up when I get to that point in the bio. The one I'm reading is the very first biography of the person in question, was written and compiled by one of his personal friends, and appeared I believe less than ten years after his death.

Bill wrote: "Thanks to a tip in Ron Charles' newsletter, I just enjoyed an episode of the podcast If Books Could Kill about the egregious The Secret.

I was afraid that the hosts were going to fai..."


Jeez. If I only had known that wishful thinking would make my dreams come true because the universe would unfailingly deliver I could have lived a wholly different life.
In the Villa Malaparte on Capri, on a diet of the best food and wine, with a man who is ever so nice and interesting and passionate. And a circle of friends to match. And a library. And a housekeeper. For example.
Modest as I am I wouldn't even ask the universe for a BMW, or a second home, or beauty, or eternal youth on top of that.

While I am the first person to cynically laugh about new-age drivel books like that infuriate me.

Politically they are at least as reactionary as Ayn Rand's excretions, if not more so.
And they pose a serious risk to people's mental health.
Everything that goes wrong in their lives is their own fault

AB76 wrote: " Butchers Crossing by John Williams is impressing me so far, like with recent novels/stories about the wild by London and Buchan, i am learning about the various methods and techniques that are use..."

I cannot point to anything in particular about the slaughter of bison herds, but I wish I could because my memories include shooting them for sport from trains with no further action (leaving them to rot). Another plus in this slaughter was the fact that it deprived some American Indians of both their way of life and food for their stomachs.

MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: " Butchers Crossing by John Williams is impressing me so far, like with recent novels/stories about the wild by London and Buchan, i am learning about the various methods and techniques..."

just finished a long section of the novel and the question came to me, that by skinning thousands and leaving most of the meat, its such an appalling waste and an example of western european business and barter, as opposed to the first nation use of the herds as supporting every facet of life.

This (slaughter of buffalo)was used as deliberate tactics by the US military as the wars with the first nations became more and more punitive after the issues with Custer at Little Bighorn, many military figures were provoked by the massacre and a need to secure the "safety" of the west that they were plundering
though the writing was on the wall a decade or so before as the greedy settlers trickled and then poured west into native lands and territories. The first nations lived off the herds, so the USA went after their living and it was a hammer blow

Miller, the hunt leader, in the novel kills maybe 500 buffalo for the hides, not the meat, cos he can sell the hides back in Kansas

Run out of books? Here's just what we all need - John Sandoe's selections for the beginning of 2023 - https://johnsandoe.com/product-catego...

Having a really good weekend of reading, the mind is alive with thoughts and stimulation

In Butchers Crossing the intense, violent buffalo hunt is over as the first snow starts to fall in the Rockies, catching the hunting party out. The dogged plains heat, followed by cooler mountain air has now changed to the dangerous chill of real cold. Williams is an austere, intense host at this reading feast, its very much a novel of the frontier, without the first nations demonised, good and bad guys neatly framed and lacking constant shoot-outs. A thinking western, man vs nature

In We Dont Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole conducts a history of Eire from his birth in 1958. The backwards, priest ridden, rural prison of 1950s Ireland is always unpleasent to re-visit and O'Toole is quietly scathing about its failings, how the country was failing to find a place in the world, while happily a closed shop to progress. Whenever the deeply idiotic Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin enters any book i read, i lament how Catholicism managed to arrest the development of a positive Ireland from 1922 well into the 1970s. This fool was a bigot who was as bad as the previous British occupiers had been at creating spiteful, sectarian divides.