Reading the 20th Century discussion

This weather isn't great for old injuries - I have a metal plate in my ankle from where I broke it about ten years ago and it's been playing up with the cold and damp. Luckily, Mr RC's brother recently did a course on therapeutic massage so I kind of do have my own physio!

Ah


Here's hoping that pesky real world soon stops intruding into the important business of reading and discussing books

I'll set up Ben and G's buddy read of....


Berlin Childhood around 1900 by Walter Benjamin


....for August 2025 if that suits you two? If not, can easily change the date

That's fine for me.

Ben wrote:



That's fine for me."

It's all set up for you and G....


Berlin Childhood around 1900 by Walter Benjamin in August 2025

Here's to a great discussion

Any other takers?.....

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

Me too, Hester. Yes, our whole team is injured but Paqueta, bless him, stepped up this week when he had to be the striker! Hoping that Potter will be the right manager for us.

Nigeyb wrote: "Ben wrote:



That's fine for me."

It's all set up for you and G....
Thanks! August works for me.

Berlin Childhood around 1900 by Walter Benjamin in August 2025

Here's to a great discussion

A..."

Posting this here with the certainty that I will never get any form of notify, and it will be a near accident if I read the replies. Using the unread group thingies sort of helps but that is another topic.

I am nominating under the History category and will gladly settle for an un official buddy read:
Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker

I would much rather read her memoirs, but the asking for that runs around $200. Unless of course some buddy cares to get two copies and gift one to me.....

Phodrick, have you tried signing out and then signing in again? That restored my notifications via the "bell" on the web version, although I no longer get any email notifications.

Tried it about 3 hours ago, general sense is no change. maybe a more certain idea by tomorrow

I realized in reading these posts that I haven't been on this thread since before the discussion on Elizabeth Taylor and choice of A Game of Hide and seek in November. I have to be better at being proactive now that the GR notification system entered the Twilight Zone.

Keeping up on choosing Buddy Reads is essential in this group. Although I too want to read more on my own TBR shelf in 2025, many of the books on my shelf are by authors first encountered in Buddy or Group reads here. While I will focus on playing catch-up this year, I also must continue to grow in my breadth of reading matter and not get too stagnant

And you can always suggest a buddy read of something from your personal TBR if you fancy reading it in company.

Vesna wrote: "RC and Alwynne, are you still interested to read Pessoa as our buddy read?"

Yes, I'm interested, Vesna, but probably not till June as I'm committed to quite a few upcoming buddies. If that's too late for you, I'd understand.

I'm going to post this in our Buddy Reads thread as well to see if anyone else is interested:

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague." Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

Post here if you're interested.

I'm a maybe. It's a book I've wanted to read but I'm not sure whether I'll have time. There is a lot on my list this year.

My cup runneth over so it would need something special to push me into the yaysayer camp. This five star review....


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


....was enough to convince me that it's highly unlikely to be my cup of Earl Grey. The excerpts the reviewer quotes had me running for the metaphorical hills. It's also a chunky 544 pages.

I will follow the discussion with interest and (as when I diligently catch up with new posts in the Proust thread) bemoan my brain for being unable to enjoy and appreciate such weighty and challenging material

Roman Clodia wrote: "Yes, I'm interested, Vesna, but probably not till June as I'm committed to quite a few upcoming buddies. If that's too late for you, I'd understand."

RC, would July or August work for you? I'm right now finalizing my traveling plans for June. After so many years I'll finally get a chance to visit my old continent (Europe) and it's most likely to be in June.

Yes, either July or August would work for me - let's see if Alwynne has a preference and then I can set up a thread. Ben, if you can fit this in, you'll be very welcome - and anyone else, of course.

Great. Indeed, let's see if it would work for Alwynne. Ben, you are most welcome to join us if you get a chance.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Vesna wrote: "RC and Alwynne, are you still interested to read Pessoa as our buddy read?"

Yes, I'm interested, Vesna, but probably not till June as I'm committed to quite a few upcoming buddies. I..."

I'm interested, for later in the year. I see someone has suggested July or August, which should work for me.

Vesna wrote: "Great. Indeed, let's see if it would work for Alwynne. Ben, you are most welcome to join us if you get a chance."

Either fine for me too, how do we decide? Look at how much currently scheduled for each of those?

Excellent, I'll set up the thread for July then - we can always move it to August closer to the time if anyone feels strongly about that.

Nigeyb wrote: "My cup runneth over so it would need something special to push me into the yaysayer camp."

You're always welcome to comment, Nigeyb, even if you're not reading a book, as you know.

Absolutely Nigey and would make me feel better about sticking my own oar in! Was the Earl Grey a Picard reference btw?

Alwynne wrote: "Absolutely Nigey and would make me feel better about sticking my own oar in! Was the Earl Grey a Picard reference btw?"

Do stick away! 😆

Will do 🙌🏼

If you'd like to join Ben and me in a buddy read of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart just post here. We're reading it in April.

