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What are we reading? 23 June 2025
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In the end, as the dying Don reviews his life, his prowess as a hunter, his womanizing, his assiduous writings on the ancient Greek settlement nearby, it becomes a portrayal of a society through the generations, and the delicate gradations of status. Critics at the time were not wrong to call it sociological.
La Loi, one learns, is not just the name of a sinister game played with cards or dice, but also, in this backward place where everyone spies on others, a mode of thought: a man asserts his will over a woman, whom he then discards, and he tells himself he has given her the law. Unless, that is, the woman is smart enough to impose the law herself and to humiliate him.
The plot, a mix of crime and sex and intrigue, is engrossing. On a purely literary level the book is resonant and satisfying, full of nuance and implied meaning. One stylistic feature that could be annoying is the repetition of facts and phrases. Here that constant circling back adroitly expresses the inescapable bonds of southern life. The personalities of the actors are distinct and memorable.
And, as a French novel set in Italy, it is fitting that for one pair of lovers it is their thoughts on Charterhouse of Parma that open their eyes to their own feelings towards each other. Their first clandestine meeting has another loud Stendhalian echo, from the final pages of Scarlet and Black.
The English translations brought out in 1958 and 2004 both seem to be long out of print, which is a pity. I’d say it would be a good one for NYRB to revive – so I’m suggesting it to them.
I am very much enjoying 'The Ministry of Time' by Kaliane BradleyThe Ministry of Time. The author is half Cambodian and so there are interesting asides on cultural identities. The premise is that 5 people are rescued, just before certain death, from the plague in the 16th century, onto the 20th century, and brought back to 21st century England and enter a kind of 'secret service' 'acculturation' programme. Its not at all certain as to what the intention is behind this, but it has 'big brotherly' connotations. The five, who are referred to as 'ex-pats' are two women and three men range from army officer in WWI to a Victorian Arctic Explorer to a woman rescued from The French revolution. The author has a lot of fun making sly observations about ethnic identities and the time-based fallacies of cultural notions of what is/was considered socially acceptable. It's, I think, going to be something of a cross-time romance, but its early days yet in my reading.
It is engaging, light in its writing, and not for those, I think, who want their sci-fi plots to follow the known 'laws' of physics, it is far more of a social/cultural experiment on aspects of identity. Still so far it's a good light read to me, and I think many will enjoy it for the themes that it does explore. There is apparently something of a thriller theme to the story, but it is too early for me to comment on that bit really but you can feel the 'big brother' element slowly creeping in. A good book to pick for a summer read I think... For those who want a bit of a holiday from dense/serious writing, but still want to read around playful ideas.
RussellinVT wrote: "Welcome to the new thread.My reading in the last week - when not displaced by momentous events in the world - was largely taken up with La Loi (see my following post).
Otherwise I continue with ..."
I'm a big fan of Kant and his thinking but he needs time and effort, although i had avoided him in my 20s and then in my 30s wondered if the term "difficult" is more about lazy readers than reality, although i'm not saying there are some very difficult reads out there. I tend to think translation can make some writers better to read though, where we are seeing a reworking of style in many cases as well as translation
The late Australian writer Randolph Stow was a new discovery for me about 5 years ago. I have now read three of his novels and they were all of the same high standard, literary, introspective and quite dark novels about human nature.I just ordered my fourth of his novels The Merry Go Round To The Sea from the mid 1960s. His consistency from a young age is remarkable and i think he would be popular among us here, i'm not posting this on the G as no aussie novels get any traction on there
The three i have read are:
Tourmaline(1963) - set in the western australian outback, a sort of parable of a messianic figure who arrives in a drought ridden town, claiming he can divine for water. Like all Stow's novels there are elements of the supernatural but the tone is realism, with specks of modernism
To The Islands (1958)- set in an aboriginal mission station in the outback and based on what Stow saw in real life. Aboriginal ideas and the supposed "civilising" force of white australia are themes
Visitants (1979)- set in Papua New Guinea, based again on time Stow spent on the islands off the mainland and based around "cargo cults". A later novel, darker in places but also brilliant
Desert Encounter by Knud Holmboe, a danish convert to Islam is superb, a rollicking readThis Dane travels accross the Maghreb in 1930 in an old chevrolet, with the winter snow and ice his first antagonist as he crosses the Atlas Mtns. For most of the early travel its hard going and there is little sun or warmth, even so close to the Sahara but the local Bedouin and Arabs are wonderful hosts, taking in the stranger who knows the Koran and speaks good Arabic.
