2021 Reading efforts of PGMCC - Fourth instalment.

Read in 2021

I start the year with four in-progress reads.

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

It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences. by June Casagrande 17/02/2020 -
The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford 26/10/2020 -
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 17/12/2020 - 03/01/2021 333 pages
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely 20/12/2020 -

Books started in 2021:

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

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 04/01/2021 - 07/01/2021 pages
Reynard the Fox by Anne Louise Avery 07/01/2021 - 17/01/2021 479 pages
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth 17/01/2021 - 31/01/2021 170 pages
The Lusitania Waits by Alfred Noyes 28/01/2021 - 28/01/2021 5 pages (Short story)
Call for the Dead by John Le Carré 31/01/2021 - 04/02/2021 156 pages
London Centric edited by Ian Whates 04/02/2021 - 15/02/2021 278 pages (Short stories)
"The House of Asterion" by Jorge Luis Borge 06/02/2021 - 06/02/2021 3pages (short story)
Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut 21/02/2021 - 01/03/2021 256 pages
The Dark Frontier by Eric Ambler 01/03/2021 - 07/03/2021 258 pages
Orlando by Virginia Woolf 08/03/2021 - 20/03/2021 Abandoned after 118 pages of 235 pages
The Hand by Guy de Maupassant 14/03/2021 - 14/03/2021 12 pages (short story)
Uncommon Danger by Eric Ambler 20/03/2021 - 26/03/2021 256 pages
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler 29/03/2021 - 02/04/2021 193 pages
Africa's Top Geological Sites by Richard Viljoen 02/04/2021 - 290 pages
Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler 03/04/2021 - 05/04/2021 267 pages
Actress by Anne Enright 05/04/2021 - 224 pages ROA* DNF
Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler 07/04/2021 - 11/04/2021 240 pages
"I Spy" by Graham Greene Short story published in 1930. 11/04/2021 - 11/04/2021 4 pages
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 11/04/2021 - 21/04/2021 ? pages
Red Harvest by Dashell Hammett 16/04/2021 - 24/04/2021 187 pages
Skytip by Eric Ambler 25/04/2021 - 26/04/2021 181 pages.
Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler 26/04/2021 - 02/05/2021 291 pages
River of Gods by Ian McDonald 02/05/2021 - 20/05/2021 583 Pages
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev 21/05/2021 - 25/05/2021 212 pages
Quiller: The Striker Portfolio by Adam Hall 25/05/2021 - 04/06/2021 197 pages
Snowdrops by A.D. Miller 26/05/2021 - 30/05/2021 273 pages
Seven Demons by Aidan Truhen 05/06/2021 - 07/06/2021 344 pages
The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany Translated by Humphrey Davies. 08/06/2021 - 15/06/2021 272 pages
Tender to Danger by Eric Ambler 15/06/21 - 19/06/2021 174 pages
The Story of a Goat by Perumal Murugan translated from Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman. 19/06/2021 - 183 pages ROA* DNF 26 pages
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway 19/06/2021 - 03/07/2021 566 pages Reread
Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout 04/06/2021 - 12/07/2021 304 Pages
Attenuation by Nick Harkaway 12/07/2021 - 13/07/2021 ? Pages Short Story in Arc 1.2 Post Human Conditions
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 13/07/2021 - 28/06/2021 210 Pages
The Maras Affair by Eric Ambler 28/07/2021 - 02/08/2021 191 Pages
The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges 30/07/2021 7 Pages (short story)
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 02/08/2021 - 15/07/2012 307 Pages
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson 15/08/2021 - 15/07/2021 12 Pages (Short story)

*ROA: Risk Of Abandonment due to lack of interest or pure boredom.

Er, Peter, isn't this the fourth installment?

>2 hfglen: Hi, Hugh. I am trying and failing to correct it. In answer to your question, "Yes!"

Peter, you might have to correct it from something other than your phone. If you want I can do it for you, or you can wait until you're using a Mac or PC.

>4 clamairy: I was on my laptop.

>5 pgmcc: And I see you figured out how to do it!

I have started the Yacoubian Building by Alaa al-Aswani. It is by an Egyptian author and I have no preconceptions about it. I am finding it an easy read, so the translator has to take some credit for that.

>7 pgmcc: Ooh, that looks interesting. I shall wait to hear what you think of it though.

>8 -pilgrim-: I am enjoying The Yacoubian Building.

Hi Peter,

I am popping in to mention that I just finished reading the first 3 pages of The Price You Pay and have chuckled 5 times already.

Thank you for putting Aidan Truhen on my radar.

>10 ScoLgo: Excellent. I can breath again.

One of my nieces drove past the house where my siblings and I were brought up. It was sold about twenty years ago when my parents passed away. My niece had her young daughter with her and said, "That's where my granny and granddad lived". "Don't be silly mum, they live in Othertown," was the reply. "No, my granny and granddad. Your Great grandparents." "Ah, I see. So mum, where do the bad ones live?"

>12 pgmcc: That is priceless.

>12 pgmcc: Ha! Took me a second.

>10 ScoLgo: Are you still enjoying The Price You Pay?

>15 pgmcc: Very much so, (though I believe your touchstone may need editing as I am most assuredly not reading a Stargate book ;). Currently bookmarked at page 222 so am nearing the denouement. I have been giggling uncontrollably throughout. Nicholas H Aidan Truhen can do no wrong, it seems.

I already have Seven Demons in hand and will jump into it after reading Peacemaker, the next book in Cherryh's Foreigner series.

>16 ScoLgo:
Thank you for the Touchstone alert. Am working on my phone and not paying attention to the small print. Should be ok now.

Glad you are finding momentum in reading the book.

>17 pgmcc: I've been meaning to ask; what were your book club's thoughts on Snowdrops? I read that one a couple of weeks ago and am wondering what you all thought of it?

>18 ScoLgo: Everyone quite liked it. Spoiler cloaking device will be engaged to protect the guilty.

Everyone thought the main character was despicable and weak. We all thought the corruption and disregard for people and human life were awful. The reason we liked it was because it portrayed the post-USSR era in Russia in a realistic fashion. The person who suggested we read it is a lawyer who spent a lot of time in Moscow at the time the book is set. She said it was very accurate. Some of us have had dealings with Russians at that time and the attitudes shown matched our experiences.

I think we liked the book for its realism but thought the characters in it were the lowest of the low. We also considered it well written.

Does that sit well with your views or did you have a different reaction.

By the way, this was the first book we really all agreed on. We have had some vastly differing reactions to books. Had it been a different group of people, and had the meetings not been virtual, we might have had some fisty-cuffs over some books.

>19 pgmcc: Yes, I agree with all of that. I too quite liked the book and thought it well-written. The two things that bothered me were...

1. The epistolary nature of the narrative; I found it difficult to believe the narrator, (Nick), would write down all of his (mis?)-adventures in such detail for his betrothed to read before their nuptials. The entire framing device actually seemed unnecessary to me.

2. Why would Tatiana go along with the scheme? I understood early on that she was being scammed, but I could never understand why she seemed to gladly be on board with being sent on her way to become another 'snowdrop', (which was implied, if not specifically stated). Maybe I missed something along the way that explained that?

>20 ScoLgo:

I ignored the framing other than thinking, up to a point, that the fiancé was reading the document and that the main character had become a snowdrop. There was a point when it became clear that this was not the case.

In relation to your second point, I believe that is explained by the involvement of the British lawyer whom she trusted. They had sold her on the idea of living near the forest and foraging. They got the main character involved to developed the old lady's trust. He betrayed her.


The other book we read for that session of the book club was Fathers and Sons. (I checked, the Touchstone for Fathers and Sons is correct.) We all enjoyed this book. It was a really good read and was a relevant today is it was when it was written.

I finished and enjoyed The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al-Aswani. It is an interesting collection of stories about the occupants of an apartment block in central Cairo. The inhabitants range from the lowly door keeper to a high-flying businessman with political ambitions, and an old bachelor of style who hankers back to the good-old-days before the 1952 revolution ousted the Egyptian monarchy.

The tales of the lpeople whose lives centre on this buidling, which is a relic of former days of granduer, give glimpses into the lives of many different parts of Egyptian society. It highlights the hyporcacy of many and the corruption of state bodies and politicians. it does it in an easy to read style and gives the reader an understanding of the thoughts and motivations of the characters, some motivations not being the most honourable.

I have seen this book described as a great book about homosexuality in Egypt. Some of the commentaries I read left me thinking that homosexuality was the only theme in the book. One of the story lines is about a homosexual relationship, but it is only one story line and I think the author did a great job with all the story lines.

Would I read another book by thie author?
Yes.

Would I recommend this book?
Yes.

Who would I recommend this book to?
Anyone interested in learning something about Egyptian society in the years before the Arab Spring.

