Ersatz TLS discussion

Happy Monday to all, whether you be celebrating Whit Monday, a bank holiday, or just having an ordinary Monday ...

Here's to good reading for everyone!

Morning all, thanks GP for opening a new thread

Current reading is:
The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark (1965), named after the checkpoint between Israeli Jerusalem and Jordanian East Jerusalem, its a novel i hadnt heard of till i found it on a search a few months back

Valley of the Shadow is a new study of the disastrous french defeat to the Viet Minh in North Indochina, 1954. The defeat led to the end of French Indochina and a crisis for the French military.

The SIlence of the Wave by Gianrico Carafiglio- a pyschological novel that has started well

Journal of a Novel by John Steinbeck. covers the writing of his novel "East of Eden" which i read 21 years ago, i am revisiting it via his writing processes

Thanks again for the new thread G and (referring back to the last thread) I am one of those who doesn't do any more ironing than is necessary, and even less dusting.

Picking up from the last thread again, I wonder what the world would be like now if religion had never been invented? There's a thought.

On the subject of books, I have been in a bit of a lazy, cozy mystery trip over the last day or two. I have just finished
Trick or Murder?

Typical old fashioned country village scene where everyone knows everyone else. The "new" vicar turns up just before Halloween and puts everyone's back up. He is, of course, not what he seems.
The series is told through the eyes of a young women who inherits a cottage in the village from her aunt, and gets work in the local bookshop, which also provides the romantic side of the series. Definitely not one for a session of deep thinking but it passes the time nicely.

Previously, I read A Date to Die For

Another slightly less cozy mystery. A journalist who has just been made redundant lets her London flat and goes, with her enormous cat Cosmo, to stay with old friends who run a country hotel. They are very concerned about a friend they have been unable to contact for a few days and our heroine goes hunting for her, along with a former Met Police officer. We, the readers, already know what happened to the missing woman because it is laid out in the prologue. But the back story is unveiled in an interesting and entertaining enough way.

Even before that I read The Boardroom by Jack Gatland. It is definitely not a cozy mystery. Set in New York, the Board of a company responsible for a disaster causing hundreds of deaths, are called in one night to an emergency meeting. They are then held hostage by a sniper in a building across the road who knows all about what happened, even though enquiries had swept matters under the carpet. The book gives a very good portrait of how low some humans will go a. for money, and b, to protect themselves. A bit on the gory side but pretty original to me.

To celebrate the holiday, two gift links to NY Times Opinion pieces.

First, in regard to the discussion of religion in the last thread, it has, I believe, been noted on these boards in the past that US and European attitudes toward religious belief vary quite a bit. Here in the US we have for more than a decade been under the increasing threat of an authoritarian sectarian insurgency which terms itself Christian.

Here’s a piece by the wife of a Republican state legislator in Wyoming that casts a worried eye on that insurgency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/21/op...

Rural states are particularly vulnerable to the promise of Christian nationalism. In Wyoming, we are white (more than 92 percent) and love God (71 percent identified as Christian in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center) and Mr. Trump (seven in 10 voters picked him in 2020).

The result is bad church and bad law. “God, guns and Trump” is an omnipresent bumper sticker here, the new trinity. The evangelical church has proved to be a supplicating audience for the Christian nationalist roadshow. Indeed, it is unclear to me many Sundays whether we are hearing a sermon or a stump speech.

Ms. Stubson recognizes this elsewhere in the piece as “idolatry”, but she stops far short of declaring it, as I have, the equivalent of the worship of Moloch.

I don’t know if non-US readers are familiar with the phenomenon of “prayer breakfasts” mentioned in the piece. I note that a National Prayer Breakfast has been held in Washington DC for over 70 years and, as far as I can recall, has always had a bipartisan attendance. I think of it as the Feast of the Whited Sepulchers.

In the second article regular columnist Maureen Dowd reflects on her newly minted Master of Arts in English Literature and its place in the present-day US.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/27/op...

In a world where brevity is the soul of social media, what practical use can come from all that voluminous, ponderous reading? Would braving “Ulysses” help you pay the rent the way coding could?

