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    Quite enjoyed the high school part with The Scorpions, but has been a massive struggle from the story of the bear, monster and beaver onwards. The Kindle version is short, hopefully finish it and get it out of the way by tomorrow. Reminds me quite a lot of Breakfast of Champions, without the wit.

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      Finished Rebecca earlier this afternoon. Have just finished reading the afterword (my edition, bought on my Kindle, is a tie-in with the recent Netflix film and I actually wanted to read it partly because, having always been curious about the book, I want to watch said film so thought I'd better get it read at last first), and am surprised but not surprised to find that it wasn't particularly well regarded critically on its release. It's really good, but there's so much about the form of it that obviously either went over the heads or offended the sensibilities of people reviewing books for newspapers in the late 1930s. If we overlook the fact that it takes place in an English country house with live-in staff, it's a novel that feels remarkably up to date with a lot of conversations that have gone on over the last few years.

      I've got an hour or two of work to do now, so a gap between books. Will have to work out when I go to bed what to 'pick up' (select from my home screen) next.

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        Classic book, like you I came to it late and devoured it. The Netflix film is an absolute clunker, though - seriously, don't bother.

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          I had a feeling it might be. We're both suckers for anything gothic and wrapped in mystery though, so will probably still watch it to be honest with you. From what I've read about the changes made in the Hitchcock version (due to it having been made in the Code era – something the writer of the afterword I read last night didn't seem aware of) that sounds like it'd be a bit pants as well.

          I am now reading Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession. Glad we're on the new board with its fancy diacritics now!

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            Well, if you enjoy laughing at really crap movies then you might get something out of it.

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              I'm currently reading Dr. Kate Lister's 'A Curious History of Sex', which is as well as being a laugh-riot, is informative and occasionally gruesome. You can follow her Whores of Yore research project here https://www.thewhoresofyore.com/about.html or on twitter https://twitter.com/WhoresofYore

              Bought Dr. Alice Bell's history of climate change yesterday 'Our Biggest Experiment' which I look forward to reading, as well as Juliet Jacques' book of short stories, 'Variations'.

              The book i've most enjoyed this year was Ann Petry's 'The Street'. There's a good article about it here https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...uge-bestseller

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                A few non-fiction pieces I have enjoyed lately.

                1) Charles Freeman's A New History of Early Christianity. The first 200 pages or so is a really interesting story (with lots of philological detective work) on how the Jesus sect came to have a set of canonical texts and a hierarchical format. Last 100 pages or so is about what happened after Constantine, which I find less interesting, but still overall a good and accessible work.

                2) Alan Taylor's American Republics. Taylor writes from a continental perspective, which really changes the way you think about American history. So it's American history 1783-1850, but framed in a way that includes Quebec, Mexico, the "pays en haut" of the First Nations, the Caribbean and above all, Haiti. Great stuff.

                3) Michael McDonnell's Masters of Empire, which is about the Anishnaabe Indians and particularly those of the Odawa tribe which lived around the Sault (where Lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior meet), and the way they spent the 17th through 19th centuries playing off different colonizing nations (France, Britain, Spain America) off against one another.

                4) Michaela Wrong's Do Not Disturb, about the RPA, Rwanda and the Kagame regime. It is not her best work - I Didn't Do it For You (Eritrea) and It's Our Turn to Eat (Kenya) were both significantly better books, if you ask me. But still excellent.

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                  Originally posted by Anton Gramscescu View Post
                  4) Michaela Wrong's Do Not Disturb, about the RPA, Rwanda and the Kagame regime. It is not her best work - I Didn't Do it For You (Eritrea) and It's Our Turn to Eat (Kenya) were both significantly better books, if you ask me. But still excellent.
                  Thanks for the tip - didn't realise this was out, or that she's done a book about Eritrea. It's Our Turn to Eat and In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz were both fantastic books.

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                    The Eritrea book is at least 15 years old now, maybe 20 (I read it the same month i joined OTF, now that I think about it). But still brilliant. My favourite of hers.

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                      I've ordered them both. I also noticed she's published a novel embracing African politics.