I am treating myself to an Eric Ambler this time round.



Tender to Danger is a story initially published under his nom-de-plume, "Eliot Reed". Charles Rodda collaborated on the Eliot Reed books*. These books were originally published as written by Eliot Reed with Charles Rodda. For some reason they have been republished as by Eric Ambler with a note at the bottom of the cover indicating the original writing credit. This book was also published under the title, "Tender to Moonlight". The publication date is 1951 but the story is set in 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII.

*The books originally published as by "Eliot Reed with Charles Rodda" are:

- Skytip (1950)
- Tender to Danger (1951), also published as Tender to Moonlight
- The Maras Affair (1953)
- Charter to Danger (1954)
- Passport to Panic (1958)

ERRATA: The Prologue is set in 1939. Chapter one starts the story proper some years after the war with an International Red Cross doctor returning home to England having spent three years working with displaced persons in several countries.

This post contains my thoughts on Tender to Danger so far. I am noting my thoughts on where I think the plot is going and will be checking back later to see how wrong I am. :-) Given that the post will contain plot detail I am hiding the comments behind the Spoiler mask.


The Prologue describes how a rich, amateur artefact collector arrives in his yacht on the coast of Croatia not far from Dubrovnik in 1939, a time when Croatia was part of Yugoslavia. When I say yacht, it is of course a rich person's yacht with a crew.

There are rumours of war and Mr. Meriden, the millionaire, dismisses them and ignores the advice of his crew not to visit this area. Not only does he ignore their advice not to visit, but he ignores their advice not to buy another boat that he finds stating that the size of the launch they have for running back and fro between the yacht to shore was limiting his ability to bring statues that he wants to collect from shore to the yacht and the new boat will be big enough to do that. Not only does he ignore the advice not to visit the area, and ignore the advice not to buy the boat, but he also buys a villa not far from the shore and within a relatively short drive to Dubrovnik.

Then we jump to a few years after WWII and meet the Red Cross doctor returning to London after three years working with people displaced by WWII. This is Dr. McLaren who is the typical Eric Ambler "ordinary person who gets mixed up in some strange and dangerous activities that are nothing to do with him". He ends up unwillingly in the company of a fellow traveller, a man who eventually claims to be a former art dealer who is now working for the Yugoslav government tracking down art pieces that have been stolen from his country by the Nazis during the war. There is a beautiful lady on the plane who is a certain Miss Meriden. Long story short, Yugoslav treasure hunter ends up dead. Miss Meriden is an artist show her sculptures in London.

Where to from here?

My assumptions are, Miss Meriden is the daughter of the millionaire who bought the villa by the coast. The millionaire bought the house and the boat to establish an art smuggling operation. His daughter's sculptures are actually a mechanism within which the smuggling operation smuggles treasures from one jurisdiction to another in plain sight. Once in another country Miss Meriden's sculptures are sold to associates who extract the smuggled treasures to be sold at a major profit.

The unfortunate agent was on to the scheme and was collecting information on the principals and was murdered for his trouble.



Am I right or am I wrong?

I shall read on and find out.

Page 65 and Eric Ambler earns even more credit in my eyes. One of his detectives says, “This is the hypothesis.”

Applause! Applause! He does not misuse the word, “Theory”, as so many other literary and screen detectives are wont to do.

The Story of a Goat is one of our Lockdown Book Club reads for our next session. I gave up on page 26. If there is any soul mending or redeeming messages in this book I will not find them and I did not find any hint of their presence in the first 26 pages.

Having dispensed with this book I decided I wanted to read something that I would enjoy and that was fun. I decided on a re-read and have settled on Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker.



It appears I last read this in November 2011. I had no idea it was so long ago.

I am past page 30 and am loving it. There is so much detail I had forgotten in the almost ten years since my last read.

>24 pgmcc:



I was right and wrong.


On the wrong side:
The lady was not the millionaire's daughter, but his niece.
The uncle had not set up an evil smuggling empire, but I suspect (and this is pure speculation that will never be proven one way or the other unless some of Eric Amblers notes include reference to it) Ambler set this as a red-herring for the reader to follow. (Yes, that is my self-justifying my initial thoughts.)

On the right side:
The boat was used for smuggling.


I enjoyed this story and the intrigue it presented. Ambler presented the reader with scenarios that could be interpreted in a number of different ways. This maintained the suspense as you were never quite sure who the good guys were and which good guys were actually bad guys. There were enough good-guy groups that the reader has a number of different good guy groups to wonder about, as well as individuals in those groups who could be doing a bad guy solo-run. This kept the suspense going to the climax.

The story contains many elements of any thriller about the aftermath of WWII, displaced persons, war criminals, missing valuables, Red-cross medical missions, people possessing several identities, agents on secret missions, etc... It also contains people trying to get back into a "normal" way of life after the disruption of the World War.

Would I read another book by this author?
Yes. So far I have read eleven novels by Eric Ambler, the last two, Skytip an Tender to Danger were originally published as written by Elliot Reed and Charles Rodda.

Would I recommend this book?
Yes.

Who would I recommend it to?
Anyone who likes old black and white spy/crime movies.

I may or may not have made this confession before, but I have not read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have watched the TV adaptation twice and the film twice.

Why do I make this confession at this time?

Well, on Father's Day my older son rang me to wish me a happy Father's Day and to apologise that his gift to me, something I told him was unnecessary, was delayed, and to ask what I would like. :-) I told him a gift was not necessary and said I needed nothing. He insisted and I realised he would be disappointed if I did not tell him something I would like. To save him such pain and sorrow, and to avoid his sending me something I already had or did not want, I suggested a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide. It is due for delivery today.

Now, those of you with long memories and who read people's posts in detail, will remember that I do have a hardback copy of Hitchhiker's Guide, but it is in a rather dilapidated state having been read by my other son and left in bits. It is currently awaiting repair with book glue and tape*, but I have decided it would be better to read a new copy and not to rush the repairs to the original copy, a copy that I picked up for only £3 some years ago in a small shop in Portlaoise. (The fact that it was £ and not € indicates that it was pre-January 1st, 2002. Knowing the work trip I was on at the time and the company I was working for I can push the date back to pre-1998. I am awaiting carbon dating results to see if I can firm up on an earlier date.) I subsequently saw the same edition for sale at £15 in Dublin. A bargain at twice the price but I did not reckon on younger son's total disregard for the health and well-being of the books he was reading when he read it. He has improved on that score since.

I do not know what edition my son has ordered but I will report back after it has arrived.

This is the edition I have but the dust-cover has perished long ago. Apparently it was printed in 1995.



* Thank you for the tips I received in various threads from people here. I recall @MrsLee influencing my procurement of book glue in addition to book tape.

The 42nd anniversary edition with slipcase. Fun to be had.

Very nice!

Lovely! Enjoy!

>29 pgmcc: Nice! Hope you enjoy it.

>29 pgmcc: Dead envious, Peter! Enjoy!

>33 haydninvienna: Agreed.

Peter, how will you be able to bear opening it?

>34 -pilgrim-:
You had better be sitting down when I tell you this. I have already ripped off the plastic covering.

>29 pgmcc: 42nd!! How appropriate, I hope you enjoy it when you finally bring yourself to take it out of the box.

>36 Karlstar: What? Take it out of the box?

What about the value? I do not want to push my luck.

:-)

You are in for an adventure!
*serves pggb to pgmcc*

>38 MrsLee: I am looking forward to it. A pggb would be just the drink to have by my side.

>38 MrsLee: Does a lower-case pggb differ in composition from the upper-case PGGBs that Groo used to make?

>40 hfglen:
Smaller glass. Everything in moderation before noon. After noon anything goes.

>41 pgmcc: Spot on. :D

>40 hfglen: I don't have the specialized hazmat equipment which Groo was the master of, so obviously, my pggbs will be slightly less effective. But then, we do want pgmcc to read the book, not pass out on it.

>42 MrsLee: ...we do want pgmcc to read the book, not pass out on it.

If needed to, I could do both.

Today was a DNBR in the garden day. Well, we did stop for a few nibbles. Cheese and wine were involved at one stage. I also took a few photgraphs of the flowers.

I am rereading Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker and I am really enjoying it. It is apparently almost ten years since I read it last. I am not making rapid progress because it involves many ideas and I have been pondering their meaning and implications. It was this book that introduced me to John Ruskin. Having been introduced to Ruskin in Angelmaker I sought out his essay, Traffic. It was written as a speech at a conferene in Bradford. He had been invited to give the people of Bradford ideas on the design of a new building they wished to construct for a Wool Exchange. At the start he said he could not talk to them on the requested topic as the building's only purpose was a focus on money. His belief was that buildings should be fashioned on greater things than money. This is something that resonates with me as I see minimum construction cost office blocks rising up everywhere in Dublin. They are soulless edifices without character. They are anonymous and have no link to the place or time. They could be anywhere in the world.

