2020 Reading Record of PGMCC - Episode 3

Read in 2020

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

Reality is not what it seems by Carlo Rovelli 3/12/2019 - 20.01.2020 234 pages
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey 20/01/2020 - 26/01/2020 222 pages
The Last Best Friend by George Sims 27/01/2020 - 31/01/2020 191 pages
Dread Journey by Dorothy B. Hughes 31/01/202 - 05/02/2020 264 pages
Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy by Tim Harford 06/02/2010 - 17/02/2020 292 pages.
The Lights Go Out In Lychford by Paul Cornell 09/02/2020 - 11/02/2020
It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences. by June Casagrande 17/02/2020 -
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley 17/02/2020 - 05/03/2020 482 pages
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain 06/03/2020 - 09/03/2020 116 pages
When The Wind Blows by Cyril Hare 09/03/2020 - 15/03/2020 254 pages
The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr 15/06/2020 - 25/03/2020 255 pages
Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor 26/03/2020 - 10/04/2020 320 pages
The Intercom Conspiracy by Eric Ambler 10/04/2020 - 17/04/2020 217 pages
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford 17/04/2020 - 25/02/2020 321 pages
An English Murder by Cyril Hare 26/02/2020 - 02/05/2020 202 pages
The Green Man's Foe by Juliet E. McKenna 02/05/2020 - 09/05/2020 251 pages
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk 09/05/2020 - 01/06/2020 410 pages
Atlantic Fury by Hammond Innes 16/05/2020 - 18/05/2020 320 pages
Selkie Summer by Ken MacLeod 18/05/2020 - 24-05-2020 99 pages
The Schirmer Inheritance by Eric Ambler 01/06/2020 - 02/06/2020 228 pages
Transcription by Kate Atkins 03/05/2020 - 11/06/2020 416 pages
The Last Day at Bowen's Court by Eibhear Walsh 11/06/2020 - 14/06/2020 192 pages
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng 14/06/2020 - 24/06/2020 448 pages
The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty 24/06/2020 - 12/07/2020 766 pages
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett 12/07/2020 - 23/07/2020 334 pages
Hezada! I Miss You by Erin Pringle 23/07/2020 - 29/07/2020 332 pages
Munky by B. Catling 29/07/2020 - 30/07/2020 105 pages
A Man by Keiichiro Hirano 30/07/2020 - 09/08/2020 295 pages
Best of British Science Fiction edited by Donna Scott 09/08/2020 - 233 pages

I am starting Episode 3 of 2020. Episode 2 was getting a bit long.

Apropos of where your last thread ended, did you ever read The Giant Under the Snow as a child?

>2 pgmcc:

Can we just skip ahead to episode one of 2021?

>4 suitable1: Hear, hear!!!

There was a mini-miracle here today. I have to go to one of our work facilities for a workshop. This is the first time I will be working outside my home in eight weeks. The miracle is that my work trousers fit despite the COVID Kilos I have put on with the great home cooking for lunch and dinner associated with a reduced amount of exercise.

Now, I must go and have a rasher sandwich for second breakfast, or is this first elevenses?

>6 pgmcc: Definitely qualifies as a miracle. I've been enforcing lighter foods, like salads, and extra exercise: as we're not formally in lockdown we're allowed to go out for as long as we want, granted we stay away from other people. But. Not as easy as it sounds like, what with rising in the morning, then having to work all day... and the suddenly it's dinnertime. And by then going out looks less appetizing. So to speak.

>6 pgmcc: Peter, had you taken into account that the pubs are closed? Memo to self: buy Pete a Guinness ASAP.

>8 haydninvienna: That is an element I forgot to factor into my equation, but I must point out that dining at home has led to a higher than normal consumption of wine.

Thank you for taking note about Guinness. It gives me something to look forward to.

>7 Busifer: I find the same. Get up, breakfast, shower, dress, work, second breakfast, work, elevenses, work, second elevenses, work, first lunch... I do not know where the day goes.

>9 pgmcc: Pete, you sound like our Feline Overlords! Except theirs is get up, play with humans, breakfast, sleep, second breakfast, patrol, elevenses, sleep ...

Yes, all those extra meals and sneaky snackettes are taking their toll. I am turning into a hobbit ...

>11 Sakerfalcon: You're English, so that's entirely appropriate ;-)
Being Scandinavian I think I'm supposed to be kind of Rohirrim-ish. But perhaps a mug of mead is acceptable...

>9 pgmcc: "Get up, breakfast, shower, dress, work, second breakfast, work, elevenses, work, second elevenses, work, first lunch... I do not know where the day goes."

This in response to >7 Busifer: who was talking about enforcing lighter meals and extra exercise. I'm laughing so hard that I'm practically crying...

>13 clamairy:
No wonder he has to take that long nap in the afternoon.

>12 Busifer: Being Scandinavian I think I'm supposed to be kind of Rohirrim-ish. But perhaps a mug of mead is acceptable...

Only if you use a drinking horn. But whether it comes from an ox or an auroch is completely at your discretion.

>15 -pilgrim-: I promise not to forget the horned helmet while I'm at it. I have some gender-derived issues with the beard parts, though, but I ask for forgiveness.

>16 Busifer: Actually I was going on Rohirric stereotypes rather than Viking ones. I was fascinated when aurochs turned up in Middle Earth.

Though, after the discussion on viking and migration, perhaps you would prefer to claim the Variags instead?

(And, yes, I really, really need to get out more (i.e. at all.))

>17 -pilgrim-: LOL! I've never been one to delve on the fandom or rpg aspects of LoTR/Middle Earth, so decided to do a cross between vikings and the way Tolkien - in my mind - used a stereotypical (and also very typical of his time) viking archetype as template for one of his peoples.

I think I'd prefer the Variags, though.

>18 Busifer: I was actually rather surprised that you identified the Rohirrim as Scandinavian/Viking - they are so strongly and specifically Anglo-Saxon to me.

It always seemed "obvious" to me - all the names beginning with "Eo", the titles used, the organisation of the forces and so on. Though of course, the fact the are primarily a cavalry, when the Anglo-Saxon did not use mounted troops (no stirrups) makes it clear that he never intended the analogous to be exact.

I had been reading The Fall of Arthur recently - Tolkien's experiment in writing poetry in the Anglo-Saxon epic metre.

He used the same metre for the snatches of Rohirric poetry in LotR. I suppose I should not have been suprised about how deeply the Rohir were infused with the Anglo-Saxon ethos: JRR's first Chair was as the Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon poetry, after all.

>19 -pilgrim-: Well, I think most Scandinavians identify them as from our collective historical past? At least those who I have had any reason to talk with about Middle Earth/LoTR have done so. Only a couple of days ago I spoke with someone who offhandedly reflected on the "fact" that Tolkien had used Scandinavian role models for both the elves and the rohirrim.

I balk a bit about using the word "vikings", vikings is to many here a construction thought up by later generations trying to find glory in our past: one of many tools used to forge a "national character" during the late 1800's and early 1900's, as the modern nation state took form. I almost cringe at using the label "viking" to just about anything, for that reason.

Anyway, the Saxons technically weren't that far from "vikings", being from where they were and what they were: tribal germanic invaders ;-)
In Middle Earth myth, as I remember it "the rohirrim came down from 'the north' and were granted the grasslands". A nice way to circumvent the fact that they invaded, and pushed other tribes off the charts.

>20 Busifer: I tend to think of "viking" as a job description rather than an ethnicity - i.e. Scandinavian raiders, as opposed to traders or settlers, or mercenary soldiers etc.

It tends to be a slightly politically incorrect term in history courses nowadays - unless referring to raising warbands. "Norseman" is, I think, the preferred term when referring to the ethnic group.

From an English perspective, the distinction between Saxon, Scandinavian and Norman invasions is not that of ethnicity so much as timing - there are a few hundred years between each influx.

Though of course, how much was "invasion" in the sense of conquest, compared to the forces who arrived as mercenaries in the hire of a local monarch, who decided to stay and were awarded territory of their own is something that is probably overstated in the history books, since history tended to be written by monks, who were the most desirable targets for raiders (rich, but unarmed), and therefore tended to see the sharp end.

Yes, the Rohirrim came from the north, and displaced the Dunlendings...who appear to be based on Celtic people's...

Their location in "the North" appears to have been as mercenary warriors in the service of the Dùnedain of Arnor. I wonder if Tolkien had the Varangian Guard of Byzantium in kind there?

I find Tolkien's priorities in mythological interests quite intriguing. His particular interest in Finnish (on which he based Quenya) and Iceland I think can be attributed to his having discovered the Kalevala and the sagas at a particularly impressionable age. But whereas the was a lot of romantic tosh about the "Celtic twilight" going around in his day (Yeats being something of a focus of that movement), in his otherwise very thoughtful essays about the nature of myth, he has a noticeable "downer" on the Irish, Scottish and Welsh traditions. He is quite frank that they do not resonate with him at all.

>21 -pilgrim-: On the Varangian guard: probably. There's rather a lot of stories in there, and hard to see how someone like Tolkien could stay away from that.

I might add that my knowledge of not only the mythologies of fictional universes but also of our own is rather limited, at least when it comes to detail: my interest in myth is that of its function in society - the political aspect, mixed in with economy, geography and sociological and cultural aspects. How society and our ideological frameworks evolve in interaction with all those other aspect; the rise and fall of human society, of the idea of knowledge (and how it can get lost). On that road I've picked up a lot of things, focussing for a while on Moorish "Spain", East Rome, historiography, the early middle ages, linguistics, history of science, the history behind the formation of modern political institutions... I think you get it ;-)

Edited to clarify that I in no way imply that the Varangian guard were mythological: they most definitely weren’t. My comment were intended in a more general way, as a disclaimer.

>22 Busifer: Yes, I think that is an interest we share.

But I am also very interested myth in terms of the archetypal stories that seem to be shared across almost all cultures, and what the variations show about how different cultures see and define themselves. As the books about storytelling that @pgmcc has been recommending demonstrate, these archetypes still shape the structures of stories that are written/told today.

There does seem to be a strong spiritual appeal about certain images and structures that speaks to people at a subconscious level. I am not using "spiritual" as polite code for "religious" here; atheists as well as religious believers have described this reaction, which C. S. Lewis referred to as a "sense of the numinous".

I think these images have a much stronger influence on actual human behaviour than pure political or religious rhetoric, and that such rhetoric is at its most effective when it taps in to these.

So my interest in myth ties into the shared interests you referred to.

I don't usually get particularly involved in the background "lore" of a fictional creation, even though I can appreciate the artistry and thoroughness that has at times gone into this.

Tolkien is an exception for me because his stated goal - and I mean the goal of his life's work, and constituted by the while story arc of Middle Earth, of which Lord of the Rings is just a small part - was to create a mythology for the English people. (He was felt there was a lack, because whereas the Scottish, Irish and Welsh have lore set on these islands, the earliest great Anglo-Saxon "legend" that has been passed down to us actually takes place in Geatland, and had no actual connection to these islands.)

