Polaris books ahead in 2014 - Part Two

CURRENTLY READING:

  

The Richard Burton Diaries by Richard Burton
A Tomb For Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš
The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

RECENTLY READ:

    

2014 books read so far: (bold = FIVE STARS, most recent books first)

Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Anthony Beevor
Journey Through a Small Planet by Emanuel Litvinoff
Joe by Larry Brown
A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey
*Under Fire* by Henri Barbusse
Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives by David Eagleman
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
Infinite West: Travels in South Dakota by Fraser Harrison
Big Bad Love by Larry Brown
*A Place of Greater Safety* by Hilary Mantel
Band of Brigands: The First Men in Tanks by Christy Campbell
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Quiet Amsterdam by Siobhan Wall
The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy
Street People by Helga Dudman
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
The Road to Ein Harod by Amos Kenan
Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life by Alex Bellos
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
The Coen Brothers by Ronald Bergan
Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A Universal History of Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges

*abandoned*

2013 Club Read here

Easter weekend finds me creating a "part two" to my thread for the first time. I wanted to thank all those who have joined in the conversation here so far and for the encouraging comments. I hope that those new to my ramblings as well will find something of interest here too.

Before I forget, I just want to say that I've struggled this year so far with keeping up with all those threads I'd been wanting to follow closely. I was probably guilty of starring too many threads in January, but the quality and variety of book choices here on Club Read is so consistently refreshing and inspiring that I just can't help but try to keep up with things!! All of which means that I might not be as present on your threads as I could be, but rest assured I am there, lurking in and out, and enjoying your many fine book choices and reviews.

The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy
(First published 2006; Audiobook edition 2011 - read by Austin Pendleton & Ezra White.)

An arresting and thought provoking two-hander that was (I think) originally written for the stage. It is described as "a novel in dramatic form". "White" is an atheist and suicidal professor rescued from his final act down at the Subway platform by "Black", an ex-convict who has found some salvation in life through his faith in God. {Not a spoiler as the failed suicide is made clear on page one.} Entirely set within the latter's sparse apartment in a rough part of town, there follows an intense and gripping dialogue as the two men discuss pretty much life, the universe, and everything. The closing pages reveal with devastating finality a resolution that one party will struggle immensely with.

It is a thoroughly entrancing situation - where two men believe so absolutely in seemingly incompatible opposites. The existential discussion is well-handled and genuinely moving. It is a brief novel, and probably best experienced as a fully immersive experience where one can give full attention to the brilliantly written script. Despite the subject matter, there are some very funny lines and I really enjoyed this 'listen'. The audiobook narration by Austin Pendleton and Ezra Knight was pitch perfect on both counts.

Part of McCarthy's undeniable brilliance lies with his ability to create with a bare minimum of pages a pair of characters so well-formed and complete with their own intriguing back-stories that the reader not only feels that he or she "knows" them quite well, but also wants to get into the room with them and sit down at the beat-up old kitchen table and join the conversation. I found myself torn agonisingly between both "White"'s and "Black"'s positions and was genuinely pained with the ending. This small book packs a powerful punch.

I loved your review of Street People and the photographs, as several others have already said.

Congrats on the new thread!

Happy New Thread! I won't admit to how many times I clicked the "Jump to First Unread" link until I figured out this was a new thread!

Great review of The Sunset Limited. I'll keep my eye out for this one. I love the cover.

Nice review of The Sunset Limited, Paul. It sounds like a book I'd love, so onto the wish list it goes.

>5 avidmom: I did the same thing.

The Sunset Limited sounds like a good book to listen to.

It's been too long: I missed commenting on two book hauls from your previous thread! (I've been interested in Winesburg, Ohio but haven't acquired it yet; look forward to your comments.) Fascinating history in your review of Street People and a wonderful connection to your grandmother.

Thank you Lisa, Avid, Darryl, Barry, and MJ for stopping by. I'm sorry I've been a bit absent recently - just been a bit busy generally... Now I want to spend a few hours of my May Day holiday catching up with Club Read! (If that's ever possible!)

Quiet Amsterdam by Siobhan Wall
(First published 2012)

Very nicely put together guide to the city of Amsterdam. Written by an author actually living in the city, it has the feel of a private guide to places that a lot of the more recognised sources won't 'bother' to get to. In a small square format it features sections on museums, libraries, parks and gardens, places of worship, bookshops, cafes or restaurants, galleries, and places to sit, or places by the water. There is also a section on small hotels and b&b's - this latter section being full of places with much character and offering a unique experience to a variety of tastes.

My one main criticism would be the disappointing maps in the early pages - not really good enough to use without resorting to either online solutions or a better physical map. That said, it is a very pleasant little guide with a lot to offer in its 144 pages. The photographs are a good mix of colour and b&w, and all in all the design of the book is good. I hope to visit the Netherlands again this year so will look forward to visiting some of these lesser-known places, and will also keep an eye out for the London version by the same author in the same series.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
(First published 2006; Audiobook version 2007 - read by Tom Stechschulte

Seeing as this has been reviewed left, right and centre, and I listened to the audio version (rather than reading and turning up page bottom corners where passages interest me - as is my want), so am deprived the luxury of referring back to certain pages or favourite moments, this here represents only my briefest of comments. My impression overall.

It is very well written, in the now familiar to me sparse style of McCarthy's that I like, and there are several places in the narrative when I was truly mesmerised. The plot is a simple and harrowing one - post-apocalyptic desolation abounds and the father and son characters are just about surviving. I was moved, I was cold, I was even hungry-by-proxy. I was almost as cold as I was in my mind when reading Apsley Cherry-Garrard's Worst Journey in the World - and that is saying something!

About a third of the way through I was beginning to feel that the necessary relentlessness would require abandonment, as it was indeed a gruelling experience to read through. But something DID change and I'm glad I kept on. I'm not sure what the change was, but I found myself enthralled and deeply fearful of what would happen next right through to the very last words. Quite unforgettable.

Superbly read by Tom Stechschulte, who managed to convey so much expression and longing in the minimal dialogue he has to work with.

I will look out for Quiet Amsterdam as I am still trying to squeeze in a few days in the city this year.

There are so many positive reviews, and yet I can't decide whether I want to read The Road. It isn't really a subject that would pull me in, but you and several others have me wondering if I should go for it.

It sounds like you are becoming a McCarthy fan. The last time I was at the city library, I noticed they had quite a collection of his books - except The Sunset Limited, the one I want to read.

Nice to see you back. :)

>1 Polaris-: That ticker-camel must be really puzzled at being so far off course :))

Enjoyed your review of The Road. It has been added to my growing wishlist.

>12 baswood: - Barry I'm also trying to finesse a few days as well - between World Cup schedules, Le Tour de France, a dodgy old motor, and booking time off work...it's not an easy thing. My best chance is probably early to mid-June. I picked up Quiet Amsterdam in a TK Maxx of all places! (They do a fine line in remaindered cookery and travel books would you believe!)

>13 NanaCC: - Colleen thanks for stopping by. It's not my typical kind of story either - but I have to say I found the audiobook really captivating listening. It is not a 'pleasant' read at all, and there are a few truly grisly moments which you won't forget in a hurry, but overall I'd say go for it, as I found it unexpectedly uplifting in an odd sort of way. (NB - That would not have been the case if I'd abandoned though!)