I am aware of the financial investment model they exist to fulfill. After a few years they will have either met their investors return objectives or not. If not they will be sold, refurbished or even demolished to rebuilt another investors return objectives. These buildings are a commodity investors are using to maximise their returns and are not designed to be the fabric of a city in which people live their lives. They are structures that will not inspire, enlighten, or entertain the populace.

As you can see, I am enjoying Angelmaker.

>44 pgmcc: You very nearly got me with that. It sounds like a fine distraction for me right when I need one. And I so much agree with what you cited and said about architecture.

But--I looked at the beginning on Amazon and saw that it's written in the present tense. To say I have no appetite for present-tense narrative fiction is putting it mildly. I ditched Wolf Hall on page 1 for the same reason, even though it should have been a sure winner for me. So I'm quite disappointed.

You can probably count it as a BB, though. I'll attest that it passed right through me.

>45 Meredy: To say I have no appetite for present-tense narrative fiction is putting it mildly.

I am sorry to hear that. I have just finished a significant section of the book that was about Edie Banister, a ninety year old former, yet still active, spy, and her training and activities during WWII. She is an important part of the story and is the main hero featured.

I will not count it as a BB unless you read it.

By the way, in the context of your downsizing your physical book collection, I would suggest, if you do decide to go for Angelmaker, that you might want to consider the Kindle edition as the book is 566 pages long and would not contribute positively towards your downsizing objective.

In relation to the architecture, you might like to hunt out John Ruskin's speech. It is available on Gutenberg and is entitled, Traffic.

When we visited Westport, Co. Mayo, in 2019, we went to see the Church of Ireland Holy Trinity Church as one of my wife's favourite authors, George A. Birmingham, real name, "Rev. James Owen Hannah", had been the rector for this church and Westport was a place he and his family loved.



The church has a display about its history and its architecture. As you can see from the picture above, and the pictures on the Buildings of Ireland page for the church, it is quite ornate, both inside and out. The internal walls are covered with scenes from the bible and the all have gold-leaf.

While reading the displayed material I was fascinated to discover that the architect followed the principles of John Ruskin in terms of making every element of the building significant and being more than just a brick, or a door frame, or a window frame, or a pillar. This would have meant nothing to me if I had not read Angelmaker and sought out material by John Ruskin.

Sitting in the heat of the evening Sun eating cheese and drinking Cabernet Sauvignon. I BBQed some trout in butter with almonds and lemon. It is a pleasant way to end a work day.

E.T.A. The cheeses are a French brie, an Irish cheddar, and a herb and garlic cheese from Carrigaline, Co. Cork.

>47 pgmcc: what about the Cabernet?

>48 haydninvienna: Chile.

I know! I know! You do not generally chill red wine.

>49 pgmcc: TBH, our household has a drinking problem, in that Mrs H drinks only Pinot Grigio and not much of that, but I prefer a substantial Australian Shiraz. (Chilean and South African reds also accepted.) I won’t drink a whole bottle by myself, so an opened one usually spends a couple of days in the fridge while I finish it. But it’s OK. Not ideal but still quite drinkable.

Having said which, tonight was fish and chips night and I got a Magners cider to go with it.

>50 haydninvienna:
I keep unused red out of the fridge and it does well. Of course, you are accustomed to much higher temperatures than I.

>50 haydninvienna: I don't refrigerate open red, but I use a vacuum corking system like this:

>44 pgmcc: Loved that bit about architecture. It doesn't take much to make things lovely. There is so much soulless road infrastructure on our hiways. However, in a small city north of us, they have worked salmon, reeds, etc. into the design of overpasses and other road structures. Fitting because the Sacramento River passes through the city. To me it makes all the difference in the world.

>53 MrsLee: Interesting! There's a graffiti artist around here (Kloof, mostly) who manages to get paid for decorating our "soulless road infrastructure" with much-larger-than-life-size pictures of the wildlife we used to have. So, for example, a wall near the local SPCA, that used to be bare concrete now sports a 6-foot-tall portrait of a kingfisher, with the associated reeds and butterflies

>54 hfglen: Bless your city administrators if they are paying for it, Hugh. Probably better if the actual wildlife were still there though.

>54 hfglen: I love murals too, rather like makeup on a plain face. :) It's funny, I don't need buildings to be old to have character. When I was in NYC, one of my favorite things was the juxtaposition of the old buildings amongst the new, but the new must also have character to make that work.

>53 MrsLee: >56 MrsLee: There's an interesting book I have that you might like to look out for: The Old Way of Seeing by Jonathan Hale. It's about why some architecture and streetscapes "work" and others don't. (Just checked its price on Amazon: you might want to get it from the library. I found my copy years ago in a remainder bin somewhere.)

>55 haydninvienna: Speaking under correction, I have an idea he's paid by the Keep Kloof Beautiful Association, and/or local corporates. Can't imagine the Council paying for it if there's corruption to spend the money on.

>55 haydninvienna: Agreed. So well said.

I have finished my re-read of Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. I see from my catalogue that I last read it in November, 2011, the year it was published. At the time I gave it five stars and these five stars have been confirmed by my re-read.

The book has 566 pages and as I read the last sentence I felt the sadness of a book I was enjoying coming to an end.

>60 pgmcc: I've felt that sadness many times. There's a real sense of loss. We don't talk about that very often around here, oddly, since we seem to talk about everything else. I know there are many books that are a slog to finish and I'm glad when they end, but others make me feel like I'm being ejected from a safe enclosure.

>61 Meredy: but others make me feel like I'm being ejected from a safe enclosure.

That is a very good description. It captures the feeling.

@MrsLee will be pleased to see I have started Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout. It is a private detective story and @MrsLee wounded me with her sharp-shooting.

>63 pgmcc: I do hope you enjoy it. Is this the time to tell you that this particular novel isn't my absolute favorite? It sets up the pattern and most of the characters which appear in later novels though, and it is by no means a loser.

>64 MrsLee:
Do not worry. I am enjoying it and I appreciate it is the first in the series.

So far it has struck me as not as brash as a Chandler story. It reminds me of the Perry Mason type shows I used to watch with my parents in the sixties. I can see how they could be comfort reads.

>65 pgmcc: I agree, they are a balance between noir and Golden Age mysteries, and not as brash. That is probably why I love them. I like Chandler and the others now and then, but I enjoy Stout. Same reason that Midsomer Murders appeal to me more than Inspector Morse.

>66 MrsLee:
Something I like about novels set within the last 100 years or so is the glimpse into society of the time that they can provide. Things like the rooming house culture, the attitudes of the characters, the type of thing that appeared in the newspaper, and the technology of the time. I can see I will be getting that from Stout's books.

Stout: "Stout means bulky in figure or shape. An example of stout is a short and fat beer mug. The definition of a stout is a dark and sweet type of beer that has a high percentage of hops. An example of stout is Guinness."

With Wolfe testing numerous varieties of beer I wondered if Rex Stout was using a play on meaning when creating his character. Of course, stout is not, as far as I know, a natural brew in the USA. My impression from the scenes where Wolfe is trying all the different beers is that they tend to be lagers, the watered down version of beer. ;-)

You may have heard the story of the Guinness CEO attending an international beer brewers' conference. At one of the breaks the CEO of Coors came out of the session and ordered a pint of Coors. The CEO of Budweiser came out of the session and ordered a Bud. The CEO of Guinness came out of the session and ordered a Coca Cola.

The CEOs of Coors and Bud noticed the Guinness CEO's order and one of them said, "Hello, Mr. CEO of G. We thought you would be doing the same as us and ordering your own product to promote the brand."

The CEO of Guinness replied, "Well, I had thought of doing that but when I saw you two were drinking soft drinks I should be sociable and join you."

>67 pgmcc: My late Prof used to refer to the "beers" you mention (I exclude Irish Guinness, which is the very Nectar of the Gods) as "crickets' pee". No more offence meant than absolutely necessary.

>68 hfglen: No more offence meant than absolutely necessary.

LOL!

>67 pgmcc: bwahaha! I like that.

>67 pgmcc: I don't know what beer was like in America during Prohibition and before. I do know that I was raised in the worst of beer eras here, thus thought I hated beer unless I could find a rare dark brew. Now specialty brews are very much the thing and stouts, lagers, IPA, ales, porters and more are served in small breweries everywhere. It's quite fun, Wolfe would have approved, I'm sure.

Today my wife had a hearing test. It was at 9am in Dublin city centre. We had our first joint visit to the city centre since the first pandemic lockdown here started in March 2020. Of course I took the opportunity to visit my two favourite Dublin bookshops. The above two books, Drive your plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel laureate, is a book I have intende reading since reading Flights, the book mentioned at the time of her Nobel win.