So Middle Earth as a whole is myth deliberately constructed by a scholar who was both a gifted storyteller and who had studied the early literature of several (mainly Germanic) cultures.

Given the popularity of LotR internationally - despite being initiallyconceived as specifically English in setting - it seems that he succeeded. The existence of a very extensive fandom, and the whole reason of secondary creations that borrow from him (to the extent that any fantasy novel is now largely assumed by non-afficionados to necessarily include elves, dwarves and wizards), suggest that he has not just written a popular novel, but created myth. The images from his book now have a life well beyond his own literary creation.

Thanks to his son's meticulous recording of everything Tolkien ever wrote, there is a fascinating opportunity to observe how he did it - what ideas he discarded and what he retained.

I am interested in how myth works, and Tolkien provides an insight into that, I think.

>23 -pilgrim-: I agree with you on what you write, and that we have shared interests, for similar, not identical, reasons, and expressed differently.

Not being English I never had any interest in JRRT's attempt at creation, though I was aware of it from the first time I encountered LoTR: my dad (and now I, though the books are in abysmal condition) had early reviewer editions of the first Swedish translation of the trilogy, and he started to read it for me when I was a small child. Naturally it took ages but it was a cherished ritual and so as he read we also talked a lot about who JRRT was, his ideas, and motivations for writing.
Today those stories are part of who I am, but I have never been interested enough to look deeper into them. Silmarillion, for example, never appealed to me.

The popularity of the books and their universe I see as a complex relationship, where there is a basic resonance in shared archetypes and the way he captured them. However, until about 20 years ago LoTR was still in the realm of select groups, much like Star Trek, and not firmly manifest in popular culture, the way they now are. (Though in certain social contexts they could seem like they had common acceptance.)

Basically I think two things have collaborated to make this happen (not counting the shared archetypes, which are undeniably important): the original groups have grown up, spawned, and spread the contagion, so to speak, to their offspring, making interest in fictional universes more commonly accepted; and the other is that as human society as a whole is and has been moving into a period of upheaval insecurity and fear for what the future will bring individuals seek relief in the past and the fictitious.

Fx Disney has managed to exploit this, with MCU, among other things, which in turn has lead to a more widespread acceptance of stories set in a fictional universe: if you can make money from it it has to be OK? ;-)
Definitely more complex than that, but sadly I now have to focus on work for number of hours, and so I need to stop here, for the time being.

>23 -pilgrim-: & >24 Busifer:

I am loving your discussion. You have brought me back to 1992 when I attended my first Science Fiction convention. It was held in Trinity College, Dublin. One of the plenary sessions was a talk and panel discussion about The Lord of The Rings. The talk was given by an elderly professor of English. He was asked to give a talk on the sources of the mythical characters in The Lord of The Rings. The audience was stunned when he started his talk by saying that he had never read the books and so he had to read them to start his research.

The advantage of this was that a totally fresh mind took a look at the characters and delved into the folklore and mythology of West and North Western Europe to find evidence of the creatures in The Lord of The Rings. He presented his findings in a matter-of-fact academic fashion with no particular axe to grind or driving passion.

I remember little of the detail at this stage but I do remember his finding origins for the Orcs, which surprised me an a number of other people.

Unlike the two of you I have not done much reading into the mythologies of various countries, peoples or regions. Like @Busifer, The Silmarillion never appealed to me.

There was another plenary session at that convention. It was about fantasy. It was in a large hall and all 21 guests were on the panel (including: Iain Banks; Terry Pratchett; Harry Harrison; Storm Constantine; Bob Shaw; ...).

I attended that convention with a friend from work. He asked a question that stunned the room into silence and I thought for a moment we were going to be thrown out into the quadrangle for the vultures and dragons to fight over our bones.

There had been a busy discussion about fantasy novels and I could see he was getting more and more worked up. Eventually he could stand it no longer. He put up his hand and asked, "Does the panel not believe that The Lord of the Rings is the quintessential fantasy story and that every other fantasy novel is simply an attempt to copy it?"

The silence lasted quite a while and not one panelist attempted to respond. After some moments another person asked some mundane question about another fantasy novel and the discussion carried on as if nothing had ever happened to undermine the whole topic.

:-)

>25 pgmcc: To have been able to sit in to listen to that panel session!!!

To be totally honest I haven't read extensively into various mythologies, or at least that was a very long time ago. I look at myself more as someone who looks at a map, picking up various data points, and then trying to piece together a picture. In that I have sometimes spent more time exploring this data layer or that - see >22 Busifer: for a selection of topics, or my listed non fiction here on LT ;-) - but in the end there's always some new or other aspect luring me in. In the end it means I have general knowledge of a lot of stuff, but the more in depth knowledge that I once acquired fade as I add one more area to my, uhm, "portfolio" of tidbits.

I think the popular term nowadays is "systems thinking". Makes it seem more respectable than "mindlessly wandering about picking up this and that" :D

>26 Busifer: Lol. You remind me of my reading into Fuzzy Logic.

You people make it very difficult to "skim" threads in order to catch up.

>25 pgmcc:, >26 Busifer: Agreed, but it's the talk by the elderly English professor that I would really like to have heard.

Can you remember any more about the orc origins?
(My impression was that the svart alfar are relevant here.)

>26 Busifer: The term is Renaissance woman. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!) ;-)

I have started reading Atlantic Fury by Hammond Innes. This was prompted by @fuzzi's suggestion of reading it with her and some others. We started the read today and I am about 30% through the book. It is a good read with plenty in it for me to like, which I will be saving for the discussion of the book with @fuzzi. I have also found a glaring mistake that I am sure Hammond Innes would be most upset about. It has not spoiled the book for me.

@fuzzi, thank you for prompting this read; I am enjoying it and it is a nice bit of relief from Flights which is a bit more challenging.

>29 -pilgrim-: After 28 years the detail is a bit vague. If my memory serves me well he did say the Orcs were a derivative of some Scandinavian mythological creature. Having said that, I could be very wrong. I was not taking notes at the time.

>31 pgmcc: That is a lot better than Moorcock's theory that the orcs were just soccer hooligans! I have been interested in mythology for a long time, but more at the 'read about it' level than 'study it' level. I still can't figure out the difference between Norse dwarves and dark elves.

>32 Karlstar:
The dark elves are the real football hooligans.

>32 Karlstar: That is because there is no difference!

>34 -pilgrim-: Oh good, I feel better now. I went to a library book club session on Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology and when I asked if anyone else had read Norse mythology before, the answer was no one, which I found surprising.

>26 Busifer: To have been able to sit in to listen to that panel session!!!

It was a great panel. All 21 guests were on stage. At the time the only one I had read was Iain Banks. He was the reason I went to the Con. I didn't even know who Terry Pratchett was at the time. I had heard of Harry Harrison and one or two others.

>28 MrsLee:
Take your time. We are glad you are around, even if you only manage to skim here and there. The work you are doing with the family material is epic.

>35 Karlstar: Mythological dwarves do not have a distinct body type, other than (perhaps not originally) having smaller stature. Their distinctive feature is their chthonic origin, being associated with underground, and hence mining.

The association with a stocky body type comes purely from the fact that, among humans, achondroplastic dwarfism is the the most common cause of abnormal small stature, and that condition does cause a different limb-to-torso ratio.

Tolkien popularised the plural dwarves for the mythological race in an attempt to keep them distinct from associations with dwarfs - the medical term in his day for any human suffering from a range of medical conditions that diminish stature.

Interestingly the one Dark Elf in The Silmarillion, Eol, actually displays most of the characteristics one associates with dwarves (apart from there being no mention of a beard!) He seems to be a relic from a period in his writing when Tolkien has not yet decided whether to use the term "Dark Elf" or "dwarf" for the mythology he was creating.

Just read through your threads, Peter.

We have a shared love of Eric Ambler, I have read most of his novels (bar maybe two or three) and he is amongst my absolute favourite authors. Another favourite from my past is Hammond Innes and I am the one to blame for suggesting him to her and her splurge on about 20 of his titles. I joined in for the read of Atlantic Fury on Saturday and was heartened that the books that I loved when I was younger are still able to captivate me.

I am committed to read Golden Hill with a friend of mine in the 75ers group next month and I'll do so now with a smidgeon of trepidation.

Thanks for the warm welcome to the group.

>39 PaulCranswick: Great to see you here. Golden Hill is an interesting enough read. I was the only one who had anything negative to say about it.

I only discovered Ambler about two years ago and have read three of his novels. He hasn't disappointed me yet. Quite like Le Carré is some ways.

>37 pgmcc: Thank you.

>29 -pilgrim-: LOL (Renaissance woman) !

>36 pgmcc: I can imagine.

I am enjoying Ken MacLeod's Selkie Summer. It is set on the Isle of Skye so I am staying it the same part of the world as my last read, Atlantic Fury.

Just a by-the-by, I had to go into one of our facilities for a meeting yesterday; my second day working in a work building rather than at home for ten weeks.

When I came out and got into my car the temperature was reported to be 27 degrees C. It was a beautiful day. Someone said the forecast for today was 1 inch of rain. At the moment it is sunny and 20C.

The weather is perfect here also. And since I am in the "shielding" category, I don't even get the daily walk. (Going quietly crazy here.)

>45 -pilgrim-: Ouch. My brain would start to eat itself if I had to stay indoors week after week.

Very blowy here today but the sun is still shining.

is very enjoyable. I will have that finished soon. Ken MacLeod is on my, "buy-his-work-as-soon-as-it-is-published" list and I have never felt any need to remove his work from that list.

When I finish it I have to return to Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. This is the book club read for a 5th June session. It is a Man Booker Award winner (2018) and is the book mentioned in the author's winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature (2018). I recommended it to the book club as it was a book none of us had read and I thought it would be good to discover an author together.

It is not the easiest read and its structure, so far, does not fit that of a regular novel. I can see its not being everyone's cup of tea. My impression is that it is more of a mosaic and I am hoping when all the pieces have been read it proves to be a complete picture. It is 400 pages long and I am at page 86.

One of the club members is not impressed with the cover.



He commented that he felt he was reading a telephone directory.

>47 pgmcc: Flights is on my TBR pile so I will be very interested in your thoughts and those of your fellow book club members. I actually like the covers from this publisher; they are simple but they have a nice texture and lovely shade of blue.

>47 pgmcc: >48 Sakerfalcon: Mine too. I also liked the cover.

>48 Sakerfalcon: & >49 haydninvienna:

I too, like the cover. As Claire states, it is a lovely shade of blue. The simplicity attracts me.

