Florence in 2015, part II - still reading but not that much

I haven't been reading much this year, and especially in the first quarter I finished very few books, which is frustrating. In this second half-year I will try to read less books at the same time, and finish them faster.

Currently reading:
Le père Goriot
Sodome et Gomorrhe

Short fiction:
The Floating Bridge
Europe n° 864 : littératures de l'Inde
Heroides

Non fiction:
La revanche des émotions : essai sur l'art contemporain

You've been focusing on quality over quantity.

Hope you'll be able to make your reading goals. Did you have some plans for what you'll be reading next?

Thank you both! At least I feel I'm making better progress now that I have reduced the number of books I was reading at the same time. I am enjoying both Le Père Goriot and Littératures de l'Inde, but I gave up on La revanche des émotions which was boring me. So I can start a new non fiction book! I think I will go with Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper.

I enjoyed Le Pere Goriot too (although of course I read it in English translation), but I don't think it's my favorite Balzac.

Aha, so what is your favorite Balzac?

I think Lost Illusions is my favorite so far . . . I have a long way to go in reading Balzac!

Well that's good to know, since from what I have read, Illusions perdues is next in the trilogy!

What is the first one in the trilogy? I know A Harlot High and Low follows it.

The first one in the trilogy is Le père Goriot, as I understand it.

I think Pere Goriot, Lost Illusions, and A Harlot High and Low are a "trilogy" insofar as they are the three novels in which Vautrin, aka Carlos Herrera, appears. But he is only one of dozens of characters who appear in more than one of Balzac's novels. Eugene de Rastignac appears in all three as well, but also in 25 others. (See http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17635 for a complete cast of La Comedie humaine.)

I would not have thought of Pere Goriot as part of a "trilogy" but I see Steven's point. I would consider A Harlot High and Low a sequel to Lost Illusions as it basically continues and extends the plot of the former.

I remember buying Splendeur et misère des courtisanes some years ago, because I liked the title. But then when I opened it the first sentence made it clear that it was the sequel to another book I hadn't read, so I gave up immediately.

I am being very reasonable and only reading 4 books now, mainly Le père Goriot and Conjectures and Refutations, and dipping into Proust and Indian literature once in a while.

I am enjoying Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper very much.

I have been interested in the development of scientific thought for about 10 years now. As far as I can remember, it stated with two novels, An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Island of the Day Before, which both tell something about the beginnings of modern science and the transition from pre-scientific thought.

At about this time (2007, according to LT), I started looking for books about the birth of science, and read Etudes d'histoire de la pensée scientifique by Alexandre Koyré. I didn't pursue this line of thought very assiduously but have been reading books on this subject once in a while, such as:
Nous n'avons jamais été modernes by Bruno Latour (catchy title and some interesting stuff but very disappointing overall)
Leviathan and the Air-Pump (referenced by the above and much more interesting)
Wonders and the Order of Nature (fascinating)
Objectivity (great subject but the treatment was a bit too dry for me and I'm ashamed to say I never finished it)

I also have two books that have been sitting in my TBR pile for much too long: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and The Social Construction of What?.

And lately, while reading about modern pseudo-science, I have been learning about the scientific method.

So it's not surprising that I have a feeling of recognition while reading Popper, since without knowing it I have been exposed to his ideas already. However, it's great reading about them firsthand, as his style is clear and agreeable to read, and I am discovering new things.

I have been writing too much already, and I haven't told you a thing about Popper! This will be for a later post though.

>13 FlorenceArt: The French title is so much better than the English one . . .

>14 FlorenceArt: It must have been your review that led me to buy An Instance of the Fingerpost; it's been languishing on my TBR because it is SO long. Maybe I can read it in August when I'll have more time at home . . .

I just watched a documentary on Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) by Marie-Hélène Rebois on Arte Replay. I'm not sure it really did justice to this great subject but it was well done. The documentary started and concluded with the last show given by the Merce Cunningham Company on 31st December 2011, before the company was dissolved. In the two years following his death, the company toured the U.S. and the world to show a selection of his choreographies. I saw all the shows that were given in Paris I think. Now his legacy has been taken over by the Merce Cunningham foundation. He planned all this after giving it a lot of thought.

The documentary showed excerpts of the recent shows, some with videos of the original ones, so that I saw Cunningham dancing for the first time. I enjoyed it but felt a bit frustrated that there wasn't more content. It felt a bit superficial. I guess 60 minutes is not enough to really do justice to such a great body of work.

I also noted that Arte replay is showing "La Clémence de Titus", an opera by Mozart I had never heard about. I think I will try to watch it this week.

>15 rebeccanyc: Yes it is, isn't it?

I hope you get to An Instance of the Fingerpost. I loved this novel.

>16 FlorenceArt:: Ah I knew there was a play by Corneille called La Clémence d'Auguste, but I had no idea there was an opera called La Clémence de Titus... My first name is being overly used. :p

>18 chlorine: Well, it could be worse. Imagine if you were called Vengeance!

I quite liked An Instance of the Fingerpost as well, although it was definitely a doorstopper.

Too bad about the Merce Cunningham documentary - sounds like it could have been interesting.

Were you planning to watch the Clemenza di Tito from the Champs Elysées or Aix-en-Provence? I heard good things about the Champs Elysées production, but need to check out the Aix version. It's not my favorite Mozart since it is definitely in the opera seria mold, so lots of da capo aria-ing, but I've found that I can really enjoy it with a good production and good singing. Vitellia especially has some great vocal fireworks.

14> In your scientific quest -- you might want to check out The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes -- I found it enlightening and highly satisfying.

>20 DieFledermaus: It's the Champs Élysées production and Télérama gives it three Ts, their highest rating. I often disagree with them on documentaries (they also gave three Ts to the Cunnigham one) but I almost never watch musical shows so I don't know how their taste matches mine. You know, I think you're having a bad influence on me ;-)

Vitellia is played by Karina Gauvin, who was Venus in Dardanus. Unfortunately I never quite figured out who Venus was, though I think she must be the fat one who only briefly appeared at the beginning and end. Which reminds me I never mentioned Dardanus on this thread. It's an opera by Rameau that DieFledermaus reviewed. It was very long and I viewed in in three or four sittings. The music was beautiful but sometimes a bit strange for me who knows very little opera, mostly Verdi and Mozart. I felt there was a lack of catchy melodies, and the solos were not very exciting, but some duos or chorus parts were really beautiful.

>21 janeajones: Thank you, this does sound interesting, I'll go look for it!

I am very happy because I just found an e-book edition of Plato's complete works that includes those codes (you know, like 260a for example) that everybody uses to refer to specific parts of the text. So now when Popper cites Plato, I can search for the text using this reference.

OK, I know I said I would stop buying new books for now, but this doesn't really count, as I don't intend to actually read it, but just to refer to it when needed. And it was only 1.79 euros anyway. But I had to fight hard with myself not to grab more from the same publisher. I have my eyes on Homer, Rabelais, Racine, Balzac, Zola, Maupassant, Pascal. Possibly also Rousseau, Bergson, Seneca, Spinoza, and why not some poetry too (Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Rimbaud). Arg!

>23 FlorenceArt: "OK, I know I said I would stop buying new books for now"

Now, we all know that's just crazy talk.....

>19 FlorenceArt:: Vengeance would definitely be a worse name! :D

Thanks to Reva I read Emmanuel Carrère's interview in the Paris Review. Very enjoyable and I liked him, but I don't feel much like reading his books because I don't like the idea of an author putting too much of himself in a book, plus his subjects seem rather difficult. Still, maybe I should give him a try.

By the way, I keep seeing references to Limonov. Carrère wrote his biography, and Clémence mentioned him in her thread, and I'm sure I read his name elsewhere on Club Read not so long ago. Him I don't like, and don't particularly feel like reading his books. But again I might give him a try.

Last night, looking for escape on a Friday night, I tried again to read In the Woods by Tana French, and I was again repelled by the pretentious prose. This time I did manage to read the prologue, but I think that's as far as I go with this book. Not for me.

I then tried to watch La Clemenza di Tito, then a documentary on wolves I found on Arte Replay, but nothing held my interest, so I ended up doodling on my Moleskine notebook. I have dozens of notebooks that I never use, and every time I see one in a shop I feel like buying it. So I have decided to fill at least one page every day, and maybe if I ever manage to fill one notebook I will reward myself by buying a new one. But not a Moleskine, they are just too intimidating. A cheap sketch pad small enough to fit in my handbag would probably be most useful, but on the other hand I like those beautiful notebooks like the Moleskine. But they are so beautiful I am scared to write or draw in them...

Qui contrôle la mer ?
You know, I keep railing against Télérama and their standards for rating documentaries, which are very different from mine. But then once in a while a movie like this one makes it all worthwhile. A fascinating and very informative view on shipping, its role in, and impact on, the global economy.

And this reminds me that I still have to finish L'homme qui a vu l'ours, a collection of essays by Jean Rolin, who besides being a wonderful writer clearly has a fascination for the sea and the lives of people who live on it.

Daily commutes have become something of an odyssey now. Due to improvement works, the train line that I normally take is stopped, so I have to take other lines that are of course crowded. As a result I spend a lot more time standing and reading on my iPhone than I usually do. I guess this will be an opportunity to make more progress into Proust, which progress is rather bumpy at the moment. I am not enjoying the narrator's adolescent love pains and the alternating of highly embarrassing moments with Albertine and lengthy considerations on how love is basically a succession of misunderstandings and lies.

This morning I tried listening to the first episode of Welcome to Night Vale, but I don't feel comfortable with this medium and I gave it up almost immediately. I can listen to podcasts of interviews (though I rarely do it), but I hate text being read to me. I'll have to find a podcast to replace the one I occasionally listened to which was cancelled because the host moved on to another job. Sigh.

Oh, and I recorded a three-part documentary that came highly recommended by Télérama (again!) on Jews and Muslims.

This morning I took "real" headphones on the train instead of the crummy ones that come with the iPhone. So I decided to give Welcome to Nightvale another chance, but it's definitely not for me.

So I will treat this month of commute hell as an opportunity to catch up on episodes of Répliques by Alain Finkielkraut, which should impact my wishlist heavily.

Another bad influence on my wishlist should be Alain Assouline's blog La République des livres which I just subscribed to (not sure why I haven't done it before).

>30 FlorenceArt: A few months ago I tried listening to Welcome to Nightvale too, on someone's recommendation. I thought it was just awful.

>31 ursula: Well, that's about how I feel too. It seemed terribly lacking in subtlety, and the narrator's voice annoyed me. Though to be fair I think the voice fitted the intended mood of the show perfectly, so I guess I should say that the show itself annoyed me. Paranormal paranoia and Area 51 type of stories annoy me. Actually they make me angry, because so many people take this kind of nonsense seriously. Did I tell you about that guy who visited the alien/illuminati bases on the Moon and Mars? Now that's scary. Not only that one single guy can be so out of touch with reality, but that there are actually people who believe him.