The other book, The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig was an impulse buy. I have enjoyed a couple of Zweig's novels, Post Office Girl and Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D.. While Zweig had a difficult time I find his writing informative, insightful, and evocative of the time and place in which his stories are set.

I bought these two books in Hodges Figgis, a bookshop @Haydninvienna knows well.

I also visited Books Upstairs, an Independent bookshop that celebrated 40 years in business two years ago. It is a store where you will not find the latest best sellers for the beach, but you will find more thoughtful books. While there I ordered a copy of Karla and the Sun (no Touchstone) by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is one of our Lockdown Book Club books for the August session.



I am interested in how this book will work out. My first attempt at an Ishiguro novel was The Buried Giant, a book that some here loved, but I did not have very much success with it. This book has interested me for a few reasons, not necessarily because I expect to enjoy the story. The reasons are:
1. Given that I was unsuccessful with The Buried Giant, will I find Karla and the Sun more engaging?
2. Apparently this book is about Artificial Intelligence (AI), and in particular the AI in a robot in a store. It can, therefore, be considered Science Fiction. I know that it will probably be classified as Post Modern, or Magical Realism, or a literary experiment by the literati.
3. Given its Science Fiction matter I am interested to see the reaction of the other book club members to it. The last thing they would ever want to read would be Science Fiction so I am waiting to see how they praise it and then argue that it could not be Science Fiction because it does not have any ray guns or spaceships.
4. I have seen some Science Fiction enthusiasts' reviews of this book and they say, "If you like Science Fiction, stay away from Karla and the Sun." It is a well known phenomenon amongst Science Fiction readers that when a writer who does not normally write Science Fiction, or who is not a reader of Science Fiction, tackles an obviously Science Fiction trope, it is not often that they succeed with writing a good book.

I could have bought this for about half the price in Hodges Figgis, and could have obtained it from Amazon for a third of what I paid, but I do not want Books Upstairs to disappear so I buy from them when I can.

I met up with my wife after her hearing test and we had beverages and a snack in the outside dining area of a small coffee shop. Outside dining is currently allowed and indoor dining will be coming back in a couple of weeks, all being well. The COVID-19 Delta variant is causing havoc in Britain with the infections rising rapidly amongst the unvaccinated population so we do not want to ease restrictions too quickly and risk the same type of exponential infection rate the UK is experiencing. Our niece who is a nurse in a London hospital is in the middle of this surge and all the hospitalisations she has seen have been unvaccinated people. They are also quite young. When last talking to her she had just admitted a 23 year old to Intensive Care.

Our visit to the city was very successful, although I now have to be very careful what I say. My wife is now wearing hearing aids and her hearing has improved enormously. :-)

>72 pgmcc: I had a similar reaction to reading The Buried Giant. It was well-written, but very slow and I never became particularly involved. (The fact that I was stranded in hospital at the time, with very few books, was motivation to persist with it.)

I had the impression that frequently strikes me with authors from the mainstream literary tradition, when they enter fields more commonly considered as genre: not having deigned to read in those genres themselves, they are proudly and laboriously re-inventing the wheel. There is nothing original here, but it is new both to those authors and to the critics who come from the same literary tradition, so it gets fêted for an originality it does no of have.

I was not a bad book, but neither did I find it a particularly good one. Good luck with Karla and the Sun!

>73 -pilgrim-: "not having deigned to read in those genres themselves, they are proudly and laboriously re-inventing the wheel. There is nothing original here, but it is new both to those authors and to the critics who come from the same literary tradition, so it gets fêted for an originality it does [not] have."

Excellent point, especially with respect to snagging the critics in the same net. I've thought the same thing about people who love to tell you they write poetry, but when you ask them who they like to read, they'll reply airily, "Oh, I don't read poetry." And yup, it shows.

>72 pgmcc: I couldn't get through The Buried Giant. I don't believe I made it more that 30 or 40 pages in before I bailed. However, I thought The Remains of the Day was wonderful. Never Let Me Go was decent enough, but not spectacular.

You're going to have to be very cautious now with all that muttering and mumbling to yourself, Peter.

>75 clamairy:
I am not sure I got as far as you did with The Buried Giant.

You're going to have to be very cautious now with all that muttering and mumbling to yourself, Peter.

Tell me about it. It is like your friend’s comment about dreading the return to not wearing masks because they have been mouthing “F*** OFF” to people for months and do not think they can stop.

>76 pgmcc: Haha! Yes, I have mostly been making unpleasant faces under my mask. I'm still wearing mine in stores, btw. We're down to about ⅓ of the population still in masks in stores. (Depending on the store. In some, like the Marshall's, Home Goods, TJ MAXX chain, it's almost 100% still.)

>77 clamairy:
Mask wearing is required in all retail establishments and public transport here.

>78 pgmcc: Our mask mandate was lifted in NY state last month. I suspect they will reinstate it when/if the Delta variant gets out of hand. Our vaccination rates here are very high, so it might be a while.

>79 clamairy: My neice, who is a nurse in London, is witnessing the British Delta variant surge in her hospital. She admitted a 23 year old into Intensive Care a couple of weeks ago. She said it is only non-vaccinated people who are getting ill, and the people getting it are much younger than before. Our government is being very careful in relation to relaxing restrictions as we have open movement between Ireland and the UK. There are some restrictions on people coming from Britain, but not from Northern Ireland. The statistics coming out from various European countries indicate that over 95% of the people testing positive are non-vaccinated which is reassuring for those of us who have received our second dose.

>75 clamairy: I read The Buried Giant in its entirety. It did not get any better.

>80 pgmcc: England is currently on course to drop all restrictions on 19th. Boris is apparently intending to go for " herd immunity".

Scotland is NOT following suit.

Unfortunately there is an open border.

>75 clamairy: I have only read one Ishiguro to date. The Remains of the Day was a 5-star book for me. I get the feeling that any other book of his that I read will be disappointing in comparison. I've heard a few good things about Klara and the Sun so will be interested in your thoughts when (if?) you finish it, Peter.

>83 ScoLgo: I gave that one 5 stars as well. The film version was also incredible.

>84 clamairy: Agreed. Two favorite actors in Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins; both of them really brought that story to life.

I have finished Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout. This book is the result of @MrsLee's sharp-shooting. @MrsLee described it as ...a balance between noir and Golden Age mysteries, and not as brash. I would have to agree.

This is the first book featuring Stout's genius private detective, Nero Wolfe, and his minion, Archie. (I am waiting to see @MrsLee's reaction to my description of Archie.)

The book is a book of its time, and elements of it would not be considered acceptable nowadays, such as the following sentences:

...“You mean you actually did all that? Without even looking at the driver? Leave it to a woman! What were your brother and Bradford doing, playing billiards?"
Part of it was that as much as I respected filial devotion and as much as I liked Sarah Barstow, it would have been a real satisfaction to put her across my knees and pull up her skirts and giver her a swell fanning, for not taking a look at that driver.

“No. But look at his name. He made me nervous. He looks like a Spaniard. What’s he doing with the name Kimball?”

"I reached down and patted her on the shoulder..."

"It was a young man, not a girl, at the desk in the outside room; that was nice for a change."



The story gives a good view of life in the city at the time. The sentence below was a welcome bit of reality. Normally in books and films no one ever has trouble parking.

As usual every car along the curb was laying its head on the next one’s tail, and I had to go nearly to Third Avenue to find a space where I could edge the roadster in.

My next Rex Stout read will be The League of Frightened Men.

I was duped by Kindle. One of the complaints about Kindle is not knowing where you are in the book. This was exacerbated by my Kindle edition containing both Fer-de-Lance and The League of Frightened Men. I thought it was taking a long time to read the book and when I checked the physical book page length I discovered it was 304 pages. The next book is a similar length. I had expected about 200.

Would I read another book by this author?
Yes.

Would I recommend this book?
Yes.

Who would I recommend this book to?
If you like old style noir private detective movies but you do not want the brashest and noirest elements, and if you are willing to take prejudices of the characters as a artifact of the time, then you might enjoy this book.

I need my towel near me for my next read.

>87 pgmcc: You really are having a fun summer, aren't you?

>88 Meredy: I certainly am. In my last thread I posted about the difficulty I was having deciding what to read next as I had so many good books to chose from. I am happy to report that I am still having that difficulty. It is like going to a restaurant where you would be delighted to eat any of the meals on the menu. Spoiled for choice.

I am also reading a short story by Nick Harkaway. It is called "Attenuation" and is contained in a collection entitled, Arc 1.2 Post Human Conditions.

>86 pgmcc: Just don't let Archie hear you call him that. He would come back with a comment drier than a martini.

>91 MrsLee: :-)

I have started my long anticipated read of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As mentioned before, I have watched the TV adaptation and the film version. I have neither heard the original radio production nor read the books. This is my first time reading the books.

