2019 book reading by PGMCC - Volume II

Read in 2019

Title; Author; Status; Start/end date; Number of pages

The Fox by Frederick Forsyth 01/01/2019 - 05/01/2019 301 pages
Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them by John Yorke 11/12/2018 - 12/01/2019 230 pages
Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami 13/01/2019 - 25/01/2019 681 pages
Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen 26/01/2019 - 08/02/2019 389 pages
The Gifts of Reading by Robert MacFarlane 29/01/2019 - 29/01/2019 47 pages
Birthday Girl by Harukim Murakami 30/01/2019 -30/01/2019. 41 pages
The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty 09/02/2019 - 22/02/2019 530 pages
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 22/02/2019 - 05/04/2019 750 pages
47 Seconds by Jane Ryan 05/05/2019 - 12/04/2019 ? Pages
Party trap. 15/04/2019-17/04/2019 112 pages
Pulp Literature Issue No. 22 17/04/2019-
Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers 27/04/2019-
08/05/2019. 291 pages
Black Snow by Paul Lynch 08/05/2019-15/05/2019 272 pages
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty 16/05/2019-

I have started reading David Copperfield. I was planning to read some Dickens and David Copperfield was sitting on top of a convenient pile of books in my study just when @karenmarie informed me that she is organising a group read of "David Copperfield" for March. Perfect timing.



I have only really gotten into Dickens in the past few years but I have found his books to be comfort reads. Do I need help?

Welcome to Volume II of my 2019 reading thread. I hope there are enough seats for everyone and that you can find suitable beverages and cheeses of your choice on the tables.

As mentioned in the last post of Volume I, I have words regarding The City of Brass. These words will follow shortly. I know all the words but am currently trying to get them into the correct order. While I juggle them around let me remind you of the beautiful item that is The City of Brass.



And now, the words you have been waiting for:

SPOILER FREE!

This was a recommendation from a friend who very accurately divined that it would appeal to me. As soon as I started reading it I was hooked and it did prove to be a book I was reluctant to put down, made time to read, and was very engaged with.

I never like to categorise books as it may close a book off to readers that would find it worthwhile and interesting. This book is in the style of an Arabian Nights story involving characters and creatures with magical powers, and as such it will probably be found on the Fantasy shelf in bookshops and libraries. For people not inclined to read Fantasy novels this would be a terrible shame as they may never even consider reading it.

Middle Eastern mythology is the environment in which this story takes place but this is simply the backdrop to what is a tale of racial prejudice, political machinations, and the manipulation of historical events to influence the thinking of a population with the intent of keeping the current rulers in their place of power and suppressing any dissent that might arise. I do not know if the author had any particular real life situation in mind when she was writing this book, but I can see the actions and reactions in this book being relevant in many real world circumstances that exist today. Having grown up in a divided community with history being used to foment violent political action I can relate to many of the incidents in this book and the way people’s emotions were used to direct the thoughts and actions of individuals and mobs.

The book was very well written. Having recently read John Yorke’s excellent book Into the Woods: how stories work and why we tell them I was more conscious of structure and technique while reading “The City of Brass” than I otherwise would have been. In Yorke’s terminology “The City of Brass” is a three dimensional story; the characters clearly develop and the reader can see how their experiences influence their development, growth and actions.

One excellent technique was the use of two viewpoints, i.e. the viewpoints of two characters, one drawn from each of the two main factions involved in the story. Chapters alternated between the two characters and this gave a balanced view of the situation; the reader could understand the thinking and actions of the two main parties and this gives the reader an overview of the story that allows observation of how each side is manipulating facts to influence people. In every real conflict on Earth each party uses prejudices to stir up hate against the group portrayed as the enemy; historical characters are presented as heroes despite atrocities they may have committed; the atrocities of the other side are pulled out of history to demonise the present day enemy and fire up the crowds with fear and a desire for vengeance. I have lived through this sort of activity and recognized it very clearly in this book.

No one should be put off from reading this book because they see it as Fantasy. No one should be put off from reading this book because it has magic in it. The Fantasy and the magic in it are simply backdrops to a story about prejudice, conflict, and political manipulation in a multicultural environment. This story could be set in any nation on Earth and the tale of political struggle and inter-group conflict could be told in any environment; dressing it up in a world where magic is the norm is a technique to let people enjoy a story without being drawn into the real world conflicts that it reflects. This book is an exposé of how political power is wielded and control maintained. From that viewpoint it is a good companion book to The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Dune by Frank Herbert.

>3 pgmcc: City of Brass has been sitting pn my TBR pile for some time; your enthusiastic review has mentally promoted it up the stack. (Now if only I could physically get to my copy!)

>4 -pilgrim-: I have a few books in inaccessible positions too. :-)

It is also quite a hefty tome, so it will take some holding. By the way, it is the first book in a trilogy. The second book was published here on Thursday last. I have ordered it and hope to have it towards the end of next week.

I hope you enjoy it when you eventually manage to get your hands on it.

(When I saw Kingdom of Copper, the sequel to City of Brass, in the bookshop two days ago it seemed to be about twice the size of it's predecessor...)

>3 pgmcc: I’ve been wanting to read this one. Now I want to even more! But if it’s a big one, I think I’ll wait till Spring or Summer Break when I have much more time to read.

I'm glad you have such a good book to start your new thread. I hope the trend will continue.

>6 Busifer: For what it may be worth, the second title Kingdom of Copper is only about a hundred pages longer than the preceding volume. Of course, that's the US edition and I know that production specs may shift from one region to another. That's why the cover of the UK version that @pgmcc owns is so much more handsome than the one I have here in the US.

>9 jillmwo: @pgmcc's cover and edition matches the one that I bought but are yet to read. The sequel was stood right beside it on the shelf at the shop, and it looked twice as large. But. That could be down to such a simple thing as typography.
It made an impression, though.

>9 jillmwo: & >10 Busifer:
My copy of the sequel is due for delivery tomorrow so I should be able to post a comparison photography soon.

Not a great 24 hours. One of our granddaughters was brought to hospital this time last night having had a seizure. She had tests and was released tonight with antibiotics and appointments for EEG and brain scan. My wife spent most of the 24 hours in the hospital and got no sleep. When she got home tonight she learned that our cat Shadow had been run over and killed. We have had better days.

>12 pgmcc: Oh, no :’(
Hugs.
What a shitty day. I hope it will turn out well for the grandkid.
More hugs.

>12 pgmcc: Sad news to hear. Hoping for the best for your grandchild.

>12 pgmcc: I am sorry to hear that. I thought that I was having a bad day, but it pales to insignificance in comparison. I hope that the test results for your granddaughter turn out well.

I hope all will be well with your granddaughter. It's sad that you have to cope with the loss of a pet on top of the other stress. Hugs!

What a grim day, Peter. Best wishes to you all.

>12 pgmcc:, Oh no, what a rotten time. So sorry to hear about Shadow, and I hope your granddaughter will be OK!

>12 pgmcc: Loads of sympathy. Your granddaughter's experience in many ways parallels our daughter's, who is at this moment in ICU recovering (?) from rampant septicaemia. And more sympathy over Shadow.

So sorry to hear about your granddaughter and Shadow. I hope that all will be well with your granddaughter.

Thank you all for you kind comments and support.

>19 hfglen:
Hugh, I hope your daughter's recovery progresses quickly.

OMG I'm so sorry. That is a lot to handle at one time. You included, hugh! I hope both of your girls recover quickly and fully.

>22 Bookmarque: Thank you!

>9 jillmwo:, >10 Busifer: & >11 pgmcc:

My copy arrived so now I can give you the comparison of the physical books.

First off, the facts:

The City of Brass has 530 pages.
Kingdom of Copper has 625 pages.

Looking at the book spines side by side does not give a great impression of a major difference.



The next picture does give an impression of the different thicknesses of the books.



The outer cover continues the lovely design of "The City of Brass". I do, however, prefer the cover of the first book.



One disappointment is the plain colour of the end papers.



The end papers of "The City of Brass" set the bar very high but to use plain end papers in the sequel is a bit of a let-down.

>24 pgmcc: Though identical covers to yours the ones that I saw were paperbacks, one large, and the other larger. Thus my impression of Kingdom being a ”bigger” book.

>12 pgmcc: Holding you and yours in the light.

>26 Jim53:
Thank you, Jim.

>26 Jim53: I got mine from the Demon Amazon.co.uk. They deliver hardbacks from their UK warehouse (a practice that will end on March 29th if Brexit goes ahead). When a new book is published in hardback form in the UK, any independent bookshops in Ireland that get it into stock tend to get it in paperback but the same size as the hardback, i.e. it is the same book block with a different back. Perhaps that is the type you have seen. I can understand how that would attenuate the different thicknesses of the books.

Love to you and yours, Peter. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

I hope you granddaughter is doing better. And sympathies on the loss of Shadow.

>29 MrsLee: & >30 catzteach: Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

Our granddaughter is getting her apatite back and is more herself. Hopefully it was just infection related.

>31 pgmcc: Great news Peter. Blessings on you all.

>32 haydninvienna: Thank you, Richard.

So sorry to hear about your granddaughter. My older son had weird little seizures when he was newborn, but they turned out to be nothing much. Just those jerks that happen when you are falling asleep and then suddenly your whole body jerks. As a new and first-time mum, though, I was terrified.

Also sympathy on the loss of your cat. As you know from Facebook, we lost our Rory yesterday. It's really, really hard.

>34 tardis:
Thank you for your comments about Tara and for sharing your son’s experience.

As you say, I learned about Rory on facebook. Bug hug. They leave a fur lined void in the family.

I have said elsewhere that the support of The Green Dragon clientelle is very comforting.

Acquisitions: Books that recently came into my possession are:

The Kingdom of Copper as shown in post #24 above. I purchased this as I enjoyed The City of Brass, the first book in a trilogy of which "The Kingdom of Copper" is the second volume. "The City of Brass" was a book bullet from @jillmwo which she delivered in a very direct and brazen fashion.



The second of my recent acquisitions is Party Trap.



The appearance of "Party Trap" in my list of acquisitions has an interesting lead in.

Shortly after my finishing Into the Woods: how stories work and why we tell them by John Yorke, I came across a facebook post by a friend who works in drama in England. He had just read "Party Trap" and was saying how good it was. He described that this is a palindromic play. It is basically a set of lines that come to the centre of the story and then are presented in reverse order for the second half of the play. John Yorke's book had been hypothesizing that all stories follow this basic structure, i.e. the structure of the second half reflects the structure of the first half. Having read about this structure I was a sucker for "Party Trap" as it is experimental writing that apparently successfully demonstrates this structure with the same words carrying reverse meaning when they appear the second time. Even the title is a palindrome - PARTYTRAP.

Apparently it takes the form of a TV journalist interviewing a politician. In the first half the politician makes their case and in the second half the politician is taken apart by the interviewer using the same words the politician has used.

Ok, so the last two paragraphs are conjecture on my part based on the limited knowledge I have as I have not yet read this book. It is on my list as soon as I finish with David Copperfield.

The third recent acquisition is One From the Other by Philip Kerr who died last March.



"One From the Other" is the fourth Bernie Gunther detective story by Philip Kerr. The fifteenth story has just been published posthumously. I have read a couple of his other Bernie Gunther stories and found them interesting. Bernie Gunther was a pre-WWII Berlin detective who survived the war and his career has carried on in different roles since then.

When my younger son, who will be twenty-two next month, was three weeks old, my wife and I took him to a writers' conference. This was basically an auditorium full of enthusiastic readers and various authors took part in panel discussions about their work, writing in general, or did readings. Philip Kerr was one of the authors and he told very funny stories about his book research including time he spent with the Moscow police. Other authors included Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh.

Anyway, I noticed that the fifteenth Bernie Gunther book, "Metropolis", has been published and I thought I would continue reading the Gunther stories in a little commemoration of Philip Kerr. His books are not 5 stars but I found them entertaining three or possibly three-and-a-half star stories.

There we have the confessions of a bibliophile in relation to my latest book purchases.

>36 pgmcc: Very sorry to hear of the recent difficulties, Peter. Fingers crossed that your granddaughter makes a full recovery.

Party Trap sounds interesting. Your description of the structure is reminiscent of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Have you read that one?