>14 avidmom: - Avid, yes I suppose I am. That's my lot for this year though - I think 3 being plenty. But I did want to acquaint myself with his writing, and he has enough of a back catalogue that I should be able to read one or two a year.

>15 VivienneR: - Vivienne - Camels ahoy! I wanted a ticker that was suitably incongruous! I'm glad you liked my comments on The Road. As I said to Colleen, it really is one that I think will stay with me for a LONG time. I keep on getting flashbacks.

>14 avidmom: - I meant to add that you should definitely hold out for The Sunset Limited - I hope you'll like it. Of the 3 McCarthys I read recently (the aforementioned, as well as The Road and No Country For Old Men), they're all so different and so memorable.

It might be interesting to mention that kidzdoc reviewed Quiet London last year, and was enthusiastic about it, as far as I remember.

Oddly, though, according to Kidzdoc's review, the author Siobhan Wall was then described as "an artist and university lecturer based in London".

The author's LinkedIn page now states "Freelance writer and artist at Amsterdam".

Quiet Paris came out in 2013 and Quiet New York came out on April 14 this year. I don't want to see the blurb on those books....

The title of the book + "based in" suggests the insider's point of view, but how credible is that if you pour out a whole series of "Quiet Anywhere".

Perhaps you can say you are "based in London", or Amsterdam or Moscow any time you stay there for what.... ? a weekend?

>18 edwinbcn: - Haha Edwin I suspect you may have rumbled Ms Wall's cunning plan! A freelance writer could I suppose be conceivably based in both London and/or Amsterdam, OR the author happened to have just relocated for the purposes of putting together each book. But I agree, once the series extends beyond two or three titles, it then does rather stretch the authenticity angle beyond complete credibility.

In any case. I think Quiet Amsterdam is a very nice and well compiled little guide book. I'd like to get Quiet London too as it is at least a city I know quite well, and I'm curious to see just how novel and 'quiet' the selected locations really are... As for Amsterdam - I'm determined to get over the channel and drive up there through Belgium in a few weeks for a few days, and I'll have the book with me, so watch this space!

Nice reviews of Quiet Amsterdam and The Road, Paul. I hope to visit Amsterdam in 2015 or 2016, so I'll look for that book soon.

I found a recent interview of Siobhan Wall, which includes the following quote:

I would describe myself as an artist, writer, and curator, but at the moment I don’t have much time to curate exhibitions as I am so busy writing the books about quiet places. I taught photography, documentary video-production, cultural studies and fine art at universities in London and Oxford for over ten years. Then my husband thought I was working too hard so 13 years ago we moved to Amsterdam and I really enjoy living in a city where I can go everywhere by bike or on foot.

So, I'd say that she can claim to be based in London and Amsterdam. I haven't seen any statements suggesting that she is 'based' in NYC or Paris from the author descriptions that I read. I'll look for Quiet New York when I go to Strand Book Store in Greenwich Village later this month. I grew up just outside of the city and worked in Manhattan for four years after I received my BA and before I went to medical school, so I'll be interested to see which places she lists. I agree strongly with two of her favorite quiet spots, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in Prospect Park, and the Cloisters in upper Manhattan.

>20 kidzdoc: Hi Darryl, and thanks for the info on Siobhan Wall. Good. I'm glad that there was a logical explanation to her being so familiar with both London and Amsterdam.

I read The Road quite a few years ago, and I really disliked it -- furthermore, the minimal role of the mother irritated me. Other than that, I don't remember why I disliked it. It made me reluctant to read anything else by McCarthy, but recently someone lent me, and others have recommended, All the Pretty Horses, so I may read that eventually.

Yesterday was my birthday, and despite the unwanted gifts of a very annoying PC Adware virus (it had the audacity to spoil how my LT looked!! - now gone thanks to Malwarebytes Anti-Malware - succeeding where Symantec failed) and a clamp on my car (the bastards got me!) I managed to make an afternoon detour to Penarth - I haven't scoured the charity shops' bookshelves there before and came up with a good haul for under £19!!:

FICTION -
The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen - 1939, Finland, a simple woodsman bucks the trend of villagers fleeing the Soviet invasion and burning their own homes, by staying put during the harsh Arctic winter.

Old School by Tobias Wolff - semi-autobiographical prep school memoir by one of my favourite writers.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth - As a recently renewed fan, how could I resist a very nice copy of the book that is Roth's most 'added' in LT? Roth's imagined Jewish experience of a Nazi-appeasing Lindbergh defeating FDR in 1940...

Archangel by Robert Harris - I like the look of this political thriller concerning a secret notebook of Stalin's.

Winter in Madrid by C J Sansom - Some mixed reviews, but I think the late 1940-set plot sounded intriguing enough to take a punt.

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee - long wishlisted classic mid-1930s exploration of Spain on foot - and it was a lovely paperback edition. Might read it soon for the Reading Globally travel writing theme.

The Ragman's Daughter by Alan Sillitoe - Nice hardback collection of gritty short stories (spanning 1960s to the early 80s) by another favourite writer.

Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge - Thought by many to be her best work. This is Bainbridge's take on the Titanic tragedy. Another author whose work I've really enjoyed before.

According to Queenie by Beryl Bainbridge - Dr Samuel Johnson and chums in Georgian London.

NON-FICTION -

Life by Keith Richards - This UNREAD hardback (£20 when published) cost me £2!! I know there is a glut of celebrity autobiographies, but I remember the copious reviews praising this one, suggesting that it really stood out from the crowd. And who doesn't love the Stones and a bit of Keef?

AA Explorer Guide to Italy - 25p in a library sale for a 2006 edition on a country I really want to visit again soon. Most of the things I love about Italy won't have changed much since publication...

Strange Company by Adrian Liddell Hart - Interesting looking 1950s 1st edition memoir of the famous historian's son's experiences in the French Foreign Legion. Includes an extended section on his time in Indochina fighting Imperial France's war with the Viet Minh.

A Crackle of Thorns by Alec Seath Kirkbride - Lucky to find this. 1st edition (1950s) memoir of British soldier-turned-diplomat who spent 40 years in the Middle East. From Lawrence and the Arab Revolt during WW1, through to the formation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and its relations with newly-formed neighbours Iraq and Syria, on to the nascent conflict between Arabs and Zionists in Palestine, and culminating in the first rounds of the Arab-Israeli wars. Nicely illustrated as well. Should be a good read!

Happy Birthday! Sorry you had some unexpected and unwanted visitations , but glad your visit to the book shops was so fruitful. The Wolff and Roth books are sitting unread on my shelves, and Bainbridge remains on my list of authors to get to. Your first title Burnt-Out Town of Miracles caught my eye. I hope you read it first!

Nice haul and happy birthday! I like some Roth but didn't like The Plot against America. I did love Every Man for Himself, though, and have but haven't read According to Queenie.

Happy birthday Paul and I bet you had a load of fun discovering those books.

>24 labfs39:
>25 rebeccanyc:
>26 baswood:
Thank you guys for the kind words. I did have a lot of fun picking this lot out.

