Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello, everyone.

Since no-one has come forward to take over putting up the new threads, I’ll go on doing it, but without long introductions. If anyone feels inclined to take it on, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Lisa.

I discovered recently that the column, The Books That Made Me, in The Guardian, started as a podcast. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I wasn’t listening to podcasts in 2010. Here they are if you’d like to listen:

The Books That Made Me: China Miéville

https://www.theguardian.com/books/aud...

The Books That Made Me: Michael Rosen

https://www.theguardian.com/books/aud...

The Books That Made Me: Penelope Lively

https://www.theguardian.com/books/aud...

Happy reading to all!

Morning all, spent a weekend with little ones, so feeling a little tired but it was good fun, making dens has re-awoken my long dormant if ever existent DIY side...lol

The epic Stead novel of 1930s Sydney and London is intriguing with its long intro of 80 odd pages set in one day, the busy chatter and thought process of an 18yo woman and the beauty of Sydney's coves, harbours and weather.

Alongside that is Vargas Llosa's novel of the Guatamela coup in 1954 and Nairns study of the UK and its union written in 2000.

NYRB had two interesting articles i read just now, one on the satirist James Gillray and his wonderful images of politics in the Napoleonic War era, some lewd and racey, wonderful imagination and another on true crime and convicted murderers writing journalism or novels, the idea of innocence and the harm that true crime writing can do. The article is written by a convicted murderer.


Forgot to add in The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War, while Freehling does move to some of the narrative of warfare, it is linked to his overall theme. He looks at the border south skirmishes in Kentucky, where access to the Confederate states was gained by Union forces and suggests that the fact that the majority of Kentucky fighting men remained neutral, meant the Confederates in the state had very little to draw on, conversely more Kentuckians joined the union forces , meaning this semi-border south battleground contributed almost nothing to the southern cause and its generals trying to defend the Tennessee broders...just 6% of available Kentuckians fought in Confederate grey). It didnt help that the South invaded sections of Kentucky, believing incorrectly it could be a Southern state. Lincoln always knew, it seems, that the Border South was essential and Kentucky in particular

“ I think that to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game..Kentucky gone, we cant hold Missouri, nor I think…Maryland”

I was wondering if we could take it in turns to sometimes write a blog for the changeover. We could send it to Lisa and it could be posted rather than taking on the whole moderation bit which no one seems to want.
My eyesight isn’t good enough for me to attempt being a mod ( difficulties reading) but I could write a short piece. It wouldn’t come around very often if everyone took a turn.
What do you think?

CCCubbon wrote: "I was wondering if we could take it in turns to sometimes write a blog for the changeover. We could send it to Lisa and it could be posted rather than taking on the whole moderation bit which no on..."

There really isn't any moderation, unless someone in the future starts posting very offensive remarks.
It just consists of closing the old thread and opening the new one with however much of an introduction.
Taking it in turns could be a nice idea. In fact, it's not even necessary to send it to anyone. Once the thread has been opened, whoever's turn it is posts the first comment.

Welcome back, GPFR!

Just to clarify, I'm happy to continue as the site's moderator - watching for troubling posts and taking action when required (so far, I've never had to step in, except for a self-promoting author who showed up in our early days). Anyone interested in taking on the role of starting the new bi-weekly threads need not worry that other tasks of moderation are required.

I want to go back to the question of cross stitch and embroidery.

While I don't have the patience (although I ought to take a picture of the counted cross stitch I had framed - it's a black and red depiction of the Thunderbird in NW native style) any more, I am still a fan of the art.

In fact, if you ever are in the DC area in March, I highly recommend a visit to https://www.woodlawnpopeleighey.org/n...
where there are marvelous pieces of original work throughout the house. The year that I went there were a number of samplers. And Google just found this for me - https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/embroi...

So I'll put cross stitch and counted cross stitch under an embroidery umbrella.

PS - I've just uploaded a picture clip of an award-winning cross stitch at Woodlawn. Quite thought provoking.

Gpfr wrote: "Hello, everyone.

Since no-one has come forward to take over putting up the new threads, I’ll go on doing it, but without long introductions. If anyone feels inclined to take it on, don’t hesitate..."

Thanks GP.
And Lisa.

