Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello and welcome to the new thread.

Here's to good reads to help us understand and/or take our minds off current events and the world around us.

And à propos of nothing at all, here's a photo from a zombie exhibition I went to with my grandsons at the musée de Quai Branly:
edit Well, promises, promises, no photo— how strange! As Russell says, it showed up at first, but has now vanished. I tried posting it again, but just got "image error". So I'll post it in Photos.

thanks for all your good work GP...i dont think the photo loaded?

Thanks for the new thread, GP. The photo was there and then disappeared.

I’ve finished a couple more of Annie Ernaux:

La Place – A reminiscence of her father, commencing with his funeral. It is done as a long series of separate images, in crisp language, as if they were sharp black and white photos from a family album. The small café-grocery of Mémoire de fille is now in the foreground, and what she evokes is a petit-bourgeois existence where the dominant feeling is inferiority, and a fear of embarrassment. No one laughs or smiles. Her father’s sole source of pride is the daughter who escaped. You wouldn’t expect such a tale to be so readable, but it is.

Les Années – This draws on the same deep well of memories, and is written in the same style of discontinuous narrative. This time it is set in a wider perspective - a sort of social (and sexual) history over seven decades that is full of remembered detail, only everything is as if vibrant and illuminated. Her individual recollections serve to capture the general mood, from the POV of the left-of-centre educated middle class. She herself is placed at a distance, and considered objectively, in the third person. Thus a weightier book, but still very readable and absorbing, and deftly done, just a couple of words or a phrase sufficing to summon up a moment in time. The effect is epigrammatic. Not having grown up in a French culture, I was conscious of missing quite a few of the references (news items, TV shows, music, fashion, lingo).
…

I can’t believe I’ve been missing all the non-book discussions on eTLS. For years I’ve seen mentions here of pages for poetry and film, etc. I found my way to the photo gallery, but that was it. Today I clicked on something by mistake, and there they all were,

Logger24 wrote: "I can’t believe I’ve been missing all the non-book discussions on eTLS. For years I’ve seen mentions here of pages for poetry and film, etc...."

If anyone else is in the same case, they're under Special Topics, below Weekly TLS.

I've just finished a rather beautiful book, L'Oiseau des Français by Yasmina Liassine. The narrator, like the author, was born in Alger in the sixties to a French mother and an Algerian father, then left to study and live in France, while returning to Algeria for visits.
We meet other women, Frenchwomen who married Algerian men who had come to study in France, these couples then settling in Algeria full of hope for the future; Algerian women, one of whom is given by a departing pied-noir neighbour the birds of the title ... You may be surprised to discover what kind of birds they are!
The narrator, now adult, explores her memories and the "labyrinthe Algérie".
The author is a maths teacher and has written books on the subject, this is her 1st novel.

Thanks again G, your work is much appreciated. Hopefully, now the election in the US is over we can talk books more again!

Robert, I do hope you have been released from custody and are home and painfree. Also that the new knee is working well. My neighbour has had her knee replacement today so I will be looking to repaying her kindness to me after my op in January.

Right, on the subject of books, I am getting towards the end of
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/an...

Surprising how many serial killers and detectives with tragic past there are in fiction! A girl's body is found mutilated and then another. They are being targeted in chatrooms by the murderer. Our detective then links this to a murder decades ago of a student at Oxford. It is quite a decent story, if a bit drawn out.

Away from crime novels I have put reservations into my local library for four books:



and



by way of a change.

Then back to crime:






They should keep me out of mischief

Gpfr wrote: "I've just finished a rather beautiful book, L'Oiseau des Français by Yasmina Liassine. The narrator, like the author, was born in Alger in the sixties to a French mother and an Alg..."

Thanks, GP, for the new thread!

I saw your post on the G first, and as I've just started a book by/about a mixed French/African author/protagonist, I'll copy my response here:

This seems like an appropriate place to mention briefly the book I've just started - and which if it maintains the standards of the first few pages, promises to be brilliant. Petit pays by Gaël Faye has been translated into English as 'Small Country': Faye was born in Burundi of a Rwandan mother and French father, and had to flee the country at 13 during the civil war - though I suspect he'd strongly resent that description of his ancestry to judge by the opinions of his protagonist, who seems to be an alter ego. When asked for his origins, his character replies: "I am a human being". I expect identity to be a key issue in the novel.

Guess what? We have just been watching the news on French channel 2, when up pops none other than... Boris Johnson, to plug his latest work of fiction Unleashed. Well... after a few Qs the programme cut away to a report on Brits having to go to Lithuania for hip replacements, followed by more on the terrible state of the NHS, with lengthy queues for dentists, hospitals in disrepair etc.

