Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello and welcome to the new thread. Good reading to all!

I'm copying here AB76's last post as people may not have seen it:

Something to Answer For by PH Newby(1969) is a truly unusual tale.

I'm halfway in and its very impressive but also getting more and more of a mystery of killing and the mystery of the main characters impaired memory and behaviour. Suez and Port Said are vivid in its burning heat, water and the uneasy days after nationalisation of the zone, the humour is subtle but knowing and one feels small influences from Durrells "Alexandria Quartet" set nearby.

As it won the first Booker in 1969,my mind goes back to John Fowles describing one of his stints as a judge on a panel in the 1970s and the meetings of writers sitting and discussing the collection of books nominated. I can see why this won the prize.

Thanks for the new thread, GP.

I've been wondering how long it will be before we have a novel set in today’s Trump world. In the public sphere there is almost too much to digest, and too little that is reliably steady, the changes are so swift. Perhaps authors will disengage and retreat into private situations, or prefer the distant future and the distant past.

Thanks G for the new thread.

Another one you may like to try:

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/da...

I've just read the first one and enjoyed it. Set in the Broads of Norfolk where you can't always drive from one place to another anywhere near as directly as the crow flies!

Gpfr wrote: "Hello and welcome to the new thread. Good reading to all!

I'm copying here AB76's last post as people may not have seen it: [bookcover:Something to Answer For: The First Man Booker Prize Winner|38..."

thanks GP!

RussellinVT wrote: "Thanks for the new thread, GP.

I've been wondering how long it will be before we have a novel set in today’s Trump world. In the public sphere there is almost too much to digest, and too little th..."

it will be a very tricky novel to write,we havent had many covid era novels yet either but with Trump i would imagine most will hide their heads in the sand and ignore it

The USA system is broken and not having an organised opposition on the point of defeat is another flaw in a system that relies on political judges and flimsy checks and balances

i can see Trump era novels resembling the east german novels that ignored any context or specific references. As he is likely to serve three terms, he will be around for a long time now

Thanks for the new thread. I've started reading a biography of Pope Pius IX. It's a break from the 1940s; in Pius IX's time, the worst characters around were Metternich and Louis Napoleon. Yes, both pretty bad...

Gpfr wrote: "Hello and welcome to the new thread. Good reading to all!..."

Thanks for the new thread, GP..

I continue to read my two 'exile' books in tandem but am making faster progress with the English-language My Friends by Hisham Matar, as I can't shake the nasty cough caught on the London trip, leading to lack of sleep and poor concentration. Although both Matar and Faye are serious authors dealing with serious topics, they also have an ability to find humour in their circumstances at times. An example from 'My Friends', where the protagonist visits a house for the first time:

The man asked us to take off our shoes. As it was a Libyan house, this should not have come as a surprise, and yet having the privacy of my socks on display served only to accentuate my anxiety.

"The privacy of my socks", eh? That tickled me, especially as it reminded me of a visit to my Danish friend a while ago - the Danes also like shoes to be removed - and my socks were worn very thin at the ankles!

I've highlighted quite a few passages in this book and will make them public if that is of any interest.

scarletnoir wrote: ""The privacy of my socks", eh? That tickled me..."

I like that!

Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: ""The privacy of my socks", eh? That tickled me..."

I like that!"

I want to know how socks get worn at the ankles!

giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: ""The privacy of my socks", eh? That tickled me..."

I like that!"

I want to know how socks get worn at the ankles!"

Good question!

A Troubled Tide: A gripping police procedural from an exciting new voice in Scottish crime. The latest in Lynne McEwan's enjoyable D.I. Shona Oliver series. A police officer dies taking part in a triathlon ...

Gpfr wrote: "A Troubled Tide: A gripping police procedural from an exciting new voice in Scottish crime. The latest in Lynne McEwan's enjoyable D.I. Shona Oliver series. A police officer dies t..."

Read the first of hers and enjoyed it.

AB76 wrote: "...it will be a very tricky novel to write,we havent had many covid era novels yet either but with Trump i would imagine most will hide their heads in the sand and ignore it..."

My thought too. One thing I think we can be sure of is that it won't be a satire in the style of Jonathan Coe. The times seem too serious for that.

giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: ""The privacy of my socks", eh? That tickled me..."