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                        A Demon Haunted Land-Monica Blake. Have read a few books on Germany in immediate aftermath of 1945 but this offers new take. Premise is that the defeat displacement & disorientation of war and Allied occupation provoked an upsurge in salvation and relief through sudden emergence of spiritual healers. And accusations of witchcraft. Served to act as distraction from both the guilt of belief in the Nazi support and vindication of settling scores endured during the same period. The eventual foundation of the Federal Republic and its subsequent development ultimately overrides the cult celebrities of the immediate post war period though the author keeps an open mind on their credibility without recourse to accusations of charlatan or fakery.

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                          Ale: What did you make of her thesis? I wanted to like that book, and there are some aspects which are interesting, but I kept getting the feeling that it was the author trying to fashion 2-3 incidents into one really big metaphor rather than an actual social history.

                          Imp: yes, the novel is called "Borderlands" and though names have been fictionalized, it's actually about the Eritrea-Ethiopia border dispute resolution commission. It's...ok, but not more than that.

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                            Recently finished "Lights in the Distance" by Daniel Trilling on refugee migration into (and through) Europe. It's a series of stories about people he met in Calais, Sicily, and Greece, some of whose stories are harrowing (even before they got to Europe) and some whose stories are so harrowing even they won't tell them. It's good to hear from the actual people who are in the middle of this, rather than the more common narrative in which the effects on the receiving (or transition) countries are told, and the refugees and migrants themselves are at best faceless victims (and at worst invaders). But he also looks at the systems and barriers that these countries (and the EU as a whole) erect to deter and harass them.

                            He's a good journalist and writes well too. Recommended

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                              Originally posted by Anton Gramscescu View Post
                              Ale: What did you make of her thesis? I wanted to like that book, and there are some aspects which are interesting, but I kept getting the feeling that it was the author trying to fashion 2-3 incidents into one really big metaphor rather than an actual social history.

                              Imp: yes, the novel is called "Borderlands" and though names have been fictionalized, it's actually about the Eritrea-Ethiopia border dispute resolution commission. It's...ok, but not more than that.
                              It's available for 99p on Kindle, or was yesterday.

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                                Originally posted by Anton Gramscescu View Post
                                Ale: What did you make of her thesis? I wanted to like that book, and there are some aspects which are interesting, but I kept getting the feeling that it was the author trying to fashion 2-3 incidents into one really big metaphor rather than an actual social history.

                                Imp: yes, the novel is called "Borderlands" and though names have been fictionalized, it's actually about the Eritrea-Ethiopia border dispute resolution commission. It's...ok, but not more than that.
                                AG I thought the thesis was best part of book. Not one that had come across before. However whether it could be sustained across a book of this size without recourse to repetition or affirmation of views previously stated is the tricky balancing act. As you recognise, to bulk out the narrative means shoe horning the material around Bruno Groning in particular. Who to be fair in the early introduction of his background he comes across as a personality which might work to this end. But ultimately am not sure the author gets to grips with him outside of his celebrity status of the period. I certainly came away with no understanding of his motives or reasons for the life he undertook in post war Germany.

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                                  Originally posted by imp View Post
                                  Well, if you enjoy laughing at really crap movies then you might get something out of it.
                                  Ha! I shall report back, if we do indeed go through with it.

                                  In related news, for quite some time I've been vaguely interested in checking out the relationship between Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Having now found that Rebecca also has lots of similarities to the latter, I've finally gone ahead and downloaded it from Project Gutenberg and added it to my To Read pile/list.

                                  Leonard and Hungry Paul is a very different sort of read, but quite enjoyable so far. It's very gentle and nice but there's an undercurrent of just slightly cynical/silly humour which means it doesn't feel cloying. So far (about a third of the way in) it's a Would Recommend.

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                                    I recently finished Silvia Plath's The Bell Jar. It had been on my shelves for years, but I'd always put off reading it. We read Plath's poetry at university, but I seem to recall the lecturer dismissing The Bell Jar as a lesser achievement since it's so obviously autobiographical and equally obviously anticipates the author's suicide. She had a real thing about people only reading Plath's work because she'd killed herself, which is fair enough, I suppose. I finally picked the book out after reading a review of a new work about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case, which referred to their electrocution being mentioned in Plath's famous opening sentence.