They then cut to Boris standing in front of that famous bus, promising that Brexit would allow the repatriation of £350 million (per day was it?) to spend on the NHS, and spouting more BS of the sort. They then asked a surgeon if he'd seen any of this money... would you believe it, he said "No!"

Cut to Boris for more Qs - we had the sound off, but even this shameless individual looked a lot pinker than usual!

Edit: Given the former PM's well-known proclivities, it strikes me that a better title for this oeuvre might have been "Unzipped"!

After reading The Black Loch, I went back to the original Lewis trilogy and read it again. Still found it excellent :)

scarletnoir wrote: "Guess what? We have just been watching the news on French channel 2, when up pops none other than... Boris Johnson, to plug his latest work of fiction Unleashed. Well... after a fe..."

i was delighted how little coverage i have seen on his book, i feared the right wing dominated UK media would give him wall to wall oxygen but in fact i have yet to have come accross him anywhere...a pleasent suprise

Attention crime fiction lovers, of which there are many in here!

I'm reading an argentine crime novel Elena Knows by Claudia Pineiro. It was written in 2007 and translated in 2021

It follows an old lady suffering from parkinsons in the wake of the death of her only daughter, who was also her carer. In precise, intricate style it follows the old lady as she travels accross Buenos Aires to see somebody

I am not a fan of crime fiction but i do like to read these novels occasionally and i like this one so far.

If I disappear for a while it is because I have been arrested for sending an email of complaint to the FA about the young lady who has been suspended for asking if the player in the opposing team, wearing a beard, was a man.

As long as I am allowed to take my reader to jail with me!

Gpfr wrote: "After reading The Black Loch, I went back to the original Lewis trilogy and read it again. Still found it excellent :)"

Good idea.

I'm re-reading The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the story of US Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Willaim Howard Taft, their families, and a new sort of press that was spearheaded by McClure's Magazine.
Sam McClure was an eccentric editor/publisher, full of ideas, variable as to money. On a trip to Paris, McClure visited Ida Tarbell, an expatriate journalist whom he hoped to recruit for his new magazine. Tarbell agreed to send material to McClure in New York, but wanted to see the magazine on sounder footing before she returned to America. McClure then borrowed $40 from Tarbell-- he wanted to visit another promising recruit in Switzerland, and the banks were closed! (She lent him the money; he promptly repaid it; she wrote for McClure's Magazine for years.)
Also interesting sketches of Edith Roosevelt, a very private person who shaded her feelings even in her poetry, and Nellie Taft, bitten hard by the Presidential bug early on (two of her father's old friends served terms in the White House), and center of a literary salon.
Taft and Roosevelt were serious fellows, a great relief from my choices in the last three presidential elections.

giveusaclue wrote: "If I disappear for a while it is because I have been arrested for sending an email of complaint to the FA about the young lady who has been suspended for asking if the player in the opposing team, ..."

That Tom Gauld cartoon about the armed unread books feels less like satire and more like journalism every day.

Robert wrote: "That Tom Gauld cartoon about the armed unread books feels less like satire and more like journalism every day.."

True.

Are you home now Robert?

AB76 wrote: "Attention crime fiction lovers, of which there are many in here!

I'm reading an argentine crime novel Elena Knows by Claudia Pineiro. It was written in 2007 and translated in 2021.."

Piñeiro is very good indeed... Elena Knows is maybe untypical but you can judge the style.

At the moment, I'm reading 3 books:

I'm continuing Lucy Lethbridge's Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves. I was rather surprised to read that there were quite a lot of British visitors to Iceland in the 19th century. One of these travellers was William Morris who wasn't impressed with Reykjavik, but wrote that it was "better than a north country town in England".

The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel, published in 2006. Linda Grant, who is Jewish, spent some time in Tel Aviv where she talked to all sorts of people, people she met in cafes, soldiers, the father of a boy killed by a suicide bomber ... At first there's a great deal of humour, but as you can see, it gets darker. She wrote a novel set in Israel after WWII, When I Lived in Modern Times, which I've got but haven't yet read.

The 3rd book, which I've only just started, is the 4th in Chris Hammer's Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic series of crime novels set in small town Australia. I was surprised not to find it in Goodreads at first, but found it under a different title. I've got "The Broken River" and in GR it's The Valley.

