Member: nwhyte

I like your recent string of Shakespeare reviews. Very nice to read something that isn't rehashed and the standard "what can I say about ____ that hasn't been said before?"

posted by bardsfingertips at 3:01 pm (EST) on Apr 1, 2009

Thanks for your comment about my interzone review. You are right, I was reading the 4th anthology - which is what the copy in my library says it is. But somehow or other librarything's database had combined this title (and one other version of the 4th anthology title) with the 5th anthology - hence my confusion. I've now separated and recombined these with the correct entries in the LT database, after which I'll amend my review.

Thanks again!

posted by kevinashley at 1:26 pm (EST) on Oct 8, 2008

I just read your review on "Black garden". It was a very good book and balanced. It still gave me feeling of displeasure of what people can do.
I read 4 years ago and 3 years ago I visited this Nagorno Karabagh. It is very beautifule there. I recomend a book by V.A. Shnirelman. I have not looked through your library. But you can contact me if you are interested.

I think I will have a further look into your library

Sincerely
Rune Norheim

posted by Girkner at 7:58 am (EST) on Oct 12, 2007

Hiya!

Just read your review of "The Dispossessed" which I just finished myself. Was intrigued by your view on the Le Guin's treatment of Thu as the most stereotyped and least explored of the forces in the book. My personal take on this, as someone who comes from the other side of the Iron Curtain, is that she chose well not to give us any "direct" experience of Thu. I can cope with characters' prejudice against something they've never experienced. I don't think I could have coped with Le Guin trying to describe something she had never had any direct experience of, and I did. Not sure if that makes any sense...

Mili

posted by elmyra at 12:58 pm (EST) on Aug 13, 2007

Hello, I read your review of A.Merritt's "The Moon Pool". I thought your comment about O'Keefe was interesting. Particularly concerning "the O'Keefe of Coleraine...The old gaelic aristocracy". Do you know where I could read up on this?

posted by NoirSeanF at 11:57 pm (EST) on Aug 10, 2007

Nicholas Whyte

thanks for joining the proust group

David Perrings

posted by dperrings at 4:33 pm (EST) on Jul 15, 2007

Quoth Nicholas (16th June)
>>I'm a bit shocked by your comment that the Mabinogion is "full of people with silly Welsh names". Some might say that "Tseng" is a silly name!

Hullo Nicholas.

Now in general there are two categories of "silly" names (note the use of quotation marks. Ones which have a alternative meaning (either inadvertant or advertant) and ones which sound unusual or just plain weird.

In the first category you have names which are descripive of something (often the subject) e.g. "Colonel Blimp" "The Knights Who Say Ni". This can also include good old fashioned puns (often sexual) e.g. "Damien Thong". You also can get combinations of the two e.g. "Dick Manual" (often these could be crudely called "porn-star names" - both descriptive of the subject AND incorporating punning/sexual innuendo).

In the second category you have names which are grammatically convoluted or just extremely lengthy such that they sound both discordant and amusing to the ear. "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll... (coincidentally also Welsh) is an example. A slightly less politically correct example is the batting line-up of the Sri-Lankan cricket team, where names are generally extremely long, convoluted and sound "silly" (note the use of quotation marks) to the untrained ear.

Welsh names in the Mabinogion fall into the second category. The issue of whether names sound "silly" in this case is largely a vowel/consonant thing. In Welsh a number of letters which are consonents in English are vowels in Welsh. Therefore to the untrained (English) ear many of the names employed in the work sound grammatically convoluted and slightly wacky (in a word: silly). QED.

You will note two adjuncts to this:
a) One's categorisation of a name as "silly" is highly culturally conditioned. A Welsh or Irish person would obviously not find names in the Mabinogion remotely silly. A llama-seller from slightly south of Cuzco would probably struggled to see why Anglo-Saxons find "The Knights Who Say Ni" (or even "The Knights Who Say Ecky-ecky-ecky-ecky-P'tang, Zzoo-Boing, gdgdbaaoizen") remotely amusing.
b) The name "Tseng" does not qualify as "silly" under either category 1) or 2).

Regards

J

PS Good to see someone reads my reviews!

posted by jontseng at 2:40 am (EST) on Jun 29, 2007

See that you have 'Field of Bones' by Philip Orr, I just read a review in 'History Ireland'. Anything to add to your review? Worth buying? I added it to my library, however it is not yet available in the US.

posted by liamfoley at 8:25 pm (EST) on Jun 1, 2007

Ah: I see from yur blog that you've found it!

posted by MyopicBookworm at 7:46 am (EST) on Apr 27, 2007

Re your review; I think there's a fold-out map of Beleriand in the back of my copy of The Children of Hurin (left it at home, can't check right now)...

posted by MyopicBookworm at 7:45 am (EST) on Apr 27, 2007

The idea probably hasn't entered his mind yet.

posted by paperpusher at 10:01 am (EST) on Apr 16, 2007

What? George W. Bush hemmed in by legal and political restrictions??

posted by paperpusher at 7:15 am (EST) on Apr 15, 2007

Wow! We share so many interests, and 84 books! You seem to be a Paddington fan too? And GTD? And Cold Comfort Farm!

posted by dryad_wombat at 4:21 pm (EST) on Feb 25, 2007

I'm commenting because we posted Catcher in the Rye at the same time. I'm not sure why its such a cult hit, Salinger's other works are definately more engaging and better written, but having read Catcher when I was 16, I have to say I felt like that was me - not the external moneyed elite stuff, but the internal confusion. Just my two cents -
Have a great day.

posted by gazzy at 2:22 pm (EST) on Feb 2, 2007

Thanks for joining Reading Resolutions!

posted by parelle at 3:21 am (EST) on Dec 16, 2006

Evening. I finally succumbed to the lure. I've nearly used my free slot already. Scary...

posted by MatGB at 7:18 pm (EST) on Nov 26, 2006

Hey! Are you on Politics.ie? If so, who? If not, ignore all this.

posted by Pidge at 3:22 pm (EST) on Oct 22, 2006

Has your copy of Star-land weathered the years well? I'm planning on restoring mine sometime in the next couple of years, as the binding glue has completely failed.

posted by Packrat at 7:10 pm (EST) on Oct 2, 2006

I looked at rachelrichardson's collection because she happens to be the only person except myself who has catalogued a copy of "Salonica and after" and I noticed your enquiry. I thought I might tell you that Rosalind Heywood in her book "The Infinite Hive", about unacknowledged human capacities like telepathy and ESP has an anecdote from her experience as a very young nurse in Macedonia during WW I on pages 85-89 of the Chatto hardback edition of 1964.
With best wishes, gibbon

posted by gibbon at 10:22 am (EST) on Sep 1, 2006

Hey-ya. We do have a lot of overlap. It seems like we both have an affinity for the classics.

I wish I had half of your sci-fi collection, though. Unfortunately, it seems like people don’t want to let their sci-fi go into the used-book circuit around here, so I’ve been semi out of luck. But I’m working on it.

posted by blueacademia at 5:23 pm (EST) on May 13, 2006

My wife found Silence and Honeycakes similar in style to his other more popular-market oriented books, ie he's drawing on his extensive knowledge of the Desert Fathers but much more focussed on making it relevant to now rather than as a history lesson. She found it a very refreshing approach.

(I should add that I haven't read most of our "religion"-tagged books, and have only tagged as "unread" those that I do intend to read someday!)

posted by nwhyte at 6:32 am (EST) on Oct 16, 2005

I see you have "Silence and Honeycakes" by Rowan Williams. How is it?

posted by a.vincent at 9:37 pm (EST) on Oct 10, 2005