Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello and welcome to the new thread.

Earlier this evening, I saw this video of a floating bookshop and wanted to share it with you:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_DGzw...

As always, happy reading to all!

Hi there, thanks again for the new thread.

That looks absolutely lovely and reminds me of this series:

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/li...

I have read the first three and they are easy and entertaining,

Thanks for the new thread.

Hospital reading continues. I returned Sherlock Holmes to the center's little library, and have started on Robert Massie's Dreadnought. Massie is a fine narrator, and his book is full of interesting character sketches of the politicians and admirals of Edwardian times. As with his Nicholas and Alexandra, I find myself shifting between interesting episodes, rather than reading it straight through.
I haven't forgotten The Bully Pulpit, which has similar virtues in describing US political life in the same period.
Along with these, there is a gift book, Jessica Shattuck's The Women in the Castle. I am a few chapters into this novel.
I fear that I owe scarletnoir an apology from the last thread. After so much learned discussion of the spelling of things Welsh, on a lark I suggested that a spelling that concerned him was really the Cornish spelling of the word.

Just started a collection of Heinrich Boll's short stories that has been on my pile for over a decade. 2024 has seen a few of these pile lingerers being read at last

Of the two big West German writers, Boll and Grass, i always enjoy reading Boll a lot more. Unlike Grass he isnt as difficult or unusual and is a far better writer and thinker.

The stories gathered in Absent Without Leave are from the 1960s and late 1950s, focused on the memory of WW2 and the wonder years of West Germany and its re-birth. Wry humour and interesting stories abound, with also the very unusual use of made up character names, which dont exist in german but sound vaguely German.

Modern novel reading has hit a brick wall, i have some interesting ones lined up but might stop reading modern stuff for a few weeks and de-tox from that world

Robert wrote: "I fear that I owe scarletnoir an apology from the last thread. After so much learned discussion of the spelling of things Welsh, on a lark I suggested that a spelling that concerned him was really the Cornish spelling of the word."

Haha, and he certainly didn't approve of my suggested pronunciation of Machynlleth!

Hope you are soon out of hospital, but glad to know that you have at least found some reading matter to your liking.

Robert wrote: "Thanks for the new thread.

Hospital reading continues. I returned Sherlock Holmes to the center's little library, and have started on Robert Massie's Dreadnought. Massie is a fine narrator, and h..."

i hope hospital is ok Robert....good books should help the time pass ofc

Robert wrote: "... Hospital reading continues. I returned Sherlock Holmes to the center's little library, and have started on Robert Massie's Dreadnought...."

Dreadnought – Quite impressive that they have such a tome in a small library. I remember being actually a bit dissatisfied with it, years ago, as there didn’t seem to be all that much about the Dreadnoughts themselves. On the other hand it was very good on the European situation generally, and as you say it has many well-narrated individual episodes. One of them has stuck in my mind all these years, because it made me think very differently about AJ Balfour, who, I had always understood, was less than successful as PM. In 1908, when of course he was no longer in office, he gave evidence to the Committee of Imperial Defence on the question of Britain’s vulnerability to invasion, having been asked to analyse the materials. He spoke for an hour. His audience (Asquith, Grey, Haldane, Lloyd George, Lord Roberts) were dumbfounded by his “luminous” exposition, and could not think of a single question to ask.

GP – Thanks as ever for the new thread.

Gpfr wrote: "Hello and welcome to the new thread..."

Thanks.

I continue to hugely enjoy Queneau's Zazie dans le métro, in parallel with David Downing's 1950s set John Russell novel Union Station for when reading and checking French vocabulary becomes too tiring!

Robert wrote: "on a lark I suggested that a spelling that concerned him was really the Cornish spelling of the word..."

You were joking? Never mind... and it's true that 'foreign' names are often spelt differently in a country's 'own' language. So it could have been true!

Any end in sight to your hospital stay? I hope so... I'd appreciate a date for the scan on my knee, as it seems to have stopped improving on its own, but we'll see. I can get about OK with one crutch by now.

scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "on a lark I suggested that a spelling that concerned him was really the Cornish spelling of the word..."

You were joking? Never mind... and it's true that 'foreign' names are often ..."

Glad your are a bit more mobile scarlet. I found when I was on crutches earlier in the year people were incredibly helpful.

scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Hello and welcome to the new thread..."

Thanks.

I continue to hugely enjoy Queneau's Zazie dans le métro, in parallel with David Downing's 1950s set John Russell novel..."

