October 2018 Reading Thread

[Hugh]

Maybe they issued the 2018 edition because they realised the 2015 was a bit of a pup! Sadly I bought mine with a shrink-wrapper on, in a town four hours' drive from where I live.

I wondered that as this thread progressed.

Maybe (as in my edit above) a useful Christmas present for someone while you pick up a 2018 edition?

 

[Extollager]

Current reading includes the Library of American edition of Hawthorne's Tales and Sketches and Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. I expect to spend some time with Fraser's Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was intrigued by her remark, pointed out to me by my wife:

“On the Great Plains, the curtain was rising on what would culminate in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. People left in droves, cutting the population in some counties by half. The collapse of the Dakota Boom left so many Victorian mansions deserted that they inspired their own gothic genre, the haunted house story.” The stale language is regrettable, and I don’t know about “Victorian mansions” – but there certainly are plenty of sizeable, abandoned frame houses in the region in which I live. Does the author think that stories of haunted houses originated as a consequence of the late-19th and early 20th-century failures of Plains farms? Stories of haunted houses predate that era, of course, as a perusal of the works of Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, Hawthorne, and others shows – to say nothing of tales, earlier still, about haunted castles.

 

[HareBrain]

Maybe (as in my edit above) a useful Christmas present

Yes, could be.

BTW, I've also got an updated telling by Jackie Morris, who also did the beautiful artwork. There is something slightly Nielsenesque about some of the paintings, but I don't know if that's intentional.

 

[Hugh]

The Norwegian folktales book that I love dearly is this one:

View attachment 47359
Art by Werenskiold and Kittelsen. As I've said here before, I have 4000 books and if I had to winnow my collection down to 200, this book would be one of the keepers.

That's high praise indeed from you. The price seems surprisingly un-stratospheric on amazon.com anyway.

 

[Hugh]

Yes, could be.

BTW, I've also got an updated telling by Jackie Morris, who also did the beautiful artwork. There is something slightly Nielsenesque about some of the paintings, but I don't know if that's intentional.

Looking at Google Images, these are truly lovely pictures. You don't need the Taschen edition.

 

[Extollager]

That's high praise indeed from you. The price seems surprisingly un-stratospheric on amazon.com anyway.

It was paperbacked around 1983 in the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library, but the Viking Press hardcover edition from 1960 is the one I enjoyed as a youngster, and of which I eventually got a used copy.

If I had to winnow my collection down to 50 books, it would probably make the cut.

 

[Hugh]

It was paperbacked around 1983 in the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library, but the Viking Press hardcover edition from 1960 is the one I enjoyed as a youngster, and of which I eventually got a used copy.

If I had to winnow my collection down to 50 books, it would probably make the cut.

So, given the phenomenal number of books you own/read and have owned/read (and presumably will own/read in the future), what is it about this edition that places it easily in your top fifty? I can't help being curious: this is such high veneration! Is it the connection to your childhood inner world? The illustrations? The remarkable nature of the oral traditions that were gathered up for the first time? The character of the trolls?

(I bought “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” purely because I had a yearning to read some traditional fairy stories that had lavish early 20th Century illustrations, and this was just the first that came to mind. I had no idea that they were Norwegian or derived from the original research of two dedicated men interested in documenting the oral traditions of remote villages in the mid-nineteenth century).

 

[Danny McG]

This afternoon I've finally finished book 19 (The Memory Trap) of the 'David Audley' series by Anthony Price. This was the final book in the series and left a couple of major story arcs unfinished. I wonder why he never wrote any more?

Starting now on one I first read many years ago... 'Marathon Man' by William Goldman

 

[soulsinging]

and Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage.

I've had an eye on that and would be curious what you think. I don't often dip into non-fiction but when I do I tend to gravitate towards books like that. I thought River of Doubt, which tackled a similarly ill-fated adventure starring none other than former US President Teddy Roosevelt was also excellent.

 

[Extollager]

I've had an eye on that and would be curious what you think. I don't often dip into non-fiction but when I do I tend to gravitate towards books like that. I thought River of Doubt, which tackled a similarly ill-fated adventure starring none other than former US President Teddy Roosevelt was also excellent.

Endurance was excellent, almost making me catch my breath at times, which my reading virtually never does.

 

[Extollager]

So, given the phenomenal number of books you own/read and have owned/read (and presumably will own/read in the future), what is it about this edition that places it easily in your top fifty? I can't help being curious: this is such high veneration! Is it the connection to your childhood inner world? The illustrations? The remarkable nature of the oral traditions that were gathered up for the first time? The character of the trolls?

All of the above, and more. Norwegian Folk Tales (Iversen & Norman, Viking Press, 1960) is a well-made book -- printed in Norway, appropriately enough. But I also like a lot the Folktales of Norway volume in the University of Chicago Folktales of the World series (this volume edited by Reidar Christiansen).

I relish the Scandinavian milieu. There's a special eeriness that's connected with the isolated farmsteads and so on, and wonderfully suggested by the Werenskiold and Kittelsen illustrations in the Viking Press book. The Christiansen book, though, has no drawings except the inappropriate cover art of horned-helmet Vikings!!?

 

[thaddeus6th]

Reading Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar.

Very disconcerting when the monsters show their humanity. Kagonovich is described as being brutal, but also grateful when Stalin is teaching him punctuation. He's rather apologetic about getting commas and full stops wrong.

Mind you, Hitler was always nice to his secretaries. The chasm of cognitive dissonance jars, when genocidal maniacs can be personally kind to those they know. I suppose it's the underlying alarm that accompanies the banality of evil.

 

[HareBrain]

He's rather apologetic about getting commas and full stops wrong.

So would I be if Stalin was the one marking my work.

 

[thaddeus6th]

HareBrain, that's the thing. Stalin was helping him out by teaching him.

It's jarring. Like a school schedule with Brutality, followed by Double Genocide, Starving the Poor, and then Punctuation.

 

[Extollager]

Started rereadings of James R. Mellow's Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times and Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, having finished Endurance; keeping on with Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.

 

[Danny McG]

Starting now on one I first read many years ago... 'Marathon Man' by William Goldman

This was written in 1974, a time when running a marathon was considered 'freakish' and three or four years before Jim Fixx (who died while out jogging) popularised running with his fitness book.

A notable point I've picked up so far in my reread is that 'Babe' the protagonist has been training and running for over three years, he has now gotten his distance up to "almost fifteen miles"

 

[hitmouse]

It is interesting how distance running has become such a popular activity. Park run is massive, there are friendly races all over the place. Last night ( as I walked to the pub) there were hundreds of runners out enjoying the fine weather. 20 years ago this was not the case.

 

[Paul_C]

I finished Raven Stratagem last night. Mostly good, though I felt a few things were poorly explained in the rush to the end (I don't know if it's me, but there are an awful lot of times when I've said the end feels rushed!).

Not made my mind up yet what's next, I bought the third book not long after starting this one, but there was a bit in the book that wouldn't have been a huge surprise if I'd read it straight after the first, so I'm tempted to leave it for a while and pick up something else.

 

[Av Demeisen]

Slowly making my way through The Baron of Bland's latest turgid offering Salvation. Lefty tewwowists planning to boom boom capitalist good guys. Yawn.

 

[HareBrain]

Finished my reread of Naomi Foyle's Astra, which was even better than the first time. I'll post a review of the series when I've finished.

With impeccable timing, The Electric State by Simon Stalenhag arrived today. This won't be a long read as it's mostly pictures (but what pictures!) and I'm intending to savour every page.