Normally when I read a book I like to underline bits I find interesting and note the page number of the underlined parts. This approach will not work in the case of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If I were to attempt that approach for this book I would have underlined everything I have read so far. I have not found a wasted sentence or a piece of redundant prose. It is a joy to read.

I have just picked up a Kindle edition of The Complete Northanger Horrid Novels on Amazon.co.uk for £1.49.

The titles included are:
- The Castle of Wolfenbach
- The Mysteries of Udolpho
- The Necromancer
- Horrid Mysteries
- The Mysterious Warning
- The Italian
- The Midnight Bell
- Clermont
- The Orphan of the Rhine

I have not checked quality but at that price I thought it was worth the risk.

I will admit I was tempted, but it says 'quality issues reported.'

>94 pgmcc: That is a wonderful theme for a collection!

>93 pgmcc: Glad to hear you are enjoying Hitchhiker's.

May not be posting much for the next week or so. Heading west for a nephew's wedding. Taking a week off and there will be sand, sea, hills, books, and grandchildren. I think my wife and I have been duped into being live-in babysitters, but we will survive, and everyone will tell me how lucky I am. :-)

The forecast is for good weather up until next Thursday. We are going to The West of Ireland; forecasts of good weather in that part of the world can be more like wishful thinking. We will be on the Atlantic coast, in the path of the predominant wind direction, without any barriers to the Atlantic weather. Wind will almost certainly feature.

But I am looking forward to it. I have my books to keep me warm and, as a matter of fact, I have just brought my towel in from the clothes line, so, I will definitely be prepared if the Vogons happy along.

Aged Mother and Better Half enduring "good weather" on the Cliffs of Moher in April 1982. Notwithstanding this picture, we had a wonderful time in Ireland, and given the chance I'd go back "like from a gun a bullet".

Enjoy your week away!

>98 pgmcc: Hope you have marvelous weather and can enjoy some sun and surf. Please share pics.

>99 hfglen: & >100 clamairy:

We will be further north than The Cliffs of Moher. We will be on Achill Island, County Mayo. I have never been on Achill before and it is supposed to be beautiful. I have just checked my camera batteries, ensured I have my charger, and ensured I have enough memory card Giga Bytes to deal with any situation. All being well there will be pictures.

>101 pgmcc: I hope you have a wonderful time, whatever the weather!

>102 Sakerfalcon:
Sitting in car at services stop near Athlone. Just finished our McLunch, the sun is shining and the thermometer reads 25C. Roasting for us.

Now sitting outside M.J. Hoban’s public house in the heart of Westport drinking a pint of Smithwicks and awaiting my seafood chowder. C. is having a glass of wine and awaiting her trio of duck.
We have had our names and phone number taken for contact tracing if there is a virus outbreak.
The sun is shining; it is very warm; and all is well with the world. Great start to the weekend.
Just gone 6pm and the Westport rush-hour traffic is passing slowly by.

>104 pgmcc: Best wishes for it to both of you—sounds idyllic.

>104 pgmcc: Seconding Richard.

>105 haydninvienna: & >106 hfglen:
Thank you both. We are enjoying our first evening. Pictures promised here on my return. I have shared some on facebook but that is of no use to some people. I need more computer power to put them up here.

>107 pgmcc: Loved the pics. Glad you are having such a good time.

>104 pgmcc: Sounds like a great trip!

Monday and the sun is shining again. Record temperatures in the country. Warnings it will last until Friday.

Currently in Westport again and bought a “BOOK!”

The Guest List. It is about a wedding on an island off the west coast of Ireland. One of the guests is murdered.

Oh! Wait! We are here for a wedding on Achill Island. Oops!

>105 haydninvienna:, >110 pgmcc: It looks and sounds like you are having a glorious time. I hope the book does not prove to be prophetic read ....

Limited reading going on due to high level of family interaction and holiday activities.
We hosted a BBQ yesterday evening and were sitting out until about 11:30pm. There is still some light in the sky at that stage. The Moon was looking well.
Our mini heatwave is predicted to last until Friday. Health warnings have been issued for the heat and water restrictions are in effect in some areas.
While record temperatures are being reached they are nothing to those experienced in North America. At the moment we are having an exceptional spell of good weather. Where we are is usually misty. To have scorching sun for longer than one day is an exception. It was great to have a beautiful day for the wedding last Saturday. The islanders were amazed the day was so good.
In relation to the wedding, there has not been a murder so far, but there are still about fifteen non-island wedding guests on the island, not to mention all the island-based guests.
If this proves to be my last post…

>112 pgmcc: The butler did it?

>113 Karlstar: I had my suspicions.

My wife and I have just come in from sitting on the decking reading in the sunlight. My wife said her book was getting so hot she could hardly touch it.

I do not know what sort of filth she is reading but I must read it after her.

>115 pgmcc: You elicited a genuine guffaw with this post.

Just out of curiosity why are you swimming so early in the day and not when it's hot in the afternoon? Are you avoiding the strongest sun of the day? That's one reason why I usually wait until late afternoon to swim.

>116 clamairy:
Two reasons for early dip. One, as you spotted, is to avoid the heat. Today reached 32C, which, in Ireland, is exceptional.

The other reason is to avoid the busy beach. Variant-D COVID is causing an increase in infections and, even though we are vaccinated, we would rather not catch it or pass it on to others.

I am home from my week's holiday and have book purchases to report. These works were bought in the aptly name bookshop, "The Bookshop", in Westport, County Mayo.


Beyond the Tape

I bought the autobiography of Marie Cassidy because I have always been impressed by her approach to her work and her calmness when addressing issues raised by the press or others. She was the State Pathologist for Ireland and has only recently retired.

I will cramp this post with a funny story about Marie Cassidy, but will put the story in the next post for those that want a laugh.


The Guest List

Now this book is a risk. Lucy Foley's first book, The Hunting Party is one I abandoned after the first chapter. I could not stand the characters and did not want to spend several days in their company.

"Why?" you might ask did I buy another book by an author whose previous work I have taken a dislike to. That, I would agree, is a reasonable question. The answer lies in the plot and in the purpose and destination of my recent holiday. The plot is about a murder at a wedding held on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland. The reason for my past week's holiday was to attend a wedding on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland. As it turns out, the island I was on is the same one the author had in mind when writing the book. Apparently she had visited Achill Island in her youth and it had made a lasting impression on her.


The Siberian Dilemma

I have read most of Martin Cruz Smith's starting with the one that made his work famous, Gorky Park. I have found the entertaining reads and this is one I did not have.

Funny Story about Marie Cassidy



From 2004 to 2018 Marie Cassidy was State Pathologist of Ireland. She is Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin. She studied medicine at Glasgow university, and that is where my funny story comes from. More on that below.

One thing to know, is that any time Marie Cassidy was called to the scene of a death, be the death accidental or deliberate, the Irish media, when reporting the event, always used the line, "The State Pathologist, Marie Cassidy, has been called to the scene." or "Marie Cassidy, The State Pahtologist, is at the scene." The main point is that Marie Cassidy's name and profession were known to everyone in the Republic of Ireland.

I was working on a project in 2007 and one of the team members was from Scotland. He and I worked closely together and became good friends. In one of our many conversations he told me he was amazed that everyone in Ireland knew the name of the State Pathologist. He reckoned it was the only country in the world where everyone knew the name of the State Pathologist. As it happened he and his wife were friends of Marie Cassidy's at university in Scotland. At one point he had asked Marie Cassidy why, after studying medicine, she had gone into pathology rather than treating living patients. Her response was that in pathology the patients never talked back.

About a month after that conversation, John told me that his wife was coming to Ireland for a long weekend rather than his travelling home to Scotland. He had told his wife how famour Marie Cassidy was in Ireland and that it would be impossible to pass a day in ireland without hearing Marie Cassidy mentioned on radio or television, or read about her in the paper. His wife was skeptical and did not believe a word of it. He told her she would see when she visited for the long weekend.

After the long weekend John told me the following. His wife had travelled over on Thursday evening and while John went to work on the Friday his wife entertained herself by shopping and sightseeing in Dublin. John met her that evening and took her to The Gaiety Theatre to see a modernised version of The Playboy of The Western World by John Millington Synge.

When they had taken their seat in the theatre his wife said, "I have spent the whole day in Dublin and have not heard or read any mention of Marie Cassidy. That was a load of rubbish you told me about her." They then settled down to watch the play.

About halfway through the play, one of the characters comes on stage and says he has just killed his father by hitting him over the head with a shovel. One of the other characters immediately shouted out, "Call for Marie Cassidy!"

John gave his wife a gentle dig with his elbow.