Your efforts are much appreciated,

Regarding taking turns to write a summary, I would quite happily contribute when I’m home, but I seem to have much less time when I’m away, calling in here only a couple of times a week, as opposed to daily, and I’m planning to be on the road for 7 months this year.

I don't know how to close and start a new thread. Blushes.

AB76 wrote: "... another on true crime and convicted murderers writing journalism or novels, the idea of innocence and the harm that true crime writing can do. The article is written by a convicted murderer."

If any genre has earned the designation, I consider True Crime my “guilty pleasure” reading, and that NYRB review was the piece in the latest issue that provoked the most thought.

The magazine got convicted killer John J. Lennon to review Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman (I trust that NYRB’s reviewer of Weinman’s previous book, The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World, was not, however, a pedophile).

To quote the GR summary,

In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review . Buckley, who refused to believe that a man who supported the neoconservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, began to advocate not only for Smith's life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned.

Lennon objects that, by dredging up this old case of someone who actually committed a murder (Smith admitted as much some time later, after his conviction was overturned and he was in prison for a subsequent attempted murder) but then lied about his innocence, Weinman has tainted those who have been convicted but actually are innocent.

To me, true innocence is the more meaningful sliver of the traditional true crime genre, which merely retells terrible tales of violence. With true innocence stories, the audience is drawn to moral uncertainty: an incarcerated person, declaring innocence, may be either the victim of an injustice, or, salaciously put, a calculating psychopath.

I don’t know why this “moral uncertainty” should necessarily occur in stories of “true innocence” any more than in stories of true guilt, as in Scoundrel; if, at the end of the story, the ultimate guilt or innocence of the subject can be determined, I’d think uncertainty must disappear.

Lennon contrasts Weinman, who wrote to Smith while he was still alive in prison and evidently quickly developed an antagonistic relationship with him which short-circuited her access, with Buckley, for whom he expresses admiration.

Buckley, the conservative, knew Smith as a three-dimensional character. Weinman, the liberal, didn’t know him at all—plus she comes to the story with the benefit of knowing its unhappy end. She invested no personal stakes. At least Buckley took a shot. He befriended the man and risked his reputation by publicly advocating for his release.

Knowing the end of Buckley’s story, however, it’s obvious that he didn’t “risk his reputation” but remained a highly influential conservative with a weekly PBS TV show – he lost nothing of substance as a result of his credulity.

I’ll probably read Weinman’s book: I’m intrigued by the “how he persuaded” part of the subtitle. Reading between the lines of the review, I imagine that, as a reader of National Review (given to him by a prison chaplain), Smith was able to size up Buckley from a distance and calculate how declarations of innocence sugared with flattery of Buckley’s intellect and world-view would allow him to play the editor like an accordion.

Weinman also quotes Smith’s correspondence with a Knopf editor, Sophie Wilkins, to whom Buckley introduced him. Taking a different tack than he did with Buckley, Smith apparently played on Wilkins’ sexual desires to ingratiate himself. Lennon objects to these quotations as voyeuristic, but I assume her purpose was to show Smith’s manipulative skill as an essential element of his story.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "... another on true crime and convicted murderers writing journalism or novels, the idea of innocence and the harm that true crime writing can do. The article is written by a convicted..."

I find the american penal system and its emphasis on punishment more than rehabilitation quite troubling, alongside the widespread use of plea bargains.

Watching sections of the Murdaugh trial, where a scion of landed or more accurately nouveau South Carolinian wealth, tries to pull the wool over people for the 50th time, reminded me also of the problem with wealth and the law(see the ex-PM of the UK pleading legal aid payment for a case, which he doesnt need).

Going back to the article, i agree with you Bill on true innocence and true guilt. I fundamentally believe in reform and redemption, of course for a paedophile murderer or any murderer, a lot of that would be behind bars. I feel the system in the USA delivers very little option of that in its extensive private and public prison system. The idea of a murderer writing for a newspaper or writing a book is fascinating and does bring up some moral queries, though if it was in the form of remorse and reconciliation, it would be most welcome.

The South African Truth and Reconcilation process in the 1990s was a real and quite unsettling historical occasion, similarily the amnesty and release in 1998 for dozens of convicted IRA and Loyalist murderers in Northern Ireland as part of the peace process.

