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Books... (Read 514511 times)

andy popp

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#1625 Re: Books...
April 04, 2021, 07:51:02 am
I'm reading Patrick White's The Vivesector and wondering why it has taken me so long to stumble across this author.

Johnny Brown

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#1626 Re: Books...
April 05, 2021, 10:34:24 am
Scarp - Nick Papadimitriou

Anyone jaded by the diminishing returns offered by the mainstreaming of psychogeography and landscape/ nature writing should check this out. Nick's patch - north-west London/ the ex-county of Middlesex - is not one I know or can get excited about, but this is merely the starting point for a highly imaginative exploration. Sebald might be the obvious comparison but while the imagined histories of Suffolk left me cold, I found Nick's hallucinated dives into local lives and 'deep topography' an invigorating buzz. Little taster doc here:


seankenny

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#1627 Re: Books...
April 05, 2021, 11:25:13 am
Thanks for that JB, I’ve watched about half that documentary and it’s just great. This is the area I live in and I recognise some of the places in the film. It’s a deeply weird part of the world for sure.

Johnny Brown

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#1628 Re: Books...
April 05, 2021, 12:05:03 pm
Ah that's interesting, I'd had it down as the reaction of a true creative to homogenised suburbanity. But maybe he is picking up on something deeper...

seankenny

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#1629 Re: Books...
April 05, 2021, 01:27:13 pm
So the thing about NW London (probably true for other bits but I don't know them very well, having only lived here the entire time I've been in the city) is both that it's very old and has tried modernity first in the UK, so there are many layers of everything. Part of this is that London and its surrounds always have been more populated than other parts of the UK. The great northern conurbations sprung up quite a bit later. Fun fact: in the 1600s roughly one in six English people either lived or had lived in London at some point.

So for example my street appears on maps from the 16th century and is, I'm pretty sure, medieval or earlier. In heavy rain it always floods which I assumed was crappy, unrepaired drainage but actually it turns out that it has a lost "river" - well, brook really - hence liable to flooding. And for some people, me included I guess, there's something quite cool about a lost river and trying to imagine the city as it was, or even the city as it was before it was a city.

Yet if I drive out of town a few miles there are vast tracts of essentially American style suburbs, or at least an attempt in that direction, that kind of weird bland modernity that JG Ballard picks up on. Then throw into the mix the huge Asian influence in this part of the city, so that the modern suburbs are really little Indias that hark back to somewhere and some time else entirely: the fishmongers in Harrow that has a huge colour poster of a girl in a sari on a beach, holding an enormous fish in her arms.

Johnny Brown

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#1630 Re: Books...
April 05, 2021, 01:35:09 pm
Those are all very much themes in the book, I think you'll like it. A nice reminder that I can enjoy fiction too, albeit drip-fed.

al

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#1631 Re: Books...
April 06, 2021, 11:38:48 am
Quote
I’m a bit of a fan too
nice one ben, will check those out too (am familiar with 'the on going moment' better than susan sontag on this subject  ;) - I like his inquisitiveness & ability to put it into words

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#1632 Re: Books...
April 24, 2021, 01:22:53 pm
JB - Just finished Scarp last night, thanks for the review. I’d had it on my kindle for ages and even started it several years ago but got distracted.  A very enjoyable nighttime read. I particularly enjoyed the imagined sections about the corvid and John Osborne. We’re a little bit further south and east from Sean but close enough to know some of the places.  I’ve long been curious about the lost rivers, buying a book about them when I lived up North and now enjoy looking for traces when I’m out and about in London.  Will watch the documentary.


jwi

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#1633 Re: Books...
April 24, 2021, 07:51:16 pm
Quick note on Les Fous du Verdon (Bernard Vaucher, Éditions Guérin)

The first chapter about the history of Verdon before the climbers is very interesting, as is the entire first half describing the first ten years or so of climbing in the canyon, even thought it is described with a bit too much colour to my taste. The second part of the book covering the period from the start of the free climbing era to the early noughties is in acute need of editing. Ground breaking ascents by French as well as international climbers (Jerry Moffat proving Pschitt right on "Papy Onsight", Alain Robert's insane free solo of "Pol Pot" or Lynn Hill's masterclass of big wall on-sighting on Minugs) are given short shift while the frankly retrograde activities of the old friends of the author standing in their etriers are given endless space.

