Hope I’m not jumping the gun here but the #1940Club starts next week and I’ve been gearing up and getting ready. The idea is simple. It’s a fun event with no pressure because you can choose anything from the year and read as much or as little as suits you. You can share on your … Read more
Here’s a treat for those who relish fiction with off-the-wall cognitive mayhem – The Hearing Trumpet Suddenly it seemed as if everyone in my online book world had read it (see here and here for here examples). It’s a short novel by Leonora Carrington, better known for her wildly idiosyncratic art. It was written in … Read more
With so many books and so little time, it helps to have a little guidance. It also helps when two or even three books can be read simultaneously – thus saving the reader valuable time for even more books. Here then is my current recommended reading list. Something for everyone here. Old Favorites Rediscovered Steppenwolf … Read more
Hands down, this is the best book I’ve read all year: All For Nothing by Walter Kempowski. It’s the bitter winter of 1945. An odd assortment of people lives in the Georgenhof – a small neglected estate in East Prussia. Eberhard von Globig is a Sonderführer, a special officer in the German army away in … Read more
‘Oh, I know all about goats,’ Sonia was saying. ‘People give them the same recommendation as the billeting officers did with evacuees – they’re no trouble. For all I know it may be true of goats. But then, like evacuees, they smell, and that’s quite enough for me.’ – Hemlock and After, 1952, Angus Wilson … Read more
Few things in this war have been more morally disgusting than the present hunt after traitors and Quislings. At best it is largely the punishment of the guilty by the guilty. In England the fiercest tirades against Quislings are uttered by Conservatives who were practising appeasement in 1938 and Communists who were advocating it in … Read more
Long before the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, bookish teens had Iris Murdoch. As the poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) explained in Annus Mirabilis, sex was invented in 1963 Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban … Read more
Always fun to find half-remembered books. One bonus of this decluttering lark is that you find so many of them. What to do? Choices: Keep: The book has an enduring value. While there is no more room you just have to hold on to this one. It’s either irreplaceable or just a core component of … Read more
George Orwell had an interesting chance encounter with a blasé conspiracy theorist at the Café Royal in 1940. (See left). The young man is in the grip of a dangerous fallacy. As always with autocracy and totalitarianism, Orwell nails it. The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a … Read more
The sandwich was no comfort, it was a pale limp thing a long way from the déjeuner sur l’herbe of her imagination. . . . Recently she had bought a new book, by Elizabeth David — A Book of Mediterranean Food. A hopeful purchase. The only olive oil she could find was sold in her local chemist in … Read more
Two Sundays, two documentaries and two very satisfactory movie experiences. The first was Maiden at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY. The second Toni Morrison: The Pieces I am at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. And before say anything about either film I have to comment on the pleasure of film-going at Indy cinemas like these. Two … Read more
I once worked in a school where the librarian arranged the non-fiction by the color of the spine. It made for some serendipitous browsing. He was a friendly fellow with a big bushy beard, a scholarly demeanor and who claimed to have a PhD in philosophy. We got along well. There came a day when … Read more
I haven’t read Go Set a Watchman and I’m not sure I will. I did read the first chapter in The Guardian and was not particularly impressed. If Harper Lee did not want it published then she didn’t want it read. But read it or not, it’s hard to miss all the controversy over the … Read more
Science teacher Jonathan Heiles sent a link to all of us about the international public campaign to name the surface features of Pluto and Charon. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly past Pluto in July and that far off world and its moons for the first time. Together with the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the New … Read more
The first day of alleged spring and another day disrupted by the rituals and routines of early dismissal. By mid afternoon the buses had come and gone and all after-school activities and athletic practices cancelled. Students and faculty had wisely left ahead of the icy roads. Luz – our wonderful cleaner – was vacuuming the … Read more