I've just finished the non-Libyan sections as he reaches the Med at Gabes, in Tunisia, travelling with a strange young American who takes salt with his tea(!!). It could be an adventure novel, the part where he describes Denmark to some Bedouin elders is hilarious as they question the shortness of day in winter and the midnight sun in summer, ramadan they feel would be demanding if it fell in a northern summer!
I am fascinated by the magheb and Paul Bowles got me started with his novels and travel accounts of Morrocco, then a few french novels of Algeria(Camus-Pellegri-Larteguy), followed by Spina's tales of Italian Benghazi. With my reading of the Western Desert in WW2 in January, i now feel superbly informed on all things Maghrebian. Throw in the french censuses of Morrocco, ALgiers and Tunisia, with the Italian one for Libya and i have so much information on the region.
My favourite locals are the Tuareg, fearsome sahara dwellers where the men cover themselves 100% but the women do not at all, a reverse of the usual Islamic customs.
For years I was active in The Great War Society, a small historical group who studied the First World War and its impact. I had not read a firsthand memoir of the Great War in some years. I am reading Storm of Steel a few pages at a time, going back to reread some passages. I note Junger's reference to the sound of birds during lulls.
It reminded me of my wife's recollection of the sound of jungle animals during lulls in Vietnam. When looking at Junger, I recall her quote from a man she was counseling: "I can remember that it was raining, but don't ask me what month it was."
Robert wrote: "For years I was active in The Great War Society, a small historical group who studied the First World War and its impact. I had not read a firsthand memoir of the Great War in some years. I am re..."
Interesting, your wife's counselling reminds me that my mother did work on neurological conditions with serviceman in london in the 1960s, of which quite a few were US airman injured in the Vietnam war, many based in the UK before Vietnam on the shared airbases.
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My grandfather was in the trenches and used to tell of the same thing - specifically of the sky larks singing high above them in the lulls. The family lived on the edge of Sheffield and could walk straight out onto the high moors, so that sound must have been poignant for him. I think I've read that larks are much rarer nowadays.
Printing this here in case the woke mods at the G delete it off the G forum:Contraventions is a collection of editorials from the New Left Review since 2000, when it had an editorial relaunch. I am not a subscriber to the NLR but thought this would be an excellent, though expensive introduction.
So far, i'm half way through, its excellent "brain food" as i call it, these are intellectual essays concerned with the state of the modern world, from a left wing perspective. That perspective is possibly further left than the UK can stomach and its good to see stuff like this in print but one also feels, in this cheap, social media feed news vacuum, that how much longer will this thinking kind of writing persist, in print form and how many will actually be reading it? Short attention spans are well fed up silo'd thinking in the modern media world, lets read about things we like, all the time, for ever and ever.
The less positive point about my reading is how dated it all seems when you look back to 2000 or 2012. Its familiar, i lived it and it makes me feel nostalgic and also a sense of enormous loss at the world we have now, the mess we live in, the undermining of democracy by idiot media and tweets.
The other negative is i know what happened next, these editorials are very much of the time and things have only got worse. i should qualify some of my pessimism, in my own life, at 49, things are pretty good, nothing that riles me about the modern world has directly affected me standard of living but thats not the point, look outwards, not inwards and i fear its got worse for the vulnerable, the sick, for minorities and for women.
I feel like a liberal historian sometimes, believing naively that things were all getting better for people as history developed over my life. Now with the political talking points, which would be unmentionables 20 years ago, i wonder what other things will be dragged into the light for dissection by the cold hard eyes of social media. Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, Thiel and others seem to be shaping society with out rules and guidelines, they are not newspapers barons or magnates, with editorial lines and some vague ideals, they are simply arrogant males, who want to make money but also want to change society, without responsibility for their actions.
The NLR is a vital part of our print media and exercises the art of thinking, where 280 characters or 30 seconds videos have no status, at all
RussellinVT wrote: "Robert wrote: ".... I note Junger's reference to the sound of birds during lulls...."My grandfather was in the trenches and used to tell of the same thing - specifically of the sky larks singing ..."