I like that!"

I want to know how socks get worn at the ankles!"

Well, mine always do. I suppose it's to do with one's gait. I also trim my toenails regularly - maybe others don't! ;-)

Though on reflection... maybe 'heels' (but at the side, not underneath) would have better described where the thin areas/holes come first. (Only slept 4h max last night... :-(

RussellinVT wrote: "One thing I think we can be sure of is that it won't be a satire in the style of Jonathan Coe. The times seem too serious for that."

I'd say that Coe's books are serious, despite their humourous content. Does anything infuriate the autocrats of whatever stripe more than to be made fun of?

COVID is no laughing matter (of course) but surely it would be difficult to write a straight-faced account of Boris Johnson and his cohorts demanding total lockdown of everyone else while they caroused, froliced and vomited in the No. 10 garden, or when you consider Cumming's decision to drive during lockdown with his family on board to 'test his eyesight'. These clowns deserve to be taken down - again and again.

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: ""The privacy of my socks", eh? That tickled me..."

I like that!"

I want to know how socks get worn at the ankles!"

Well, mine always do. I su..."

Bet the TLS mods wouldn't have let us have a discussion about how socks wear on the books section!

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "...it will be a very tricky novel to write,we havent had many covid era novels yet either but with Trump i would imagine most will hide their heads in the sand and ignore it..."

My th..."

exactly,a criminal in the pay of Russia as President of the USA sounds like a good film but sadly its not fiction

a tough time for the world and the USA, the MAGA crowd are fantasists, nothing will be better under them

excellent perry anderson article in the latest LRB, on neo-liberal economics and its continuing reliance on "the continuous expansion of credit above any increase in production"

he covers populism(brexit-trump -ADF etc) and laments the idea that a solution to our debt heavy economics could be more neo-liberalism.Hear hear!

AB76 wrote: "...a tough time for the world and the USA, the MAGA crowd are fantasists, nothing will be better under them..."

Indeed - though the defeat of a Musk-backed conservative in the vote for Wisconsin's supreme court despite his bribes of up to $1 million - legal, apparently (!) - by nearly 10% may be an indication of 'green shoots of recovery'.

Meanwhile, in Hisham Matar's 'My Friends' we have reached the Arab Spring of 2011:

...a temporary state but one that knew no bounds or borders, a condition as much for the heart as it was for parliament, and one belonging to nature, to the eternal cycle of the seasons, confirming what I have always secretly believed: that as sure as blossom, freedom would come, and, even though winter is just as certain, it can never last.

scarletnoir wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "One thing I think we can be sure of is that it won't be a satire in the style of Jonathan Coe. The times seem too serious for that."

I'd say that Coe's books are serious, despite their humourous content. ..."

I’d be impressed if someone can do it. To me it feels as though we’re beyond satire.

i spent today in london, meeting friends for a korean meal in Westminster, it was beautiful weather with a cool breeze and nice to walk around westminster riverside, st james park and the embankment...Alan Duncan, ex Tory MP passed us by at one point

Was pleased to see Foyles back at Waterloo, i think it closed down during the pandemic and despite many visits to london since 2021, i didnt see it had re-opened

RussellinVT wrote: "I’d be impressed if someone can do it. To me it feels as though we’re beyond satire.."

Perhaps we'll get something along the lines of The Rotters Club, where a real-life IRA bombing is included in the narrative to shocking effect - nothing funny there - but there are many light-hearted passages dealing with family and friends.

Newby manages scenes and setting so well in Something to Answer For

Half way in he describes the protest by the Canal Zone pilots against the nationalisation of the Canal. The pilots protest in a grandoise way,all europeans, and then settle at the terrace of the Suez Yacht Club to see if the newly appointed Egyptian pilots can guide a convoy of ships up from Port Tewfik on the Red Sea

Slowly out of the canal haze emerges a line of vessels in immaculate order, our anti-hero/unreliable narrator Townrow delights in this act of defiance, while the atmosphere at the yacht club is dampened by such scenes.