I wish I could adopt the attitude of Drew Lichtenberg, who has taught theater history at Catholic and Yale Universities. “We should hail the return of the arts and humanities to bohemian weirdos,” he said. “It began as something for which there were no career opportunities or money to be made, and thence it will return. Like Gertrude Stein’s circle in the Jazz Age. Or like Baudelaire, Rimbaud and the Symbolist poets in the fin de siècle.”

But I find the deterioration of our language and reading skills too depressing. It is a loss that will affect the level of intelligence in all American activities.

Political eloquence is scarce. Newt Gingrich told Laura Ingraham that the secret to Donald Trump’s success is that “he talks at a level where third-, fourth- and fifth-grade educations can say, ‘Oh yeah, I get that.’”

The piece, combined with Michael Dirda’s recent column linked by @MK in last week’s chat, gave me something between a nudge and a kick in the pants to return to the literary classics, which have provided my most rewarding reading experiences. This week I started on a long-delayed reading of The Faerie Queene.

Bill wrote: "To celebrate the holiday, two gift links to NY Times Opinion pieces.

First, in regard to the discussion of religion in the last thread, it has, I believe, been noted on these boards in the past th..."

i am alarmed by the Trump MAGA cohorts that squeal for the removal of seperation of church and state, mainly as the Suprem Court is now a MAGA splinter group and is likely to entertain any ideas the masses on the right have about changing the course of the last 60-70 years in the USA(though seperation of church and state is much older)

I wish i could say the conservative protestant approach to abortion was due to a feeling of fading irrrelvance but the USA is one western nation that bucks that trend, i see the conservative protestants in the USA as knowing they have a huge base and great outreach, its not fustration that fuels them, its relevance, they know with the Catholics voting alongside them, they can achieve so much outside the two coastlines, especially in the mid-west

Gpfr wrote: "Happy Monday to all, whether you be celebrating Whit Monday, a bank holiday, or just having an ordinary Monday ...

Here's to good reading for everyone!"

Thanks. In the US it's Memorial Day, a day to honor servicemen. (Originally, it commemorated visits to the graves of Civil War dead.)

MYSTERY

at bottom of page 61 of my Spark novel, the following is written:

T.M.G -4

does anyone know what this means?
Obviously T.M.G is The Mandelbaum Gate but not sure what the -4 means? as its in the middle of chapter 3

its a penguin edition

AB76 wrote: "Bill wrote: "To celebrate the holiday, two gift links to NY Times Opinion pieces.

First, in regard to the discussion of religion in the last thread, it has, I believe, been noted on these boards i..."

My 2¢ is the driving force is keeping or gaining power, and extreme religious views on abortion are triggers used to support those views. The population of 'white males' in the US is a declining percentage so they use what means they have to stay in power. Here's a longish clip - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics....

Ashamed to see the furore over Kathleen Stock speaking at the Oxford Union, universities should be a place of unlimited open enquiry, not this strange new world of triggers, welfare and counselling.

I attended university in the late 1990s, i'm probably one of the youngest here and this was not an issue at any time during my studies. it is a major concern to see what is happening to campuses over Europe and the world....

was gonna post this on the G but then realised it would have no chance of surviving the wokerati mods!

I've just finished listening to The Secret of Chimneys. Early on I wished one could easily dissect (if that's the correct word) an author's mind. I know I could not sprinkle a book with so many odd clues. Of course, writing anything longer than a few sentences is beyond me.

Hugh Fraser does an excellent narration, and my library has more audio by him, so I can while away my time with the weeds listening to him narrate missed Christies - skipping Poirot of course.

AB76 wrote: "Ashamed to see the furore over Kathleen Stock speaking at the Oxford Union, universities should be a place of unlimited open enquiry, not this strange new world of triggers, welfare and counselling..."

Sorry to say but debate is passé. Today's rules seem to be agree or get the hell out! I hope you can listen to this example from an episode of the NYT's The Daily - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/po...

What got me was that Dan Savage (Editor of The Stranger) was used as a reality reference by detractors in this piece. Personal Opinion note - The Stranger is a local left wing equivalent of Fox News. It revels in hyperbole.

Nothing like the location made famous by 'aces and eights' to spur (no head rolls, please) in an newish historical mystery series whose second book is - The Big Sugar: A Brigid Reardon Mystery. The first - The Streel: A Deadwood Mystery is available at a nearby library. Guess where I'm headed this afternoon?

