The Valleys of the Assassins - and Other Persian Travels - Freya Stark
Narratives of several journeys in remote areas of the Middle East, principally the Persia-Iraq border region, in the 1930's. Armed with the self-assurance of empire, but also innate savvy, cunning, and fluency in various local languages, the author explores the tribal hill-country of Luristan, and the area of northern Persia which was home to the titular assassins first described by Marco Polo, outwitting and deceiving unfriendly officials/police as necessary. She is motivated partly by her own curiosity and wanderlust, and partly by a never fully explained commission from the British Foreign Office (I think) which likely relates to mapping and general intelligence gathering but apparently also includes a bona fide treasure hunt.
It's a remarkable insight into a people (peoples really) and place which most of us know nothing about. As a Western woman she is able to report from both sides of the patriarchal societies with whom she stays. But I was frustrated by how little humanity she gives us: what there is is memorable, like the smart young tribesman with big plans to make it in Tehran, or the sorrowful first wife of a polygamous chief now supplanted by a younger model, but the focus is on geographical description - map-making, really - archaeology, and Stark's daily camp routine.
The prose is mostly functional, again in keeping with Stark's semi-hidden mapping agenda, but always precise and there are some nice descriptive passages. I think as long as you don't go into this expecting a modern travelogue a la Chatwin or Theroux, you won't be disappointed. Its uniqueness alone is enough to recommend it. I'll read the acclaimed biography of Stark, Passionate Nomad by Jane Fletcher sooner or later. She led a pretty incredible life.
Who's reading what?
Tempting. I've never read any Stark, but I'm aware that she looms up, imposingly, behind the likes of Robert Byron and Patrick Leigh Fermor. Whose Broken Road - is that it? - I still haven't brought myself to read, despite being a great fan of the first two parts of the trilogy. It's partly knowing that it was put together by his editor and biographer posthumously, and partly not really enjoying - and, in fact, giving up on - the biography itself.
Europe Between the Oceans - Barry Cunliffe
This is an excellent overview of European cultural movements from 10,000 BCE to 1,000 CE. I don't know much about ancient history but to my ear, at least, this book didn't seem to push any particular agenda or theory to the exclusion of others. The author of course has a position wherever the facts (or their interpretation) are in doubt but he's not evangelical. The maps, charts and illustrations are really well thought out and the narrative is well balanced geographically and across time periods. The slightly awkward title doesn't really do justice to Cunliffe's steady emphasis of geography - coasts, rivers and mountains - as the driver of many of the major twists in the European story. The other constant factor is trade, and what surprised me most was the evidence for wide-ranging trade contacts and networks throughout European prehistory, the Vikings hardly being more active in this regard than their forebears of ten millenia earlier.
This is an excellent overview of European cultural movements from 10,000 BCE to 1,000 CE. I don't know much about ancient history but to my ear, at least, this book didn't seem to push any particular agenda or theory to the exclusion of others. The author of course has a position wherever the facts (or their interpretation) are in doubt but he's not evangelical. The maps, charts and illustrations are really well thought out and the narrative is well balanced geographically and across time periods. The slightly awkward title doesn't really do justice to Cunliffe's steady emphasis of geography - coasts, rivers and mountains - as the driver of many of the major twists in the European story. The other constant factor is trade, and what surprised me most was the evidence for wide-ranging trade contacts and networks throughout European prehistory, the Vikings hardly being more active in this regard than their forebears of ten millenia earlier.
Either Mani or A Time of Gifts are well worth your or anybody's time. Between the Woods and Water, less so, but if you like ATOG - and I love it - you won't be able to resist crossing the bridge into Hungary with him, to see how he gets on there.k-j wrote:David - I really must read some Leigh Fermor.
Sir Barry Cunliffe often pitches up on popular archaeology programmes over here (i.e. the UK). He's an authority on the Celts as well, I think, and I'm pretty sure he wrote my Very Short Introduction to the Celts which I lent to someone and never got back. Have you read Europe by Norman Davies? Great book, although the subject matter is so broad that I think I prefer The Isles, which gives him much more room for commentary.