In short: read the first half---it it deeply fascinating, but do not finish the book: that would be a complete waste of time.

Also, the writer is absurdly pretentious. Here is a random sentence for you:
Quote
Les modes sont à la fois péremptoires et sinusoïdales, qui imposent leurs oukases sans logique ni raisons apparentes
(Fashions are simultaneously peremptory and sinusoidal, imposing their ukases without apparent logic or reason.)
« Last Edit: April 24, 2021, 08:00:13 pm by jwi »

jwi

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#1634 Re: Books...
April 25, 2021, 11:47:08 am
A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine, Tor Books)

A science fiction duology which successfully explores the connection between memory and self.

I was less enamoured by Arkady Martine's debut novel A Memory Called Empire than others. "Others" includes the jury for the Hugo Award who bestowed it with the title of Best Novel in 2020. But I really liked the second novel in the series, A Desolation Called Peace.

Even after having read the entire first novel I was not sure what I thought about this fish-out-of water story in a slightly fictionalised world-spanning Sino-Japanese empire. The second book is awesome. Proper space opera. Aliens who are really alien, palace intrigues and brave envoys. Well worth reading, with a proper ending, which justifies the first novel. It seems to me like Arkady Martine has learned on the job.

The protagonist is the ambassador for a small independent mining station on the rim of the empire, tasked with keeping the empire from swallowing the station and attach it to the world, without loosing her identity to a culture she really admire.

The stationers have a controlled population of but 30,000 on a crowded torus. They however possess a secret technology to preserve the memories of their dead by implanting them in a compatible young adult. The dead might have memories of earlier dead in their turn, in the longest lines all the way back fourteen generations to the founding of the station.

Both books well describes how it feels to be living, working and dreaming in an acquired language — a description that is free of many of the most atrocious pitfalls monolingual writers falls into when they imagine how that would be.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2021, 12:03:22 pm by jwi »

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#1635 Re: Books...
April 25, 2021, 12:14:46 pm
Sounds good jwi!

Dirt by Bill Buford. A sort-of-sequel to his book Heat which was a great story about him sacking off his job as literary editor at Granta to learn how to cook in the kitchens of Italy.  This one covers the period when he, his wife and kids left New York for Lyon, the centre of French gastronomy.  Buford finds himself working in a bakery and then a restaurant whilst studying at the grand ecole of cookery and pursuing a hypothesis that the classic French style of cooking originated in Italy and transplanted to Lyon during the renaissance (I didn’t know that Leonardo da Vinci spent his final years in France). If you like cooking, food, history and France then this is a great read.  On Wednesday last week, the British Library hosted a web chat with Tracey Macleod, Buford and Jonathan Meades which was ace.

remus

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#1636 Re: Books...
April 26, 2021, 08:44:26 am
Those sound right up my street jwi, can't wait to get stuck in!

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#1637 Re: Books...
April 26, 2021, 12:00:15 pm
A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine, Tor Books)

Thanks for this review jwi, I read A Memory Called Empire recently and found it well-written and an interesting concept but I was essentially nonplussed. More of a set up without any payoff. And a little bit improbable in terms of including extraneous love stories between ambassadors etc. Will look at the second one though based on your review.
 
At the moment I'm reading the Three Body Problem Trilogy by Cixin Liu which in my opinion is absolutely top notch sci fi. Summary is an installation in Mao-era China accidentally makes contact with an alien race. The outcome transforms world history.

Loads of influences detectable from the Foundation series, Neal Stephenson, and other sci fi classics, but with a unique lens from someone who has grown up in modern China and from a layman's perspectives some mind-expanding hard science extrapolated into a fascinating exploration of possible futures for mankind. I can't put the series down, am on the third book a week after picking up the first one.

Have been really lax on here and on my own reviews website www.bookslike.co.uk, but have quite a good backlog of books to write up.