Back to the article, in my brief knowledge of Smith from the article, he strikes me as somebody who played the game and achieved is desired aims only for it all to come crashing down again, it seems he achieved very little in terms of rehabilitation and saw a chance of freedom, via a 2nd degree murder plea. The fact he fooled the prison shrink is also concerning....

Gpfr wrote: "Hello, everyone.

Since no-one has come forward to take over putting up the new threads, I’ll go on doing it, but without long introductions. If anyone feels inclined to take it on, don’t hesitate..."

Thanks for your generous help.

giveusaclue wrote: "I don't know how to close and start a new thread. Blushes."
I was thinking of just writung an opening short piece not doing anything else.
just a thought

CCCubbon wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I don't know how to close and start a new thread. Blushes."
I was thinking of just writung an opening short piece not doing anything else.
just a thought"

Opening a new thread is easy, but I'm quite happy to continue opening and closing. As I said before, I can open a new thread and someone else can write the first post to start off the new fortnight.

Thank you g,
Anyone like to have a go in a fortnight?

Reading Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa(2019) is a pleasure, well 80% pleasure with some recurring disappointment over sexual crudity and language.

The meticulously plotted novel of central american CIA wrongdoing is of course mesmerising, i'm about 60% in and with his usual style the tension as just been switched up 100%. Sweaty palmed murderers and seedy, sleazy assassins abound. Morally, the great author is scathing about the crooked, violent, cynical dictators who the CIA sponsored and assisted whenever possible and the pondlife that follow them as "security" advisors and hired guns. Poor Guatamala feels like a fresh faced virgin with the violent Dominican involvement in things, the disgusting Abbes Garcia and his boss President Trujillo, a nation to be violated by ones whose living is such violation.

I get rather tired of the red-blooded male sexualisation though, of the crudity in reference to women and the behaviour of the violent louts he writes about. I'd rather not know about their sexual antics and while i suspect Vargas Llosa is doing this in a knowing way, it feels horribly seedy and rather base, for a master storyteller. His sexual writing is always turned up to 10 and has discouraged me from a few of his novels. I guess violence from men who delight in it is disturbing enough without their sex lives involved too

Quiet here this week!
I've just finished The Sanctuary by Emma Haughton. I think CC has read and liked it.
Her previous thriller was an isolated group of people in snow and ice, and this one is an isolated group of people in the Mexican desert. The Sanctuary is a very expensive rehab centre and the heroine, Zoey, wakes up there not knowing, at first, where she is or how she comes to be there. It's quite twisty and fun and not gruesome for those who don't like that.

Bookmarks

Not quite finished my current book... so a bit of a digression.

Yesterday I lost (or maybe mislaid) the bookmark I'd been using, so replaced it with my favourite - a card around twice the width of a normal bookmark showing a picture of the Nelson Monument on Calton Hill, Edinburgh. Not only is this pleasingly aesthetic, it also reminds me of visits to that beautiful city - and also (on the back) as evidence of my feat in climbing the tower:

This is to certify that (.............) climbed the 170 steps to the top of The Nelson Monument, Calton Hill, Edinburgh.

Do any of you have favourite bookmarks? I'll use any old piece of paper or used envelope if one is not to hand, but it's less pleasing.

(I see from green underlining that GR is querying my use of 'feat' - probably the spellchecker thinks I meant 'feet'!)

scarletnoir wrote: "Bookmarks

Do any of you have favourite bookmarks? ..."

I have a large collection of bookmarks.
We had quite a long discussion about this on WWR in January. The photos I posted have expired, unfortunately. Others may still be visible. The thread was on 17 January and is highlighted in the comments if you click on the link.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

The following extract from ≉i>Otherlands amused me last night


When a continent carries an ice sheet, the weight of that sheet distorts the equilibrium, the isostasy that causes the crust to float as it does. The crust is forced down into the mantle, sinking exactly like a laden ship. When the weight eventually melts away, it will rise once more, rebounding upwards over tens of thousands of years, and causing the sea to regress. ……. Even today, the parts of the Earth that were ice-laden in the Pleistocene are rising, not yet having shaken off the weight of the ice age. Great Britain, for instance, is tilting around a line that can be drawn very approximately from Aberystwyth to York, with the land to the north rising at up to about a centimetre a year, and, as the magma flows into the space below, the land to the south sinking. The process will continue for thousands more years into the future.