I didn't know that or that he was a sir. I was particularly impressed with the sections on the Celts and ancient British/Irish populations in the book I read.David wrote:Sir Barry Cunliffe often pitches up on popular archaeology programmes over here (i.e. the UK). He's an authority on the Celts as well, I think, and I'm pretty sure he wrote my Very Short Introduction to the Celts
So rude, but most people don't realise it. For many people, books are disposable things and once read, they can't imagine that a book could still hold value for a person. Hence the non-returning of lent books (also of course, some people are just forgetful or selfish). I never offer to lend books any more and if someone asks, I try to agree as vaguely as possible and hope they forget about it. I suppose that makes me a git but I don't really care.which I lent to someone and never got back
No. Strange how you and I both seem to read a lot, with reasonable overlap in subject matter, but to have very few actual books in common. I suppose it shows just how many of the damn things there are.Have you read Europe by Norman Davies? Great book, although the subject matter is so broad that I think I prefer The Isles, which gives him much more room for commentary.
fine words butter no parsnips
The Great Gatsby
Probably 20 years since I first read it, my daughter asked me about it for some reason, and I realised I'd forgotten much of the story, so I pulled it down from the shelf and read it in one sitting (lying in bed, actually). I had forgotten all about Myrtle, Tom's bit on the side, and I was particularly impressed by how much extra moral oomph she (or rather Fitzgerald's portrayal of her) brings to the story. It really is a special novel - brilliant, grown-up writing, every character complex and fully realised, the prose economical yet frequently dazzling. Pretty much a flawless work of art.
And that brings us to the end of April.
Probably 20 years since I first read it, my daughter asked me about it for some reason, and I realised I'd forgotten much of the story, so I pulled it down from the shelf and read it in one sitting (lying in bed, actually). I had forgotten all about Myrtle, Tom's bit on the side, and I was particularly impressed by how much extra moral oomph she (or rather Fitzgerald's portrayal of her) brings to the story. It really is a special novel - brilliant, grown-up writing, every character complex and fully realised, the prose economical yet frequently dazzling. Pretty much a flawless work of art.
And that brings us to the end of April.
fine words butter no parsnips
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Ros
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Oh, I'm completely missing it, then. I must give it another read one day.Finding it a bit tedious and characters unpleasant and unreal is not an option, then?k-j wrote:The Great Gatsby
It really is a special novel - brilliant, grown-up writing, every character complex and fully realised, the prose economical yet frequently dazzling. Pretty much a flawless work of art.
Ros
Rosencrantz: What are you playing at? Guildenstern: Words. Words. They're all we have to go on.
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I can't see how you could call it tedious. It's short and lots happens. Characters unpleasant? Tom certainly is, but everyone else is nice enough. Characters unreal? Maybe in the sense that their setting is fairly remote from us. But surely that doesn't count. For me they are all very believable, very recognisable. So no, not an option and you must read it again.Ros wrote:Oh, I'm completely missing it, then. I must give it another read one day.Finding it a bit tedious and characters unpleasant and unreal is not an option, then?
fine words butter no parsnips
Turtle Diary - Russell Hoban
A bit different from the (five) other Hoban novels I've read, this is a mostly naturalistic narrative with only hints of magic. Two middle-aged individuals, each leading their own kind of big-city solitary existence, are drawn independently to the sea turtles in the zoo and form an almost intuitive pact to liberate them off the coast of Cornwall. Sounds schmaltzy, but Hoban's eye for everyday detail keeps it grounded, and the connections that emerge between the two are not what you would expect. The turtle motif didn't really do much for me, but I loved the background detail, the glimpses into the lives of the minor characters and the depiction of 1970's London. Fine writing, although I prefer his more pyrotechnical novels like Pilgermann and of course Riddley Walker.