Tonight I watched the first part of Juifs et musulmans - Si loin, si proches. It turns out there are 4 parts but I only recorded 3, so I have to watch them while they are on replay. This first part was very interesting and covered a period I knew nothing about, the beginnings of Islam and its flash conquest of the Middle East and great chunks of the Mediterranean. The rich history of this century (610-721) was skimmed over really, but since as I said I knew nothing about it, it was good to get a bird's eye view. And this reminds me that I have a biography of the prophet in my TBR list...

I also have a love of a well-made notebook. I use them, but my problem is in sticking with one notebook until it's done before going on to the next one. Still, I use them for everything from sketches to grocery lists. I like having and using a beautiful notebook, even for banal things. But not buying another is not easy.

>32 FlorenceArt: I was willing to go along with the premise, but it just seemed so over-the-top, as if after every pronouncement there was supposed to be a laugh track. Definitely a mismatch for me as well.

I have a friend who is very into conspiracy theories. I find it a little alarming. I mean, if you're just entertained by the craziness out there, that's one thing, but if you're seriously thinking "wow, now that is strange, I wonder how that could be ..." it might be cause for a little investigation into your own thought processes. I have not heard of a guy visiting alien illuminati bases on Mars! And it seems like the kind of thing that no one could possibly believe ... but I know better.''

I love beautiful sketchbooks too, and have had a problem with collecting them and not wanting to use them, but I'm getting over it! I'm slowly retraining myself to realize that a sketchbook isn't supposed to be a collection of perfect work - it's for getting ideas out, trying new things, etc., and not all of that will be beautiful. But all of it will be useful.

Well, one problem I have with notebooks is that they conflict with my tendency to do everything on my iPad. I have several notebooks on the iPad, including one where I keep a diary (which I had never done before!), plus several great drawing and painting apps. So carrying a notebook around weighs down my handbag and feels redundant. But on the other hand I miss the notebook as an object, and the feel of writing or drawing on paper.

I finished (well, technically I didn't) Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart. The reason I didn't finish it is simply that I hate being scared, and right after the main mystery was cleared there was a last ditch suspenseful episode with one of the heroes in danger and a run against time to free him. I didn't see any reason to go through this so I just stopped a couple of chapters before the end.

As you can probably guess, I wasn't really gripped by the book. Suspense is not my choice (obviously) for recreational reading, and I bought this book under the misapprehension that there was a romance in there. There is, but it's rather subdued. Otherwise it was OK I guess, if you enjoy that sort of thing. The writing was rather pedestrian but didn't get in the way of the story.

The reason I am mentioning this book at all is that I was intrigued by the mix of modern writing and some rather outdated elements. The book was first published in 1965. I was expecting a very dated view of women's role and place in society, and in a way it is, but I got the impression that the author had a rather ironic and lucid view of this. Anyway her heroin, the narrator, is far from helpless. She was a practicing veterinarian surgeon, but of course she stopped practicing after she got married.

Here are a couple of quotes to illustrate, behind spoiler tags in case anyone is planning to read this book:

(After the spy husband has asked his wife whether she could manage climbing a steep hill in pursuit of the villain)
"The question, I gathered, had been no more than one of those charming concessions which make a woman’s life so much more interesting (I’ve always thought) than a man’s. In actual fact, Lewis invariably took it serenely for granted that I could and would do exactly what he expected of me, but it helps occasionally to be made to feel that it is little short of marvellous for anything so rare, so precious, and so fragile to compete with the tough world of men."

(After the teenage sidekick has conveyed some explanation originally given to him by the spy husband)
"Something about his voice as he spoke made me shoot a glance at him. Not quite authority, not quite patronage, certainly not self-importance; but just the unmistakable echo of that man-to-woman way that even the nicest men adopt when they are letting a woman catch a glimpse of the edges of the Man’s World. Timothy had joined the club."

And this one is just for fun:
"The lift arrived without a sound, and proved to be one of the most modern possible variety, the self-service kind of which I am always stupidly terrified, and which has a panel of controls and buttons and switches that look every bit as complicated as the business end of a computer."

The elevator quote is great! (didn't read the spoilery ones)

I have been continuing my reading on science and pseudo-science in general, and psychoanalysis in particular. I found (actually my mother pointed me to) a French language site called Science et pseudo-science that I find very useful if a bit too vehement and militant at times. I'm glad to have found it because my sources were mainly North American or English so far, so it's good to have found a French site that I can refer to my deluded friends if need be. (As if that could be of any use. Sigh.)

Anyway, I was reminded of the argument some of you presented, which is that "some areas do not lend themselves to scientific research, especially where the human mind is involved". I disagree with this argument, which is often used in defense of pseudo-science. There are, some proponents of psychoanalysis or energy healing or traditional Chinese medicine argue, some things that are unfathomable to science. Which Popper agrees with in a way when he says that psychoanalysis is not a science, because it does not present its theories in a way that can be refuted. They are too vague and can always be adapted to explain any behavior convincingly. However, even if psychoanalysis or acupuncture rely on mechanisms that are unknown to science and have never been observed, at least their claims to healing can be tested. And they have been, and the result was that they do not heal. Either these mechanisms do not exist, or they do not function in a way that can help us. It is therefore not only a waste of time and money, but also dangerous to treat these theories as valid, because they are competing with science and medicine, which although they do not provide any absolute certainty, have at least had the result that life expectancy is around 80 years in the most developed countries. People die because they rejected science and trusted pseudo scientific methods of healing instead. That makes me very angry.

But I digress. I originally wanted to mention a few articles on this question of whether some phenomena are closed to science. The most obvious of those phenomena, I think, is conscience. How can conscience be a scientific object? "What is it like to be a bat?" tries to answer, but I can't say I understood everything it says. The article dates back to 1974, and I have no idea how the question has been answered (or not) since. Nor did I understand everything in this one (in French). It's a complex subject, maybe too much for me, but I'm still interested.

This article (in French again) seems much clearer. I haven't finished reading it yet, but in order to refute the "dualistic" theory (that the scientific method is not the right way to study the human mind, because it's so special) the author starts by exposing the basic principles of the scientific method in a very clear way. Now I'm getting to the part where he discusses the arguments of dualism proponents.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and links.

Glad you enjoy them! Actually that last article became very disappointing in the second part. The author seemed to accept a lot of things about "the power of the mind" or the idea that acupuncture releases endomorphins in certain areas. Citation badly needed here.

This is the difficult part about finding information on the Internet (well, not only since other media are also highly unreliable). You always have to choose who and what to believe, and of course you do that according to your own preconceptions of what the truth is. Being aware of that helps me to counter that effect a little, and I have a number of criteria that I try to make as objective as possible, but in the end knowledge is always second (or third, or....) hand, and it all comes down to who you choose to trust.

For some reason, one morning this week I woke up wondering about Bob Dylan's claim to the Nobel prize. I was extremely surprised to learn a couple of years ago, from an impassioned diatribe on LT, that he was a candidate. Since then the question has been at the back of my mind: why him? Is he really worth anything as a writer, as a poet? And if he is, what's different about him compared to all the other great songwriters out there? I am not a great music lover, but I tend to be drawn to the words as much as the music, so I know there are many poets in this field, and I know only a few of them. My current favorite is Leonard Cohen, who I rediscovered a few years ago, and whose 2012 album Old Ideas is without doubt the one I listen to most often. (To put things in perspective, I listen to music about once a week, often even less than that.)

A Google search on "Bob Dylan Nobel Prize" didn't bring up much except this article saying he should get it, without offering much proof of it, except that Dylan apparently knows his classics. Which is fine, but hardly a recommendation for a literary prize.

Then I looked up Dylan's Wikipedia page, which didn't even mention the Nobel Prize as far as I could tell. Then his website, which tells me that he is good at promoting himself (or hiring people to do it for him), and let me listen to some excerpts from his songs and read the lyrics.

Inevitably, since his recent albums cannot be found on Qobuz, my streaming music provider, I had to ask myself whether I was interested enough to buy one. Apparently I was, since I am now listening to Modern Times (2006). The more recent Tempest (2012) didn't appeal as much.

So far I am not overwhelmed, but it could grow on me. Unfortunately the music doesn't really grab me, so I doubt I will ever be convinced that he deserves the Nobel more than Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, or Serge Gainsbourg. Yeah, I know, my tastes in music show my age...

I've only listened to Dylan's 60s and early 70s music (in the 60s and early 70s) and haven't heard anything of his more recent work.

>39 FlorenceArt: In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins has an excellent chapter refuting the notion of dualism and the idea that some aspects of life are beyond the reach of science.

>43 rebeccanyc: He hasn't published that many actually, though he's busy touring apparently.

>44 StevenTX: Interesting, thank you!

Well, after countless hours of exhaustive research (I listened to about half the songs in the album a couple of times, and read some of the lyrics), I can say that no, I wouldn't give Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize. In order to give some veneer of objectivity to my "research", I also spent some time on the respective web sites of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. To be honest, I'm not sure I would give them the Nobel prize either, but I much prefer them. It's hard to judge the words independently of the music, and I'm not sure it should even be attempted. And the sad fact is, I don't think Dylan's music is all that great (not bad you know, just not great), so I'll probably always have trouble appreciating his words.

Conclusion: although there is a high risk of researcher bias, especially due to a very small sample size on the part of Dylan's works, I would say that of the three, Cohen is the better poet, and Waits the better musician. However, further research is definitely needed.

And here is some raw data for your appreciation:

Bob Dylan
Thunder on the Mountain (Modern Times, 2006)
Lyrics

Leonard Cohen
Amen (Old Ideas, 2012)
Lyrics

Tom Waits
Chicago (Bad as Me, 2011)
Lyrics

I finished The Floating Bridge, a book of prose poems by David Shumate. I really love his poems, they are full of beauty and sadness and delicate humor, which a touch of fantastic. At first I felt this book was not as good as the first one I read, High Water Mark, but when I picked it up today after a break of a few weeks, it was a real pleasure to read the last 10 or so poems. I probably shouldn't have read both books so close to one another. I will wait a bit before I buy the next one, Kimonos in the Closet. As far as I can see he only published three books, so after that one there will be no more to read unless he makes another.

I searched for a sample of Shumate's writing online. There aren't many, but here is one, which is included in The Floating Bridge: Plum @ Agni online.

Interesting to read your research on Bob Dylan. I own most of his music and would grant him the nobel prize for his impact on popular culture especially in the late 1960's and early 1970's. It would seem that the nobel prize is as much an award based on "politics" or "culture" as it is on literature.

>48 baswood: I do believe that those who insist that Dylan should get the Nobel are indeed thinking of those arguments you mention.

Finished Arabella by Georgette Heyer last night. As usual, I feel a bit guilty to enjoy her rather sexist works, but I did enjoy it. She has a knack for subtly suggesting the feelings of her characters and the humor of the absurd situations they create. I just wish women were a bit less innocent and men (or at least the hero) a bit less all-knowing.

I think I'm falling back into my habit of reading too many books at the same time.