Imagining the UK as a kind of very slow see-saw.

CCCubbon wrote: "The following extract from ≉i>Otherlands amused me last night ..."

😯😲

Gpfr wrote: "We had quite a long discussion about this on WWR in January."

Wow! That was a very long thread, which I didn't see... having read it, I now feel the subject has been rather done to death. I do drop in to WWR from time to time, but it can feel a bit cliquey and it's also well hidden by the G. after week 1.

And I thought I was being a little bit original... ho, hum.

Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Bookmarks

Do any of you have favourite bookmarks?

"That was a very long thread, which I didn't see... having read it, I now feel the subject has been rather done to death...."

"I have a large collection of bookmarks...."

Those who like you didn't read it might enjoy the subject 😀

Here's my latest bookmark which I bought today in a splendid 2nd-hand bookshop in the Galerie Vivienne (near the old Bibliothèque Nationale). I'll post a picture of the shop in Photos.

scarletnoir wrote: " I do drop in to WWR from time to time, but it can feel a bit cliquey..."

I agree about the cliquey-ness — a bit more or less depending on the moment, but ...

scarletnoir wrote: "Bookmarks

Not quite finished my current book... so a bit of a digression.

Yesterday I lost (or maybe mislaid) the bookmark I'd been using, so replaced it with my favourite - a card around twice ..."

I've got a lovely Moomins bookmark, made form card which was a gift from my daughter. However, I have started and not finished many books recently, so the bookmark is (hopefully) hidden in one of those books.

Mostly, I just end up using random bit of paper, usually receipts.

An extremely wet day here in Peneda-Gerês gives me the chance to catch up with a bit of reading and recording.. so here goes..

Firstly, Sing, Nightingale by Marie Hélène Poitras translated from the French (Quebec) by Rhonda Mullins .

which, coincidentally, I’ve just mentioned on The G’s fairy tale thread, which has some great suggestions, with hopefully more to follow..

The events of the novel that take place in the village of Noirax are presented as a cardboard puppet theatre, with the dark surrounding forest, and the estate house of Malmaison close by.

Malmaison is the is the home of the ‘father’, from a long line of fathers. He lives alone, widowed, with the house falling apart around him. He has respect in the village, in his own mind at least, and has female callers, though any relationship is distant.

His routine is interrupted by the return of his son, Jeanty, fleeing a catastrophic relationship, and of Alienor, an enchanting young woman whose mission is to bring the estate back to life.

But Malmaison has a dark history. Generations of women have come to tragic ends here, the mothers and wives and mistresses, and to their children. Aliénor gradually gets closer to the truth, as the family undergoes changes, some quite bizarre.

To best appreciate this very quirky and often fantastical story, it is best to read it as one might with a fairy tale. Consider it, as Poitras suggests at the opening of each chapter, as that cardboard puppet theatre set in the forest, with a subversive charm with an enduring quality, twisted and haunting, and yet bewitching.

Last House Before the Mountain by Monika Helfer translated from the German (Austria) by Gillian Davidson .

This partly autobiographical novel is based on Helfer’s own family; a young woman recalling her grandmother's life in a rural and remote Austrian village.

It begins in 1914 when Maria’s husband, Jozef, is called away to serve in the war. The family have 7 children, and are, as the title suggests, the last house, indicating their poverty. They also attract scorn from the rest of the community, and this worsens while Jozef is away. Maria‘s good looks mean she has plenty of attention, but it is a mix of lust, curiosity, jealousy and cautious distrust.
Aware of the attention his wife will receive, Jozef asks the town mayor to keep an eye out for any potential callers, which he does, but Jozef has placed his faith in the wrong man, and their assignations drive the plot in the second part of the book.

Helfer’s characters are richly described, and the backdrop of the Austrian mountains adds to the mood created. It is a novel about family, and the fragile bond between beauty, trust, and love.

Recoil by Jim Thompson

The first thing to say about this novel, is that if you don’t read the Lion first edition, which I think is unlikely, at least stop and stare at the cover for a while.. more recent editions aren’t a patch on it.