I think I will enjoy this book, but I tend to like books that stray from the norm and the apparent loose linkages between the various sections of the book so far give me food for speculation and thought. As we all have a tendency to mentally link things together, or to fit them into some unifying model in our heads (see The Science of Storytelling) I find myself trying to link the various disparate snippets of story into, if you like, story streams. I am of the opinion that there is some order behind the apparent chaos and that the order will be revealed as I read on.

Some sections of the book appear to pop up in a very random fashion. Many sections ponder interesting questions, or make insightful comments about things we all take for granted. At least one section had me laughing with glee.

Others are a bit of a plod, but I hope will be meaningful at some point.

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk Interim report.



I proposed this book for the on-line Book Club I have been reading with.

This book was recommended to me by a stranger in Hodges Figgis bookshop in Dublin. I was browsing a table of books and noticed another customer picking up and looking at Into the Woods: How stories work and why we tell them by John Yorke. The book has a different name in the USA. It is Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story as you will see from the Touchstone.

I read that book in 2019 and found it wonderful, so when I saw her put the book back in place I commented, “That is a great book”, and gave her a quick description of what I liked about it. She said it was exactly the type of book she was looking for, took it up again, and thanked me for the recommendation. She then went on to say, “You have recommended a book to me, so I will recommend one to you.” She crossed the floor the bookshelves and took Flights from its place, handed it to me and said, “This is a wonderful book. I strongly recommended it. It won her The Nobel Prize.”

Well, that was quite a recommendation. I thanked her and planned to read it soon. I did not read any reviews or the blurb on the back. I like to come to a book with as little knowledge of it as possible. (That may beg the question of how I pick a book to read. I think that can wait for another day.)

When I was asked to propose a book for the book club I thought it would be nice to discover a new book and a new writer together. With the book having won the Man Booker prize and the author being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature I thought it would be a good bet.

During the Zoom meeting when I suggested the book the club host looked up the blurb on-line and read it out to the group. I present it hear as support for my subsequent comments.

“Flights, a novel about travel in the twenty-first century and human anatomy, is Olga Tokarczuk's most ambitious to date. It interweaves travel narratives and reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. From the seventeenth century, we have the story of the Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen, who dissected and drew pictures of his own amputated leg. From the eighteenth century, we have the story of a North African-born slave turned Austrian courtier stuffed and put on display after his death. In the nineteenth century, we follow Chopin's heart as it makes the covert journey from Paris to Warsaw. In the present we have the trials of a wife accompanying her much older husband as he teaches a course on a cruise ship in the Greek islands, and the harrowing story of a young husband whose wife and child mysteriously vanish on a holiday on a Croatian island. With her signature grace and insight, Olga Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer of modernity and towards the core of the very nature of humankind.”

There was something about the Dutch anatomist, Philip Verheven, dissecting and drawing pictures of his own amputated leg that put some of the book club members off. I do not know what it was.

Needless to say, there was not universal support for the choice and several other titles were discussed.

Between the other titles not having been published yet, and some of the options sounding a bit dull, the book club founder and session host concluded that we should read Flights. There was less than totally enthusiastic support for the book, but an acceptance that it would be the book we would read.

Given that background I approached the book with some trepidation wondering if I had proposed a book that was going to alienate people and, possibly a benefit, not ask me to propose any further books to the group.

Well, when I started reading and discovered the structure was not in any way traditional, and that it appeared to be made up of random, not clearly connected, sections I was asking myself, “What have I done?”

Then I got to page 19 and found it full of wonderful insights, humorous comments and interpretations, and some very thought-provoking questions and concepts. At this point I felt my choice was redeemed. That lasted to page 61, then the book slowed down and left me reading small sections of apparently disparate ideas and elements. At page 95 it took off again for me. Not only did it pick up with interesting content, but it gave a philosophical hint that perhaps all these disparate parts come together at some later stage to form a complete whole that will shed understanding on life, the universe and everything, and justify the apparent disparate nature of many of its parts.

Having reached this stage I felt I no longer cared if the rest of the club membership did not like this book; I felt it has something for me and that I will have positive things to say about the book after all.

I must confess I took a break of about a week from Flights to read Atlantic Fury by Hammond Ines and Selkie Summer by Ken MacLeod. These were both set in the Hebrides (islands off the West Coast of Scotland) and were very enjoyable. They were a bit of a palate cleanser and they must have worked. I was much more enthusiastic about Flights on my return to its pages.





It is not a book for everyone. Given that the other members greatly enjoyed Shadowland and Golden Hill I feel Flights might be a bit much for some of them. It is not a simple, relax and enjoy it book; it requires some close attention and a willingness to stick at it in the hope that the resulting impression and benefit from reading this book will be more than simply the sum of its disparate parts.

There is a part of the book where the narrator describes her tastes as being weird and often different from that of others. I felt this perfectly described my position in relation to the other club members’ tastes, and plan to bring this out during our discussion.

I shall now continue in my reading with confidence that it will all come together at some level and that hopefully I will see that and understand at least some of the links.

>51 pgmcc: I read her Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead earlier in the year and I can understand why she is so acclaimed.

>52 PaulCranswick: Okay, that one might be a direct hit.

>46 Busifer: I was in the "don't go out, don't have visitors" situation since last October, until February (with a 3 week break that @pgmcc and @Sakerfalcon can testify to. Lockdown started in April.

Perhaps you should ask those two about the state of my brain. I make no warranties regarding its current existence, functional or otherwise.

>52 PaulCranswick: Tell me more please: that one has been on wishlist for a while.

37 years married today. Ordered in Chinese food, ate it in the garden, drank some wine, and currently sitting in the conservatory drinking tea and coffee, reading my book, and watching the day slowly fade into night. Two collared doves just landed on a pear tree beside us and then departed for the night.

At 2:30pm we had a Zoom birthday party for our eldest grandchild who was four today.

>56 pgmcc:

What did your spouse do?

>56 pgmcc: Congratulations.

>56 pgmcc: Congrats, dude. Sounds like a prefect way to celebrate, in my opinion.

(It would have been 36 years for us earlier this month.)

>59 clamairy: Thank you and big hug. May is a nice month for weddings.

>58 -pilgrim-: Thank you.

Congratulations! That sounds like a lovely way to celebrate.

Congratulations to you and Caitríona. We're 44 years in August.

>47 pgmcc: I, too, like the cover. The simplicity is appealing.

>54 -pilgrim-: From what I can see from over here your brain seems fully functional! :-)

>56 pgmcc: Congrats. Sounds like a nice way to celebrate!

>57 suitable1: Due to the Coronavirus restrictions she had to stay with me and eat Chinese food too.

Congratulations! Sounds as though you had a lovely celebration. Or at least, my idea of lovely.

Congratulations to you both! And despite #65 I suspect she would have stayed with you and eaten Chinese food even without the CoVid-19.

>67 haydninvienna:
You are right. She would; she loves Chinese food.

Just finished Flights by Olga Tokarczuk.

Not a book to read if you are looking for something cheery. It delves into thoughts on travel, existence, human physiology and psychology.

On Monday I had a DNBR day. It was a bank holiday and I sat in the garden reading The Schirmer Inheritance by Eric Ambler. It is really good. I will finish it today.

So who is on my "buy-his-work-as-soon-as-it-is-published" list?

Nick Harkaway
Ken MacLeod
John Le Carré
Kevin Barry
Haruki Murakami
S. A. Chakraborty

Iain Banks was a former member but, as you will know, he passed away too soon.

Other authors have categories of books that I would buy as soon as they are published. These would include:
Juliet E. McKenna - Green Man series
Ian McDonald - Stand alone novels

We shared Iain Banks, may he rest in peace. The same with Ursula K LeGuin, though in later years some of her books put me off.
I'm positive that S.A. Chakraborty will be on my list, too.

Anne Leckie
Yoon Ha Lee
C.J. Cherryh

Ian McDonald... I keep an eye out, and decide when I see the title. The same goes for Neal Stephenson and William Gibson.

(Edited to fix touchstones)

I have always bought Ken MacLeod's books as soon as they have been published. Selkie Summer is no exception, and like his previous books it has not disappointed me.

Once again MacLeod has demonstrated the breadth of his talent. His earliest books were space opera; he then moved into near-future; his most recent trilogy was far future revolution amongst robots; Selkie Summer is a contemporary story steeped in Scottish mythology and set in The Isle of Skye, albeit without the bridge that exists today. The story explains why.

MacLeod’s stories are always entertaining, intriguing, and come with a purpose. In Selkie Summer we have a young student from London getting mixed up in a diplomatic incident between the British navy and a race of Selkies. She also gets emotionally involved and MacLeod skilfully brings the reader through a range of emotions. As to the purpose, I suggest you read the book and find out for yourself.

At several different points in the story the reader is presented with situations that have several possible outcomes. In each of these situations MacLeod surprised me with the way he took the story. I also found the end of the book was not predictable. MacLeod keeps one guessing right to the last page.

Much of the humour in the book comes with the characters of those involved. Look at the situation; a city girl from London going to The Isle of Skye for the summer; how could you not find opportunity for humour in that?

If you like wild land- and sea-scapes, enjoy a mystery, and appreciate realistic relationships and a sprinkling of humour, Selkie Summer is a book you will enjoy.

I have started reading Transcription by Kate Atkinson. I have only read the first few pages but can tell I am going to enjoy it.

This was a book bullet, from @jillmwo I believe.

>73 pgmcc: Stop sniping at me! Haven't you got me with enough BB yet? :)

>75 -pilgrim-:

:-)

>74 pgmcc: Welp... I took a hit and have added Transcription to my burgeoning Overdrive list. I really enjoyed Life After Life, the only Atkinson I have read to date, and the description of this book makes me think I will enjoy it as well. Probably need to squeeze in A God in Ruins first though...

>77 ScoLgo: I think you got me back. This is my first Atkins but I believe it will not be my last and your comments have strengthened that belief.

>78 pgmcc: Have you read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North? If yes, it does a similar thing to Atkinson's Life After Life in playing around with unexplained reincarnation. The biggest difference, (in theme), is one protagonist remembers their past lives in detail while the other does not.

Something about Atkinson's writing style and the way she developed her characters appealed to me more than how North went about it. That's not a put-down of Claire North; I liked her book quite a bit. I just liked Atkinson's a bit more. YMMV...

(edited to fix touchstone)

>79 ScoLgo: You are an evil person. :-) You know I will now have to read Life After Life before I can read the spoiler. I will also have to read Claire North's The First Lives of Harry August. You are merciless. I will have no shortage of books to read.

Keep well and happy reading.

I had a pleasant surprise at our Covid-19 Zoom Book Club meeting tonight. We were discussing Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. This was recommended to me by a stranger in a bookshop and I knew nothing about it. It won the 2018 Man Booker prize and was the book referenced in Olga Tokarczuk's by the Nobel Prize committee when they presented her with the 2018 Nobel prize for literature. I reckoned it could not be all bad.