Port Said is a difficult city to conceptualise, good photographic evidence from the canal zone era is poor, though maps do seem better .Inexplicably any data about it is absent from my superb 1937 British Military Report, they include the smaller canal cities but Port Said is mostly a blank

For Russell, re Junger

a diary entry i read last night includes reference to "burning and disposal of notes and papers" suggesting self censorship

what is maddening is all the alternative names he gives people,when its Hitler (kniebolo) it makes sense but i get used to a name being used and then when more curious about who it is, i check the glossary of names and find its not their real name. There are also obscure characters who seem well informed but arent part of the Parisian Wehrmacht HQ staff(where Junger served) who are never fully identified

His visit to Picasso interested me, the great artist asked him if the locations in his short novella On The Marble Cliffs were inspired by real life places. (for anyone who hasnt read Jungers 1939 novella, it is set in a countryside of varying landscapes)

AB76 wrote: "For Russell, re Junger

a diary entry i read last night includes reference to "burning and disposal of notes and papers" suggesting self censorship..."

Yes, as we thought. But then... if all the alternative names could fool you, what chance would the Gestapo have?!

AB76 wrote: "For Russell, re Junger

a diary entry i read last night includes reference to "burning and disposal of notes and papers" suggesting self censorship

what is maddening is all the alternative names h..."

You might be interested in this, where I quote Junger in this, very early blog of mine, back in 2021, on WW-I artists, comparing Kathe Kollwitz and Otto Dix, amongst others as to their relationship towards the oncoming war. It is, to me, a very interesting period of history, but I am, I suppose, seeing it mostly through the lens of art, due to my own particular background. It might well be of not much interest to others. https://jediperson.wordpress.com/2021...

After the war, critic Ernst Jünger, in 1924, speaks of the end of the Homeric hero and also of the ‘storms of steel’ that condemned the heroic ideal to historic obscurity:

“while the sensations of the heart and the systems of the mind may be refuted, there is no refuting the world of objects - and the machine-gun is just such a “thing”... This was the fundamental experience that shaped the approach known as the Neue Sachlichkeit, a sobering realisation of the power of things.”

He was a singular thinker, for his own particular times, it seems. But as you have also reminded me, so was Picasso. Picasso has had a somewhat contradictory, and particular history, though he is still an ongoing interesting person to me, artistically, politically, and ideologically. During the Spanish Civil War, he was determined to stand up to, and do the right thing... when confronted with fascism on his own doorstep...

So, I have a sense of 'blog, bookending' here, in that my most recent blog is exactly about Picasso standing up, to account for his own ideology, and history. Anyway here it is, if you are interested. https://jediperson.wordpress.com/2025...

I have had a huge slow down in terms of the books that I am reading. I am slowly making my way through 'medieval maps of sea monsters', and their history, which I am enjoying, but I am slightly perturbed by the idea that I might be taking some solace from only reading about the past!... as if I am finding the present just a bit to much to deal with, at the moment!...

Tam wrote: "AB76 wrote: "For Russell, re Junger

a diary entry i read last night includes reference to "burning and disposal of notes and papers" suggesting self censorship

what is maddening is all the altern..."

thank tam.i visited the Kollwitz musuem in Berlin, it was very interesting and i agree Junger is a singular thinker, one has to wonder how he managed the jackbooted day job when all he was interested in was so much deeper!

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "For Russell, re Junger

a diary entry i read last night includes reference to "burning and disposal of notes and papers" suggesting self censorship..."

Yes, as we thought. But then......"

good point

Tam wrote: "AB76 wrote: "For Russell, re Junger

a diary entry i read last night includes reference to "burning and disposal of notes and papers" suggesting self censorship

what is maddening is all the altern..."

Sometimes you do yourself good by stepping back a bit from the now, which is very unsettling for us all.

giveusaclue wrote: "Tam wrote: "AB76 wrote: "For Russell, re Junger

a diary entry i read last night includes reference to "burning and disposal of notes and papers" suggesting self censorship

what is maddening is al..."

yeah,with Trump here for 4 years and a third term almost certain ,the now is looking very tricky. Plus Musk and his job cutting glee....

Probably a contemporary satire is out of the question; we have too few people who can even write journalism without ranting.