I have put aside Conjectures and Refutations for the moment. The first essay was very clear and easy to read but the second was a bit more difficult, and I thought it would be better to wait a bit before I start the next one.

So I started La chute de la monarchie, a very serious and rather dry account of the French Revolution (I am still at the stage where the ancien regime is being described), and I am thinking of starting the biography of Marie-Antoinette by Stefan Zweig to give it a bit of color.

I am still reading Le père Goriot, reluctantly right now as Something Bad is about to happen and I hate that.

I was in need of some escapist literature and bought The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which is very satisfying so far and may keep me busy for some time.

Also trying not to rush and buy Kimonos in the Closet, David Shumate's latest poems collection, too soon.

Enjoyed reading about your Bob Dylan project! I heard the Nobel rumor also, although I'm not sure where I first heard it.

Looks like some interesting reading. I liked the Stefan Zweig bio, but I was wondering how it would compare to a more modern account.

I had several friends who really liked The Name of the Wind, although they were disappointed by the second one in the series. Hope it will be good escapist reading.

>52 DieFledermaus: I hadn't realized it was only a rumor, the article I read stated it as a fact. But according to the Nobel website, nominations and candidates are secret, so you're right, it's only a rumor.

The name of the wind is on my wishlist already. Looking forwards to hearing what you think about it, as I have trouble finding fantasy that I like.

This morning on the escalator, the man before me had a book in his hand, which was behind his back, so what else could I do but read the title? It was Comment le peuple juif fut inventé (The Invention of the Jewish People). This is a question that I have asked myself a lot while I was still following Dan's Bible Read: how did the Jews stay a people for so long, when all the other peoples of that time and place have long disappeared? And thanks to the Bible Read I also have some ideas on that question, but I am interested in Shlomo Sand's ideas, even if this question and the way he answers it are probably politically fraught. I think I might add some of his books to my wishlist.

Then again, after reading some of the Amazon reviews, maybe I'm not that interested in what Sand has to say. I don't think discussing the DNA of Jewish people has any bearing whatsoever on the Palestinian issue, and it's rather dishonest to bring this into the debate. There's enough real problems to deal with, without confusing the issue with dubious theories.

It's an interesting question about the Jews, although I'm not sure it's the right question. I'm mean other people didn't stop being a people. So, a better question migt be why this group of people who identify with those of the biblical Judean hills have chosen to do so the way they have and within generally non-welcoming atmospheres they have lived in? Or does one choose this kind of thing anyway. And, politics aside, the DNA stuff is relevant, although preferably without any political agenda.

Yes, I agree that DNA is useful for historical investigations, but I don't think it should be used as a political argument.

I do think that other peoples who were conquered and displaced by the Assyrian empire disappeared as separate ethnic entities after a few generations. Well, maybe a few centuries, I don't know. And probably most of the Hebrews did, but not that minority who clung to their sacred texts and customs and maintained strict matrimonial segregation with their neighbors. And I do think there is an unbroken line, culturally if not genetically, between those people and the Jews of today. But I could be completely mistaken, I am very ignorant on the matter.

Today is the first day of my summer holiday! I'll take it as a good omen that the weather was perfect: sunny but not too hot.

I visited the library and borrowed Maus at last. The idea of reading this book makes me a bit nervous.

I also visited the music section (a rare occurence) to find music by the composer Wolfgang Rihm. I read a review of his last work (Et Lux) which caught my interest, but ECM in its great generosity allows 30 seconds of preview (or is it prehear?). That's a bit short to decide whether I like it or not, and I knew nothing about this composer before. So I borrowed, not Et Lux (they didn't have it) but Fetzen. It's OK but a bit disappointing after all these efforts.

I'm afraid I am hating Le Père Goriot right now and probably won't finish it. I hate those small, pathetic and disgusting characters and their small, pathetic and disgusting stories. I realize I should have more compassion for them, but it's hard to muster any with Balzac helpfully telling me exactly how I should feel about them. I know this is how people wrote in the 19th century, but I don't have to like it. I can stomach it when I like the story and the characters, but in this case I hate them and wish them all to hell.

Last time I was at the library (well, next to last), I picked up Code-barres (barcode) by Krisztina Tóth. It's a novel (according to the front cover) or a collection of short stories (if you believe the back cover). I had read the back cover only and got a minor shock when I saw the front cover after reading two of the stories: I wasn't expecting to commit to finish the book, I just picked it up because it was in the librarians' selection and the cover looked nice. I think it's a collection of short stories linked by a common thread (short vignettes of the life of a woman, or maybe different women, or maybe the author, who knows?). That's how I will read it anyway. The stories are good and the translation is readable if not perfect.

Last night I read a story in Granta, only to find out at the end that it wasn't a story but an excerpt of a novel by French author Mathias Énard. As a story it didn't work too well, but as an excerpt it's interesting, too bad I read it in English! I don't think I have read anything by him yet but I have a paper copy of Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants (Talk to them of battles, of kings and elephants - what a title!) That my mother lent me ages ago.

My reading of La chute de la monarchie and Marie-Antoinette is progressing well. It's amusing to read the two together, as they have completely opposed views on history. Vovelle barely mentions Louis XVI's sexual problems, but to read Zweig it's almost like they were responsible for the whole revolution.

Oh, and one more thing: apparently Infinite Jest is finally being published in French! This article in French tells the story of how it took 20 years to translate.

I think you might love Maus, despite the topic. It's so well done.

Had no idea IJ was not translated to French yet. That seems very strange.

Dan, I didn't know it either! And yes, it is strange, and partly due to the fact that French publishers were only interested in French novels apparently, and in part to an unfortunate set of circumstances that prevented a publisher who was genuinely interested completing her project in time before she lost the rights.

I just watched Un jour ou deux, a choreography written in 1973 by Merce Cunnigham for the Opéra de Paris. I enjoy watching contemporary choreographies written for a classical ballet corps. Classical ballet is very demanding on dancers, they have a specific vocabulary and can do incredible things with their bodies. They have incredible bodies too. This was wonderful, I wish I'd seen it in person (I think this movie was shot in 2012).

Oh, and I forgot to mention a very interesting series of articles on memory on the AFIS website (in French) that I have been reading this week. Memory is not reliving past events, it's mostly reconstructing them from a few hints and other memories. If I try to remember what I ate at breakfast yesterday, there's a chance that what I am remembering is not specifically yesterday's breakfast but other similar ones. As a result, it's scarily easy to create false memories, as many experiments have shown (and I'd rather not think on how ethical it is to do that kind of experiment). On the other hand, it's highly unlikely that supposedly suppressed memories, especially from early childhood, can be retrieved. Most of the articles in this series insist on the consequences of this in crime investigations. Apparently there is a method that has been scientifically proven to increase chances of getting the truth from witnesses, but investigators don't know about this and don't apply it, relying instead on age-old methods of unknowingly influencing witnesses. Very interesting, and a bit frightening.

Enjoy your holiday

>59 FlorenceArt: I found the people in Le Pere Goriot small and pathetic too, but I guess I kept reading because of Balzac's portrayal of the sweep of Parisian society at the time. I did like other works by Balzac much more.

>62 baswood: Thank you! Right now I am enjoying the last of the sun (rain forecast for the next few days) by the pool!

>63 rebeccanyc: I should probably just give up on this one and try another.

> 63 > 64 There is worse : La cousine Bette. Perhaps not small and pathetic but this book made me despair of the human species!

>65 h-mb: OK, I'll scratch that one from the list then!

Have a wonderful holiday! I'm enjoying that the kids' school holidays are offset from the Bavarian system. We're gearing back up again, but with everyone else gone, back to school shopping is uncrowded and the traffic is light.

>63 rebeccanyc: My favorite Balzacs, as I've said before, maybe even on this thread(!), are Lost Illusions and its "sequel," A Harlot High and Low.

>65 h-mb: Oh no! I was thinking of reading Cousin Bette soon. Thanks for the warning!

>67 RidgewayGirl: Thank you! I intend to. I'm starting with a few days with my parents in the countryside, then back to Paris for some exhibitions (and also working on my hopefully coming soon performance), and finally a week on the Baie de Somme to see some nature, birds and seals.

>68 rebeccanyc: That's right, I remember you saying that. I guess I'll try Les illusions perdues then, but not right now.

I had never heard of Infinite Jest. I've added it to my wishlist, but when / if I get to it I'll most probably read it in English.

70> I only learned about it a few years ago, on LT. It's a classic in the "impossible to read books" class, like Ulysses. I read it a couple of years ago and I'm glad I did, but it wasn't an easy ride. I liked Ulysses better. There is a list somewhere in the intahwebs (surprise!) of the XX most difficult reads in literature, and I'm pretty sure it's in it.

P.S. Here's the list: 50 Incredibly Tough Books For Extreme Readers, mentioned by StevenTX here on Club Read. And yes, Infinite Jest is number 4.

When I discovered the AFIS (Association Française pour l'Information Scientifique), a non-profit organization dedicated to the defense of science against pseudo science, I subscribed to their magazine and ordered a few back issues. The quality of the content is rather uneven, but a few days ago I read a long and very good article in the July issue by Gérald Bronner (not available online as yet, but maybe later?): "Pourquoi Internet peut-il être un incubateur de la pensée extrême ?" (Why the Internet can be an incubator for extremist thinking).

This is not your standard "the Internet is the death of culture" complaint. The author describes the main drivers that make the Internet especially nurturing to extreme thinking. One is the good old confirmation bias: we all tend, when confronted with information, to give more value to what confirms the opinions we already hold, and to ignore contradicting information which requires more intellectual effort to process and can cause unease. In addition, as people holding a minority opinion tend to be more vocal in their defense of it, they are often more visible on the Net. This conveniently feeds the confirmation bias, and may also give the false impression that these opinions are widely held.

Another element is, of course, the community factor. Family, friends and colleagues are likely to reject or deride extreme opinions held by someone in their midst. One well-known tactic of sects or extremist groups is isolation: take the individual away from any influence that could counterbalance that of the group. With the Internet, this is no longer the only option. You can meet like-minded people very easily and restrict your exchanges to people sharing your opinions. (In fact, we all do this already.) Members of the group will mutually reinforce these opinions among themselves and create the false impression that they are the norm.

The author refers throughout to the "information market" and its deregulation thanks to the Internet. In such a highly competitive market, simple ideas passionately defended by believers have a big advantage over balanced and scientifically grounded opinions defended by informed people.

I am glad I read this article. It organized and presented things that I mostly knew (or rather, I thought when I read them "Yes, I knew that!" which is not quite the same thing) in a clear explanation. Bronner has written a few books, and I have added two to my wishlist: L'inquiétant principe de précaution (the dangerous precautionary principle) and Croyances et imaginaires contemporains (contemporary beliefs and imagination).

The Grandest Art of the Ancients in the New York Review of Books

This article reviews several exhibitions that I am not likely to see, but just reading the review was interesting. Especially the description of the surprising statue of a boxer.

An epic poem made from court records.

>73 FlorenceArt: >74 FlorenceArt: I am so behind in my New York Review of Books reading . . .