Yorke's Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story, (different subtitle on this side of the pond?), is currently sitting on the library hold shelf waiting for me to go pick it up. Yes, that would be a direct hit you scored. Feel free to carve another notch into your book-pistol's grip. On the shelf next to it is hhHh by Laurent Binet. A book I have been meaning to read for quite a while now. Not sure who gets credit for that BB but I know it was someone here on LT.

>37 ScoLgo:

Thank you, @ScoLgo. Tara appears to be improving and back to her normal self. We will just have to wait and see what the tests show.

I have read and enjoyed Cloud Atlas. Party Trap appears to go beyond simply having symmetry but uses the same lines in reverse order and meaning different things in the second half. I am looking forward to seeing how well it works.

Yes, Yorke's book has a different subtitle across the pond. I am delighted to be able to carve another notch on the grip. Into the Woods has been responsible for the removal of a significant amount wood from the bb gun grip.

hhHh has been on my shelves for some time and I have not managed to get to it yet.

I have started reading David Copperfield and that will take me a while. I am finding the initial chapters somewhat depressing and irritating as there is a considerable amount of abuse taking place in the story. I am not getting the usual pleasure I get from books by Charles Dickens. . I read somewhere that "David Copperfield" is supposed to be somewhat autobiographical. If that is true then Dickens had a rather difficult young life. I have a biography of Dickens, in fact I have two, and must read one of them one of these days.

By the way, the reason I have two Dickens biographies is because when I read Drood* I was left with an irresistible urge to read a biography of Dickens. I went as far as buying a recently published one and, not having the time to read that one, I bought a shorter one, which I have not managed to read either.

*Take note, @MrsLee & @Bookmarque.

>38 pgmcc: I’m holding my thumbs (and fingers crossed) for Tara; good to hear that she seems back to normal. Events like that are always nerve-wrecking.

>39 Busifer: Thank you. Her parents have had quite a traumatic time. As with all these things it started at night, involved going to an out-of-hours doctor, then an immediate rush to a hospital which involved an all night sit up in the Accident and Emergency department, etc... Exhausting. I think every parent has gone through this sort of thing at one time or another with their first child.

The support from all my LT/GD friends has been great. It is one of the bonuses of being in the Green Dragon group.

>38 pgmcc: I am glad that there is some good news about your granddaughter.

Your description of Partytrap sounds fascinating; I shall look forward to your review with interest (and itching fingers).

As regards Dickens, is there any book by him without that? It permeates the opening chapters of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, and is pretty much the entire theme of Nicholas Nickleby. There is a fairly strong component in Great Expectations too, if I remember correctly. I read the first 3 of those, and part of the latter, in my teens.

I appreciate Dickens as a great campaigner for social reform. As polemic against the current evils of society in his day, the relentless, grinding portrayal of misery was perhaps necessary, but I have always found him very hard to read because of that. I cannot say that I look back on any of those books with any pleasure. (And I am not someone who requires my reading to be upbeat; for context, I should add that I am a great fan of Russian literature.)

>41 -pilgrim-:

It is only in recent years that I have started reading Dickens in any serious way. I had only read A Christmas Carol and The Signalman up to about four years ago. I have read and enjoyed Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and Great Expectations. I suspect my problem with David Copperfield is rooted in the bad start to my week so hopefully I shall enjoy the book more as life improves.

I have found that Charles Palliser's books are very good at replicating the Dickens style. The first book of his that I read was, Quincunx, which he explains in his accompanying notes was an exercise in writing in the Dickens style. He was/is a lecturer in English literature. I believe his exercise succeeded. "Quincunx" is excellent and I have enjoyed the other books he has written since.

I have not dipped into Russian literature as much as I would have liked. In my twenties I took a fancy to And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea, bought second-hand copies of these books, and I still see them sitting on my shelves every so often. I suppose after having them in the house for about forty years I should read them soon.

>42 pgmcc: are you going for a record for having a book on Mt TBR, Peter? I suspect I could probably beat that one, although it's hard to be sure.

>43 haydninvienna: Well, Richard, the Sholokhov titles are just the opening shot; a "range finder" one might say.

>42 pgmcc: Hmm. Quincunx has been on my TBR pile for ages. I bought it on a whim around the time it was first published.

I have inherited a copy of And Quiet Flows the Don from my father. If I can find it, maybe we should try a joint read sometime?

Although I am strongly tempted to read The Cossacks by Shane O'Rourke first, for context. That was high on Mt TBR, but my copy is currently in a location that I am not (again).

From the Golden Age of Russian literature, my favourite author is Dostoevsky, but I have probably read more of the Silver (and the moderns). May I recommend to you the short stories of Isaac Babel? His time serving with the Cossacks made me think of him, and he has the particularly Odessan knack of mixing the inconceivably grim with wry humour.

>43 haydninvienna:, >44 pgmcc: I shall observe this competition with interest.

>46 -pilgrim-: No use observing. Peter wins by a mile since I can't prove any different. I'm pretty sure that I have a book or two that I bought 50 years ago and have not read, but since that book would be in the storage unit in Canberra I can't prove anything.

I have had a difficult time with Dickens, A Christmas Carol excepted, and decided I can live without him. We have a selection of indigenous authors who wrote in a similar vein and I had quite enough of that in school.

I have started on Dostojevskij several times but never quite managed, though I read a lot of Gorkij in my 20’s. My memory is that it was all quite gruesome.
The one that has stayed with me is Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, which I sometimes consider for a reread.

>48 Busifer: I have The Master and Margarita on my shelves. I have only had it there a couple of years.

I'd love to join a group read of David Copperfield! Will it be in this group?

>50 Elizabeth616: I shall find out where it is and get back to you.

@Elizabeth616, I see you have just joined LibraryThing. Welcome. Tell us a few things about yourself. What sort of books do you like reading? What part of the world are you living in? Do you like wine and cheese?

>48 Busifer:, >49 pgmcc: I loved The master and Margarita. I have a whole stack of Russian fiction and non-fiction in my flat just waiting for me to dip into. It has been growing taller for the last 3 years or so.

Peter, I hope that your granddaughter's condition is improving and that you and your family are finding some peace after this horrible week.

>52 Sakerfalcon: Hi, Claire. Thank you! Things are a lot calmer at this stage.

>48 Busifer:, >49 pgmcc:, >52 Sakerfalcon: It took me 3 tries and a the right translation before I got into The Master and Margarita, despite recommendations from several friends.

It is brilliant, wonderful, and I would recommend it wholeheartedly, but - even more than most - the choice of translation is important. Bulgakov was writing at an extremely dangerous time, and a lot of his subtext is extremely subtle. For example, the Master disappears for several months; it is only by mentioning a single detail of his clothing - the fact that his coat no longer has buttons- that the author lets the reader know where the Master has been. (Detainees of the security services routinely had the buttons removed from their clothing.) A bizarre feature of a magical sequence makes sense if the scene becsuse it is a pun with Russian slang. A translation that ignores such scenes, as incomprehensible to a foreign reader, removes the subtlety and wit of the satire.

Incidentally, as an example of heavy-handed translation, the Finnish title bears no resemblance to the original, and acts as a major spoiler to the plot. It apparently translates as "Satan goes to Moscow"!

>52 Sakerfalcon: I am curious as to what you have in that stack...

>54 -pilgrim-: According to the introduction to my edition the only thing the translator changed was the way names are used: in Sweden, at the time the translation was made, we weren't expected to understand that a person should be addressed in specific ways depending on the relationship between addressee and addressed, and so to ease reading the patronym is not used.

@karenmarie has set up a thread for a group read of David Copperfield. It can be found here.

>55 Busifer: I hate when they do that! So much is lost. A lot of information is given in The Master and Margarita by one particular character using unexpected forms of address... ;-)
How did your translation handle the room full of seated people?

>57 -pilgrim-: It's been some 12 years since I last read it, so I have no memory of it. And as I'm not at home at the moment refreshing my memory is kind of difficult ;-)

On the use of honorifics and such of course I lose some context when things like that are removed. But. As I'm not familiar with how to interpret it, at all, I would not had been able to read the message even so. I got something out of reading it none the less, even as it might not have been what was originally intended; something which happens all the time, anyway :-)

>58 Busifer: I have immense sympathy for translators; it is an art where it is far easier to see that something has failed than to recognise when it has been done well.

And Russian name permutations, T-V distinctions (in any language) and the Greek genitive all stand out as ways of conveying information, or introducing deliberate ambiguity, that cannot be simply represented in English.

Bulgakov has many subtle ways of implying that characters have been detained or interrogated (the buttons, the sideltsy) without ever directly saying that this happened. But these references depend on having the relevant cultural vocabulary. To spell out what has been implied excises a lot of Bulgakov's wit, but to simply translate, without explanation, misses a lot of the point of the story for many foreign readers. I know the modern fashion in English is never to use footnotes in a translation , but with writers like Bulgakov, who rely so heavily on implied and double meanings, I feel they are essential to full enjoyment.

>59 -pilgrim-: This is the one relevant use of introductions, I believe. My edition of The Master and Margarita benefited from it, explaining such details; the same with my copy of Macbeth, which took half the book explaining how to read the subtext.

Hi Peter.

From your previous thread, I’ve added The Unfortunate Fursey and The Return of Fursey to my ridiculously huge wish list.

>12I am so sorry to hear about your granddaughter’s seizure. And on top of that to lose your cat Shadow. I hope your granddaughter’s doing better. Please accept my condolences for Shadow.

>19 hfglen: Best wishes for your daughter, Hugh.

>50 Elizabeth616:, >51 pgmcc:, >56 pgmcc: All are welcome! Thank you, Peter, for sharing the link.

>60 Busifer: Introductions are certainly a good place to include general information about cultural context, when that of the readers differs markedly, either by time, place or both, from that of the author. But to include the specifics of a given pun or allusion would often act as a spoiler to the plot. I don't like "introductory" material that wishes to familiarise me with the unfolding of the plot itself, before I actually read the book!

>61 karenmarie: Hi, Karen.

Thank you for your good wishes for my granddaughter and the condolences for Shadow. Tara does appear to be returning to normal so we are pleased with that.

>60 Busifer: & >62 -pilgrim-:

I am very wary of introductions to fiction. I have been burned too often by introductions that give away too much of the story before I read it. I prefer to receive the story the way the author intended it to be received. However, I agree wholeheartedly about it being useful to have cultural and language tips in an introduction. This proved invaluable when I read The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War by Jaroslav Hasek. The introduction contained a pronunciation guide for the Serbo-Croat names in the book and provided useful contextual information that supported my enjoyment of the story.



Apart from my feelings about introductions I also have feelings about translators. I believe they can be unsung heroes or possibly villains who get away with murder. This was exemplified with the recent publications of The Graveyard Clay and The Dirty Dust by Máitín Ó Cadhain. (The touchstones are confused because the two titles are different translations of the original Irish title of the original book, which is "Cré na Cille"). This is a book that was first published in 1949. It was written in Irish by a person who became the professor of Irish in Trinity College, Dublin having been born into a very poor family in the west of Ireland. (His life was very interesting but that is another day's story.)

Máirtín Ó Cadhain's level of Irish is regarded as the best and most sophisticated and his novel is described by some as the Ulysses of the Irish language. (I think that is nonsense. It is much better than that.) Because of the high regard with which people held Ó Cadhain's writing no one would attempt the translation of his novel in case they made a mess of it. It was not until 2015 that the first translation came out. In fact, in 2015 two translations came out, hence the two titles I mentioned above. One was a true translation ("The Graveyard Clay") while the other ("The Dirty Dust") was looser and used a lot more vulgar language, apparently as a marketing ploy to appeal to a more populist audience. You can work out for yourselves which translator I consider the hero of the hour and which the villain of the piece.

By the way, "The Graveyard Clay" is the conversations between the dead in the graveyard of a very rural Irish village in the west of Ireland, not unlike the village from whence Ó Cadhain hailed. The residents of the graveyard are from a number of generations and the only news they get from the village is when someone else dies and is buried. It is a wonderful book and as one reads through the book one gets to know the prejudices, secrets and relationships within the village.



In relation to translation in general, I read Umberto Eco's book Mouse or Rat: Translation as negotiation. That is an excellent book and it does not only describe translation from one language to another, but also from one medium to another, such as from a novel to the silver screen. As someone who has had his novels translated into other languages and who has translated other people's works, Eco was well equipped to give great insights into the whole world of translation. It was illustrated with funny examples where translations went wrong, or at least along an amusing trajectories.