David Niven was a paratrooper on D-Day. Like many Allied paratroopers, he came down in the wrong place. Niven had to shelter in a ditch until morning, listening to the birds. Whippoorwills. Niven wrote later that "I didn't know that there were so many of the damned things."
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A new light on David Niven. Anyone who landed on D-Day goes up in my estimation.
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It was everything a lively short story should be. In 25 pages we see a social setting, a meeting of a country girl and a young barrister, an immediate connection, and a neat love story that ends badly for everyone concerned, as we knew it would. There’s a well-worked Cyrano-type angle. (The story came out several years before the play.)
Apparently Hardy wrote 49 short stories. The editor, Susan Hill, has chosen what she thinks are eleven of the best. Working through the other ten I’m wondering if a single one of them will end happily.
RussellinVT wrote: "For fiction, I’ve picked up a Penguin collection of short stories by Thomas Hardy called The Distracted Preacher and Other Tales, in particular to read one called On the Western Circuit, mentioned ..."so true about happy endings, Hardy was rarely into the lighter side of life. i havent been too impressed by his stories so far(but am making a note of the distracted preacher edition), though i love quite a few of his novels
i visited a church in surbiton last week that he was employed in building, his first career as an architect has always interested me
on short stories:i must admit that i get fustrated with the short story collections where every story is about 10-15 pages, this places a lot on every story selected leaving a mark or within 450 pages, they all merge into one
Recent collections i have read by Conan Doyle, Buzzatti, De La Mare and Machen have more stories in the 35-45 page duration, where you can settle into a tale and enjoy the prose more
hoping a post on the G makes it past the gates of wokedom to be published but no sign after 20 minsit was about the Holmboe book which is magnificent, such a balance of humour, absurdity, customs and culture from the Maghreb
god knows why the mods have binned it
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it was about the Holmboe book which is magnificent, such a balance of humour, absurdity, customs and culture from the Maghreb..."
They let you in. Nice post.
Does Holmboe explain why he converted? Sounds bizarre for a Dane in the 1920s.
RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "hoping a post on the G makes it past the gates...it was about the Holmboe book which is magnificent, such a balance of humour, absurdity, customs and culture from the Maghreb..."
Th..."
it seems that he became enchanted by the theology and the certainty that islam presents to the faithful. he spent time in Muslim Europe(the balkans) and the introduction suggests his conversion came during his time with these european muslims. He previously had converted from Lutheranism to Catholocism
its remarkable he did so much in such a short life, he was killed near Aquaba in Jordan 1931 after a skirmish with local tribes, aged only 29. suspicion falls on the italians who were deeply unhappy with his comments on Graziani's "pacification" of the Senussi rebels in 1930
Everyday i am astonished that the SC has backed and assisted Trump at every turn, its like the US constitution is the emperors new clothes and the USA has regressed in a decade towards something of a failed state. I'm sure many will feel that is harsh but if the legacy of an orange faced mafioso like Trump is another 25 years to unwind his series of shockwaves, then the consitution has failedSmall matter of how democracies are undermined by money is the other factor and the ludicrous electoral system, only surpassed by the one in the UK!
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I think you may be right. While anthologies can be wonderful - recently read collections of Scottish and Italian stories were very satisfying, many of them fab - they will naturally favour brevity. With the greats, I find generally that longer is better. Maupassant, DH Lawrence, Hemingway come to mind, and I’m not sure that Chekhov wrote much at all on the really short side. But the field is vast, and some short ones are memorable, e.g. Smeddum, discussed briefly over on WWR; and Katherine Mansfield’s are all exquisite (in my recollection) no matter how short. Is O Henry another? Everything he did seems to be very short, and yet he has a great reputation.
RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "on short stories: i must admit that i get fustrated with the short story collections where every story is about 10-15 pages, this places a lot on every story selected leaving a mark ....."O Henry is someone i have yet to explore and yes some brief tales can be brilliant, quite a few in the Paul Bowles collection i read a few weeks back were short but well composed.
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Another I forgot to mention is Balzac. I didn’t really care for his faux-medieval Droll Tales – perhaps I should try them again – but he wrote quite a lot of others that are more or less contemporary. Recently I was given a tiny leather-bound book, not much larger than a credit card, with several of his shorter ones, including two I’ve never seen before, and they go to show that length really doesn’t matter when you’re a great master – they’re all excellent reads, just right for when you’re sitting in a café.
RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "O Henry is someone i have yet to explore and yes some brief tales can be brilliant.."Another I forgot to mention is Balzac. I didn’t really care for his faux-medieval Droll Tales – p..."
how small is the print?
AB76 wrote: "on short stories:i must admit that i get fustrated with the short story collections where every story is about 10-15 pages, this places a lot on every story selected leaving a mark or within 450 ..."
Those Victorian and Edwardian tales with just the right length for a train journey in those days are often rich collections of incident. I'm thinking of Kipling's "The Man Who Would be King," which threads together enough destinies for a novel, or Thomas Hardy's "The Three Strangers." I first read both stories when I was browsing through my mother's old college literature anthology...
RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "on short stories: i must admit that i get fustrated with the short story collections where every story is about 10-15 pages, this places a lot on every story selected leaving a mark ....."O. Henry liked to give the reader a character sketch, then stop at the climax of the story. I'm thinking here of his story "After Twenty Years."
RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "on short stories: i must admit that i get fustrated with the short story collections where every story is about 10-15 pages, this places a lot on every story selected leaving a mark ....."A Chekhov fan told me that he got his start writing very short stories-- a great many of them. I suspect that most haven't been translated.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "on short stories:i must admit that i get fustrated with the short story collections where every story is about 10-15 pages, this places a lot on every story selected leaving a mark o..."
i do love that era, i found some late Kipling short stories in oxfam in the spring and deciding whether to read them or The Light that failed at sometime this year
Re Holmboe and LibyaThe vastness of Libya was something i first realised during the Allied actions against Gaddafi about a decade ago, where Cameron seemed to believe he had delivered freedom to the Libyans but instead left a nation at war, quelle suprise
Using google maps then i realised how vast the region was, the huge long coastlines with very little population centres outside the large cities, there are bigger nations but few in Africa as sparsely populated. Still only around 7m people live in Libya, in 1930 it was roughly 800,000
The Italian pacification of the Senussi Bedouins was vicious and Holmboe observes capped wells throughout the region as the Italians tried to remove any advantages the Bedouin had to maintain their livelihood. The Ottomans in eastern Libya, 50 years before, found the Senussi a tough opponent,largely leaving them be where they could. The Italians did suceed in breaking the mass Senussi resistance by 1934 but when WW2 broke out the British used the Senussi as allies(it helped that many had fled to Western Egypt or lived there already)
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Fascinating. Something to look out for.
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I can’t figure out point sizes, so I’ll just say that an upper case letter is 2 mm and lower case 1 mm. It’s small but perfectly readable. The complete book measures 3 ¼” wide by 4” high, and the text itself measures 2 1/4” wide by 2 5/8” high (less than the width of a credit card), with 130 pages and 24 lines to a page, so it looks not dissimilar to a normal paperback text, only a bit squarer and in miniature. There were 101 titles in the series and, apparently, from 1916 to 1925, some 25 million were sold. You could buy a box of 30 for $2.98. The books were ideal gifts for American soldiers and sailors away in the war, because they fit easily inside a breast pocket. I never saw one before. If you look up Little Leather Library on the net there is a picture of Lady Windermere’s Fan. The link wouldn’t copy.
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RussellinVT wrote: "And with all that, only 1/4" thick."they look lovely, just googled them
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RussellinVT wrote: "The Decembrists are an intriguing point of reference in 19C novels – as idealistic, rather romantic, officer-class figures, large numbers killed or executed or sent for hard labour - so a review of..."The last decades of Tsarism are a fascinating time to read about, the incredible waves of unrest and revolutionary action even before 1905 I have a book by George Kennan on 1917 lined up for this year but there are so many good studies of the earlier 1860-1905 period
Crucial for any understanding of 1905 was the Russian defeat to the Japanese a year earlier, causing a huge blow to Russian self-esteem and their standing in the eastern areas near Japan too
RussellinVT wrote: "The Decembrists are an intriguing point of reference in 19C novels – as idealistic, rather romantic, officer-class figures, large numbers killed or executed or sent for hard labour - so a review of..."I have fond memories of going to a concert in London many years ago, of 'the Decemberists', who I think were a Seattle based band. I especially liked 'the crane wife'... They are really quite dark, in terms of their inspiration. I have no idea as to what their current music is like, but you might enjoy them as a period piece?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwQ1W...
not sure this includes the crane wife so here it is but I think there might be another part to it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3cp8...