Well, being on holiday helps. Usually I am so behind that I simply don't read most of them.

Yesterday I went to the Palais de Tokyo to renew my love-hate relationship with it. I was not disappointed.

I saw three of the five exhibitions: Patrick Neu was eminently forgettable. Céleste Boursier Mougenot attracted an untypical crowd for the venue (including a lot of children) by transforming a large chunk of the main floor into a canal. You could get on small boats to cross it (I didn't). I couldn't help wondering how much this cost. It was nice though.

Jesper Just's Servitude was just incredible. It's a maze of metal ramps and walkways wandering in the huge underground space that used to be the Cinémathèque française, with video projections on some walls or screens. The first one that stopped me was a view of a series of mysterious elevator doors opening and closing without anyone getting in or out. The second one was a visit of a large abandoned building, filmed in such a way that I felt the building itself was moving so that I could see the whole of it without moving myself. Indeed I stayed transfixed before this one for a long time. Combined with the settings (the metal structure behind the projection screen that occasionally became visible, and the sounds the visitors made walking up and down the metal ramps and stairs), it had an almost hypnotic effect.

This morning I finished Maus. I loved it. Some parts were difficult, but Spiegelman manages to alleviate the horror by mixing this story with others on several levels: his difficult relationship to his father and to his past and heritage, and also some funny reflexions on his work and its success. Highly recommended.

This morning I finished Maus. I loved it

Yay!

>78 dchaikin: :-D

>74 FlorenceArt: very interesting

>80 baswood: Yes, isn't it?

I just finished The Name of the Wind and I'm not sure how to rate it. I enjoyed it but I expected it to be more self-contained than this. It just stops in the middle of the story. Logically the next step should be to buy the next volume and start reading it immediately, but I'm a bit reluctant, especially since >52 DieFledermaus: says that some people find it disappointing. And now that I am faced with this decision, I'm wondering if the first tome was really that great, great enough to read a second one (and does that one have a real ending or does it just lead to a third?). I think I'll wait a while before buying the next one.

Yesterday I returned Maus to the library and thoroughly searched the B section of graphic novels to find Jane, le renard et moi which was recommended by RidgewayGirl, until I finally discovered that (1) the books are filed under the artist's name (in this case Isabelle ARSenault) and not the writer's (Fanny BRItt) and (2) this book is in the young readers section anyway, not the adult section where I was looking. By that time I had already picked up 2 books from the Bs, so I didn't bother trying to discover where the children's books are.

Biotope 1 had a promising beginning but turned out to be unbelievable and sloppily written. I don't think I will seek out volume 2.

Œdipe à Corinthe should be better, as the writer is Joann Sfar. I barely skimmed the first pages though.

>81 FlorenceArt: For what it's worth, I enjoyed the next book in the series as much as I did the first one, but, yes, it does also just end with a lead-in to the next one. Which isn't published yet. (I'm pretty sure that one, when it's out, is supposed to wrap up the story, though.)

>71 FlorenceArt:: Thanks for the list, it made me laugh!
I actually have read four or these books! (or maybe five, can't remember if I've read Heart of Darkness or not)

>82 bragan: Thank you, good to know!

>83 chlorine: I started writing down the list to mark those I have read but got bored. I read a few and gave up on at least two (But I'm still planning to get back to Moby Dick some day, I feel I didn't give it enough of a chance), and I have some on my wishlist too.

>71 FlorenceArt: I had taken note of that list when StevenTX posted it as well. I've read 9 on the list. Some of the others are on my radar, particularly Cortazar's Hopscotch, which a Spanish friend had been reading and recommended to me.

>84 FlorenceArt: I have tried to read Moby Dick so many times (in my teens, 20s, 30s, etc.). I once even took just it on a vacation! But I have come to realize it's not for me. I've browsed the list in >71 FlorenceArt: and I've read eight or so, some a long time ago. It's an interesting combination of old and new, and different genres. I do want to read Hopscotch too, Ursula.

I greatfully participated in the group read of Moby Dick on LT a few years ago. It gave me the motivation to start and finish reading it, and looking back, I am glad I did.

>86 rebeccanyc: Wow, that's dedication! I only tried it once I think, and that was when I discovered ebooks and Gutenberg. I started a lot of books then and did not finish them all. That's why I feel I should have made more of an effort. I had so many books at my disposal suddenly, I tended to get distracted.

Moby Dick is among those I've read and one that I kind of regret finishing. I wanted so much to like it though!
My advice: if you tried it and felt it was not for you, don't try again.

I had to read Moby Dick in high school, sophomore year. We were told to skip certain chapters (the ones with the details of the whaling industry). My teacher told us, "Seriously, skip them. You'll never make it through otherwise." Well, I was a completist - what kind of person only reads part of a book and calls it done?! - and I was also convinced I was sooo smart, so that wasn't going to stop me. I could make it through those chapters, come on! So I resolved to read right through.

You know how this ends ... I never finished the book. And I have also never had the heart to go back and try again, so I just call it done.

Fun story, thanks for sharing! :)

>90 ursula: LOL, that was a fun story indeed! The only book that I read by skipping parts was War and Peace. I only did this because I was stranded for a month in a foreign country (Germany) with no access to books I could read, and I only had the books I brought with me. Otherwise I would have abandoned it. As it turned out, I enjoyed the parts I did read.

>88 FlorenceArt: Well, it was a cousin's favorite book, so I kept trying . . . until I wised up.

>92 FlorenceArt: I skipped the war parts of War and Peace when I read it in my teens, but when I reread it for the first time in my 40s, I ended up liking the war parts the best.

>93 rebeccanyc: Maybe I should try doing that. I was barely 20 when I read it first.

I loved Moby Dick, but it did require effort on my part. Conditions were right when I read it, with a group read being led by a knowledgeable guide who was excited about the book and time to read it uninterrupted.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/127471

That's the beginning of the discussion, long dormant, that guided me through, if you decide you'd like a sextant along on the voyage.

The trick to enjoying Moby-Dick is for someone to prohibit you from reading it. My father belonged to a religion that disapproved of fiction. When I was about 15 years old I bought a copy with my paper-route money at the local drug store and smuggled it into the house. As it was forbidden fruit, I loved it.

>95 RidgewayGirl: Thank you, that link might come in handy.

>96 StevenTX: Wow!! Was it the first novel you read?

>97 FlorenceArt: No, not the first by any means. My father's religious rigor waxed and waned; it was just for a couple of years that I had to resort to smuggling.

>98 StevenTX: Oh good. I can't imagine going through childhood without reading fiction.

Just watched a great documentary on Arte Replay: Louis XIV, roi des arts. Tomorrow will be the 300th anniversary of Louis XIV's death (1st September 1715). The documentary shows how he supported the arts during his 72 year reign, and also used them for propaganda. Under his tutelage, and often with his active participation (he was a very good dancer, and he took a direct interest in the activities of painters, architects and gardeners who worked for him), a number of great artists flourished: Corneille, Molière, Racine, Boileau, Lulli, Le Brun, Le Nôtre... Highly recommended if you have access to it (it's probably only accessible from France). It's on replay until Saturday.

This afternoon I visited the Mona Hatoum retrospective at Beaubourg. It was OK but not what I had been led to expect. There were a lot of maps, I liked that. Unfortunately she likes to use hair a lot in her art, and I hate hair. There was a room where strands of hair were hanging from wires, I almost walked into it. Ugh. I'd rather walk into a room full of spiderwebs, with spiders.

Yesterday I went to the Palais de Tokyo to renew my love-hate relationship with it. I was not disappointed.

Heh heh

The Louis XIV documentary sounds interesting and I've been wondering what would be a good follow up for The Sun King. Unfortunately, I can't understand spoken French (and reading it usually consists of picking out enough words to have a general idea of what's going on if I don't have the opera libretto). I remember reading in Apollo's Angels about a 6 hr ballet that he attended (maybe he even danced in it?) - that was a lot of dancing.

There were a number of excepts in the documentary from the 2000 movie Le roi danse, maybe it's available with English subtitles?

I have also wanted a Louis XIV biography, but surprisingly there doesn't seem to be that many (well, looking at the touchstones right now, maybe I'm wrong about that). I read Louis XIV by Jean-Christian Petitfils, which was very serious and thorough but not very exciting. It doesn't look like it was translated to English anyway.

I also read, years ago, L'allée du roi (The King's Way) which is a fictional autobiography of Madame de Maintenon. I wasn't crazy about it at the time but it was a nice read. Of course it's all told from her perspective, and I think that's what annoyed me, I would have liked something more objective.

And coming back to Jean-Christian Petitfils, I see he has written biographies of many kings: Louis XIII, Louis XIV, the Regent, Louis XV and Louis XVI. I'm tempted to read them all in order. Or maybe just Louis XVI? That would make a more modern (and objective?) counterpoint to Stefan Zweig's contemptuous representation.

>99 FlorenceArt: Wow! A 72-year reign. I had no idea, but it sounds like he was a great king, at least for artists.

I also read L'allée du roi and thought it was a nice read, but I enjoyed the TV adaptation more.

Yesterday I visited the Fondation Vuitton for the second time. I enjoyed it much more this time, as there was no pressure for me to like it, and it was less crowded. However I'd like a word with the architects and let them know what I think about purposefully designing a museum so that people will inevitably get lost in it. And the curators are in on the conspiracy too. They insist on making you go through dark rooms full of noise and people you can't see, and you're supposed to find the other end and continue to the next exhibit. Of course you don't. So you go out the way you came in and then try to enter the next exhibit by what turns out to be the exit, as you are politely told by a nice man who then sends you back to find the correct way in the dark room full of noise and people. Come to think of it, this may be a metaphor for contemporary art as a whole.

So I enjoyed the visit, but none of the works made a great impression on me, except maybe the video installation where you walk into a square room with video screens on each side, and get shot at by various actors from various movies, in a very impressive choreography. I didn't think of looking up the artist or the title, and it doesn't seem to appear on the foundation's web site.

Unfortunately I missed Extended Lullaby by John Cage. I walked right past it without realizing it was an exhibit! All the others had a full room to themselves, but this one was small and placed in the entrance, before the first dark room. Sigh.

So that was the "sound" part of the current exhibitions, which was the reason I visited really but turned out to be mostly videos, and mostly not very exciting. The "Pop" side was more conventional and had of course several Andy Warhol works, and also several beautiful Basquiat, for which I was grateful because I haven't seen many. Also a large fresco by Gilbert and George, who seem to be a bit like Jeff Koons: fun to look at, and it can have depth if you bring your own I guess.

Also yesterday, I finished Code-barres, a bit hurriedly because I wanted to give it back before leaving for the Baie de Somme tomorrow. I enjoyed those stories of ordinary lives of young girls or women, often sad. The translation was readable and for a change was mostly written in correct French, but there were a few obvious errors.

Started reading Frenchman's Creek, I'm not sure why I bought this book, I guess I felt like reading something by Daphne du Maurier and I found this on Kobo... Anyway I was a bit hesitant at first but I'm enjoying it is far (only a few chapters in though).

