Reading the 20th Century discussion

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen a friend just gave me this beautiful edition for my birthday. Thanks David.

I just purchased Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s and Excuse It, Please! by Cornelia Otis Skinner, Mademoiselle Misfortune by Carol Ryrie Brink and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald. The Gatsby fills out a set of matching hardcovers by Scribner's that I have. Can't wait to get to them all!

I had a successful layover at O'Hare: Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali, Sundays in August by Patrick Modiano and Audition by Ryū Murakami.

Just purchased The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James and It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis.

Marcus wrote: "Just purchased The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James and It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis."

My least favorite by James (but friends love it), the Lewis is a gem - is it prescient or is everything old new again?

Ivan wrote: "Marcus wrote: "Just purchased The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James and It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis."

My least favorite by James (but friends love it)"

Portrait is my favourite James - and perhaps one of his most accessible books.

Glad to hear that, Roman Claudia. It will be probably my first H. James. I have The Ambassador also. Let’s see.

I've read and recommend these by James:

Daisy Miller
The Aspern Papers
The Turn of the Screw
Washington Square
The Spoils of Poynton
The Europeans

Has anyone read any Kingsley Amis? I have recently been given his Memoirs and Lucky Jim. He hasn't appeared in our favourite authors thread yet, but would anyone recommend his work?

Ivan wrote: "I've read and recommend these by James:

Daisy Miller
The Aspern Papers
The Turn of the Screw
Washington Square
The Spoils of Poynton

I'd add The Bostonians to this wonderful list - James is perhaps at his most comic in this book. I still have many of his novels to read...

I haven't read very much Amis, Pamela - I tried Lucky Jim as a teenager, but wasn't a big fan. I do remember reading You Can't Do Both, which I thought was good.

Judy wrote: "I haven't read very much Amis, Pamela - I tried Lucky Jim as a teenager, but wasn't a big fan. I do remember reading You Can't Do Both, which I thought was good."

Thanks Judy, maybe I'll try Lucky Jim next year then but there are other books that are more appealing atm.

I only read Lucky Jim and it didn't really appeal to me at all. It was, in my opinion, laddish and unfunny. I know some people say it's laugh out loud, but I didn't think so. I stopped there, so maybe I should try more, but that put me off!

Pamela wrote: "Has anyone read any Kingsley Amis? I have recently been given his Memoirs and Lucky Jim. He hasn't appeared in our favourite authors thread yet....."

He has now...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Susan wrote: "I only read Lucky Jim and it didn't really appeal to me at all. It was, in my opinion, laddish and unfunny. I know some people say it's laugh out loud, but I didn't think so. I stopped there, so ma..."

Well I think I will read it, but maybe also the one Judy mentioned. After all, if I'd only read Scoop, I wouldn't think I liked Waugh, so glad I tried others.

And thanks for the thread Nigeyb.

Pamela wrote: "Has anyone read any Kingsley Amis? I have recently been given his Memoirs and Lucky Jim. He hasn't appeared in our favourite authors thread yet, but woul..."

I read Lucky Jim a few years back but I don't remember much about it at all. Apparently it didn't make much of an impression on me one way or the other. Whatever that tells you. : )

My sister has just kindly lent me two books by Vera Brittain, Testament of Friendship, about her friendship with fellow writer Winifred Holtby (I'm also a big fan of her work), and Testament of a Peace Lover: Letters, a series of letters which she produced throughout the Second World War. Looking forward to these two.

I want to read A Hero for High Times: A Younger Reader’s Guide to the Beats, Hippies, Freaks, Punks, Ravers, New-Age Travellers and Dog-on-a-Rope Brew Crew Crusties of the British Isles, 1956–1994 however my library copy is already inundated with reservations and it's a bit pricey so, instead, I popped onto eBay and bought a couple of other Ian Marchant books instead....

The Longest Crawl: Being an Account of a Journey Through an Intoxicated Landscape or a Child's Treasury of Booze

According to G.K. Chesterton, the act of getting to and from a pub is central to an understanding of British life and landscape. So bon viveur, pub singer and writer Ian Marchant set off with photographer Perry Venus on a gruelling month long British pub crawl, to go to and from a lot of pubs in order to test Chesterton's hypothesis.

Parallel Lines: Or, Journeys on the Railway of Dreams

For 175 years the British have lived with the railway, and for a long while it was a love affair - the grandeur of the Victorian heyday, the glorious age of steam, the romance of Brief Encounter. Then the love affair turned sour - strikes, bad food, delays, disasters...Parallel Lines tells the story of these two railways: the real railway and the railway of our dreams. Travelling all over Britain, Ian Marchant examines the history of the British railway and meets those who still hold the railways close to their hearts - the model railway enthusiasts, the train-spotters and bashers (a hybrid of train-spotting where the individual - usually male - has to travel behind a certain locomotive in order to catalogue it), the steam enthusiasts. He swaps stories with commuters at the far reaches of London suburbia, he travels to deserted railway museums, and smokes cigarettes on remote, windswept stations in the furthest corners of Scotland, turning his characteristic eye for character, humour and surprise to one of the great shared experiences of the British nation.