AB76 wrote: "MYSTERY

at bottom of page 61 of my Spark novel, the following is written:

T.M.G -4

does anyone know what this means?
Obviously T.M.G is The Mandelbaum Gate but not sure what the -4 means? as i..."

It has something to do with providing a guide to assembling separately printed sections of a book. Most older Penguin editions have these indicators. For more details, see The Mezzanine, where the narrator talks about the codes in his Penguin edition of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "MYSTERY

at bottom of page 61 of my Spark novel, the following is written:

T.M.G -4

does anyone know what this means?
Obviously T.M.G is The Mandelbaum Gate but not sure what the -..."

Of course I had to go look up The Mezzanine at my local library only to find that, even though published in 2010, the library has ordered 6 copies to go with the 1 it already has. I'm in line for it, but it will be a while before it shows up.

AB76 wrote: "Ashamed to see the furore over Kathleen Stock speaking at the Oxford Union, universities should be a place of unlimited open enquiry, not this strange new world of triggers, welfare and counselling..."

It is frightening to be honest AB. These gender terrorists or whatever you want to call them cannot be allowed to win. Nobody is denying, least of all Prof Stock, that transgender people do exist, but their "rights" should not supersede the rights of the rest of the population. And however one identifies, if you are XX you are biologically female and if you a XY you are biologically male.
The very idea of a male rapist being put into a female prison is so bizarre and beyond any commonsense it beggars belief. And positively encouraging children to take puberty blocking drugs is, to my mind, child abuse.

Better stop now before I offend further.

MK wrote: "Of course I had to go look up The Mezzanine at my local library only to find that, even though published in 2010, the library has ordered 6 copies to go with the 1 it already has. I'm in line for it, but it will be a while before it shows up."

Actually, it was first published in 1988, and I probably read it in paperback about a year later. I'm not sure why your library would want to stock so many copies of a 35-year-old novel, unless it's enjoyed a sudden prominence for some reason that I'm unaware of.

By the way, thanks for the link to The Daily - I missed that one when it was first published and I found it a very typical case of the way self-righteous social justice warriors always proclaim themselves in the right even when proven wrong.

I wasn’t wild about Real Life, but Brandon Taylor’s “By the Book” interview is one of the best I’ve read:

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

For some reason, people always seem surprised that I (or anyone) is reading Sigmund Freud — I don’t get why that is surprising because everyone should be reading Freud — so I guess I have to say, the entire series of Freud’s writings as reissued by Penguin Modern Classics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/bo...

MK wrote: "I've just finished listening to The Secret of Chimneys. Early on I wished one could easily dissect (if that's the correct word) an author's mind. I know I could not sprinkle a book wit..."

This might have been my favourite Agatha Christie when I was reading her books as a youngster all through the 1970s. I didn't find any of the other Tommy and Tuppence books ever quite matched it in terms of breezy adventure and pure fun but I hope to read them all again one of these days and find out if my reactions will change.

Bill wrote: "I wasn’t wild about Real Life, but Brandon Taylor’s “By the Book” interview is one of the best I’ve read: What book might people be surprised to find on your shelv..."

I'm not familiar with Brandon Taylor but I agree in having found Freud a very rewarding writer. I've avoided the psychiatric case studies up to now through a bit of mistrust as to how reliable they are factually, but the writings on culture, the arts, religion, etc are some of the most thought-provoking and incisive I've come across by anyone.

MK wrote: "Of course I had to go look up The Mezzanine at my local library only to find that, even though published in 2010, the library has ordered 6 copies to go with the 1 it already has. I'm in line for it, but it will be a while before it shows up"

I can second Bill's recommendation of The Mezzanine: an unusual style, probably not for everyone, but I found it egrossing. This reminds me, I should seek out more of Baker. The only other one of his I've read was the non-fiction one about WWII, Human Smoke (also excellent).

AB76 wrote: "Ashamed to see the furore over Kathleen Stock speaking at the Oxford Union, universities should be a place of unlimited open enquiry, not this strange new world of triggers, welfare and counselling..."