I recently picked up a period piece from 1948 called Love among the Ruins by Angela Thirkell, of whom I knew nothing but the name. It turned out to be one of thirty-odd novels she set in “Barsetshire”. The Wikipedia entry says she borrowed frequently from other novels without attribution.

This example of her work is long, unhurried, competently written, and quite entertaining in the comedy-of-manners mode. It gives a good picture of life in the country in the straitened peacetime of the 1940s. It’s probably quite realistic in having all the county types sound off about being regimented by the Labour Government.

There are some Trollopian echoes, but nothing particular in the plot lines. It’s more a case of names carried forward a couple of generations (Grantly, Thorne, de Courcy, etc). It’s not just Trollope either. There are brief appearances from a Mr Carton and a Mr Wickham.

The gentry families, one of the them titled, are mostly impoverished. They live in the servants’ quarters, and the main house, after being requisitioned in the war, now becomes a prep school. They visit each other on Sunday afternoons, coming impromptu round the back, and taking tea on the terrace. The mothers look out for good marriages.

The lower classes are present in supporting roles – cook, gardener, cowman, pigman, garage mechanic (no actual farm labourer or factory hand is ever in sight) – and in this book they often have poor morals. One woman has a succession of children with no known father. She names a son Poyntz, which strikes everyone as an improbable choice. She says it came to her because she had no points left in her ration book.

The cast list reaches fifty or sixty. Not so much three or four or families in a village, more like ten or twelve. At a certain stage you give up on who’s related to whom.

Interestingly, this was a time when it was still possible for an author to write, “He appears to like little boys” without it carrying the faintest shade of impropriety. Nowadays it means only one thing.

I had thought the title must be the origin of the phrase, and then discovered that – true to form - she got it from a short poem by Robert Browning: mysterious lover in a mysterious ancient landscape - the Roman Campagna? It does have some application to the story, except that the love element here is all rather restrained, with just a single moment of dramatic tension, about half way through. It hardly needs saying that the man who has been damaged in love, years before, is a Captain in the Navy.

I imagine this was the sort of book that filled the shelves of a Boots lending library. Today it’s probably unpublishable, and though I quite enjoyed it, one will be enough for me.

Robert wrote: "Probably a contemporary satire is out of the question; we have too few people who can even write journalism without ranting."

exactly,good point, the more calm measured stance of the past is long gone.i am suprised reading the Marxism Today(from1979-83) essays how balanced they are towards Thatcher. They attack the p[olicies in a measured adult way,there is no ranting

video about the first booker prize won by PH Newby(for the novel i'm reading in 1968). i'#m gonna watch it after i finish the novel to avoid spoilers, how young Muriel Spark looks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJXgk...

shame they let american novels in recently...

i'm entering a curious phase of my reading life,especially of classic novels where the stinkers seem to have vanished, this could be short lived or it could be a sign of a greater reading maturity, i'm not sure

Up until 2020,i was still finding a good 20-30% of novels that left me cold or lost their way or started badly but since 2022 ish, that % is ridiculously low.Of course this could start a reversal and the rest of 2025 is dotted with occasional stinkers

i have been for a while avoiding large novels (500pages ) and the canons of great lit(i've read a lot of them in the past) but what puzzles me is that i am making sure i break up cycles of novels which i easily enjoy.(psychological studies/plotless novels/thrillers and historical war novels). This would, in anyones opinion, increase the chance of a duff read or two.

Maybe i am reading "differently" and more content with the holistic experience of a novel,rather than how it made me feel or think.. But i remain sensitive to style(i drop books quick due to the way they are written) and also very intolerant of too clever by far,winding tales.

the rest of 2025 may resemble the pre2022 period and i will then be proved wrong but it seems something has changed but i'm not sure what. unless, by total random luck, i have just chosen the right novels, certainly many an anticipated read can be a let down but again, i'm not sure that applies so much now.

Statistically from my rather vague records, 50% of novels i read between 20114-19 were what i would call "excellent",from2020-2025 that figure is 63% and from2022-25 it is 68%. In 2024+25 it is 68% too. (nb. these stats reflect an increase in the novels iu enjoyed as opposed to stinkers)

AB76 wrote: "i'm entering a curious phase of my reading life,especially of classic novels where the stinkers seem to have vanished, this could be short lived or it could be a sign of a greater reading maturity,..."