Happy Birthday and splendid book haul, Paul!

Happy birthday! Enjoy those books.

Happiest ever Paul!

Nice haul!

Happy Birthday Paul - sorry to hear about the clamp, that is vicious.
I've read a few of your new additions; loved the Laurie Lee; Winter in Madrid is worthwhile, I hadn't known about the internment camps for the Republican prisoners till reading this; I read The Plot against America soon after reading C.J. Sansom's Dominion and found them both quite good alternative history reads; loved the audio of Life.
My next Robert Harris will be Fatherland.

Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday too. You, me, Billy Joel and John Corbett share the date. Cool! :)

Don't know if you will like this band/video or song, but I think you'll appreciate what this guy does at 3:12!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGBLlFMn9Xc

Thanks for all the birthday greetings!

>31 avatiakh:
>32 avidmom: Yes, the clamp is vicious - and nearly always a totally over the top measure designed to generate revenue for authorities. My tax disc had just expired and I'd gotten complacent as I park off road at home and usually at work too - out of the traffic warden's reach. Venture to the (very small) city and see what happens!

Avid - I LOVE what the walker does at 3'12. Not exactly my kind of music but it is a good bit of pop. I liked the video! Oh, and great to know we share a birthday, I hope you had a good one on Friday too - add Alan Bennett to that list, he just turned 80!

Happy birthday to you both! I read 150 pages into Life a few years ago, liked it a lot, who knows what distracted me away. Picking it back up with audio read by Richards is a great idea.

Loved your review of street people which I just read catching up with your thread. Enjoying your other reviews and glad you like the road. Happy belated birthday!

>34 detailmuse: - Cheers MJ. I agree that Life on audio read by Keith himself does sound like a great idea.

>35 dchaikin: - Thank you Dan!

Sneaky nothing-special-'cept-it's-Friday kind of book haul:

FICTION:

Another Country by James Baldwin
Wildfire Season by Andrew Pyper
Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

NON-FICTION

Résistance: A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France by Agnès Humbert
Edith's Story: The True Story of a Young Girl's Courage and Survival During World War II by Edith Velmans
This Boy by Alan Johnson
Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong by David Walsh
It's All About the Bike by Robert Penn
With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant by Richard E. Grant

(£4.10 the lot!)

>37 Polaris-: "Sneaky nothing-special-'cept-it's-Friday kind of book haul:"

That seems to be as good a reason as any. :)

Nice haul! I have Edith's Story, but added Résistance: A Woman's Journal to my wishlist.

Yes! I remember Merrikay reviewed it last year and loved it. It's an unread hardback as well. For 50 pence I rescued it from an untidy shelf of Mills & Boon pulp.

Lucky! For you and the book

Nice haul!

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
(First published 1992; Audiobook version by Audible 2013 - read by Jonathan Keeble)

I've abandoned a novel by Hilary Mantel. I'm still a little shocked at myself, but about two thirds through what is a long book, I have taken it back to the library. Between Volumes 1 and 2 of the unabridged audio versions, I must have renewed the loan so many times and still end up taking it back with a late fine. It cost me 60p to not finish A Place of Greater Safety.

I know - what kind of shlamozl gets about two-thirds in to a book and then says - "Nah" - ?

I love her writing and devoured Wolf Hall and then Bring Up the Bodies, but I have to say that for me personally I couldn't enjoy this one as much. In all three cases I listened to audiobooks, and I think that that may well be the key here, for I am pretty much otherwise bamboozled as to why I've given up on it. The subject is one that I've always been interested in but never really previously understood very well.

The story of the French Revolution, told intimately and in sumptuous detail through the life and times of three of its principal figures fascinates; the writing excites, paints, and transports, but there is such a rich and full cast of characters here, that I essentially had a problem with remembering who was who among the many secondary characters. The reader - Jonathan Keeble is a very good reader. The three central characters - George-Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximillian Robespierre - are portrayed excellently and with real depth and range, but by the time you get to the ninth character who's from an aristocratic/educated/military/clergy background his vocal stylings started to repeat on themselves to the point of confusion. Some of his 'peasant' or 'sans-cullotte' voices used a pretty annoying Cockney accent. I want to know more about this time, so I think I'm going to have to turn to Simon Schama's Citizens to find out more about how it all went so horribly wrong.

Mantel's rendition of late 18th century Revolutionary France is so lavishly presented though that I'm sure that most readers of historical fiction (or maybe the likes of Henry VIII, Louis XVI, Robespierre and the gang is 'historic fiction'?), will like this. If you enjoyed her Tudor books then you'll almost certainly enjoy this as well. But I would recommend it be read and savoured and loved - as I know many who read this probably did - and not try to listen to the convoluted intrigues of the Left and Right Wings of the Third Estate, and the court of King/Citizen Louis Capet, while negotiating the rush hour traffic driving home from work...

>43 Polaris-: Hi, Paul. I have A Place of Greater Safety on my TBR pile, but I think with a book like that I will need to read it in print. I really enjoy audio books, but for me there are certain books that I want to be able to flip back and forth to be sure I am not missing something. I sometimes will go to the internet to look up things I want to know more about, and I can't do that in the car. In the print version that I have, there is a cast of characters at the front of the book, which I know I will use. I needed that when I read Wolf Hall and maybe with Bring up the Bodies, as well.

Sorry you didn't like A Place of Greater Safety, which is my favorite by Mantel, but I've never listened to audio books so I can't address how this would work as one. I highly recommend Citizens, but you really have to get the book for that because it is enhanced by wonderful illustrations.

Hi Colleen and Rebecca!

Colleen that is exactly what I needed. In fact, when I listened to Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies I had a cast list that I'd printed from the net, which really helped. And that was with a story that I did know, more or less, quite well. I looked for something similar for APOGS but found nothing unfortunately. If I'd a had a dramatis personnae for this book, and had been reading a physical copy, then I'd probably be giving it 4.5 or 5 stars, it is very very good.

Rebecca, I'd remembered that it was a favourite of yours, and I could see why, it is very well written. The first half of it I really liked, and I did like the book, but just couldn't enjoy it on audio quite with the relaxed abandon I'd have liked - as I was having to progressively go back over bits quite often and work out who was who too many times. I definitely regret choosing this one for audio.

I can imagine that an in depth novel about the French Revolution would present problems if you did not know at least some of the issues involved and the characters. I have never listened to an audio book, but if I did I would choose something much lighter.

Before reading A Place of Greater Safety, I got the wonderful suggestion from Kay/Ridgewaygirl to read David Lawday's The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, A Life. It was highly readable and relatively short but still gave me all the background I needed to enjoy A Place of Greater Safety, which ended up being my favorite of the books I've read by Mantel. If you ever feel like giving it another go, I'd highly recommend it.

Band of Brigands: The First Men in Tanks by Christy Campbell
(First published 2007)

Having once myself had the dubious privilege of experiencing army service from the testing confines of a late 20th century main battle tank, I was curious to read this fairly recent account of the very first tanks and the original tank men. This was also my first related read in this centenary year of the First World War's outbreak.