I understand that our confreres at the G have been hacked lately. When I try to contact them, I get a quick shift to Never Never Land.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "MYSTERY

at bottom of page 61 of my Spark novel, the following is written:

T.M.G -4

does anyone know what this means?
Obviously T.M.G is The Mandelbaum Gate but not sure what the -..."

thanks bill....that solves it!

Berkley wrote: "Bill wrote: "...Brandon Taylor..."I'm not familiar with Brandon Taylor but I agree in having found Freud a very rewarding writer. I've avoided the psychiatric case studies up to now through a bit of mistrust as to how reliable they are factually, but the writings on culture, the arts, religion, etc are some of the most thought-provoking and incisive I've come across by anyone.""

Yes, Freud is such an interesting writer on those more general subjects, and I just read something in Classical Mythology by Helen Morales in which she asserts that Freud focused on the child-fantasy interpretation to be obtained from the Oedipus myth in order to avoid what his patients were in fact telling him, which was that as children they had been sexually abused; that his theories would have found much wider and continuing acceptance among practitioners, who were hearing the same thing from their patients, if he had stuck to the facts instead of the myth; and that it is all profoundly ironic, because if he had taken up another part of the Oedipus story, it would all have fitted, because the origin of the curse – or, as we might say, the family dysfunction - was that Oedipus’ father Lais, while a guest of King Pelops, had abducted and raped Pelops’ son Chrysippus.

I'm completely unqualified to express any kind of authoritative view on these matters, but it does not make them any the less fascinating.

giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Ashamed to see the furore over Kathleen Stock speaking at the Oxford Union, universities should be a place of unlimited open enquiry, not this strange new world of triggers, welfare an..."

the scottish gender issues shone a bright light on the insanity of it all, with two male rapists who became "women" and all the issues with what sort of prison they would serve their sentences in.

its all very sad and more invasion of female spaces, of which feminists have argued for over 100 years to preserve. whats also sad is we are talking about maybe 0.01% of the population being offended about a majority of the neglected 51% of the population trying to encourage safer behaviour and understanding of what being female is all about.

Anyone here interested in Staffordshire Pottery History? Here's the Arnold Bennett Prize winning book for this year - https://www.barewall.co.uk/products/a...

For any Welsh among us - read the blurb and towards the end you will find out a tad about his first book.

I found it difficult to read this piece in today's Washington Post. Gift link below. It rather follows on from today's earlier discussion about what I call - radical Christianity

https://wapo.st/45DHOCb

Bill wrote: "MK wrote: "Of course I had to go look up The Mezzanine at my local library only to find that, even though published in 2010, the library has ordered 6 copies to go with the 1 it already has. I'm in..."

@Bill - My library today has 1 copy from 2010 (Atlantic) and 6 copies on order. There are 19 holds.

Some libraries try to keep a ratio of holds to books and periodically run a program for this purpose. The library I used to work at tried to have a book for every 5 holds.

I don't know if this is the reason here, but the library is (at least temporarily) flush with funds thanks to a levy, so that may have something to do with it, too.

MK wrote: "@Bill - My library today has 1 copy from 2010 (Atlantic) and 6 copies on order. There are 19 holds."

I was just amazed that 19 people wanted to read a novel from 1988 that few people in my experience seem to have heard of.

Looking at the Goodreads stats for The Mezzanine:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/stats?...

Over 100 people added it as to-read at the end of May 2023 - it must have been mentioned by some "influencer" recently. I wonder if I could influence the influencer to mention Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright.

Russell wrote: "Yes, Freud is such an interesting writer on those more general subjects, ..."

He reminds me of Marx a little in a way: I think they were both so concerned to treat their respective fields of investigation in a scientific way and to present their conclusions in the same determinate manner as 19th century science, that it led them astray at times - Marx in his over-confident predictions of the future and Freud perhaps in his presentation of his case histories.

But I think both were extraordinarily acute in their more general analyses of the many and various questions they were concerned with, philosophical, cultural, etc. And of course psychological in Freud's case and political-economical in Marx's.

Bill wrote: "I was just amazed that 19 people wanted to read a novel from 1988 that few people in my experience seem to have heard of.

Looking at the Goodreads stats for The Mezzanine:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/stats?...