A bit different from the (five) other Hoban novels I've read, this is a mostly naturalistic narrative with only hints of magic. Two middle-aged individuals, each leading their own kind of big-city solitary existence, are drawn independently to the sea turtles in the zoo and form an almost intuitive pact to liberate them off the coast of Cornwall. Sounds schmaltzy, but Hoban's eye for everyday detail keeps it grounded, and the connections that emerge between the two are not what you would expect. The turtle motif didn't really do much for me, but I loved the background detail, the glimpses into the lives of the minor characters and the depiction of 1970's London. Fine writing, although I prefer his more pyrotechnical novels like Pilgermann and of course Riddley Walker.
fine words butter no parsnips
I haven't read Turtle Diary - I don't think I was attracted by the blurb on the back -but I had to check that it wasn't the one where he used the Peloponnesian War as a metaphor for his illness. But that's Kleinzeit. Very good.
I really liked Kleinzeit (in 2008, I think) but had forgotten the Peloponnesian War motif - or rather, I had remembered the motif but not the novel it was in. I'll probably read it again someday. You never know what you're going to get with Mr. Hoban, usually an attribute of a good artist.David wrote:I haven't read Turtle Diary - I don't think I was attracted by the blurb on the back -but I had to check that it wasn't the one where he used the Peloponnesian War as a metaphor for his illness. But that's Kleinzeit. Very good.
fine words butter no parsnips
Ablutions: Notes for a Novel - Patrick deWitt
This is a very good drinking/bar novel, a gush of slapstick pity and despair tracing the career (in both senses of the word) of a drunken barman in L.A. There are no saints, only miserable sinners, and there are only brief and intermittent instants of dignity amidst the depravity. It is, as the title suggests, very episodic, but I've read many texts less worthy of "novel" status than this. The drunkards in this book (which is everyone) are not lovable rogues, but more or less unsatisfactory people (although satisfyingly unique), and as such it's a believable society. There's a serviceable plot, too, which eventually takes wing with a drunken drive to Las Vegas/an unspecified desert town where everyone is even more wasted than back in the bar. A farcical love story occurs, and no one is left any the wiser as to anything, except that drinking is a very bad good idea, and Patrick deWitt is a very bad good writer.
This is a very good drinking/bar novel, a gush of slapstick pity and despair tracing the career (in both senses of the word) of a drunken barman in L.A. There are no saints, only miserable sinners, and there are only brief and intermittent instants of dignity amidst the depravity. It is, as the title suggests, very episodic, but I've read many texts less worthy of "novel" status than this. The drunkards in this book (which is everyone) are not lovable rogues, but more or less unsatisfactory people (although satisfyingly unique), and as such it's a believable society. There's a serviceable plot, too, which eventually takes wing with a drunken drive to Las Vegas/an unspecified desert town where everyone is even more wasted than back in the bar. A farcical love story occurs, and no one is left any the wiser as to anything, except that drinking is a very bad good idea, and Patrick deWitt is a very bad good writer.
fine words butter no parsnips
Memoirs of Hecate County - Edmund Wilson
A set of six tales with a common narrator and all situated in New England and New York. I liked the use of fantasy, restrained to the extent that it becomes realistic, mirrors those few moments of genuine oddness that we all seem to experience in our lives. There is magic here, but it's momentary, and leaves the characters guessing and second guessing long after we leave them. "Ellen Terhune" is I guess the most avowedly supernatural story, but its time-shifting spookery is handled so adroitly as to take the reader entirely unawares. I'd locate it between Henry and M.R. James's ghost stories - perhaps closer to Henry. The central piece, "The Princess with the Golden Hair", is quite objectionable in the chauvinism of its narrator and its predictability, but it's soaked in a weird sexual fever (it was banned for a while) that makes you keep reading. My favourite was "Mr. And Mrs. Blackburn at Home", but that's because I can't resist a good literary Satan, and here he speaks excellent French and much good sense. He is as good an Old Nick as I've read.
On the other hand, there is not much depth to these stories. If you don't care for the milieu, or Wilson's or the narrator's style, you will probably detest them. There's nothing groundbreaking about "Memoirs of Hecate County", but I found it surprisingly good. I must read some of his non-fiction.