However, at the last meeting when I suggested we all discover it together one of the group looked up the blurb and read it out. It mentioned someone dissecting their own amputated leg, and a family holiday in which a mother and her young son disappear. There was a general, how can I describe it, non-enthusiasm? for the book. Regardless, the chair of the meeting made an executive decision and we read it.

I had been apprehensive about how people would view it and when some of the loved it, and other found it thought provoking, and only one couldn't finish it, I felt vindicated for my choice.

It is a challenging read. It does not follow a straight line, or even a squiggly line, but it is worth the effort. I still do not understand what half (probably more than half) of what it was about, but it was thought provoking, poignant, informative, and entertaining.

Next we are reading The Last Day at Bowen's Court by Eibhear Walshe, and The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng.

>80 pgmcc: Muaahhhaahahahahahahah!!

Sorry, Peter! In truth, I don't think you can go wrong with either book. But I do recommend not reading them back to back, (or Book After Book, if you like ;). The spoilers in my post are rather mild and really should not ruin the stories for you. They certainly give less away than the book blurbs themselves. I just dislike mentioning any details - no matter how minor - about a book others have not yet read.

>74 pgmcc: Hope you enjoy it. I still have to read her A God in Ruins, which is a semi-sequel to Life After Life. Add those to your teetering stacks. And don't forget about her Jackson Brody detective series, which is quite good, too. :o)

>81 pgmcc: The Garden of Evening Mists is sublime. The world needs more books like that one.

>73 pgmcc: book bullet, but my library doesn't have it. :( Guess I'll have to buy it. :)

>79 ScoLgo: I really enjoyed The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. I might have to read Life After Life.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson was an entertaining read. The book skips back and forward in time to tell the story of Juliet Armstrong, a person who is a young girl at the start of WWII, and how she ends up working for the secret service, and how things develop for her after the war.

The Last Day at Bowen's Court is a novel based on the life of the author Elizabeth Bowen. There is discussion about whether or not Elzabeth Bowen was a British spy during WWII spying on Ireland. I do not know what the discussion is about. It is clearly stated in all her biographies that she was working for the British authorities advising them on Irish neutrality. That sounds like spying to me. Of course, what would I know about spying.



This is the next book for our COVID LOCKDOWN BOOK CLUB. We have two books for the next meeting that takes place in the first week of July. The second book is The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng.

My dilemma:
Two books to read for the book club by July 2nd.
Empire of Gold by S. A. Chakraborty is due for delivery by 22nd June.
Must read fast. If I have not finished the book club books by the time Empire of Gold arrives I might have to abandon them and be in a "did-not-finish" status at the book club meeting.
What am I to do?

Pretend you took your lawnmower off a shelf again, and lay on the couch reading for the next two weeks.

>88 clamairy:
You have a good memory. It worked three years ago. Why would it not work again this year?

Hmmmmm! Food for thought.

A dilemma indeed. I had so looked forward to getting to Network effect, and then The Empire of Gold arrived! Both must-reads, and I can't read them simultaneously. Obviously. So, the Chakraborty has to wait. In your case? I'd try to finish one of the book club reads, but not both.
But then, I do have 120% to do at work so has little time to spare... which of course affects my choice.

>90 Busifer: Your The Empire of Gold arrived before mine. Our bookshops have been closed up until this week.

Ours have mainly stayed open, but on restricted hours and with strict rules on how one is allowed to move around in the shop. At least that's how it is and has been in the SF Bookshop, which is the one I tend to visit.
They have rebuilt the checkout counter, so plexiglass shielding, markings on the floor, extra barriers to keep the queue in order (very unusual in Sweden up until now: we generally know how to form a line, lol). And because there are no tourists there are maybe 1/3 ot 1/4 of the normal number of visitors.

I popped into Barnes and Noble yesterday just to be around some books. Our library is still closed. I looked for The Empire of Gold. Not there! I was so disappointed. I do have a small locally owned bookstore in town taking online orders, but they are backed up in filling them. So no matter how I obtain a copy, I’ll have to wait a bit. :(

I finished The Last Day at Bowen's Court by Eibhear Walshe. This is one of the two books to be read for the on-line book-club meeting on 2nd July, the other one being, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, which I started yesterday.

My dilemma of The Empire of Gold arriving has been eased slightly through my own forgetfulness. The book was due to be delivered today. I received my notification of delivery by text message on Saturday and was looking forward to the book landing on my lap. Yesterday I received a message that the courier had tried to deliver it but could not do so. It was may fault.

I pre-ordered the book in February, 2019, over a year before I ended up working from home due to the pandemic. Normally I have used my work address for deliveries. My work address was on that order and it appears it could not be accepted on Sunday.

When I received the delivery notification by text message I had the option to change the delivery address but that time has gone.

Thankfully, my work has taken the policy of forwarding any mail that arrives at the office to the intended recipient's home address. It will, however, not be received by work before today, and then someone will have to put my address on it and put it back through the postal network. At the very earliest I will receive it tomorrow.

Last Day at Bowen's Court is a novel about the relationship between the author Elizabeth Bowen and her lover, Charles Ritchie. It is an interesting love story about this affair, there is a lot of pain for all the main protagonists, Bowen herself, Alan her husband, and Sylvia, Charles Ritchie's wife. Bowen's novel, The Heat of the Day, is her own fictional story inspired by her affair with Ritchie and she dedicated it to him.

One of the things I liked about the book was its presentation of the viewpoints and feelings of all the main players.

The feel of the book was like reading one of Bowen's own novels.

As with many books produced these days a little more attention could have been given to proof reading. The typos were not many but were sufficiently frequent to be noticeable.

Of course, we could start a whole debate on whether is should be "The Last Day at Bowen's Court" or "The Last Day at Bowens' Court".

I have started The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng.



This is the second book for my July 2nd book-club meeting.

Let us see how I behave when The Empire of Gold arrives. That will be a test of the strength of The Garden of Evening Mist.

My dilemma is real. 15% into The Garden of Evening Mists and two copies of The Empire of Gold arrive on the same day. Worse than that, my son has started reading the copy I bought for him.

:-)

>96 pgmcc: But it's a good dilemma. Like having so much cheese in the house you don't know what to eat...

>97 clamairy: Too much cheese? Impossible! But Peter, that does seem like too much of a good thing, all the same.

>96 pgmcc: Either way I think you'll get to it before I do: I enjoy the fifth Murderbot book immensely but has had to put all my energies into work, and so have stalled. Originally I had expected to start Empire by now.

>98 haydninvienna: There can't bee too much cheese. But as >97 clamairy: points out: it is possible to have so many kinds that it gets hard to decide where to start ;-)

>99 Busifer: You have reminded me that I have to work too. I was trying to forget about that. Work simply compounds my dilemma.

>97 clamairy:, >98 haydninvienna: & >99 Busifer: On the matter of cheese.

Yesterday I had my fourth work related trip out of my house since March 13th. I was at one of our facilities for quite a long workshop and two fairly serious meetings. On my way home I stopped at our local shopping centre with the aim of getting some paracetamol at the pharmacy.

Unfortunately the pharmacy has been working reduced hours due to the COVID-19 restrictions and was closed by the time I got there. Fortunately the butcher next door was still open. During the lock down we have been using this independent butcher primarily to avoid the queue to get into the supermarket. (There are restrictions on the number of people who can be in shops at the same time and people have to queue in a social distancing queue to get in.) What we discovered is that the butcher's sausages are delicious. As there was nobody in the queue for the butcher I went in and bought 3lbs of sausages (it could be a few weeks before we shop again), a bottle of BBQ sauce, and two strip-loin steaks that the butcher cut nice and thick for me.

Heading back to the car I discovered there was nobody in the queue for the supermarket and decided to go in to get the paracetamol that I could not get in the pharmacy. While I was there I acquired some Gruyere, a block of white cheddar, a wedge of French Brie, and a piece of Wensleydale with cranberries.

When I got home I prepared the steaks for my wife and I, and prepared some fried onions and mushroom to accompany the steak. We had a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon which was perfect with a few shavings of Gruyere after finishing our steaks.

A pleasant evening meal and a nicely stocked cheese compartment in the fridge.

>100 pgmcc: Cape Cabernet, I hope. Our winelands have been severely crippled by lockdown.

>101 hfglen: Apologies, Hugh, but our wine stocks are replenished when we go to France, hence we tend to have French wine.

>100 pgmcc: You made a very worthy haul.

(Today I scored some Wensleydale with Apricots!)

>100 pgmcc: A lovely shopping trip. Thank you for describing it. Now I must go eat some cheese, even though I thought I was done eating for the evening.

>102 pgmcc: One day, a Wine Route tour is indicated, methinks.

>105 hfglen: I like the way you think.

>103 clamairy: ...some Wensleydale with Apricots!

I can see how that would work. Mmmmmm!

>105 hfglen: Which Wine Route, Hugh? I can think of at least 5 worthwhile ones. Maybe all of them? How many of them can we swing a GD meet-up in?

Re cheese: there are 3 local supermarket chains that I honour with my custom. This morning (I usually make the main assault on Friday morning because the shops are quieter then) it was the big Monoprix at Doha Festival City, explicitly because it has the best selection of cheese (my usual one, Al Meera, doesn't really seem to do cheese). So I got some manchego, some gorgonzola, some Greek feta, and some plain ol' cheddar.

>103 clamairy: Sorry, clam, but I take my cheese straight. I bought some boursin with pepper a while ago, but don't even care for that very much. (Doesn't stop me adding fruit or quince paste or whatever to a cheese plate though.)

>104 MrsLee:
We first experienced Gruyere about six years ago in a French market. The sales person used a little cheese cutter that looked like a plasterer's trowel with a slit along its broadest part, i.e. just beside the handle. She used it to shave off the thinnest sliver of cheese I had ever seen. When I put it on my tongue the flavour exploded throughout my mouth. I could still taste the cheese fifteen minutes later.

It took me about five years to locate one of those cheese cutters* (I promise a picture later) and we used it on the Gruyere on Wednesday evening. The cheese still has the effect of exploding flavour from the thinnest sliver. The more mature the cheese the better.

*Note: I have not allowed our non-ownership of one of those cheese cutters to prevent our eating Gruyere. Oh no! We just had it in bigger pieces.

>108 haydninvienna: Depends. Stellenbosch, Paarl or Franschhoek if you're feeling wealthy (all have breathtaking scenery and good museums); Olifants River for wine-in-the-desert, with the freshest fish-&-chips at Fryers Cove* or a seafood buffet (expensive) at Muisbosskerm near Lamberts Bay; Little Karoo for sweet wine; Breede River would be good too... or a DIY tour of several. Given LOTS of time we could do all of these, but shipping home could be wonderfully expensive.