Over 100 people added it as to-read at the end of May 2023 - it must have been mentioned by some "influencer" recently. I wonder if I could influence the influencer to mention Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright."

I thought Nicholson Baker was a pretty big name in contemporary American literature from the 1980s through to the early 2000s at least, but no idea how prominent he is now.

I've read only one book by Steven Millhauser - In the Realms of Morpheus, which I thought was interesting but uneven. I was thinking of trying Martin Dressler next and then going back to the earlier Edwin Mullhouse later, but if you tell me that that's his best I might have to revise my plans. Which would make you an influencer, if only on the smallest of scales.

Off to Amsterdam tomorrow for 2 days, to see the Vermeer exhibition. Looking forward to it!

In Valley of the Shadow, french complacency towards the capabilities of the Viet Minh troops to supply and then bombard the valley of Dien Bien Phu is quite shocking to read

I have read a lot of fiction and non-fiction about Indochina, the military reading concentrated more on the battle the French had to hold a colony they exploited and damaged over 150 years or so, DBP was always a part of my reading but never in detail

It seems the French managed to drop an assortment of elite troops, tough colonial units and local Tai allies into a valley they could only hope to defend if they did everything correct. Instead the whole affair seems tainted by conceptions that the Viets couldnt do " A, B, C or D" and that in a formal pitched battle they always lost.

For a battle hardened set of officers, there is a lot of Gallic emotion and furious set-tos about what subsequently starts to happen in the first few weeks, as outposts are destroyed, colonial troops desert and a number of high ranking officers are killed. There is Col Piroth, in charge of artillery, who sulks in his bunker clutching a hand grenade with the pin detached, the hard Col Langlais,berating Piroth and others, his commander De Castries who becomes depressed and defeatist within days.

In fairness to these officers, they were all used to quick, decisive actions, as part of the best units in the french army. At DBP they found themselves cut off and facing a long siege without any chance of relief, though preparations could have been far better once they landed

The fate of all the men captured at the end of the battle was forced marches and starvation in Viet Minh POW camps, the experience they went through was harrowing and savage. Not many survived that period and this forms a large section of Larteguys novel The Centurions

I'm only one third into the read and its gripping

Here's a long piece about Nick Cohen and the G (mostly) and spiked articles. If you are avoiding sleaze, you should not click.

When doing a gift article, I don't know if it includes 'reader remarks' so I will add this which I clipped (Gift link below the clip) - Gerry Mohan
Berlin, Germany
39m ago
There's only one thing I would disagree with in this article and that's the description of Nick Cohen (and by implication the Guardian) as "left wing". It's worth reading a 2011 article by ex-Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook, "The Dangerous Cult of the Guardian"..."The paper’s role, like that of its rightwing cousins, is to limit the imaginative horizons of readers. While there is just enough leftwing debate to make readers believe their paper is pluralistic, the kind of radical perspectives needed to question the very foundations on which the system of Western dominance rests is either unavailable or is ridiculed.
Reading the Guardian, it is possible to believe that one of the biggest problems facing our societies – comparable to our compromised political elites, corrupt police authorities, and depraved financial system – is an array of mainly isolated dissidents and intellectuals on the left.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/wo...

MK wrote: "Here's a long piece about Nick Cohen and the G (mostly) and spiked articles. If you are avoiding sleaze, you should not click.

When doing a gift article, I don't know if it includes 'reader remar..."


this reflects so badly on the G, which spends so much time censoring comments and moderating free speech but no deals in hypocrasy too!

what baffles me is that anyone could ever think this behaviour is acceptable, i'm a red blooded male and have worked with many women i found attractive(some i dated) but never, ever would i physically impress myself on them or do anything against their will

Though it seems with Cohen it was an older man just doing what he wanted with younger female staff...uggh

Berkley wrote: "I've read only one book by Steven Millhauser - In the Realms of Morpheus, which I thought was interesting but uneven. I was thinking of trying Martin Dressler next and then going back to the earlier Edwin Mullhouse later, but if you tell me that that's his best I might have to revise my plans. Which would make you an influencer, if only on the smallest of scales."

I was a bit dismayed that Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer won the Pulitzer Prize. Not that it was undeserved, but that the Prize undoubtedly meant that most readers new to Millhauser would gravitate to that book as their first encounter, and I thought that Dressler was unlikely to encourage further exploration of his oeuvre.