Glad you found your way out again.

300th anniversary of the death of Louis xiv...interesting...and I'm wondering if this could inspire my library to get something on him in audio. Not likely, I guess.

>100 DieFledermaus: mentionned The Sun King by Nancy Mitford. I didn't know about it but it sounds very readable.

Back from a great week in the Baie de Somme, visiting gothic buildings, walking and watching birds and seals. I didn't read much but made some progress into Frenchman's Creek.

I also picked up a book: Bestiaire médiéval des animaux familiers. Very interesting although rather badly written, but the illustrations are great and I'm learning a lot about how our ancestors judged animals and used them as parables of human vices and virtues. Many of these prejudices are still alive today.

Glad your week went fine!

Thank you! It was great.

Granta has an interview of Ben Marcus, an author I hadn't heard about. He just published New American Stories, a follow-up to The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, which gets mixed reviews on LT. I (finally!) made some use of my subscription to Granta and read his short story The Loyalty Protocol (you need to be a subscriber to access this link). While reading this I had mixed feelings and was thinking about the discussion we had on kidzdoc's thread about writing that leaves things untold, and whether this is something European writers do more than Americans. While reading this story I felt that there was too much said, but it was redeemed at the end, and that somehow illuminated the whole thing. I need to find a book by Ben Marcus. And I might try one of the collections he edited too.

Also in Granta, I followed a link to this strange poem/short story by Jon Fosse, Dreamed in Stone, which I enjoyed.

Gave up on Frenchman's Creek. It feels so good to give myself authorization to stop when I've been forcing myself to read something. Maybe that's why I keep buying books of suspense when I hate being scared. Also, the whole idea of people taking up piracy just because they are bored with their lives, well I wasn't too crazy about that.

I wanted to buy The Age of Wire and String but then I reminded myself sternly of my resolution concerning the TBR, so I started a new story in Love and Hydrogen. I also have several books in French in the TBR that require my attention, but I don't know if I will resist the lure of New Books.

Good for you for giving up! It's liberating, isn't it?

Yes it is!

After I finished the short story, I started Rue des boutiques obscures by Patrick Modiano. I'm very happy I did, it feels like meeting an old friend. I read somewhere that you can follow the itineraries Modiano describes in Paris on a map, so right now I am in Neuilly-sur-Seine, looking for the past of an amnesiac. I looked at the view in Google Street View, but it must have been very different in 1965. Now you can see the towers of la Défense, where I will go back to work tomorrow morning. I don't know when they started building those, but it must have been in the seventies.

>112 rebeccanyc:, 113

Yippy Yeah!

I long harbored the idea that I had to finish reading any book I had started reading and / or any book I had bought.

Now, I have completely left that stance. After reading 1 or 2 books by an author and not liking them, I tend to throw out all remaining books by that author on my TBR. So, last year I threw out all David Foster Wallace, and recently all Colum McCann and Salman Rushdie.

I now also go over to skim reading mode or abandon a book if I really don't like it. Last week I read 30 pages into Cruelle Zélande by Jacques Serguine only to discover it belonged to that genre of erotica.

>114 FlorenceArt: Translated into Englsh as Missing Person. I want to read more Patrick Modiano and this one sounds good.

>115 edwinbcn: Yes, it's part of our inalienable rights as readers to read what and if we want. After all, we (well at least I) do this for pleasure, right? It shouldn't be a chore.

>116 baswood: The English title is very apt. The missing person is the narrator. I strongly recommend reading this with a map of Paris at hand. I am enjoying it immensely. It's been a while since I really enjoyed a novel, now that I think of it.

Yesterday and today I watched the opera Orfeo Chaman. Initially, after only skimming Télérama's review, I thought I was going to watch Monteverdi's Orfeo, but I soon realized my mistake. I still haven't wrapped my head around the idea that opera is still being written today. It feels weird, but this one, while recognizably opera, was also unmistakably contemporary. The combination was rather a success, for me at least.

The music was very good and the production too, though to my untrained ear Orfeo's voice sounded rather weak, like the pop singer I suspect he is as opposed to the rest of the cast who were "real" opera singers. Definitely worth two hours of my time.

Bookwise I am still enjoying Rue des boutiques obscures and reading about the French Revolution.

Just finished Rue des boutiques obscures. So far I had only read a few minor works by Modiano and liked them, but this one is the best I have read yet.

Modiano has admitted to writing about the same events in all of his books. About his own past. In a letter to the narrator, his former employer writes "Vous aviez raison de me dire que dans la vie, ce n'est pas l'avenir qui compte, c'est le passé." You were right when you told me that the important thing in life is not the future, it's the past. Modiano always writes about the past, and about how it shapes us but we are also estranged from it. His characters are always kind of lost, both in the past and in the present. In this book, the narrator has no past, he is an amnesiac. Hence, as the first sentence states, he is nothing. He will go looking for his past, and of course he won't find what he is looking for, although some of it will be unveiled.

This book should feel dark and oppressive, but somehow Modiano's touch is so light that what he makes me feel is a sort of nostalgia, melancholic but appealing.

For me also this was about the past, even though I was barely 2 years old when the book was published. The story (both past and present) mostly takes place in Paris, a Paris that must have been very different from mine but still recognizable. All the actions can be traced on a map (and I did follow some of it on Google Maps), the streets are named and often even the house numbers. A mention of the song Sag Warum sent me down memory lane. No "boum" (party) was complete without it in the 70s.

Another old acquaintance, strangely, was Porfirio Rubirosa, whom I must have met in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, since that's the only book I have ever read about the Dominican Republic. He only has a minor role but it was strange to see his name for the second time.

I want to change what I said before: yes, I think Modiano deserved the Nobel prize.

And now, that exciting moment of decision: what to read next? I've been pretty good about reading from the TBR so I may allow myself to buy a new book now. Anyway, I'll read a few short stories while I decide.

Nice to get a more positive perspective on Modiano. I certainly would be more willing to read him now.

A cheers to selecting the next book. That's always fun.

Dan, I thought you read Dora Bruder recently (The Search Warrant). Or was that someone else on Club Read?

Not me. I haven't read Modiano. Maybe Darryl?

Oops, sorry, I often get people confused like this (IRL too).

ETA: it was baswood.

And you should! Read Modiano I mean.

Où sont nos navires ?

This was the title of a column in Ouest France (regional newspaper for Brittany and the West of France) that kept track of the French ships so that families could know where they were, and travel to the port where they were stopping to meet them. The crews came mostly from Brittany, and especially from the island of Ouessant.

This 4 part documentary is a nostalgic and patriotic look at the history and decline of French merchant shipping since WWII. The patriotic part is a bit surprising, as patriotism has had a bad name ever since it was used by the Vichy administration. It was interesting, but a bit limited by its French outlook, so that the history of the last 50 years or so was not very well covered I think. On the other hand, it was interesting precisely because of its French outlook and how it reflected the impact of globalization on French seamen and their jobs. Today there are very few ships under a French flag, but French officers are still sought out because of the quality of their training (or so the documentary says). They now sail with an international crew, mostly from third world countries, the Philippines being the most widely represented.

The impact of the invention of the container (around 1965-75) was vividly described. It reduced the length of port calls from days to hours.

Is there something in the air these days that makes shipping an interesting subject? It has been popping up everywhere it seems.

I really need to pick up L'homme qui a vu l'ours again. A lot of the essays in this book were related to shipping.

>118 FlorenceArt: - Glad you enjoyed Orfeo Chaman. I saw that on culturebox, but am always worried about being lost without subtitles - can be difficult for contemporary operas because good summaries or librettos are hard to find.

Also, the Modiano sounds interesting.

>127 DieFledermaus: Yes, I couldn't find much info on that opera apart from links to videos of this performance. The language is Spanish, if that helps any. And of course on Culturebox there are French subtitles. Even the ensemble's web site doesn't give much information, plus it seems to be in French, at least that's how it displays to me. It says that Christina Pluhar has been living in France since 1992.

I really liked the music, which made use of some unusual (I think) instruments, and had a lot of polyphonic parts (if it means what I think it does: several singers with each a slightly different melody), which I like.

Le barbier de Séville by Beaumarchais

I read this because it is mentioned by Zweig in Marie-Antoinette. The Queen staged a representation of this play where she played Rosine, which Zweig condemns as a grave political blunder because 10 years before, Beaumarchais had written a pamphlet on Louis XVI's sexual impotence, and his follow-up play Le mariage de Figaro, which was much more subversive than Le barbier de Séville and is often considered a forerunner of the revolution, had been banned by the same Louis XVI, so playing this at Versailles showed a complete lack of respect for her husband.

Anyway, maybe I should have read (should read) Le mariage de Figaro instead. This was a fun read, but it would have been much more enjoyable played on stage (though maybe not with Marie-Antoinette as Rosine). Some of the most comical episodes were hard to figure out based only on the dialogue. It has all the expected elements (and old fart wanting to marry a young orphan, a smart servant helping the interest of the young lover - in fact these elements came from Molière's L'école des femmes which was itself inspired by Scarron's story La précaution inutile) and some very funny scenes.

I also bought and started to read The Age of Wire and String. I am intrigued by this book which reads like a human conversation manual written by a spam robot. I don't mean that as a bad thing, necessarily. From what I can gather there is not much of a story and I intend to approach it as a collection of short stories or prose poems, so it may take me a while to finish it. Which means I still need to pick a novel to start. Yum.

I have decided I am going to read Pantagruel. It took me a while to find an e-book edition that looked good. At first I thought of reading it in translation and referring to the original text once in a while, but that doesn't really work, does it? Plus all the translations I sampled sounded flat and dull. Rabelais's appeal is in the language, after all. So I bought the Livre de Poche edition which is the original text with notes. I haven't really started it yet, just read the short introduction (plus skimmed the intro of a couple of other editions of this and Gargantua).

Looking forward to any comments on Pantagruel.

Dan, it got off to a rocky start as there are a lot of notes, and notes are even more of a bother in e-books than in paper books. I finally found a way to display the text and the notes side by side on my iPad, and now I'm enjoying it a lot.

>130 FlorenceArt: I read the five book series Gargantua and Pantagruel in the Penguin classics edition. Even in translation there is nothing quite like Rabelais. I got a little bored at times.

>133 baswood: For me, the language is a big part of my enjoyment of Rabelais's writing. A big part of it is simply the unusual words, which were perfectly usual at the time he wrote, but are new or weird to me. Of course that has nothing to do with the quality of the writing per se, it would be the same if I was reading a grocery list or a legal deed from the 16th century...

In all the books I am reading right now there was nothing simple and easy to read just for pleasure, so after a busy weekend preparing for my next exhibition and performance, I added yet another one that I picked from my wishlist: Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. I only read a few pages but so far I think it's just what I needed. I have never read a book by Marillier before.

