|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: Mordor: twinned with Slough
|
|
|
Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
|
Posted
I'm cranking up the reading these days, having recently completed Vasily Grossmann's monumental Life and Fate, Simmons' I'm Your Man (biography of Leonard Cohen) and now reading inter alia Paul Ham's Hiroshima Nagasaki , Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four (A-List) and Cecilia Hewlett's Rural Communities in Renaissance Tuscany, and Edmond Jabès' Book of Questions (B-List). I may never finish the B-listers though!
--------------------
shameless self promotion - because I think it's worth it
and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
Posts: 18917 | From: "Central" is all they call it | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
|
Posted
If you are a science fiction or fantasy reader, and if you are in London this coming week, the World Science Fiction Convention is in town down at the Docklands. I will be on the program -- catch me and say hi!
--------------------
Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
|
Posted
I'll look out for you, Brenda! I'm very excited - I've been meeting people all week who have been to Hay-on-Wye to shop for books as part of a tour round the UK before they get to WorldCon, and they've all been lovely to chat to.
--------------------
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
ArachnidinElmet
Shipmate
# 17346
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eigon:
I'll look out for you, Brenda! I'm very excited - ...
![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif) me too. I've been doing some military-style organisation with printouts and diagrams to try and get to see as many writers speak as possible.
--------------------
'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka
Posts: 1887 | From: the rhubarb triangle | Registered: Sep 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
I've started re-reading Screwtape Letters! ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
We remember them fondly, the novels of one Clive Staples Lewis. I am sitting here in front of a fan in our study with the inadequate ductwork.
--------------------
If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gill H
Shipmate
# 68
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
I've started re-reading Screwtape Letters!
Ever heard the John Cleese audiobook? Perfect casting. He reads it superbly.
--------------------
*sigh* We can’t all be Alan Cresswell.
- Lyda Rose
Posts: 9313 | From: London | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
|
Posted
Am currently going through a bit of a glut. Having recently finished Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and Stem Cells: A Very Short Introduction have picked up Rowan Williams' Being Christian which is as good as it is short (a bit like the inverse of Tom Wright, the longer the better!) and am enjoying The Night Circus.
Am still ploughing my way slowly through Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations which is interesting, but such hard work.
Meanwhile the coffee table book for dipping into is now Plato and a Platypus, having finished Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities.
I need to catch up with writing my reviews.
--------------------
I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
|
Posted
I've just finished reading Antonia Fraser's Faith and Treason, the Story of the Gunpowder Plot. It is very well-written and interesting. I learned that Guy Fawkes role in the plot was not nearly as important as that of Robert Catesby.
The book raised a question in my mind. Why on earth did the conspirators assume that if they managed to kill the King and other prominent men, the automatic result would be religious freedom for Catholics? There were many devout Catholics in England, but there were also many devout Protestants, and an even larger number of people who were outraged at the idea of political assassination. If the plot had been successful, there might have been a civil war in which Catholics would have suffered disproportionately.
Moo
--------------------
Kerygmania host
---------------------
See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
Just a guess, but there'd been such recent, multiple, radical shifts from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again and back AGAIN that perhaps they thought it would simply swing back once more, without major bloodshed.
I would be interested to know who they might have expected to take the throne after the disaster. A Catholic?
Not that any ruler would be in favor of regicide.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
|
Posted
I am now reading Budapeste, by Brazilian writer Chico Buarque (better known as a singer / composer). About a ghost writer who's at a dead end but who finds solace in the Hungarian language. So far it's very good.
--------------------
I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
i now hav The Compleet Nigel Molesworth hurrah.
This is all four books in one volume with the original illustrations. I read them as a child, and thought I'd try re-reading them, years later.
After I'd clicked the Submit button to place the online order, I wondered if I'd made a mistake and would find them childish chiz chiz but when the nice new Penguin edition arrived, it was a pleasure to read. The Molesworth stories work surprisingly well from an adult's perspective and as a grown-up you get all the little asides, between-the-line-isms and so on that you didn't pick up as a child. In fact although I was reading them on the train and feeling a bit depressed, they actually made me laugh, and I can't say that of many books.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
|
Posted
The 100 year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared (Jonas Jonasson) had me laughing out loud almost to the end - at the main character and also the cheek of the author to write him in as almost the sole rearranger of world history over the last century! I did get a little bored towards the end, though, as the joke did begin to wear a little thin by then.
