BS: Books that should be better known

Subject: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 18 May 15 - 11:05 AM

I read a lot of books, a hundred or so a year. Every once in a while I come across a book that I feel has been overlooked and under appreciated. I am sure that many avid readers have that experience. Here are a few Fiction books that I feel are true classics.

The Story Of An African Farm by Olive Schreiner (!883) Amazing book, the author is a fascinating character as well.

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (1947) One of the most heartbreaking books I have ever read, not an easy read but a good look into Berlin during The Last War.

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, very good book. I always felt that Davies was far more worthy of a Nobel Prize than many of those who won one.

To The End of The Land by David Grossman. May help in gaining a better understanding of Modern Israel.

The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin (known as The Line in America. Great book , tells us a lot about ordinary people in Soviet Russia

Perhaps you could share some of your choices for little known, but great books

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,DaveRo
Date: 18 May 15 - 11:14 AM

Looks like you might enjoy Life_and_Fate by Vasily Grossman

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 18 May 15 - 11:17 AM

I might, Tell me a bit about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 May 15 - 11:55 AM

'Beyond Pulditch Gates' by Henry Hudson - a hidden masterpiece about 1960/70s Dublin and the building of the Poolbeg power-station
Both humourous and tragic
Found it in a discount shop last year
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 May 15 - 12:01 PM

Blimey, HiLo - I haven't even heard of any of those, much less read them.

Food for thought.

If you can get them in translation, I recommend the collections of short, witty and whimsical, off-the-wall pieces by the late 19th century French writer Alphone Allais. Very tart and often dark humour. Miles Kington, the (deceased) English humorous writer and musician, translated some of Allais' pieces into idiomatic English as The World of Alphonse Allais, in the United States.

Well worth a read.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Bert
Date: 18 May 15 - 01:04 PM

Wilt by Tom Sharpe
Trapp's War by Brian Callison
73 North by Dudley Pope
Dover goes to Pot by Joyce Porter
Looking for Dilmun by Geoffrey Bibbey
Down to the Sea by Shalimar

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 May 15 - 01:28 PM

One of my favourites as a youngster was the 35th of May. Got it from the library at least 3 or 4 times. Never been able to get it since. I am sure I did not realise it was satire then but I would like to read it again now to see if it gives me the same amount of enjoyment.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 May 15 - 01:31 PM

Ah, yes, Will -- Alphonse Allais —
Once exhibited a blank piece of paper in a frame in an exhibition titled "Anæmic Girls Walking To First Communion In Snow". My metaphysical speculation on this has always been, if one wanted to put it in an exhibition, would any sheet of white paper do, or would one have to track down and exhibit the original one?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 May 15 - 01:32 PM

Just as I pressed enter I remembered the girl who had a black and white pattern, harlequin-esque I think, because she had mixed race parents and the man who's never ending job was to sweep the equator - a steel rail which ran around the world. Unless that was either a different book or a result of my fevered imagination :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 May 15 - 01:48 PM

Nice question, Michael! I think I'd have to search for the original...

I have to boast a little and say that I read them - many, many years ago, when you could buy the French editions from London bookshops - in the original French. By sheer chance, I had a 19th century French/English dictionary which helped me out as some of the argot and word usage could not be found in a modern one.

Vive Le Chat Noir! Vive Rodolphe Salis! Vive Aristide Bruant! Vive Erik Satie!

Etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Thompson
Date: 18 May 15 - 02:06 PM

Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson - a history of swimming in literature, fascinating and faintly seedy, with trips into ancient Rome, the Romantics, Japan, etc
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady - truly hilarious book about growing up the 1950s Deep South
Irish Fairy Tales by James Stephens - wonderful versions of the stories of the Fianna retold in English, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham
The Pursuit of Love - very funny story of English aristocratic life by Nancy Mitford - a thinly-disguised version of her own upbringing
On Broadway, a collection of Damon Runyon's stories of people doing the best they can during the Depression

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 May 15 - 02:11 PM

Elijah Wald's biography of Josh White.
nice to see Joyce Porter getting a mention - very funny lady.
Jack in the Green by Clo Chapman

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 May 15 - 02:52 PM

Peter Currell Brown: Smallcreep's Day.

It's a sort of fantastic voyage through a surreally enormous factory in the English Midlands: English magic realism influenced by Kafka and Calvino, but more political. Brown never wrote another book and nobody else has ever written anything like it.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 May 15 - 02:55 PM

Por the politically minded:
Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge - one of the finest, non-hysterical accounts of political persecution under Stalin
Steinbecks, 'In Dubious Battle (just pipped at the post by Grapes of Wrath.
The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hasek - hilarious account of an idiot who survives World War One because of his idiocy - a/the European Classic - read it 4 times so far.
Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis - a white, middle-class American tracing his family tree finds he is decended from a black slave and ends up defending his family from outraged neighbours.
Mornings in Jenin, - Susan Abulhawa - magic description of life in a Palestinian refugee camp - extremely moving and relevant.
Peekskil U.S.A. - Howard Fast - short account of the anti Union Labor Day Riots in New York State, 1949 (Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson were present)
Where do you stop? - lots of great books out there to be read - so little time.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 May 15 - 03:42 PM

Also for the politically minded--or anyone in an allegedly Democratic system who votes: First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea, by Paul Woodruff. A real eye-opener.

For a good read, a couple of random selections:

Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini. Set in and around the French Revolution, one heck of an adventure story. The movie with Stewart Granger doesn't come anywhere close to doing it justice.

Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. None of the movies do it justice. The novel (written by an eighteen year old girl!) raises the question of "who is the real monster here, the 'Creature' or Dr. Frankenstein?" Dr. Frankenstein creates, then forsakes his creation, leaving "Adam 2" to fend for himself....

Science fiction writer Brian Aldiss credits Frankenstein with being the real first science fiction novel ever written. Mary Shelley was extrapolation from known science at the time ("Galvanism").

The movies don't come close to the story that Mary Shelley really wrote.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Mark Ross
Date: 18 May 15 - 06:04 PM

Don Firth; Scaramouche has one of the greatest opening lines in lterature;

"He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad."


Mark Ross

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 18 May 15 - 06:17 PM

The books of Oliver Rackham should be better known and read by everyone who has the slightest interest in the world around them.

The History of the Countryside

Trees and Woodlands in the British Landscape

Woodlands

The Ash Tree (his last book)

etc., etc.

Rackham was an interesting combination of a scientist and a historian. His books illuminate the relationship between man and the natural world - particularly in Britain.