Pat Cosgrove can get out of the prison where he is serving a 15 year term for armed robbery thanks to Doc Luther, a psychologist, who has agreed to hire him. Pat will spend the next weeks trying to discover exactly what the Doc’s motivations were for this.

He soon realises that everybody else seems to know why, even his new girlfriend, Doc’s secretary, though, despite fancying him, refuses to actually speak to him. Pat goes as far as to hire a private detective to solve the mystery, who subsequently warns him to tread carefully, as Doc may be planning a life insurance fraud with him, involving Pat as the main character.

Initially it’s easy to think of the characters as lacking depth, and somewhat flat, but this is quite intentional, just Thompson moving through the gears, as the novel steadily gains pace.
Another reason for their flatness, is that it allows the plot to take centre stage; having set the scene, almost anything can happen, and that, for the reader, is quite addictive - there is no need to justify the actions of any one individual.

Thompson has very much his own style of plotting in his books also. This is a good example. Here he jumps straight in to a stage of the story others would take half a book to get to, it’s pretty much what those others would consider the climax; Cosgrove’s procedural jailbreak. From then on, it’s the characters that fascinate, and above all, Cosgrove himself. To figure out exactly what is going on in his mind is the real pleasure of this book.

The genius of Thompson is at work here - it’s all about psychology, or motive and drive; Doc the psychologist who works even though he has lost his license to practice, and Cosgrove, his new assistant, who is an enigma.

So, without necessary realising it, the attention is firmly back to the plot - the reason the characters behave in the way they do, is simply that the plot demands it.

The reader is putty in the great man’s hands..

and, Coronation Everest by Jan Morris

Morris (then James Morris) recounts Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's famous ascent of the mountain, from her position as special correspondent for the London Times, there as an eyewitness to the climb.

First published in 1958, though Morris's narrative may bear some sense of sentimentalism typical of postwar Britain, it nonetheless transcends its era. Her vivid and keen-eyed description of the historic trek and the vivacious impressions of the local people and their customs, are interrupted briefly by the more matter-of-fact business of competitive journalism.

Morris’s initial speculation as to why anyone might attempt such a daunting undertaking gives way to the realisation that the aspiration and endeavour of a few, represent the whole of humanity. It is written in such a way that we see how, to her own astonishment, her own question was answered.

CCCubbon wrote: "The following extract from ≉i>Otherlands amused me last night


When a continent carries an ice sheet, the weight of that sheet distorts the equilibrium, the isostasy that causes the crust to float..."


It's nothing to do with melting ice, it's wee Nicky tipping England into the Channel.

giveusaclue wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "The following extract from ≉i>Otherlands amused me last night


When a continent carries an ice sheet, the weight of that sheet distorts the equilibrium, the isostasy that causes t..."

Saving the best bit ‘til last?

Hey, AB it is snowing a little here in S. Derbyshire!

Re bookmarks - I do have some including a metal Rennie Mackintosh style bookmark that a friend bought me. However, as most of my reading is digital my ereader cover opens my book at the last page read and I can tap a little icon at the bottom of a page to put my own in.

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "Mostly, I just end up using random bit of paper, usually receipts...."

Better than bills, anyway! ;-)

giveusaclue wrote: "Hey, AB it is snowing a little here in S. Derbyshire!

Re bookmarks - I do have some including a metal Rennie Mackintosh style bookmark that a friend bought me. However, as most of my reading is di..."

snow here too giveusaclue, settled overnight, went up to ldn today and it was cold, drizzly but no snow around vauxhall and the tate, so it seems that the snowline stopped at surbiton on the way up. very cold and just got back to steady heavy, much needed rain

Fear in the World is a translation from small scottish publisher Vagabond Books, the fourth of the foreign translations of novels i have read, ordered direct.

Set in an un-named country that could be the USSR, written in 1938, it is an italian classic of the Fascist era, where the heavy pen of the censor was a challenge to all non-fascist thinkers and authors. Corrado Alvaro lived in the USSR for a period and while there is an ambiguity in the descriptions of place, there is the sense of a post-struggle era(possibly the 1920s), where a society is recovering from a civil war.