I’m half-way through Colm Toíbín’s Long Island – Eilis Lacey twenty years on from Brooklyn. I can’t remember if anyone else here has read it. I have to say that so far it is a bit of a disappointment. The plot gets off to a cracking start with a domestic explosion on page 2, and develops nicely. But what has happened to the sparkling style that marked out earlier novels? Where the simple phrasing used to be sharp and insightful it now seems just serviceable. Hoping for better in the second half.

Logger24 wrote: "I’m half-way through Colm Toíbín’s Long Island – Eilis Lacey twenty years on from Brooklyn. I can’t remember if anyone else here has read it. I have to say that so far it is a bit of a disappointme..."

I'm planning to read it, but haven't yet got it.
I hope it improves!

Logger24 wrote: "I’m half-way through Colm Toíbín’s Long Island – Eilis Lacey twenty years on from Brooklyn. I can’t remember if anyone else here has read it. I have to say that so far it is a bit of a disappointme..."

I've seen the film of Brooklyn and am fairly sure that I read it as well - but was unable to confirm that, so... what I know for sure is that the film was a bit of a let-down, and IF I read the book it didn't stay in the memory.

Gpfr wrote: "...the 4th in Chris Hammer's Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic series of crime novels set in small town Australia.."

As I read a lot and like crime series, I'm always on the lookout for new authors in that genre... I've seen Hammer's name but not read any.

How does he compare with the other Aussies I've read - Jane Harper and Garry Disher? When it comes to authors, I'm quite picky!

The Leavetaking by John McGahern

Almost finished this and its a bit of a novel of two halves, which is a shame as short novels tend not to hit the quality control issues as much as longer ones

Part one was classic McGahern, evoking Ireland, family situations, a boys school and full of what i was seeking. Part two is more a rather dull love story, set in london, lacking the impact of the first part and it has suprised me, nothing he has written has seemed so vague. (apparently he re-wrote the second half in the 1980s and that may be why it feels like two different books)

Just finished it and the last 20 pages were superb, am glad i read it, mcGahern is a serious and thought provoking author. I didnt care much for the love affair mind you..

Next up after Mcgahern, is a collection of ghost stories by Henry James

It will be interesting to see how i find these tales, i plan to re-read The Turn of the Screw.

scarletnoir wrote: "I've seen Hammer's name but not read any.

How does he compare with the other Aussies I've read - Jane Harper and Garry Disher?..."

I've read both of Hammer's series: the first with Martin Scarsden, a journalist, and the second with Lucic and Buchanan, and I've enjoyed them both.
I would say he's better than Jane Harper (I liked her books). Better than the stand-alone Disher book I read recently. Maybe I have a preference for the Hirsch series ...
I'd say try the first Scarsden book and see what you think. You may not share my opinion, of course!

Gpfr wrote: "I'd say try the first Scarsden book and see what you think. You may not share my opinion, of course!.."

Thanks for that - I may very well give that a go.

scarletnoir wrote: "As I read a lot and like crime series, I'm always on the lookout for new authors..."

I think you should try Volker Kutscher's Gereon Rath series — I don't believe you've read them? Set a bit earlier than Philip Kerr and David Downing.

Ah, just looked out of the window and the snow is starting ❄❄.
Temperature 1° or 2° today and 18° forecast for Sunday!

AB76 wrote: " a collection of ghost stories by Henry James

It will be interesting to see how i find these tales, ..."

Let us know what you think!
I don't think I've read any other of his ghost stories than The Turn of the Screw.
And I don't want to hear about "dross" 😏😄

Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: " a collection of ghost stories by Henry James

It will be interesting to see how i find these tales, ..."

Let us know what you think!
I don't think I've read any other of his ghost s..."

i expect to be dissapointed but lets see, Henry James might suprise me for once!

I finished Colm Tóibín’s Long Island. The second half was in the same mode as the first. I should clarify what I said earlier. The book was a bit disappointing only by reference to the standard you expect from him. It was a perfectly good read, considered as a piece of high-end popular fiction of the kind written by, say, Anita Shreve, which is no disparagement, as I have read several of hers and enjoyed them. It just lacked the arresting literary style that was so impressive in his earlier novels. I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it.

I never saw the movie version of Brooklyn. It was one of those instances where you don’t want any disturbance of the spell created by the book. That, and the lead role being played by Saoirse Ronan, who is just too intense for my liking.

Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "As I read a lot and like crime series, I'm always on the lookout for new authors..."

I think you should try Volker Kutscher's Gereon Rath series — I don't believe you've read t..."