>130 FlorenceArt: I'm used to reading old French authors aloud : it helps to understand - and to appreciate. It's particularly true with Rabelais, inspired by legends and old stories. Narration gives a better feeling of what he set to do than just reading.
PS : do read Gargantua : it's a delight. Try to sing the Gregorian chant with the monks of Seuilly and you can hear their terror. It could be a slightly derisive transcription of Gregorian but it surely shows how the fear breaks up all sense. Silently read the sequence ", ini, nim, pe, ne, ne, ne, ne, ne, ne, tum, ne, num, num, ini, i, mi, i, mi, co, o, ne, no, o, o, ne, no, ne, no, no, no, rum, ne, num, num" and then "sing" it, imagining soldiers at your door. The long absurdity suddenly makes sense.

I'm intrigued, and yes I intend to read Gargantua, which several commentators said is a more mature and better work than Pantagruel. I hesitated to start with Gargantua and skip Pantagruel, but I decided to do them in (writing) order. Don't know if I will be interested enough to read the rest of the books.

Your song sample reminds me of Pérotin of the school of Notre Dame, rather than Gregorian chant. He can make a single word last several minutes by just repeating each syllable endlessly. Fun stuff.

Not doing much reading at the moment as I'm busy preparing for the open studio weekend next week-end. I will hold my first public performance ever, with musician Hannah Judson, and I'm very excited about that since I've wanted to do this for about two years. So if you're in the Paris area, please come visit me on Saturday at 5 PM.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1492547947730608/
http://www.florenceartur.com/

Bonne chance! And have a great time!

Thank you :-D

Thanks for the link to your website. I enjoyed seeing your art.

Sounds amazing, all the best for a fab weekend.

Good luck next weekend

Thank you Rebecca, Tony and Barry!

You're very talented - best of luck with your exhibition.

Thank you Alison! :-D

Have a wonderful exhibition!

Wish you well! Enjoyed looking through your videos, and getting to see your work.

Thank you Jane and Dan! The exhibition starts this afternoon. I will probably have a lot of time on my hands since there won't be many visitors today, so I'll probably paint and read :-)

Well the performance went very well, although we had a very small but very enthusiastic audience. We both had fun and already started discussing plans for the future. I'm exhausted. Having a cold doesn't help either.

I finished Daughter of the Forest and enjoyed it a lot. The bad guy might have been a trifle over the top but on the whole it was a very good read in the "light stuff" category. I will probably buy the next one in the series.

And since I'm too tired to look very far for my next light read, I started The Restaurant at the End of the Universe which I had waiting on my iPad already.

Delighted that it was a success!

>149 FlorenceArt: Yay! for great performances and enthusiastic audiences. Boo for colds. (Boo! Boo! Boo!)

I keep checking out and renewing my library's copy of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It would be a reread for me. I love that series!

>149 FlorenceArt: -- fab it went well, great -- but a cold? Didn't you have your towel with you?

Thank you all!

Avidmom, it's a reread for me to, but it's been so long, I mostly remember the bits that are quoted to me by my friends who are fans.

Tony, I guess I must have mislaid my towel. How stupid of me.

A hot toddy may help...a pangalacticgargleblaster?

(But never stupid)

>154 tonikat: LOL!

I finished Bestiaire médiéval des animaux familiers. Despite the bad writing, I enjoyed reading this book which reviews the (very long) list of animals featuring in medieval literature, the way they featured in the human economy and culture, and the symbolic and exemplary value of each animal. In the medieval world, everything is a message from God to Man, and animals play a big part in that as symbols and examples to be followed or warnings. Each animal gets a short chapter with excepts from books, and of course lovely illustrations.

Among the many interesting factoids was the general category of "worms" which included almost all insects, or as the Bible would say all animals that swarm, and also mice, rats and moles. Worms were believed to be born spontaneously from putrefaction. The scorpion was a worm, and not a snake. Bees were exempt from this general contempt and lauded for their chastity and industriousness, and because God in his wisdom taught them to make perfect hexagonal shapes.

This made me add a few books by Michel Pastoureau, who is an expert on medieval symbolism, to my wishlist.

156 - Very interesting. I'm fascinated by the different meanings of plants and animals in Medieval artwork (particularly tapestry). Do you know if this one has been translated?

Unfortunately I can't find trace of a translation. And Pastoureau's works on animals don't seem to be available in English either, which is a shame. I read two of his books on colors and loved them.

That is a shame. I may look around for some other things on the various symbolism. It's amazing how complicated it all was. I think that's what draws me to the tapestries, every stitch carries so much meaning.

I have been too tired to do much "serious" reading lately, but my attempts at light reading haven't been very successful.

I finished The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I enjoyed it the first time I read it, but I think my recollection of it was distorted years later, from reading and hearing so many references and quotes from fans. It is funny, but that's all it is, and it's not enough to sustain my interest for a second reading.

After that I turned to some seriously trashy romance: Marked by Elizabeth Naughton. You know, it's the kind of book that you wouldn't want to read on the subway because the cover shows a manly man with gleaming muscles manfully embracing a womanly woman (the woman is optional apparently. In this case it's just the man's manly gleaming chest), and the steamy (and rather unbelievable) sex scenes make you feel embarrassed reading it in public. As you can probably guess from my description, I wasn't expecting Jane Austen, but I do have my standards even for trash. The paper thin characters have an emotional depth that is slightly below the Barbie and Ken level. And reading such an incredibly original piece of dialogue as « I know modern women aren’t supposed to like to cook, but, well, I do » made me feel like I was betraying the whole female sex just by reading this. I did smile at some of the reactions of a 21st century woman suddenly confronted with Greek gods and heroes, but I'm not sure the humor was intended, and even if it was, the genuine potential of the situation was woefully under-exploited.

So, I did finish the book with some difficulty, but all it did was awaken my romance addiction without satisfying it in any way, so I'll probably need to find another one soon. Maybe I should just re-read Jane Austen for the umpteenth time.

Very frustrating visit to Beaubourg today to see the exhibition by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. The main thing about contemporary art that makes me angry is it manipulative tendency. Artists and curators will do anything to force an emotional reaction from the spectator. One popular (probably because it's cheap and simple) way to do that is to plunge people in the dark to disorient them and make them vulnerable. That's practically guaranteed to make me storm out of the exhibition in a rage, and that's what happened. Of course, this is exactly what "they" wanted (or at least one of the reactions they hoped to achieve), which makes it even worse.

After that I raced through a few exhibitions in the museum and a couple of neighboring galleries, which were OK but not great. I felt a bit guilty and tried to get interested in Wilfredo Lam's work, and honestly is was not bad, but nothing unforgettable.

161 - That's unfortunate. I've only been to one show like that which I found effective. It was of Hiroshi Sugimoto's work where one side of the wall were his photos of various bodies of water during day and the other side were photos taken at night - so the night side of the wall the lights were dimmed. A little taste:

I've been very lazy updating this thread lately, though to be honest I haven't done much reading. However, today I finished The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus. All the time I was reading, I kept wondering what to say about it. It's a rather indescribable book. The cover says "stories" but I was warned from the beginning not to expect that. I approached it rather as a collection of prose poems, but as I was progressing through the book it became clear that those very short stories, or poems, or whatever, form a whole, so it could be seen as a novel. Provided you don't expect a beginning, middle or end, or well, much of anything you usually find in a novel. Maybe what is to be found there is a very intimate description of the writer's inner world. Or is it the reader's inner world? Maybe, as I mentioned when I started reading it, it was written by a spam robot. You know, the kind that takes snippets from the web and randomly swaps words, so that the result almost makes sense and you can't help trying to find the original word that will make the sentence mean something. It's a weird, puzzling, sometimes funny but mostly sad, and above all beautiful book. Highly recommended but probably not for everyone. You'll probably know which applies to you if you read the following excerpt. Or maybe not.

« Bird speech at the circle of willis results in migrant noises or “puddles” that amass near the head of the pedestrian, rallying it toward a form of disruption within the flowing crowd. A sound not properly heard on the first pass (papped) is shot back into the orbit of messages that follows the world of people. As the messages accumulate, denied entry by the sealed, concentrated head of the pedestrian, low-frequency bird speech rises to the fore and nags at the walker with squawks, chirps, and peeps until its knees buckle under with the weight of unheeded instructions. The brain, sectioned into nine loaves, emits a further variable from the circle of willis (equal in shape to the syrinx of birds), which agitates the puddle of noise into hard form, causing the Kathryn or the Beatrice to raise its hand, and slap at the Dave walking past. »

As you say somewhat weird.

Yes, it is weird, but in a good way!

And I forgot to mention the drawings by Catrin Morgan, which are every bit as beautiful and mysterious as the text.

Los Angeles by Ling Ma in Granta. Strange story. I'm still not sure whether I liked it or not.

The name of Bruno Schulz has come up a few times lately. I had added his complete works on my wishlist and borrowed it from the library last week. I read two stories from The Street of Crocodiles (Les boutiques de cannelle in French) and so far I am finding it difficult to connect with his writing. At first the flowery language annoyed me and I had to make an effort to continue reading. Later, well, I got used to the style I guess but my mind keeps wandering as I read. I doubt I will finish the book, but I'll read at least one more story.

Last week I spotted a San Antonio cover on the book swap table a local association has installed not far from my home. This was on the way to do the grocery shopping. On the way back I stopped to pick up Laissez tomber la fille and arrived just as someone had dumped a load of books. So I also picked up Rashômon et autres contes by Akutagawa Ryûnosuke and a very old "Classique Larousse" called Le théâtre comique au moyen âge with three comic plays from the Middle Ages.

I hope that you, your family, friends and loved ones are all safe today.

Rather shaken, but everyone is accounted for I think. Thank you.

Good to hear that you and family are well.

I am glad to hear that and your family are safe.

Likewise glad you are all safe.

>186 FlorenceArt: I found Bruno Schulz's writing dense and surrealistic, but I appreciated his attention to the natural world. (I haven't read anything in The Street of Crocodiles, but I read Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass some years ago.)

Thanks everyone!

Rebecca, maybe I should try reading Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.

Was thinking about you Flo. Glad you are ok.

>172 FlorenceArt: I am under the impression that all of Schultz's stories are similarly written, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend that if you already don't like his writing. But my edition did have delightful illustrations by Schultz.

>173 dchaikin: Thank you Dan :-)

>174 rebeccanyc: I just finished the first story in Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, and the writing feels very different to me, or maybe it's the subject matter, I don't know. I liked it much better than the first two stories I read. The translator is not the same, but I don't think that explains it completely.

First, glad that you and yours are safe. Thinking much of Paris these days.

Catching up on your thread from August's discussion of Bob Dylan, I was wondering if you'd read his book/memoir Chronicle. I found his descriptions of his creative process fascinating.

I loved Cousin Bette, so maybe you'll reconsider--she is one of the most conniving characters in literature.

I enjoyed looking at your web site, although unfortunately I can't speak/read French--your artistic talents are certainly multi-faceted. I especially liked your "Floating Sculptures". I was wondering whether you also composed the music for the videos?