Sadly, Prof. Rackham died in February of this year. I'm still distraught. RIP

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: LadyJean
Date: 18 May 15 - 06:23 PM

When my sister and I were kids we had, "The Big, Golden Book of Dog, Cat and Horse Stories" and loved it. I think we are the only people in the world who know it existed, though the stories were wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 May 15 - 06:29 PM

"He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad."

Appropriately enough, that is also inscribed on Rafael Sabatini's gravestone.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Bill D
Date: 18 May 15 - 07:55 PM

Older ones, but can be found.....


The B.S. Factor: The Theory and Practice of Faking it in America A semi-light-hearted poke at how we rationalize and pontificate.

Critique_of_Religion_and_Philosophy
Simply brilliant comparison of patterns of thought in both fields. I heard him speak many years ago, and credit him for pushing me towards how to read other books.

anything on this page...books by Stephen J. Gould One can read them to educate ones self about basic evolutionary theory....or... as a basic primer on *How to Think* (no, not what to think, but the process of evaluating differences of opinion in any field. Nowhere else have I seen such detailed analyses of what is involved in sorting out conflicts & discussing the premises & reasoning used by ALL sides of an issue, both historical and current.)


why yes... there does seem to be a theme in my suggestions, doesn't there?
Even my favorite Sci-fi novel, "The Mote in God's Eye" is an exploration of thought patterns and the concepts behind looking at other cultures.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Bert
Date: 18 May 15 - 08:06 PM

Glad to see The Good Soldier Schweik I used to have a copy of that.

The British Character by Pont, another one that I USED TO HAVE.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Joe_F
Date: 18 May 15 - 08:37 PM

Among the great books of my life that most people haven't heard of:

William Bradford Huie, The Revolt of Mamie Stover
Eugene Burdick, The Ninth Wave
Arthur Koestler, An Age of Longing
C. M. Kornbluth, Syndic
Lovejoy & Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity
Pohl & Kornbluth, The Space Merchants
George R. Stewart, Earth Abides
Philip Wylie, Finnley Wren

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 May 15 - 03:10 AM

Creative Dreaming by Dr Patricia Garfield PhD.
My copy is ISBN 0 8600 7439 0

So many great inventions/discoveries/creations have their genesis in recalling a dream. From benzine rings to great songs. Any list would be too long for here.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 19 May 15 - 03:15 AM

Brendon Chase by 'BB' (Denys Watkins-Pitchford) - three boys living as outlaws in the woods. Illustrated with the author's woodcuts.

At school I used to read 'Encounter' in the school library, mainly for Arthur Koestler's articles/essays. It wasn't so much the content, but I was really inspired by his writing style.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 May 15 - 04:13 AM

Nearly forgot - hoow could I?
The Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon - trilogy (Sunset Song, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite) on early twentieth-century Scotland - a classic
Just discovered James Barke's five novels on Robert Burns - read the first, 'Wind That Shakes the Barley' (excellent) and a poised to embark on no. 2, 'Wind That Shakes the Barley' - then another three to go
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 May 15 - 04:28 AM

"Arthur Koestler's"
Koesler's 'Darkness at Noon' and the Spanish Civil War Trilogy - very strange man, excellent writer
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: CupOfTea
Date: 19 May 15 - 10:12 AM

I wonder if the novels of Dorothy Evelyn Smith are only unknown in the US. "Oh, the Brave Music" has been a favorite since childhood .I think it may have been a book club edition in the 1950, as I found it in my uncles bookshelf with other books popular in that era. I took out many of her other books from the library, only to find that in later years they'd been tossed (sold in a library book sale "cancelled" stamped on 'em). Searching used book stores has only yielded that first novel, reinforcing the book club theory.

Her detailed depictions of the life of average and poor people in the rapidly changing world around 1900, in the north of England fascinated me, and made me fall in love with Yorkshire long before "All Creatures Great and Small" hit PBS here. What do the English think of her?

Joanne the Anglophile from Cleveland

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,Modette
Date: 19 May 15 - 01:25 PM

Everything by Perec, but, most especially 'Life - A User's Manual'.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 May 15 - 02:17 PM

I wonder if the novels of Dorothy Evelyn Smith are only unknown in the US

I work in a second-hand bookshop in the UK and I'd never heard of her before. And I do keep an ear open for writers that customers recommend. That was how I heard about Patrick McGill.

Somebody very much out of fashion now: Ethel Mannin. A sort of feminist bohemian Aldous Huxley. Her books are very hard to find - I can't imagine why Virago never reprinted them, you'd think they were right up their street.

Some of the previous suggestions are for books far MORE well known than they ever ought to have been. "The Mote in God's Eye" is an evil piece of xenophobic paranoia in SF parable disguise (it advocates something close to what the EU is currently trying to do to refugees from Africa and the Middle East, only Niven and Pournelle had Mexico and south-east Asia in mind). And "Earth Abides" was a potentially fine story ruined by the stereotypes of its time - by the end of the book, the women characters are so insignificant they don't even have names, and the African Americans are presented as genetically programmed to keep on growing cotton despite living in a world where that no longer makes any sense. "The Mote" sold in millions and "Earth Abides" has hardly ever been out of print. ("Gay Hunter" by Leslie Mitchell aka Lewis Grassic Gibbon is a much better post-apocalyptic, post-technological-civilization book which is much harder to find).

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 May 15 - 03:14 PM

On Shimrod's non-fiction theme, Richard Fortey's "The Earth: An Intimate History" is wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 May 15 - 03:31 PM

Actually, Don, Bride Of Frankenstein [1934] was the best of James Whale's old Boris Karloff/Colin Clive original 1930s Frankenstein series, keeping quite a lot of the book's themes, & with a rather good invented mad-scientist character called Dr Pretorius, a fine characterisation by Ernest Thesiger. I remember that version with some affection. Mind you, they all missed the point of the original, that the really intelligent and sensitive and articulate character was the "Dæmon" {as Mrs Shelley called him, rather than Monster or Creature}, who starts out full of loving-kindness but it is perverted because no-one can relate to his ugliness, Frankenstein [who is a medical student, not a doctor BTW -- and certainly not a nobleman] having skimped on the skin so it is overstretched over the muscles and features. The films gave us the good intentions, and much of the intelligence, but none of the articulacy. The 'Bride' version contains the book's themes of the blind musician who befriends the creation because he can't see him, &c.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Bert
Date: 19 May 15 - 04:11 PM

I've just been re reading some P. G. Wodehouse, not for the plots, but for the language.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 19 May 15 - 05:10 PM

For a bit of English nostalgia, 'One Fine Day' by Mollie Panter Downes

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 May 15 - 06:22 PM

Right on all counts, MGM.