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Good one. I was hearing about them on the radio not long ago, but had forgotten. It seems they’re a cult band over here. Lovely songs. Lucky you to have seen them.
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I made the same assumption when I saw the title. The book’s actually about the events of 1825.
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https://youtu.be/F3NyuYfHTRc?si=lSmY5...
RussellinVT wrote: "The Decembrists are an intriguing point of reference in 19C novels – as idealistic, rather romantic, officer-class figures, large numbers killed or executed or sent for hard labour - so a review of..."Years ago, I read the autobiography of a journalist named Danilov, who was accused of espionage and imprisoned in Brezhnev's time. Danilov devotes much of his book to the story of an ancestor of his, an officer named Frolov, who was sent into Siberian exile as a Decembrist. When these men were freed at last, a Czarist officer congratulated them as "a group of George Washingtons." They melted down links from their chains and fashioned them into rings.
RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The last decades of Tsarism are a fascinating time to read about..."I made the same assumption when I saw the title. The book’s actually about the events of 1825."
oh even better, thats not such a well covered event
i see gpfr was censored on the guardian, it happens to us allMajor other issue with the G is lack of edit option or delete, sometimes i announce i'm reading something on there, then change my mind and it remains
that just happened with the Crossman diaries, i have decided to leave it for another time and read Canetti's The Torch in My Ear. I enjoyed his Party in the Blitz about a decade ago but didnt really get into his first autobiog or his only novel. I am revisiting him on all levels now
RussellinVT wrote: "Tam - Let me return the favour by giving you this link to a lovely youtube video on the Ashmolean, which we were discussing in the last thread. The Vice-Chancellor of the University and the Directo..."Ha! At one point I thought that Xa's hands would be so reflexive that he would start flying off into higher level spaces, like an angel of the Ashmolean, all by himself. I recognised the print room as the place that I saw the Samual Palmer's in.
The crane wife is very similar to the 14th century French tale of Melusine, except that Melusine is a dragon born of fairie's. A study in hubris, no less, and none the less. Here is a portrait of the husband spying on his wife, and finding out that she is actually a dragon https://i.postimg.cc/Kc6cV3HM/2c60c92.... and here is another picture of the family castle, from 'Les Très Riches Heures du Duc De Berry's Calendar (March). You can see the dragon, Melusine, flying over the ramparts of the castle on the right. It did not end well! https://i.postimg.cc/hvQDdBPJ/Les-Tre...
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Well that is very fascinating about Melusine, and it sent me off to read again the ten-page fragment of The Fairy Melusine deep in the middle of AS Byatt’s Possession. It starts with an image of the Fairy, with vans (webbed wings like sails, very Miltonic) and sinewy tail and leather pinions, flying around the castle keep – ASB must have been looking at the same picture in Les Très Riches Heures – but later she takes a much less threatening form, a lady singing sweetly to herself seated on a rounded rock in a secret pool. A draggled knight, Raimondin of Lusignan, watches in wonder, having come upon her unexpectedly through a cleft. And so on. It’s a pastiche of course, in rather loose blank verse, but I think worth reading for itself, for the imagery, quite apart from the (outstanding) novel. I must look around for an original telling of the Melusine tale in French.
Yes, Xa, very fluttery! He knew his stuff.
One surprise in Junger's Paris diary is his fascination with dreams. Freud and Jung would have loved this-- a highly articulate man who remembers details of his dreams, and gives the reader intriguing images.
Robert wrote: "One surprise in Junger's Paris diary is his fascination with dreams. Freud and Jung would have loved this-- a highly articulate man who remembers details of his dreams, and gives the reader intrigu..."his dream recall was remarkable, sometimes the entries started with dreams as if they were reality. not sure how far in you are but his father starts to appear in dreams more as the diaries continue. are you and Russ reading Junger now, or was it you all along Robert?