>62 -pilgrim-: & >64 pgmcc: - on introductions; I think we agree. I am very wary of them and generally just browse, but for cultural and other contextual clues they do well.

I will note that in some cases I don't care if they spoil the work, though. I'm thinking of the extensive discussion that takes up the first half of my edition of Macbeth; The Oxford Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Macbeth. I have little active knowledge of late medieval symbolism, or of the language of the time, and even as I have a general knowledge of the politics of the era a bit of more specialised context added to the reading experience.

Umberto Eco is a two-headed beast. He is a great analyst, but while I loved his The search for the perfect language he really lost me in Baudolino, which to me read as an academic treatise disguised as fiction, and a dry one at that.
I have great respect for his insights on language and linguistics, nonetheless, and I will look out for Mouse or Rat? Translation as negotiation, which I haven't read.

>65 Busifer: I found Baudolino long and I only stuck with it because of the way it made a mockery of history, relics, and reports from crusades to foreign lands. One thing I found amusing was the crusade taking six heads of John The Baptist to trade for supplies.

His best book was The Name of the Rose, the one that made him famous.

>66 pgmcc: I enjoyed both the book original and the movie, which I find is not too usual.
It’s been such a long time since I last read the book, however, so I’m not sure what I would think of it today.

Baudolino ended up a DNF. Unusual for me I gave up about halfway through: I usually give in much earlier. I remember it as I understood what he was on about but didn’t find it entertaining enough.
If asked now I would not be able to tell anything about the book.

>1 pgmcc: Just been lurking here for a short while and would like to say I am glad your family members are doing better and that this thread is impressive with the quality of the posts. A nice break from more contentious sectors of LT!

>68 DugsBooks: Thank you.

The founders of the Green Dragon group were hoping to create somewhere people were safe from the all too common online abuse experienced in other groups. It works well.

Good to see you over here.

>66 pgmcc: The Name of the Rose is on my list for this year. I've been meaning to get around to it for a long time. I really enjoyed the humor and pathos of Focault's Pendulum when I read it a few years ago. Considering it was translated, I can only assume it was a masterful translation because it seemed to me to be natively written in English.

I'm also with you on introductions. I am not fond of spoilers so avoid forewords at all costs. I even try to avoid book blurbs when possible. Of course, I do revisit after the work itself. Have often picked up insights that I missed on my own reading but at least the plot was new to me as I read it.

Strangely, I don't have that issue with watching a movie before reading the book. I actually prefer that these days. Maybe it's because I will only read a book where I actually enjoyed the movie? Coming back to the story via a more detailed medium adds rather than detracts, in my opinion. I had excellent experiences with this approach for challenging story lines like Cloud Atlas, Under the Skin, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

>64 pgmcc: , >66 pgmcc:, >67 Busifer:, >70 ScoLgo: I have great respect for Umberto Eco and his games with words, which do create a headache for any translator. Perhaps the reason translations of Eco's books work so well is that (as he explains in Mouse or Rat?) he engaged in correspondence with his translators, discussing what would be the cultural equivalent in their language of the effect that he was trying to obtain in the original.

But he is firmly of the "change rather than explain" school of thought regarding translation, even telling his translators to remove sections that they felt could not be found a direct equivalent. So, for example, the German versions of his work remove much of the garrulous, casually blasphemous dialogue of one character, because 'Germans swear less, particularly, regarding religious themes, and therefore the dialogue, if included in full, would sound far more shocking than in Italian'.

I dislike this attitude in translations intensely. It is intellectually arrogant. Assuming that Eco is correct in that Germans take religious-themed 'bad language' more seriously than Italians do, why should he also assume that Germans are unaware of the fact? Probably most Germans would be able to shrug, recognising that this is a cultural difference, and that the Piedmontèse character is not intending the level of offensiveness that would be inferred if a German uttered the same words, instead of being left wondering why he speaks like a German. (I believe that this was discussed regarding Baudolino, and I do wonder if these cultural adjustments do remove the verve that makes it readable, and if the Italian original is very different in tone from what the rest of us are getting.)

It seems to me to be a form of cultural imperialism when translators feel the need to change what is familiar to readers of the original work, but not to their readers, into something that their readers are familiar with. It forces a false homogeneity, and denies the validity of other ways of behaving, in other times and places.

It is also insults the reader. The translator is saying "I know about this, but I assume you are too ignorant to know, and too stupid for it to be worthwhile to explain". Maybe I happen to know about cultures other than my own. Or maybe I am completely ignorant about this difference - but I would like to learn about it, please.

That said, I thoroughly recommend Mouse or Rat?, which really set me thinking about translation issues, and is written in a light and amusing manner.

>72 -pilgrim-: Whoops - that turned into something of a rant! Maybe there should be a thread on which translators we prefer (and why).

I apologise Peter, for taking up so much space on your thread.

>72 -pilgrim-: I think that a thread on "which translator" would pretty soon have to be "taken outside" for exactly the reason you mention--that people have strong feelings about it. I remember that in the introduction to Archibald Colquhoun's translation of I Promessi Sposi, he talks about hearing Italians arguing heatedly among themselves about how particular passages should be translated.

>72 -pilgrim-: There is no need to apologise. I have no objection to conversations taking their course on this thread. Remember, this is a pub. Conversations in pubs can go in any direction.

I am delighted you enjoyed Mouse or Rat?. Your comments on it are spot on. I had forgotten about Eco liaising with his translators. Haruki Murakami does the same. Murakami would not be the same academically as Eco but he does try to use Japanese cultural themes in his works that he wants his readers to appreciate.

I may have to reread Faucault’s Pendulum. It was the second Eco I read and I felt it dragged when compared to The Name of the Rose. I loved the chapter on vanity publishing. That had me laughing out loud. I think I was not fully aware of Eco’s tricks and jokes when I read it and missed a whole layer of enjoyment.

His last novel, Numero Zero was very good. He had that knack of writing “fiction” and leaving you wondering whether or not it was fiction. I found that my fact checking on Numero Zero revealed some key elements in the book to be true, even to the extent if finding a yiutube video of the Italian Prime Minister’s speech in Parliament where he confirms the cirnerstone premise of Eco’s novel..

I love stories that skillfully mix fact and fiction and leave one wondering which is which. I find these stories help develop a healthy sense of skepticism. Other authors I have found can do this are Wu Ming (an Italian group producing stories in the name of “Wu Ming” and “Luther Blisset” and Daniel Pennac.

>66 pgmcc: You may be amused that I used that very passage in Baudolino as an analogy in a talk I gave the other day. I was commenting on how the Tabora railway works were turned into a mint making notgeld in World War 1 for German East Africa, allegedly out of used shell cases from the warshil Königsberg. The number of things made out of these shell cases definitely recall Baudolino's trade goods!

>75 hfglen:. :-)

>54 -pilgrim-: In answer to your curiosity about my Russian book pile (and to further hijack Peter's thread), the pile currently contains:
Chernobyl prayer by Svetlana Alexievich, Chernobyl by Serhii Plotkin, Pushkin's children by Tatiana Tolstaya, Gulag by Anne Applebaum, Inside Putin's Russia by Andrew Jack, Bolshoi confidential by Simon Morrison, Imperial dancer by Coryne Hall, Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, Hope against hope and Hope abandoned by Nadezhda Mandelstam, Life and fate by Valery Grossman, and Cancer ward and The gulag archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. That's in addition to a few other titles that have made their way onto actual shelves rather than the pile.

I really will get around to reading them all one day!

>74 pgmcc: To get back to the main topic, I too enjoy Eco's writing though I've only really read his novels. I especially like The mysterious flame of Queen Loana which is basically a man going through the books and comics in his attic to reconstruct memories of his life. My copy has coloured illustrations.

>77 Sakerfalcon: I enjoyed The Mysterious Flame of Queen Liana. The illustrations are excellent and are tied into the story very well.

>71 -pilgrim-: Very well stated, I think, and I share your opinion on his stance.

>77 Sakerfalcon:, >78 pgmcc: U-hu, a partial hit on The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Baudolino definitely put me off Eco, but Mysterious flame seems like a good one!

I received an e-book version of 47 Seconds by Jane Ryan via the Early Reviewer programme. By coincidence a local independent bookshop is holding a book launch for this book on March 21st. I am not likely to have finished David Copperfield in time to have also read this book by then, but I shall go along all the same. I find book launches good fun. They have the essence of hope; someone has managed to get a book published and they are all full of joy and good will. Also, there is often wine. :-)

It is a crime novel set in Ireland and published by a well established publisher.

>79 Busifer: You might find Numero Zero of interest too. It is out of the ordinary in relation to Eco's novels in that it is quite short.

>81 pgmcc: :D
I'll make a note of it.

>70 ScoLgo:, >74 pgmcc:
I never actually finished Foucault's Pendulum - because I was enjoying it too much!

I happened to be familiar with the Cathar theology, Popes and anti-Popes, and politics that form the background to The Name of the Rose.. With Foucault's Pendulum I was less familar with its references - and got sidetracked into reading up on some, which sidetracked into reading about Lurianic Kabbalism...And then life intervened and I lost access to my copy.

As to Numero Zero: Alas, it is sitting in a TBR pile that is not at my current location.

>83 -pilgrim-: That's a strange excuse for not finishing a book - but it makes perfect sense! ;)

I have two print books checked out from the library at the moment. Once I finish & return them, I think I will finally crack open my copy of The Name of the Rose. It has languished on my TBR shelf for far too long.

>80 pgmcc: "Also, there is often wine. :-)"

That reminds me of an old-timer who frequently comes to my workplace for the free coffee. He keeps up on all the local funerals (he actually knows most of the people, at least remotely) and attends as many as possible for the free food. At least he says he does, I suspect him of being a bag of hot air who kissed the Blarney stone.

Not you though! Your book launching parties are much more upbeat than the funerals, I'm sure. :D

I swear my long-haired orange cat knows I am wearing a black shirt (unusual for me). Every time I sit today he jumps on my lap and cuddles just long enough to give me a coating of orange fur, then he jumps down.

>85 MrsLee: Your old-timer sounds like a soulmate for Grandma Mazur in the Stephanie Plum stories!

>85 MrsLee:

Your book launching parties are much more upbeat than the funerals, I'm sure.
It depends on the book. My son and I went to the launch of a book of poetry. I am not a great fan of poetry but a friend of mine who has produced poetry that even I like, recommended I go to this other poet's book launch. Everything was wonderful until he did a reading. After that a funeral would have been more fun.

Cats are mind readers. Your cat knew about your choice of shirt before you even knew you were going to wear it. Your cat has had all night planning its moves to give you a fine coating of hair.

>87 pgmcc: lol! You could always do what I did about an hour before the concert last night. With community concert series, one never knows what sort of talent one will be trapped in an audience full of people who might know one and desire to speak with them. So, I fortified with one glass of wine before the event to put me in a more flexible mood. Worked a charm, although this time the talent was above average, and I only had to speak to a few people.

I did notice that they were selling wine in the lobby as well. Possibly others take the preventative medicine as well.

>88 MrsLee:
You are a wise person. Your pre-emptive medication is sound advice.

At the poetry reading the poet was claiming an upbringing in a poor area and his poems were about how difficult it was for his family, and his mother in particular, brining up children in council flats (local authority social housing rented to those who cannot afford to buy a home of their own). We were all full of sympathy until one of his poems described his mother pushing the pram up flights of stairs. This lost him all credibility. As a nephew of mine discovered at his brother's wedding soon after the time I was at the poetry book launch, it is difficult to push a pram up stairs. My nephew was at his brother's wedding which involved a barbecue. My nephew was pushing a pram full of burger baps to the BBQ location. It involved going up a flight of stairs. My nephew, not having had a lot of experience with a pram at that stage, pushed the pram up the stairs. Of course the content of the pram tumbled out everywhere. I am glad he had this experience with burger baps before his son was born.

Had the poet's mother pushed her pram up the stairs we might not have had the opportunity of hearing her son read crap, meaningless, attempting to go for the sympathy vote, poetry.

>87 pgmcc: >89 pgmcc: Can we assume you didn’t care for the poetry? As to prams and stairs, maybe he was channeling At Swim-Two-Birds, in which I vaguely recall an incident involving a cow going upstairs backwards? Or something like that. All my memories of that book are vague, to be honest.