Zazie? Paris invaded by mouth.

scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "on a lark I suggested that a spelling that concerned him was really the Cornish spelling of the word..."

You were joking? Never mind... and it's true that 'foreign' names are often ..."

I am allowed to get out of bed and race around in the wheelchair. Walking lessons continue. Hope you surprise them with progress!

Robert wrote: "Zazie? Paris invaded by mouth.."

A good description!

Robert wrote: "I am allowed to get out of bed and race around in the wheelchair. Walking lessons continue."

Good - progress is being made.
(Despite a couple of bad injuries in the past - broken femur, then broken pelvis - I was never in a self-propelled wheelchair. They were used briefly to ferry me from A to B in the hospital, but it was crutches as soon as I could get of the bed.)

I wonder if there are any admirers of 'Nicholas Blake' out there?

We have been watching the series 'The Beast Must Die' on ITVX, and before starting found out that it was based on a book. (I initially thought from the title that it must be by Dennis Wheatley of 'The Devil Rides Out' fame!) Further research showed that the author was 'Blake' - or Cecil Day-Lewis, to give him his true name. The TV series isn't bad, but as you'd expect a lot has been changed: updated from 1938 to the present; a woman not a man seeking revenge; the detective Nigel Strangeways a cop not a PI - and minus the literary references - etc. It's not bad if not outstanding... so far, much of the basic plot has been retained though I assume filled out a lot.

I may have read one or two 'Blakes' a very long time ago, but I'm not sure.

scarletnoir wrote: "I wonder if there are any admirers of 'Nicholas Blake' out there?..."

I've read and enjoyed most of them. I thought I must have written about them here, but a search didn't turn up any reference.
There was a recommendation somewhere at the end of 2020 to The Case of the Abominable Snowman and after that I read the others over the next couple of years.

The Comfort of Strangers – Jacqueline Winspear (2024)

Saw this at the library, the concluding volume in the Maisie Dobbs series. It was pretty good. I’ve only read one other, which I quite liked. Set in post-war 1945, the mystery story felt a bit contrived. The family story, which comes to fore in the second half, was stronger. An incident at a war memorial was handled with beautiful sensitivity.

The much-borrowed title is apposite here.

P.S. One thing JW touches on, among other period details, is how the school-leaving age in 1945 was 14. This reminded me of the controversy in the mid-1960s over raising the age from 15 to 16. Even at the (all boys) grammar school that I went to, there was huge discontent among boys saying they didn’t want to waste another year in school. Only a small minority were going on to technical college or university. In the event the decision was put off, and the change didn’t happen until 1972.

Logger24 wrote: "P.S. One thing JW touches on, among other period details, is how the school-leaving age in 1945 was 14. This reminded me of the controversy in the mid-1960s over raising the age from 15 to 16. Even..."

I can remember my grandma, born 1899, telling me that at 12 she had half a day at t' school and half a day at 't mill!

Gpfr, I'm not sure if it's the same one, but there is a bookshop on a narrow boat situated at Foxton Locks in Leicestershire,
I bought one of my grandsons a Harry Potter book there..

Saw a headline in the G about capitalism saving the NHS. (The author didn't think it likely.)

I think of it while stirring my hospital morning egg. "Is this capitalism," I ask.

Haybaling tommorow, i will be helping my father and 5 other helpers to gather a bumper crop, lots of it greening and showing evidence of the wet 2024 we have had so far

Reading is going well, its been a strong year and after declaring i was losing patience with modern novels after a few duff reads, i decided to read Nawal El-Saadawi's Two Women in One (1971) as a kind of "cheat" modern novel. Its a feminist work and one can get an idea of being a woman in Sadat's Egypt from the remarkable prose

The Heinrich Boll stories are great, two stories, one set in August 1939 and one in Autumn 1945, captured the beginning and the end of WW2. Boll seems to be telling an autobiographical tale here and his Catholicism is a factor in the first story about 1939(though a questioning approach)

I am really enjoying The Penguin Modern History of Spain the author argues strongly for Spain being less of a straggler from 1898 to 1914 and actually recovering well from the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Phillipines. The strands of the problems of the 1930s are starting to emerge as WW1 breaks out, a mix of a catholic activism in the face of deep rooted left wing anti-clerical ideas, the last twitches of organised conservative vote rigging, stagnation of the Conservative-Liberal duopoly, the emergence of organised workers parties and a stubborn, inflexible monarch

Robert wrote: "Saw a headline in the G about capitalism saving the NHS. (The author didn't think it likely.)

I think of it while stirring my hospital morning egg. "Is this capitalism," I ask."