Thanks - no, I haven't. I suppose there are some references back to the Weimar period in the other two - especially Downing - but they mainly focus on the Nazi era and post-WW2.

Edit: having checked this out, I bought Babylon Berlin as an ebook at the very low price of 99p, so even if I don't like it I won't have broken the bank! I think there was a TV adaptation recently, but I didn't see it.

Gpfr wrote: "Ah, just looked out of the window and the snow is starting ❄❄.
Temperature 1° or 2° today and 18° forecast for Sunday!"

Daughter and partner took 2h instead of 1h to get here on Wednesday... many cars and lorries stuck on hills as a result of frozen hail. More hail expected overnight, but we're on the coast - it rarely sticks, but it can happen.

In Uncivil Society i am delighted that such a short book is so full of information, its is brilliantly written and analytical about the situation as the communist edifice collapsed in eastern europe, during autumn 1989

Looking at the minority "civil society" that the west delighted in, but which was marginal except in Poland, the authors look at the "uncivil society", the power of the communist state and organs and how it steered itself into an abyss

The three studies are East Germany, Romania and Poland. I havent got to Poland yet my reading about the 1980s earlier in the year, showed me that of all the states in the eastern bloc, the Poles had a vivid civil society post 1980, even if communism remained (the catholic church and the unions).

Kotkin shows how the East German regime was almost like a frozen Weimar era collection of dogmatic communist idealogues, they loathed social democracy(as in the 1920s) and by using the west to fund their failed state were slowly driving themselves into a deep ditch. When Gorby in the USSR showed them he had no interest in propping up their system, they lost their nerve but there was also the protests in Leipzig that shook the security state, based around a luthern church in the city. Well stocked, well manned and all seeing the security organs of the "uncivil society" melted away in stages, indecision ruled and slowly things led in a few weeks to the opening of the wall

Romania was very different,* virtually no opposition and no sign of any unrest by september 1989, protests had mainly been against the state system, with long powercuts and all production going to external markets and not for home consumption, as Ceaucescu tried to deal with economic problems. But events in the western city of Timisoara around a Calvinist pastor being evicted from his church, led to large protests and suddenly a tide turned with the organised proletariat becoming an opponent of the great prole himself Ceacescu. A general collapse of the state organs, as in East Germany, began and suddenly the old dictator was being mocked and jeered, within weeks he was dead.

Kotkin's basic message is that while the west saw a civil society of writers, intellectuals and protest movements as tearing down the Eastern Bloc, in many situations it was a kind of snowball effect of public dissent and indecision from the "uncivil" society. There was also the actions of the party leaders in the 1970s and 80s that slowly weakened the workers paradise message, when workers suddenly were seeing less and less of basic elements of life being available or affordable...

i have also observed over the years the shock of any regime that declares dissent illegal and then sees its legitimacy slowly leak away as it loses control. There seems to be a tipping point when even the most rigid organisations (Stasi, Securitate etc) suddenly lose that powerful iron fist and are like rabbits caught in the headlights, its like none of them ever prepared for a situation like they faced...

* Romania was different in the speed of events, in the DDR it had been building from the late spring 1989, while in Romania it was Nov-Dec 1989 when the state fell

AB76 wrote: "In Uncivil Society i am delighted that such a short book is so full of information, its is brilliantly written and analytical about the situation as the communist edifice collapsed in Eastern Europe..."

Thanks for the summary, AB. I kind of remember the suddenness of the collapse in Rumania. East Germany and of course Poland and Czechoslovakia had been building for a while.

scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Volker Kutscher's Gereon Rath series

"I bought Babylon Berlin ... I think there was a TV adaptation recently, but I didn't see it...."

I've read all the books available in English or French — 5 out of 10 so far.

Regarding the series, AB76 enjoyed it but I wrote this earlier this year:
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: "AB76 wrote: "In Uncivil Society i am delighted that such a short book is so full of information, its is brilliantly written and analytical about the situation as the communist edifice collapsed in ..."

its amazing how vivid my own memories of 1989 are, i was 13 and i remember all the stages of slow dissent in the east, the border issues, the groups crossing into Hungary during the summer to get to Austria and the Gorby factor, where he was clear that the USSR wanted no role. I remember that the euphoria of Oct-Nov in Prague and Berlin was followed in December by the sudden unrest in Romania and Ceacescu in the bitter winter cold, clad in russian hat being booed in Bucharest and thinking "wow"

Gpfr wrote: "I think if one wants to watch this series, it's probably better not to have read the books."