>90 haydninvienna: My son had recently completed his degree in English. Unlike his father he appreciates poetry. His detailed criticism of what the “poet” read on the evening would, however, indicate it was not something worthy to be called poetry. It was painful.

>89 pgmcc: Pish. Everyone knows that you pull a pram up a flight of stairs. ;)

>77 Sakerfalcon: Also replying late:
Chernobyl prayer by Svetlana Alexievich, Chernobyl by Serhii Plotkin, Pushkin's children by Tatiana Tolstaya, Gulag by Anne Applebaum, Inside Putin's Russia by Andrew Jack, Bolshoi confidential by Simon Morrison, Imperial dancer by Coryne Hall, Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, Hope against hope and Hope abandoned by Nadezhda Mandelstam, Life and fate by Valery Grossman, and Cancer ward and The gulag archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. That's in addition to a few other titles that have made their way onto actual shelves rather than the pile.

Written by a Belarusian, a Ukrainian-American, a Russian, an American-Pole, a Briton?, an American, another Briton, 3 Jewish-Russians and an Ukrainian-Russian - an interesting selection of perspectives you have there.

Given that it is rapidly approaching March 17th in this part of the world I shall take this opportunity to wish you all a

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Thanks, and the like to you, @pgmcc!

And a very happy St. Paddy's Day to you too, Pete!

>94 pgmcc:

I saw that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. I didn't know you had automobiles back then.

I did a somewhat risky FB ad for the holiday at work. A photo of one of our new cars, the caption: "St. Patrick would drive the Hell out of this 2019 (insert model of car). How about you? I'm still dubious of the propriety, but it made my boss laugh and he said go ahead.

Pete, I hope there is no driving in your parts other than to where you want to go and may you have joy today.

>97 suitable1: We even had wifi then. No matter what level archeologist are working at they have not found twisted pair copper wire or fibreoptic cable.

>98 MrsLee: Sounds good to me @MrsLee.

As someone who studied geology I have to keep quiet about how snakes nevee actually made it to Ireland when St. Patrick’s driving them out if Ireland is mentioned. Do not tell Riley; it would shatter his world picture.

Of course, St. Patrick’s monks were very practicle. The first written record of how to make whiskey was in the writings of one of St. Patrick’s followers.

>97 suitable1: Proof positive we had cars then.

>100 pgmcc: I'm sure the monks were primarily concerned with its use for medicinal purposes.

On another topic, since you've gone and debunked the story about the snakes, we could turn instead to St. Gertrude whose day this also is. She is the patron said of cats, as I understand it.

>102 jillmwo: You are correct in relation to St. Gertrude.

I have a sister with Gertrude as her middle name. When I find the time I shall tell the funny family story about how she ended up with the name, which she hates.

>101 pgmcc: Clearly an American cartoon; there's a continuity error. It's a left-hand-drive car; in Ireland it would be right-hand-drive, to keep to the left side of the road. Otherwise great!

>104 hfglen:

Well spotted, Hugh.

I have just discovered that it was @suitable1 who gave me this cartoon in the first place, two years ago.

Ah, it's us what drive on the sensible side that notice these things ;-)

A belated Happy St Patrick's Day to you! I hope you celebrated in style!

And another belated Happy St. Patrick's Day from me!

>107 Sakerfalcon: & >108 -pilgrim-: Thank you!

I hope you enjoyed the day yourselves, wherever you were.

It appears from the look of this thread that I am not reading anything. In reality I am reading David Copperfield and my posts for this group read are on the thread dedicated to it: https://www.librarything.com/topic/304385

I started David Copperfield on 22nd February and am still not finished. Currently on Chapter XXXVIII of LXIV chapters. Page 474 of 750 pages.

My wife and I went to Westport in County Mayo for the weekend. I took Friday off so we could get there on Friday.

Mayo is famous for many things including Croagh Patrick, the pyramidal mountain you see below.



Westport is somewhere I have wanted to visit for a long time. It is a planned town unlike most rural towns in Ireland. Also unlike many Irish rural towns it is thriving and buzzing. It is a pleasure to visit.

There is a literary reason we wanted to visit the town. George A. Birmingham, an author whose work my wife enjoys and whose books I have collected, lived in Westport. He was the Church of Ireland minister in the town. We went in search of information about him. As part of our quest we visited the Church of Ireland Holy Trinity church. We were surprised to find it open to visitors. We were hoping to speak to someone but we found a beautifully decorated church with plenty of wall charts and information on the history of the church, including the time when George A. Birmingham, whose real name was Rev. James Owen Hannay. I shall be posting more pictures at a later stage, but thought I would include a few snaps that give you an idea of what it is like.

When was the lovely church constructed? I really like it.

>112 jillmwo: 1868. It was the last Church of Ireland church built before the Church of Ireland was disestablished. Lord Sligo had it built as part of his estate.

I particularly like the steeple for some reason and now some part of me is wondering vaguely what "we" (using the royal we, there) might know about the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. I'm not sure I know anything.

>114 jillmwo:
Well, it all started when Henry VIII wanted the Pope to annull one of his marriages and the Pope refused. Henry then declared himself head of the church in England. This was the start of Anglicanism, the origins of the Church of England. It also established the Church of Ireland (CoI) These were state churches with representatives in the House of Lords.

In Ireland the church was financed by tithes that everyone had to pay to the CoI even if they were not members of the church. This led to various degrees of unrest including the Tithe Wars.

In 1867 (I think that is the date) Parliament voted to disestablish the Church of Ireland which meant it no longer had representatives in the House of Lords and lost some of its rent rights over certain lands that Parliament took into the possession of the state. In simple terms the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland separated it from the Church of England and terminated it as the official state religion.

That’s it in a nutshell. For a more detailed account you would want to read about the Reformation in England, the Restoration, the arrival of King William of Orange, the Cromwellian campaign and massacres in Ireland, etc...

>111 pgmcc: One concludes that Ireland is full of beautiful places the rest of us have never heard of, let alone to have any chance of visiting.

>116 hfglen: I think that conclusion can be applied to many countries.

The church in Westport was a surprise to me.

A lovely place, and that sounds like a lovely weekend, as well.

>114 jillmwo:, >115 pgmcc: Just to complicate matters, the Church of Ireland, like the Episcopal Church of Scotland (which is also disestablished), remains part of the Anglican Communion.

Church politics is either recondite, arcane and boring or extremely bloody. I vastly prefer it in the former state.

All of which has reminded me of Chesterton's masterly take-down of F E Smith over the Bill to disestablish the church in Wales.

>120 haydninvienna:
I had to look that up. It is excellent. I only wish he were alive to give his view on Brexit and the current debacle debates in Westminster.

>121 pgmcc: Have you seen the cover of th latest Economist, Peter?

>120 haydninvienna: I agree, that was superb.

>122 haydninvienna: Your handiwork biting home.

>115 pgmcc: and >119 -pilgrim-: I know more now than I did before. Thank you. Of course, I know about the Reformation but I never considered how Henry's behavior might have shaken up the other adjacent related bodies. And I don't think I realized or ever thought about the Church of Scotland being a part of the Anglican Communion. (On this side of the pond, the Episcopal Church of the United States sticks out awkwardly -- all elbows and knees -- in trying to slide into the pew with the rest of the Anglican Communion.)

And your point about church history is well-taken. (That said, we must be careful about such discussions here in the Pub.)

>125 jillmwo:
The Episcopal Church of Scotland is part of the Anglican Communion. The “Church of Scotland” is Presbyterian, an interesting difference.

I believe we are within the GD rule as long as we are discussing facts and not straying into preaching or apostolising. As you say, one must be careful of not stepping over that line. If we were not to mention religion at all we would have to avoid most European history and could never discuss several of Dan Brown’s novels, the latter perhaps being a good thing. :-)

>125 jillmwo:, >126 pgmcc: Moreover the Church of Scotland is the established Church in Scotland - thanks to complications in the history of the Scottish Crown, and the accommodations with Protestant Scottish lords that Mary (Queen of Scots, not Mary I of England) had to make to accede to the Scottish throne.

Being a Catholic monarch of a largely Presbyterian nation was a difficult political manoeuvre, complicated by the actual residence in Scotland of Calvinist theologian, John Knox. (His famous First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women was actually a direct attack on Mary's rule - regiment being Scots for regimen i.e. rule.)

Henry VIII of England's religious politicking had no direct effect on the situation in Scotland, a neighbouring country which has its own religious history.

The existence of the Anglican Church only became an issue, when the non-existence of any grandchild of Henry VIII left the Scottish monarch as heir to the English Queen Elizabeth (I).

James VI's move to London, to become James I of England, was not popular in Scotland. He was probably privately a Catholic, like his mother. If it had been the the throne of a larger, more prosperous, Catholic neighbour... that could have got really messy. And British history very different.

History of religions fascinates me. And that church is beautiful!

>45 -pilgrim-: My copy of The Collected Stories of Issac Babel has arrived. You have scored a direct hit with your book-bullet.

>129 pgmcc: I am delighted to hear that. *cackles evilly, rubbing hands together*

I look forward to reading your thoughts on them.

>130 -pilgrim-:

You do that evil cackle really well. I shall have to watch you very closely lest you riddle me with book bullets when I am not expecting it.

Rubbing your hands together reminded me of Uriah Heep as I am reading David Copperfield at the moment. Only 200 pages left to go. I am writing my thoughts on the thread dedicated to a group read of the book in the 75 book challenge group. David Copperfield group read thread.

In relation to Russian literature there are some more recent authors I have enjoyed. These include:

Vladimir Voinovich - The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin

Dmitry Bykov - Living Souls

Yevgeny Zamyatin - We

I have downloaded a copy of Gogol's Dead Souls because I believe Bykov's "Living Souls" is basically a modern take on "Dead Souls" and I want to read the original for comparison.

Trying to catch up, but I'm so far behind that it's hard. I'm sorry to lag so much.

With your strong recommendation, you did get me with a BB for Into the Woods.

Thank you, too, for thinking of me on your adventuresome trek to Franklin. I've been there (my mother lived next door in Wrentham for very many years) and would have loved to join you for a meet-up. The last time I was back, I met Marissa Doyle at Davis Square and we had a nice lunch in Cambridge. I hope on another trip you can connect with more GDers.

I could not get into Gormenghast, though. It gave me a very strange and unpleasant feeling and I abandoned it after fewer than a hundred pages.

>131 pgmcc:
I have been following your thoughts on David Copperfield in that thread. It reminds me of why I do not like Dickens: the heaping of so much unrelieved misery on one character (usually the protagonist) I find too depressing. I recognise that he did sterling work in acting as the social conscience of his age, but I do not enjoy reading him.

Why I feel that way about Dickens, yet love Dostoevsky,, is hard to say. I have just finished reading Netochka Nezvanova; I left my comments on the old thread devoted to that book, in the hope of eliciting some responses.
https://www.librarything.com/topic/60248
Maybe it is because Dostoevsky creates more fully rounded human beings, without descending into caricature; maybe it is that the undertones of his faith give a sense of hope, even when exposing the awfulness of human behaviour.

I was safe from your BB onslaught behind the sturdy shield of Mount TBR - which contains copies of all 3 of the books you mentioned!

It took me a long time to locate a copy of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, which I first heard serialised on the BBC years ago.

Unfortunately Mount TBR is currently located in other climes. I am therefore tempted to join you in an electronic read of Dead Souls...

>133 -pilgrim-:

It reminds me of why I do not like Dickens...

I think the reason I like Dickens is threefold, one, as you state, he was showing the most wretched calamities falling on people and the conditions they live in to highlight the plight of people; two, the vividness of his characters; and three, everything generally ends up well so one can read the horrors knowing that things will be sorted out at the end. I suppose his quirky use of language is a fourth reason.

I have not yet ventured into the realm of Dostoevsky. I would agree that Dickens's characters are more caricature rather than real.

When reading Dickens I am always conscious that his magazine was very popular and that in the days before radio, television, cinema, Internet and smart phones, his works would have been the soap operas of the day for the reading classes. When we hear that 10,000 would have been an initial run of some of his magazines and that people queued to get a copy on the day of publication, we get an idea of how important his work was. We also realise that when writing his stories Dickens was playing to his audience and that he needed the cliff-hangers, emotional stirrings, mysteries, and villains.

I was safe from your BB onslaught...

Oh! You spotted what I was doing there. :-)

The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin

I found Chonkin shortly after having read The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War which prepared me for a similar treatment of the military life in Chonkin.