I enjoyed the James Whale movies with Boris Karloff, but they went pretty far afield from what Mary Shelley wrote. I liked the final scene in "The Bride of Frankenstein," when his newly assembled and animated Bride (Elsa Lanchester), who is not exactly "'Miss Universe" material herself, rejects him with a gag of horror. Karloff's facial expressions (through the heavy make-up) are eloquent indeed. He then orders everyone out of the laboratory before he destroys it, along with himself and his "betrothed."

Boris Karloff did a pretty good job with what he had to work with.

There have been several movie attempts since then, most of which went far afield. I had high hopes of Kenneth Branaugh's 1994 attempt ("Mary Shelley's Frankenstein"—not quite!), but his change at the ending:

When cheated of his bride, "Adam" rips Elizabeth's [Frankenstein's fiancee—Helena Bonham Carter] head off. Frankenstein staples it back on and reanimates her. But then she rejects him, feeling that she is now more like "Adam."

An interesting twist. But I really wish someone would just stick to the story that Mary Shelley wrote.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 19 May 15 - 06:34 PM

Some great suggestions here. Since we seem to be including nOn fiction, I'll add some tomorrow, off to a kitchen party tonight !
Oh, I read a lot of "literary" travel books. Shall I list th here or start a new thread? What say you ?

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 May 15 - 07:11 PM

I have to stick up for non-fiction as I never read fiction (not even history books more than thirty years old). I bought a book in 1984 called In A Dark Time, an anthology of writings, sayings and poems which shine a light on the sheer madness of humanity when contemplating or enacting war, in fact, showing how we lose our humanity as well as our collective sanity, though it isn't without hope ("the eye begins to see..."). It was edited by Nicholas Humphrey and Robert Jay Lifton. My copy's going yellow now and it's stuffed full of newspaper clippings I've amassed which echo the same sentiments.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 May 15 - 07:16 PM

I often find literary travel books a bit annoying, with the author's persona getting in the way. Bruce Chatwin does that a lot. Robert Byron (The Road to Oxiana) sorta gets away with it by being so wildly camp and baroque.

Rather unliterary: E. Lucas Bridges, "The Uttermost Part of the Earth". It's the story of his family, who went to Tierra del Fuego late in the 19th century as farmers and missionaries to the Indians of the region, and lived to see their near-complete extinction. It's easy to find in the UK in the Readers Union edition from around 1960, which includes Bridges' sepia photos.

One literary travel book that included a comment I strongly identified with: Burroughs and Ginsberg's "Yage Letters", about trailing round tropical South America getting smashed on exotic drugs. Burroughs mentions that he wore the same pair of nylon socks for months of jungle travel; they rapidly settled into a state of indestructible dinginess. I had the same kind of socks when I was a student in New Zealand and they just kept going for years until I lost them - I'm not sure what colour they were meant to be but they spent most of their career snot-green. You can't buy them any more. Burroughs thought they were discontinued in a capitalist strategy of planned obsolescence and he wasn't far wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 May 15 - 08:06 PM

A lovely literary travel book is South From Granada by Gerald Brenan, an autobiographical account of his life in an Andalucian village in the earlier 20th century. I'm a bit biased because I go there now and again and love the Alpujarras. I'll be there again later in the summer, baking in the heat!

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: ranger1
Date: 19 May 15 - 09:12 PM

Lawrence Millman's travel books are excellent. I bought the first one because of the title: An Evening Among Headhunters and wasn't disappointed. I managed to get my hands on two more of his books -Last Places and Our Like Will Not Be Here Again, also excellent.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: kendall
Date: 19 May 15 - 09:35 PM

Silverlock by John Myers Myers.
The mists of Avalon.
Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell.
Travels with Charlie. Steinbeck

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 May 15 - 08:04 AM

Is Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' still recognised as the masterpiece it is?
It's been one of my 'read again' books throughout most of my life.
The ambiguity of the title is the subject of a family story.
My father was a prisoner-of-war in Spain and reading material was heavily censored by the Fascist authorities
'The Jungle' slipped under the net because they thought it was a travel book.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 20 May 15 - 10:17 AM

I read "The Jungle". didn't care for it all. But now I feel I will give it another go. As an historian I read a lot of history, I would highly recommend the following, all by Margaret MacMillan.. Paris 1919 , The Uses and Abuses of History and The War that Ended Peace. She is a very good historian.
and is an expert on the Great War. I would also suggest Barbara Tuchman, especially A Distant Mirror.
Finally, Rose Menocal, The Ornament of The World, Jews, Muslims and Christians in Medieval Spain.

For Travel books I do like Eric Newby, especially A Short Walk in The Hindu Kush, also Frey Stark and Vita Sackville Wests' book on her Journey to Tehran.
Travel with a Donkey by Robert Louis Stephenson was a book I disliked because I found Stephenson unlikeable. However, the donkey was grand.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 May 15 - 10:43 AM

The Nutmeg Tree, by Margery Sharpe (I think; I am sure of the title). A lovely, lovely novel.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Bill D
Date: 20 May 15 - 10:55 AM

Jack Campin:

" "The Mote in God's Eye" is an evil piece of xenophobic paranoia in SF parable disguise .....Niven and Pournelle had Mexico and south-east Asia in mind...."

Ummm... I have read many reviews of the book, and yours is the only one I have seen which finds that theme. Did you come to those conclusions by yourself, or did you find them in other reviews? (or have you some personal knowledge of Niven & Pournelle's minds? Niven has written about alien cultures many times, but all I ever saw was speculation.)
I found the flaws of the book to be simply that the concept was too huge to develop all the implied side stories and characters sufficiently. There were many times I wanted to say, "...but what about THIS?"

(I am halfway through re-reading the sequel, "The Gripping Hand".... now I guess I will be looking for "xenophobic paranoia" on every page.)

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,DaveRo
Date: 20 May 15 - 11:33 AM

Arctic Dreams, by Barry Lopez, is a wonderful book. I've read it several times and often refer to it.

It's about the Arctic, the animals that live there, and the people who explored it - their motives and their attitudes to the natives.

There are chapters devoted to the polar bear (which apparently can turn green in captivity) and the musk ox, And chapters on explorers like John Davis, who sailed with a four-piece orchestra and, unusually for the time, was interested in, and willing to learn from, the eskimos.

And there are lots of maps; I love books with maps.