I promised some photographs from my holday. I will start with this shot of sunrise, just before 6am on 21st July, on Achill Island. This was taken from the decking at the house we rented for the week. An hour later my wife and I were in the Atlantic for our first dip of the holiday.

Update on current read.
H


My holiday was spent in the presence of family, including three grandchildren ranging in age from 5 years old to almost 1 year old. Between family interaction, wedding activities, and holiday activities, I got very little reading done. I am only on page 114 so far. I am enjoying it greatly, but am not getting a good run at reading it.

I think one problem may be that I know the story too well from the TV and big screen adaptations.

>120 pgmcc: That is stunning!

>120 pgmcc: What a beautiful sunrise.

>120 pgmcc: That is a great image.

>122 -pilgrim-:, >123 Narilka:, >124 Karlstar:

Thank you! The weather was amazing.

Looks like you had ideal weather, Peter. (Scotland around the same time was pretty good too.) And yes, that is a great picture.

>126 haydninvienna: Thank you, Richard. The weather was atypical for the location. The bride’s father was amazed that we even got one good day for the wedding. He would not believe we had a week of great weather after the wedding. He said the island is usually covered in mist or drizzle.

Currently busy at work so more pictures will have to wait a few days.

>120 pgmcc: That is indeed an amazing scene!

>128 hfglen: Thank you! That is praise indeed coming from someone who posts great scenes every week.

It is such a lovely shot, Peter. I'm glad your trip was such a success.

>130 clamairy:
Thank you, Clare.

Just a gorgeous landscape. Woah.

>120 pgmcc: What a scene. A treat just to see it here--and trying to imagine what it was like to be there.

>133 Meredy: & >132 Bookmarque:
Thank you. It is a lovely part of the world.

I have finished my read of the first book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy in five parts. Very enjoyable.

I am taking a little breather from the humour and have started The Maras Affair by Eric Ambler.



This is a cold-war story and the main character is a press representative for a US newspaper. He is based in a country behind the Iron Curtain and the story is about all the issues associated with that.

The Maras Affair was first published in 1953. It describes the actions of an American newspaperman based in a country behind the Iron Curtain. The events that unfold were quite prescient with regards to the uprising in Hungary in 1956. This is one of the things I like about Ambler's stories; he gives the reader an accurate feel for the atmosphere and circumstances of the time.

One of the aspects of the book that I find a bit off, is the naivity of the American newspaperman; he was put in his posting without speaking the local language, and he appears to be totally oblivious to how awkward and dangerous life could for people not abiding by the rules of the ruling regime.

There is also his behaviour toward the eponymous character, Maras. The newspaperman, Burton, treats her as a vulnerable female who needs his protection. Maras is a woman who was active in the local resistance against the Nazi occupation during WWII. She is obviously a very capable person who would manage to look after herself without the help of her boss. Oh yes! Did I mention Burton was her boss? Well, of course he has fallen in love with her and wants to rescue her from the dangers all around her. If this were to happen today Mr. Burton would probably be facing the sack for using his dominant position to coerce an employ to become romantically involved with him. I am on page 138 and my interpretation of the story so far is that she has absolutely no interest in him.

>136 pgmcc: Then that cover you posted might be an accurate depiction of how someone in 2021 feels reading that book!

>137 clamairy:
Pretty much.

I have not finished it yet but I am hoping the newspaperman gets a surprise when he discovers the woman is the brains behind the uprising. I suspect that may not be the case as the last scene I read had her in his arms and laying her head on his chest.

The politics and secret police activities are well done. It is dated in terms of attitude but no more than say a Humphrey Bogart film.

I finished The Maras Affair. I enjoyed it but not as much as the other Ambler books I have read. It was still good and the representation of the socio-economic situation behind the Iron Curtain at the time was realistic. (Please do not ask me how I know.)

Would I read another book by this author?
Yes.

Would I recommend this book?
Yes.

Who would I lend it to?
Anyone who likes old spy or detective movies.

This is a book for our Lockdown Book Club.

>141 pgmcc: I saw this is on the long list for the Booker Man prize this year. You will be the first person I know who is reading it. Hope it's up to the hype!

What a lovely photo! It sounds like your holiday also was lovely.

I've read Ambler's The Mask of Dimitrios and loved it. I'm reluctant to try some of his later titles, as I'm not certain they would feel as fresh to me as Dimitrios. There's an immediacy to Ambler's writing because he was such an astute observer of current affairs. Unfortunately, my tastes in spy novels do not run to the postwar period, especially the Cold War. (I have this same problem with Helen MacInnes. Alas, several of her later novels were discounted on Kindle a few months ago, and I was unable to resist.)

>143 libraryperilous:
Thank you. The week was great.

The Mask of Dimitrios was the first Ambler I read and, like you, I loved it.

I have read all his pre-WWII novels at this stage and am working through the others. I like the way he presents the atmosphere of the time and gives a flavour of the locale. Some of his postwar novels are not necessarily spy novels. They deal with the post-war era and in some cases they relate to consequences of the war but not necessarily espionage.

Unlike you, I do enjoy the Cold War stories. I have always had a fascination with Russia and growing up in the 60s meant a lot of news items were about the Cold War. I love John Le Carré's novels and the ones that made his name were about the Cold War.

I have not read any Helen MacInnes.

>142 clamairy: I am approaching it with caution, as I do any books suggested for our book club. :-) I wonder if the other members of the book club realise they are reading Science Fiction. I think many of them would be shocked to think they were reading SF. My caution is due to Ishiguro not being known for writing SF. Someone told me some years ago that when non-SF writers write SF they tend to recreate the wheel. I am thinking this book may be a bit like a re-run of Asimov's I Robot stories. We shall see. It is my intention to let all the other members have their say on the book before I make any comment. Hopefully I will be surprised and will find the book entertaining. You will read my opinion of the book here first.

I find the whole area of mainstream authors writing a story with SF elements and yet denying they are writing SF.

Audrey Neffenegger did a superb job with The Time Traveler's Wife. It was a wonderful love story more than anything else. I know some people who loved the story but deny to this day that it is anything to do with SF. I do not think Neffenegger was worried one way or another. It was book that put tears into my eyes at the end.

>145 pgmcc: I had a long post typed up and somehow I lost it, so now I'm going to try to recreate it... though I doubt its original brilliance will ever be recaptured.

I enjoyed that Neffenegger as well. I also enjoyed Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead's take on the Zombie Apocalypse Zone One quite a bit. Speaking of branching out one of my favorite nonfiction writers Erik Larson has his first attempt at fiction coming out soon and I understand it's a ghost story!

>146 clamairy: I had a long post typed up and somehow I lost it,...

I know the feeling.

When I was doing a long post I got into the habit of doing it in MS Word and copying and pasting it to avoid that exact problem. I appear to have fallen out of that habit, but I also appear to have fallen out of the habit of writing long posts. I find I am not as diligent at writing reviews as I once was. I seem to be more impatient to get onto the next book.

I am resisting your Whitehead and Larson bullets. I am just looking the other way, hiding behind a wall, not noticing at all.

ETA: I have just had a look at the description of Zone One. It sounds like a near-future re-opening after COVID. Too realistic for me at the moment.

My daughter took her family and visiting relations to the Underground Railway exhibit in Cincinnati last week.

I still have a BB from you regarding Larson. I have The Devil in the White City to read yet.

You see how I ignore your BBs.

>147 pgmcc: I wasn't actually trying to make you read the Whitehead. He's a distinctly American author. Not that you wouldn't appreciate his writing. Maybe some day.

My posts have gotten shorter and shorter as the years have gone by. I have not gotten quite to the '@TimSpalding one word review' stage yet. But I think it's coming.

>144 pgmcc: I grew up in the 80s, and the fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the seminal moments of my childhood. I can imagine why people who grew up earlier in the Cold War era are fascinated by it, especially stories that provide a peek behind the Iron Curtain.

For MacInnes, I recommend starting with Above Suspicion. MacInnes was unequivocal about Nazi Germany. It does read as a bit preachy, but it also is gimlet-eyed. The book also was made into a favorite film of mine, starring two of my favorite classic Hollywood stars, Fred MacMurray and Joan Crawford. Crawford was known for noir films but excelled in high-spirited heroine roles and was cast in too few of them.

Klara and the Sun

I am only a short distance into this book but I am finding it a more pleasant read than I thought. It is reminiscent of John Sladek's Roderick and Asimov's I Robot. While I am not grabbing the book at every reading opportunity, I am looking forward to see where Ishiguro takes the story.

My first attempt with an Ishiguro book, The Buried Giant, ended with DNF due to boredom. So far Klara and the Sun has avoided that fate.

I am still curious to see how the other book club members feel about having read Science Fiction or if they will try to classify it in some other fashion and avoid admitting they have read Science Fiction.

I promised some photographs from my week on Achill Island.