I have also read the sequel to "The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private ivan Chonkin", and have the third book, Displaced Person.

One of the things about Voinovich that I find interesting is the picture of his receiving an honour from President Putin on his return to Russia from a forced exile. It struck me that Putin, in his previous profession, was most likely the person who expelled Voinovich in the first place.

Dead Souls will be a little while in the future. We can set up a thread for a group read of "Dead Souls" and can invite comments from passing GDs and other LTers.

>132 Meredy: I am delighted whenever I spot a post from you. Catching up, is not something you have to do, and do not apologies about lagging so much. I noticed a short while ago that I have not reviewed many of the books I have read in the past two years.

I hope you enjoy Into the Woods. He definitely has had an effect on my reading. I am not overburdened with it but I am more conscious of structure and where I am in a story.

I am sorry you could not get into Gormenghast. Part of the first book did have an ominous feel to it.

How could I not think about you when I went on the trip to Franklin? It was a book-hunt, I started out from Boston, and you had described your times in Boston book-hunting so pleasantly and with such fond memories that there is no way I could have undertaken such a trip without thinking of you. Also, on the return journey I picked up Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, a book bullet ably aimed by your good self.

>134 pgmcc:
Dead Souls will be a little while in the future. We can set up a thread for a group read of "Dead Souls" and can invite comments from passing GDs and other LTers
Once you have completed David Copperfield of course.

President Putin may have autocratic tendencies but he shows no signs of being a Stalinist. His nostalgia appears to be for the Russian Empire rather than the USSR.

We are skating on thin ice re GD terms here, so I will justify the above comment by recommending Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin - a vicious but extremely witty satire, which espouses that point of view.

(Caveat: Sorokin pulls no punches, and is not for the faint-hearted! I have had his Голубое сало recommended to me several times but have not yet nerved myself to it - or found an English translation!)

>136 -pilgrim-: So, you are firing your own book bullets in response, I see.

I am safe from his Голубое сало as reading Russian is not one of my skills, although I can say "I do not speak Russian" in Russian, thanks to an attempt in my early 20s to teach myself the language from books.

I agree that Putin is for Russia rather than any particular political system.

>136 -pilgrim-: According to the LT list, today in 1809 Gogol was born.

>137 pgmcc: *whistles insouciantly whilst polishing sniper rifle*

>138 pgmcc: С первым Апреля, Пётр!

It seems that Russia celebrates April Fool's Day (День Смеха or День Дураков) and has done since the time of Peter the Great.
https://www.tripsavvy.com/celebrate-april-fools-day-in-russia-1622483

With Gogol' s black humour, I wonder if that date for his birth amused him?

>134 pgmcc: I have also downloaded (from Project Gutenberg) an "adaptation" of Dead Souls by a Polish emigré - a philosophy professor called Krystyn Lach-Szyrma, who took part in the 1831 rebellion - called Home Life in Russia. It should make an interesting comparison.

I note from your group read thread that you have not been enjoying David Copperfield as much as you expected. I hope my negative attitudes to Dicken's, as expressed here, have not infected you...

>142 -pilgrim-:
Your comments did not infect me. I am quite aware of what I did not like about David Copperfield, not that I didn't like it, but that I do not find it as enjoyable as the other Dickens books I have read. It was too predictable in some respects; there were too many coincidences for tear-effect; Dora was a dreadfully annoying and unrealistic character; David had no decent judgement; etc...

>143 pgmcc: It is the caricature nature of Dickens' characters, I think, that makes me less willing to endure the (realistic) misery that he puts them through. What you are complaining about with David and Dora is how I see all his characters - they come across as idealised types, rather than real people. However skilfully, humorously or viciously, they are delineated, they always seem to be just marionettes, being put through the motions to tug at our heartstrings. I appreciate the social message he was trying to put across, but don't enjoy watching him do it.

But that is simply my opinion. I was apologising for intruding my sour remarks into your read of an author whom you evidently enjoy, but I fail to.

"47 Seconds" by Jane Ryan. Early Reader book.



This is a first novel by Jane Ryan. It is a murder mystery set in Ireland and the main character is Bridget, a graduate from Trinity College, Dublin, who went on to study law and become a barrister before giving up her law career to become a Guard (Irish police officer). As it happens she comes from a wealthy part of Dublin and her father is a retired judge.

I am about 25% through the book. Despite an angsty start the story and the writing has settled down to the extent that the story is becoming the main feature rather than the irritating character of Bridget and her over-reaction to the simplest of perceived slights. I think the anger and self-centredness of the character could be toned down a bit but, as I say, the story is taking over now and we may be seeing the character settle down a bit. It this were a real situation I would be amazed as this person being allowed to continue in the force, or even pass basic training.

This is the book that I received an invitation to the book launch a couple of days after notification from Librarything that I had won a copy for review on the Early Reviewer programme. I went along with my wife and we bought a physical copy to support a local writer and a local publisher. I couldn't help but feel the people attending the book launch (about fifty or sixty people as far as I could see; a good turnout for a book launch for a book by an unknown author in Dublin) were mostly from the well-to-do/posh part of Dublin that the book attempts to parody. It turns out that most of the attendees know the author and were there go give support. It was a very nice event and I believe about 100 books were bought, not bad for the event.

I shall report more as I progress through the book.

Poolbeg Press has been established for a long time and has always focused on publishing works by women. The representative from the publisher gave a nice speech to introduce the event.

The story in 47 Seconds is keeping me going and it outweighs the effect of the issues I have with the writing. I know there are people here who would not put up with some of these issues so I shall list some of them to hopefully get your opinion on whether or not I am being too fussy.

Main character: Very much full of angst and lashes out at people for the slightest perceived offense. This character is a Guard (Irish police officer). One of the key themes of the book is the latent misogyny and sexism in the force. Our main character is the daughter of a judge, has gone to the most posh university in the country; went on to study law and became a barrister. She gave up her legal career to become a Guard. (The reasons become clear through reading the story.) Her father, the judge, is not impressed with her abandoning her legal career. Her mother is suffering from Alzheimer disease and much of the caring for the mother has fallen on the main character.

My issues: Her lashing out at people is over the top. The point would be better made if this were toned down a bit.

For someone who has had such a privileged upbringing, worked in the legal profession, and lived the world of the well-to-do, some of her actions are a bit out of character, such as:

- using singular form of verb with a plural subject
- taking mouth-fulls of wine (this happens with several characters on different occasions whenever wine is poured). In this book wine is not drunk in any other fashion.

One person, in a jeweller's store, has a "steaming" cup of latté. I ask you, have you ever seen latté steam in any reasonably heated interior environment. I think someone makes their coffee too hot or they have never had a latté.

Am I being too picky?

>146 pgmcc: I’m not even sure I would have noticed the latté one, Peter. I would most definitely have noticed the subject-verb one and it would have irritated the heck out of me. The 3 points you raise make me wonder whether the author is of the social class that drinks wine and lattés or not.

In short, I would regard your 3 points as faults, yes. Might or might not be enough to make me stop reading.

>147 haydninvienna: Having attended the book launch, met the author and seen her friends, I am firmly of the belief she is of the wine and latté drinking social class. I would even suggest she and her friends would be "ladies who would do lunch". Perhaps she does not drink wine or latté herself and therefore has a knowledge gap in those areas. Alternatively, as she was trying to write a gritty, on-the-ground cop story she may have thought of gritty, on-the-ground cop types and thought they would be the people who would gulp wine and have their verbs and subjects mismatch.

I must give her some space in relation to her social class and practices. While part of that "club" I think she may have been dealt a strange deck and is possibly playing it incorrectly. In her little speech at the launch she gave thanks to her husband and sons who put up with late dinners and delayed laundry during the time she was writing the book. My immediate thought was, "Why are they not making the dinner and doing the laundry?" This could be the source of some of the angst in the main character. As far as I am aware the author is working full-time and, according to what I understood from her speech, is not getting a lot of domestic support at home from the lads. Apparently she gets lots of moral support. I could be wrong, but I think she deserves a bit of credit for getting the book written while having other things to contend with.

The story is good and that is carrying me on. I am about half-way through and find that I am eager to see how the story proceeds, so something is working.

>148 pgmcc: I just love you for that speech. :) So sweet. I would not be as charitable, I'm afraid, when it came to the behavior of her main character. I would probably finish the story if I had met the author, as you have, but unless the character had some growth and development, that would be the end of it for me.

One of my main objections to many of the "cozy" mysteries, or "gritty" for that matter, that I try, are the bizarre mood swings of the characters. They are set up as intelligent people, then they do/say really stupid things. I especially don't like huge mood swings, or anger which seems all out of proportion. These traits are frequently given to women, which annoys me even more. I admit to bouts of unreasonableness, but as a rule, I keep it under control.

>149 MrsLee:. Thank you, @MrsLee, for your appreciation of my "speech". I do believe fair is fair.

In relation to your comments in your second paragraph, I agree wholeheartedly. You have stated it perfectly with, "...huge mood swings, or anger which seems all out of proportion. " Some people might argue that it is a bit of exaggeration to make a point, but the unreasonableness of the response becomes the focus of the reader rather than the point the author is trying to make.

"These traits are frequently given to women, which annoys me even more." I agree this happens but I normally see it with male authors. The fact that this author is a lady made it more surprising for me.

" I admit to bouts of unreasonableness,..." Nobody is immune to these.

"but as a rule, I keep it under control." Not all of us have your level of self-control.

I have yet to see much personal growth in Detective Guard Bridges. There is a slight improvement in her reactions to other people but this may be a bit more focus on writing the story rather than a conscious effort to demonstration increasing maturity. To date the poor behaviour has been presented with subsequent explanations as to what is happening in Bridges's personal life that is affecting her behaviour; what is missing is significant self-awareness and change. Of course, I am only half-way through the book.

>148 pgmcc: I think your comment about the author's background and the contribution her personal circumstances make is very perceptive. It is a mistake to assume that the privileged classes are immune from ingrained misogyny - the question is not whether her background has advantages over other women, but whether women are subject to serious discrimination within that social class. If she is personally on the receiving end of the misogynistic attitudes that her character experiences, the reaction described may contain her own anger as well as the character's.

I admit that persistent flaws such as you describe tend to irritate me intensely.

However what you wrote about her immediate family may go some way to explain that too. It is common for the family of novice authors to act as beta readers and informal copy editors. If they are not providing domestic backup, we cannot presume that they are providing literary support either. I am impressed that she is finding time to write at all; it sounds as if he proof reading/beta testing is not all that it could be.

Do you know what her educational background is? Academic education is still often considered unnecessary for young ladies of a certain class. Maybe her grammar is that poor, rather than her character's? I had a friend whose parents spent a considerable amount of money buying her an education that was academically inferior to my state school one (but, of course, did furnish the "right" social connections).

Thanks for an interesting discussion up above. I don't feel like I have anything to contribute, at the moment, but just listening is nice, too.

>152 Busifer: I am glad you are enjoying it and glad to know you are sitting in the pub with us.

>153 pgmcc: *bows*

It looks the story in 47 Seconds is leading to main character, a cop who has an obsession with a particular criminal, is going to turn out to be the criminal’s half-sister. This is too contrived for me.

Also, the author demonstrated another lnowledge gap by having an adopted boy see his birth parents name on a birrh cert his adoptive mother had. This would not be normal.

Bah, I hate that overly coincidental shit, too. Unless there are lots of connections woven into the plot it's far too "author is so clever".

Hi Peter. Just thought you’d like to know that I’ve just seen a bunch of Ross O’Carroll-Kellys in the sale bins in a bookshop in Lyneham in Canberra. No I didn’t buy any.

>157 haydninvienna: Those South-siders certainly get around.

I have started reading the play, Party trap. It is described as a "palindromic tragedy" and is written symmetrically, i.e. the first half of the play is repeated in reverse order in the second half. So I have been told. We shall see.

My understanding of the premise is that a politician is being interviewed and the language boosts and promotes his party tenets, while the interviewer uses the same dialogue in reverse to refute the interviewees political stance. That may not be 100% accurate but I shall be able to give you a more informed view when I have finished.

There was a two day gap between my finishing my last book, 47 Seconds, and starting Party Trap. This was not due to my usual weekend hiatus in book reading because of family matters, but due to political activity. I shall not soil the posts in the GD by promoting any political views or manifesto, but shall mention that my wife have been put on the ballot paper for the local government elections and this has meant work for me. She go a telephone call from the political party she is in and was told, "We are putting you on the ticket: go get your photograph taken professionally and send it to us for you posters and election leaflets."