My copy has a sticker 'Winner of the 1986 American Book Award for Non-Fiction'. I highly recommend it, to scientists and poets alike.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 May 15 - 11:35 AM

Niven's and more especially Pournelle's politics are no great secret.

The book was published towards the end of the Vietnam War, and just about every American SF writer of the time was writing parables about it. The other source of its generally paranoic tone is long-standing white supremacist fears of being "outbred" by other races, "overrun" by immigrants, or just expropriated by the working class.

SF has always used stories about the future to sermonize about the time when it was written, going way back to the very first SF story, the Book of Revelation.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Bill D
Date: 20 May 15 - 12:00 PM

Well... I have never bothered to study authors' (of fiction) politics before reading their books.

It is possible that Marion Zimmer Bradley had deep, hidden themes in the "Darkover" series.. (yes... womens' issues were pretty clear, and cultural issues were discussed...but..)

I also listen to Burl Ives without thinking much about his sad political history, and Ewan McColl without concerning myself with his sneaky name change and attitudes.

A work of literature should stand on its own. If various moral, cultural and psychological themes 'seem' to be obvious, one can then decide whether to buy (or even just read) the book(s).

I find in science fiction the most interesting ideas expressed in many ways. "Mote" was one of the most challenging.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Bill D
Date: 20 May 15 - 12:22 PM

Just been looking up Niven's 'politics'...etc. It seems he, like many sci-fi authors, had opinions
Interview He calls himself a Libertarian. *tsk*... I am most assuredly NOT one, but the interview is fascinating.

As to his views on immigrants: Snopes seems to think his views might be..umm.. exaggerated. All sorts of theories seem to suggest that Niven was a snotty, rich guy with too much time on his hands.http://the-discourses.blogspot.com/2008/04/moron-report-13-larry-nivens-racism.html *shrug* If I could interview him personally, I might ask some questions about certain issues.... but if I re-read his books, I enjoy them, or not, on their own.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 May 15 - 12:44 PM

"and Ewan McColl without concerning myself with his sneaky name change and attitudes
Assume you don't have the same reservation about the many writers or personalities who, for one reason or another have changed their names (like Robert Zimmerman) or is it just the politics?)
Maybe I should withdraw 'A Scot's Quair because it was actually written by Leslie Mitchell, whose politics were very much to the left.
Couldn't begin to list the hundreds of great authoors, playwrights and actors who have changed their names.
Sorry, couldn't resist this sort of aside
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 May 15 - 12:58 PM

I knew Jerry Pournelle and his wife, Roberta, back in the late Fifties, early Sixties. Drinking buddies at the Blue Moon tavern in Seattle's University District. At the time, Jerry was working at Boeing (something to do with the space program--very "hush hush") and I was not aware that he had much interest in writing. The Pournelles were casual folk music fans and hosted a couple of "hoots" (informal songfests) in their home in the U. District.   

As I recall, Jerry said he was born in Louisiana and I think he said that he was a West Point graduate (along with a couple of other degrees, including Physics, I believe). He was, indeed, politically conservative, but I was not aware that he was any kind of white supremacist. As a Liberal/Progressive myself, I would have been a bit sensitive to that.

He and Roberta left for Southern California sometime in the mid-Sixties and it wasn't until the late Sixties that I discovered that he was writing spy novels under the pseudonym, Wade Curtis. Then, science fiction stories under his own name began appearing in Analog.

When he and Larry Niven passed through Seattle on a book signing tour (Lucifer's Hammer, as I recall), my wife, Barbara, and I wound up having dinner at Ivar's Salmon House with Jerry, Larry, Frank Herbert, and Mildred Downey Broxon. We occupied the table for about four or five hours, sipping wine and talking.

Memorable evening!

As I said, Jerry was definitely quite conservative, but I didn't detect any traces of white supremacist in him. At least, nothing blatant.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Will Fly
Date: 20 May 15 - 01:07 PM

There used to quite a vogue for Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series in the late '60s/early '70s, but he's not often mentioned these days.

My favourite book, of all time, is still "War And Peace". Tolstoy's breadth of thought and humanity still staggers me.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 May 15 - 01:25 PM

"War And Peace"
Been top of my Bucket list for most of my life, but never quite managed its highs and lows (same goes for Thackerey's 'Vanity Fair'
Much prefer Tolstoy's unfairly underrated 'Resurrection'.
Don't think I ever got over the Cinemascope version of W and P - saw it in Manchester in the 60s and could only get seats on the front row - crick in the neck for weeks and had to throw my jacket away because of the smell of horse-shit!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 21 May 15 - 09:00 AM

People Smuggling for Dummies by Nigel Farage.

RtS (sorry)

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 May 15 - 09:30 AM

King Leopold's Dream (sometimes Soliloquy) by Mark Twain.
Pamphlet/novelette on the horrors of the Belgian Congo under Leopold - makes nonsense of the 'Gallant little Belgium' slogan.
I read it in my twenties and was knocked out, decided to read it again last year and found to my delight that it was still available (I assume everybody knows about The Book Depository and its 'free postage to anywhere policy)
It is also available for free download HERE
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 May 15 - 01:06 PM

Twain got his material from E.D. Morel's book "The Black Man's Burden", which is well worth reading in its own right.

More than 100 years later, Central Africa has never recovered from what the Belgians and French did.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 21 May 15 - 01:48 PM

"Take my camel dear, said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."
   This must be one of the great opening lines in literature. The wonderful and under rated "The Towers of Trebizond" by Rose McCaullay.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,lefthanded guitar
Date: 21 May 15 - 05:46 PM

Turtle Diary

by Russell Hoban - Iread this several decades ago, and liked it very much then, a romance between two gentle souls who love turtles, set in London.

I don't know if I'd still like it as well, can't find the book anywhere these days; but perhaps some catters have read it.

and OMG this is a child's book, but does anyone remember the "escape to the Mushroom Planet: series; loved them as a kid.

Well we have some great suggestions here, and I thank you for giving me some ideas for beach days.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 22 May 15 - 02:29 AM

The best children's books are delightful at any age. I often go back to the books I enjoyed when I was young.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 22 May 15 - 02:32 AM

Thanks all , I now have a summer readIng list. !

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 May 15 - 05:47 AM

Thanks for the opportunity to revisit old books.
Before I go - collections of short stories
I see there are budget editions of O Henry available everywhere - probably one of the finest American short story writer (well... maybe second to Ray Bradbury!!)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 May 15 - 07:28 AM

I enjoyed "Turtle Diary" as well. I haven't read it for more than 30 years.

