RugbyRebels

Well into Go Set a Watchman now and have mixed feelings about it. Firstly, it is certainly readable and quite enjoyable so far. However, I am as sure as I can be that it was not written by the same author as To Kill a Mockingbird. The style is very different. They may have collected some of her notes from a failed attempt to write a sequel and made a novel based upon them, but that's all, IMHO.

I have to add that my final comment on Chomsky's Turning the Tide was that while I also enjoyed it and found it very informative, some of the later chapters seemed very flat and I'm not sure the old guy actually wrote these himself, but rather instructed his team on what he wanted covered there and they wrote it for him. While the postscript is basically just a remix of what he's written many times in the past.

Not sure how common this is, but even Alexandre Dumas back in the 19th century was said to employ the services of a team of writers , rather than actually write every word himself.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain. Reviewed by someone on here a couple of years ago, I finally got round to slotting the final instalment of the Border Trilogy into my reading schedule. Despite the difficulty I have in dealing with much of the Spanish dialogue (Choice: skip it and lose some of the detail or sit there with a translator App and lose the flow?), I have enjoyed all 3 of these books, Cities of the Plain being my favourite. It is brutal, I suppose predictable, but McCarthy's writing comes in wonderful and atmospheric swathes. In terms of emotional entrapment, there are few equals. Truly brilliant.

That would have been me. The border trilogy are some of my all time favourite books and McCarthy's sparse writing style just suits the setting perfectly. The best of his work.

George Orwell's Coming Up for Air. Written in 1939, Coming up for Air clearly bears the embryo of 1984, though there is a degree of levity in Orwell's tale of mid-life crisis between the wars. I enjoyed this book, particularly the middle section and there are early indications of the darkness of his 2 later and more famous fictional works.

Also finished off Brian Gardner's The Big Push, which was recommended in Middlebrooke's bibliography for his excellent The First Day of the Somme. 1st published in 1968, so firmly falling in with the Oh What a Lovely War crowd, blaming everything on Haig and ultimately spawning the tripe of Clarke's Lions Led by Donkeys. As you might imagine, not chiming in harmony with my own views, but nevertheless a valuable and beautifully written piece of the historiographical fabric.

I think Suttree is up there wit the trilogy. The first 150 pages of the crossing are the best imo. The conversations with the woman about the war in ATPH and with the old man about the tremolo in the crossing are incredible, whole thing a gift.




(still reading war and peace!!)

I saw they are making Rogue Male into a film with Benedict Cumberbatch, it's a good book if you haven't read it, I'm looking forward to the film.

Edit: I've just seen that they don't go into production until next year and the Film is released in 2018, hopefully I'll still be kicking along then.

paddy no 11 wrote:I think Suttree is up there wit the trilogy. The first 150 pages of the crossing are the best imo. The conversations with the woman about the war in ATPH and with the old man about the tremolo in the crossing are incredible, whole thing a gift.




(still reading war and peace!!)

I have Suttree (A far heftier looking volume than the works of McCarthy that I've read so far) sitting on my shelves waiting to go, but given the line-up I have waiting - and that I start my Masters next Monday - I could see it being another few years before I get round to it.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:

paddy no 11 wrote:I think Suttree is up there wit the trilogy. The first 150 pages of the crossing are the best imo. The conversations with the woman about the war in ATPH and with the old man about the tremolo in the crossing are incredible, whole thing a gift.




(still reading war and peace!!)

I have Suttree (A far heftier looking volume than the works of McCarthy that I've read so far) sitting on my shelves waiting to go, but given the line-up I have waiting - and that I start my Masters next Monday - I could see it being another few years before I get round to it.

What in? You're time nearly up?

Museum Management and Practice. About 15 months to ENDEX.

All the best.

rowan wrote:Well into Go Set a Watchman now and have mixed feelings about it. Firstly, it is certainly readable and quite enjoyable so far. However, I am as sure as I can be that it was not written by the same author as To Kill a Mockingbird. The style is very different. They may have collected some of her notes from a failed attempt to write a sequel and made a novel based upon them, but that's all, IMHO.

Gave up on it in the end, sorry to say. It was well-written (in a technical sense) and recreated the American South around the middle of the 20th century quite well, but almost too well, and really that was all it did. The writing and characterization were mechanical and empty, there was none of the life and soul of To Kill a Mockingbird, and basically nothing to keep me going after 80 or 90 pages, especially as by then I'd become about as sure as I could be that I'd allowed myself to be duped by a fairly obvious scam.