Our story begins in earnest towards the war's middle - by early 1915 the Western Front's trench-bound stalemate had well and truly stuck. The largely defensive strategy of the Germans in the west, designed to stifle the all-too-predictable and largely ineffective Allied tactics of prolonged artillery bombardment followed by 'surprise' infantry attacks; while they laboured at knocking out the poorly-led and poorly motivated Russians in the east, seemed to have held sway.

This book tells the story of how the tank was first conceived and eventually designed and built, before being thrown into the quagmire. The reader learns something of the personalities, and considerable failings, of those 'in charge' of Britain's war effort, and the earlier chapters covering all the various military-political machinations and inter-departmental and inter-service rivalries are surprisingly intriguing, and almost thriller-like in places. Campbell's writing is good. The impressive level of research in his subject is evident, and there are some fascinating portraits of the various characters in the vanguard of this new branch of the Army. With the tanks' early reputation for unreliability, and the men having something of the 'unwanted' about them, and for having no discipline and no regard for the "traditions of war" - the put-out old guard and the Cavalry officer types (by late 1914 largely redundant) were pretty disdaining of the 'Machine Gun Corps - Heavy Branch' that the tanks belonged to.

That was the officers. Then there were the men. On his first day after arriving, Maj. Fuller got a shock. He took an early morning drive around the Heavy Branch area and its outlying villages where the men were billeted alongside the locals. Pigs grunted as bleary figures in khaki emerged from tumbledown cottages. 'Boney' Fuller drew his own stark conclusion. He wrote in his memoirs: 'I had never seen such a band of brigands in all my life.'

The whole concept is repeatedly under the threat of being either abandoned, or poorly implemented by the uniformed buffoons dithering around HQ squabbling about who's in charge (the tanks were not yet under their own command, but at the whim of the infantry generals sending regiments of men over the top through the machine guns to the barbed wire). In the beginning nobody wanted to know about the noisy smelly beasts. Then everybody wants to know and be "seen" taking a joyride around Lord Whatshisname's country pile near London, where the prototypes are "put through their paces" in the grounds of a delicately landscaped estate - supposedly standing in for a Western Front no-mans-land!! Some are thinking that this could be the weapon to change the course of the war. Others are trying desperately to keep it all secret, before the Germans find out and make their own version - bigger and better.

Tank factory workers gossip, journalists speculate wildly, prisoners-of-war talk, one MP (Liberal) even blabbs about the latest developments with "moving forts on caterpillars" during session in Parliament! It's a wonder that anybody was surprised by them when they did finally enter the fray in Flanders.

The new super-weapon makes its debut somewhat belatedly about six weeks into the Battle of the Somme, 1916. The results were mainly confusing - a very mixed performance. All along, the pioneers had argued (along with Churchill) that to be effective they had to be thrown in en masse, and not just dribbled in here and there in small numbers. But almost a whole battle's worth behind schedule, C-in-C Field Marshall Haig can resist waiting for the machines in number no longer, and does exactly that. The factory fresh machines and the far-from-ready Tank Corps is thrown in by twos and threes. The 8-men crews suffer an appallingly high casualty rate - often either asphyxiating on engine or ammo fumes or burning to death in rhombus-shaped pyres of ammunition. Yet by the grotesque scale of Western Front body counts the tank men actually have a comparatively decent chance of not being blown to pieces compared with the poor infantry.

Churchill is one of the biggest advocates of tank development, helping from his cabinet seat running the Navy. But after Gallipoli in 1915 he is almost persona-non-grata in government, and his influence wanes. I knew Churchill was an all-out man of action and had seen active service in the British Army's late 19th century Imperial campaigns, had also been a war correspondent, and had been a very "hands-on" Home Secretary at the time of the miners striking and the violent Sydney Street Siege in 1910-11; but I had no idea that he actually returned to the Army after the Gallipoli disaster. He wintered on the Western Front as a battalion commander (Colonel), and then was invited back to Lloyd-George's War Coalition later during 1916.

Among the first officers to really understand the strategic potential of tanks though was the above mentioned Major JFC 'Boney' Fuller (Boney for his somewhat Napoleonic traits...). An interesting character, probably eccentric and possibly a bit mad, he became one of the chief early exponents of tank warfare and would go on to write an instructional manual which would ironically be of major influence to the German commanders of 'blitzkrieg warfare' in 1939-40. (Fuller would after his army retirement in 1933 go on to become a leading figure in Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Present at one Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday army parade in Berlin, April 1939, after 3 hours of tanks rumbling past, a positively genial Fuhrer asked, "I hope you were pleased with your children?" Fuller replied, "Your Excellency, they have grown up so quickly that I no longer recognise them.").

After the United States' (late...) entry into the war, we glimpse a cameo appearance of a Captain George S Patton of the US Cavalry. An early enthusiast for tank potential he sets up the US Light Tank school in France.

He liked the little Renault because it 'bucked and reared like a horse'.

But it was at Cambrai late in 1917 that the tanks finally made a genuinely significant impact, when used en masse as the pioneers had always advised. Major 'Boney' Fuller among the chief architects of the successful breakthrough. This being the First World War though, the German losses were in the main rapidly recovered, but there had been a sea change in thinking at last. With the Bolsheviks removing Russia from the war, the German generals knew they didn't have long to throw everything at the west before the full impact of the USA's entry to the mess could force them back to a defeat.

Although not intended as defensive weapons, the tanks would play a part in helping to halt the German advance that almost broke through to Paris in early 1918, before joining the Allies' charge back towards the German border and the eventual Armistice with German capitulation. Band of Brigands was an interesting read and recommended for anyone interested in armoured warfare or the history of the First World War. It's also a fascinating look behind the scenes at the workings in the corridors of power and HQ offices of the British Army of this era. Too many typos and only so-so maps drops my rating by half a star.

>47 baswood: Barry, you're right!

>48 japaul22: Thank you so much for the tip. The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, A Life - looks like a good account of who was undoubtedly one of the driving figures of the revolution. I've added it to the wishlist. I wish I'd read it before the Mantel, but I don't at all rule out giving the latter a second attempt another time.

>49 Polaris-: another great review, Paul..

Excellent review of Band of Brigands; The first Men in Tanks and I didn't know that about Churchill.

Not many club read members would have experienced service in a late 20th century main battle tank, you might be the only one.

>43 Polaris-: Sorry the audio didn't work out for you; I guess some books work and sometimes they don't. I know I couldn't concentrate on anything when navigating "rush hour" traffic (which for us here in nowheresville, relatively speaking, is not traffic at all - but it still rattles my nerves.) Citizens has been on my WL ever since Rebecca recommended it (and I know exactly where it is in our public library) to me, but it seems to be a rather large tome and I'd need to be in a frame of mind where I could concentrate.

That is the first time I've seen "shlamozl" used in a sentence. I've heard it before - in the themesong for the 70s sitcom "LaVerne and Shirley." :)

Just catching up on your thread, Paul, totally putting Band of Brigands on my wishlist.

Great review of Band of Brigands, Paul!