The NHS desperately needs saving after the last 14 years...

I injured my knee on 12 August, and was seen in A&E not by a doctor - or even a nurse - but by a barely trained 'assistant', who carried out rudimentary tests then disappeared to talk to an invisible physician. Between them, they decided to send me for an X-ray and to give me an appointment with a doctor for later - a week later - when I was told there wasn't a break - which I could have told them. I was sent away again, to await an appointment for an ultrasound scan. I'm still waiting. I have had no treatment, no advice and no physiotherapy. I was given co-codamol and crutches, which I still use.

We are due to leave for France a week today. It looks as if we'll be off before any scan is done. I'll probably have it done privately over there - not something everyone can afford.

My retired GP friend tells me that the NHS was never better financed than during the last Labour government... it's on life support by now, and who knows how long it'll take to get back to the previous state, if it can ever be managed?

Greenfairy wrote: "Gpfr, I'm not sure if it's the same one, but there is a bookshop on a narrow boat situated at Foxton Locks in Leicestershire,
I bought one of my grandsons a Harry Potter book there.."

The one in the video is in London.
I must try to visit some time when I'm over.

Logger24 wrote: "The Comfort of Strangers – Jacqueline Winspear (2024)

Saw this at the library, the concluding volume in the Maisie Dobbs series. It was pretty good. I’ve only read one other, which I quite liked. ..."

I've enjoyed this series, not read the last one yet.
I'm not keen on the somewhat mystic/spiritual aspects of the heroine's approach to investigations, but they're not too intrusive :)

Volker Kutscher
Has anyone else read his Gereon Rath novels? I think some have seen the Babylon Berlin TV series which is (freely) based on them.

The series starts in the late 1920's, Rath is a police officer (of sometimes dubious behaviour) in Berlin. I think there are 9 novels (so far?) in the series, but they haven't all been translated — 5 into English and 3 into French. For some reason I started thinking about them this morning and wondering if a new one was available.

I think they're very good.

The Final Curtain
This is the final book in Higashino's Detective Kaga series. Murders in Tokyo turn out to have a connection to Kaga's mother who left her family with no explanation when he was a young boy.

I've got some books in his Detective Galileo series still to read.

Gpfr wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "The Comfort of Strangers – Jacqueline Winspear (2024)

...I'm not keen on the somewhat mystic/spiritual aspects of the heroine's approach to investigations, but they're not too intrusive :)"

I didn’t see any of that in this last book, except in the sense that she wasn’t satisfied in herself if things didn’t fit. It was more a case of an intelligent person asking ordinary questions. There was a slip at the back the library asks you to fill in. The two previous readers rated it 5/5 on the library scale (“Unmissable”), which suggested to me they were hard-core fans. Not to be too dismal, I gave it 3/5 (“Definitely worth reading”), which felt a bit generous.

scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Saw a headline in the G about capitalism saving the NHS. (The author didn't think it likely.)

I think of it while stirring my hospital morning egg. "Is this capitalism," I ask."

The NHS desperately needs saving after the last 14 years...

I injured my knee on 12 August, and was seen in A&E not by a doctor - or even a nurse - but by a barely trained 'assistant'...

My retired GP friend tells me that the NHS was never better financed than during the last Labour government... it's on life support by now, and who knows how long it'll take to get back to that state, if it can ever be managed?"

I read somewhere that the one thing the Blair/Brown government did without fail was to ensure each year that NHS funding was increased by at least the rate of inflation.

Sorry to hear of your poor care. When last year I had a mysterious and rather painful swelling in both my lower legs, the Express Care department of our rural hospital here in Vermont examined me and then had a paramedic take me off immediately in a wheel chair to the Ultrasound department. I was back in 15 minutes with the results. They were worried it might be blood clots (risk of heart attack) but it was just burst cysts in the back of my knee. Treatment: ice packs, leg elevation, compression socks. They had all this functioning on a quiet Sunday afternoon. The standard of care was impressive.

With the UK out of the EU, do the reciprocal arrangements for health care still exist?

Robert – Hope you’re not in hospital for the long weekend.

Haybaling done, i feel well "worked" and am wondering how things may ache at 8am tommorow. lovely weather 22c with a cool steady breeze

looking foward to putting my feet up and reading something now..

Logger24 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Saw a headline in the G about capitalism saving the NHS. (The author didn't think it likely.)

I think of it while stirring my hospital morning egg. "Is this capi..."

