June, 2026 Reading: "I return to find secrets. I return to rob them." (Robert Duncan)
Talk Literary Snobs
Join LibraryThing to post.
1CliffBurns
Started off the month with another John Banville mystery, APRIL IN SPAIN.
Part of his "Strafford/Quirk" series...and, as with the last one I read, the writing is fine, but the mystery doesn't live up to the hype and the pacing (unlike most crime novels) is too slow, and the book lacks a certain amount of focus and intensity.
Diverting but not essential.
Part of his "Strafford/Quirk" series...and, as with the last one I read, the writing is fine, but the mystery doesn't live up to the hype and the pacing (unlike most crime novels) is too slow, and the book lacks a certain amount of focus and intensity.
Diverting but not essential.
2KatrinkaV
While out on a field ed course, I picked up a 25-cent copy of Hermann Hesse's Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game at the tiny tourist center in Hooker, OK. Best bargain/unexpected find around. Been meaning to read it for years, and I’m enjoying it so far!
3iansales
Read: Carry On, Jeeves, PG Wodehouse
This collection is the third book in the second volume of the Jeeves Omnibuses, and contains stories published between 1916 and 1925. Some of the plots were later used in novels. I say “plots”, but there’s pretty much just the one Wodehouse uses.
Interestingly, the opening story, ‘Jeeves Takes Charge’, describes Bertie hiring Jeeves. Around half of the stories take place in New York. They all follow the usual pattern: a friend approaches Bertie, or sometimes Jeeves directly, for help with a small problem, usually involving a fiancée or a relative, it all goes horribly wrong, but Jeeves has not only foreseen this, he has carefully engineered events to produce the desired ending. It’s all very clever, but it does wear a bit thin over the course of ten stories. There are some characters familiar from other stories, or novels, some here introduced for the first time.
The stories were mostly originally published in Strand in the UK and the Saturday Evening Post in the US. Some of the contents are rewritten versions of stories that appeared in an earlier collection, My Man Jeeves, from 1919. So it’s not just plots Wodehouse re-uses, sometimes it’s the stories themselves. Still, they are amusing, and Wodehouse can throw a neat turn of phrase, even if it gets a little formulaic in places. The names here are not as absurd as in later stories, although I expect they would still seem absurd to any reader who is not, well, English. I should probably rephrase that: it’s not that the names do not seem absurd to English readers, they do; it’s just that they also seem entirely plausible for the upper classes.
Wodehouse’s depiction of the upper classes endures for the English. He’s not the only chronicler of the aristocracy’s inbred idiosyncrasies and depredations, and his stories only really hold true for a relatively short period in recent UK history; but then all the stories written about the English aristocracy only really hold true for the time during which the stories take place. In the twenty-first century, they’re an anachronism. Like, well, royalty.
This collection is the third book in the second volume of the Jeeves Omnibuses, and contains stories published between 1916 and 1925. Some of the plots were later used in novels. I say “plots”, but there’s pretty much just the one Wodehouse uses.
Interestingly, the opening story, ‘Jeeves Takes Charge’, describes Bertie hiring Jeeves. Around half of the stories take place in New York. They all follow the usual pattern: a friend approaches Bertie, or sometimes Jeeves directly, for help with a small problem, usually involving a fiancée or a relative, it all goes horribly wrong, but Jeeves has not only foreseen this, he has carefully engineered events to produce the desired ending. It’s all very clever, but it does wear a bit thin over the course of ten stories. There are some characters familiar from other stories, or novels, some here introduced for the first time.
The stories were mostly originally published in Strand in the UK and the Saturday Evening Post in the US. Some of the contents are rewritten versions of stories that appeared in an earlier collection, My Man Jeeves, from 1919. So it’s not just plots Wodehouse re-uses, sometimes it’s the stories themselves. Still, they are amusing, and Wodehouse can throw a neat turn of phrase, even if it gets a little formulaic in places. The names here are not as absurd as in later stories, although I expect they would still seem absurd to any reader who is not, well, English. I should probably rephrase that: it’s not that the names do not seem absurd to English readers, they do; it’s just that they also seem entirely plausible for the upper classes.
Wodehouse’s depiction of the upper classes endures for the English. He’s not the only chronicler of the aristocracy’s inbred idiosyncrasies and depredations, and his stories only really hold true for a relatively short period in recent UK history; but then all the stories written about the English aristocracy only really hold true for the time during which the stories take place. In the twenty-first century, they’re an anachronism. Like, well, royalty.
4Cecrow
>2 KatrinkaV:, take note of the appendices at the end; I recommend reading each of them at the point when they are mentioned, so you follow the context.
5Cecrow
I'm reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Mr. Lawrence of Arabia. This is him reflecting back on working alongside the Arabs during World War I. He was aided by his field notes, destroyed them as he went along, then lost his manuscript and had to start all over again from memory. So I am floored by the degree of detail in the travelogue portions, with the many and varied precise descriptions of desert terrain. Did he seriously remember all that, or was he just making it up as he wrote??