*Fryers Cove winery and restaurant are in a disused fish factory at Doring Bay. The kitchen overlooks the bay, and when a fish-&-chips order comes in the chef signals to a boat in the bay, and the requisite quantity of fresh-caught fish is despatched up to the kitchen.

>109 pgmcc: For some unknown reason we have three such cutters, all inherited. I believe the basic design in Norwegian.

Further to the above, for the completely insane one could go to a place with the wonderful name of Grootdrink (= big drink) on the Orange (Gariep) River, which is kept alive by the local wine co-op, then on to Kakamas downstream (Die Mas van Kakamas), fresh dates, dried peaches and specially good lamb chops, and a little further to Aughrabies Falls National Park (major waterfall in the desert), backtrack to Upington and head north (300 km with no sign of life) to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. If you don't wish to go back the way you came it's possible to leave the park into Botswana (4x4 only) or Namibia.

>111 hfglen:
I think we might need a designated driver.

>112 pgmcc: To be fair, we'd need a daily roster, relying (probably) on drivers who are used to keeping left.

>113 hfglen:
So, between you, Richard (@haydinvienna) and myself it could be done.

>114 pgmcc: if Better Halves come along we get at least one more, who probably knows the way.

>115 hfglen: I like the way you think.

>114 pgmcc: >115 hfglen: >116 pgmcc: Ha! I don't even have a drivers licence any more! It fell due for renewal on my birthday in 2019, and I never got around to it. Didn't matter much because I don't drive here. So that lets me out.

And what about the Hunter Valley (reds), Mudgee (reds), the Yarra Valley (whites and sparkles, and some reds), the Canberra region (whites), Rutherglen (dessert wines) ... the Barossa (everything), Margaret River ... and I know I've missed a few. And New Zealand! And Chile! and Argentina! and still a whole hemisphere to go!

>117 haydninvienna: True ....

>111 hfglen: Taking the insane option, I've just realised that if we did it one September we could see the Namaqualand wildflowers -- some hills change colour the flowers are so plentiful; in other places you can see 50 kinds without moving. Then I'd also steer us to Paternoster (mans what you think) on the West coast, and if the Girls don't object, take you to a beach with the wonderful name of Tietiesbaai (pronounced t1ttys-bay, which the locals swear isn't the meaning). Back to Cape Town airport via Darling Cellars (I kid you not) and Evita se Perron, home of Evita Bezuidenhout.

There's a winery called Huntington Estate (near Mudgee, in central NSW) which had an annual chamber music festival (last held in 2019, and now defunct, unrelated to Covid). The Leeuwin Estate winery in Margaret River (south of Perth) does concerts from time to time: I know they had k d lang one year because I went to that one, and another time it was Bryn Terfel and the Australian soprano Yvonne Kenny. I used to fantasise about winning big and travelling around from concert to concert. Now if more wineries had concert venues ...

>117 haydninvienna:, >118 hfglen: & >119 haydninvienna:

It looks like we are going to need a bigger boat.

According to the Kindle I have 45 minutes reading time left in The Garden of Evening Mists. Once I finish it I can get started on The Empire of Gold. Yay!





Of course, despite what you might think about my posting in the GD, I am working, so when that 45 minutes takes place will not be any time in the next few hours. :-(

Still, I am making progress.

By the way, The Garden of Evening Mists is quite good, but I am not sure it is something I would have read if it were not a book-club book. Things I like about it are:

- It is giving me some background history on Malaya since WWII
- I am learning some things about Japanese gardens
- Personal struggles are real and often have heightened stress due to prejudices held by the individual
- Pain does not always fade away
- We all start looking back when we reach a certain age
- It jumps back and forward in time. I quite like this technique of presenting the present day situation and then filling in the history through flashbacks, although in the case of this book it is through the main character trying to remember as much of her life as she can before her memory shuts down for good.
- How it portrayed the relationships and love between people. There are a few very poignant parts in the novel.
- It shows the human and in-human aspects of people on all sides of a conflict

Would I chose to read another book by this author? Probably not, but that is because what he has written is not something I particularly want to read about. The book is well written, and has some very moving elements, but it is not my general cup of tea.

If I had to read another of his books for a review or a book-club, would I? Yes.

Things I did not like about the book:

- I felt it was a bit slow to get going
- For a long time I kept asking myself "Why was this book written at this time?" (I am not sure I have developed an answer to this question, but I have been moved into the space of considering it a good book.)

Perhaps I like this book better than I thought I did while I was reading it. Perhaps the one thing that I disliked about it was its holding me back from reading The Empire of Gold. I can never forgive it for that.

Finished The Garden of Evening Mists.

Starting The Empire of Gold. Yay!

I promised a photo of the cheese cutter I described earlier. One slide the cutter smoothly over the end of a narrow block of cheese and a thin sliver of cheese comes out through the slit and ends up resting on the wedge shaped portion of the cutter.

The cutter is resting on a slate cheese board our eldest child bought us one year. Did I say she is due her third child in a few weeks time?

>123 pgmcc: I have one like that! It's best for harder cheeses. For the squishier varieties I have an assortment of implements. One of these days I'll share photos if I remember to.

>122 pgmcc: Good for you. Personally I loved The Garden of Evening Mists and gave it five stars, but to each his own. Enjoy The Empire of Gold, hopefully with cheese on the side.

>124 clamairy:

I can see the attractions of The Garden of Evening Mists. As you can see, there were more things I liked about it than disliked about it. It did win me over more in the final third.

>123 pgmcc: We have a traditional cheese knife too which we use for our brie and other cheeses. My first experience with the type of cutter pictured was when I discovered Gruyere, so this cutter is firmly associated with my passion for the flavour and texture of that cheese. Mmmmmmmm! They will forever be bound together in my mind.

Empire of Gold with a side order of cheese? Now there is an idea I like. Probably not at twenty-three minutes past ten at night.

>125 pgmcc: Is there such a thing as a bad time for cheese?

>126 ScoLgo:
Good point!

>126 ScoLgo: & >127 pgmcc: I often have a nibble as my bedtime snack. No carbs!

>121 pgmcc: I love the name The Garden of Evening Mists, and the cover. Sounds like a book I would like to try when I am in the right place. Your negatives did not dissuade me, and your positives encouraged me.

We had a cheese slicer like the one pictured, but could never make it work right, so I think it went the way of other kitchen gadgets. I have a box grater with slicing blades on one side. I use that or my mandolin when I want very thin slices. Actually, the box grater works even better than the mandolin, and you get three thin slices for each arm movement. Efficiency! lol

>123 pgmcc: That is a standard cheese slicer. It's called and "osthyvel", ie ost/cheese + hyvel/plane (the tool, not the transport or tree). Every household in Sweden has at least one (vegans and the lactose intolerant excepting). I have two.
We use it to cut slices to have on ordinary breakfast sandwiches. And with "we" I mean people living in Sweden.

One of the big things that we, as a people, discover when we travel abroad is the absence of this very common kitchen tool. I use it for butter as well, when the recipe calls for thin slices of butter on top of something before it goes into the oven (fx a delicious French savoury but sweet pear pie: it has sliced pears and black pepper sprinkles and butter slices on puff pastry... and then, when it gets taken out of the oven it's given a generous topping of roquefort + rosemary sprigs....)
*starts to drool*

>129 MrsLee: Depending on the spring in the planing part, in combination with the handle, the cheese needs to be very hard for it to work. I have one very simple/cheap that works well on all kinds of hard cheeses, but my nice-looking design one with a rosewood handle only works on a really hard cheese to work (think parmeggiano).

>130 Busifer: "the cheese needs to be very hard for it to work". Interesting. Ours (all 3) work quite happily on local cheddar, which is nowhere near as hard as parmesan. Haven't tried it on local gorgonzola / "blue rock", but then with that I'm greedy and want chunks, not slivers. The Girls likewise with brie or camembert.

>130 Busifer: I am drooling too.

>123 pgmcc: Somewhere in this house, in one of those gadget-filled drawers that barely open, is our slicer like that! And i would love to know why Empire of Gold is already out over there but not here.

>131 hfglen: “Local Gorgonzola” that you can slice? I have half of a wedge of Italian DOP Gorgonzola in my fridge. When I bought it I could just about pour the inner end of the wedge. I still wouldn’t try slicing the outer, firmer end. It just occurred to me to wonder how a wheel of Gorgonzola can be cut into wedges for packing though.
ETA on consulting the oracle, I find that there are 2 varieties of Gorgonzola, “dolce”, which is what I know, and “piccante”, which is firmer and longer-aged. I also discovered that the Milan metro has a station called Gorgonzola.

And now I wish I could remember which British food writer it was who asserted flatly that Gorgonzola in the height of its glory cannot be cubed. Just give it a few more months, mate.

>133 jillmwo: The original release date was February but was put back to June 11th.

Perhaps the delay is due to the COVID related issues that have delayed the printing of some books in the US. I understand that due to restrictions a number of paper mills were closed with a subsequent scarcity of paper. Alternatively, perhaps they have a different publication date for the States.

On the positive side I am about 100 pages in and am enjoying it.

>131 hfglen: Then perhaps your planers have some spring in them? Not much is needed for them to work on softer cheeses, but some are extremely stiff/lack spring entirely. Like my designer cheese planer.

>134 haydninvienna: Both variants of Gorgonzola is available in most groceries here, but I tend to think like you: a Gorgonzola is sometimes best poured rather than, um, sliced.

>135 pgmcc: On the positive side I am about 100 pages in and am enjoying it.
Yay! I expect to actually start reading today, but that depends on how successful I am at getting words into the report that I need to get ready before vacation starts on Friday (when I have promised I will send it out for feedback, scheduled for mid-August).

>136 Busifer:

Yay! I expect to actually start reading today,

I hope you enjoy it. I am going to say something behind a spoiler mask, but it is only a spoiler for people who have not read the first two books.

At the end of "Kingdom of Copper" I feared the third book would descend into a mess. My fears are proving unfounded. So far I am finding the third book to be of the high standard of the first two.

I hope you get to enjoy the book and have a great holiday.

>137 pgmcc: Thank you. On the book - I shared your fear, and it's good to hear that this far it was unwarranted.

>134 haydninvienna: Ours tends towards the crumbly. Cuttable rather than pourable when cold straight out of the fridge, but becomes spreadable as it warms. I do think trying to slice it would be a dumb idea -- it needs to be spread more generously to get the flavour!

>135 pgmcc: As it happens, I got a shipment notification this morning, so at some point, I will open my door and find The Empire of Gold on the stoop. Glad to know it's going well for you.

>140 jillmwo: Great news. I hope you enjoy it.

Page 130 and still going strong. Only about another 600 pages to go.

>140 jillmwo: Apparently June 30th was the US release date.

I hope you have found your copy on the stoop by now.

I have just finished Part 1. You will probably catch up with me very quickly.