NHS funding under the tories was a crime, it only grew in terms of amount, never relative to inflation, the growing population and what the NHS really needed. They used to say "record funding", what a joke

my only recent NHS hospital experience was negative but only related to a maxfax wisdom tooth x ray. it took far too long and was oddly chaotic but small beer compared to many stories

Gpfr wrote: "Volker Kutscher
Has anyone else read his Gereon Rath novels? I think some have seen the Babylon Berlin TV series which is (freely) based on them.

The series starts in the late 1..."

i'm doing what i rarely do and have been really enjoying the tv series of Babylon Berlin, without reading the books. the series is wonderfully filmed, full of suprises and great acting, with a quiet sense of humour

AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Volker Kutscher
Has anyone else read his Gereon Rath novels? I think some have seen the Babylon Berlin TV series which is (freely) based on them."

have been really enjoying the tv series of Babylon Berlin ..."

I think if one wants to watch this series, it's probably better not to have read the books. I saw the 1st series, it took me a long time to get into it, and although I could see qualities, having read the 1st books before, I didn't want to watch any more. Particularly what was done to the character of Charlotte Ritter.

Logger24 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "ith the UK out of the EU, do the reciprocal arrangements for health care still exist?"


Yes
https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/heal...

AB76 wrote: "Haybaling done, i feel well "worked" and am wondering how things may ache at 8am tommorow. lovely weather 22c with a cool steady breeze

looking foward to putting my feet up and reading something n..."

Hot bath AB if you can cope with that. Going to be a warm week.

Glad you got the harvest in.

AB76 wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Saw a headline in the G about capitalism saving the NHS. (The author didn't think it likely.)

I think of it while stirring my hospital morning e..."

We don't need just to throw money at the NHS we also have to make sure it is working efficiently. Some are working themselves to death, but a friend of mine who works for the NHS cannot believe some of the inefficiency and waste she sees, mostly not frontline.

giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Haybaling done, i feel well "worked" and am wondering how things may ache at 8am tommorow. lovely weather 22c with a cool steady breeze

looking foward to putting my feet up and readin..."

round here only hot day is sunday(26c), otherwise 22-23c which i dont mind

a hot bath....yes...gonna be needed in about an hour!

giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Saw a headline in the G about capitalism saving the NHS. (The author didn't think it likely.)

I think of it while stirring my hospi..."

it does need a fair funding though, its not an organisation you can force into efficiencies as the tories did for 14 years. the UK is getting sicker and iller, with a rising population, so i agree, you cant throw cash at it but it needs to be well funded, on a sensible basis, as the demands on it grow

Logger24 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Saw a headline in the G about capitalism saving the NHS. (The author didn't think it likely.)

I think of it while stirring my hospital morning egg. "Is this capi..."

Oh, I'm here for the weekend. My stepson will visit and my sister will likely visit, too.

We've done a sort of wheelchair aerobics today. While waiting, three of us old guys were kicking a balloon back and forth. At the end, we played a sort of volleyball (balloons again). It was fun to test coordination, though I returned the ball under, rather than over, the net.
Then we did a bowling game, with the pins set in the center, and each in turn attacking with a ball from a different point. I got a strike!

Logger24 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Saw a headline in the G about capitalism saving the NHS. (The author didn't think it likely.)

I think of it while stirring my hospital morning egg. "Is this capi..."

Not only am I in hospital, but I just received a written notice that coverage for my current skilled care nursing service is terminated effective 9/2/2024-- i.e. on the last day of the weekend. excitement and appeal are done and I'm reading for pleasure.

giveusaclue wrote: "We don't need just to throw money at the NHS we also have to make sure it is working efficiently."

What you can't do is give year-on-year below inflation increases, and then trot out the deliberately misleading mantra that 'the NHS has been given record funding' - being 'economical with the truth' - and expect the system to go on working. It's broken - as I saw for myself.

In addition, in the 'cut off nose to spite one's face' line it's worth pointing out that most of the staff I saw were not of British origin, so making it harder for people to come here to work in the health and care sectors is potentially disastrous.

It's also worth mentioning that I've been unfortunately 'looked after' by our local hospital several times in the past for serious conditions - both accidents and otherwise - and I never saw it in such a mess. The care, previously, was either good or at least not bad at all.

What we see now may be great for those who benefit from reduced taxes to fund their private care, but not so for the rest of the population.

Robert wrote: "We've done a sort of wheelchair aerobics today.."

Sounds OK - and a lot safer than the wheelchair rugby at the paralympics - have you seen that? Fun, but rather dangerous!

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "We don't need just to throw money at the NHS we also have to make sure it is working efficiently."