6KatrinkaV
>4 Cecrow: Thanks! Will do, though I’m already a good way through. (Maybe going back will be like a mini version of doing the hopscotch version of Cortázar’s Hopscotch, after having read it straight through the first time—one of the best reading experiences I’ve ever had!)
7CliffBurns
Sorry, I know many smart people champion the writing of Ben Lerner, but I don't get it.
I also recognize he's well-educated and highly intelligent and seems to have something to say...but, whatever it is, it doesn't interest me.
TRANSCRIPTION, his latest book, a case in point.
It's a very simple tale about a writer visiting his aging mentor to do an interview but something goes wrong and the interview never happens. The writer cobbles together a version of that night's conversation and releases it as if transcribed from an actual recording. Was the writer ethnically and professionally dishonest...or did he inadvertently create a more faithful rendering of his old friend than mere transcription would allow?
Supposedly a meditation on truth in the digital era and other stuff, the book meanders, interspersed with dialogue that never rings true and lots of (wink-wink) allusions relating to art, psychology, culture...the final result leaving an overall impression of an author who thinks he's terribly, terribly clever but has a hard time coming to the point.
I also recognize he's well-educated and highly intelligent and seems to have something to say...but, whatever it is, it doesn't interest me.
TRANSCRIPTION, his latest book, a case in point.
It's a very simple tale about a writer visiting his aging mentor to do an interview but something goes wrong and the interview never happens. The writer cobbles together a version of that night's conversation and releases it as if transcribed from an actual recording. Was the writer ethnically and professionally dishonest...or did he inadvertently create a more faithful rendering of his old friend than mere transcription would allow?
Supposedly a meditation on truth in the digital era and other stuff, the book meanders, interspersed with dialogue that never rings true and lots of (wink-wink) allusions relating to art, psychology, culture...the final result leaving an overall impression of an author who thinks he's terribly, terribly clever but has a hard time coming to the point.
8Cecrow
Noting Marjane Satrapi's death in our other thread got me looking into her work, and I borrowed/read Persepolis over the weekend from our library. This is the story of her childhood in Iran and how it was interrupted by the Iranian Revolution in 1979. It was worth the trouble. Comparable to Maus in how it uses the graphic novel format to convey a difficult story about oppression and violence, distinguishing the victims from the perpetrators to remind us that 'Iran' is not a single entity to be painted with one brush.
9iansales
Read: Mountolive, Lawrence Durrell
Back in the 1990s, I borrowed the omnibus edition of The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell from the Daly Community Library, the subscription library I’d joined within six months of arriving in Abu Dhabi. I was aware of the quartet, although I forget where I first came across mention of it. However, for some reason I never got around to starting it, and took it back unread. A few months later, I was in Dubai and I came across the Penguin US boxed paperback editions of all four books in, I think, a book shop in the Dubai Mall. I bought it. I read the books. And was so impressed, I began hunting down everything by Durrell I could find. I now have an extensive collection of first editions and limited edition chapbooks by Durrell, including first editions of his first two novels, Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic Spring (as by Charles Norden).
I’ve been meaning to reread the Alexandria Quartet for years, but never got around to it until recently. I read Justine and Balthazar last year. I was just as taken with the two books as I had been all those years ago – more so, perhaps. It had not struck me before how cleverly plotted the Alexandria Quartet is. Everyone remembers the lush prose, the setting, the cast of expatriates, and the various relationships, especially that of the opening novel between Darley and Justine… but there’s much more to the quartet than initially seems, and it’s in Mountolive that it comes into focus.
The title character is a member of the Foreign Office, assigned to Egypt, where he makes friends with the Hosnani family. He has an affair with Leila Hosnani, the mother of Nessim and Narouz (Nessim is the husband of Justine). Mountolive is moved on to other postings, gradually rising up the ranks, until he finally returns to Egypt as ambassador, shortly before the events described in Justine and annotated in Balthazar. In the years since, Leila has survived a bout of smallpox and is now disfigured and a complete recluse.
Meanwhile, Pursewarden has had a disagreement with Maskelyne, the head of intelligence at the embassy, particularly over the role of the Hosnanis in Egyptian, and Middle Eastern, politics. Maskelyne is sent to Palestine. Later, Pursewarden discovers Maskelyne was right, and commits suicide.
Mountolive is the pivot around which the story of the Alexandria Quartet revolves. It is the actions of the Hosnani family, and their secret project, and the clues regarding it uncovered by Darley, Clea and others, which explains the actions of the characters in the preceding two books. It all slots together like a piece of precision engineering. The lush writing is still there, and there are some eye-opening sequences in Mountolive. The commentary on Egyptian politics is all you would expect of a Brit who lived in the country during WWII. There is an invented figure who reads like a parody of the venal, corrupt Middle Eastern politician.
The last time I read the quartet, I seem to remember Mountolive being something of a disappointment after Justine and Balthazar. It’s written in the third-person, unlike the other two, and Mountolive is far more reserved than the rest of the cast. But this time I liked it more, more even than Justine and Balthazar, perhaps because its wider view made Egypt, and especially Alexandria, more of a character than in the earlier novels. They were filtered through Darley’s point-of-view, and here Durrell is writing about Egypt.