--------------------
Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
Somebody put a boxed set of four volumes of "Game of Thrones" on a book exchange table and they were gone within minutes. I managed to snaffle Vol 1, not having read this before or seen the TV series, and am now halfway through and hooked. It's convincingly written - the author's put a lot of work into the details - and so far not as violent as I'd been led to expect. You can see some of the plot twists coming, though.
I'm quite intrigued by the idea of a godswood. Don't know why anyone hasn't thought of that before. Also I like the idea of seasons that last for years. Brian Aldiss did that in his "Helliconia" books, to good effect.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
|
Posted
I'm reading a collection of short stories by Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others. The title story is the best so far. There's themes to do with religion and science and science as religion and religion as science. I reckon Shippies would find "Hell is the Absence of God" and "Tower of Babylon" very interesting for example.
Anyone else read them?
Posts: 3690 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
|
Posted
I've read some Ted Chiang stories a year ago. He's a local author, but I missed a reading he gave this summer. They're interesting in how they literalize some religious landscape and cosmology.
I do have the new Eileen Gunn novel on the stack
I've also been reading some Iain Banks novels.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Cara
Shipmate
# 16966
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
i now hav The Compleet Nigel Molesworth hurrah.
This is all four books in one volume with the original illustrations. I read them as a child, and thought I'd try re-reading them, years later.
After I'd clicked the Submit button to place the online order, I wondered if I'd made a mistake and would find them childish chiz chiz but when the nice new Penguin edition arrived, it was a pleasure to read. The Molesworth stories work surprisingly well from an adult's perspective and as a grown-up you get all the little asides, between-the-line-isms and so on that you didn't pick up as a child. In fact although I was reading them on the train and feeling a bit depressed, they actually made me laugh, and I can't say that of many books.
Any fule kno that the Molesworth stories are one of the great pleasures of life and will provide endless delite.
--------------------
Pondering.
Posts: 898 | Registered: Feb 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
This is TRUE.
New rule: anyone posting on this thread hav to do so in the style of nigel molesworth.
(Thinks: that should ensure nobody post, har har.)
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
|
Posted
quote:
Crap spouted by Stejjie:
Could do with something very light and funny and inconsequential to read afterwards. Any recommendations?
if you want classic frippery you could do wurse than the Compleet Molesworth
Mapp and Lucia series
as for historical mysteries, you might want to look at A conspiracy of paper which has an 18th century Jew*** detective in London. of corse he is never gong to be half as good as anything my grate frend peason gets up to, chiz.
* 've always had a fondness for "Fire Burn" by John Dickson Carr. It involves a modern police detective (well 20th century) who is transported to Regency London and a locked room mystery.
so long as it's not doctor who coz you can have too much of a good thing.
[ 19. September 2014, 06:58: Message edited by: Ariel ]
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
QLib
Bad Example
# 43
|
Posted
* raed a book called "he Athenian Murders' by a bloke with three Spain***-sounding names. It was quite good at first with but the end was a bit of a chizz if you aks me and not a bit like "The Name of the Rose" witch the blurb sed it was. But it was'nt.
And * finely got round to redding "Wild Swans' which is not boreing stuff about burds but dont red it if you don't like histry as their was lots of that.
--------------------
Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
quote:
and not a bit like "The Name of the Rose" witch the blurb sed it was. But it was'nt.
they all hav to sa that. the other thing they all hav to sa in the blurb on the cover if it is a fantasy book is that it is just like LORD OF THE RINGS. Usually it never bear even a passing resemblance to it, not so much as a hobbit to be seen even from a distance with a super telescope (thank god).
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
QLib
Bad Example
# 43
|
Posted
Ffotherington-Thomas likes fantasy but he is utterly weedy and wet. He talkt me into going to a fancy dress party with him as Leggolass and me as Gimli. * only went because he sed his pater would give us a ride in the Roller. But his pater had to go to Skotland for the reffyredun so his mater took us instead in pink Honda. Iw ill never live it down. Chizz, chizz, chizz.
The films are good tho, with all the batles.