I thought that Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright was Millhauser’s best single book – certainly his best novel. It works on at least two levels: an intensely evocative depiction of a middle-class post-war American childhood and a satire on literary biography. This last gives it shape and point, a kind of beginning-middle-and-end-ness that seems to elude Millhauser in his other fiction. (Though perhaps the novel’s satire also encompasses writing that incorporates that kind of story arc: literature is like that, real life not so much.)

His second novel is a kind of sequel to the first. Not that there are any common story elements, but if Edwin Mullhouse is about childhood, Portrait of a Romantic is about adolescence. I thought it very good, evocative of the life of an introspective American teen in the same way the previous novel evoked childhood, and brilliantly written.

After those two novels, I think Millhauser’s strength lies in his short fiction and novellas – forms in which it is difficult to achieve the kind of recognition which lesser writers can attain writing novels. I think Millhauser recognized both these truths and attempted, in From the Realm of Morpheus, to string together a collection of fantastic tales and Borgesean vignettes into the semblance of a novel. (As if to emphasize his miniaturist credentials, the first (and only?) edition's dust jacket features a painting by Nicholas Hilliard.)

Michael Dirda, who is one of the novel’s few champions among literary critics, says that the original manuscript of Morpheus was considerably longer but trimmed radically before publication at the publisher’s insistence.

One of the book’s appeals to Dirda, as it would no doubt be for many readers, are two of the libraries Millhauser imagines in the world of dreams: one containing books left incomplete or unrealized in the waking world, but published in full under Morpheus’ aegis; the other a collection of all the books written by fictional characters, mentioned in novels, plays, and stories, but otherwise unavailable to the wide-awake reader.

MK wrote: "I found it difficult to read this piece in today's Washington Post. Gift link below. It rather follows on from today's earlier discussion about what I call - radical Christianity

https://wapo.st/..."

MK wrote: "I found it difficult to read this piece in today's Washington Post. Gift link below. It rather follows on from today's earlier discussion about what I call - radical Christianity

https://wapo.st/..."

I listened to the article earlier today, but only just now got around to looking at the accompanying photographs. It looks like poor editing evidently resulted in a still from The Handmaid’s Tale being included in the article.

Gpfr wrote: "Off to Amsterdam tomorrow for 2 days, to see the Vermeer exhibition. Looking forward to it!"

Have a good trip. Have you packed Tracy Chevalier's 'The Girl with a Pearl Earring' or 'The Lady and the Unicorn'? Or maybe something else?

MK wrote: "Here's a long piece about Nick Cohen and the G (mostly) and spiked articles. If you are avoiding sleaze, you should not click.

When doing a gift article, I don't know if it includes 'reader remar..."


Thanks for the link (and also the previous one on home-schooling) MK.

I've read Cohens column for years and generally he came over as an unpleasant person. Left-wing? No way..

I lost the illusion that the G is a left-wing newspaper when they joined the smear campaign against Corbyn. What he said and did, every mistake, every misstep was blown out of proportion (Nick Cohen was one of the most vicious hatchet wielders). He was the only social democrat leader the Labour party ever had. But his politics were not important any more. It was all "kill the witch".
I still think he was one of the rare animals in politics: a honest and decent person who really wanted to make the country a better place for those who weren't upper-middle class.


I found the Jonathan Cook article you referred to

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/...


(btw: reader's comments are accessible)

Bill wrote (#37): "MK wrote: "I found it difficult to read this piece in today's Washington Post. Gift link below. It rather follows on from today's earlier discussion about what I call - radical Christianity

https..."

My first thought as well. If only...

Gpfr wrote: "Happy Monday to all, whether you be celebrating Whit Monday, a bank holiday, or just having an ordinary Monday ...

Here's to good reading for everyone!"

Thanks for this! As for your comment:

...Leonardo Padura's Heretics. One strand of the story is about a young Jew wanting to become an artist who is an apprentice in Rembrandt's studio — he has to keep it secret.

I remember writing about this book, looking back it must have been on TLS, and I think you responded, scarletnoir, saying you hadn't liked Padura. I think it's a marvellous book, but then I like Padura.