So last Friday I met my first LT'er in real life when I made a rendez-vous with Darryl (aka 'kidzdoc') in London. Darryl is spending a while on holiday in England before continuing on to France and Spain. It was a lovely warm and sunny spring day for it and we met at Canary Wharf tower in the old docklands. We headed for Greenwich which has always been a favourite part of London for me, there's so much to see there: The record breaking old 19th century tea clipper Cutty Sark (it's lower hull now encased in a glass viewing bubble thingy following recent post-fire damage repairs) in all its glory (but where's Sir Francis Chichester's Gypsy Moth gone I don't know...?), the National Maritime Museum, the old Royal Observatory and Flamsteed House at the top of the hill in Greenwich Park, the wondrous view of London from the east and across the Thames basin, and the old Royal Naval College buildings which now form part of the music college at Greenwich University.



Any time I go to Greenwich I love to just saunter along near the ground floor windows where you can hear the super talented musicians practicing away. Usually its classical stuff that you can eavesdrop, but this time, as I was with Darryl, it was fitting that we could overhear some great jazz saxophone and drumming coming out of the classrooms! I could've just spread out on the neat lawns nearby and spent a while there!

I'd planned on spending a bit longer at Greenwich but as we kept on stopping and nattering away so frequently, the time was running away from us. So it was back to the Docklands Light Railway which took us back across the river and on into the East End. We walked on in a zig-zag direction to take in the old Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, Sidney Street (site of a famous and violent anarchist siege in 1911 which saw a young Churchill laying down the law as Home Secretary), past a few buildings of the East End's Jewish past, and Moslem present, on the edge's of my ancestral neighbourhood of Spitalfields, and on to Brick Lane.



We strolled past the curry houses and the hipsters in the glorious sunshine before stopping for a well-earned and late lunch at the famous Beigel Bake for hot salt beef beigels with mustard. They are very delicious, and well worth the time to hunt down if you're visiting London.





After we ate we headed back to the Brick Lane Bookshop that we'd clocked earlier. I hadn't been aware of it before, but I'm glad we checked it out, and as Darryl confirmed, any meet up between 2 or more LT'ers requires an obligatory bookshop visit. At least one anyway!



As the photo shows, it's a small little place, but was nicely stocked and had a good corner of shelves on books specialising in East London writing and history. I bought my wishlisted collection by Emanuel Litvinoff of autobiographical shorts on life in 1930s Spitalfields - Journey Through a Small Planet (not easy to come by living in south Wales!), and Darryl came away with the Orwell Prize winning memoir This Boy by British Labour politician Alan Johnson, and Lost For Words by Edward St. Aubyn.

After coffee and cake and a sit down at the nearby Truman Brewery buildings, before we knew it, it was time for Darryl to head off to freshen up at his hotel before his evening out at the theatre. (I took the opportunity also to combine my London visit with one to my parents.) I lost count of the number of times we mentioned a place to get to in London before swiftly deferring it to "next time" as we just didn't have the time this visit! All in all a brilliant day and I very much look forward to seeing Darryl again and brushing up a bit more on my London walks!

(These photos are courtesy of Darryl, so thanks to him! There are more to be seen, and plenty of fine reviews and theatre talk on Darryl's excellent thread here.)

...And now my attention turns emphatically toward Brazil. Tonight sees the opening ceremony and first game of the 2014 World Cup. It's only once every four years so I fully intend to indulge in it by immersing myself into a world of football nostalgia, fantastic Brazilian music, plenty of beer and unhealthy eating, and a micro-carneval in my living room for the next few weeks! Now, if this recent British sunshine weather can just continue a bit longer...!!

Paul! urgent request for you to send over one of those salt beef sandwiches. It was a special treat to get them from Blooms on the Whitechapel road, when I lived over that way.

Enjoy the football. I shall be watching it on French television, (where the are showing the English group games) as an added bonus I get to laugh at the mispronunciations of the English names.

I wish Barry! I could go for one right now! I was only telling Darryl about what an institution Blooms on the Whitechapel Rd used to be. Shame its gone. I saw over on his thread that you'd said you used to live on Greatorex St once. That was where I had to do my 'Barmitzvah test' (a pre-requisite for an orthodox barmitzvah) when I was 13. As a treat (more like as a recovery method for the trauma caused by the process) our Dad took each one of me and my brothers in turn for a slap-up meal at Blooms after the test.

(For anyone who has seen the Coen brothers' film'A Serious Man', the Rabbi's office is VERY much how I remember the room and atmosphere of the place where I had to answer questions about the Torah and put on tefillin for a very doddery old man with an unfeasibly messy white beard!!)

>56 Polaris-: - 57 So glad you got to meet kidzdoc in person .... and I thought those photos looked familiar! Love your football plans. Soccer (eh hem, soccer) is big here in Southern California (not so much in the other part of the country where I come from). This morning roofers came to my neighbors house to replace the roof damaged in the terrible winds. They spoke Spanish so I couldn't understand much but I certainly understood "futbol" - which was talked about a lot. ..... Love your futbol plans too. LOL!

>59 Polaris-: Oooh .... I've never heard of that movie. I'll have to check it out. :)

It's a very good film. Thanks for stopping by Avid!

Also taking note of the film. Loved your description of your afternoon with Darryl. I had a Brick Lane bagel earlier this year, but not a salted beef one. I enjoyed Journey Through a Small Planet, Litvinoff is quite a character.
We are also entering futbol mode in our home.

It's only once every four years so I fully intend to indulge in it by immersing myself into a world of football nostalgia, fantastic Brazilian music, plenty of beer and unhealthy eating, and a micro-carnival in my living room for the next few weeks.
A man after my own heart. One match in and I'm already ranting at the TV - that was not a penalty. Looking forward to Spain-Holland tonight - not sure how good the Dutch are at present but with Robben and Van Persie they always have a chance to score. With players like Robben and Busquets on the pitch I expect to see players go to ground when hit by a stray breeze.

>63 Jargoneer: Ha! Indeed! Some very strange refereeing decisions, and the shame of it is that it sort of cheapened the Brazilian's victory. Never a penalty though. Hard to judge teams though from their opening fixture but I thought Brazil looked very "normal" by their own high standards.

As for the Dutch. I grew up loving their style and philosophy ('78 was the first final I can remember), and still do in my heart, but I do despise Arjen Robben and his cheating antics in particular. Spain are a 'maturing' team, but I think that quality is quality and my gut feeling is that the mass media have written them off too easily...they will still take some beating. Time will tell.

78 is also the first WC I can remember although being Scottish I remember it for all the wrong reasons.

I agree about Spain, perhaps a player like Xavi is slightly past his best but he would still be in virtually every WC squad. You look at some of the players that Spain left behind and they would be most squads. Someone like Arteta has never played for Spain but if he had been Scottish or English he would have first choice material.

Please excuse the interruption of your WC chat, but wanted to say I enjoyed the recap of your meet-up with Darryl. Salted beef bagel .... Sounds Yummy.

Ok. I'm done. Carry on. :)

>66 NanaCC: You're very welcome Colleen, and thank you! That bakery is a must if you're ever in London.

>62 avatiakh: & >65 Jargoneer: Hope you and yours are enjoying the football so far.

England play their first game tonight, against Italy... I'm almost as excited as I would be if I were a ten year old boy! Fortunately, being a supporter of the club team that I support, I've gotten used to big dreams of glory popping like bubbles in the air, so won't be too disappointed if we bomb... On the other hand, if we win, everyone in England will doubtless get completely carried away and start talking about us as world-beaters! It's a funny old game.

