SMF

The Godfather by Mario Puzo. The movie is great but the books is even better.

Welcome to SMF, Bobby Gibson!

- Murray

Since I last wrote, I have worked my down some of the stack in the photo.

Gulag Archipelago, Raj Quartet (and Staying On, it's fifth part), Nick Cohen's "You Can't Read This Book" which is about censorship, Dawkin's Brief Candle in the Dark, Charles Murray's In Our Hands about universal basic income, and I have re-read Beowulf in prep for a three part study group run by the retired professor next door. The best news was a new-to-me translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey by Stanley Lombardo. He's translated them into 20th century American argot ("You dirty rat!") but preserved the dactylic hexameter. Strangely, it makes them far more readable than the other translations I have. It's not the newest, and is here discussed in a 2000 C-Span program that is worth your time:

On the subject of the Odyssey, this book is on my pile of to reads:

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic

I read about it yesterday here:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/best-n ... azalgette/

clive

I’m reading Fire And Fury.
I haven’t enjoyed it, exactly, and I could never fully recommend it. But of course, that’s what makes it the perfect historical record of our time.

The above has been banned for spam about student essay writing services. I doubt she can read by the quality of her own English.

C.

All sorts on the go at present.
By the bed is Albion's Seed, a fascinating study of four groups of English immigrants to the Americas. Characterised by religion, area of origin and their folkways, they gave flavour to different parts of the USA still seen today. For example, the New England puritans came from East Anglia, the home of Cromwell and the Roundheads, whilst the Virginia planters sprang from royalist emigrés from the west country. Ever think that the American civil war was just round two of the English civil war?

But that book is a bit thick and heavy and is nearly finished anyway, so it's not going with me tomorrow on the next roadtrip. This will be a three day odyssey to Cape Tormentine, across the 14km Confederation Bridge, across PEI to Brudenell, then back on the ferry to Caribou and along the coast to home. The Boss is at a conference and I am the driver, but instead of a black uniform and peaked cap I shall be hoping we can have the roof down the whole way. I have now had the Miata for 27 years, and am at only 22,000 miles. She still feels like new. (Can't say the same for The Boss.) Going with me will be three books to keep me out of trouble, along with my Rolleiflex and a few rolls of film. They will be:
The Devil in the Kitchen, which is Marco Pierre White's autobiography. Sadly, it is ghost written, and badly at that. All the same an interesting character, and the only 'celebrity chef' who actually can cook and doesn't give a hoot about celebrity. He even gave back his three Michelin stars.
The Ink Trade - who would have thought that over thirty years since we lost Anthony Burgess, I would be able to buy a newly published volume of previously uncollected journalism? I shall have to ration myself, unless I find I have lost the taste for his style in the interim. Everyone has heard of/read/watched A Clockwork Orange, but that wasn't his best. Read Earthly Powers to feel the full force. Funny how so many writers who were successful in their day will sink without trace after they die. Jeffery Farnol, Neville Shute, A J Cronin, Arnold Bennett, William Golding, Robertson Davies and so on. They should still be enjoyed, and Burgess along with them.
Finally, The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson's attempt to explain how Europe could have been a happier place through most of the twentieth century if only Edward Grey had kept Britain out of what could have been just another minor continental war. Revisionist or counterfactual history is a useless and guilty discipline, but I couldn't help myself.

I have temporarily set down Schlesinger's Journals to re-read Gone With The Wind.

I was gifted a 1936 fourth printing copy by a dear old high school friend who died at the age of twenty-seven from brain cancer. He was one of those rare individuals who lit up a room wherever he went.

He gave it to me because I loved the movie. The book is an eye-opener.

Divorced of it's setting and cultural constructs I find it interesting for it's dynamic between the sexes (after all it's essentially a love story). I've been thinking of my old friend lately and it sparked this endeavor.

Chris

I am re-reading a fantasy novel (fae denizens and magic powers and such), Sixty-One Nails by Mike Shevdon, in eBook form on my desktop computer. Neither of our local library systems (city and county) had a book copy of it. It's quite entertaining.

I have a 16 year old granddaughter who suggested I read The Outsiders by Hinton. I say sure, why not? I might learn something. More importantly, it makes her happy. Just started it. I plan to spend some quality time reading it in the next few days.

Shadow Tyrants, Clive Cussler

patriotic gore....edmund wilson

Picked up an Observer book on Old English Churches and have been enjoying that immensely. Also nearly finished Sense and Sensibility, which I think is my favourite Austin novel --- besides Emma ---- OK, so they are both pretty even in my eyes.

Getting ready to pick up either PD James Death in Holy Orders or Richard Adams Watership Down for an upcoming prep before I jump into my annual read of Pilcher's Winter Solstice.

OK - so I admit to having a bit of an eclectic taste in reading.

“Right Here, Right Now” by Stephen Harper.

Death in Holy Orders - check
Winter Solstice - check
Mistletoe Murders, a Collection of Short Stories - check

I picked up a small selection of Observer books in November on our trip to North Yorkshire -- and am perusing the Cathedrals volume at the moment.

My current nightly "serious reading" is Murder Room. I just can't resist PD James - even when I have read them over and over again.

Yup - I am pretty dull.

The Death of Santini, a memoir by author Pat Conroy, who wrote The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides and The Lords of Discipline, among others. A personal favorite of mine.

a fantastic read: when breath becomes air by paul kalanithi

still plowing through 'silk roads'

clive

Robert MacFarlane's Landscapes - a book for word lovers, detailing many of the local or regional dialect words for landscape features that we are losing. I've often observed the worn hole in a hedgerow where an animal passes through frequently and thought there ought to be a name for it. Now I know several, each for certain regions of the UK.

Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny - not as detailed in personal life as Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains: The Life and Times of Sandy Denny, but much more detail on the musical side. Such a loss. Anyone wondering what the heck I'm talking about should go and listen to Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking or their Liege and Lief albums, and hear the purest and most powerful female voice that England ever produced. Alcohol, cocaine and a flight of stairs silenced it far too soon.

Currently re-reading all the Richard Condon books I have, starting with A Trembling Upon Rome, which tells of the shenanigans that the popes got up to before the Borgias were hardly any more respectable. Condon is a greatly under-appreciated writer; much cleverer than you might think and worth investigating.

Soho Ghosts by Greg Keen

‘The Wicked Wit of England’ by Geoff Tibballs.