Holmboe's Desert Encounter remains one of the best "travel" books i have read, though genocidal reportage is probably closer to the mark, even if so far the horror is only told of. I'm about half way through now.As he passes into Cyrenaica, eastern libya, he notices that there are no longer any native Arab troops in the italian garrissons, they are all Eritreans(who are Coptic Christian and loathe the Senussi Bedouin). His observation of the genocide is subtle, the acts against the Senussi by the Italians resemble british colonial actions during the Boer War. Camps erected for nomadic people to expire in, their important cattle either killed or removed, wells filled in and a vicious response to any transgressions. Cyrenaica is a war zone but a war zone larger than the Ukraine, with barely 200,000 people living in it.
By his knowledge of arabic and his very modern, for 1930, approach to the Bedouin, he learns much of what was going on and what the Italians wanted to keep secret, At a campside with three Bedouin warriors, he promises not to reveal that he saw them to any Italians and the Bedouin discuss their world and their pessimism after years of brutal war with the Italians
Of the Italians themselves, its soldiers not civilians he encounters and there are some good officers he finds, who talk with the LIbyans and are respected. However, the boundary which divides Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica seems almost like a void where facts go to die. One intelligent, sympathetic captain reveals to Holmboe he barely knows what goes on accross that frontier "Cyrenaica is a seperate colony, its violent".
There is one striking parallel with Fisk's observations of the IDF in Lebanon, around the time of the camp massacres in 1982, he finds troops obsessed and trigger happy at the prospect of "terrorists", when Fisk knows the PLO have left, the camps are full of old men, women, kids and a few teenage lads. Holmboe is baffled at how paranoid the Italians in Cyrenaica are about the Bedouin, in the vast spaces he sees few in the border area but every Italian seems to think the desert swarms with them!
I have finished 'The Ministry of Time' by Kaliane Bradley. It started off well and I was enjoying the light inquisitions into political identity and race. But as the main twist in the plot hove into view I found the plot to be increasingly strained somehow. It seemingly evolved into a caricature of itself and what seemed in the early days to be sharp observations of peoples perceptions of each other became rather witless stereotypes. Maybe light satire is a hard thing to pull off in a novel as its likely that the reader has to invest in the idea of their being a kind of 'truth' laying at the base of the story. Still it was a worthy attempt I think. I'd give it a three out of five. Unlike 'Cuddy', which no one seems to want to read in my library, so I still have it, as it is easier to renew it on line, than go into town to return it, 34 people are waiting to read 'The Ministry of Time', my on line account tells me. So, it looks likely to become a popular holiday read. I have picked up Paul Lynch's 'Prophet Song' but I think that I am not in the mood for harrowing dystopia's somehow, and would much rather look for a comfort read instead... Or perhaps some non-fiction calls?...
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Me as well. Yes, lots of dreams. Vivid dreaming must have been the experience of millions. He recalls his very beautifully.
On the reality of war-time it’s difficult to think his comments on the insanity of it all, guarded as they are, wouldn’t have got him into serious trouble had they become known.
I was also surprised that, passing through Cologne in Oct 1942, he records devastation from the bombing. In Hannover he shelters in a house that is shaken to its foundations during a raid. I had somehow always thought of the destruction of the cities as happening much later in the war.
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For $1.83 plus postage I’ve found a 1927 re-telling of the classic 1393 version by Jean d’Arras - on abebooks.fr – “bon état.” It was buried among a zillion copies of a cartoon magazine called Mélusine which looked as though it was modelled on Tintin and Astérix.
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Three out of five is a bit of a warning, though 43 people in line is quite impressive. I see it’s described as a “fabulous” time travel novel by Emily Wilson in New Scientist. Is this the same Emily Wilson I wonder who did the fabulous translation of The Odyssey?
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Books mentioned in this topic
Volcano (other topics)Colonial Tales (other topics)
The Ministry of Time (other topics)
My reading in the last week - when not displaced by momentous events in the world - was largely taken up with La Loi (see my following post).
Otherwise I continue with Junger’s brilliant Journals, Amis’s sharp reviews, and Holmes’s The Age of Wonder - after the cross-Channel balloonists and the intrepid Mungo Park in Africa we're now on Humphry Davy, the boy wonder from poorest Cornwall.
I’ve returned Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to the library and am getting my own copy. I think it is a project for the fall, not the blistering heat of summer.
I’m now looking about for my next piece of fiction, though I often find that after finishing one gripping novel I need to leave it a while before starting another.