>142 pgmcc: Theoretically, it should be delivered today before 9pm, but I am not feeling particularly sanguine about the chances. Despite the system saying that it left their hands yesterday, the "track your package" feature is telling me that it is not yet on the &*^$% truck.

>143 jillmwo: That is frustrating.

Page 212 and it is still good.

>144 pgmcc: This continues to be an exercise in having the universe thumb its nose at my general expectations. The cheery notification I got today notes that my copy is "running late" but that most packages just arrive a day or so late. They are relying on my patience, which is justifiable in a pandemic situation. (This is really a first-world issue, if I'm honest.)

But you'll be halfway through the book at this rate before I get a chance to turn to the title page.

>145 jillmwo:
I am sorry to hear that. It is very frustrating.

>147 jillmwo: If this is the worst thing that happens to me in 2020, then I'm doing just fine. Don't waste sympathy on me. In the meantime, I'm reading Ngaio Marsh.

>147 jillmwo: Are you taking pot-shots at me with your BB gun?

A few years ago I was staying at my sister's place in Donegal when some beautiful red flowers came into bloom. I was overwhelmed by their appearance. When we were coming home by brother-in-law dug up a few plants for us including a couple of the plants that produced the beautiful flowers. Those plants have had a mixed performance in our garden but the ones that I was overwhelmed by have been doing well. They have come into bloom in the past few days and I have to admit I have become obsessed with them and have been taking more than a few photographs of them. Those of you who are on facebook will have seen these already but I definitely want to share them with my friends here who are not on facebook. Apparently the plant is Crocosmia Lucifer.

I have also included a picture of some wild forget-me-not and a rose.

By the way, my showing you three pictures of Crocosmia Lucifer means you are getting off light. I literally have taken hundreds of photographs of these flowers.



I even went out in the rain to take some pictures of them.









I hope you like them.

They are beautiful!

>149 pgmcc: Peter, those are gorgeous, both the flowers and the pictures. "Lucifer", my minimal Latin tells me, means "light-bearer". Appropriate.

>150 catzteach: & >151 haydninvienna:
Thank you.

>149 pgmcc: You were richly rewarded for going out in the rain. The other pictures are special, too.

>149 pgmcc: I am not sure that it is possible to love them as much as you evidently do, but they are indeed beautiful.

Those Crocosmia are gorgeous. I do love flowers that look alien, as those certainly do. The effect of the raindrops is spectacular, well worth getting wet for IMO.

>155 Sakerfalcon: well worth getting wet for IMO.

I agree with your opinion.

>154 -pilgrim-: I think I have a bit of an emotional attachment to them. As I mentioned in >149 pgmcc: they came from my sister's place in Donegal. I have a particular bond with that sister as she is also my Godmother, or, as we jokingly call it, my Fairy-Godmother. She is twelve years older than me and she has always involved me in whatever she was doing. As a teenager I gave her husband a hand in his decorating and building work, and they introduced me to Donegal where I did a lot of my growing up from the age of fourteen. (If @suitable1 is about I expect a post with the question, "What growing up?"; I think I would take that as a compliment.)

So, these flowers tie me to my sister, her husband, and to Donegal. Their strange appearance gives them a mysterious air, and I cannot pass the blooms without stopping and admiring them.They are very mathematical in their geometry, and they follow a very regulated way of blooming with the pairs of flowers opening from the back to the front. The colour is really striking and their form is intriguing.

>156 pgmcc:

Growing up is over rated.

>149 pgmcc: Lovely photos! Those flowers grow wild here along the Pacific coast. I have some in my garden performing beautifully this year, but usually it is too hot here.

Love the forget-me-nots. My garden used to be full of them, and then they all disappeared. :(

>156 pgmcc: Yes, your emotional connection with them was very evident. There are flowers that evoke similar responses from me.

>157 suitable1: I understand that if one has not grown up by the time they reach their fifties, then they do not need to.

>158 MrsLee: Thank you!

I only really noticed them about four years ago. Now I see them everywhere. The road maintenance people have even planted them in the centre of a local roundabout ("traffic circle" to you, I believe).

The wild forget-me-nots are tiny. I had to get really close to get that shot. I love them but my wife keeps pulling most of them up as they are invading the flowerbed.

One of my repeat-watch films is "The Quiller Memorandum" based on the novel by Adam Hall.

I have not read the book but am thinking of doing so. When I investigated its availability I learned it is the first of a 19 book set of books about Mr. Quiller.

Has anyone here read any of these books or anything else by Adam Hall? I want views before I jump in. I will get the first one and see how it matches the film.

The casting in the film was very good with:
- George Segal
- Senta Berger
- Edith Sneider
- Alec Guinness
- Max von Sydow

Less than 400 pages to go. Yay!

>149 pgmcc: The Lucifer flower is beautiful. Made me think of Alien, for some reason...

Today I thought especially of you. My morning paper had a review of Joseph O'Connor's Bram Stoker book, and the review of it was favourable. Immediately made me think less of the reviewer (on staff with the paper, a regular), as I have a clear memory of you being unimpressed at how he handled his topic.

(I have considerably more than 400 pages left, I've been busy weeding, sorting, trying to repair the lawn from the marks made by a heavy duty tractor late last fall... not to mention the family event consisting of watching 3 episodes of Babylon 5 each evening.
But so far I enjoy what I've read.)

>164 Busifer: Now you are making me jealous. I had been planning a Babylon 5 marathon (re)watch this summer (since circumstances meant that I never saw how the series ended when it was first broadcast) - but my DVDs are stored in one place, and I am still in lockdown in another.

>165 -pilgrim-: It was the one series that we can't get on any streaming service, which means son haven't watched it. And we always watch things together when we're vacationing in our cabin, so I went and bought a complete box set of the series, to bring with us.
Husband and I both enjoyed it when it originally aired and have talked about a rewatch for some time now.
This far, S1E11, I think it's less embarrassing than I feared it would be. Son absolutely loves G'Kar, and together we make fun of how US-centric its idea of a one-government Earth was. And of course, Ivanova and her Russian misanthropy/cynism ;-)

>164 Busifer: It was Alien I was thinking of when I described the buds like some alien creature growing to maturity. It was the spine and vertebrae like nature that made me think of Alien.

To a reader who did not know any detail about Bram Stoker and Lord Irvine, it would come across as a well written biography. The fact that it distorts the truth and relationships beyond belief would be lost on such a reader. My assessment of Joseph O'Connor's use of this subject matter is:

- He used a famous name to get noticed
- He did not do much research on Stoker's life, of if he did he ignored it
- He obviously did no reading of the ample material available on where Stoker got his ideas and even the name "Dracula"
- He threw every possible thing that was happening at the time of Stoker's living in London (Jack the Ripper, Suffragette Movement, etc...) to add spice to the book. He even threw in a reference to the Norther Ireland Troubles that happened decades afterwards.
- The fame of his sister, Sinead O'Connor, is, in my opinion, what gets him any attention.

I have suffered three of his books and will never suffer another word written by this person.

>167 pgmcc: Have you heard of The Cellist of Sarajevo? It was going cheap on. Amazon yesterday; it is an award-winning novel. Because it is a novel about a real, living person - whiose actions, but NOT his name, feature in the book - I did a little research before buying.

Since Vedran Smailović is now based in Northern Ireland, maybe you are familiar with these events?

This was a man who risked his life to play the same piece of music in the open, in the ruins of Sarajevo, every day for 22 days, to commemorate 22 people who were killed whilst waiting for bread in the marketplace..

As a. professional composer and musician, publicity are relevant to his career. However he believes no one should make a profit out of s war like that.

Stephen Galloway, without even bothering to contact Mr Smailović, used his actions in a novel, to do just that.

He also falsifies various facts, such as the dates.

Mr Smailović was, apparently, furious.

Another Canadian author, Elizabeth Wellburn, did contact him, as she wished to collaborate with the cellist on a children's book. The man she had invited to illustrate ii, Deryck Houston, concludes that Mr Smailović is a "difficult character" and appears to believe that their compatriot Stephen Galloway's artistic vision should be the paramount consideration.
https://www.economicvoice.com/vedran-smailovic-the-cellist-of-sarajevo/50027558/...

I conclude that I will never, ever read a book by Stephen Galloway.

>168 -pilgrim-: I heard of the book but have not read the book. From your description of the background I would be of the same feeling regarding books by that author.

>167 pgmcc: As I remember it, then. I was tempted to contact the reviewer but felt that I'd be conveying third-hand info and would not be able keep up a debate with him on the topic.

Amazing photos, Peter. I can't get over how the essence of the moistness comes through your photos. It's incredibly dry here right now, and despite watering everything daily some of my flowers are not doing as well as they should. Keep those pics coming.

>163 pgmcc: YAY!

>171 clamairy:

Thank you, Clare. The essence of the moistness was coming through my shirt as well, but it was worth it.

I hope you get to The Empire of Gold Soon.

May the fires burn brightly for you!

>170 Busifer:

I sometimes find myself asking what a reviewer's motivation is. Is it an honest review of how they felt? Is it someone promoting the author or the book? Is it someone trying to be clever? Is it someone who did not do any research and was taken in by the author? etc...

I saw a post recently on facebook. I think it was on the "book riot" facebook page. It was promoting an article about writing a professional review. I have not read it yet but that got me wondering what was meant by a "professional review". There is no one type of review. It depends on why it is being written, who is writing it, etc... This is something I have put a bit of thought into but do not have the time climb up on my soapbox just now to pontificate, but to give a flavour of the things I have thought about on reviews:

- A pupil writing a review in school; are they trying to show they understand the book or show that they can string words together to make sentences?

- Someone being paid to write reviews for a newspaper; are they trying to give an honest opinion on a book; to promote the book, or to fill 1.5 column-inches in the paper?

- A friend of the author writing a review of the author's latest novel; have they even read the book?

- A Science Fiction fan writing a review for a fanzine; are they giving their true opinion of the book (a distinct possibility in this case) or are they trying to show off how much they know about the author's works and how it relates to every other author in the SF novel universe and beyond (another distinct possibility in this case)

I could go on. Reviews can be a minefield. Challenging a reviewer for their opinion can be a rewarding experience or an occasion of deep frustration with unintended consequences.

I have found myself writing reviews for many reasons. When I stopped writing them for a magazine I welcomed the opportunity of writing them just for myself as much an opportunity of recording my thoughts about a book for future reference as an occasion of sharing my views with other people. I tend to prioritise the "recording my thoughts" motive and this is often why my reviews may not fall into the mainstream flow of thoughts on a given book or author; this can be due to my ignorance, misreading, or honesty.

>172 pgmcc: As long as the essence of the moistness wasn't coming through your camera! Looks to me like your trip out in the rain was very much worth while.

>173 pgmcc: are they trying to show off how much they know: applies to reviewers in newspapers as well. Much as I admire Clive James, I have to admit the justice of the comment that he wants you to know that he has read everything.