When she got the news she did a few things of which one was call me. During that telephone conversation she told me, and in these words, "Peter, Head Office called me. They're putting me on the ticket. I've cancelled the holiday."

As you can imagine I am devastated. I am missing my briefing sessions with Control and shall never get the latest updates now. :-(

Well, over the weekend I was wearing out my shoe leather (which is probably actually plastic and not even rubber) accompanying my wife to the doors in the surrounding area to get promises of votes from the electorate. Fun and games for the next six weeks.

>159 pgmcc: Oh wow, I can see how that would infringe on reading time!

I have finished Party Trap. (Play)

It is an interesting mind experimt and would need careful direction to get the full benefit from performance. I have some thinking to do before further comment.

>159 pgmcc:

Do you accept absentee ballots? I do not expect to be in Ireland during the voting season.

Perhaps some of the roving enforcers can carry messages from Control?

>162 suitable1: Your offer of support and assistance is much appreciated.

Hi Peter!

>101 pgmcc: Made me laugh out loud!

>135 pgmcc: I read and adored Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. I have acquired but not yet read Aristotle and an Aardvark go to Washington.

>145 pgmcc: A book bullet. I’ve added it to my wish list. I like prickly, on-the-edge female detectives. Have you read the D.C. Fiona Griffiths series by Harry Bingham?

>146 pgmcc: Not necessarily too picky, if the plot and character develop meaningfully.

>148 pgmcc: Poor Jane. The husband and lads should help out, although helping implies that the work is Jane's and they're doing her a favor. Depending on how old the lads are, they need to know how to do laundry. *smile*

Best wishes to your wife. I hope the next six weeks is productive. Do you have additional pairs of shoes as you solicit votes?

(I read this morning about the happenings up in Londonderry on Maundy Thursday and immediately thought of you and yours. I'll stop there, to stay within the pub rules, but it needed saying. Or so I felt.)

>165 Busifer:
Thank you.

Only just googled this. Otherwise, what @Busifer said.

Also fascinated that there is (was, sadly) a journalist called Lyra; was immediately reminded of Lyra Silvertongue in His Dark Materials. We need people like that!

>167 hfglen: She appears to have been quite a passionate journalist who was dedicated to getting the real story.

I have been offline for most of the last 24 hours, so like @hfglen, I had to Google this. Too reminiscent of times we all hoped were past.

>169 -pilgrim-:
Agreed.

I had to google it too, and kind of wish I hadn't. The past is past but all too often it rules us still.

Reading time reduced. Dropping leaflets. Canvassing. Climbing up poles between midnight and 5am to put up wife’s election posters. Life just does not get any better.

GD rules prohibit further detail.

>172 pgmcc: Can you at least tell us whether your efforts are being well received?

>173 -pilgrim-: The acid test will be on May 23rd.

At home my wife tolerates me for doing all this work for her.

Hey, Peter. Sorry I wasn't here to offer my condolences about Shadow in a more timely manner. Is Tara still doing well?

So the Copperfield was not a reread? I read it back in the early 80s are really enjoyed it. I read The Quincunx in the 90s, and though I agree that it was similar to Dickens in style, I felt like it was missing the humor. So I have not read any Palliser since. To be honest, I haven't read much Dickens in that time, either!

>174 pgmcc: Strength to you-all. Ours is 8 May.

Climbing up poles between midnight and 5am to put up wife’s election posters.

Good thing you've had all the undercover training.

>177 suitable1: The black-ops gear was very appropriate. I just scaled the poles like a ninja and lashed the posters in place.

We got forty posters up.

This is a very interesting experience.

>176 hfglen:
Thankyou, Hugh! I got the date wrong. It is the 24th. We have three ballots on the day:
1. Local elections for all the local authorities in the country.
2. European elections for sending Irish members to the European parliament.
2. A constitutional referendum on the number of years people must be separated before they can have a divorce finalised. Currently it is four years but the referendum is to see if people will agree to having it reduced to two years.

There is quite a difficult situation for people wanting to divorce. Because there has been escalating prices for houses and apartments the rental market is charging more and more for rental apartments. I have friends who are separated but still living in the same apartment because they cannot afford two places. This means that they will not be deemed to have been separated for the time the are co-habiting.

I hope this is not infringing GD rules. I am not advocating any political agenda but reporting on why my feet are sore. Did I say we delivered my wife's canvass car to over 1,000 dwellings on Easter Sunday? It gave me great understanding of the difficulties faced by my postal delivery colleagues face the challenge of letter boxes of various types that are back-breakingly low down, or have anti-breeze brushes in them that make it very difficult to actually put something through, to mail boxes in locked lobbies, etc... I have always said a postal operative's job is not easy, especially when you consider they have to do it no matter the weather, and do it every day.

>175 clamairy: Clare, thankyou for the condolences about Shadow. George, the last remaining of the four kittens we found in our garden in August 2013, is a bit lonely. That is not helped by the presence of the new dog, Willow, as the two of them are not hitting it off like kissing-cousins.

Tara appears to be doing great, thankyou. Her MRI came back clear and the blood tests they took at the time of her seizures revealed that while she did not have a fever she did have a virus that could have been causing the seizures. She went on pretty strong medicine for five days to break the cycle of the seizures (she was having one approximately every two weeks). She has not had any since then even though she has had sickness involving a temperature in the meantime. She and her parents and four month old brother went to County Cork for a break over Easter and had a ball. They have some form of device to be used to inject a medication into her mouth by the cheek if she has another seizure and they have instructions to call an ambulance immediately if this happens. I was in the room when the doctor was giving these instructions. She said that this medication can cause effects that require the type of equipment they have in the hospital and in an ambulance, and that it would be better to have her lie still until the medical equipment arrived in the ambulance rather than try to take her to hospital by car. Hopefully this will never be needed. Their local doctor has told them it will be ok for them to go on their planned holiday to France. She thinks the risk is very low and has told them to go away and enjoy themselves. They are going to stay in our spy training camp mobile home in France.

I was very remiss in terms of early life reading of Dickens. I think the first Dickens I read was The Signalman, and I read that because I had watched a TV adaptation of it and wanted to read the original story. Next I read A Christmas Carol which I found to be much more humorous than I had expected. That would have been in the 1980s and I did not read any other Dickens until @Karenmarie urged me into a group read of Great Expectations only a few years ago; so yes, Copperfield was not a re-read.

As it happens, I read The Quincunx some time in the 1990s. I loved it but, now that you have mentioned it, I too did not notice any of Dickens's humour in it. Palliser focused on the dire side of Dickensian stories.

The copy of The Quincunx I have included an essay about writing that style of book. Palliser mentioned that he is a university lecturer on creative writing and that he had written The Quincunx as an exercise in using Dickens's style. I have read most of his other novels and enjoyed them quit well.

>179 pgmcc: Without commenting on the right or wrong of the subject, I find it very interesting to hear how things work in other places.

>180 pgmcc: Words fail me as to your granddaughter and daughter's health. I included your daughter because she is the mother, but of course the whole family is affected by the stress and worry. Hugs, and hopes that all will be well from henceforth.

>181 MrsLee:
Thank you for the hugs and good wishes.

In terms of how we are doing things here, my feet are sore from canvassing for the past five hours.

One of the things here that might be different to other places is there being a limit on how much money one can spend on a campaign. This means that a rich person cannot just flood the place with marketing and advertising and gives ordinary people a chance to get elected.

Climbing poles ninja style simply MUST be within pub rules?!

Or even become a pub sport?!

My good wishes for your granddaughter and her parents—and your sore feet! Best of luck to Mrs Pete at the election.

>185 haydninvienna: Thankyou,Richard.

>183 Busifer:

I think pole dancing was part of his undercover training. I heard that he picked up quite a bit in tips.

>187 suitable1: I donated them all to charity.

>188 pgmcc:

Good work!

I have managed to steal a few minutes at bedtime to read and have started Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers. This is one I inadvertently skipped in trying to read the Lord Peter Wimsey books in chronological order, having rushed to read Five Red Herrings to see what all the kerfuffle was about with its being put in a less than perfect light by some of the GD denizens.

I am enjoying Strong Poison (the book) and it is a welcome bread from the election campaign to come back to work and have some reading time on the bus.

I have also been reading "Pulp Literature Issue No. 22" which is an Earlier Reviewer item. It is so-so and Strong Poison is a welcome diversion from it.

I only read a few Lord Peter Wimsey books; Strong Poison was one of the first two. My memories of it are positive.

>191 -pilgrim-: That is good to hear. As I said, I am only a few pages in to it (24, actually) and I am finding it interesting and I am keen to continue.

>190 pgmcc: Strong Poison is an antidote to so many unwelcome things. ;) That's why I keep Sayers, Stout and a few other author's mysteries on my shelves always. If I find myself underwhelmed and surrounded by unappealing books, I can always buck myself up by reading one of them.

>193 MrsLee: Good advice

I have a confession to make.

Yesterday I noticed a new bookshop less than 100 paces from the door of the building where I work. Apparently it has been open for nearly two months and I only noticed it yesterday. What is more shameful is that I pass it every morning I come into work.

Well, today I visited the new establishment and came out with Tana French's The Wych Elm. I have tagged it as a book-bullet because I have been influenced by comments by some people in the GD indicating that this is a good read. To my shame I have not read any Tana French yet. I have The Likeness but it sits unread on my shelves.

Should I read In The Woods first before The Likeness?

By the way, I am still enjoying Strong Poison.

I came across some interesting product placement. One of Dorothy L. Sayers' characters has a Guinness at 11am and the excuse is given that, as the advertising says, "Guinness is Good for You!" What is interesting about this is that Guinness was Dorothy L. Sayers' client when she worked in advertising and the slogan, "Guinness is Good for You!"*, was thought up by her.

*I think it was in the 1980s that there were objections that there was no medical evidence that demonstrated that, "Guinness is Good for You!" and Guinness had to stop using the phrase as it could be described as false advertising. Still, for those of us who grew up in the 1960s and had access to TVs the phrase is something we will recognise for the rest of our lives.

>195 pgmcc:

"Guinness isn't too bad" just doesn't have the same ring.

>195 pgmcc: That is one of the things that make reading the Lord Peter books fun. All the little hidden treasures and insights. Makes you feel good when you catch one. :)

>196 suitable1: I don't know, @suitable1. You might have something there. Keep working on it.

>197 MrsLee: You are right on the button with that. And, yes! I did feel good when I saw it. :-)

>195 pgmcc: At least you did finally notice!

I have only read the first three Tana French 'Dublin Murder Squad' books and they are all essentially stand-alone stories. The only argument to be made for reading them in order is that French does this interesting thing where each successive book focuses on a different protagonist. She introduces them in one book and then makes the next book revolve around that character. In book #1, In the Woods, the MC is (mostly) Adam Ryan, with partner Cassie Maddox also playing a large role. Book #2, The Likeness, features Cassie as the main character but also brings in her boss, the initially unlikable Frank Mackey. Book #3, Faithful Place, (my personal favorite so far), is all about Frank and his family and also introduces his in-department nemesis Detective "Scorcher" Kennedy who, it is my understanding, takes center stage in book #4, which I plan to read soon-ish.

Looks like The Wych Elm is a true stand-alone so all of the above does not apply to the book you just picked up.

BTW, is 'Wych Elm' the Island Kingdom title? It comes up as 'Witch Elm' when I search it here on LT, (I'm across the pond in the US).

Whether or not Guinness is good for me is beside the point. It remains my pint of choice. Now, if only US pints were 20oz. like the ones I received when visiting London a few years ago, (*sigh*)...

>199 ScoLgo:
Thank you for the overview of Tana French's works. It looks like I will be able to read The Wych Elm without worry.

In relation to the title I noticed that the touchstone had witch. I do not know about the Island Kingdom but The Wych Elm is the title in the Irish Republic.

In relation to Guinness you have to drink it in Dublin to have the true experience. Let me know when you get here and I will buy you the first pint.

>200 pgmcc: Seconded as to drinking Guinness in Dublin! It never tastes right in England. And >199 ScoLgo: , Peter is definitely a worthy companion for the drinking of a pint or two (or maybe more).