I'm still in shock over the Spain game. They were lucky it was only 5, by the end they were a complete and utter shambles. (The last team to humiliate Spain like that were - Scotland, they beat them 6-2 in Madrid in 1963).

I'm really looking forward to the England game as well. It's a classic match-up full of intrigue. Can the young English players perform on an international stage? Will the ageing Italians implode like Spain? Will Ballotelli manage to get through a match without losing the plot?

Yes, the Spanish collapse last night was quite memorable. That RVP header though right on half-time was such a cracker that it must have lifted the whole team for the second half, etc. I was trying to remember the last time that Spain were thrashed so, and thought it must have been at least the '60s - so thanks for the clarification. Mind you, weren't Spain European champions in the mid-60s? On the other hand Scotland would have had a good side too at that time, so it's no wonder that they beat them so thoroughly.

Such a shame that England are the only UK team in this affair. Makes me pine for the good old Espana '82 days....

I have seen a couple of great games of football already in this competition. The Brazil and Spain games were excellent.
That must be the end of Spain as competitor's in this competition, because no team can survive such a drubbing and come back to win. Just think what it has done for their confidence which visibly leeched away from them during that second half. Every team will have watched that and now knows that running through the middle of the Spanish defence with pace is going to cause panic.

I am still quietly confident about tonight. Come on England.

A deep depression hangs over England amidst thousands of wrecked coffee tables.

Well, I think it could have been much worse. England showed enough to suggest that with a slight adjustment of the attacking roles within the team, they could yet progress to the latter stages. So far, this has been an excellent World Cup overall.

I think England were unlucky to lose, they deserved a draw but just couldn't break through in the last 20 minutes. They lack a player who can open up a defence with a bit of magic. No I would be worried by the number of England players going down with cramp which does raise concerns about the team's conditioning. (Talking about conditioning - don't think I've ever seen a physio carried off injured before).
Re England's group - was impressed with Costa Rica yesterday, I thought they were whipping boys but they are a team with a lot of pace and no lack of skill.

Completely agree about this being an excellent WC so far. Usually the group stages are cagey at the beginning but the matches have been very open.

Big Bad Love by Larry Brown
(First published 1990)

My first five-star read of this year, yet I didn't love every story in this collection of ten shorts (nine stories and one 87 page novella). So how does that work? Well, the power of Larry Brown's writing in this second collection of his is such that while I don't think that everything he tries to do here is a complete success, the value and impact of his creation when it is a success is so overwhelming that I have no choice but to give the book the highest rating. The novella "92 Days" which closes the collection is among the very best of his work, and probably one of the best shorter stories I've ever read.

These stories show us characters familiar to Brown's rural Mississippi. Mostly male, working class, and white, these characters often drink too much, have difficult or failed marriages, and are frequently running into trouble. They clearly follow a range of autobiographical themes. The stories are grouped in three sections. The first features the opening eight salvos, and then the second and third sections include a satirical dialogue - "Discipline" - where a writer on trial stands accused of plagiarism (that I didn't care for so much), and the novella "92 Days" respectively.

In the opening story "Falling Out of Love" - '...it was an evening as fine as you could ask for except that we had two flat tires on our car some miles back down the road and didn't know where we were or who to ask. Besides this main emergency, I knew things weren't right.' "The Apprentice" is an amusing insight into the life of a struggling author pre-publication, and how the obsessive compulsion to write can affect a marriage. It is the male narrator's wife Judy who wanted to be the writer: '...I didn't know what to do. If I said it was bad, she'd sull up or maybe cry. She cried a lot when I didn't like her stuff. And if I said it was good when it really wasn't, she'd get very encouraged and sit right down and type it up all nice and neat and send it off to Playboy or somewhere, and then get all broke down when it came back rejected.'

"Wild Thing" is a hopeless tale of an unhappily married forklift driver who has an affair with a younger married woman he meets in a downtown bar. The title story then sees Brown explore another side of matrimonial unhappiness: his narrator Leroy, is spending time in town drinking and playing Tom T Hall songs on the jukebox, avoiding going home and having to bury his dead dog, and his wife Mildred who "...was sexually frustrated because of her overlarge organ..."

"Gold Nuggets" sees a slight change of scenery, but not flavour, as the story is set among the strip bars and back alleyways of a Gulf Coast harbour town. The pathetic narrator is in town with a pot of money to pick up shrimp for himself and his associates - who he doesn't even like. He promptly falls victim to the tawdry attractions the town has for him. "It was a bar somewhere between Orange Grove and Pascagoula, one of those places where they charge you nothing to get in and then five dollars for a ten-ounce Schlitz. It was dark. Everyone had on sunglasses but me..."

...They hadn't even set it on the table when the other one leaned over and said she wanted one, too. So I bought her one. And told her to bring me another beer. I didn't care. I wanted to wake up broke and sober. I figured if I couldn't buy a drink, I couldn't get a drink. We jawed some old shit, it didn't matter what we said. We all knew the score. Their job was to rob me, my job was to pay for the robbery. All night long if possible.

"Waiting for the Ladies" is a powerful story of a man whose wife tells of a flasher exposing himself at the local dump. The narrator is newly out of work and has enough time on his hands to ride around looking for the pervert, fantasising about what he'll do to him given the chance. The story reveals far more about the narrator than you'd initially expect.

Then, "Old Soldiers", a poignant tale of Leo, a Vietnam veteran spending time with Mr Aaron - a WW2 veteran who fought with Leo's father in Europe. Leo frequents Mr Aaron's general store where they drink together and tell stories. A 3rd character, Squirrel, is a local barfly in his 50s or 60s, and a mutual friend of both. One evening sees Leo 'trapped' at the bar - looking for a good time but instead, mildly annoyed, nursing a drunk Squirrel who needs a ride home...

"I was on the front lines at Korea," he said. I looked sideways at him.
"I didn't know that," I said.
"Hell yes."
I listened then, because moments like that are rare, when you get to hear about these things that have shattered men's lives. I knew my daddy never got the war out of his head. When he got to drinking that's what he'd talk about. Mama said when they first got married he'd wake himself up screaming from a nightmare of hand-to-hand combat, knives and bayonets and gun stocks. With sweat all over him like he'd just stepped from water. I listened to Squirrel.

The final story - "92 Days" is the novella which alone is easily worth the book's price. Brown immerses us into a world very similar to that which he himself had not long recently been in. The struggling author (though unlike Brown 'Lonnie' is divorced from his wife and never sees his young kids) spends his days writing and drinking, and opening the mail with dread. He reads Faulkner and Bukowski and tries to picture Betti DeLoreo, the editor who wrote him a rejection letter, full of compliments for his 'voice', and encouragement to not give it up. His ex-wife keeps the pressure on for alimony and child support, while he has a finite number of days to keep on writing full time before his money runs out altogether, and he goes back to house painting.

