Khadaji's Whatcha Readin' thread - January 2017 Edition

Cafe Society
41

I just finished George and Weedon Grossmith’s DIARY OF A NOBODY, which has been on my reading list for a long time. It’s a 1892 English comic novel, very much admired by the likes of George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, and J.B. Preistley, who claimed it was funnier than anything Jerome K. Jerome ever did.

I disagree. I found the book to make rather cruel fun of the protagonist, Charles Pooter (okay, great comic name), a middle-aged senior office worker and suburban Londoner. Pooter is regularly mocked by his friends, publicly humiliated, and he trips over area rugs. I’ve loved THREE MEN IN A BOAT since I was a teenager because of its sunny outlook and optimism and good hearted humor – DIARY OF A NOBODY just leaves a sour taste behind.

42

Today started Joseph Kessel’s BELLE DE JOUR.

BELLE DE JOUR (1967) is one of my favorite Luis Bunuel movies, about a beautiful Parisian housewife (Catherine DeNeuve) who spends her afternoons working at a brothel, due to her craving for sexual humiliation.

Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea it had been based on a novel. Let alone a novel by an Argentine author, living in Paris, and published in 1928!

I got hold of a 1962 St. Martin’s Press USA hardcover edition (and a very klutzy translation) and am 30 pages in. I can see that Bunuel added a lot of his own personal juice to the screenplay; the narrative so far is rather pedestrian. Severine had better start abasing herself pretty soon.

43

OK, I took a Discworld book out of the library, to see what all the fuss is about. Read Chapter One. Been there, done that.

Nothing sitting around in the house to be read but a 1936 L. Ron Hubbard pulp novel reprint, until I can get back to the library. But Hubbard might be a better writer than Pratchett.

But I do like Ann Patchett. Wish I had more by her.

44

Just started The Girl With All The Gifts. I’ve had it for a while, but want to read it before the movie comes out this year.

On Deck Slow Horses by Mick Herron. Thriller about disgraced agents at MI5

In the hole: The Big Picture On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. Light reading, to be sure, but fun!

45

Which Discworld book? You’ll find a lot of Pratchett fans on this board will strongly disagree with your assessment and urge you to try a different book first. I really like the books, but I can understand being thrown off by starting in the wrong place.

46

Happened to me, for example. I started with The Light Fantastic, which it turns out is really part two of The Colour of Magic and I gave up on Discworld for years. But a book reviewer I respect kept going on about how great Pratchett was, so one day I grabbed a copy of Feet of Clay. Which isn’t even his best book, or really where you should start, but I thought it was great.

47

It was the Witches books for me. I had sorta kinda liked The Light Fantastic, but it was Wyrd Sisters and Reaper Man that sealed my loved for Pratchett.

48

Finally got around to Dune, and now I’m working through Dune Messiah. There are definitely some things that I just can’t wrap my head around, especially when he begins talking about prescience and the religion forming around him. But they’re still enjoyable, and I can see why they’re considered such impressive sci-fi material.

49

Rereading Game of Thrones. I’m on the second book now. It’s my third reading, and it’s so fun to stumble across something that now has significance.

For instance, Catelyn is meeting with Renly when he asks if she’s seen Ser Barristan. She is confused, because she thought he was at King’s Landing. Renly tells her he was dismissed from the King’s Guard and that he vowed to offer his services to the true king. Renly thought if Barristan hadn’t gone to Robb Stark he would have come to him.

Of course, we all know, Barristan ends up with Danerys. So his true king (or queen, since he didn’t know Viserys was dead) was a Targaryen descendent.

50

I love doing that too. Not GoT - somehow I never got into the series and I did try, several times. But on a recent reread (er, re-listen) to Good Omens, I did a double-take when I heard “Crowley blessed under his breath” - had never noticed that line before.

For folks who don’t know the book, Crowley is a demon who’s been living among humans since Adam and Eve first made applesauce.

For people who have NOT had the chance to read this book: correct this omission. Immediately. It’s by Terry Pratchett and Neal Gaiman. Imagine “The Marx Brothers meet The Omen”, only funnier. I tortured my 19-year-old by making her listen to a few minutes of it as I was driving her somewhere. She was snickering within 5 minutes.