Like so much Italian literature i read, especially from the 1900-1945 era, it has a precise, logical manner, with deep thoughts and analysis, much is left hanging and the style is light years away from southern european drama and bonhomie. Possibly living in the Fascist years formed this style among writers like Moravia,Buzatti,Pavese and others, to evade censure and leave the reader to interpret the signs and signals.

A dark, brooding sense of random justice hovers over the pages, the idea that "thinking criminal thoughts" could lead to arrest and dis-favour. This is a pre Orwell(1984)novel and i wonder if he ever read it. I am also interested in how Alvaro compared the pretentious, insidious fascism of Mussolini to the cynical, irrational madness of Stalinism. I wonder what he felt was worse?

The Morning News Tournament of Books 2023 begins today:

https://www.tournamentofbooks.com/202...

For a slim volume, a compact study(of which i usually avoid, preferring a more expansive historical account), The South vs The South is full of details and new knowledge.

Lincolns stance on emancipation, balanced with his political instincts has been well covered in the NYRB over the last decade, some excellent articles, Freehling looks more at the conundfrum over employing ex-slaves in the Union Army between 1861-63. I can see now how Lincoln was trying to play a careful game with the sentiments of border south unionists and southern slaveholders he hoped to entice over to the union side.

Freehling has some good detail on the "contraband" as union soldiers called employment of slaves. During the undecided years of Lincolns policy, the ex-slaves were mainly employed in building forts, dams, trenches and doing important work. Freehling also mentions the not inconsiderable Confederate slave allies, where much of the hard labour was being performed by the enslaved population. There is also the interesting use of escaped slaves as trackers and intelligence agents, they knew the land and the people as the Union forces moved south.

Lincoln is always a complex character for me, i was quite appalled to re-read his suggestion to a gathering of Northern free blacks at the White House, that they settle in Latin America, ludicrious. The history of the free black population in the North is one of progress and success, albeit slow due to racial politics and from this population many of the great African-American thinkers of the late 19th century emerged.

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark.
"Remember you must die", says the anonymous telephone caller to the elderly characters of this short book. At first, I began to wonder if reading about a large number of elderly people suffering from different afflictions was really what I wanted to do, but in fact it wasn't depressing, with funny moments.
David Lodge quoted this in The G.

"It happened that a number of old people I had known as a child in Edinburgh were dying from one cause or another," Muriel Spark recalled in 1960, "and on my visits to Edinburgh I sometimes accompanied my mother to see them in hospital. When I saw them I was impressed by the power and persistence of the human spirit. They were paralysed or crippled in body, yet were still exerting characteristic influences on those around them and in the world outside. I saw a tragic side to this situation and a comic side as well. I called this novel Memento Mori."

Pourquoi pas la vie by Coline Pierré.
Published by L'Iconoclaste, an interesting French publisher, the author imagines what would have happened if Sylvia Plath hadn't killed herself. The book begins with the preparations for suicide, but it is interrupted by the cries of her daughter.
I was given this for my birthday and have only just started it, so far, so intriguing.

Cromwell: Our Chief of Men by Antonia Fraser.
There were several good recommendations here for a life of Oliver Cromwell, but I came across a very cheap 2nd-hand copy of this one, so went with that. It's a solid tome, which I'm reading rather slowly, but it's filling in the gaps in my knowledge.

Gpfr wrote: " Memento Mori by Muriel Spark.
"Remember you must die", says the anonymous telephone caller to the elderly characters of this short book. At first, I began to wonder..."

I haven't read Spark, but this sounds interesting. There's no particular reason for the omission - no 'gut feeling' that it's not for me, as can happen with some authors - just a case of 'so many books, so little time' as someone wrote recently.

Anyone here interested in the US Civil War and/or Abraham Lincoln might want to scroll through the Bancroft Award winners over time.
Here's a link - https://library.columbia.edu/about/aw...

Gpfr wrote: " Cromwell: Our Chief of Men by Antonia Fraser.
There were several good recommendations here for a life of Oliver Cromwell, but I came across a very chea..."

an excellent choice GP, this is a great study of Cromwell, one of the best among the older books about him. There a couple of newer ones too out in the last year or so...