You have a good grip on your excellent/stinker ratio. Without putting a figure on it, I think I’ve done quite well in avoiding absolute clunkers, but after nearly 20 years of catching up on all the classics I failed to read before, I am beginning to sense that I am close to running through the greatest examples of British and European fiction. (Some gaps remain, e.g. Conrad.)

So as I explore further afield and I tackle less reliable authors, my strike rate may well get worse. One vast area I have no more than skimmed is the classic literature of the Greek and Roman world, so that may be where I go next.

On the other hand, it may be high-end popular fiction! I’m looking forward to the new trilogy from Pierre Lemaitre when it is complete. His previous trilogy was on the period between the wars out of which he creates a vivid panorama, if occasionally over-dramatised. This one is on the post-war trente glorieuses.

I think what I look for has remained fairly steady. Certainly like you I appreciate a good writing style, and have little patience with those modern authors who treat it as a secondary value, or who (as you say) want to demonstrate their cleverness (step forward China Miéville). I also remain faithful – can’t help it – to a good love story of any age.

Cycles I do often take my time over. After a break of a year or more I am starting on the very last of the Rougon-Macquart sequence, Le Docteur Pascal. Zola dedicates it to his late mother and to his dear wife, and calls it “le résumé et la conclusion de toute mon œuvre.” Even though it is generally accounted one of the lesser works, I already feel myself under the pleasurable spell of a great master.

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i'm entering a curious phase of my reading life,especially of classic novels where the stinkers seem to have vanished, this could be short lived or it could be a sign of a greater read..."

interesting Russ, i too have been rather skirting the Greek and Roman world.

A good 60% of all books i read are in translation, though since around 2018, i have moved more towards english language novels, around 60%. I am pleased that translations since 2020 seem to be becoming more common and that the big publishers like Penguin are doing their bit and producing new translations too. ( a good example was Anselme's Algerian war themed novel On Leave that i read ear;lier in 2025)

Another two new translations which i will be reading in next month or so are Portugese author De Carvahlo's Empty Wardrobes and Insp Imanishi Investigatesby Matsumoto.

I hear you on Mieville....cant stand him

Just finished Something to answer for by PH Hewby(1969)

i really enjoyed it even if the conclusion was more of continuation of labyrinths within labyrinths of unreliable narrative.

Stylistically its accessible , amusing and well put together what Newby has achieved is on the Greene-esque level of accomplished and questioning british writing, while more focused on absurd comedy, violence and some dated racism, there are still pithy questions to be asked, assumptions to be re-analysed and the idea of Suez as a momumental folly is also part of this narrative. Although on the surface maybe nothing is serious here and a question of unreliable evidence…

Like AB76, I've been in Egypt, but during WWII, with Olivia Manning's The Levant Trilogy. After re-reading The Balkan Trilogy, I wanted to re-read this next. The two trilogies follow the real-life wartime experiences of Manning and her husband in terms of location. Apparently, Guy Pringle is modelled on her husband.
Here, Harriet and Guy have been evacuated from Athens to Cairo. The books follow on the one hand, Harriet, and what is happening away from the fighting, and on the other, Simon, a young soldier, out in the desert, where Montgomery takes over.
While looking at a review by Artemis Cooper of a biography of Manning, I saw a comment recommending a memoir by her, Cairo in the War 1939 - 1945.
My father was stationed in Malta during the war and my mother and elder sisters were evacuated to Cairo, but they weren't there for long, spending the rest of the war in South Africa.
A book about the British in Egypt which I greatly enjoyed (I think I've written about it here before) is Priscilla Napier's A Late Beginner, a Slightly Foxed paperback.

I read the 2nd in the Hildur series by Satu Rämö, The Grave in the Ice. Nordic noir, set in a small town in Iceland. The author comes from Finland but has settled in Iceland, like one of her characters.
As well as the murder mystery, the story is picked up again of the disappearance of Hildur's younger sisters.
There are several different timelines going on and at first I found that rather confusing, but it was OK after a bit.