51

I finished reading “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole. It wasn’t what I expected: I thought it would be more like “The Mysteries of Udolpho” because they’re both described as early “gothic novels”, but “Otranto” is more like a flat-out fantasy novel. I mean, in the first few pages a gigantic helmet falls out of thin air and crushes somebody!

It had a rather extemporaneous feel to it, like someone was making up a fairy tale as a bedtime story. It wasn’t bad (and it was relatively short), but I thought the ending was rather abrupt and it ended on kind of an odd note.

52

That was my reaction to Otranto as well. But I could see why it would be such a counter-culture kind of novel in the period of the 18th century Enlightenment/rationality.

53

So, I finished reading the Richard III book. If you’re interested in that period of English history, archaeology, or the Ricardian controversy, it’s well worth a read.

There are two points that i (surprisingly) found very moving. The first was when they were digging up the bones. They actually found them when they dug their very first trench on the first day, but at that stage of the dig, they had no idea of their significance. They were just “Skeleton 1” in the excavation of a church, where burials were expected.

When the bones expert came back to it a few days later, she gradually uncovered them, starting with the legs (the foot bones were missing), then the skull. There were only two on that part of the dig, plus a camera man, plus Phillipa Langley, the Richard III fanatic who found the money for the dig. As they uncovered the bones, they started to think it might just be a friar. Langley left for a walk, disappointed.

The bones person left the ribs and back bone for last, because the ribs tend to be the most fragile. It was all going normally, as she uncovered the vertebrae. Then suddenly the next one wasn’t there in the proper place, in a line between the skull and the pelvis.

Then she found it, curving to the side… and another, and another, and then the curve came back to link up to the pelvis…

And sure, they were professionals, doing their job - but the bone digger just stopped and thought to herself: “This is Richard III!”

And the other digger thought “This just went from being an interesting dig to being one of the greatest set of vertebrae ever found - we’ve got to get everything perfect from this point on!”

And the camera man just kept taking pan after pan, thinking “I’ve got to get this before all hell breaks loose.”

A very low-key account, yet moving.

54

The other part that I found moving was the account of the head-wounds on Skeleton 1’s skull, how brutal they were, and how they matched up so closely to the historical record of the death of Richard III at Bosworth.

It was a violent death, although likely a quick one, with part of the back of his skull and brains sliced off, plus a stab wound to the skull that penetrated the brain by about four inches until the blade hit the inside of the skull on the other side. The experts thought the first wound was likely a halberd, the other a sword.

From the position of the wounds, he was likely on foot or even kneeling. Which matched the accounts of Richard being unhorsed but fighting valiantly: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

As one pathologist said, “Even with modern medicine, these are not wounds you can walk away from.” Likely dead almost instantaneously.

55

What book is this? I think I really NEED to read it.

56

“Digging for Richard III: How Archaeology Found the Lost King”.

It was Mrs Piper’s Christmas present to me, which she bought, appropriately enough, in the bookstore in the Crypt at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

57

Thank you! I will grab it today.

58

Recently finished: Tales of a Cold War Submariner, by Dan Summitt. Memoir of his career in the US Navy, 1947-74, which included command of two nuclear submarines and a tour at Naval Reactors, working directly for Adm Rickover.

Now reading: A Study in Charlotte, by Brittany Cavallaro. First in a series of YA mysteries starring two teens at a fancy boarding school in Connecticut – Charlotte Holmes and Jamie Watson, g’g’g’grandchildren of Sherlock and John. (The title is a take-off on A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story.) Very interesting so far, with one kid killed and another seriously injured, and the culprit doing a fine job of framing Charlotte for everything.

59

Oops - just realized I had the title wrong - sorry - I was on my phone, juggling from screen to screen.

Should be: “Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King”

60

If we’re also including kid’s books, the Piper Cub has been enjoying a series called : “Eerie Elementary: The School is Alive!”

It’s about a haunted school, inhabited by the spirit of its architect, a guy named Eerie, who is regularly trying to kill the students and teachers, fought off by a brave hall monitor and the custodian. We’ve read all the ones so far, and he’s anxiously waiting for more.

http://www.scholastic.ca/branches/eerie.htm