A set of six tales with a common narrator and all situated in New England and New York. I liked the use of fantasy, restrained to the extent that it becomes realistic, mirrors those few moments of genuine oddness that we all seem to experience in our lives. There is magic here, but it's momentary, and leaves the characters guessing and second guessing long after we leave them. "Ellen Terhune" is I guess the most avowedly supernatural story, but its time-shifting spookery is handled so adroitly as to take the reader entirely unawares. I'd locate it between Henry and M.R. James's ghost stories - perhaps closer to Henry. The central piece, "The Princess with the Golden Hair", is quite objectionable in the chauvinism of its narrator and its predictability, but it's soaked in a weird sexual fever (it was banned for a while) that makes you keep reading. My favourite was "Mr. And Mrs. Blackburn at Home", but that's because I can't resist a good literary Satan, and here he speaks excellent French and much good sense. He is as good an Old Nick as I've read.
On the other hand, there is not much depth to these stories. If you don't care for the milieu, or Wilson's or the narrator's style, you will probably detest them. There's nothing groundbreaking about "Memoirs of Hecate County", but I found it surprisingly good. I must read some of his non-fiction.
fine words butter no parsnips
I like the sound of the Patrick deWitt. Have you read any of the Edward St Aubyn novels (the Patrick Melrose series, to be specific)? Very bad behaviour among what I can only describe as the upper - or upper middle? - classes, and beautiful writing.
Diverse people have recommended these to me, and I've read nothing but good reviews, but I have avoided them, not sure why. Another entry for the "will get around to someday" list.David wrote:Edward St Aubyn novels
fine words butter no parsnips
Not prose, but I'm putting it here anyway:
Twenty-Five German Poets: A Bilingual Collection - ed. Walter Kaufmann
This wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind when I asked my wife for a bilingual anthology of German poetry for Christmas. I had imagined something more modern and dashing, dotted with obscure works of genius. Kaufmann turns out to be an idiosyncratic editor-translator, sometimes swashbuckling and never neutral in his short introductions to each poet. His selection runs from 17th-century Silesius through to about the mid-20th, stopping short of Celan. The translation, which might be expected to be workaday in a parallel text edition, is actually quite characterful and often inspired, not shying away from englishing the rhyme and metre while remaining quite faithful to the feel of the original.
The diversity of Goethe's work was the first revelation for me, and I loved his rowdy Venetian Epigrams. There is a lot by Schiller and only three by Hölderlin, which I found odd. I liked the Heine very much. The selection of Rilke is broad and deep. I was very impressed by the expressionists Trakl and Benn, both of whom I will read more of. I was surprised at the omission of Georg Heym, who I was reading separately at the same time.
The editor is an immense fan of Nietzsche, referencing him in his introductions whenever appropriate and often when not, and including a baker's dozen of FN's frankly second-rate poems, as well as verses dedicated to him by George and Morgenstern. Other than the Nietzsche fetish, this is a really good introduction to German poetry and overview of its development.
Twenty-Five German Poets: A Bilingual Collection - ed. Walter Kaufmann
This wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind when I asked my wife for a bilingual anthology of German poetry for Christmas. I had imagined something more modern and dashing, dotted with obscure works of genius. Kaufmann turns out to be an idiosyncratic editor-translator, sometimes swashbuckling and never neutral in his short introductions to each poet. His selection runs from 17th-century Silesius through to about the mid-20th, stopping short of Celan. The translation, which might be expected to be workaday in a parallel text edition, is actually quite characterful and often inspired, not shying away from englishing the rhyme and metre while remaining quite faithful to the feel of the original.
The diversity of Goethe's work was the first revelation for me, and I loved his rowdy Venetian Epigrams. There is a lot by Schiller and only three by Hölderlin, which I found odd. I liked the Heine very much. The selection of Rilke is broad and deep. I was very impressed by the expressionists Trakl and Benn, both of whom I will read more of. I was surprised at the omission of Georg Heym, who I was reading separately at the same time.