This image shows the north western part of Achill. The curved, sandy beach is where we went for our morning dip on three mornings. We were staying in a rented house about five minutes walk from the far end of the beach.

The highest peak in the picture, just right of centre, is Slievemore (anglicised spelling for Sliabh Mór, meaning big mountain). This dominated the view from the back of our holiday home and its slope can be seen in the sunrise picture in post >120 pgmcc:.

From the front garden one can see the view below.


Ths first picture in this post was taken from the top of the mountain in left part of this picture.

>151 pgmcc: Just lovely, Peter. What a view!

>152 clamairy: Thank you!


This is Slievemore from the Silver Strand on the north coast of the island.

Those photos are a feast for the eyes!

>154 MrsLee:
Thank you. I am glad you like them.

Damn, I want to go back to Ireland! We saw such a small part of it, and it was such a long time ago (1997, I think. Maybe 1998).

Beautiful pictures - I'd love to visit Ireland.

I lived in Ireland for two and a half years and I would seriously love to get back again!

Magic! Sheer magic, all three pictures. And I'll join the chorus that wants to go back. (@Tardis, I was there some 15 years before you!)

I simply want to get there for the first time...

...me too.

I did get to Scotland, though.

>156 tardis: >157 NorthernStar: >158 haydninvienna: >159 hfglen: >160 -pilgrim-: >161 Meredy:

Thank you for your comments on the photographs and for your enthusiasm to visit Ireland. I would love to welcome you all here, and have a cup of coffee or a PGGB in a physical pub that we can rename to "The Green Dragon" for the day. And yes, of course there would be cheese.

>162 pgmcc: AFAIK Irish CHEESE is in no wise to be sneezed at, even if there are no Big Names such as one finds in France.

I am still making progress with Klara and the Sun. I am still eager to hear my book club companions' views on the book. I am still not grabbing every opportunity to read it, but I am enjoying it when I do read it. It is a good example of a Science Fiction trope being used to examine a very human situation. It is a good melding of SF and mainstream.

I like SF that uses the scientific concept or trope to examine real-life situations, and to examine human feelings, emotions and actions. The SF element in this book provides the read with the fly-on-the-wall experience which enables them to be an observer of human interaction.

It is quite easy to see the way the book is going, but I am interested to see how Ishiguro handles it.

Money where mouth is time. As in the past, when I have said I see where the book is going, I will write a note here for review when I finish the book so we can all see what I got wrong. Do not read the spoiler masked words below if you intent to read the book as I do discuss some of the things that happen in the book.
It was well signalled in the first part of the book that Jose was ill, and it was obviously going to be a terminal illness. I expect she will die at some stage in the latter half of the book if not right in the middle. The first part of the book was focused on Klara, the AF (Artificial Friend), while she was in the shop awaiting purchase. It served to establish Klara as an AF and as a being that is thoughtful and retrospective.

Now Klara is living in Jose's home and is learning that Jose is ill and that Jose's sister has died previously. While it is denied by Jose that it was the same illness the sister had, I suspect it was and that Jose's mother has told Jose it is different to give Jose hope of recovery.

So, where do I think the book is going?
Firstly, I expect Jose to die relatively soon. (I am almost halfway through.) Her father, who is currently estranged from her mother, used to work in a nearby factory. I think this is going to involve some pollution that has caused, or is believed to have caused, the illnesses of the two daughters. Whether this will prove the reason for the marriage breakup or not, I am not sure. I think would be too clichéd, but writers to write some clichés. We shall see.

I expect that after Jose's death the book will focus on the effect on the surrounding characters, the mother, the friend Rick, the housekeeper, and Klara.

What will happen to Klara, the AF, after the child requiring the AF is gone? I suspect she will be sold into the secondhand market. I suspect the mother may not be able to go on and we may have a tragedy there.

So, when I finish the books I have to check the following points:

Does Jose die?

Do we get a view of the impact on the other characters of Jose's death?

Will the mother survive?

Will Klara be traded in for credit against a new suite of furniture?



This book is identified as the one that won Ishiguro the Nobel Prize. It is a bit lighter than the previous Nobel prize winning novels I have read, but it is getting there.

By the way, I am still amazed Haruki Murakami has not been awarded a Nobel prize.

Seconding >163 hfglen:. I miss Dubliner cheese.

>165 haydninvienna: Costco has that in stock quite often, and more rarely they have the Blarney Castle cheese, which I enjoy even more than the Dubliner. And I buy Kerry Gold butter there as well. It comes in a slab, but I keep it in the freezer. Mmm...

The additional photo is lovely, Peter. That cloud is remarkable.

>166 clamairy: I am a recent convert to Kerry Gold butter. I buy it for toast and the like, and the cheaper butter for baking. But never margarine or not-butter.

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin is a book I have made quite a bit of noise about in my threads since I read it. I mention it here because I am slightly excited about an event currently planned for Friday, 29th October this year. It is a symposium celebrating the writing of Melmoth the Wanderer. it is being organised by a senior lecturer in The University of Limerick (UL) and is being hosted by UL. The information I have to date from the organiser has not made it clear if this is going to be an on-line or a physical location event. Either way I am sure you will be hearing more about this event from me.

Given that it is to be held in less than three months I am inclined to believe it will be on-line as people would need time to book accommodation to attend and that would be difficult to do at short notice.

Glorious photos Peter! Thank you for sharing. It looks like you had perfect weather. How on earth did you manage to tear yourself away from that view and return home???

A GD meetup in Ireland? Count me in!

>167 MrsLee: English and Irish butter is very different to the standard American sort, I found. I used to pay extortionate amounts to buy it from Fresh Fields (as it was) when I lived in the US because it both tasted and behaved as I was used to. I tried to make brandy butter once with American butter.... disaster!

>169 Sakerfalcon:
Thank you, Claire. The weather was perfect if you like long, hot, summer days. :-) I was worried we were going into a heat wave like the one in north-west North America, or the Mediterranean, but it broke after a week and a few days.

Tearing myself away was a problem, but it was eased by visiting my cousin on the way home.

In the early 1990s I paid a visit to Donegal having not been there for several years. On that occasion I nearly did not return to Dublin.

A GD meeting in Ireland would be great. I have regretted not being able to meet up with you in 2017, but have managed to meet up with @maddz, @haydninvienna and @imryl in Ireland. I was also able to meet others from the Science Fiction group at Worldcon, including @RobertDay and both members of the @anglemark collective. My accidental meeting of a friend of @jillmwo also added to the excitement.

Karla and THE SUN has taken an unexpected turn and is presenting me with a range of interesting issues. I am reassessing my views on some of the characters. There were signals earlier on as to the route the story was going to take but I did not spot them as such; I thought they were just incidents to fill out a particular character's character. Now I realise they were pointers to a strand of the story that was not front and centre.

This turn also takes the story in a direction that is not one of the automaton story tropes that Science Fiction readers would be familiar with from stories such as, I Robot, Supertoys Last All Summer Long, or The Complete Roderick.

The Mother is coaching Karla to replicate José so that Karla can substitute for José once she has died. The objective is so that the Mother will not have as bad an emotional time as she would without a continuation of José. This is totally selfish and I am quite mixed up about how I should feel about this. It does not put the mother in a particularly good light. I may, however, change my mind, but I think it somehow devalues the mother's relationship with her daughter if she thinks the pain of the daughter's death can be ameliorated by having a substitute.

I am just sharring a memory here.



Facebook presented me with this memory from 14 years ago. It is a panel at the MECON Science Fiction convention in Belfast back in 2007. The picture is of a panel that was hijacked by the guests and it turned out to be one of the best panel discussions of the convention. The only person in the picture who was supposed to be on the panel is the moderator. The panel had just gotten started when the guests marched in and occupied the seats. There had been some unrest about some of the panels and their actions were fully supported by the members. This was a bloddless coup.

The people in the picture are:

With her back to us and with her head turned to the right is Leah Moore, writer of graphic novels and daughter of Alan Moore.
From left to right at the table:
- Catie Murphy, wirter of graphic novels and urban fantasy novels, and, as she has said herself, entertainment fodder;
- John Reppion, writer of graphic novels and husband of Leah Moore (They are a lovely couple.);
- Hapless panel moderator who did not have a clue about what was happening;
- Iain Banks/Iain M. Banks who is sadly missed and I suspect needs little or no introduction to the readers of this thread;
- Alastair Reynolds, wirter of hard Science Fiction and a lovely guy
- Ian McDonald, writer of wonderful Science Fiction and who is another lovely guy.

This was a great convention and everybody enjoyed themselves. Small conventions like this spoil the attendees as you get to eat, drink, and make merry with some of the best writers in the World. You also get to see that they are human too, and that they can be great fun to be with.

By the way, Paul Cornell was at this convention too. It was a pity he did not join the pirate guests for this panel.