I just bought a second-hand copy in good condition for $3 of 'The Flame of Life' by Alan Sillitoe.

First page blurb
'The Flame of Life brings the cycle of novels - which started with The Death of William Posters and continued with The Tree of Fire - to an end by explaining the progress, and otherwise, of life in the Handley community.

A score of intimately connected yet outlandish people gather together, some by their own inadequacies, others by a genuine wish to make the community a success. But the people are too diverse, too ordinary, too unruly to be moulded in any satisfactory direction by their self-imposed experiment.

Between the pressures of these extremes the experiment falls apart. Yet it also succeeds in a more human manner, because chaos brings change in all of them. As Dawley observes, the Revolution came home to roost in more ways than one.'


AUTHOR'S NOTE
The present novel was begun in August 1967, and finished in January 1974. This is a long time for one book, though during that period other items were written that were more urgently pressing. They elbowed the present work aside, which may have been compliant in this because the plot and form of the book weren't so absolutely clear in my mind as they subsequently became over the years.
   During its progress three other novels were written, as well as two books of short stories, two filmscripts, and a volume of poems.
   Earlier versions of chapters three and four were printed as part of a novel in progress entitled CUTHBERT in The Southern Review ( Louisiana State University) in the summer of 1969.

Back cover synopsis
THE FLAME OF LIFE
Orphans of the Promised Land

'A provoking, deep-searching study of contemporary attitudes, of the dilemma confronting idealists in a corrupt society. Men and women who, having challenged and overthrown the barriers of evil, find themselves tumbling helpessly into a vaccuum.'

Sounds intriguing Greg - thanks

I have just forked out the unprecedented sum of £10 on two much looked forward to books. The Gilt Kid by James Curtis in an old penguin edition and a London Books edition of It Always Rains on Sunday by Arthur La Bern... London life from the early mid 20th Century ahoy!

I've read both of those beauts CQM. I feel confident you will find much to enjoy in both titles

Nigeyb wrote: "I've read both of those beauts CQM. I feel confident you will find much to enjoy in both titles"

Just been looking into Arthur La Bern, very little information about him or even his books but here's a pricey little number that might pique your interest sir.
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/Bo...
I'd have it myself but that price might be a sticking point between me and the Mrs.

Thanks CQM - Brighton Belle does indeed look very enticing. I shall keep an eye out for a more modestly priced copy

Received 5 books toady - The Lost Gallows by John Dickson Carr, Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era, The Annulet of Gilt, Bowen's Court by Elizabeth Bowen and The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of José Robles.

I have been out of control.

When it comes to books, I'm often out of control. 😁

Me too :) Some good titles there, Jan - nice to see some love for Elizabeth Bowen in this group.

Nice haul! I have that Nellie Taft one too (somewhere). Years ago C-SPAN did a yearlong series on the First Ladies and I’ve been trying to pick up the books since.

(I too have no control when buying books.)

I just picked up a Persephone book, William - An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton - then straight after spotting this in the Oxfam bookshop I came across a mention of her as a suffragist in Hearts and Minds! (I've just finished Hearts and Minds and thought it was excellent - looking forward to our discussion.)

Judy wrote: "I just picked up a Persephone book, William - An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton - then straight after spotting this in the Oxfam bookshop"


A serendipitous discovery in an Oxfam bookshop? Is there any greater pleasure? And it's published by Persephone. Bravo Judy.

William - An Englishman looks really interesting. And, to cap it all, Cicely Hamilton was, apparently, a chum of E.M. Delafield and was portrayed as Emma Hay in "The Provincial Lady Goes Further: "Every Englishman is an average Englishman: it is a national characteristic."."

William - An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton synopsis....

William was 'written in a rage in 1918; this extraordinary novel... is a passionate assertion of the futility of war' (the Spectator). Its author had been an actress and suffragette; after 1914 she worked at the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont and organised Concerts at the Front. William - an Englishman was written in a tent within sound of guns and shells; this 'stunning... terrifically good' novel (Radio 4's A Good Read) is in one sense a very personal book, animated by fury and cynicism, and in another a detached one; yet is always 'profoundly moving' (Financial Times).