--------------------
Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
I've been reading Kate Mosse's "Sepulchre" and then re-reading "Labyrinth", the first book in her Languedoc Trilogy. It's been interesting to see how the two stories connect. "Labyrinth" switches between the Cathars in the medieval period and a female character in the present day who is drawn into re-enacting and completing some unfinished business from centuries ago.
"Sepulchre" is set partly in Victorian-era France and modern day, and revolves around a pack of Tarot cards and some more unfinished business which the modern-day heroine gets to sort out.
There is a third, "Citadel", which is set during the Nazi occupation and slips back to the time of a 4th century monk. I haven't read this yet and am debating getting hold of a copy. The storylines of the first two books in the trilogy are interesting, but somehow these just seem to fall short of being the kind of classic, gripping stories that you want to enthusiastically recommend and re-read over the months. I can't quite put my finger on why.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
|
Posted
I tried reading one of hers and couldn't get into it, which is odd because it's the type of thing that I would normally like. I think the problem was... detachment (the author's, or mine, or a bit of both). The characters seemed slightly lifeless and I found myself completely uninterested in what happened to them.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
...
I would be interested to know who [the Gunpowder Plotters] might have expected to take the throne after the disaster. A Catholic?
...
According to Wikipedia, James's young daughter Elizabeth would be installed as a puppet Queen, and brought up as a Catholic & married to one. This is slightly ironic, given that in fact in later life, as the 'Winter Queen' of Bohemia, she became bit of a Protestant pin-up girl.
[ 24. September 2014, 10:53: Message edited by: Albertus ]
--------------------
My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
georgiaboy
Shipmate
# 11294
|
Posted
I've only recently discovered Sarah Caudwell's work. Here in the US, I've found 'Thus Was Adonis Murdered' (1981), 'The Shortest Way to Hades' (1984) and 'The Sirens Sang of Murder' (1989).
Lots of fun detail about the legal profession in London, incidentals of life of an Oxford prof, and excellently crafted plot and dialogue.
Don't know if there are later entries to her list, but I highly recommend these.
--------------------
You can't retire from a calling.
Posts: 1675 | From: saint meinrad, IN | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
I tried reading one of hers and couldn't get into it, which is odd because it's the type of thing that I would normally like. I think the problem was... detachment (the author's, or mine, or a bit of both). The characters seemed slightly lifeless and I found myself completely uninterested in what happened to them.
Yes, it was the sort of thing I'd normally enjoy as well. I think "slightly lifeless" and "detached" are about right. With some novels you can get absorbed in them as the story plays out in front of you; with these I tended to be conscious that I was reading a work of fiction.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
|
Posted
Could have been worse. Could have been 'The Affinity Engine' by George Mann. Reading THAT was like listening to Les Dawson playing the piano...
...with the caveat that Les Dawson was obviously a brilliant pianist deliberately playing badly, whereas George Mann's writing style is presumably like that *all the time*.
(For non-UK readers: Les Dawson playing the piano )
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Melangell
Shipmate
# 4023
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by georgiaboy:
I've only recently discovered Sarah Caudwell's work. Here in the US, I've found 'Thus Was Adonis Murdered' (1981), 'The Shortest Way to Hades' (1984) and 'The Sirens Sang of Murder' (1989).
Lots of fun detail about the legal profession in London, incidentals of life of an Oxford prof, and excellently crafted plot and dialogue.
Don't know if there are later entries to her list, but I highly recommend these.
I believe the fourth and final title is The sibyl in her grave (2000). The author died in February of that year. The crime writer Martin Edwards has an article about her here . I agree that it's a very enjoyable series…
--------------------
Gwnewch y pethau bychein (Dewi Sant)
Do the little things (Saint David)
Posts: 367 | From: A bit of Wales in Surrey | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
|
Posted
[tangent] Hi Melangell! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) [/tangent]
Recently the Book Group read one of Laurie R. King's books from her Mary Russell series. Recently I found one of her Kate Martinelli mysteries in a used book store. How could I lose?
This book, "with child" totally sucked me in. King writes intelligently (IMHO) and descriptively. "with child" is the third in the series, so now it's time to hunt the first two and any others King may have written since! Very different from the Mary Russell stories, but just as hard to put down. The library is across the street from my work, which is a Very Good Thing!