Proposing a read of The Trick of It by Michael Frayn in August

I’ve added it to our schedule. I’ll probably pass this time

Thanks, Ben. Looking forward to it.

Sonia mentioned Shorty September in another thread, dedicated to reading short stories and I wondered if there would be interest in doing something similar here in September?

I'm thinking we could nominate short stories, put them in a poll and the top four could then be read in September, one each week.

Post here if you're interested and we can chat further. Also, if you have a better suggestion of how to organize this, feel free to comment.

I like that idea. I don't as a rule read many short stories (there are several reasons for that), and every year I think that I should read more. This would be a lovely way to work toward that goal.

I’m not much of a short story fan with a few notable exceptions however might well get involved when the time comes. File me under interested observer who might spontaneously flip into active participant

Thanks G and Nigeyb - I'll see how much interest there is. I was thinking criteria might include stories that are easily available on the internet/libraries/are out of copyright so people don't have to buy four books.

If you are looking for a free read Kathleen Sully 'Merrily to the Grave' could be an interesting one. It is out of print, but available through the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/merrilyto...

https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=8838

Thanks Sonia - can I take it that you'd join Shorty September? If we have enough interest, I'll set up a thread for nominations and then we can put them to a poll over the summer so hold on to your idea.

Yes I'll join in.

I would join in. I do enjoy short stories.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Thanks G and Nigeyb - I'll see how much interest there is. I was thinking criteria might include stories that are easily available on the internet/libraries/are out of copyright so people don't hav..."

I like that idea. I certainly cannot buy books right now, and one reason I rarely read short stories is that they usually appear in collections, and I rarely want to read more than one or two stories in a given book. Stories that I can borrow from a library or download and print would be great.

Excellent, Ben and Sonia - looks like we've got enough of us to go ahead. I'll set up a thread so that we can post nominations as and when we think of stories.

Here's the shorties nomination thread:

www.goodreads.com/topic/show/23085630...

Inspired by the recent episode of Backlisted on Hannah Arendt, RC and I have decided to buddy read Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil in September. Anyone who wishes to join in is welcome.

Thanks for setting that up, Susan - looking forward to it (sort of!, given the subject matter)

G wrote: "Roman Clodia wrote: "Thanks G and Nigeyb - I'll see how much interest there is. I was thinking criteria might include stories that are easily available on the internet/libraries/are out of copyrigh..."

Yes, I only read books that are available on the Libby platform from the library.

We'll be coming to the end of our Fremlin and Highsmith buddy read odysseys soon where some of us have been reading through their complete catalogues spread out over the last couple of years. So I'm wondering if we want to replace one or both with another author that we want to read in full - and, if so, any thoughts of who?

With Fremlin and Highsmith Brian did a superb job of organizing us to spread out the books across the year so we didn't get bored or have too many similar books at once.

I'm not usually a completist but this schedule worked very well for me.

Some suggestions off the top of my head:

John Le Carré
Barbara Pym
Shirley Jackson

Thoughts? Other ideas? Support for any of these authors?

I'm generally not a completist either, but I'd love to read the full Smiley series. I've done two so far. Are there more 4 and 5 star reads of Pym and Jackson that we haven't read?

Can we add Muriel Spark to the list of possibilities?

Other possibilities are Mario Vargas Llosa, Junichiro Tanizaki and Ismail Kadare

I like the author suggestions so far, but I am going to throw out some others that might be interesting for various reasons. My last listing, Tom Stoppard, is for drama which IMO, is great fun to read when one pursues the author's oeuvre. I over the last few years I did deep reads of Harold Pinter and August Wilson; both were informative and fun.
Iris Murdoch
Angela Carter
Umberto Eco
Doris Lessing
Ursula K. Le Guin
Patrick O'Brian
Tom Stoppard

I would love to join for Barbara Pym, all of her novels (I read only one and *loved* it) Muriel Spark too if that's the final choice.

I'd dip into more Pyms. Maybe not every one. Some of her books are firm favourites

Thanks everyone.

Just a reminder that you can propose a buddy read at any time for a book and just need one other reader to make it happen. A mod doesn't have to be involved but we'll happily set up a thread for you.

For a longer author project, we'd need a stronger commitment and someone to be a kind of project leader to schedule the books and keep the project alive. Brian informally fell into that role for Highsmith with support from Susan for Fremlin.

From posts so far we'd have:

Barbara Pym: RC, Vesna, Nigeyb, possibly Ben
Muriel Spark: Vesna, Ben

There are lots of interesting authors mentioned here who I would join in with on a buddy (Kadare, Mario Vargas Llosa, Lessing) but I wouldn't want to commit to a full author project. But happy to support with admin if other group members want to go ahead.

Keep your thoughts coming and we'll see where we get to.

I'd go for Pym, a few I haven't read and a number I'd happily reread!