                                    Obviously, it's a sad and claustrophobic read. I'd never given any thought to why it's called The Bell Jar, but the metaphor, when it is presented in the novel, is both really obvious and devastatingly brilliant. It is sometimes very funny too, especially the scene when the narrator (basically Plath) and her fellow magazine interns all get food poisoning after eating avocado, caviar and crab meat at a hospitality event. But really, what stays with you is the thought that this must be one of the best ever fictional representations of a young person's mental health traumas, and it was written nearly 60 years ago.

                                    Co'incidentally, I was in the small English language section of our best local bookshop a day or two after finishing the novel, and they had Ted Hughes' The Birthday Letters on the shelves. They almost never have English language poetry on display. I didn't buy it, but I wonder how many Zilina locals are desperate to read Ted's versified self-justifications.

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                                      Tales From The Gas Station Vol I-Jack Townsend. The story is established very early. First paragraph early. This is a shitty little gas station. That never closes. All this loose undefined background allows the narrator free reign to build a series of tales of loose undefined connections. Daftness abounds and there are nods to H P Lovecraft as well as Herge Tintin just for starters. Which means the style and narration is very good for the genre. To recommend beyond that is more difficult-am no more wiser at the end of the tale even allowing for fact two more volumes have already been published.

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                                        I read The Bell Jar as a teenager in the 80s and thought it was superb. I think it's unfortunate that it's difficult for us to avoid framing the book in the context of her suicide; it would still be a vivid and vital novel had she survived her illness and lived to old age. Its spirit is close to that of The Catcher In The Rye if you imagine the lead character as a contemporary of Holden Caulfield with a similar worldview and wit.

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                                          I thought that I was the only adolescent male to feel that way (and was accused of faking it male peers).

                                          It is cheering to note I wasn't quite that alone.

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                                            I read The Bell Jar quite shortly before I moved here (so, aged 25) because my girlfriend at the time was obsessed with it. I'd quite like to read it again some time without the oddness of that relationship affecting my judgement of it. I do remember liking it a lot more than I did The Catcher in the Rye, which I read nine or ten years earlier and didn't get on with at all.

                                            This afternoon I finished Leonard and Hungry Paul, which I very much recommend. I'm now reading Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. The 'title' story, 'Story of Your Life' (it bothers me a bit that the story is singular but the collection has the plural in the title) is the short story that the (I thought very good) film Arrival was based on.

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                                              After finishing it (The Bell Jar), I lent it to a Slovak colleague who would be 25 or so, maybe a little older. She knew of it as a 20th century classic and was intending to read it, but didn't know much about Plath's life or that she was at least as well-regarded critically as a poet. I'm very curious as to what she will make of it.

                                              I get the Holden Caulfield comparison, though I wonder if there is a tendency to look for precursors to Plath's narrator more than to Salinger's. After all, Holden Caulfield is in a tradition of young, outsider (anti-) heroes that go back at least as far as Mark Twain's characters. Esther's voice feels at least as fresh to me as Holden's, given a lot of factors - mainly that she is a young woman and that she is so unsparing in detailing what went on in mental health institutions.

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                                                I read The Bell Jar when I was around 20/21 (both my mum and GF at the time were into her), and found it distressing, but can otherwise remember nothing about it. Probably not an ideal book for a bolshie young man - I was heavily into Martin Amis and Milan Kundera at the time.

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                                                  I was also getting into Amis - and his contemporary Ian McEwan - at about that age. I loved their late 70s and 80s novels, as well as Time's Arrow and Black Dogs from the early 90s. Since then, the only thing I've found bearable by either was Atonement. It just occurs to me that I couldn't think of anyone to fit that 'bands you used to love but now can't stand' thread in the music forum, but these two would be my answer if there was a similar category for authors. Actually, Saturday by McEwan has to be one of the stupidest, most annoying, just downright worst novels of the 21st century.

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                                                    Originally posted by jameswba View Post
                                                    I was also getting into Amis - and his contemporary Ian McEwan - at about that age. I loved their late 70s and 80s novels, as well as Time's Arrow and Black Dogs from the early 90s. Since then, the only thing I've found bearable by either was Atonement. It just occurs to me that I couldn't think of anyone to fit that 'bands you used to love but now can't stand' thread in the music forum, but these two would be my answer if there was a similar category for authors. Actually, Saturday by McEwan has to be one of the stupidest, most annoying, just downright worst novels of the 21st century.
                                                    This. Pretty much word for word

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