The editor is an immense fan of Nietzsche, referencing him in his introductions whenever appropriate and often when not, and including a baker's dozen of FN's frankly second-rate poems, as well as verses dedicated to him by George and Morgenstern. Other than the Nietzsche fetish, this is a really good introduction to German poetry and overview of its development.
fine words butter no parsnips
Yes! Actually, having typed that, I wonder whether I'm thinking about his Roman poems instead. Froh empfind ich mich un, auf klassischem Boden begeistert ... if I remember that right. Can't remember any more, but I remember thinking the rhythm often seems to be identical to Betjeman. Can that be right?k-j wrote:The diversity of Goethe's work was the first revelation for me, and I loved his rowdy Venetian Epigrams.
Actually again - blimey, another memory - I remember a walking holiday in Germany in the 80s, with a German edition of Goethe in my rucksack, out of which I tried to learn a poem every night to recite during my daily Wandeln. I got to about five, at most, I think. That German edition is upstairs somewhere now.
Ha! Yes! That rhythm seems to crop up quite often in German poetry, especially the romantics. It's in Hölderlin quite a lot too as I recall.David wrote:but I remember thinking the rhythm often seems to be identical to Betjeman. Can that be right
Is that an edition of Goethe in your rucksack or are you just etc etc...with a German edition of Goethe in my rucksack
fine words butter no parsnips
Not giving up hope of getting on top of this...
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - Orwell
A one (or at most two)-dimensional novel by Orwell, about the tyranny of capital and the ghastly existence of the downwardly mobile middle class. Apart from a few mordant jabs at the booksellers and the reading public, this doesn't have much to recommend it.
Maus - Art Spiegelman
This conveys the terror of (being Jewish in) the Third Reich very well, and all the praise heaped on it for its style and its cat/mouse/pig conceit is deserved. But it didn't really vary from my expectations - or perhaps I mean it didn't really add much to similar narratives I've absorbed in the past? So although it's a great work of art, it's not one I'll read again, but I will recommend it to my kids.
Die Schönsten Erzählungen - Kafka, tr. Appelbaum
Five Kafka stories in a parallel text edition with very competent, user-friendly translations. It was an intense thrill to read Kafka in German (although I'd have struggled abysmally without the English to hand) and I didn't find K's style as convoluted as I had been led to believe it was. I have read all his stories before in translation, but of these five (The Judgement, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, A Country Doctor, A Report to an Academy), it was A Country Doctor that impressed me the most this time around with its out-of-control narrative and increasingly hallucinatory tone.
The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science - Armand Marie Leroi
An account of Aristotle's bio/zoological investigations, centred on his home isle of Lesbos, which is perhaps over-optimistically subtitled but nonetheless a very entertaining read. Aristotle is sometimes right, more often wrong, but the important thing is the way he goes about his science, plunging his hands into dead (or even sometimes, it is hinted, live (ugh)) specimens and having a good root around before trying to make sense of what he finds. He comes across as a thoroughly good egg. I don't think the author ever really decided whether he was writing about Aristotle, or about science, or about the history of science or the scientific method, but I didn't mind the book's dilatory style. Would be a good one to read on holiday, on a beach.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - Orwell
A one (or at most two)-dimensional novel by Orwell, about the tyranny of capital and the ghastly existence of the downwardly mobile middle class. Apart from a few mordant jabs at the booksellers and the reading public, this doesn't have much to recommend it.
Maus - Art Spiegelman
This conveys the terror of (being Jewish in) the Third Reich very well, and all the praise heaped on it for its style and its cat/mouse/pig conceit is deserved. But it didn't really vary from my expectations - or perhaps I mean it didn't really add much to similar narratives I've absorbed in the past? So although it's a great work of art, it's not one I'll read again, but I will recommend it to my kids.
Die Schönsten Erzählungen - Kafka, tr. Appelbaum
Five Kafka stories in a parallel text edition with very competent, user-friendly translations. It was an intense thrill to read Kafka in German (although I'd have struggled abysmally without the English to hand) and I didn't find K's style as convoluted as I had been led to believe it was. I have read all his stories before in translation, but of these five (The Judgement, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, A Country Doctor, A Report to an Academy), it was A Country Doctor that impressed me the most this time around with its out-of-control narrative and increasingly hallucinatory tone.