There are 378 copies listed on http://used.addall.com/, so it's not hard to find one.

Right now I have an original copy of the Cancellaria Secreta Anhaltina in an envelope by my feet. Now that's getting a bit less routine.

Apropos of which: somewhere near Brno there is a cave hollowed out of a hillside just before WW2 with sculptures of Czech Protestant warriors in it - depicting the legend that the defeated troops at the Battle of the White Mountain would some day emerge from under the mountain and come to the rescue of the Czech nation. It was hidden from the Nazis during the war. I've been inside it and seen the sculptures, but I can't now find it for googling. Anyone?

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 May 15 - 08:17 AM

"depicting the legend that the defeated troops at the Battle of the White Mountain
It's said that somewhere on our local mountain, Sliebh Callan, is buried Finn McCumhall's 'Boom Barra' (phonetic spelling - can't find a reference to it) - a bronze trumpet which, when blown, will summon he Fianna from their graves if Ireland ever needs them.
Funny how these things get around!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 22 May 15 - 10:39 AM

And Arthur will arise from one of assorted hillocks in Somerset ...
I live in hope.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 15 - 11:04 AM

Several reviews on Beyond the Cascade seem to indicate it is well worth reading. Its popularity indicated by sales volume seems to be inversely proportional to the delight expressed in them by those who actually read it.

They can be perused on this Amazon page.. E-book or hard copy, as you prefer.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 May 15 - 11:04 AM

Elijah will be back to rescue the Children Of Israel any time now, too. Pity he missed out last time they really needed him in the mid-1940s. You just can't trust these heroes and prophets!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 22 May 15 - 11:11 AM

If you play chess, you will love this one ,"The Flanders Panel" by Aurtoro Perez Reverte. Even if you don't play chess it is a great mystery

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 22 May 15 - 11:11 AM

Everything That Rises Must Converge- Flannery O'Connor (a collection of short stories)

The Horses Mouth- Joyce Cary, hilarious and tragic, part of a trilogy, the rest of which is also worthwhile.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 May 15 - 12:14 PM

Favourite literary story
Way back, J.P, Donleavey and Brendan Behan were neighbours for a time in Dublin
Donleavey was working on'The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B' at the time and it was his practice to do all his writing in longhand.
One afternoon, feeling somewhat cabin-feverish, he decided to take a walk, leaving all his work scattered around his desk.
When he returned he found that his house had been broken into - the French doors had been forced, but all he could find missing was a bottle of whiskey from the sideboard.
Relieved, he sat down to resume work on the pages he had left open, most of which he had crossed out.
Written across the bottom of the page in bold handwriting was - "leave it in".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 May 15 - 12:31 PM

I read Cary's "The Horse's Mouth" as a set book at school. Thought it was okay, but many years later read Ethel Mannin's "Lover Under Another Name", whose main character (otherworldly artist with a thing about William Blake) is far too similar to be concidence. Mannin's book is FAR better, with real character development and a much more emotionally gripping story. I originally thought Cary had just ripped Mannin off, but in fact his book was published a few years before: my guess is they are both based on the same real character but Mannin dug deeper into what made him tick.

The Wikipedia page about Mannin shows the scale of her work. Pretty darn impressive for someone so thoroughly forgotten.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Mannin

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 May 15 - 02:15 PM

Received the 35th of May today - Thanks for the heads up Thompson. It is just as good as I remember but certainly not up to todays politically correct standards for kids books. When a black horse called Negro Caballo takes the protagonists to the land of Cockayne you have to wonder what will be next :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST
Date: 22 May 15 - 07:35 PM

"A Separate Peace" by John Knowles. Salinger's "Catcher In The Rye" garnered all the attention at the time but this similarly-themed book tells a better story, and the last line of the novel alone is worth the read.

"A People's History Of The United States," by Howard Zinn. Given what fifty-eight years of living in the USA can tell you about human nature, this book rings truer than the pablum served up in any history class in any elementary school/middle school/high school in America.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST
Date: 22 May 15 - 08:04 PM

Johnny Got His Gun," by Dalton Trumbo. Like Robert Altman's movie "Streamers," some of the most powerful anti-war statements can be made away from the battlefield. Trumbo makes his from inside the head of a wounded soldier in a hospital.

"Homage To Catalona," by George Orwell. Orwell's accounting of his participation in the Spanish Civil War gives insight into the makings of his most famous novel.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: LadyJean
Date: 22 May 15 - 10:23 PM

The tale is told, that, back in the 1930s, Princeton University got a new building with quotations above each of the doorways, including the line, "He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
The faculty searched high and low, through the works of Shakespeare, Rabbelais, Moliere, Aristophanes etc. to find the source. Then one prof had a nervous breakdown and was told to take it easy, and read nothing too serious. Somebody suggested Scaramouche, uh huh.   I don't know if the building is still there.

"Winterdance" is a memoir about one man acquiring huskies and running the Iditarod. It is well worth reading.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: meself
Date: 22 May 15 - 10:49 PM

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill. Novel about a girl growing up in the mean streets of Montreal, in the care of a decidedly dysfunctional father. Conveys a sense of why those who grow up in such circumstances so often make the dubious choices they do, in eminently entertaining, quirky prose. If you like the title, read the book - you won't be disappointed.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 23 May 15 - 07:19 PM

"The Past Is Myself" by Chrisabel Von Bielenberg, an Englishwoman married to a German officer, she spent much of the second war Berlin. A wonderful account of one woman,s life in a horrible tIme.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 May 15 - 03:23 AM

I'd suggest the poetry of Mary Oliver. Her Dog Songs (2013) is particularly good for us dog lovers, but maybe a bit much for those who don't care for dogs. Her other poetry is very insightful into the human heart and the glories of nature.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 24 May 15 - 08:01 AM

Thanks Joe. I read some of her poems last night, very fine indeed. I read a lot of poetry, I admit to being a bit of a traditionalist, I love Yeats and Hardy and Andrew Marvel, among many others. But, I do read contemporary things as well. Check out Wendy Cope if you have a moment, I do like her rather a lot. Thanks again !

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 May 15 - 08:53 AM

Funny thing - I love good song lyrics but don't really get poetry :-( I know it is me. There is nothing wrong with poetry and I do enjoy a lot of monologues when recited but for some reason I do not enjoy many poems in written form. Wish I did!