>176 arubabookwoman: Thank you! There is a small menu on the top right on my website where you can switch to English, or you can follow this link: http://www.florenceartur.com/?lang=en

No, I take the music in my videos from Creative Commons sources, mainly ccmixter.org. This is sometimes a source of frustration, and I have started working with a musician on live performances. I don't know if our cooperation will go further but I'm enjoying live performance with her.

I don't know about Cousin Bette, in fact I don't know about Balzac at all, Le Père Goriot has brought me back to my initial opinion of his books when I was a teenager, and that wasn't a very good opinion. I don't enjoy reading about the meanness of human beings.

I've been reading mostly light stuff lately, but I also watched a few documentaries.

Paris-Berlin, destins croisés is a four part look at the history of both cities, mostly from an urban planning perspective. Interestingly, while the first three parts were mostly about Paris, the last one focused on Berlin. Since Haussmann, Paris has given up on modernity and building the city of the future, and Berlin is in the lead on that front now.

Austerlitz, for me, is first a fascinating double station in Paris where the metro enters the train station and stops above the tracks. Next it is a napoleonic victory. I had heard of W.G. Sebald's book apparently, since it's been on my wishlist since 2011, but it didn't figure in my mental wishlist, which has a lot less room in it than the LT one. After watching this excellent adaptation (that's how it is described though it is not a traditional adaptation, but rather the story of the director's personal relationship with that book), it has jumped back to the top. The movie could be seen as a spoiler, but that shouldn't really be a problem for me. After all, if the book is spoiled by my knowing the essentials of the plot, it means it's not as powerful as I think it is.

Also, I am having increasing difficulties staying interested in Proust these days. I am still reading it but I am in need of an alternative for my iPhone reads. The Age of Wire and String played that role, but now that I've finished it I need something to replace it. Probably David Shumate's Kimonos in the Closet.

I came across a good ebook version of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land today and became interested. I spent some time looking for a good electronic annotated version, but I'm not sure there is one, and after all, I read Ulysses without any notes. This could also be a candidate for my iPhone, except that I'd like to have access at least to the author's notes, and I prefer to read books with notes on my iPad (more screen space to display them).

This week I finished Howl's Moving Castle, a light story of a young witch. It was fun but the writing was pretty uninspired, and it occurred to me that I would have been better off re-reading Pratchett's The Wee Free Men. I liked the characters and the story though, and I might pick up the second book of the series some day.

I went to the library yesterday to renew the loan for the complete works of Bruno Schulz (slowly progressing through The Street of Crocodiles) and look for Coffee Time by Tetsuya Toyoda again. It was lost but apparently it's been found again, and borrowed. So I placed a reservation on it. And picked up Terre d'accueil in the BD-comics-manga section. The title (Host Country) and the Amnesty International logo on the cover give an idea of the theme, but it wasn't too preachy, although the political message was clear. It's a very sad story of exile, friendship, love and malice between human beings. Well, the main character is a yeti, but it's still about people of course. The book was written in Italian but the city is very recognizably Paris in the drawings, and it felt good to recognize it, and strange to see it through the eyes of immigrants. Not the best BD I have ever read but worth spending an hour reading. I think I will give it 4 stars.

Last night I watched a fiction on TV, which is highly unusual. It was the first episode of Rectify, and I enjoyed it. By experience I know that I probably won't follow through with the series, but I will try to catch episode two at least, before it disappears from Arte Replay. That only leaves me a few days though.

I couldn't access the original version on replay so had to watch the French dubbed one, which was less annoying than I feared because it's pretty good. One expression puzzled me: bordélique comme une pile de cintres (as messy as a pile of coat hangers). Is there really such an expression in English? I kind of like it.

After that I watched an episode of a documentary series called "Secrets d'archives" about historical events as they were recorded on TV. This one was about the first moon landing. In addition to the technological challenge, it was a huge communication enterprise for the NASA and the U.S. After all, they had to reclaim symbolic ownership of the moon from the USSR, whose spacecraft Luna 2 had been the first to reach it in 1959. The whole thing was filmed and broadcast in real time, which was a huge risk of course, and also a huge success. There were at least 17 cameras on the launch pad of Apollo 11 and several more inside the command spacecraft. A system had been devised so that a camera could be deployed before Armstrong touched the ground and film him. The landing itself was timed so that it could be broadcast on prime time (initially the astronauts were supposed to have a few hours to rest, but the schedule was brought forward). And the planting of the American flag was filmed in color. It was a fascinating story. I feel a bit miffed that I was 6 when this happened, and I don't remember a thing about it. I guess my parents were not especially excited about the whole thing? Or more probably I wasn't. Silly child.

I finished Pantagruel, and I must admit it was pretty tedious at times, although I enjoyed it at other times. I am now reading the introduction and will try to post in more detail about this book later.

I just bought La fin de l'homme rouge, the latest of Svetlana Alexievitch's books to be translated to French. I'm not sure I'm ready for Tchernobyl and this seemed safer, and a subject matter that interests me (the end of the Soviet Union).

I watched a documentary on Chambord last night. I grew up not very far from it (a couple of hours ride at most) so I visited it a number of time, like most other Loire castles, of which this is the most famous and impressive. It has a number of interesting characteristics.

Practically all the documentation about the castle was destroyed in the 17th century when the state archives in Blois were moved to another city, because there was not enough room for all the documents. So we don't know who the architect was, but the initial drafts were almost certainly drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. But he died before the work started, and the initial perfect symmetry was messed up when the king later decided to add two wings to the original square design. Initially the plan was that the four towers were organized around the double helix staircase in a rotating symmetry, a bit like a swastika. But when the king later decided to add a chapel and royal apartments around the initial square, this no longer worked and the north tower's layout had to be flipped (like a pancake) in order to allow circulation between the original square and the added wings. I'm not making much sense here because it's rather difficult to explain. The French Wikipedia article has two drawings that might make this clearer:

Probable original plan:


Modified plan with the north tower (upper right corner) flipped:


The castle is a unique combination of styles, with influences from medieval castles (François 1er and his "small band" of close friends were fascinated by chivalry), Lombard architecture which the king admired, and the rich architectural and artistic traditions of the stone workers who built other Loire castles, such as Blois. The main impetus (and huge quantities of money) came from François 1er, for whom this was much more than just one of the many castles he built. He meant it as a symbol of his power and glory, something similar to what Versailles meant to Louis XIV later maybe. Charles Quint visited the castle during a brief period of peace between the two enemies, and was very impressed.

And speaking of François 1er, I still need to comment on Pantagruel. It was, as Baswood had warned me, a bit boring. This book had rather too much schoolboy bragging and pranks. Some parts made me smile though, like the voyage through Gargantua's mouth, and later stomach, at the end. But a lot of the humor is either distasteful or lost to me, as can be expected in a work 400 years old or so. I especially hated Panurge and his crude and cruel pranks. Unfortunately it turns out he's a much more important character than Pantagruel, who mostly features by being huge (he can shelter a whole army from the rain with his tongue) and doesn't do much.

What's the connection with François 1er? He was king when the book was published. He was a great lover and protector of the arts and literature. He founded the Collège des trois langues (the three languages being Latin, Greek and Hebrew) to provide a humanist and modern counterpoint to the rigid traditionalism of the Sorbonne (where teaching Greek was banned in 1524). But he was also a devout Catholic and there were some bloody episodes of repression against Protestants. The humor in Pantagruel may have been crucial in gaining his support. As one (maybe a bit over-enthusiastic) critic said, Rabelais had to make the king laugh to avoid burning at the stake for his highly subversive ideas.

François 1er seems to have been a charismatic and flamboyant king, and is still one of the most popular in France today. His emblem was the salamander, and his motto "Nutrisco et extinguo" ("I nurture and I extinguish" fire, though many sites give "I take nourishment from it and I extinguish it", but I think the first translation is the correct one). According to Chronologie des rois de France, "he gave a decisive impulse to the exercise of absolute monarchy, and largely established the modern state in France." He coined the expression "car tel est notre plaisir" (for such is our pleasure) and established "your majesty" as the standard form of address to a king of France.

I think I need to find a biography of François 1er for my wishlist.

Getting back to Rabelais, although I appreciate the historical importance of his ideas (the above over-enthusiastic critic draws a direct line from Rabelais to enlightenment and the French Revolution, which he clearly considers the most important event in history ever), and I'm certainly glad he didn't burn, I still don't like his humor, and his subversive message doesn't really speak to me. What do I care whether the Catholic Church should reform, or the reformation movement win? They're all the same to me. What I am interested in is his language, mostly. French was still a young and very malleable language then, and I think Rabelais loved experimenting with it. I was happy to note that as I progressed through the book and became more familiar with it, I no longer had to read every single footnote. The footnotes were a bit dated and sometimes frustrating by the way. I mean, if you can't bring yourself to print "pet" (fart), I think you should be publishing la comtesse de Ségur, not Rabelais! Although an e-book, the edition I read obviously dated from the seventies and it sometimes showed.

And speaking of dated approaches to Rabelais, I also read the introduction to an 1883 edition of Gargantua that I found on the BNF site, Le Rabelais populaire. Talandier, the editor, is the over-enthusiastic critic I was referring to above. Enthusiasm is often communicative, and I enjoyed reading his views, but what interested me was his motivations for publishing two versions of the book, both translated into modern French. The first edition was the expurgated text, aimed at young readers in the lycées de garçons et de filles (this is important), and also at women. The complete unexpurgated edition was for men, and women who wanted to read it with their husband. Obviously this was a very daring and progressive move. Wow, I feel so grateful. Well, I do appreciate that Talandier really wanted women to have access to Rabelais, and of course it has to be placed in context. It was probably not a popular view with everyone. I'm so glad I wasn't in a lycée de filles in 1883.

One last note on Pantagruel. I found a totally unexpected link to another recent read, The Age of Wire and String, in the following passage:

"car l'on loue les gens à la journée pour dormir, et gaignent cinq et six solz par jour ; mais ceulx qui ronflent bien fort gaignent bien sept solx et demy."
(Freely translated by me) "for they pay people to sleep, and they earn 5 or 6 sols a day; but those who snore well and loud can earn up to 7 and a half sols."

I love those little random echoes you can find sometimes between completely unrelated books. And I'll let you read The Age of Wire and String yourself to find out what I'm referring to. :-P

Very interesting comments on Chambord.

My husband and I are watching Rectify together, which means it will take us a long time to watch the whole season, but I'm finding it compelling enough to want to keep watching, despite the long gaps between episodes.

Thank you!

I have the opposite problem in that there is not enough gaps between episodes, but it seems I'm in a minority. One episode a week would be enough for me, but French TV insists on airing at least two in a row, and often three. I think in this case it's three, but I gave up trying to keep up after the second one. Since it's only on replay for 7 days I'd have to watch the three episodes in a weekend, and that's too much for me. But it is pretty good, I'm just not a very good spectator.

>180 FlorenceArt: I have never heard of an English expression "as messy as a pile of coat hangers" but that doesn't mean there isn't one.