>174 haydninvienna: I enjoyed some of Clive James's dry wit. I have not read his writings but only watched him on television.

One of the things I liked about Umberto Eco was that, although his knowledge indicated that he had read everything, he took the approach of having an awful lot to read and learn. I found his writing and what he said in interviews was totally absent of any arrogance or pretentiousness.

Forgive me if I am repeating myself, but at the start of The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable there is a quotation Umberto Eco about the types of people come into his library. (I have a picture of his library somewhere. It made me feel better about myself when I saw how messy it was.) He said there are two types of people who come into his library. One type says, "Wow! Look at how many books you have." The other type comes in and says, "Wow! Look at how many books you have. Have you read them all."

At that point Eco goes on to explain that a library is like a gold mine. Its value is in the un-mined resources.

Needless to say, Eco preferred the first type of person in his library.

I found the picture of his library.

>175 pgmcc: Was that his local public library? Please tell me that wasn't in his home. I'll cry myself to sleep tonight...

>172 pgmcc: Thank you for my first real laugh of the morning.

>175 pgmcc: I feel better just seeing that picture.

>173 pgmcc: I find myself nodding along to what you wrote. In this case I think the reviewer is of the type who need to come through as litterate, well read, intellectual. Or that is my impression, having read his output for what feels like at least two decades. He tells the reader that the author has done his research, which is the absolute opposite of what you are saying, so he certainly hasn't done any fact-checking on his own.

>175 pgmcc: et al, on Ecco's library: not very untidy, if you ask me. I'm sure he knew approximately where everything was. It's huge, though, but so was his erudition.

>176 clamairy: Please tell me that wasn't in his home. I'll cry myself to sleep tonight...

I believe it might have been his personal library at work in the university. I suspect the table in the foreground would have been used for tutorials and other discussion.

His home library is below.



From a different angle it is here:



I think the first picture was taken behind the book cases protruding from the wall at the far end of the library in the second picture.

Are you going to sleep any better now?

>177 -pilgrim-: I know exactly what you mean.

Essence of moisture - isn't there some of that on the mirror behind the bar?

>188 pgmcc: Right beside the Bitters.

They even have it on tap.

>179 pgmcc: Yes, that makes much more sense. No slouch in his home library, though I have to admit that is a bit less inviting than the first one, IMHO. Throw a bed in that library in >175 pgmcc: (with a kitchen & bathroom attached) and I would move right in.

>183 clamairy: You would not be alone.

>183 clamairy:
How do you know the bed and kitchen are not already there, behind the camera?

>185 pgmcc: I don't.

I have finished The Empire of Gold. Very good. Great trilogy.



I loved the bit at the end when...

I have started Bel Canto for the Lockdown Book Club.

I was going to reread Use of Weapons but started it and could not stop thinking about Iain no longer being around so decided to leave it for a while.

>187 pgmcc: I'm so glad! I'm roughly 1/4th into the 2nd book and enjoying more than I anticipated.

>188 pgmcc: I enjoyed Bel Canto!
So sorry about Iain, though.

>189 clamairy: Enjoy the rollercoaster.

I am about 2% into Bel Canto. (Think in the case of this book 2% equates to about 7 pages. Kindles are such an abomination...unless you want to take hundreds of books worth of reading material with you on holiday.)

This is the first book I have read for our COVID-LOCKDOWN Book Club that I think I might unreservedly enjoy. I have read what is basically an introduction to what is to come. Even though it is only a few pages the author has been very clever in how she reveals information. The pace has been relaxed, hints have been gently slipped in, and characters are being filled in as we go. Context is being provided almost as a backdrop and I found myself coming to see what was happening as the author guided me through different elements of the opening scene and background of what are obviously going to be key characters, and one that I think might be wearing a Red Shirt but is there to give realism to the scene.

Why do I think I am going to enjoy this more than the other books I read for the book club? It appears that it will have a story with incidents in it rather than simply being a platform for the author to show off what a great literary writer she is. By the way, I think her writing is very good, but I also believe she is telling a story, not just showing off. I like the way she is telling the story.

The author?

Ann Patchett.

>191 pgmcc: I've read three of her books and I like the way she writes very much, plus I also enjoy the stories she tells.

>192 clamairy: Bel Canto will not be the only Ann Patchett book I read. I will definitely seek out another of her books, even if I have to read it on a Kindle. Uggghhhh!

;-)

Yes, I am obsessed, but I was encouraged to keep posting pictures.

Just to keep some sort of pretense that this thread has something to go with books and reading I present an image of the three books of S. A. Chakraborty's Daevabad trilogy.

I really enjoyed the story in these books and the events , albeit presented in an Arabian Night style fantasy,apart from the magic are a true reflection of what happens in any divided community. It is also written in a style that grabs the reader and drags them forward at a great pace. With all three books now published the reader who does not want to read a trilogy until all three books are out can get their hands on the trilogy and binge read. At about 700 pages per book it will be some binge reading weekend.

The thing about obsessions is that you lose the ability to stop.





You see, it does stop raining in Ireland on occastion.

Well, only for a short while.



Garden resident.

One of these things is not like the others.

Pretty, pretty flowers!
Glad to hear the third book is good.

Lovely photos, af ALL the garden denizens.

>198 suitable1:. I know; the books.

>199 catzteach: Thank you.
I think the third book rounded off the trilogy nicely.

>200 MrsLee: Thank you. We only have a small patch of ground (20ft by 40ft) but my wife has filled it with colour.

On the subject of "piffle".

Last weekend we watched the comedy, "One, Two, Three", Jimmy Cagney's penultimate film. It is about the head of the Coca Cola operation in West Berlin during the 1960s, i.e. during the cold war. It was made in 1961. I could talk about the antiquated management style, the blatant sexism, and the multiple examples of stereotyping, but that is not the purpose of this post.

There is a character in the film, a key character to the plot, and I was delighted when I heard his name. His name is, "Otto Ludwig Piffle".

I think Herr Piffle will feature at future Piffle Parties in the Green Dragon. In fact, I will make sure he does.


Otto Ludwig Piffle

>194 pgmcc: That top photo of the rose is gorgeous. If that is the product of your wife's eye for colour in the garden, she's amazing.

And I am enamored of the name Otto Ludwig Piffle.

>205 jillmwo: Caitríona, my wife, says, “Thanks very much.”

>196 pgmcc: Basically that's kind of the definition of an obsession, Peter! And my compliments to the gardener also.

>204 pgmcc: Quick Google shows that Herr Piffl is made to confess that he is an American spy by endless repetition of the song "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini". Oh the humanity ...

>207 haydninvienna:
Another song that features in the film is, “Yes, we have no bananas”, sung in German to the accompaniment of a string quartet.

I read an interview* with S. A. Chakraborty this morning. It appears the Daevabad Trilogy has been optioned by Netflix.

*I will try to provide a link this evening after work.

>209 pgmcc: I fear the real story will be at risk of drowning in pointy ears...

>194 pgmcc: That first rose is just fantastic!

>210 Busifer: I fear the real story will be at risk of drowning in pointy ears...

That would be logical.

By the way, my 23 year old son started The Empire of Gold yesterday morning and had it finished by early evening. One day. Some people make me sick.

That first rose is just fantastic! My wife says "Thank you!". She is the gardener in the household. I just photograph what she produces.

A by-the-by personal story. (There is a book element. Obvs!)

Those of you who know me and have followed my threads might remember my going to London in January of this year (before the virus struck) to meet, in person, an on-line friend from the other side of the World that I have been communicating with since, and we estimated, 2006.

Well, I was copied on a tweet from him this morning. He was responding to a question posted by someone else; "What was your longest internet friendship?" He responded by giving my Twitter tag (@Peter_G_1) and giving the exact date we met and a link to the Livejournal discussion we had on that day. He had tracked down the discussion thread on LiveJournal in which we were discussing Iain Banks novels, specifically Use of Weapons and Player of Games. The Algebraist also entered into the conversation.

The date was 23rd March, 2006, just over a week before I joined Librarything. I enjoyed rereading the discussion and travelling back fourteen years.

>209 pgmcc: I just knew someone would snap this up. I was kind of hoping for HBO (bigger budget) but after what they did to the last few seasons of Game of Thrones maybe it is better off on Netflix.

>211 pgmcc: I remember those days. :o( Now reality prevents such devotion to reading.

It is all happening here. We are minding two of our grandchildren, girl aged 4 and boy aged 1. I just asked my wife where the dog was and was told, "Dog following a boy, following a man (our son) who is on his way to clean up after a cat has been sick." Fiction does not get any more exciting than this.

>214 pgmcc: Are you sure you're up for handling such thrills?

>209 pgmcc: oh, I hope they do it justice! And that I get to read Kingdom of Copper before they release it.

PS I love all those roses! My dad loved roses so we always had them in the yard. They do not grow well where I live now so I do not get to enjoy them much.

>215 clamairy: No, I am not sure at all. The cat is skilled at making himself scarce when the grandchildren are around. He must have been suffering from stress this morning.

>216 catzteach: oh, I hope they do it justice!

That is a concern shared by everyone I have mentioned this too. My defence against any disappointment is to consider any screen adaption as being something totally separate from the books. No screen adaption can 100% match the reader's imagination, so there is always a high probability of disappointment if one compares the two versions. By considering them as two separate entities I can enjoy each of them separately without being hit by the, "THAT-IS-NOT-WHAT-IT-IS-LIKE-IN-THE-BOOK", anxiety attacks. It requires some self-control but I have found it helps significantly and is good for my well-being.

May the fires burn bright for you!

Thank you for the comment about the roses. My wife has appreciated the kind comments about her flowers.

I have finished Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I gave it four stars. It is an account of a hostage situation in an unnamed South American country. It is set in a time before mobile phones and other sophisticated technology like them, e.g. PCs and laptops. I would put it in the 1970s or early 80s. It is an era before sophisticated processes were in place to handle such a situation.

I will say no more* about it other than to say the author made me feel I was there and made it easy for me to picture the locations involved. Oh yes, opera lovers will like it. This book does not have gruesome scenes or scenes of gross violence. It is more about the people involved, so do not be put off by fear of reading lots of cruelty.

*Obviously I changed my mind when I got to the end of that sentence.



I have started Hezada! I Miss You. The author came up with the idea for the story when her husband gave her a piece of paper on which he had noted a piece of graffiti he say in a public lavatory, "Hezada! I Miss You". From that note she came up with the idea for a novel. I can't wait to find out what she did with this.

>219 pgmcc: I enjoyed Bel canto which I read it a few years ago. I do like opera and enjoyed those aspects of the book. I should try and read something else by Patchett but the TBR piles are so tall already!

>220 Sakerfalcon: I liked An Patchett's writing. I will try something else by her. Her tone was even and unobtrusive. As a reader, I was there with the characters. Nothing jarred. It all flowed.