>200 pgmcc: It comes up 'Witch Elm' on my Overdrive list at the library. Must be a regional/national spelling thing... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would love to visit Dublin sometime! Unfortunately, it won't be this year as we have already made plans for a Caribbean cruise in the fall. I expect the ship's bars will offer Guinness but I'll have to wait to test that hypothesis until we are on board.

On the topic of beer I'd say that any beer brewed under license is not as the original. Never underestimate the importance of the local water source. Imagine wine from Bordeaux made under license somewhere else. Its just not done. But for beer it is accepted, because, I don't know, beer is just beer?
Even a bland lager such as Carlsberg Hof tastes much better in Denmark than the license brewed Hof sold just across the strait, in Sweden.

For the record I prefer a pale ale (aka bitter) with a low percentage of alcohol. Not to be served too cold, it's not a lager, dammit ;-)

Hi Peter!

>190 pgmcc: I’m not a GD denizen, but I put The Five Red Herrings in a less than perfect light, too. It’s my least favorite, and up next in my year-long re-read of Sayers’s fiction.

>199 ScoLgo: I read In the Woods in March of 2009, have all the other books sitting here waiting to be read, just need to find the right time for them. Thanks for the insight.

>203 Busifer: As far as I know, Guinness served in the UK is still brewed in Ireland. It still doesn't taste the same in England. I suspect that in this case it has something to do with the amount that's sold in each country--quicker turnover in Ireland leads to better-tasting beer.

>205 haydninvienna: I have a vague idea that someone once told me that UK Guinness is delivered by carbon dioxide pressure, and in Ireland they use nitrogen.

>206 hfglen: Int'resting .. Can anyone enlighten us? Peter?

>206 hfglen: As usual, the Fount of All Knowledge has an answer:

Nitrogen is used under high pressure when dispensing dry stouts (such as Guinness) and other creamy beers because it displaces CO₂ to (artificially) form a rich tight head and a less carbonated taste. This makes the beer feel smooth on the palate and gives a foamy appearance. Premixed bottled gas for creamy beers is usually 75% nitrogen and 25% CO₂. This premixed gas which only works well with creamy beers is often referred to as Guinness Gas, Beer Gas, or Aligal. Using "Beer Gas" with other beer styles can cause the last 5% to 10% of the beer in each keg to taste very flat and lifeless. (from Wikipedia, article Draught beer).

I infer that Guinness is dispensed under the nitrogen/CO₂ mixture (but surely that would be the case in both countries) and that other keg beers in England (and Ireland) would be dispensed under CO₂ only. Which leaves us pretty much where we were before. More research in both countries is clearly necessary.

Traditionally the only two countries where one could get Guinness were Ireland and Nigeria. This was because Guinness had a brewery in each of those countries and it was held as true, and supported by empirical evidence from research and studies carried out by many people, including myself, that Guinness did not travel. In addition, people in other countries were not familiar with the product and consequently the staff serving the black nectar were not trained in how to properly dispense a good pint of Guinness.

Guinness invested a lot in research and training and I must say that there are more places outside Ireland and Nigeria where one can get a good pint. I had a good pint, two in fact, in Birmingham in February.

A close friend of mine is married to a lady who was the quality manager for Guinness so I may be able to get more detail straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak, although my friend’s wife is nothing like a horse.

By the way, I am away for a management meeting and I have been reading my Lord Peter Wimsey novel in a room that is straight out of that era. Photos will follow when I am back home and the campaign allows. Things will be hectic for the next three weeks.

As long as I have known what a Guinness is the saying has been that it doesn't travel. I have always assumed that this is because the ingredients don't take well to the metal kegs used, and the farther it has to travel, the worse it gets?
I wouldn't know, I'm no fan of stout, it's too sweet for my liking.
But someday I might visit Eire and so would be able to challenge my prejudice and taste :-)

I wish you strength on the campaign trail, and sweet victory!

>209 pgmcc:

Management meeting? I thought you had to give that up until after the election.

>211 suitable1:
Without the day-job there is no finance for the election campaign.

Strong Poison is still filling the few minutes reading time I manage to scrape together. I am in the final fifty pages and the race to the solution of the crime is gaining pace. I have noted a few interesting quotes at the back of the book and hope to share them when the world reverts to a state of normality after election day which is Friday, 24th May.

Strength to you for the fortnight to come! We had elections yesterday, and a local fast-food chain promoted voting/themselves by offering a free coffee if you could show you'd voted (easily done, the electoral staff mark your thumb with indelible ink at the polling station).



The coffee that came had an original marking. Does anybody in Ireland do anything similar?

>214 hfglen:

Thank you for the wishes for strength. It is getting tiring. I escape to the day job but Caitríona is out canvassing and leaflet dropping all day and into the evening.

The coffee idea is good. No one in Ireland does that. We do not have proof of voting. One has to be prepared to provide proof of identity at the polling station but there is no voting receipt or indelible mark applied to people. I suppose the only way to do that would be for some coffee establishment to provide vouchers to be handed out at the polling station.

I have finished Strong Poison. It was interesting and I found Dorothy L. Sayers writing very amusing. Two things that struck me were:

1. As an advertising agent she came up with many of the Guinness slogans and iconic images (the Tucan; "Guinness is good for you") and in Strong Poison she did a bit of product placement. Two of her characters had a Guinness, because, "...according to the advertisement 'Ginness is Good for You!'"I>
2. She has made more references to Jeeves. I noticed in Murder Must Advertise she described Lord Peter and Bertie Wooster with a serious streak. (I paraphrase) In Strong Poison there is an incident when Bunter tells Lord Peter something in a relatively formal form of words and Lord Peter tells him not to be so like Jeeves. Sayers obviously had no worries about letting people know where her inspiration for the characters came from. It acts as a great "shorthand" way of informing people what Lord Peter and Bunter are like as the Jeeves stories were very popular at the time.

Black Snow is now my reading. This was a recommendation from a cousin whom I met last week for coffee not having seen him since 2014.

I have read the first chapter. It is like a prologue and it describes how a barn catches fire and the feeling of despair of the farmer and his family as the see their livelihood go up in smoke and the loss of one of their friends who went into the barn with the farmer to save the cattle but was lost. The title comes from the black falling cinders from the fire.

It is set in West Donegal (the most north-westerly county of Ireland), a county I know well and one of the most rugged and weather swept parts of the country which is open to the humours of the North Atlantic weather. Difficult farming land with long winter nights and a short summer which might be as wet as any other time of the year. Time-wise the story is in the era of manual labour on farms and the use of horses for any harrowing or ploughing. Fields have to be cleared of stones by hand with the stones being tossed to the edge of the fields, hence the number of loose stone walls in the area and other parts of the west of Ireland.

My cousin recommended this and the author in general but said this book is the best of Paul Lynch's books that he has read.

>215 pgmcc: Interesting. How do the Irish Powers That Be stop "enthusiasts" from voting twice in the same election?

The day before last I saw a large truck marked Quinn International something, from Donegal Town, trying to navigate downtown Stockholm while towing a shipping container.
I couldn't not think that the driver had gotten a bit lost.

You mentioning Donegal made me remember it, though I though of you when I saw it.

Your description of the area makes it sound a lot like the counties that provided the US with poor Swedish immigrants up until WWI: farm hands from places were farms really wasn't up to the job of keeping a lot of people fed.

>218 hfglen: Voters are allocated to specific ballot boxes that are located at specific polling stations. There is a table at each ballot box manned by two people with a copy of the electoral roll listing the people eligible to vote at that ballot box. The area you live in dictates the ballot box. When someone comes to vote they should have their voting card that will have been delivered to their address. They will also have to be able to provide photographic ID. When they vote their name on the roll is run through with a line.

In practice, the people manning the table are generally the same people that were there at the last election and they get to know people. We always part with the phrase, "See you at the next election."

There are 8 ballot box areas in the Local Electoral Area that my wife is standing for. That covers 21,500 voters.

Primary schools are used for polling stations. The pupils get the day off if their school is a polling station.

The issue is personation, i.e. people voting in someone else's name. There were various allegations about personation in the past. In Northern Ireland we used to joke that polling day was a great day because you got to meet all your dead relatives who came back from the grave to vote, i.e. some people were still registered to vote even though they had passed away.

>219 Busifer:

I would suggest the link here> is owned by the company that owns the truck you saw.

Donegal is my favourite county.

The issue is personation, i.e. people voting in someone else's name. There were various allegations about personation in the past. In Northern Ireland we used to joke that polling day was a great day because you got to meet all your dead relatives who came back from the grave to vote, i.e. some people were still registered to vote even though they had passed away.

Does it really happen, though? Or did, even? In Sweden maybe that could hypothetically happen if it was a very recent death and the voting card was sent out before the death got registered, but with digital records and short processing times that is less and less likely to happen.
And you would have to show up with both voting card and a valid ID with a photo that would have to have a likeness with the would-be voter.

>221 pgmcc: Yeah, that was definitely them. I almost took a picture but felt it to be kind of not fair to them, they looked so out of place.
The parts of the town where I saw the truck definitely isn't friendly to that kind of load. Too narrow, and lots and lots of hard corners.
I felt sorry for them.

>220 pgmcc: Not a problem we have here, at least not that I know of. We are required to show a valid ID book, which includes a photo. No voting cards (I wonder if that's because of high illiteracy rates?), and in this election we could vote at any polling station in our home province. I gather some scores of people are already being charged with attempting to vote twice.

>220 pgmcc: and >222 Busifer: Many thanks for your insights.

>224 hfglen: In Sweden if you won't be able to vote at your designated polling station alternate polling stations open up two weeks in advance, so that no one should be stopped from casting their vote. On election day you have to vote at your designated station, though. These advance polling stations are open to anyone who happens to be in the vicinity, given you can show ID and voting card.

(I don't get a voting card for one of our elections, and that's the church council election. I'm not a member of the Church of Sweden, which I discovered when I tried to secede, when I turned 18, aeons ago. Makes sense, because my parents both seceded as soon as it became legal to secede without simultaneously entering another, state approved, religious organisation, in 1951, but somehow I still felt robbed of the action.)

ETA: I know, no religion or politics, but I'm not trying to discuss either: I'm just presenting facts. I hope no one gets offended by the addition of my personal story.

>222 Busifer: In the 1970s they did not have digital records and short processing times.

In some areas where paramilitaries were in big numbers the people manning the ballet boxes would not feel safe mentioning that the same person has voted ten times.

>225 Busifer: I think your personal story is fascinating.

If someone is not going to be able to vote at their designated polling station due to work or illness they can apply for a postal vote in advance.

The only polling stations that are open ahead of the main polling day are those on islands that open one or two days in advance of the polling day to give the authorities the opportunity of getting the votes from the island to the mainland counting centres. Weather can affect the transfer of votes from the islands; another reason for opening ahead of the normal polling day.

>226 pgmcc: I can see how that would come to be. May those times never return.

>227 pgmcc: Interesting to learn about how systems differ.

I usually vote well ahead of the day. When I was younger I used to think of election day as a special day, a day on which to celebrate our democratic rights.
Nowadays I just cast my vote and wish for all of it to be done with, mainly because I just can’t stand the inane media-staged ”debates” that infest all media in the run up. And so I’m happy that the possibility to vote in advance exists.

>220 pgmcc: You voting system sounds very like ours.

I am in Newport Oregon, at the Sylvia Beach Hotel, which is on Nye beach. Sylvia Beach was a person, apparently. Anyway, we ate at an Irish pub last night. I tried a Guiness against my better judgment and the advice of my pub friends here. The waitress said it was "nitro" charged. Still did nothing for me. Tasted flat in spite of the head on top. So my husband drank that, and I tried an Irish gin which I liked a lot. All this to say, you and your wife were in our thoughts and we toasted you.

>229 MrsLee: Thank you for the thoughts and trying the Irish drinks. When you arrive in Dublin I shall give you the opportunity of trying a Guinness here. It may do nothing for you here either, but at least you will be able to say you tried it at its best.

I hope you had a nice meal.

This is Black Snow. It is quite interesting. It captures some real Donegal atmosphere with only a few small slips that could be due to the author's youth, a real slip-up, or a lapse of concentration. The problem with being a pedant is that the slightest error will annoy you; more so if you make it yourself.