I went down and checked the mail. Water bill, light bill, phone bill, and somebody wanting to give me an AM/FM radio worth $39.95 if I bought a quarter acre of land in some resort area in Arkansas for $6800. Nothing from Betti DeLoreo. But at least nothing had come back. Yet. I had fourteen stories on their way to or back from various editorial offices across America.
I went back to the house, opened a beer, and sat down at the machine. I sat there all afternoon waiting for it to say something to me and it never did.

But Lonnie writes plenty of stories. One he starts is about a widowed go-go dancer called Marie, locking her three sleeping children in the car in the parking lot. She ends up quitting and riding

...around for a while, wondering why her husband hadn't had enough sense to buy life insurance. She didn't have enough dog food for their dog.

At this point I realized I couldn't help them, realized I wasn't a writer, and threw it away, which scared the shit out of me.

I think Larry Brown is one hell of a writer, and this is a superb collection, whose images and characters will stay with me a long time.

Great review of Big Bad Love Paul. It sounds like Larry Brown was very familiar with those characters that he writes about.

Cheers Barry.

Never heard of Larry Brown before, but I'm impressed by your five-star rating.

>56 Polaris-: Still trying to catch up on threads. Thanks for sharing your "tour" of London with kidzdoc, sounds like you had a lot of fun.

>77 rebeccanyc: Thanks Rebecca.

>78 VivienneR: Nice one Vivienne. Me too. I'm struggling to keep up with most of the threads I really want to follow, so I apologise as well for being so absent from your thread too, as well as others'. Will hopefully be able to catch up over the summer. Thanks for stopping by though.

Just in time before their grand World Cup debut I want to wish Bosnia-Herzegovina very good luck in their game tonight. They'll need a bit of luck as they're up against the mighty Argentina - including Lionel Messi, arguably the best player in the world.

Only one of their 11 starting players actually grew up in Bosnia.

Picked up copies of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and Escape From Colditz by P R Reid today in Caerphilly.

The Maltese Falcon! Cool! That latter is an incredibly popular book here on LT. Never heard of it ....

It's the true story of the British officer who ran the escapes (surprisingly several) out of Colditz - until his own. The film was based on this memoir.

Not only was there a book and file but also a board game, Colditz, which was developed by Reid. Great stuff for those who remember it (probably through rose-tinted glasses).

So much for our agreement about Spain - it turned out they really are past it.

...and England never even made it!

I remember the Colditz board game. Excellent fun. I once had a very amusing afternoon playing that with a school friend and us throwing ourselves into a good bit of John Mills/Richard Attenborough type British stiff upper lip and yer generic sadistic Prussian clicky heels type characters acting in accompaniment to the play.

England could have done with a bit of that 'Colditz' style courage and ingenuity tonight (we've just lost to Uruguay and are very nearly out of the World Cup already).

Sorry about England. Enjoying what I see of the WC. I'm liking the US coach. I haven't seen a US team play with such confidence as they did against Ghana, who was clearly the better team.

Good stuff on Larry Brown. And enjoyed your review of the development of those WWI tanks.

It's been fun catching up on your thread.

>86 dchaikin: - the US coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, is a bit of a football legend, who won the WC and European Championships with Germany, and who, as coach, revitalised the German national team in the lead-up to 2006. He also was one of the most infamous divers (read 'cheats') in the game - his most famous 'dive' was going down as if a sniper had got him in the back.

Not sure what to think about England. They didn't really deserve to lose either of their games but did and are, almost certainly, going home early. In the BBC remit to interview everyone about England they decided to talk to the English Beach Football coach. He stated that England should have gone for youth which makes you wonder whether he has the credentials to coach beach football because he obviously knows bugger all about the real team.

This however is the greatest film of the year - Untamed Passions. Tim Roth as Sepp Blatter, Sam Neill as Joao Havelange, and Gerard Depardieu as Jules Rimet. Watch in awe as Blatter fights corruption.

>88 Jargoneer: good to know about Klinsmann. Thanks.

Great review of Big Bad Love, Paul! I haven't read anything by Larry Brown yet, but I do like good Southern Gothic writing, so I'll add this to my wish list.

If you haven't read them, I would highly recommend the works of two Georgia authors, Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers. O'Connor is my favorite short story writer, and her book The Complete Stories, which won the National Book Award in the 1970s, is a great place to start. Her debut novel Wise Blood is superb as well, but McCullers' debut novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is easily my all time favorite. She is an excellent short story writer as well.

I saw England's first World Cup match when I was in London but missed the second one after I arrived in Barcelona, so I can't comment on their performance. As you can imagine, the Barcelonians are gutted by La Furia Roja's spectacular flame out, especially the disastrous opening match against the Netherlands. I'm surprised that they even showed up for yesterday's meaningless match against Australia, which was barely mentioned on La 1, the primary Spanish television station, this morning.

I've been very impressed with the performance of the USA squad, which as you know came within a minute of opening group play with two wins. Hopefully they will play well enough against Germany to advance to the round of 16; it would be a shame if that last second Portuguese goal caused them to be eliminated.

Well done USA - through to the knock-out phase. England? The less said the better....

>90 kidzdoc: Darryl I have Flannery O'Connor in my sights, and have just added The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter straight away on the strength of what you said. (I love your review by the way. I can see how much you love this book!) Glad to hear your still able to enjoy the World Cup even though you've gone from the frying pan into the fire when you left London for Barcelona....

It always throws up some strange surprises. Who'd've thought that Greece would make it through to the 2nd round while the reigning champs go out after just 2 games?! (Not that their team play the prettiest footy., but I am pleased for the Greek people - they deserve a little happiness from SOMETHING!!!)

>86 dchaikin: & >87 Nickelini: Thank you so much! I'm glad this thread is enjoyable. (Hope the football isn't putting people off...!)

>88 Jargoneer: - I saw a brief clip of that on the John Oliver show and it looks insanely bad. What was Tim Roth thinking??!!? The same actor who was in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Reservoir Dogs?? Glad to see the $1.3bn FIFA 'reserve' is being spent wisely...

...and for the record I am now a Colombia fan...

I have always been a Costa Rican fan

>92 Polaris-: - it's hard not to root for Colombia the way they are playing. And thanks to the World Cup I now know that, in terms of population, Colombia is the second largest country in South America.

>93 baswood: - any team that puts out Greece can't be bad. (I have nothing against Greece, just they way their national team plays).

>91 Polaris-: - I blame J. K. Rowling. Her refusal to write any more Harry Potter has left a generation of actors without a viable pension plan, forcing them to sell their souls to the devil or, worse, FIFA.

Well, the World Cup is well and truly over. Congratulations to the winners Germany. The football in the main throughout the tournament was of a good standard and there were plenty of shocks and surprises, and superb moments of skill galore - in the group stages at least. The 2nd round was entertaining still, and then the competition took a bit of a dip in my opinion. The quarter finals either being dull and cagey affairs, or having some atrocious fouling and all-round bad sportsmanship.

That semi-final thrashing by Germany of Brazil was unexpected. Not perhaps the result, as the over-rated hosts had flattered to deceive thus far, but in the manner of their total capitulation which I cannot recall ever seeing at any level of the game - even by a complete minnow against a giant in a domestic knockout cup competition - let alone in the semi-final of the World Cup. In the end it was the best team that won, which isn't always the case. A well hosted and memorable event. Such a shame that it comes at such a huge cost. Is it worth it?