In the view of Persephone Books, William is one of the greatest novels about war ever written: not the war of the fighting soldier or the woman waiting at home, but the war encountered by Mr and Mrs Everyman, wrenched away from their comfortable preoccupations - Socialism, Suffragettism, so gently mocked by Cicely Hamilton - and forced to be part of an almost dream-like horror (because they cannot at first believe what is happening to them). The scene when William and Griselda emerge after three idyllic weeks in a honeymoon cottage in the remote hills of the Belgian Ardennes, and encounter German brutality in a small village, is unforgettable. The book, which won the Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse in 1919, is a masterpiece, written with an immediacy and a grim realism reminiscent of an old-fashioned, flickering newsreel.

Wow, thanks Nigeyb - I must make sure to read it very soon. I had the impression the author was a suffragist rather than a gette but she was only mentioned fairly briefly in Hearts and Minds - and some people belonged to both groups as we will see when we read H&M next months.

I'm awaiting a few 20th century books from abebooks:

Unexplained Laughter by Alice Thomas Ellis

The Harpole Report by J.L. Carr

and am picking up a copy of Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper: Or, Work It Out for Yourselffrom the library today.

Some good reading ahead...or so I hope.

Judy wrote: "Wow, thanks Nigeyb - I must make sure to read it very soon. I had the impression the author was a suffragist rather than a gette but she was only mentioned fairly briefly in Hearts and Minds - and ..."

I have been meaning to read this one for a while now, but finding the time to fit it in is, as ever, tricky. I believe it is now available in the public domain.

I've now come across a mention of Cicely Hamilton in Testament of Friendship, the biography of Winifred Holtby by Vera Brittain, which I'm slowly reading in between group reads! Hamilton was involved with the journal Time and Tide, which Holtby wrote for. Interesting how so many books connect...

Yesterday, having too much time on the internet, I downloaded a few books, including some from the Man Booker International longlist (The 7th Function of Language, Frankenstein in Baghdad and Vernon Subutex, 1). I also started another impulse download, The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Martin Luther King, Jr. And Robert F. Kennedy

I won a copy of I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death but have yet to start it. I can say that the cover is beautiful.

Susan, I liked the beginning of Frankenstein in Baghdad but it began to sag in the middle for me and I ended up skimming the last 100 pages. Might have been my mood/workload though.

I don't often look through longlists, but I picked out the ones that looked the most interesting. When I get to it, I'll let you know what I think.

On the spur of the moment, I bought two books with very pretty covers on a visit to Felixstowe in Suffolk, The Accidental Stalker and Moving Times - they are by Mary Powles, an author who had recently visited for the town's book festival, though I missed out on the festival sadly!

I mistakenly thought these were murder mysteries at first glance, but in fact I think they are "contemporary women's fiction" - anyway, I'm looking forward to them. Looks as if they are set in Wales but the second one partly in Suffolk too.

In the last couple of weeks, I've ordered in paperback or purchased on the kindle, the first 5 of the 12 novels by Elizabeth Taylor:

At Mrs Lippincote's
Palladian
A View of the Harbour
A Wreath of Roses
A Game of Hide and Seek

Also in paperback:
The Misunderstanding
A Very Long Engagement

and on Kindle:
Embers
Life and Times of Michael K
Trouble in Triplicate
Human Voices
The Killings at Badger's Drift
The Secret in Their Eyes
All the King's Men

Gravity's Rainbow Choking my way through it (no pun intended), certainly have found humorous bits and quotable sentences but his fascination with male anatomy, sex and fetishes, I think i may be ready to brave 120 Days by de Sade.

I bought some Audible books
Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (currently listening to)
King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts
Auntie's War: The BBC during the Second World War
Death at the Bar

I have just borrowed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams but I could have no chance to begin

Oh, I love Hitchhiker's, Shecharchoret. I recently bought a copy for my 13 year old son. I think the humour will really appeal to him.

I like Douglas Adams too - loved the original radio series of Hitchhiker’s

Yesterday I ordered 11 of the 13 books from the Man Booker longlist from Waterstones (everything except Snap and Sabrina), two of these (Normal People and Washington Black) were pre-orders. I was able to collect 8 of them on my way home, and have already started one (Milkman).

Wow, that's dedication, Hugh. Interested to hear your thoughts and read your reviews.

It will take me at least a month to get through those even if I don't read anything else!

Hugh wrote: "Yesterday I ordered 11 of the 13 books from the Man Booker longlist from Waterstones (everything except Snap and Sabrina), two of these (Normal People and Washington Black) were pre-orders. I was a..."

The release of the Booker longlist is an anticipated event for you!

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "The release of the Booker longlist is an anticipated event for you!"
Peer pressure from other groups (particularly The Mookse and the Gripes is largely responsible for that!

Hugh wrote: "It will take me at least a month to get through those even if I don't read anything else!"
Reserving them from the library makes me space them out a bit and remember that I have other commitments, such as group reads.