That's an impressive line up of SF writers. I bet that was a great discussion.

>172 pgmcc: What a wonderful memory to have pop up. Don't smite me, but I've never read any Banks. Where do you suggest one should start?

>172 pgmcc: That's quite the writer panel! What was the conversation about?

>174 clamairy: What???!! So much smiting! I starting with Look to Windward and loved it, but I'd suggest starting with The Player of Games.

>173 Narilka: & >175 Karlstar: After the initial raid and occupation they settled down to discussing how they wrote. I picked up a great tip from Alastair Reynolds that I use to this very day when writing reports for work. He writes his first draft in red, then when he is editing he will change it to blue, and when he is happy that it needs no more editing he changes the colour to black. At a glance he can see how much he still has to edit, where he is currently working, and how much he has finished with.

Ian McDonald also shared a bit of news with us. He was working in a TV production company and he had just received word that his company had been successful in its bid for the localisation of Sesame Street programmes in Northern Ireland.

It was a fascinating discussion.

>174 clamairy: I did not discover Iain Banks work until my late twenties. I might even have been thirty. Of course, when I discovered his work he had only published three books, Consider Phlebas, The Wasp Factory, and Player of Games.

I picked up Consider Phlebas on holiday and found it a ripping yarn. I loved it. When I discovered he had written a "mainstream" novel I had to read that too, and loved it. Then I read Player of Games. I was lucky to be able to read his books, both Iain M. Banks (IMB) and Iain Banks as they were published. I would recommend reading the Iain M. Banks books in that order because, while most of them are standalone some do have slight dependencies on earlier books. Also, familiarity with The Culture will help when reading some of the later books. The Player of Games was my favourite IMB book until I read Look to Windward which then shared my favourite IMB slot. By the way, Look to Windward refers to events in Consider Phlebas.

The Iain Banks novels are not as consistently great in the way the IMB books are. Also, for many of them the term "mainstream" may give a slightly skewed impression of what they actually are. I have said before that if anyone had described The Wasp Factory to me before I read it I would probably not have read it. I would have been missing a brilliant book. The Bridge is probably my favourite IB books, although Complicity gives it a good run for its money. I loved The Quarry but that was probably more emotional and because the messages he included in that book were very much his own. I described The Quarry as a manifesto of Iain's personal feelings, thoughts and beliefs.

10:12 pm and we are sitting eating oysters. Mmmm!

Are you talking of cabbages and kings?

>179 Meredy: No. i am eating oysters.

:-)

>180 pgmcc:
And now we have eaten every one.

I have just finished Karla and the Sun. It was much better than I expected. I am not sure I would have considered it for a Nobel prize over works by Haruki Murakami.

I have just read Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery. Very atmospheric.

>179 Meredy: Apropos your question, there has been a walrus around the coast of Ireland for the past few months. He has been resting on any floating items he comes across, mostly pleasure boats. West Cork is where he is currently holidaying. The picture below was taken (not by me) five days ago.

Klara and the Sun

I have finished this Lockdown Book Club read and was pleasantly surprised. My predictions in >164 pgmcc: proved wrong in many ways.

My spoiler-free comments are:

This was an interesting read. I do not think Ishiguro mess up any traditional Science Fiction (SF) tropes as some SF commentators have suggested. He used the SF trope to explore various aspects of human relationships and prejudice. I do think, however that the way the trope was used in the story was dated and it was pre-dated by some fifty years or more by some SF writers.

Will I read more by this author?
No. My bad experience with The Buried Giant was not counterbalanced by Klara and the Sun. Had I read Klara and the Sun as my first Ishiguro would I read another of his book? No. while I think it was a good book I did not think, "Wow!"

Would I recommend this novel?
I am not sure. It is a good enough read but it is not brilliant.

To whom would I recommend it?
I might recommend it to someone who asked me to give an example of a non-SF writer using SF in their story.

I am still looking forward to hearing what the other book club members made of it.

My experience with him has been similar. I don't understand the Cult of Ishiguro. The first book I read was Never Let Me Go which, despite its flaws (and it has some), was pretty good. Then I tried Remains of the Day and was so bored to tears I almost ossified. Never again.

And similarly I don't understand the Cult of Murakami.

>186 Bookmarque:
We will have to agree to disagree on Murakami. :-)

I have started reading Charter to Danger by Eric Ambler.

I discovered that I was not the only one to be confused over the similarity in meaning of the title of this book and that of another Eric Ambler book. This book is Charter to Danger. There is another ambler book called, Tender to Danger, also known as Tender to Moonlight. I see that someone has posted covers for Tender to Danger as covers for Charter to Danger.

Touchstone error: I also see that the only Touchstone that works for Charter to Danger is the Touchstone for Tender to Danger.

Any way, I have started reading Charter to Danger which is a totally different book to Tender to Danger.

>186 Bookmarque: To each their own. I rated The Remains of the Day at five stars. I loved that book and plan to re-read it one day. It is the only Ishiguro I have read to date so have no comment on any other of his works. but that one stood out for me in a year of otherwise decent reading, (2013).

>183 pgmcc: I remember a televised version of that story, too, that was chillingly creepy. Likewise shivery is Tom Tryon's novel Harvest Home, which was adapted as a 1978 TV miniseries.

>184 pgmcc: That's a good one for a smile. I don't see any lurking carpenters, but the billows do appear smooth and bright.

>190 Meredy:
I could not think of a current story about a carpenter that would produce as humorous an image.

>191 pgmcc: I bet that verse (along with a whole lot of other things) couldn't get published today. Some oysters' rights advocate would take affront. It's amazing how many people seem unable to separate the words and deeds of fictional characters from the opinions of the author. And that's only if they realize that there is an author, a concept that television seems to have largely obscured.

Sorry, I know you've put up a continuation thread, but I was thinking it made sense to keep one branch of the conversation in one place.

>188 pgmcc: - as mentioned in your new thread, based on your comments I separated the two books, which had been combined. It doesn't seem to have fixed the touchstones here.

>192 Meredy:
I agree with your continuing the conversation here.

>193 NorthernStar:
That is strange. I noticed that “Add books” feature recognised two separate books but Touchstone did not.

Thank you for your help.

Charter to Danger This one worked. Yay!

>186 Bookmarque:
I hope to give you a more complete description of what I like about Murakami's work at a later stage. In the meantime I will say I love his use of surreal elements to look at reality. In the first pages of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle he was describing how a man had decided to give up his job and take some time at home to improve his work/life balance. He found his first day at home really surreal. He was seeing things that he had never seen before, such as the mail deliver, an empty street, etc... Every sentence posed a question and every answer posed another question. I found the book drew me in and challenged my view of the world.

The first Murakami I read was 1Q84, books one and two. (There is a book three, but one and two are a useful unit to discuss.) Again surreal, or even supernatural elements of Japanese mythology and superstitions were used to look at the real world. The first two books of 1Q84 were a very strong message about violence towards women.

If I were to sum up my feelings about Murakami's books I would say he uses surreal imagery and ideas to analyse the real world and to lead the reader to analyse their own view of the world.

I always enjoy reading Murakami's works but I do feel have to take a break between books. It is like having gone on a personal development course in which you were really engaged and in which you found some really interesting things about yourself and the world you live and work in. You need a period of calm afterwards to assimilate what you have learned and you definitely do not want to start another course the very next day. A Murakami book is almost like a spiritual retreat.

"A Murakami book is almost like a spiritual retreat." That sentence appears to support your use of the word, "Cult", in you post. :-) Then again, anything that makes you think is like a spiritual retreat.

Just catching up on threads.

Your trip to the island sounds lovely! The pics are wonderful! I hope to visit Ireland someday.

That walrus! Too funny!

>197 catzteach:
I hope you get here.

Of course the media have named the walrus “Wally”. Thankfully none of the outlets gave used the headline, “Where’s Wally?” I am sure they are saving that for when he disappears for a few days.

NOTE: On this side of the Atlantic the children’s book “Where’s Waldo?” is called “Where’s Wally?”

>196 pgmcc: It's the surreal I can't deal with much at all in fiction. I hate it - it does my head in. Dream sequences, too. They get skipped every time. I'm too literal and linear a thinker for it possibly and I'm about the least spiritual person I know. Don't read my review of Windup Bird if you love the book. Just preserve your joy in it.

I realize that you've moved on, but jic you check back...

>144 pgmcc: I've read one Helen MacInnes, and have since bought her other books whenever I've found them.

Is that a good enough recommendation?

I also like Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean, all good stuff.

>200 fuzzi:
It certainly is a good enough recommendation.

I have Hammond Innes on my radar from the time we did a group read of Atlantic Fury.

Alistair MacLean occupies a few slots on my shelves but I still have to read one of his books.

Thank you for popping back to this thread with your recommendations.