Highlights that are all worth a look if you haven't read them:
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis - modern classic, not as funny as I thought it was going to be but worthwhile
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke - weird clever fantasy novella
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry - an absolute must read if you like gritty Westerns
The Railway Navvies, Terry Coleman - fascinating non-fiction insight into the lives and immense achievements of the workers who gave birth to the railway age
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell - modern classic, scathing insight into lives of workers in early C20th, reminded me of USA trilogy
Beneath a Scarlet Sky, Mark Sullivan - not well written but an incredible true story of a young man coming of age in WW2 Italy
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller - very interesting, beautifully written view of the Trojan War from Patroclus' perspective



andy popp

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#1638 Re: Books...
May 03, 2021, 02:04:34 pm
Just this morning, at the very moment I dipped the homemade Greek cookie into my first coffee of the day, the instant relese of its sweet, gentle aromas caused a series of deep memories to flow across my mind. I fell into a reverie. Ah! Marcel, how I do love you. How "A le Recherche" is the greatest novel of all time. Have I mentioned that before? Perhaps, but no reason not to repeat it. I've been thinking about rereading it. It's a big commitment ... but, then again, I've got plenty of time now I'm no longer climbing (though, of course, I have thought about starting again). We'll see. It would give me lots to post about.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2021, 02:23:03 pm by andy popp »

Will Hunt

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#1639 Re: Books...
May 03, 2021, 02:07:26 pm
I'll have what he's having.

Duma

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#1640 Re: Books...
May 03, 2021, 02:20:43 pm
Hahahahahahaha!

Nicely done.

Yossarian

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#1641 Re: Books...
May 17, 2021, 01:26:28 pm
I hadn't heard of AJ Finn's A Woman in the Window nor viewed the recent movie and am not particularly bothered about becoming more closely acquainted with either. But this New Yorker article about the author's alter ego Dan Mallory is without doubt one of the greatest* pieces of journalism I have ever digested:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/a-suspense-novelists-trail-of-deceptions


(*The ultimate example remains this from the Guardian in 2002 - https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2002/mar/09/restandrelaxation.shopping)

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#1642 Re: Books...
May 18, 2021, 08:50:58 am
I read and enjoyed both of those links.

I wonder if the Dan Mallory piece is an industry hatchet job, wearing the clothes of investigative journalism, or if the intent is really to unpick the lies of a sociopath in the way the author lays out. I half expected the byline to be an obvious Dan Mallory pseudonym but this appears not to be the case!

cheque

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#1643 Re: Books...
May 18, 2021, 10:44:10 am
(*The ultimate example remains this from the Guardian in 2002 - https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2002/mar/09/restandrelaxation.shopping)

Jeffrey Euginedes’ Air Mail is a good companion to this.

Yossarian

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#1644 Re: Books...
May 19, 2021, 01:55:11 pm
I read and enjoyed both of those links.

I wonder if the Dan Mallory piece is an industry hatchet job, wearing the clothes of investigative journalism, or if the intent is really to unpick the lies of a sociopath in the way the author lays out. I half expected the byline to be an obvious Dan Mallory pseudonym but this appears not to be the case!

I hope it's the latter. There seem to be too many independent voices for it to be the former. It's just so strange and multifaceted and compelling a story. I LOVE the fact that Sophie Hannah dropped him straight into a new Agatha Christie. I love the fact that he was really into Patricia Highsmith / Tom Ripley. I love the fact that he bullshitted that he had a PhD studying Munchausen syndrome. And the little details like not coming into work for a meeting, blaming it on an ill dog, and then having a conference call punctuated with the mystery canine, to which the other two people on the call afterwards agreed that, "There's no dog, right?"

I think the high-functioning bullshit artist makes such a good subject for this kind of essay, primarily because their actions and MO are superficially so straightforward and potentially easy to accomplish, but the deeper you delve into it you realise that most people are entirely incapable of this sort of behaviour. I have a couple of acquaintances who are fairly low level full-of-shit, but they're really just like fibbing toddlers in comparison.