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 May 15 - 10:01 AM

walk the blue fields by claire keegan.
ragged trousered philanthopists. gander at the gate rory o connor.
last of the donkey pilgrims, kevin o hara.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Thompson
Date: 24 May 15 - 04:42 PM

Claire Keegan also has a superb long short story called Foster, which is available as a short book, or you can read it in the New Yorker (see link). There's a misprint in the middle, by the way: "take a present off a man" should (as would be obvious to any Irish person from context) read "take a present of a man".

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 May 15 - 11:24 AM

I got a lot out of this thread in that I was reacquainted with a childhood friend. :-) What have other people taken away? Anyone going to read any of the books listed? Just idle curiosity.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 May 15 - 03:44 AM

"Anyone going to read any of the books listed?"
Will try several, and have been inspired to re-try a couple that didn't take first time round.
Might even take another turn at War and Peace, but I couldn't get on with Catcher in the Rye, and I doubt if I ever shall - ah well, my loss.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: lefthanded guitar
Date: 26 May 15 - 03:25 PM

A belated thank you to Jack Campin - for remembering Turtle Diary AND for providing me wiht a (new to me) website to purchase the book (and at MORE than reasonable prices)

Hope I didn't get back to late to say: THANKS JACK!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 26 May 15 - 03:40 PM

One of the best Autobiographies I have read is "Speak Memory" by Vladimir Nabakov.
I will certainly have a go at a few on the list.
Oh, and I must mention The Worm Forgives The Plow by John Stewart Colis and Cider with Rosies
by Laurie Lee.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 May 15 - 03:53 PM

My favourite Russell Hoban book so far is "Riddley Walker" - nobody's idea of obscure, though.

That period produced a lot of superb fractured-future books. Two you won't find easily: Janet Frame's "Intensive Care" (which ends with a shattering extrapolation of NZ's official eugenic policies) and Bernard Wolfe's "Limbo 90" (what happens when you let psychologists run the world).

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 May 15 - 01:24 AM

Mr. Gnome, Sir, I think that even you would like Mary Oliver's Dog Songs. It really is a pleasure to read that book - more than once, preferably out loud. It may change your opinion of poetry.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 27 May 15 - 06:16 AM

I would have thought that Cider with Rosie' was already very well known, but the sequel - 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning' is as good if not better. This is followed by 'A Moment of War', and later, 'A Rose for Winter'.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,DaveRo
Date: 27 May 15 - 07:37 AM

And in a similar vein Love and War in the Appennines by Eric Newby.

(All these Picador books! When I was in a hurry I used to just pick any book from the Picador rack. Smallcreep, Turtle Diary, and several others mentioned were Picadors.)

I've enjoyed other Eric Newby books too. The Last Grain Race describes one of the last voyages on a sailing clipper, just before WW2.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 27 May 15 - 10:14 AM

I know that Cider With Rosie is well known in the UK, however, it may not be well known in America, which is why I mentioned it. I also enjoyed the sequels, but feel that the first book is the best.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: kendall
Date: 27 May 15 - 08:01 PM

"The Jungle" was required reading in my history class in college.

Another for the list, "Father fell down the well." :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 May 15 - 08:30 PM

"The Jungle"
Strange thing about 'The Jungle' was that it was written to draw attention to the conditions of the meat packing workers in Chicago, yet its main effect was to reform the hygiene laws in that industry - people didn't take to the idea of eating their corned beef mixed in with the bodies of workers who had fallen into the machinery apparently!
I don't think I mentioned the huge output of Scots writer, Nigel Tranter
Bought my first one in Putney open market because of its title 'Lords of Misrule' (thought it was about folk traditions), but found it was about a period of Scots history that I was unfamiliar with.
Tranter's sixty-odd novels take events Scots history and their basic theme - especially recommended are 'The Bruce' and the James V trilogies
Well written and extremely digestible Sots history - all (except maybe a couple of the later ones) memorable
Alexander Cordell did the same job on Wales and Walter Macken on Ireland - also very readable if you are into history without the hard work
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 May 15 - 08:54 PM

Nigel Tranter had some rather strange ideas. He was a follower of the "Catholic Apostolic Church", a sect founded by Edward Irving early in the 19th century which invented the idea of the Rapture. They have been defunct for a long time, Tranter was one of their last members. They built an enormous church in Edinburgh which has strange Byzantine-inspired Pre-Raphaelite frescoes by Phoebe Anna Traquair, and pillars along the walls which don't quite touch the floor (there is a gap of a few inches at the bottom). The idea was that on Judgement Day God would lift the entire church up to heaven with the congregation inside it.

There is a book about the Catholic Apostolics by Columba Flegg, who comes across as a fairly unpleasant person. Somebody ought to write a novel about them, they had a lot of strange connections with the powerful.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: kendall
Date: 08 Jun 15 - 10:30 PM

Amazon has a blog up on my new book. It will be on the shelves soon.

Add to the list, Wake of the Red Witch.
The Count of Monte Cristo.

Silverlock

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Musket
Date: 09 Jun 15 - 03:49 AM

Hopper and Silo Discharge -Successful Solutions. (IMechE Publications)

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jun 15 - 11:59 AM

That one is obviously in the same genre as this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Kmhn3TDQL._SL500_.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Musket
Date: 09 Jun 15 - 12:53 PM

Cheeky bugger. I get a small discount off my membership for each one sold, as a contributing author!

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jun 15 - 01:20 PM

Serious recommendation to anybody with the stamina
Emile Zola's 'Rougon-Macquart' series of twenty novels
Better ones include 'Germinal' and 'Nana' but some of the lesser-known ones are masterpieces 'L'Assommoir (The Drunkard)' and 'La Débâcle' being two of the best novels I have ever read
La Bête Humaine' was made into a fine classic French film in the fifties - well worth looking out for
Though the novels stand alone, it does help tor read them in some order - and abandon the ones you can't get on with (had problems with the religios ones)
Just come across a 'recommended order of reading' list I would concur with
Jim Carroll
La Fortune des Rougon (1871)
Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876)
La Curée (1871-2)
L'Argent (1891)
Le Rêve (1888)
La Conquête de Plassans (1874)
Pot-Bouille (1882)
Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)
La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (1875)
Une Page d'amour (1878)
Le Ventre de Paris (1873)
La Joie de vivre (1884)
L'Assommoir (1877)
L'Œuvre (1886)
La Bête humaine (1890)
Germinal (1885)
Nana (1880)
La Terre (1887)
La Débâcle (1892)
Le Docteur Pascal (1893)

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Jun 15 - 07:43 PM

pig keeping, by wd peck.
companion plants helen philbrick and richard b gregg

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Jun 15 - 07:53 PM

Jim Carroll,
clearly does not understand The Good Soldier Schweik.
The novel is set during World War I in Austria-Hungary, a multi-ethnic empire full of long-standing tensions. Fifteen million people died in the War, one million of them Austro-Hungarian soldiers of whom around 140,000 were Czechs. Jaroslav Hašek participated in this conflict and examined it in The Good Soldier Švejk.