The controversy is in where the scam actually lies.

Was Capote's intervention on reading the manuscript of GSAW so important and fundamental that it shaped the development of TKAM to the extent where he was its true author? And that without his assistance, the manuscript of GSAW failed to come even close to the heights of TKAM?

switchskier wrote:

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain. Reviewed by someone on here a couple of years ago, I finally got round to slotting the final instalment of the Border Trilogy into my reading schedule. Despite the difficulty I have in dealing with much of the Spanish dialogue (Choice: skip it and lose some of the detail or sit there with a translator App and lose the flow?), I have enjoyed all 3 of these books, Cities of the Plain being my favourite. It is brutal, I suppose predictable, but McCarthy's writing comes in wonderful and atmospheric swathes. In terms of emotional entrapment, there are few equals. Truly brilliant.

That would have been me. The border trilogy are some of my all time favourite books and McCarthy's sparse writing style just suits the setting perfectly. The best of his work.

If you like the border trilogy then try Butcher's Crossing by John Williams.

Sitting on my shelf waiting its turn. If its anything like the quality of Stoner than it promises to be a gem.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:Sitting on my shelf waiting its turn. If its anything like the quality of Stoner than it promises to be a gem.

I'm highly suspicious that you live in a library.

A library, a virtually inexhaustible supply of 1963 Vintage Port (And a similar supply of the 1994 for the awful time when the '63 runs out), a lazy dog at my feet and super-fast broadband with life-time subscriptions to a selection of discerning erotica and I would live out my days a truly happy man.

If you're wanting the dog to be part of the erotica you might need peanut butter or something.

Peanut butter makes me want to retch - better add a supply of Swarfega to the list!

Numbers wrote:

switchskier wrote:

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain. Reviewed by someone on here a couple of years ago, I finally got round to slotting the final instalment of the Border Trilogy into my reading schedule. Despite the difficulty I have in dealing with much of the Spanish dialogue (Choice: skip it and lose some of the detail or sit there with a translator App and lose the flow?), I have enjoyed all 3 of these books, Cities of the Plain being my favourite. It is brutal, I suppose predictable, but McCarthy's writing comes in wonderful and atmospheric swathes. In terms of emotional entrapment, there are few equals. Truly brilliant.

That would have been me. The border trilogy are some of my all time favourite books and McCarthy's sparse writing style just suits the setting perfectly. The best of his work.

If you like the border trilogy then try Butcher's Crossing by John Williams.

Looks good, it's been added to the list.

Interesting selection. Not sure they'd chosen the best though. Elif Safak isn't really considered Turkish, having been born in France and raised mostly in Western Europe, and the Bastard of Istanbul certainly isn't her best book; just the most controversial.


http://blog.headout.com/50-books-50-cou ... und-world/

Algeria: The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris by Leïla Marouane
Central African Republic: Daba’s Travels from Ouadda to Bangui by Bambote
Egypt: Specters by Radwa Ashour
Ethiopia: Notes from the Hyena’s Belly by Maaza Mengiste
Ghana: Homegoing by Ta Nehisi Coates
Libya: The Bleeding of the Stone by Ibrahim Al-Koni
Morocco: The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun
Mozambique: Ualalapi by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa
Nigeria: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin

Afghanistan: Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi
Iran: The Cypress Tree by Kamin Mohammadi
Lebanon: One Thousand and One Nights: A Retelling by Hanan Al Shaykh
Qatar: The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Sophia al-Maria
Saudi Arabia: Love Stories on al-Asha Street by Badria al-Bishr
Turkey: The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Finland: Purge by Sofi Oksanen
France: The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
Greece: Kassandra and the Wolf by Margarita Karapanou
Hungary: Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy
Iceland: Stone Tree by Gyrõir Elíasson
Italy: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Romania: Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu
Slovenia: Alamut by Vladimir Bartol
Spain: Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones
Ukraine: Requiem by Anna Akhmatova

China: Candy by Mian Mian
India: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Japan: 1Q84 by Haruki Murukami
Mongolia: The Blue Sky, by Galsan Tschinag
Myanmar: Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Yi
Pakistan: A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
Philippines: Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco
Russia: Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
South Korea: Please Look After Mother by Shin Kyung-sook
Sri Lanka: Metta by Sunethra Rajakarunanayake
Vietnam: Ru by Kim Thúy

