Now reading...

[B. Goren.]

[A Lark Ascending]

A topic I'll be teaching again in a fortnight. Felt in need of a good overview outside the standard UK textbooks.

Alongside the above:

4th in Walker's detective series based in Perigord. A bit clunky plotwise but this series has a lovely sense of place. It's also one of of those series that goes to great pains to explain how the food is prepared - mouthwatering. Don't think I'll be eating foie gras anytime soon, though.

Edited August 25, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[A Lark Ascending]

Another topic I teach regularly but have not read an adult book about for a long time. I've read Evans' excellent book (and highly recommended - it's an easy read) on historiography ('In Defence of History') and he's been a major voice in opposing our current education secretary's attempt to return history teaching in schools to a 1950s 'Our Island Story' approach.

The first of three big volumes. But the first 30 pages have me hooked. Strong, narrative history for the general reader that carries off its analysis within an unfolding tale.

[BillF]

our current education secretary's attempt to return history teaching in schools to a 1950s 'Our Island Story' approach.

[A Lark Ascending]

our current education secretary's attempt to return history teaching in schools to a 1950s 'Our Island Story' approach.

He's lost! Major backtrack took place but it was largely hidden from public view. The provisional K3 curriculum that snuck out in early July looks very similar to what we have now. Though he still has a chance to bugger up GCSE and A Level.

[sidewinder]

This week's read bought at the wonderful Salt's Mill, Saltaire. Bumper compendium of all things Ecky Thump, Eeee Bah Gum & Trouble Up 'T Mill...

Wittily signed on the front by Mr M. And incredibly - The MC5, John Taylor, Graham Collier and John McLaughlin all get mentions.

Edited August 27, 2013 by sidewinder

[ejp626]

Midway through Faulkner's Light in August. Parts I find pretty interesting, but the bits about Joe Christmas and his awful childhood (shudder). There are a lot of hard men in this book (sort of Cormac McCarthy hard -- based on the Robin Thicke thread should we be shaming Mr. McCarthy into paying the Faulkner estate?). Joe Christmas and especially his adoptive father are almost parodies of the silent, cruel men who resort to violence since they are so out of touch with any other mode of social intercourse. His father has the added distinction of being absolutely sure he is morally in the right and that his Presbyterian god commanded him to beat the child until he returned to the path of righteousness. A real piece of work. (Just had a flashback that growing up there was one father on the street who matched this profile -- and who was gradually shunned. Nowadays it would be considered to have crossed the line from excessive corporal punishment to child abuse... Would the police have been brought it? Perhaps.)

The other characters are more interesting (and like Sutpen or some of the Snopes are more morally ambiguous). Still, given how much of the novel is given over to Joe Christmas (at least so far), I can't see reading this a second time. (I am sort of chuckling at how Rev. Hightower's congregation must have felt when they first heard his jumbled rantings from the pulpit. Very hard to imagine how he got through Divinity School in the first place.)

Am also reading Joseph Heller's A Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. His final novel. Basically a post-modern pastiche (about how hard it is for old authors to still get it up (the pen that is)). Not that good unfortunately, unless one is just deeply into Heller (which I am not).

Edited August 27, 2013 by ejp626

[BillF]

Just finished this. Thanks for the recommendation!

[jlhoots]

Eugenides: Middlesex

Read it approx. 10 years ago. Reading it again for our Book Club. Really good.

[A Lark Ascending]

Further to the above - within 50 pages of finishing this one - utterly gripping. I've taught Nazi Germany since the late 70s to younger students (13-16) but never fully appreciated the scale of the violence in 1933.

Hadn't realised that Evans was an expert witness in the David Irving trial in the late 80s, playing a key part in demonstrating the latter's distortions through hard evidence.

[alankin]

And Kristallnacht - 1938.

[A Lark Ascending]

[Head Man]

Just finished this. Thanks for the recommendation!

Was that me?...anyway, a wonderful book.

I've just finished my first novel of his:

which I didn't enjoy nearly as much.

[BillF]

Just finished this. Thanks for the recommendation!

Was that me?...anyway, a wonderful book.

I've just finished my first novel of his:

which I didn't enjoy nearly as much.

Try this one:

[Head Man]

Try this one:

Thanks for the recommendation, Bill, I've ordered a copy.

I never bought this because it seemed too like the memoirs of his flying career, "Gods of Tin" & "Burning the Days", both of which I enjoyed enormously. Perhaps that's what he's best at writing about.

[alankin]

[A Lark Ascending]

Great series. I love the way he alternates between a serious Zen novel followed by one that is almost opera buffa. 'Cosi Fan Tutti' has the most amazing opening chapter which is told almost like the prologue to an opera; the whole novel plays with the Da Ponte plot but twists it into the murder story.

[JSngry]

Mojo Snake Minuet by John Litweiler

[paul secor]

Mojo Snake Minuet by John Litweiler

[John Tapscott]

[John Litweiler]

Mojo Snake Minuet by John Litweiler

[Jazzmoose]

I've been in one of those 'don't know what to read' moods lately, which always makes me turn to old favorites. I've gone through Heinlein's A Door into Summer (a favorite in my teen years that gets weirder every time I read it), Tanith Lee's Don't Bite the Sun (I have a feeling I only like this because I was young when I first read it) and William Tenn's The Human Angle (no apology for this one; I always forget how good Tenn was until I'm reading him again).

[BruceH]

I've been in one of those 'don't know what to read' moods lately, which always makes me turn to old favorites. I've gone through Heinlein's A Door into Summer (a favorite in my teen years that gets weirder every time I read it), Tanith Lee's Don't Bite the Sun (I have a feeling I only like this because I was young when I first read it) and William Tenn's The Human Angle (no apology for this one; I always forget how good Tenn was until I'm reading him again).

Have you checked out the gigantic two-volume Complete Stories put out by NESFA press? I've been thinking of getting those for years.

[Jazzmoose]

Yeah, I've thought about it. Those and the Eric Frank Russell and Robert Sheckley volumes as well. But while I know I'd appreciate having them in hard cover, I'm just cheap enough that buying stuff I (mostly) already have bothers me.

Edited September 6, 2013 by Jazzmoose

[BillF]