Hezada! I Miss You is coming along nicely. I am about forty pages into the 332 page story.

It is set in a small US Midwest farming town which, like so many small rural towns in many countries, is declining in population and drifting towards decrepitude. A circus has been coming to the town for 100 years and the story starts as people are anticipating its imminent arrival for this year.

Erin Pringle has a wonderful way of using tiny details to convey atmosphere and character. The language of the characters is natural and you know the author knows what she is talking about. Tiny detail, like the little girl who yearns to own the red shoes on sale in her mother's thrift shop despite their not fitting her and being in severe need of remedial restoration work, conveys the economic situation of the place and puts in context the limited ambitions of the child, and by association, the town. I have read short stories by Pringle and she has displayed the same skill in conveying place, time and feelings.

The first chapter is about the three lampposts in the town and about the Town Council's role with respect to these lampposts. When I read the last sentence in that chapter I burst out laughing.

I am enjoying reading this book.

>218 pgmcc: I do my best to separate movies/tv shows from the books. If there’s been enough of a time lag, it’s easier. It’s also easier when it’s a tv show. Maybe because I can watch the characters develop slowly and get to know them apart from the book character.

>219 pgmcc: While I was not a gushing fan of Bel Canto when I initially read it for a book group some years back, I admit she had a memorable premise.

>222 pgmcc: I am intrigued by this book based on your comments so far. I shall be following your reading progress with interest.

>222 pgmcc: "When I read the last sentence in that chapter I burst out laughing."

Those laugh out loud moments are the best! I had a similar experience recently when nearing the end of The Star Fraction, (chapter 19, 2nd paragraph), where Macleod sneaks in this little joke...

The US Government responded to the strikes and riots by pulling out of the UN and calling a constitutional convention. Several of the States seceded becoming the world's second Former Union: the FU2.

lt was such a delightfully unexpected little (nearly throw-away) sentence that I literally laughed out loud. Mrs. ScoLgo gave me an eyebrow-raise and slight eye-roll - but didn't bother asking what was so funny since she has long since become accustomed to my quirky outbursts.

>225 Sakerfalcon: While the writing is good and while I found laugh out loud moments, Pringle writes about hard topics. This is not a book to read if one is looking for a bit of light relief. From the back cover:

...is a novel that explores tradition, love, and suicide..."

It is a book that looks at the thoughts and feelings of those left behind. This is an excellent book, but it is one to read in a contemplative fashion.

The author knows her characters and she knows small town America.

>226 ScoLgo: The Star Fraction was my first MacLeod novel. I read it so long ago I can hardly remember the content.

>224 jillmwo:

I am likely to read more by Patchett, probably because of her even tone rather than the story. This is the first novel I have read for our Lockdown Book Club that I have wanted to continue reading because I wanted to read the book rather than wanted to finish because it was due for discussion.

>229 pgmcc: I've only read three of hers, but my favorite by far was State of Wonder, which I read for a library book club when I lived in Connecticut.

>230 clamairy: Thank you for the tip.

I have taken this week as leave. We are not risking any long distance or overnight trips but we did take a trip to Howth harbour today.



The weather was nice and we bought some fish and chips for lunch.

Howth is a fishing port and there are several fishmongers on the pier. We came home with a bag of mussels (which I cooked this evening in a white wine sauce - see below), mackerel, sole, sea trout, and a whole salmon.

I received the latest Swan River Press publication today, Munky.



It appears to be about a haunted monastery. This may slip into my reading schedule after Hezada! I Miss You and before the second book-club novel I am due to read for Thursday, 6th August. For the record the second book-club novel for the next session is A Man; I know nothing about it.

>232 pgmcc: Dead envious of you, Peter! Howth looks beautiful. How were the rhododendrons, or is it too late for them?

>234 haydninvienna: We only went to the harbour and did not see any rhododendrons. :-(

Perhaps the next time.

Near Howth Castle.

I got told about the Rhododendron Garden by my boss when I worked in Dublin. Everything the page at the above link says is true. It's simply beyond gorgeous when in full flower.

We passed the road to the castle but decided fresh fish was our priority yesterday. My wife asked, as we passed the sign for the castle, "Didn't you want to go up there one day? What is up there?"

"The castle", I replied.

>232 pgmcc:
A local training exercise, how nice. Do you have a new handler?

>238 suitable1:
You are too sharp. We will have to keep an eye on you.

Is that your doorbell I hear ringing?

Munky by B. Catling; Swan River Press July 2020 105 pages.

This story is set in a small village in England. Its characters are beautifully drawn and have all the hallmarks of being based on real people, which I understand they were.

It is a quirky, humorous story which is more about characters, acceptance of the world as it is, and the ethos and atmosphere in a small English village. Having read the first twenty-five pages I likened it to a cross between Barchester Towers and The Unfortunate Fursey.

Another beautiful volume from Swan River Press.

Just started A Man by Keiichiro Hirano. This is the second novel for our Lockdown Book Club session next Thursday. The Prologue was interesting enough.

@pgmcc and @haydninvienna : Howth Castle sounds lovely. Just to be clear, there IS a castle open to the public to go with the Rhododendron Garden, right? It's not just a bait-and-switch fishing port marketing ploy?

>242 jillmwo:
Yes, there is a castle with a Rhododendron Garden. Members of the public can visit.

>240 pgmcc: That sounds lovely. And it's so new that you are the only person on LibraryThing with a copy!

>240 pgmcc: It was just published last week. Swan River Press produce numbered limited editions. This is limited to 500 copies. All my Swan River Books are the same number, 11. I have been a loyal customer from the start. They are beautifully produced but are too expensive for the casual reader* as they are produced as collectors' items. All copies are stitch bound, hardcover books. They do not only have art work on the dust cover but also on the actual cover. I should post pictures of the dust cover and the cover of this one.

Their books are lovely and a joy to hold and read.

*Normally €30 but have crept up to €35 with the increased postage charges (SRP includes P&P to anywhere in the world in the price). The decision of the US government to pull out of the Universal Postal Union, a body established under the United Nations to co-ordinate the international charges between countries, and set its own charges for mail arriving into the US will make it much more expensive to post things to the US from other countries.

You are putting me in the mood to take photographs of all my SRP books and post them on a thread here. I have posted some in the past, such as The Unfortunate Fursey and The Return of Fursey.

>240 pgmcc: The cover art looks terrifying, but it sounds charming and I must check to see if my library buys a copy sometime!

>243 pgmcc: I am saddened that you neither hit back at the pun in #242 nor even groaned as an acknowledgement. Am I that rusty at this game. Bait-and-switch? Fishing port? (I worked at that one....)

More seriously, the Swan River Press books are quite striking.

But I did want to ask whether you were pleased with the Hugo award winners announced at Worldcon?

>247 jillmwo: Never fear. Discerning minds appreciated your contribution...

>247 jillmwo: Apologies for not picking up on your word-play. When you used the term "bait-and-switch fishing port" I thought you were just using a colloquial term for a port where you could get bait and tackle. Apologies for my lack of mental agility and for not appreciating the product of your hours of effort.

In relation to my reaction to the Hugo awards I only have a few opinions as I have not read any of the nominated stories. For things I have seen and have some knowledge I was quite OK with the awards.

"The Good Place" is a series I really enjoyed and was pleased to see it winning. I have not seen the other nominated programmes so I cannot say whether or not it was the best, but if there was better in the batch it must have been pretty wonderful.

"Good Omens" was very good. Again I have not seen the other nominations, but given that the are mostly Star Wars derivatives or super hero comic derivatives I would say Good Omens probably was the most deserving of the bunch. I only watched it last month. It is years since I read the book and I could not remember the story so it was nice to watch it without knowing what was going to happen next, although I did remember the last line as it was read out on the show.

Jeannette Ng's acceptance speech was an interesting winner. Given it made such an impact and led to a change to the title of the award it deserved to be marked in some fashion.

I enjoyed the first two seasons of The Expanse so was not surprised the book series won an award. Again, I have not read the other series nominated.

Ellen Datlow has always been a good editor so it is not surprising she won in the Short Form Best Editor category. There do not appear to be many new names in the nomination list for that category.

I am tempted to take photographs of all my Swan River Press books and post them here. That might prompt me to read more of them. It would also be something my friend who runs Swan River Press would like.

What were your own opinions on the Hugo awards?

Catching up, so -

>223 catzteach: Me, too. Despite that the tv or movie version is often vastly inferior. I'm speculating that the reason might be that the director allows him/herself to be limited by the original work? I think one of the reason that Good Omens worked so well, at least in my mind, was that Neil Gaiman was so closely involved in both, which means he could make reasonable decision when the story had to deviate from the original.
I think the show-and-tell of the moving pictures format and that of the written media are two very different ways of telling a story, and so the stories just HAVE to be told differently.

>232 pgmcc: Fantastic! With or without rhododendron (rhododendri? lol, I know but my brain didn't let me NOT use that plural form). Not a fan of mussels, in any form, but it looks like a very nice day out indeed.

>247 jillmwo:,>249 pgmcc: I had only read Arkady Martine's A memory called empire but whatever the competition I think it was a worthy winner. Well written and clever, I'm waiting for the sequel to be written and published.
And of course I think Good Omens was a worthy winner, too. Even as the story was quite not the book at all (and I love the book) the miniseries was its own story.

Edited to add, because I forgot:

>245 pgmcc: For such fine work €35 doesn't seem too much? Hardbacks are very expensive in Sweden, I paid €30 for Martha Wells' Network Effect.

Doing a quick catch-up here (MrsLee is right, you don't make skimming easy) and dodging BBs left and right. Beautiful garden pics, too, and oh, that library. Have you ever googled photos of private libraries? When I used to daydream about the home I'd have one day, what I pictured was not a kitchen or bedroom or living room, never mind a great hall, but a magnificent library.

I received Best of British Science Fiction 2019 edited by Donna Scott and published by Newcon Press as part of the Early Reviewer programme. Today I read Fat Man in the Bardo by Ken MacLeod. My review of this story:
An excellent thought experiment using existence within a simulation to take socio-political concepts to their extremity.

I am taking the opportunity of starting another volume to start Episode 4 of my reading log. I think 252 posts is quite enough for one thread.

>251 Meredy:
Thank you for dropping by. I am glad you liked Umberto's library pictures and the garden snaps.

I have looked a few library images on-line and found them beautiful. There is a cartoon that I will try to track down, in which a couple is arguing because the lady wishes to put up another bookcase and the man protests saying it will make the apartment smaller and that he thought she wanted to live in a large apartment. She is thinking, "I never said I wanted to live in a large apartment. I said I wanted to live in a small library."

>250 Busifer: For such fine work €35 doesn't seem too much? Swan River Press would love you. Did I mention that the price includes postage to anywhere in the world?