Australia: The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Indonesia: Saman by Ayu Utami
Micronesia: The Book of Luelen by Micronesian author Luelen Bernart
Papua New Guinea: The Crocodile by Vincent Eri


Argentina: Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
Bolivia: Sweet Blood by Giovanna Rivero
Brazil: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Chile: The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Columbia: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Costa Rica: Cadence of the Moon by Oscar Nunez Olivas
Cuba: Three Sad Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
Mexico: Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor
Peru: The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
Uruguay: Lands of Memory by Felisberto Hernández

Also interesting. Woolf, Faulkner, Hemingway and Neruda also featured in the article:

It just takes a cursory glance at Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s works to see the strong influence of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

In his novel My Name is Red, Pamuk describes the Istanbul of the past in a way that echoes Dostoyevsky’s descriptions of 19th century St. Petersburg.

When once asked about his admiration for Dostoyevsky, Pamuk said: “Dostoevsky is an author with whom I tend to identify. I have learned a lot from him.”

While drawing parallels with Dostoyevsky, the Turkish writer said that like the great Russian writer, he was embedded his own culture that, unlike Western culture, has never been the center of the world.

“In Notes From the Underground, Dostoyevsky was waging a war against shallow Occidentalists, didactic writers who were always extolling the wonders of the West,” Pamuk said. “He was angry at the West and the Westernizers for looking down on his people.”

Pamuk added that like Dostoyevsky, he also “carried a certain anger and resentment.”

More here: https://rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/0 ... nts_634339

If anyone has read The Forgotten Highlander you may want to know Alistair Urquhart passed away on Friday. I could have has the honour of meeting him a few months ago. Picked a patient up and he was in the next bed, recognised him but couldn't place where from. My patient ended up mentioning him, I was gutted, would have shaken his hand.

OptimisticJock wrote:If anyone has read The Forgotten Highlander you may want to know Alistair Urquhart passed away on Friday. I could have has the honour of meeting him a few months ago. Picked a patient up and he was in the next bed, recognised him but couldn't place where from. My patient ended up mentioning him, I was gutted, would have shaken his hand.

Great book and sad to hear of his passing. How his story isn't more widely known I do not know.

Haven't read this personally (nor heard of it before), but looks interesting:

An American has won the prestigious Man Booker fiction prize for the first time. Paul Beatty was presented the award by the Duchess of Cornwall in London for his novel “The Sellout”.

It’s a story of a young black man who tries to reinstate slavery and racial segregation in a suburb of Los Angeles.

Critics have describes it as “a smart satire”, brave and funny which takes a bit of getting into but once there, you don’t want to leave”.

http://www.euronews.com/2016/10/26/the- ... oker-prize

Just finished reading Schindler's List. Just wow. Reads like a horror novel, but it actually happened, something you need to keep reminding yourself.

Has made me determined to a. never again draw spurious and frankly pathetic comparisons between people I disagree with and the nazis (I don't particularly remember doing that anyway tbh, but certainly wont be now) and b. not let anyone else away with drawing these comparisons either.

Seems like a small step to take, but it feels like the worlds sinking into hysterical reactions to problems that either dont exist or at least not nearly to the extentexisting that hysteria victims say they do. Witness the march of nationalism and the far right across the world. Standing up against that should be everyone's first priority.

Sorry, end rant. Its a great book, go read it.

Bit of a mad old time at work and the Masters is taking up much of my reading time so I've had to cut back, but have enjoyed a couple of pretty different reads over the last few weeks.

John Bradshaw's In Defence of Dogs takes a reasoned tilt against the accepted premise that dogs are pack animals that must be dominated and argues that evolution has selected out those wolf-like characteristics and that today's domestic dog does not need a thrashing to keep it in its place. He talks a great deal of sense and those who are thinking of bringing a dog into their homes really should read this before they follow convention and ruin what should be a truly rewarding relationship with an animal. Those who've got a dog already have probably fecked things up, but no harm in reading this to see where they went wrong.

Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. This is only the 2nd Dickens I have read and feck me but it was good. I saw the very end of the old black and white filum some years ago so I knew that the story was going to end up with some one getting his napp knocked off, but that didn't spoil the reading of what Dickens said was his best story. I was quite surprised by how visceral his narrative was at times - he pulled no punches for his Victorian readers - and the resonances with some of IS' latter-day excesses was stark. The prose isn't always the easiest, but a brilliant, brilliant read.