Enjoyed reading your thoughts on Pantagruel. I think you have top be in a certain frame of mind to enjoy the book and you can only get yourself in that frame of mind by reading some of it. Interested to read that you enjoyed the language aspect of the book and the word play, because most of this passed me by as I read an English translation. I do have an original and a modern French version, but I did not use these very much.

>185 baswood: Well, I'm not sure what frame of mind I'd need to be to appreciate fart jokes. Seems to me I'm long past the age when they would appeal to me ;-)

Anyway I'm hoping Gargantua will be, as critics say, a more mature and better book. And I'm still waiting for that page I read I school, where the insults that were frozen during a battle held on a very cold day start thawing. Not sure it's in Gargantua either, maybe in the third or fourth book. I'll just have to keep reading until I get to it, but for now I'm giving Rabelais a rest.

>186 FlorenceArt: I think the frozen words episode takes place in the fourth book.

>187 h-mb: Ah, I was afraid of that! Well, that's three books to look forward to then! I do believe that Pantagruel, being the first one, may be the weakest.

I've been forcing myself to read The Street of Crocodiles, and tonight I reached the point where I asked myself why, and stopped. I'm not sure why this book doesn't appeal to me. The first two chapters were really a pain but then the translator changed, don't ask me why, and the writing got a bit better, but still, I have to fight to keep my mind from wandering the whole time. I should probably try to read Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, since I borrowed the complete works, but I don't feel very motivated right now. Maybe later, since I don't have to give it back for two weeks yet.

>188 FlorenceArt: Gargantua is much better, yes. There's Maistre Janotus' rant and Brother John stopping Pichrocole's invasion just by himself. Hilarious!

Thanks, I look forward to it!

I just found out that starting tonight, Arte is airing a 7 part documentary called "Jésus et l'islam" by the authors of the great series "Corpus Christi". I'm going to watch the first episode now, and record the whole thing.

I just watched the third episode of "Jésus et l'islam". I was a tad disappointed by the first episode, but the second and third were wonderful. Just as good as Corpus Christi and its followers. At first I thought the subject wouldn't be as interesting to me this time, but I was wrong. I have always been intrigued by the way Islam recycled elements of the Jewish and Christian traditions, when Muhammad is always presented as coming from an animist culture. This series sheds light on this, and I am learning some fascinating things about the Quran itself and the context it was written in. And after I finish this series, I can watch another documentary on the origins of the Quran. And Corpus Christi is also available on replay until February! Yum.

>193 FlorenceArt: I like what they do and how they do it : no flashy show and, most of all, no controversy. You can hear what the different researchers have to say to the end; they can't interrupt each other, their reasoning can develop.

>194 h-mb: There is more disagreement between scholars in this series than in the previous ones, especially the latest episode I watched, which is about the prophet himself. I thought we knew more about him simply because he was born about 600 years after Jesus, but in fact it seems that the opposite is true, because we don't have any other contemporary written sources to put the Coran in context, and the Coran itself is not a historical text at all. The documentary's cut makes the scholars respond to and contradict each other, which is fun. Also, I was glad to see some of the scholars from the earlier series again. They were obviously selected not only for their knowledge but also for their capacity to transmit their enthusiasm on screen about their subject. I enjoy watching and listening to them.

I added Coffee Time by Tetsuya Toyoda to my wishlist after reading a review in Le Monde when the French translation came out, about a year ago. Then I waited for my library to get it, then it was in the catalog but nowhere to be found, and finally it was found again and borrowed by someone else, so I reserved it.

When I finally managed to get my hands on it, I was a bit disappointed at first. It wasn't what I expected, exactly. Something in the stories didn't sound quite right, a slightly unbelievable side. And then the fantastic or dreamy aspects got more visible (while staying subtle, with one fun exception), and I guess I "got" it, and I started to enjoy the stories more and more, and at the end I really loved it. Some of the stories feature recurring characters, all feature coffee, and like coffee, they are often bitter and sweet at the same time. Recommended, I think I'll give it 4 stars.

Well the last episode of Jésus et l'islam was extremely interesting. The subject, roughly, was "who wrote the Coran?". The replies showed the difficulty for a Muslim to even consider that question. It also showed that, as interesting as the question may be from a historical point of view, from the point of view of the text itself and of its religious, political and literary impact, it may be pointless. This reminded me of Robert Alter's defense of the Bible as a literary text. In the end, we'll never know for sure who wrote the Bible, the Coran or the Iliad. And knowing that all three texts did not have an author in the modern sense of the word, someone who wrote every word and checked every comma, doesn't really matter when you are reading them, and certainly shouldn't prevent us from seeing them as unique and complete works with an internal consistency, even when they occasionally contradict themselves. Err, am I making any sense here? Probably not. Oh well. I think I should read the Coran, or at least attempt to. And I've got this biography of Muhammad somewhere on my iPad...

There are more than 120 French translations of the Coran. This article gives a list with a short description of (I hope) the best of them. I wonder if there are iOS apps similar to the Bible apps (I use the Olive Tree Bible app which has been very useful) that you can use to confront different translations, or read with the notes alongside. Notes are essential when reading a text like this one.

I had neglected my revolutionary readings for a while but I finally managed to finish La chute de la monarchie. It wasn't a very enjoyable read, it's very detailed and not always very clear and I got lost a bit. It's probably mostly me, I always have difficulties following history books because I keep forgetting what I've read and losing track of people and chronologies. The book stops rather abruptly in 1792. There are other books in the series, with different authors, but I didn't realize there were so many of them. They must be at least as detailed as this one. The next one covers only a two year period (1792-1794). There are also two different books about the Napoleonic period, one for domestic aspects and one for international aspects. I think I bit off more than I could chew with this series.

I still have to finish Zweig's Marie-Antoinette. It's interesting but I'm a bit skeptical of his theories. His enthusiasm is refreshing but I'd rather read something less exciting and a bit more up to date with the latest historical knowledge.

So I already bought Jean-Christian Petitfils's Louis XVI. In fact I bought a big e-book package containing four biographies from Louis XIII to Louis XVI. I already read Louis XIV in paper form and found it interesting but rather dry, and it didn't really give me a well-rounded idea of Louis XIV as a human being. I'm hoping Louis XVI will do better at that (one of the Amazon reviewers says it does).

I should also finish Histoires de la révolution et de l'empire (I read the first essay on voting, very interesting) and read François Furet's Penser la révolution française. And I also have De révolution en république: les chemins de la France by Mona Ozouf on my wishlist. Should keep me busy for a while if I ever get to actually reading all of this.

I really enjoyed your comments on Pentagruel, and loved how mixed them into Chambord and Frances I. That is interesting that the humor was basically a way to sugar coat the criticism. I think knowing that humor was necessary to basically keep Rabellais alive changes how one might read that humor.

Thank you Dan :-)

To say that I started reading Still Life with low expectations is an understatement. I had downloaded a sample from Amazon, so I knew that the writing was uninspired but probably not bad enough to prevent me from reading it. Usually I would stop there, but since so many people seem to love this series, I finally decided after much hesitation to give it a try and see whether the character development made up for the pedestrian style. Under these circumstances, it's probably a small miracle that I actually managed to read the book, and even enjoyed it a little. But I must say I expected more from the characters. They never really came to life for me, though Clara and Peter came close to it, and Ruth was also interesting. Gamache and his team were a disappointment, and don't get me started on the bad guys. Maybe it gets better with the following books. I probably won't find out.

Jacques Demy's movie Peau d'âne is on TV tonight. Not much of a surprise, it happens every year around this time, but I'm torn. Do I watch it for the umpteenth time, or do I stick to the series Les aventuriers de l'art moderne, which will be off replay soon? I guess I'll record Peau d'âne and keep it for later. I'll post about Les aventuriers when I'm finished with it, but so far it's a delight.

Les aventuriers de l'art moderne was great. It's a 6 part documentary series that tells the story of the avant-garde in Paris from 1900 to 1945, using photos and films from the period and beautiful animations. It's an overview so it doesn't go into great detail but the focus is mostly in the artists' personal lives, and sometimes it feels a little like a soap opera. There is even a "previously on the show" sequence at the beginning. Unfortunately this approach makes painfully visible how few women there were in this world, except for those in the bed of men artists. At first I resented this, but I don't think it comes from a bias of the authors but rather from our society. It's harder for a woman to become a recognized artist, and they are less likely to be remembered by history even when they achieve success in their lifetime. This documentary just discreetly makes this obvious.

Anyway, I enjoyed the series, although the tone was much lighter in the beginning and became darker as the world did and artists were faced with difficult choices like every one else. I was especially interested by the description of André Gide's dilemma as he came back from his trip to the USSR: should he tell the truth, at the risk of undermining one of the best defenses against Hitler, who unfortunately also happened to be a dictator: Stalin? He chose to tell the truth. Also interesting was the depiction of the Spanish civil war and especially André Malraux's role in it.

I finished Stefan Zweig's Marie-Antoinette. It was fun but a little frustrating, as his opinions are a bit dated but more importantly I don't know how much his facts are. His impassioned and unabashedly partial views were a nice change over the very dry history book I've been reading, La chute de la monarchie. He made much of the affair with Fersen, I don't know what modern historians think of that, supposing they are interested at all.

I'm not through with the French Revolution though. I need to read better history books, and I need to read about the Terreur. How did things come to this? I need to understand, or at least try to.

I think I will continue with the biography of Louis XVI by Petitfils, and La révolution française : Dynamique et ruptures 1787-1804. I started both and will probably read them together. They seem to have a much more readable style than La chute de la monarchie.

I also wishlisted Antonia Fraser's biography, Marie-Antoinette: the Journey, but I don't know if I will still be motivated to read it after all this.

I got interested in the French Revolution after reading Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety and I read several books after that, including Citizens by Simon Schama, and the delightful The Queen's Necklace by Antal Szerb. I'd like to read more, eventually.

I read The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle which I found very good and informative as well as going into questions of why things happened as they did.

Of course the short answer is "What do you expect when the legal profession take control of anything"

I hope to get to Hilary Mantel's book one day.

>205 rebeccanyc:, >206 baswood: Thank you for the suggestions! I have heard about A Place of Greater Safety but had forgotten about it. I think I'll add it to my wishlist. I remember the movie Danton by Andrzej Wajda. Robespierre is a fascinating character. But thankfully not all men of law turn out like him!

Oops. I've been buying books again.

Cranford doesn't really count though, because I was about halfway through reading a free version of it when I suddenly decided I wanted to have some background on all those allusions to the war with France. So I bought the Oxford Classic edition. It has a few notes that are not essential for understanding or enjoying the novel, and some background material that I intend to read now but likely never will. But at least it won't weigh up my TBR.

Sans feu ni lieu will probably be my next light read. I recommended Fred Vargas to Rebecca and suddenly felt like reading one of her books.

Au bonheur des dames was in my shopping cart at Kobo when I bought Cranford, so I had to buy it, obviously.

I loved Cranford. The BBC miniseries was good too.

Colleen, I'm enjoying it very much.

Happy new year everyone! I will now move in to my 2016 thread.