Anna Sorokin / Delvey is another great example, though her story is more fashion, expensive restaurants and Moroccan hotels than publishing and Oxford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Sorokin
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50662268

moose

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#1645 Re: Books...
May 19, 2021, 02:24:42 pm
A bit like the fashion designer, art curator, film director and probable serial fraudster CS Leigh / Christian Leigh / Kristian Leigh.  My brother was possibly the last person to meet him (he'd become obsessed with finding one of his "lost" films) and write quite a nice feature about it:

https://neilthomasward.medium.com/in-search-of-a-lost-film-8e187f3c253

After he wrote the piece, he was accused by various people of being CS Leigh himself - trying to cover his tracks, in readiness for a comeback in yet another field of fraudulent endeavour!

Rocksteady

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#1646 Re: Books...
May 24, 2021, 12:27:09 pm
Just this morning, at the very moment I dipped the homemade Greek cookie into my first coffee of the day, the instant relese of its sweet, gentle aromas caused a series of deep memories to flow across my mind. I fell into a reverie. Ah! Marcel, how I do love you. How "A le Recherche" is the greatest novel of all time. Have I mentioned that before? Perhaps, but no reason not to repeat it. I've been thinking about rereading it. It's a big commitment ... but, then again, I've got plenty of time now I'm no longer climbing (though, of course, I have thought about starting again). We'll see. It would give me lots to post about.

Just loved "A le Recherche" which I think I alluded to somewhere a long way up thread. Big commitment to re-read though. I'd be tempted to just re-read my favourite bits. I really enjoyed in particular the second part, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.

Proust appears in cameo in the non-fiction book The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. I thought it was an absolutely exceptional book, a family memoir that encompasses fin-de-siecle Paris, Vienna up to WWII and post-war Japan. Traces the history of ownership of a collection of netsuke. I would say the influence of Proust is heavy on this book and in a really good way. Worth a read by anyway who wants to understand modern European history really.

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#1647 Re: Books...
May 24, 2021, 12:32:02 pm
Also for any fantasy fans looking for their next read, the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off could be a good way of finding quality new authors. 10 blogs each take 30 books and review them, choosing their favourite to go forward to a final round where the 10 finalists are reviewed by each of the 10 blogs.

Full list with links here: https://www.zackargyle.com/spfbo-7?fbclid=IwAR3V1-aTbiWrIsa1Jd0EEKH0-ANn86_Vt7x-xAaujk6j784PBCBAC46J1Hg

Full disclosure my novel is in the running but as a fantasy fan I'll definitely be using it to add to my reading list too.

andy popp

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#1648 Re: Books...
May 25, 2021, 08:41:48 am
Just this morning, at the very moment I dipped the homemade Greek cookie into my first coffee of the day, the instant relese of its sweet, gentle aromas caused a series of deep memories to flow across my mind. I fell into a reverie. Ah! Marcel, how I do love you. How "A le Recherche" is the greatest novel of all time. Have I mentioned that before? Perhaps, but no reason not to repeat it. I've been thinking about rereading it. It's a big commitment ... but, then again, I've got plenty of time now I'm no longer climbing (though, of course, I have thought about starting again). We'll see. It would give me lots to post about.

Just loved "A le Recherche" which I think I alluded to somewhere a long way up thread. Big commitment to re-read though. I'd be tempted to just re-read my favourite bits. I really enjoyed in particular the second part, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.

That post was a jokey riposte to another poster on a different thread. But I have always wanted to reread it. I started once and I got the middle of book three before being derailed by something. I am sure that one day the reread will happen, perhaps in retirement?

I know others who have loved the de Waal book and I see he has another just out that also been getting good reviews.

I'm not sure why, but I kind of bracket de Waal with Philip Sands, who I haven't read, but really want to. Has anyone read either East West Street or The Ratline?

Will Hunt

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#1649 Re: Books...
June 14, 2021, 12:13:03 pm
I really enjoyed the 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy adaptation that was mentioned on the other thread (still about 2 weeks left before it's taken down from iPlayer). The film is great too. I've never read any John le Carre - where does one begin?

 

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