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[jazzbo]

Ross Macdonald's Black Money

Good one!

[BillF]

Very keen on English "kitchen sink" novels from c.1960

[A Lark Ascending]

I read this last about 40 years ago. The idea of returning to a place of childhood and finding it smaller appealled to me at the time; whilst I was retracing my own childhood in Cornwall a week or so back this book came to mind so, ironically, I found myself re-reading it.

Strange to read it now - Orwell was the first 'proper' author I 'got' into after reading 'Animal Farm' at school. I think I was very taken by his rather jaded, cynical take on life at the time and adopted a similar outlook in my late-teens. Reading him now I'm less comfortable - his wholesale attack on the aspects of what was then modernity (assuming that the viewes of his protagonist are his own; you certainly can feel "1984" coming). Above all a sense of superiority to everyone around who doesn't seem to appreciate the tacky nature of the world, a sense of distaste towards virtually everyone he meets. Maybe it's irony, a jab at the partially educated man.

But he has a wonderful way of evoking the power of nostalgia - his memories of a lost pre-First World War England. And the sense of menace - fascism, rubber truncheons, the ever present 'bombing planes' gives a real feel of how it must have felt in that year between Munich and the outbreak of war.

What surprised me is that my own return to childhood places had little in common with his picture of memories shattered and places distorted beyond recognition. I was amazed at how limited the changes were, how much the old spirit seemed to be there.

God knows what Orwell would have made of 2010 if he thought 1939 was tacky!

Edited August 26, 2010 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

I read this last about 40 years ago. The idea of returning to a place of childhood and finding it smaller appealled to me at the time; whilst I was retracing my own childhood in Cornwall a week or so back this book came to mind so, ironically, I found myself re-reading it.

Strange to read it now - Orwell was the first 'proper' author I 'got' into after reading 'Animal Farm' at school. I think I was very taken by his rather jaded, cynical take on life at the time and adopted a similar outlook in my late-teens. Reading him now I'm less comfortable - his wholesale attack on the aspects of what was then modernity (assuming that the viewes of his protagonist are his own; you certainly can feel "1984" coming). Above all a sense of superiority to everyone around who doesn't seem to appreciate the tacky nature of the world, a sense of distaste towards virtually everyone he meets. Maybe it's irony, a jab at the partially educated man.

But he has a wonderful way of evoking the power of nostalgia - his memories of a lost pre-war England. And the sense of menace - fascism, rubber truncheons, the ever present 'bombing planes' gives a real feel of how it must have felt in that year between Munich and the outbreak of war.

What surprised me is that my own return to childhood places had little in common with his picture of memories shattered and places distorted beyond recognition. I was amazed at how limited the changes were, how much the old spirit seemed to be there.

God knows what Orwell would have made of 2010 if he thought 1939 was tacky!

Like that book very much. Have read it several times.

[paul secor]

Ross Macdonald's Black Money

Good one!

Read all of Macdonald's novels about 35 years ago, & hadn't revisited them since. Decided that now would be a good time to do so.

[crisp]

God knows what Orwell would have made of 2010 if he thought 1939 was tacky!

Especially that tasteful TV show Big Brother.

[A Lark Ascending]

God knows what Orwell would have made of 2010 if he thought 1939 was tacky!

Especially that tasteful TV show Big Brother.

Quite.

I wonder if the people who created it were aware of the irony?...I suspect they never got past the idea of an all seeing eye.

The 'Britain's Got Talent/X-Factor/Be the star of a revived musical' programmes remind me of some of the narcotic entertainments in Huxley's 'Brave New World'. Where they both got it wrong was that there are a substantial number of people who refuse to be taken in.

Funny how the word 'talent' in Britain today has morphed to mean someone who can imitate someone else, however insipid, to perfection.

[jazzbo]

Ross Macdonald's Black Money

Good one!

Read all of Macdonald's novels about 35 years ago, & hadn't revisited them since. Decided that now would be a good time to do so.

I read them all about twenty-seven to twenty-five years ago. I re-read one a few years ago and enjoyed it. Since I'm nearly done re-reading all Chandler (for the fourth time perhaps?) I may grab one of his down soon.

[rdavenport]

Very keen on English "kitchen sink" novels from c.1960

I was a fan too, in my younger days - all part of the Smiths/Morrissey thing I was in to! What's next Bill - "A Taste Of Honey" or "The L-shaped Room"?

I remember the TV adaptation of A Kind Of Loving in the 1980s - didn't it have Joanne Whalley in it? I used to love her.