MK wrote: "Anyone here interested in the US Civil War and/or Abraham Lincoln might want to scroll through the Bancroft Award winners over time.
Here's a link - https://library.columbia.edu/about/aw......"

thanks MK

@Andy

Love the lichen above that Roman road.
Lichen - one of the most ancient life forms. Lovely colour. Guess it has some cyanobacteria in its composition with that
blue/greycolour ( lichen mixture of any couple ,algae, cyanobacteria, fungi )
Do you find similarities between the various forest places in different countries ? If tou mixed up all the photos would you know where each was taken?

CCCubbon wrote: "@Andy

Love the lichen above that Roman road.
Lichen - one of the most ancient life forms. Lovely colour. Guess it has some cyanobacteria in its composition with that
blue/greycolour ( lichen mix..."

The colours are incredible. The rain really sets the greens off on today’s photos. The time of year also I think.

Thanks for the additional information.. I wouldn’t have known where to easily grab such detail.

Regarding identifying the particular forest, I’d like to think so, but..
In this case the ‘old ways’ are often walled, narrow, and paved of some description. Unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere.

Sometimes late in the evening, when I’m at home, I put my photos on 5 second shuffle and test myself as to where they were. As to when, that’s usually too difficult.. 3/10
I manage location on about 7/10. Some I have to pause, for a bit more time. Some do escape me.

Since it's women's month (although it's curious that men don't need a month of their own), I've put The Hourglass Factory in first place on my nightstand. I was going to begin it yesterday, but I picked up Cynthia Harrod-Eagles latest Bill Slider police procedural at the library. And I have now finished it after laughter at snarky comments, but having to grab a Kleenex at the end. It really hit home. I'll say no more because of possible give-aways.

It's one of her best


I had to tear myself away from it to run some errands this afternoon. It was a 🚕🚕🚕🚕 day!

Andy wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "@Andy

Love the lichen above that Roman road.
Lichen - one of the most ancient life forms. Lovely colour. Guess it has some cyanobacteria in its composition with that
blue/greyco..."

Interesting - I was picking up the similarities from your photos .

That cyanobacteria - think first living thing to photosynthesise so gave out oxygen, turned sea water from anoxic to one with oxygen and eventually into atmosphere hence the rest. The cyan bit gives away the blue colour.

Gpfr wrote: " Cromwell: Our Chief of Men by Antonia Fraser.
There were several good recommendations here for a life of Oliver Cromwell, but I came across a very chea..."

Theodore Roosevelt wrote a biography of Cromwell. I haven't read it, though it's said that the book seems to weigh Cromwell as if he were a potential Governor of New York. (Teddy was thinking about leadership, and Cromwell's life fell into familiar channels. Teddy wondered if Cromwell had originally planned to become dictator, or if he fell into authoritarian rule due to the press of circumstances.)

Andy wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "@Andy

Love the lichen above that Roman road.
Lichen - one of the most ancient life forms. Lovely colour. Guess it has some cyanobacteria in its composition with that
blue/greyco..."

love the images and the dog! sadly it keeps prompting me to log in, which it didnt months back. forecast says 11-12c in Galicia, so i guess you are pretty wrapped up for a whole day in that, though as a Lake District habitant, its probably balmy for you!

Lie in the Dark by Dan Fesperman

Fesperman is a former journalist who travelled to a number of trouble spots around the world. This is his first novel, set in Sarajevo around mid-way through the near-4 year siege during the conflict which followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. His descriptions of the war and the privations endured by the population feel entirely authentic and based on personal observation. This provides a very solid basis for a good police procedural, in which homicide detective inspector Vlado Petric tries to unravel the motives for and identify the perpetrators of the killing of another policeman. Vlado muses on the apparent absurdity of identifying one murderer, when so many others are being killed daily by snipers and shellfire.

The book is well written (after one or two slightly overcooked passages near the start) and the plot - though far fetched on occasion - hangs together pretty well. I'd say it is for the most part a mystery/suspense novel rather than a thriller, though there are plenty of thrills, too, towards the end. I won't say more for fear of including spoilers.

My thanks to MK who recommended this book.

I'll certainly look up some more of Fesperman's novels, based around other assignments in different parts of the world.