One slip: The woman of the house (it is set in 1945) comes down to the fireplace and stirs the coals to rekindle the fire. This is in west Donegal. They have already mentioned bogs in the area. They have already mentioned the turf stacked up ready for use on the fire. There would have been no coal in that area...ever; everyone would use turf for their fire. Also, turf fires were renowned for keeping lit and just requiring some additional fuel in the morning. There were turf fires that had been burning in hearths for decades.

It’s so interesting to hear how things are done in other countries. Here in Oregon, we get to vote by mail. Super convenient!

>231 pgmcc: That kind of thing would get to me, to. But now I wonder what's the difference between peat and turf? A matter of language? Or something more tangible?

I mean, I have been taught that it's peat bogs, peat fire, and so on, whereas the name in Swedish for that is torv... which is similar to turf (which I thought meant grass and the roots and stuff beneath - "grästorva", in Swedish).
So I get the feeling of some Norse leftovers?

I used to notice that Dublin on winter evenings smelt just like Canberra used to on winter evenings. In Dublin the smell was the smoke of turf fires; in Canberra it was from solid-fuel heaters burning briquettes of compressed Victorian brown coal. Pretty much the same thing. Those heaters are now prohibited for pollution reasons. The suburb I lived in in Canberra was in a valley that used to develop a temperature inversion in winter that used to fill up with the smoke, and if you went for a walk on a winter evening you’d come back stinking of it.

Edited to correct "solid-file" to "solid-fuel". What can I say? I was posting from an airport on the phone.

>233 Busifer:
You have asked a question about something that is obvious to you but is something Irish people would not think of until someone draws our attention to it.

Your description of the word, "turf" (turf (which I thought meant grass and the roots and stuff beneath, applies here too. We would use the phrase, "surf and turf", to describe a dish that contains both food from the sea and from the land.

Your use of the word "Peat" also applies here, but we tend to use "turf" and "peat" interchangeably when it comes to fire. When going to the bog to cut fuel, a practice that was part of the rural tradition and is now restricted tightly for conservation reasons, people would describe as going to cut the turf. The blogs of soggy bog that are cut out and left to dry would be referred to as sods of turf. When putting the dried sods on the fire they would be referred to as turf. "Hey, Peter, go and get some turf for the fire." "No", replies Peter. "I went the last time. It's your turn now."
You would seldom hear anyone saying "go and get some peat for the fire."

Having said that, there is a product produced by the state organisation that manages the bogs, and it is compressed turf made into manageable, clean briquettes. These are called "Peat Briquettes" (and sound like the "briquettes of compressed Victorian brown coal" mentioned by Richard in the next post) which sounds like it goes against what I have said up to this point. People do not say, "Go and get some peat" when talking about getting Peat Briquettes for the fire. They would say, "Go and get some briquettes for the fire."

From your point of view I suggest you consider peat and turf as synonymous when it comes to putting fuel on a domestic house fire. I would also be inclined to think you are right about some legacy from the time when your ancestors came to our shores for their holidays.

>233 Busifer: The blogs of soggy bog--a fair description of all too many of them, I fear.

The briquettes produced by Bord na Móna and those made at Yallourn in Victoria are exactly the same stuff except that the Yallourn version are a bit further along in the process of going from vegetable matter to peat to lignite to anthracite.

>235 pgmcc: Thank you for the clarification. I had never encountered the word "turf" in that context, is all, and while I immediately understood what you meant I got curious. Now I know more, and that is always a good thing.

Oh dear! Now we have gaslight in a remote farmhouse in west Donegal. Oh dear!

>237 Busifer: Thank you for asking. It gave me a few minutes of retrospection which is always good too. It is always interesting to view things from someone else’s viewpoint.

Oops! I am glad I reread the above paragraph. I had misspelled “things” and it changed the meaning quite a bit.

The Black Snow: Oh dear! Now he has basalt in Donegal.

It is a pity that he is spoiling a good story with little errors and anachronisms. He has a lot correct about Donegal, some of the language used, but he spoils it with those little points that make me think he is a millennial who has not picked up some of the nuances of the place and time.

So what do you burn when you can't get peat/turf/dried bog mummies? I guess wood is at a premium. Here giant trees lay rotting in every wooded lot I pass.

>241 clamairy: Smokeless zones were introduced in the 1980s to fight the smog and air pollution problem. People had to move to smokeless coal if they wanted to have a fire in the grate, electricity if they wanted big bills, and oil or gas for central heating. Now the focus is on high quality insulation to reduce the energy required to heat a home. More people are putting solar panels on their roofs to provide hot water. A nephew of mine had pipes buried in his garden and pumps installed to gather heat from the earth. He always has hot water in the house, even in the depths of winter, and his house, which is quite big, is always warm without using any fuel. His electricity is only used for appliances. The only water he heats using electricity is in the kettle or on the hob.

Wood tends to be readily available as there is a managed woodland programme and the forests are managed in a sustainable fashion. Which brings me back to Black Snow. It was set in 1945 Donegal. He had fir tree forests in Donegal in 1945. That is an anachronism as fir trees were introduced into Donegal as a cash crop in the 1980s. When he was growing up in Donegal he would have seen plenty of fir trees. I started going to Donegal the year he was born, and a fir tree was not to be found in Donegal at that time.

I have started Six Wakes. This was a book bullet. The premise is interesting and I am looking forward to a clone populated murder mystery in future space. I suppose if Ian McEwan had written it there would be no way it would be considered Science Fiction. Thankfully he did not write it.

>242 pgmcc: I envy your son his place, then. That is what I'm aiming for, but our extremes are greater than yours. I have to get my roof replaced before I can get my solar panels. But I did start using my mini-splits to heat my house back in March, and the increase to my electricity bill was minimal. But I used a lot less heating oil, and that is what I'm aiming for.

Wait... do you guys still have hobs!!!???

What’s a a hob?

>243 pgmcc: I hope it does not disappoint.

>245 catzteach: "A hob is a projection, shelf, grate or bench for holding food or utensils at the back or side of a hearth (fireplace) to keep them warm..."



The pitcher in the bottom right corner is on a hob.

>244 clamairy: >245 catzteach: >246 clamairy:

When we talk about a hob we are referring to the rings on a cooker for saucepans, etc... It used to be cookers were one item with the cooking rings on the top surface and the oven below them. Fashion moved on to having the oven at a higher level for ease of access and the cooking rings built into the worktop separately from the oven. We would refer to the built in rings, whether gas or electricity, as the hob.

>247 pgmcc: Ah. That makes more sense. We call those burners, mostly.

>248 clamairy: "We call those burners, mostly."

Especially apt when one turns them on high then gets distracted by something while waiting.

>248 clamairy: I was trying to think up a smart way of saying that, such as, "Well, we prefer to cook our food rather than burn it; but hey, whatever you prefer." I think you beat me to it.

I am obviously suffering election campaign fatigue: I am finding I am making spelling mistakes everywhere, or I am forgetting to use a word, or I am using the wrong word. Normal service should return after 24th May, 2019. (I am leaving myself wide open there for some of the lurking Green Dragoneers of high wit. Looking at you, @suitable1.)

What about the run-off election?

>251 suitable1: Election day is next Friday, 24th.

We do not have run-offs. We make up our minds in one day.

>251 suitable1: AFAIK the Irish have an extraordinary "single transferable vote" system that nobody without a Ph.D. in applied maths, or an Irish passport, has a snowball's hope of understanding. Pete, is that so?

To me "hob" means exactly what >247 pgmcc: says, and I must admit that I got confused by >244 clamairy:. I had no idea that it wasn't Common English.

>253 hfglen: Have you ever contemplated the procedure for electing members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs)?

>253 hfglen: If you mean "Proportional Representation", then you are correct. Everyone in Ireland receives a Ph.D. in applied maths at birth or on adopting Irish citizenship.

>254 Busifer: Not this side of the pond. I've only seen the term used in older novels.

>250 pgmcc: Wide open is too easy.

And I'm with Clam, hobs are found in fireplaces.

>253 hfglen: >255 -pilgrim-: >256 pgmcc: Clearly then Australians are all mathematical geniuses. Look at the vote-counting procedure for the Australian Senate, or the one that used to be used for the Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory.

>250 pgmcc: and if memory serves me correctly, the spaceship Heart of Gold put it something like this: “We have achieved normality. Anything you cannot cope with is therefore your problem”.

>257 clamairy: I think any word for "stove top", "burner" or "hob" is unlikely to be common in science fiction, which is what I mainly read, and with the exception of Trek and MCU (also bad choices if looking for frequent use of kitchen terminology, I believe) most TV or film that I watch is of UK origin. So maybe that's why.

I was convinced that "wee" meant "small", always, as well, so I'm open for all sorts of misunderstandings :D

>261 Busifer: LOL So someone "having a wee" must not have made much sense to you! Well, I have had similar experiences with the word "pissed." In the normal sense it would be the past tense of wee (urinate.) LOL But here in the Northeastern US it means to be really angry, while in parts of the UK it means to be intoxicated. LOL It's not considered that big a deal here, but in the Midwest it was considered vulgar.

I'm really pissed that you pissed in the alley after getting pissed in that bar!

>261 Busifer:, >262 clamairy: & >263 suitable1:

Now you are all just taking the piss!

To "take the piss", as opposed to "take a piss" or "have a piss", means to slag someone or joke about something.

>263 suitable1: EXACTLY!

>264 pgmcc: Yes, I found that out too. And that slagging can be mean-spirited.

>265 clamairy: Here the slagging wound be generally good humoured on the part of the slagger. The slaggee may not think so.

If you were to be really mean-spirited you would be "rippin' the arse out of them".

>262 clamairy:, >263 suitable1: , >264 pgmcc:

In all regions of the UK in which I have lived, there is a crucial distinction:
pissed = intoxicated
pissed off = angry (and the probably result of someone taking the piss)

>262 clamairy: >263 suitable1: >264 pgmcc: et al. Now, the various uses of "pissed" I am well aware of, even if I have no idea which kind originates where, and so on ;-)

All this talk of being pissed reminds me of the story about the squirrel who went out for a few drinks one night. At about 3am he staggered home rather the worse for wear and found he had not brought his key with him so he started tossing pebbles up at the bedroom window to try and wake Mrs. Squirrel.

As he was doing this Mr. Hedgehog wandered past and asked, "What is wrong, Mr. Squirrel?"

Mr. Squirrel replied, "I'm locked out of my tree."

>245 catzteach:

I am about 50 pages in and enjoying Six Wakes. As it happens I am, by coincidence, reading another book with not dissimilar subject matter, We Are Legion (We Are Bob).

The first book I read that looked at matters from the viewpoint of a preceding clone was Ken MacLeod’s Newton’s Wake. In this book soldiers were blasé about dying as they would be brought back in a newly grown body. Ken uses the same technique as is used in Six Wakes, i.e. the old clone has not died when the new one is activated, to set up the moral dilemma and pose the question of identity and individuality. I strongly recommend Newton’s Wake; it is a standalone space opera and I found it not only intriguing but also very amusing.

By the way, the occurrence of the word, “Wake”, in the two titles has not escaped me. In MacLeod’s book Newton’s Wake refers to the gravitational wave caused by large objects passing through space, a phenomenon that was hypothesized by Newton and has recently been found to have supporting evidence from gravitational observations. Exciting times.

I may have to re-read Newton’s Wake to see if Ken also meant a play on the word, “Wake”, in relation to a wake for a dead person. I am waiting to see which sort of wake is meant in Six Wakes.

There is a similar issue with the concept of the transporter in the likes of Star Trek. If someone is transported from one location to another is the original destroyed while a new entity is produced at the destination location. Christopher Priest also toys with this topic in The Prestige.

Two hundred and seventy-one posts?

It is starting to look like I need to start a third thread for 2019.

Watch this space.

>270 pgmcc: In Six Wakes I understood 'Wakes' to mean the clones themselves. Meaning that they were now in the state of being awake, as opposed to the previous iterations of themselves they kept finding in a state of not awake (murdered). The other meanings you mention had not occurred to me. I may need to give that some more thought.

The Bobiverse books were fun. I read the entire series last year and enjoyed the concept quite a bit.

Yes! That was a large part of the horror angle in The Prestige, that Angier was basically committing suicide every time he used the machine developed by Nikolai Tesla - but that he still went through with it time & again because "The Show Must Go On". That and he could not stand to be bested by Borden . I have watched the film several times and really like it, but found the book to be somewhat better - mainly due to the creepy ending.

>272 ScoLgo: I agree about the book and the film.