What you can't do is give year-on-year below inflation increases, and then tr..."

the RAAC concrete issue was a disaster too for the NHS, hospitals built 40 years ago should probably last another 20 years but so much RAAC is being found that its another headache

scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "We've done a sort of wheelchair aerobics today.."

Sounds OK - and a lot safer than the wheelchair rugby at the paralympics - have you seen that? Fun, but rather dangerous!"

I've seen the documentary "Murderball," where the wheelchair-bound go all out in a kind of indoor rugby.

Has anyone else here read any Heinrich Boll?

His short story collection i purchased in Hatchards about 12 years ago is brilliant but i cant quite work out why its taken me over a decade to read it.

The stories are a mix of WW2 and post-war West Germany settings, dry humour and some catholic themes. I see him as the best German writer of the 1945-1975 period, though of course Lenz, Koeppen, Andersch, Grass and East Germans like Heym and Wolf were also producing great fiction. Koeppen probably asked the hardest questions of the new Germany mind you, his novel of Bonn politics The Hothouse is a great read

Its good to see a questioning spirit in the West German authors about the new state, the economic miracle and the accomodation of ex-Nazi's. This was never the case with the East German authors, who all seemed like acolytes of the dreadful communism that ruined East Germany, though it was intriguing with the diaries of Brigitte Reimann to see dissent at many stages, in private accounts

Two Women in One is a remarkable work of Arabic feminist literature

I'm half way through this and intrigued by the depth of a short 120 page novel, very little has occurred but El- Saadawi has filled the page with the inner mind of a character, her position in modern Egyptian society as an 18yo medical student, the expectations of her and the routine she follows.

I am not sure whether the impressive number of post-WW2 Arabic novels i have read have a truly original arab voice, i would expect all of these writers have been influenced by contact with the west but every novel brings me a vivid, clear impression of the Arab world. Whether it be Mahfouz or Idris, Jabra or Khanafani, or Khalifeh or Samman. (All these were writers in the 1945-75 period)

Arabic culture and literature has always fascinated me, finding novels by Jabra, a Christian Palestinian author, who wrote most of his novels in exile in Iraq, was an exciting moment for me. His 1959 novel of Baghad Hunters in a Narrow Street was a great read. Khanafani, another Palestinian, who was killed by the IDF in the 1970s , wrote short, bitter stories of the Palestinian plight. Khalifeh and Samman like El-Saadawi are female writers, one Palestinian the other Lebanese . Samman's Beirut '75 captures a Lebanon drifting into conflict, two classes, poverty and anger at the heart of it all

I was going to post this on the G but i think i will do removing all Palestinian reference , just in case the G fail to publish it

I've mention previously how I have enjoyed the West Wales Murder Series where a detective sergeant,Norman Norman (yes really). who has been dropped on from a great height by superiors. He then retires but is brought out of retirement by a senior officer to mentor a small inexperienced squad in......West Wales.

Well I am now reading the series forerunner, Slater and Norman books. Judging by the way the murders were committed in the first two books I think they may rival Midsomer Murders for ingenuity of thought in that direction.

AB76 wrote: "This was never the case with the East German authors, who all seemed like acolytes of the dreadful communism that ruined East Germany."

I've only read Christa Wolf among DDR authors (A Model Childhood and Cassandra), and I found her subtly but, necessarily indirectly, critical in her accounts of life in the East (or, its mythological proxy, Troy).

AB76 wrote: "Two Women in One is a remarkable work of Arabic feminist literature

I'm half way through this and intrigued by the depth of a short 120 page novel,..."

I can personally recommend, Nawal El Saadawi's 'Woman at point zero', (published by Zed Books, 1983). it left a powerful impression on me, many years ago, as to what women in very different cultures have to deal with, in terms of being able to express themselves, and the difficulties of being able to achieve, what would have been a normative ambition, for native Egyptian men, of those particular times.

AB76 wrote: "Has anyone else here read any Heinrich Boll?..."

I've read The Clown and Billiards at Half Past Nine and The End of a Mission, but that was all 50+ years ago and I don’t remember anything about any one of them, save for a general impression that they were lively and satisfying and often funny. The short stories sound good value.

I’ve just finished CS Forester’s The Pursued, a neatly done crime-of-passion story. Thanks for your recommendation, and credit to Penguin for reviving it. I liked the uncluttered prose, the sort of good writing that must have been standard in the 1930s, and the clever handling of the plot. It was also in one way a first for me – I’ve managed somehow to come this far in life without ever reading a Hornblower.