Many of the situations and characters seem to have been inspired, at least in part, by Hašek's service in the 91st Infantry Regiment of the Austro-Hungarian Army. The novel also deals with broader anti-war themes: essentially a series of absurdly comic episodes, it explores both the pointlessness and futility of conflict in general and of military discipline, Austrian military discipline, in particular. Many of its characters, especially the Czechs, are participating in a conflict they do not understand on behalf of an empire to which they have no loyalty.

The character of Josef Švejk is a development of this theme. Through (possibly feigned) idiocy or incompetence he repeatedly manages to frustrate military authority and expose its stupidity in a form of passive resistance: the reader is left unclear, however, as to whether Švejk is genuinely incompetent, or acting quite deliberately with dumb insolence. These absurd events reach a climax when Švejk, wearing a Russian uniform, is mistakenly taken prisoner by his own troops.

In addition to satirising Habsburg authority, Hašek repeatedly sets out corruption and hypocrisy attributed to priests of the Catholic Church.
Plot summary
Statue of Josef Švejk in Sanok, Poland

The story begins in Prague with news of the assassination in Sarajevo that precipitates World War I.

Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no one can decide whether he is merely an imbecile or is craftily undermining the war effort. He is arrested by a member of the state police, Bretschneider, after making some politically sensitive remarks, and is sent to prison. After being certified insane he is transferred to a madhouse, before being ejected.
Statue of Josef Švejk in Przemyśl, Poland

Švejk gets his charwoman to wheel him (he claims to be suffering from rheumatism) to the recruitment offices in Prague, where his apparent zeal causes a minor sensation. Unfortunately, he is transferred to a hospital for malingerers because of his rheumatism. He finally joins the army as batman to army chaplain Otto Katz; Katz loses him at cards to Senior Lieutenant Lukáš, whose batman he then becomes. Lukáš is posted with his march battalion to barracks in České Budějovice, in Southern Bohemia, preparatory to being sent to the front. After missing all the trains to Budějovice, Švejk embarks on a long anabasis on foot around Southern Bohemia in a vain attempt to find Budějovice, before being arrested as a possible spy and deserter (a charge he strenuously denies) and escorted to his regiment.

The regiment is soon transferred to Bruck an der Leitha, a town on the border between Austria and Hungary. Here, where relations between the two nationalities are somewhat sensitive, Švejk is again arrested, this time for causing an affray involving a respectable Hungarian citizen and engaging in a street fight. He is also promoted to company orderly.

The unit embarks on a long train journey towards Galicia and the Eastern Front. Close to the front line, Švejk is taken prisoner by his own side as a suspected Russian deserter, after arriving at a lake and trying on an abandoned Russian uniform. Narrowly avoiding execution, he manages to rejoin his unit. The unfinished novel breaks off abruptly before Švejk has a chance to be involved in any combat or enter the trenches, though it appears Hašek may have conceived that the characters would have continued the war in a POW camp, much as he had done.

The book includes numerous anecdotes told by Švejk on nearly any occasion (often either to deflect the attentions of an authority figure, or to insult them in a concealed manner) which are not directly related to the plot.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jun 15 - 08:49 PM

"clearly does not understand The Good Soldier Schweik."
Having read it 4 times, I think I do
I suggest you read the book rather than the Wiki cut-'n-paste precis you have put here.
All good literature is open to individual interpretation - the one I gave is how I understand it over the thirty odd years since first read it - it is pretty well the same as Brecht interpreted it when he moved it ito W.W.2. and turned it into a play - you don't agree with it, go dig him up and argue with him.
Please do not interrupt a discussion of books with your ongoing vendetta and ruin another thread.
Over and out
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Jun 15 - 03:10 AM

I have read the book many times, neither is there a vendetta you pompous pillock, remember, action provokes reaction, your contininuous snidey cooments to some people on this forum[myself included] reveal your true character.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLoi
Date: 10 Jun 15 - 04:43 AM

I picked up book at a parish sale last week, "Tales of Moorland and Estuary " by Henry
Williamson, same man who wrote "Tarka The Otter". A love book about rural life in Devon before the second War.
   Also read " Anna of The Five Towns" by Arnold Bennett , very good book. I have always thought that Bennett has been under appreciated as an English novelist.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Jun 15 - 07:34 AM

Appreciation of the admirable Bennett has been increasing the past 40 years or so. Margaret Drabble wrote an excellent critical biography of him, 1974. Particularly to be recommended in terms of this thread, tho, is Bennett's "Riceyman Steps", less well-know than the Clayhanger series.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Jun 15 - 07:43 AM

HENRY WILLIAMSON was an excellent writer, it was a pity that he dabbled in fascism in the 1930s.
I hope Mr Carroll does not think that the following cut and paste is part of some vendetta, talk about paranoia.Politics

In 1935, Henry Williamson visited the National Socialist German Workers Party Congress at Nuremberg and was greatly impressed, particularly with the Hitler Youth movement, whose healthy outlook on life he compared with the sickly youth of the London slums.[1][6] He had a "well-known belief that Hitler was essentially a good man who wanted only to build a new and better Germany."[7] Opposed to war and believing that wars were caused by "usurial moneyed interests",[8] he was attracted to Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, and joined it in 1937.[9]

On the day of the British and French declaration of war on Germany Williamson suggested to friends that he might fly to Germany to speak with Hitler in order to persuade him away from war. Following a meeting with Mosley later that day however he was dissuaded from his plan.[10] At the start of World War II Williamson was briefly held under Defence Regulation 18B for his political views, but was released after only a weekend in police custody.[9] Visiting London in January 1944, he observed with satisfaction that the ugliness and immorality represented by its financial and banking sector had been "relieved a little by a catharsis of high explosive" and somewhat "purified by fire." And, "in The Gale of the World, the last book of his Chronicle, published in 1969, Williamson has his main character Phillip Maddison question the moral and legal validity of the Nuremberg Trials".[1]

Williamson initially retained a close relationship with Mosley in the immediate aftermath of the war, but when he brought Mosley as his guest to the Savage Club, the former BUF leader was promptly ejected by club staff.[11] Williamson refused Mosley's request that he join the newly established Union Movement and indeed his suggestion to Mosley that he should instead join him in abandoning politics altogether led to the two men falling out.[12] Nonetheless Williamson did write for Mosley's theoretical journal The European.[13] He also continued to express admiration for aspects of Nazi Germany after the war.[14]

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jun 15 - 08:37 AM

"I hope Mr Carroll does not think....."
I try not to think about you Dick - it gives me indigestion
Please leave me out of your postings or I shall be forced to conclude that you are trying to deliberately sabotage this thread
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 10 Jun 15 - 08:55 AM

I did not know that about Williamson, thanks, I will have to read up on him.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Jun 15 - 03:52 AM

The finest Scottish novel, IMO.