On a very different note, I'm reading Hermione Lee's biography, Edith Wharton. I started this a while ago and stopped for no particular reason, but have gone back to it. This is a very long book and I've felt somewhat bogged down in house and garden design, interior decor and so on. Her writing career is now getting going.

Gpfr wrote: "Like AB76, I've been in Egypt, but during WWII, with Olivia Manning's The Levant Trilogy. After re-reading The Balkan Trilogy, I wanted to re-read this next...."

I've meant for ages to get into the Balkan trilogy. I didn't realize that the Egypt scenes in The Fortunes of War TV adaptation belong to a second trilogy. I remember the look and feel of the events in Rumania, and the disharmony between Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh (in real life as well, it seems), but more vivid in my recollection are the later scenes, with a very young Rupert Graves in the desert.

AB - I was coming back to read that piece on voting in Schleswig-Holstein, and it has disappeared. Could you re-post it (unless there was a reason for deleting it).

RussellinVT wrote: "AB - I was coming back to read that piece on voting in Schleswig-Holstein, and it has disappeared. Could you re-post it (unless there was a reason for deleting it)."

hi russ, i will re add the link,i think i deleted it by mistake but its a very good article

https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewconte...

it should download the PDF file when you click on it, it very much supports the protestant nazi vote theory, adding the rural angle

Gpfr wrote: "Like AB76, I've been in Egypt, but during WWII, with Olivia Manning's The Levant Trilogy. After re-reading The Balkan Trilogy, I wanted to re-read this next. The two tri..."

my three great uncles were all stationed in Cairo during WW2. One then served in italy and won a medal at Anzio, the oldest of the brothers wrote a number of plays for the entertainments for the troops, and the youngest seemed to have posed on camels with fez's rather often!

AB76 wrote: "video about the first booker prize won by PH Newby(for the novel i'm reading in 1968). i'#m gonna watch it after i finish the novel to avoid spoilers, how young Muriel Spark looks!

https://www.you..."

Why?

AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Like AB76, I've been in Egypt, but during WWII, with Olivia Manning's The Levant Trilogy. After re-reading The Balkan Trilogy, I wanted to re-read this next..."

Sound like characters out of The Balkan Trilogy. My mother's father was also at Anzio, with the US 45th Division, and earned the Silver Star. My father had some long talks with him about the war; Anzio was a result of making military strategy fit a political scheme.

AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i'm entering a curious phase of my reading life,especially of classic novels where the stinkers seem to have vanished, this could be short lived or it could be a si..."

On the Greek and Roman world:

The Golden Ass by Petronius Arbiter. One of the few surviving novels of ancient Rome. I enjoyed the Graves translation.

The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. Again a Graves translation, though the edition I read was a Penguin, I think, edited by a historian. Suetonius came from a military family and the traditions-- and superstitions-- of the Roman army influence the book.

The Memoirs of Hadrian by Margaret Yourcenar. A novel taking the form of letters Hadrian writes to his adopted heir Marcus Aurelius. A prize winner in its day, and holds up well. I appreciated it best when I reached the middle age that Hadrian is when he composed the book. Hadrian is supposed to have written a memoir, but it was lost.

Claudius the God. Claudius, too, left a lost memoir, and a modern writer, Graves, fills in the gap. Again, a novel in the form of a letter from a middle-aged emperor to his heir, in this case Claudius' son Britannicus.

Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Like AB76, I've been in Egypt, but during WWII, with Olivia Manning's The Levant Trilogy. After re-reading The Balkan Trilogy, I wanted to re-r..."

my great uncle wrote 90 pages of memoirs about his italian campaign, for his kids and its a great read. he was a buyer in a southampton dept store in peacetime, the memoirs open with his phoney war of waiting around for his conscription papers. he was 26 when war broke out and then served in the royal artillery, he joined the italian campaign at Tunisia

Article on Anthony Cheetham in TLS, the great publisher included an unfortunate client, on yes, the possible longest serving President in USA history, Donald Trump. His 1980s masterpiece "The Art of the Deal" was on Cheethams books.

I would imagine his masterpiece is a bestseller now, as non-fiction horror,

Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i'm entering a curious phase of my reading life,especially of classic novels where the stinkers seem to have vanished, this could be short lived or it ..."

Yourcenar has been on my radar...