--------------------
Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Melangell
Shipmate
# 4023
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by jedijudy:
[tangent] Hi Melangell! [/tangent]
Recently the Book Group read one of Laurie R. King's books from her Mary Russell series. Recently I found one of her Kate Martinelli mysteries in a used book store. How could I lose?
[tangent] Hello jedijudy! [/tangent]
I enjoy both the Mary Russell and the Kate Martinelli series - there are currently five of the latter. No. 5, The Art of Detection, appears to bridge both series…(!)
A good source for finding out what my favourite authors have written is Fantastic Fiction which is where I've just checked out the KM series. Lots to enjoy!
--------------------
Gwnewch y pethau bychein (Dewi Sant)
Do the little things (Saint David)
Posts: 367 | From: A bit of Wales in Surrey | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I'm reading Frankenstein right now, and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by it. ... It seems that there different kinds of ethics at play here.
The point being is that the real monster is not the creature but the doctor who created it.
--------------------
Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jack the Lass
Ship's airhead
# 3415
|
Posted
My most recent 3 books have all been by journalists (this was by accident not design), which meant that they have all been well-written, easy reads with a good eye/ear for a pithy phrase.
First up was "Eat, Pray, Eat" by Michael Booth - he's a food writer who goes with his family for an extended trip round India, ostensibly to research for a book on Indian food, but the subtext is to salvage his marriage and family life which have been suffering primarily from his drinking, lack of attention and general mid-life crisis. Midway through the trip his wife announces that she has enrolled him in a 5 week yoga bootcamp in Mysore, and that if he doesn't sort himself out she is leaving. It took me a while to get into, I think that the way he set it up was to make it really clear that he was a bit of a selfish prick who needed to sort himself out, so although it was self-deprecating (and often quite funny, usually at his expense), I found it quite hard to get beyond thinking "you're a bit of a selfish prick". I found I had a ton more sympathy for him once he started the yoga bootcamp, both in terms of his own insights about himself but also because of his descriptions of the realities of an overweight, middle-aged, unfit, cynical person trying to do this pretty hardcore yoga (he talked for example about feeling humiliated lying on the floor to recover while all around the other participants were contorting themselves into all sorts of unlikely positions; I could *so* relate to that from my one (and probably only) humiliating foray into yoga a few years ago. I enjoyed this, eventually, and will keep an eye out for more of his books in the library.
Second up, last week I finished Ron McMillan's "Between Weathers: Travels Round 21st Century Shetland". This was a wonderful book. I had been to Shetland for a couple of days a few years ago and always wanted to go back, and this just fed into that, it was a brilliant evocation of a wonderful place. He is just one of those wonderful travellers who travels without (much of) an itinerary, preferring to just see where the fancy takes him and who he meets, and he was very generous in his writing without romanticising the place. Thoroughly recommended.
And now I'm reading "The Potting-Shed Papers: On Gardening, Gardeners and Garden History" by Charles Elliott, which is a series of essays originally appearing as his column in the American magazine Horticulture. Although American he lives in London and has a garden in south Wales, so writes as both an insider and outsider on the peculiarities of gardening in Britain. None of the essays are longer than 5 or 6 pages, so it's a great book for dipping into, but I am really enjoying it.
--------------------
"My body is a temple - it's big and doesn't move." (Jo Brand)
wiblog blipfoto blog
Posts: 5767 | From: the land of the deep-fried Mars Bar | Registered: Oct 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
QLib
Bad Example
# 43
|
Posted
I think someone on board recommended A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss, but I can't find the post in question ... well, if it wasn't a shipmate, I don't know who it was, but I'm very grateful. It's a substantial treat - I'm halfway through at the moment and dragging it out a bit because I don't want it to end.
--------------------
Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
|
Posted
I just finished reading a fascinating poetry collection called Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong, set in a near-future fake American city-cum museum. Funny and sad, and very, very odd.
--------------------
Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
deano
princess
# 12063
|
Posted
I've just read The Lord of the Rings. I thought this thread was about that. Sorry.
Well I say read, I've read the first third of the book a few times and just got bored with it. I've been trying to get through the damned thing since I was 16. I made it this time at the age of 47!