"A Scots Quair" containing "Sunset Song", "Cloud Howe" and "Grey Granite", by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Changed my life completely

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Jun 15 - 10:01 AM

Found this in Mark Twain's "Sketches"

"I was sitting here," said the judge, "in this old pulpit, holding court, and we were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy summer day, and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious. None of us took any interest in the trial except that nervous, uneasy devil of a Mexican woman—because you know how they love and how they hate, and this one had loved her husband with all her might, and now she had boiled it all down into hate, and stood here spitting it at that Spaniard with her eyes; and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer lightning, occasionally. Well, I had my coat off and my heels up, lolling and sweating, and smoking one of those cabbage cigars the San Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times; and the lawyers they all had their coats off, and were smoking and whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner. Well, the fact is, there warn't any interest in a murder trial then, because the fellow was always brought in 'not guilty,' the jury expecting him to do as much for them some time; and, although the evidence was straight and square against this Spaniard, we knew we could not convict him without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every gentleman in the community; for there warn't any carriages and liveries then, and so the only 'style' there was, was to keep your private graveyard. But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that Spaniard; and you'd ought to have seen how she would glare on him a minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for the next five minutes search the jury's faces, and by and by drop her face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to give up; but out she'd come again directly, and be as live and anxious as ever. But when the jury announced the verdict—Not Guilty—and I told the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she appeared to be as tall and grand as a seventy-four-gun ship, and says she:

"'Judge, do I understand you to say that this man is not guilty that murdered my husband without any cause before my own eyes and my little children's, and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the law can do?'

"'The same,' says I.

"And then what do you reckon she did? Why, she turned on that smirking Spanish fool like a wildcat, and out with a 'navy' and shot him dead in open court!"

"That was spirited, I am willing to admit."

"Wasn't it, though?" said the judge admiringly.

"I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I adjourned court right on the spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took up a collection for her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends. Ah, she was a spirited wench!"

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jun 15 - 03:25 AM

Have just launched into the latest of C J Sansom's 'Shardlake' series, 'Lamentation' - just as superb as the other five.
Came across the series by accident when I was given a copy of another of his books 'Winter in Madrid' (Spanish Civil War) - just as excellent.
For anybody vaguely interested the English Reformation, but can't manage the mountains of factual information, the Shardlake books are a must - well researched, unsensational and highly readable, but really need to be read in order if they are to be valuable for passing on the events of the period (they all come with short titles (Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone and Lamentation)
Sansom also wrote 'Dominion' which envisages a Britain which had lost the war at Dunkirk and was surviving under German rule - equally fascinating.
Damn good reads, all of them
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Apr 19 - 10:56 PM

I've just been re-watching a 1976 BBC mini-series that I saw when new: "The Glittering Prizes" and in one of the episodes there is a character modeled on either Mosley or Williamson, or both. He's living out in the country, almost unknown, unremembered, until one of the protagonists of the mini-series decides to have a go at taking him apart, and is handed some surprises.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 03 Apr 19 - 12:19 AM

The End of the Golden Weather, a play by the New Zealand playwright and actor Bruce Mason (R.I.P.) It's based on his growing up, and is a wonderful coming off age story.
-Chanteyranger

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Apr 19 - 11:22 AM

We could do a whole series of threads like this.....

People that should be better known,,,
Meals that should be better known..
Pork pie shops that should be better known...

Perhaps if we had an umbrella thread...things that should be better known

as for books its very subjective. Jim was saying War and Peace had never really done it for him.

I remember when I was 19. The coldest winter in the coldest place in England. The woman I loved despised me. I was failing a teaching practice in a secondary modern (English teaching where none of the kids could read). Queues of kids outside the Headmasters office waiting to be caned every day. That's when I read War and Peace.

I remember thinking the Battle of Austerlitz would be a piece of piss after this lot.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: robomatic
Date: 03 Apr 19 - 03:27 PM

I just finished "King Leopold's Ghost" by Hochschild and found it informative and fascinating infuriating and kind of sad about my species. I remembered someone in Mudcatreferring to the book so I did a search and turned up this thread, which is actually not the thread I recall. Anyhow, there were so many references to books and authors I have not been introduced to that I saw no harm in resurrecting it at this point in time.

New reference: A well-read Starbucks acquaintance (who had just read "King Leopold's Ghost" recommends a new book to me "Out Stealing Horses" by Per Petterson. I ordered it for my Kindle based only on that.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Apr 19 - 07:57 PM

I heard "The End of the Golden Weather" when it was first broadcast and didn't get it. I have the book and might give it another try.

Another NZ one, rather horribly topical: Janet Frame's "Intensive Care", particularly the long third story. It dates from about 1970 and Frame was extrapolating the most sinister tendencies of the time in NZ society, particularly its eugenic ideology. She projects that into a future where the people of "Waipouri City" (Wellington?) are burning the bodies of their euthanized mentally defective children in their gardens. It's a double narrative, ending with the diary of a girl who's just been incinerated. It is simply so horrific and powerful that it sank into obscurity, though almost all of Frame's other work is easily available. Perhaps it had an influence anyway, and helped build the more tolerant NZ that is now appearing on the world stage.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Apr 19 - 03:10 AM

Have just started to re-read Richard Watts's 'The Kings Depart' an extremely readable account of Germany between the wars
If I still have it, I'll do the same for Paul Henissart's 'Wolves in the City' The Algerian War and how France avoided a military coup
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Apr 19 - 11:04 PM

My fave Hoban book is The Sorely Trying Day.

Subject: RE: BS: Books that should be better known
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Apr 19 - 03:14 AM

We have a community book-reading project called One Book, One Community. The book for this year is The Far Away Brothers, by Lauren Markham. It's about teenage twins who migrate from El Salvador to California. It tells the story of the issue that is most urgent in the United States right now.