One more book to go, Clea, which is set six years after the events of the first three novels. I’m looking forward to rereading it.
Back in the 1990s, I borrowed the omnibus edition of The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell from the Daly Community Library, the subscription library I’d joined within six months of arriving in Abu Dhabi. I was aware of the quartet, although I forget where I first came across mention of it. However, for some reason I never got around to starting it, and took it back unread. A few months later, I was in Dubai and I came across the Penguin US boxed paperback editions of all four books in, I think, a book shop in the Dubai Mall. I bought it. I read the books. And was so impressed, I began hunting down everything by Durrell I could find. I now have an extensive collection of first editions and limited edition chapbooks by Durrell, including first editions of his first two novels, Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic Spring (as by Charles Norden).
I’ve been meaning to reread the Alexandria Quartet for years, but never got around to it until recently. I read Justine and Balthazar last year. I was just as taken with the two books as I had been all those years ago – more so, perhaps. It had not struck me before how cleverly plotted the Alexandria Quartet is. Everyone remembers the lush prose, the setting, the cast of expatriates, and the various relationships, especially that of the opening novel between Darley and Justine… but there’s much more to the quartet than initially seems, and it’s in Mountolive that it comes into focus.
The title character is a member of the Foreign Office, assigned to Egypt, where he makes friends with the Hosnani family. He has an affair with Leila Hosnani, the mother of Nessim and Narouz (Nessim is the husband of Justine). Mountolive is moved on to other postings, gradually rising up the ranks, until he finally returns to Egypt as ambassador, shortly before the events described in Justine and annotated in Balthazar. In the years since, Leila has survived a bout of smallpox and is now disfigured and a complete recluse.
Meanwhile, Pursewarden has had a disagreement with Maskelyne, the head of intelligence at the embassy, particularly over the role of the Hosnanis in Egyptian, and Middle Eastern, politics. Maskelyne is sent to Palestine. Later, Pursewarden discovers Maskelyne was right, and commits suicide.
Mountolive is the pivot around which the story of the Alexandria Quartet revolves. It is the actions of the Hosnani family, and their secret project, and the clues regarding it uncovered by Darley, Clea and others, which explains the actions of the characters in the preceding two books. It all slots together like a piece of precision engineering. The lush writing is still there, and there are some eye-opening sequences in Mountolive. The commentary on Egyptian politics is all you would expect of a Brit who lived in the country during WWII. There is an invented figure who reads like a parody of the venal, corrupt Middle Eastern politician.
The last time I read the quartet, I seem to remember Mountolive being something of a disappointment after Justine and Balthazar. It’s written in the third-person, unlike the other two, and Mountolive is far more reserved than the rest of the cast. But this time I liked it more, more even than Justine and Balthazar, perhaps because its wider view made Egypt, and especially Alexandria, more of a character than in the earlier novels. They were filtered through Darley’s point-of-view, and here Durrell is writing about Egypt.
One more book to go, Clea, which is set six years after the events of the first three novels. I’m looking forward to rereading it.
10RobertDay
My review of Chris Priest's essay collection The Recollections is attached. It's more of a personal reaction; the earlier review by nwhyte is superior in many ways.
11CliffBurns
>10 RobertDay: Enjoyed that review, Robert.
Warts and all.
Nobody's perfect and I still say "it's the song, not the singer".
Warts and all.
Nobody's perfect and I still say "it's the song, not the singer".
12CliffBurns
THE MARTIANS: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America by David Baron.
Entertaining account of how America became fixated on the notion of life on Mars, thanks to the well-intended but flawed efforts of scientists and amateur astronomers who insisted the geographical features they were dimly perceiving through their instruments were actually canals bringing much-needed water to a dying race of Martians.
Percival Lowell, Nikola Tesla, Camille Flammarion and Giovanni Schiaparelli figure prominently in the book, all of them in one way or another fooled or deluded by what they believed their eyes were seeing.
For lovers of Mars (like me) this book is a fun ride.
Entertaining account of how America became fixated on the notion of life on Mars, thanks to the well-intended but flawed efforts of scientists and amateur astronomers who insisted the geographical features they were dimly perceiving through their instruments were actually canals bringing much-needed water to a dying race of Martians.
Percival Lowell, Nikola Tesla, Camille Flammarion and Giovanni Schiaparelli figure prominently in the book, all of them in one way or another fooled or deluded by what they believed their eyes were seeing.
For lovers of Mars (like me) this book is a fun ride.
13CliffBurns
THE FUTURE OF TRUTH by Werner Herzog.
A short book, but so well-considered and perceptive. Herzog knows enough about history to realize "fake" news and shameless propaganda have been with us as long as there have been social hierarchies. What constitutes truth might be subject to debate, but it is our efforts to define it, to authentically portray it, that hone our critical thinking skills and contribute to the creation of a civil society.
Recommended.
A short book, but so well-considered and perceptive. Herzog knows enough about history to realize "fake" news and shameless propaganda have been with us as long as there have been social hierarchies. What constitutes truth might be subject to debate, but it is our efforts to define it, to authentically portray it, that hone our critical thinking skills and contribute to the creation of a civil society.
Recommended.