Was it worth it? On balance yes. I think the pacing is off and had to persevere a few times when the same characters were walking across the same country for days on end, and I did skip over almost all the poetry and songs. But it was enjoyable at the end.
Anyway, sorry for the diversion.
--------------------
"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
The point being is that the real monster is not the creature but the doctor who created it.
Oh yes, very much so! The monster becomes monstrous because of what happens to it, but as balaam says...
AG
--------------------
"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
Posts: 3574 | From: The wardrobe of my soul | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged
|
|
Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
|
Posted
I am currently reading what if?; serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions*. It's by Randall Munroe, the creator of xkcd.
Here is one of the questions and an excerpt from the answer** quote:
What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty?
.......
But what if the empty half of the glass were actually empty--a vacuum? The vacuum would definitely not last long But exactly what happens depends on a key question that nobody usually bothers to ask: Which half is empty?
Moo
*Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Boston 2014
**p.119-120
--------------------
Kerygmania host
---------------------
See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
|
Posted
I'm reading "Impressions of Theophrastus Such" by George Eliot.
A confession, I'd never heard of this book, her last, until I came across a mention in an essay by Geoffrey Hill.
--------------------
Refraction Villanelles
Posts: 464 | From: Southern England | Registered: Jul 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
The Weeder
Shipmate
# 11321
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gill H:
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
I've started re-reading Screwtape Letters!
Ever heard the John Cleese audiobook? Perfect casting. He reads it superbly.
I pulled my Screwtape off the shelves this morning, to re-read. I read it every couple of years or so- it never fails to amuse me.
I am also re-reading the Father Brown stories. GK Chestertons stories about this little Catholic priest never fail to hit the spot.
--------------------
Still missing the gator
Posts: 2542 | From: LaLa Land | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
TurquoiseTastic
Fish of a different color
# 8978
|
Posted
I am currently attacking "North and South" for the first time. My goodness. I had completely the wrong idea of Mrs. Gaskell previously - I thought she was a sort of sub-Austen-type writer. More like Eliot with a touch of "Dickens on an aggressive day"!
Posts: 1092 | From: Hants., UK | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
|
Posted
I am eternally grateful to the person who passed along Louis de Bernières’s Notwithstanding. It’s a collection of interconnected short stories describing life in an English village. It’s filled with fabulous characters and surprisingly unsentimental. I loved it and am very bummed that's it's finished already.
--------------------
Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
Just finished reading "Citadel" by Kate Mosse, the third book in her "Labyrinth" trilogy. This one is set in the same part of southern France as the others, but during the Second World War.
It's an odd book. There's less of the timeslip element than in her previous two, so when she does plunge back into the fourth century, it comes almost as an irrelevance and an anomaly. The story of the Resistance fighters is much more interesting and the conclusion not what I had expected.
I was interested to see the author had written this book three times; perhaps that's the secret because it came across as more polished than the preceding two. I'm half minded to get a copy of this as I think this is one that I'll want to read again.
(I wonder if she will write more? When you have a 700-year-old hero like Audric Baillard, there's plenty of scope for him to be involved in adventures in other centuries...)
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Tree Bee
Ship's tiller girl
# 4033
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I have just finished 'Fabulous Riches' by former pop star, now priest, Richard Coles. It's like a long personal testimony but has been vilified by conservative evangelicals who know next to nothing about the spiritual classics.
This has my detailed thoughts on it.
Looks good Leo. One for our book group?
I must be middle class as I wear Boden, have eaten Mivvis and am aware of Jennings and Buckeridge!
--------------------
"Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple."
— Woody Guthrie
http://saysaysay54.wordpress.com
Posts: 5257 | From: me to you. | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
JoannaP
Shipmate
# 4493
|
Posted
I have recently discovered Simon Parke's thrillers. I thoroughly enjoyed A Vicar, Crucified, which was clearly written by somebody who knows how the CofE works (or doesn't!). My only quibble concerns Abbot Peter; I don't understand why he left his monastery when he retired as abbot. Finding one of the most accurate descriptions of myself I have seen for a while in the Enneagram types in the Appendix was weird. The second one is already downloaded...
--------------------
"Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow." R. H. Tawney (quoted by Isaiah Berlin)
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin
Posts: 1877 | From: England | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Thread closed
Printer-friendly view