The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science - Armand Marie Leroi
An account of Aristotle's bio/zoological investigations, centred on his home isle of Lesbos, which is perhaps over-optimistically subtitled but nonetheless a very entertaining read. Aristotle is sometimes right, more often wrong, but the important thing is the way he goes about his science, plunging his hands into dead (or even sometimes, it is hinted, live (ugh)) specimens and having a good root around before trying to make sense of what he finds. He comes across as a thoroughly good egg. I don't think the author ever really decided whether he was writing about Aristotle, or about science, or about the history of science or the scientific method, but I didn't mind the book's dilatory style. Would be a good one to read on holiday, on a beach.
fine words butter no parsnips
I must take a list of your recommendations to the library. The other day I thought - as I often do - that I don't read enough modern fiction, so I borrowed (having rejoined the library especially) How To Be Both by Ali Smith. Do not do this. It is bleedin' awful. It seems to conform to some modern novel-writing template:
1. Come up with a clever idea - not a very clever one, just one that will pass muster as vaguely post-modern. (And "genre-bending". Pah.)
2. Be cute. Be very cute.
3. Pad at will.
I'm taking it back on Saturday.
1. Come up with a clever idea - not a very clever one, just one that will pass muster as vaguely post-modern. (And "genre-bending". Pah.)
2. Be cute. Be very cute.
3. Pad at will.
I'm taking it back on Saturday.
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bodkin
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I read Cold comfort farm which I thoroughly enjoyed. I thought it was surprisingly modern in some parts of its outlook for 1932 and lead to me discovering that the original CCF was and still is on the outskirts of my home-town of Hinckley (apparently Stella knew the daughter of the principal of Hinckley Grammar school which owned several properties including CCF, it is apparently opposite the farm where one of my school friends lived.
--
I also read I am the messenger by Markus Zusak. Entertaining and enjoyable as it goes along but the ending falls flat.
--
What else... I read A God in Ruins which is Kate Atkinson's sort-of sequel to Life after Life. This doesn't have the overtly quantum nature of the previous book but does have her trademark out of sequence retelling. I got a bit bogged down in the middle, there's a couple of sections that were a bit not too my taste, and this isn't the masterpiece that the previous book was. However it has a nice twist at the end and I enjoyed it overall. Unlike her others, I suspect, not one I'll reread.
--
Neal Stephenson's The Confusion which is the middle of a trilogy. I then went back and tried to read Quicksilver which is the first but I got 90% of the way through and didn't complete it yet.
These are remarkable books, huge complex historically set novels where I'm not a good enough historian to tell whether they are significantly "counter history" or not. They a tale of soldiers and countesses (of varying degrees of legitimacy) and members of the Royal Society and William of Orange and pirates and smugglers and Spaniards and Liebniz. And the plot revolves around politics and natural philosophy and economics undergoing a couple of paradigm shifts and sex and the pursuit of $$$ and maths and many, many, long, long ocean voyages.
Also each book insists in telling more than one story at once.
As I said "remarkable". Possibly not for everyone, but you'd have to make your own judgement on that.
I will try to get back to Quicksilver (nothing wrong with it, just a touch too long) and if I see the 3rd going cheaply I will certainly buy it.
--
Also the usual more SF than I can count and Terry Pratchett's final book: The Shepherd's Crown which I am glad I read for completeness, but which won't be what I remember him for...
--
I also read I am the messenger by Markus Zusak. Entertaining and enjoyable as it goes along but the ending falls flat.
--
What else... I read A God in Ruins which is Kate Atkinson's sort-of sequel to Life after Life. This doesn't have the overtly quantum nature of the previous book but does have her trademark out of sequence retelling. I got a bit bogged down in the middle, there's a couple of sections that were a bit not too my taste, and this isn't the masterpiece that the previous book was. However it has a nice twist at the end and I enjoyed it overall. Unlike her others, I suspect, not one I'll reread.