Thanks - I remember your comment now that I see it again. I'll try the book first - if I don't care for it much, I may try the TV programme instead, if it appears on free-to-air!

Talking of Eastern Europe, there’s an excellent review by the polymathic Jenny Uglow in the latest NYRB of a book called Vienna: How the City of ideas Created the Modern World by Richard Crockett, about the “Red Vienna” of 1919-34, when it was an island of determined social democracy in a sea of conservative, Catholic, anti-semitic, post-imperial Austria. She describes a ferment of modernist ideas that dispersed across Europe and America after the advent of Hitlerism. The review is so comprehensive I don’t feel the need to get to the book immediately but it is on my TBR list, and I mention it as others may be interested.

Logger24 wrote: "Talking of Eastern Europe, there’s an excellent review by the polymathic Jenny Uglow in the latest NYRB of a book called Vienna: How the City of ideas Created the Modern World by Richard Crockett, ..."

thanks logger, i spotted it as i leafed through my NYRB print edition earlier today. i did try and find some books on Red Vienna about 5 years ago but they were all extortionately expensive, this might be a better bet

Robert Musil wrote very well about the climate of Austria in the mid 1920s to early 1930s in a collection of his later non-fiction i read in the summer, it reminded me how while it was not a Nazi regime until the anchluss, it was a long dark night of right wing religious reactionary rubbish for Austria from 1919-34

giveusaclue wrote: "Robert wrote: "That Tom Gauld cartoon about the armed unread books feels less like satire and more like journalism every day.."

True.

Are you home now Robert?"

I walked up the 30 stairs to the old place yesterday, thank you.

Robert wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Are you home now Robert?"

I walked up the 30 stairs to the old place yesterday, thank you...."

That's excellent news!

Robert wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Robert wrote: "That Tom Gauld cartoon about the armed unread books feels less like satire and more like journalism every day.."

True.

Are you home now Robert?"

I walked up th..."

Brilliant news Robert. Very pleased for you.

Robert wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Robert wrote: "That Tom Gauld cartoon about the armed unread books feels less like satire and more like journalism every day.."

True.

Are you home now Robert?"

I walked up th..."

good to hear robert!

While i did like Rory Stewarts Politics on the Edge, the second half was weaker and more indulgent, less interesting.

I knew before i started reading that 2016-19 would be a painful section anyway, with the accession of the Clown as Prime Minister and the tawdry, self-harm of the slow slide to Brexit coming into reality but Stewart loses his way a bit with an overlong account of his bid to become tory leader and PM in 2019. I remember the events, he was never a frontrunner but always good copy, though in his book it seems like he is the messiah and that is a very different tone to the first half of the book

He also finished quickly in 2019, with his loss in the leadership contest, nothing on that remarkable autumn of 2019 as The Clown tried all the tricks to shut parliament up, until suddenly as he looked weaker than ever, the opposition parties were tricked into an election and they lost badly. So the porogation of parliament, his loss of the whip is barely covered but would have been far more interesting than 15 pages on his leadership bid

Nobody in the tories comes out better than before in my opinion except David Gauke, an intelligent 50 something minister, who like Stewart had the whip removed by The Clown. Michael Gove reminds me of a slippery eel, lying, plotting and scheming, while denying it all, most of the tory MPs are as i saw them at the time, a spineless and careerist bunch of goons.

Robert wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Robert wrote: "That Tom Gauld cartoon about the armed unread books feels less like satire and more like journalism every day.."

True.

Are you home now Robert?"

I walked up th..."

Very good indeed! I actually misread that as "at the old pace..." - but I doubt that! Just to make it, though, is an achievement.

Have just posted a review of


which was quite restrained. The whole idea was good, but there were so many unbelievable things it spoiled the book.

Robert wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Robert wrote: "That Tom Gauld cartoon about the armed unread books feels less like satire and more like journalism every day.."

True.

Are you home now Robert?"

That's great, Robert.

I walked up th..."

Something odd happened there! Great news, Robert.

AB76 wrote: "While i did like Rory Stewarts Politics on the Edge, the second half was weaker and more indulgent, less interesting..."

Thanks for that review, AB. The Stewart book does seem to be one of the better ones, at least the first half. Whether it ever gets to the top of my list is another question. An old friend from England asked me the other day what my coping mechanism was and I said it was to not watch TV and to go and read something from another century (preferably in a simpatico café or in front of a log fire).

Imagining some future history student in school, I’m sure the years following Brexit, and the rapid succession of PMs and ministries, will be every bit as confusing as the 1760s and 1850s=-60s used to be for me.