[paul secor]

Arnold Wesker's story "Love Letters on Blue Paper" from the collection of the same name

[BruceH]

Giving the Martin Beck police series a try, with "Roseanna," the first one. Written by the husband-and-wife team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

[jlhoots]

Per Petterson: Out Stealing Horses

[jazzbo]

Giving the Martin Beck police series a try, with "Roseanna," the first one. Written by the husband-and-wife team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

I'll wager you'll enjoy it once it reels you in. These were a great series of books to read. . . real and grim and with their own pace and "lighting."

[jlhoots]

David Fulmer: Rampart Street

[BillF]

Very keen on English "kitchen sink" novels from c.1960

I was a fan too, in my younger days - all part of the Smiths/Morrissey thing I was in to! What's next Bill - "A Taste Of Honey" or "The L-shaped Room"?

Just borrowed a library copy of David Storey's This Sporting Life and watched the film of Kind of Loving yesterday - mainly shot in Radcliffe and Bolton, incidentally.

[Jazzmoose]

I haven't posted on this thread much lately; I'm too embarrassed over my revisit to SF turning into a rut, but what the heck...at least it's not Harold Robbins! Currently reading Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman.

[GA Russell]

This weekend I read Carl Hiassen's current best seller Star Island.

Light fare with a few laughs. Not good enough to make me want to read another of his anytime soon, but not bad enough to discourage me from ever reading another one of his.

[medjuck]

Giving the Martin Beck police series a try, with "Roseanna," the first one. Written by the husband-and-wife team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

I'll wager you'll enjoy it once it reels you in. These were a great series of books to read. . . real and grim and with their own pace and "lighting."

They get better and better. One of the few serie i've read where our attitude to the characters changes from book to book. Two good films made about Beck: The Laughing Policeman

(American with Walter Mathau as Beck). And Man on the Roof (Swedish based on IIRC The Abonible Man).

[Harold_Z]

Reading Jack Finney's About Time. It's a collection of short stories about time travel by a master of that genre. Time travel has been a favorite of mine since I could understand the concept.

Edited August 30, 2010 by Harold_Z

[thedwork]

[A Lark Ascending]

Finished this yesterday (had a two week gap half-way whilst on holiday). Excellent account. Can't wait for the flurry of Battle of Britain docs due on TV in September.

Also finished:

Heard bits on 'A Book at Bedtime' earlier this year so I wanted to fill in the gaps. One of those dissolute lives amongst the well-heeled at Oxford books.

Now gripped by:

Wonderfully written - gets exactly the right balance between historical overview of what was happening and vignettes from the testimony of people who were there.

My god, we are so lucky to have been born after all of that!

Edited August 30, 2010 by A Lark Ascending

[BruceH]

Giving the Martin Beck police series a try, with "Roseanna," the first one. Written by the husband-and-wife team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

I'll wager you'll enjoy it once it reels you in. These were a great series of books to read. . . real and grim and with their own pace and "lighting."

They get better and better. One of the few serie i've read where our attitude to the characters changes from book to book. Two good films made about Beck: The Laughing Policeman

(American with Walter Mathau as Beck). And Man on the Roof (Swedish based on IIRC The Abonible Man).

I vaguely recall renting the Matthau film version of "Laughing Policeman" quite a few years ago. All I can remember is that I didn't care for it. Enjoying the book right now though; I've skipped ahead to it, and then maybe I'll go back to the second book in the series. Liked Roseanna BTW.

[Larry Kart]

C. V. Wedgwood's "The Thirty Years War." Lord, could she write.

[A Lark Ascending]

C. V. Wedgwood's "The Thirty Years War." Lord, could she write.

Gosh! There's a throwback. Remember reading that in the summer of '73, between 'A' Levels (last lot of school exams) and going to university.

[BruceH]

I haven't posted on this thread much lately; I'm too embarrassed over my revisit to SF turning into a rut, but what the heck...at least it's not Harold Robbins! Currently reading Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman.

Why be embarrassed? I for one would love to hear what old sf book or collection you've been flipping through. (And Old Twentieth is recent, and by a respectable writer as well!)

Myself, I've actually been perusing some of the "Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories" paperbacks that came out during the 80's. Found three in a used bookstore. When they were coming out I turned my nose up at them, partly because I was already familiar with most of the stories, partly the perceived tackiness of the series. (And by the second half of the 80's I was going through a non-sf-reading phase, though I didn't know it was a phase at the time.) Now I marvel at what a good deal these books were; for the price of a cheap little paperback you could get a more than decent little anthology of some of the best sf stories of a particular year, from the late 30's to the early 60's. Wish I'd bought them at the time, though I probably would have sold them by now.