I must plead not guilty - I have never read anything by Padura, so can't have "not liked it"! ;-)

AB76 wrote: "The SIlence of the Wave by Gianrico Carafiglio- a pyschological novel that has started well..."

I like all Carofiglio's 'Guido Guerrieri' novels, featuring a defence lawyer. I didn't care for an early novel about someone with a gambling addiction - 'The past is a foreign country'.

I'll be interested to see what you think of this one.

Bill wrote: "To celebrate the holiday, two gift links to NY Times Opinion pieces.

First, in regard to the discussion of religion in the last thread, it has, I believe, been noted on these boards in the past th..."

Thanks - no time to read the articles now (or maybe ever? we'll see...) but the quote from the first one seems completely accurate and on the ball.

The second is a bit more problematic as the 'arts' nowadays are very different to what they were before the invention of media such as cinema and musical records, let alone the internet and social media. The assumption from Lichtenberg seems to be that the 'arts' can be returned to people of talent but no money (or perhaps interest in making any) - however (in the UK at least) it feels as if fewer and fewer working class people have any chance of making it in the media as actors, as they can't afford to attend drama courses. In the past, being an "actress" (in particular) was regarded by some as being little better than being some sort of prostitute (or so it seems) - nowadays, wealthy mothers would be delighted if their little darlings made it as Hollywood stars, with the riches that would follow.

That's Lichtenberg, though - the main points by Maureen Dowd seem difficult to disagree with.

AB76 wrote: "Ashamed to see the furore over Kathleen Stock speaking at the Oxford Union, universities should be a place of unlimited open enquiry, not this strange new world of triggers, welfare and counselling..."

Absolutely... I'm not sure of the details of her views, but it seem clear to me that they have been misrepresented in order to demonise her.

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The SIlence of the Wave by Gianrico Carafiglio- a pyschological novel that has started well..."

I like all Carofiglio's 'Guido Guerrieri' novels, featuring a defence lawyer. I didn't ..."

so far its well balanced and hitting all the right notes..

giveusaclue wrote: "Better stop now before I offend further."

You didn't offend me, as I agree with you.

It is a 'blue moon' occurrence when I agree with the Daily Mail, but this is one such occasion.

(On pretty much everything else from the Zinoviev letter - 1920s, to supporting the fascists in the 1930s, to supporting tax cuts for the rich when the owner is a tax evader, to criticising so-called 'benefits cheats', to demonising immigrants generally - forget it.)

Gpfr wrote: "Off to Amsterdam tomorrow for 2 days, to see the Vermeer exhibition. Looking forward to it!"

How I envy you! I'd have gone, too, except for ongoing concerns about flying + COVID, and by the time we decided to go anyway it was sold out. The only slight consolation is that I've seen a reasonable number of the remaining paintings... up to 20 or so, judging by the galleries I've visited which hold the works.

I have finished Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters and its been a very enjoyable and readable late evening appointment for me over the last 4 weeks

Written in a NYC townhouse and then on Nantucket island for the summer, he drops in some interesting political commentary, General Macarthur gets some stick, comments on Korea and the Russians, the weather in the two locations and the usual literary updates, plus his relatives and short but quite poignant memories of his childhood in Salinas.

In some ways it didn’t reveal all about the writing methods I was curious about, though the way that the novel churned him up sometimes, causing bad dreams and moods was interesting, plus the anxiety over finishing the novel vs time to finish it. I also perceived a bitterness towards the world of critics and their reviews, there is doubt that a novel of ideas and questions will be well received, which is a good point. People don’t always want doubt creeping into what they read.

Bill wrote: "MK wrote: "I found it difficult to read this piece in today's Washington Post. Gift link below. It rather follows on from today's earlier discussion about what I call - radical Christianity

https..."

Thanks, Bill. Snipped the picture for a future use. So glad I don't live in a red state - although true blue also has concerns.

A book title as 'click bait'. I've just finished Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester: The Shipwreck that Shocked Restoration Britain. While Pepys kinda runs through the dialogue, he is not the lead character. If I had to pick a lead, it would have been James, Duke of York.

It spite of the title, it was an enjoyable book where I learned about that era's shipbuilding and the plight of the lowly crews. If that interests you, this would be a worthwhile read.