--
Neal Stephenson's The Confusion which is the middle of a trilogy. I then went back and tried to read Quicksilver which is the first but I got 90% of the way through and didn't complete it yet.
These are remarkable books, huge complex historically set novels where I'm not a good enough historian to tell whether they are significantly "counter history" or not. They a tale of soldiers and countesses (of varying degrees of legitimacy) and members of the Royal Society and William of Orange and pirates and smugglers and Spaniards and Liebniz. And the plot revolves around politics and natural philosophy and economics undergoing a couple of paradigm shifts and sex and the pursuit of $$$ and maths and many, many, long, long ocean voyages.
Also each book insists in telling more than one story at once.
As I said "remarkable". Possibly not for everyone, but you'd have to make your own judgement on that.
I will try to get back to Quicksilver (nothing wrong with it, just a touch too long) and if I see the 3rd going cheaply I will certainly buy it.
--
Also the usual more SF than I can count and Terry Pratchett's final book: The Shepherd's Crown which I am glad I read for completeness, but which won't be what I remember him for...
http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/
Sounds rubbish. Libraries are treacherous places. I almost always get a book out when I visit, although I seldom intend to, and most of the haphazard selections are not very good.David wrote:I must take a list of your recommendations to the library. The other day I thought - as I often do - that I don't read enough modern fiction, so I borrowed (having rejoined the library especially) How To Be Both by Ali Smith. Do not do this. It is bleedin' awful. It seems to conform to some modern novel-writing template:
1. Come up with a clever idea - not a very clever one, just one that will pass muster as vaguely post-modern. (And "genre-bending". Pah.)
2. Be cute. Be very cute.
3. Pad at will.
I'm taking it back on Saturday.
fine words butter no parsnips
CCF I've got to read. Neal Stephenson I've heard quite a lot about, some of it sounds great and some of it bad. From your description it sounds great. I especially love long sea voyages, members of the Royal Society, Spaniards and Leibniz. I'll give it a crack on my next long voyage. Thanks Ian.bodkin wrote:I read Cold comfort farm which I thoroughly enjoyed. I thought it was surprisingly modern in some parts of its outlook for 1932 and lead to me discovering that the original CCF was and still is on the outskirts of my home-town of Hinckley (apparently Stella knew the daughter of the principal of Hinckley Grammar school which owned several properties including CCF, it is apparently opposite the farm where one of my school friends lived.
--
I also read I am the messenger by Markus Zusak. Entertaining and enjoyable as it goes along but the ending falls flat.
--
What else... I read A God in Ruins which is Kate Atkinson's sort-of sequel to Life after Life. This doesn't have the overtly quantum nature of the previous book but does have her trademark out of sequence retelling. I got a bit bogged down in the middle, there's a couple of sections that were a bit not too my taste, and this isn't the masterpiece that the previous book was. However it has a nice twist at the end and I enjoyed it overall. Unlike her others, I suspect, not one I'll reread.
--
Neal Stephenson's The Confusion which is the middle of a trilogy. I then went back and tried to read Quicksilver which is the first but I got 90% of the way through and didn't complete it yet.
These are remarkable books, huge complex historically set novels where I'm not a good enough historian to tell whether they are significantly "counter history" or not. They a tale of soldiers and countesses (of varying degrees of legitimacy) and members of the Royal Society and William of Orange and pirates and smugglers and Spaniards and Liebniz. And the plot revolves around politics and natural philosophy and economics undergoing a couple of paradigm shifts and sex and the pursuit of $$$ and maths and many, many, long, long ocean voyages.
Also each book insists in telling more than one story at once.
As I said "remarkable". Possibly not for everyone, but you'd have to make your own judgement on that.
I will try to get back to Quicksilver (nothing wrong with it, just a touch too long) and if I see the 3rd going cheaply I will certainly buy it.
--
Also the usual more SF than I can count and Terry Pratchett's final book: The Shepherd's Crown which I am glad I read for completeness, but which won't be what I remember him for...
fine words butter no parsnips