Perhaps I might resume a slightly more frequent presence on LT again now. (Mind you, I am currently immersed in my annual holiday-by-proxy across the English channel as the Tour de France approaches its midway point...Happy Bastille Day France!)

Infinite West: Travels in South Dakota by Fraser Harrison
(First published 2012)

I received this book in the Early Reviewers programme. In 2012. I appreciate that my review is not exactly 'early', but better late than never right?

I really enjoyed this interesting and entertaining exploration of a state that the author had first 'discovered' for himself while on a family holiday some twenty years earlier. That visit came at the end of an American sabbatical for the English academic. Fraser Harrison's writing has been described by some earlier reviewers as reminiscent of Bill Bryson's. As an admirer of Bryson's books, I wouldn't disagree, but would add that Harrison is often perhaps more charming, more laconic, and more willing to put more of himself into the book than Bryson is. ("I could tell the story of my youth in rivers.")

The book is split into seven lengthy chapters each focusing on the different main locations or aspects of South Dakota's story: 'Harrison' (a quirky self-indulgence in which the author explores the tiny township of his name - which in turn leads, among other things, to an unexpected exploration of the earliest pioneer settlers of the state), 'Lewis and Clark', 'The Badlands', 'Mount Rushmore', 'Deadwood', 'Wounded Knee', and a final chapter 'Sketches' which pulls together all sorts of diverting loose ends from his travels as a whole.

This extract on homesickness, from the chapter on Lewis and Clark, gives a good flavour:

The words "home" and "travel" are opposites, and there will always be tension between them; the one cannot be reconciled with the other. In some way, however small, the impulse to travel always contains an element of dissatisfaction with home, and by the same token, it must be a rare journey that is undertaken without some degree of homesickness. Staring into the lit windows of the houses on Island View Avenue {in Pierre, SD} as if I were a burglar checking out possessions worth stealing, I was conscious of my paradoxical position: I had left home and journeyed thousands of miles only to find myself on the bank of a river in a strange city brooding on the significance of "home" and speculating about the charms of an alternative one. But then travel, to some extent, is always a meditation on the theme of home.

Or this from the chapter on the Badlands:

We planned to spend the night in Hot Springs on the southern edge of the Black Hills, so we decided to drive there via the minor roads that led through the Badlands. Though this broken land was one of the chief objects of our trip, we were still mystified as to its exact nature, having nothing to enlighten us except some improbably lurid photographs in the brochures. Hardened by three hundred miles of vacant prairie and Wall Drug's cowboy kitsch, we expected nothing but the usual disappointment as we made our slow ascent of a ridge eight miles south of Wall. It was to be our last moment of cynicism.

We rolled over the crest of the ridge and found we had strayed onto a plateau of the moon. Its skyline was a palisade of jagged ridges and pinnacles, an extended curtain of rock many miles long, from which the town of Wall derived its name. The floor of this lunar grassland was littered with the ruins of peaks that appeared to have fallen out of the wall, and the entire moonscape was composed of pink and cream rock piled in layers scattered across the plain like remnants of an exploded ice cream.

Harrison is not afraid to explore uncomfortable truths concerning the USA's historic westward expansion, and her relations with and treatment of the indigenous populations. The section on Wounded Knee is a case in point, and while it does not amount to what could reasonably be called 'enjoyable' reading; the all too tragic subject matter is very sensitively approached and
covered in a way that I found profoundly moving.

I was usually pleased by his frequent tangents and interesting distractions as he floats smoothly from one subject area to the next. All in all a book I found well worthwhile my time. I'll certainly keep an eye out for other titles by the same author. My 'uncorrected proof' copy was devoid of photographs or maps, and I hope that the final edition included some, as that would probably elevate the book to a more complete publication of the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

>96 Polaris-: Yes; most other people seem to have reviewed this book two years ago. Sad to hear that yet another travel writer is following in the footsteps of Bill Bryson.

Changing the subject - it looks like we already have a winner of the Tour de France after todays stage in the Alps. It was sad to see some of the favourites having to pull out because of crashes, I don't ever remember Lance Armstrong falling off his bike, although most of France wished he would.

The one time I remember him crashing was when a spectator's loose bag strap tangled with his handlebar and down he went. Of course being superhuman he then got back up on his bike and rode up the road to an improbable-yet-dramatic victory like a only a demented angry Texan doped with freshly-transfused oxygen-rich blood can.

Yes, can't see anybody getting even close to Nibali sadly, barring the unthinkable. But you just never know, and they do say that everyone - even the winner - usually has at least one bad day, and he hasn't really had one yet...

(He's a worthy champion though I think. Just a shame that so many have had to abandon this year, and that other notables aren't present. I'd love to see a Grand Tour one of these years where the likes of Froome, Contador, Wiggins, Quintana, and Nibali are all in the same race as leaders of their own teams.)

a demented angry Texan doped with freshly-transfused oxygen-rich blood can.

And I don't have any of those traits. No wonder I feel like having a nap.

>95 Polaris-: As you know I thoroughly enjoyed this year's World Cup, although the semifinals and the final were a bit of a disappointment (not to mention the third place match). The best team definitely won IMO, but I think I'll remember the spectacular flame out of the host nation's team and the surprising early exits of Spain, Portugal and England in group play.

Is it worth it? And, for that matter, are the Summer Olympics worth it? As a long time resident of a city that has hosted the Olympics (Atlanta), I'd say that the 1996
Summer Games didn't have much lasting impact here, as the city already had four major sports teams (now three, with the departure of Atlanta's professional hockey team), a major college football and basketball team in the city (Georgia Tech) and an even larger college football team not far away (the University of Georgia), and the city was already a major regional cultural center and business hub, with a large airport that has since become the world's busiest one. The only lasting visible legacy is the Centennial Olympic Park next to CNN Center, which is attractive but not particularly memorable or impressive. I think that money could have been better used to support the city's and region's infrastructure, particularly its substandard mass transit network, and to improve the lives of the poorer residents who are concentrated to the south of the city.

>98 Polaris-: a demented angry Texan doped with freshly-transfused oxygen-rich blood

Are you talking about George W. Bush? Rick Perry? No, it must be Ross Perot of whom you speak.

>100 Nickelini: LOL

>100 Nickelini: and >101 kidzdoc: - ha!

It's probably too early still to assess properly the impact of London's hosting of the 2012 Olympics, but as it was supposed to regenerate the somewhat dilapidated east end of the city, I'd say that it has completely failed in that regard. In the meantime, my own football club is due to occupy the main stadium there from the 2016-17 season onwards - a move that returns West Ham United actually closer to its geographic origins, but one that I'm very apprehensive about.

As the 2016 Olympics will be more centered on Rio de Janeiro in particular, as opposed to the World Cup taking place throughout the country, I'd expect that most Brazilians will remain very unexcited about it until the eve of the occasion. Whether there will be any lasting socio-political fallout from the cost of hosting the World Cup, and the huge disappointment of the national team as well, will remain to be seen. I at least hope that the footballing letdown will at least stimulate a long overdue reappraisal of how the country would like it's national side to play o jogo bonito.

Darryl, don't forget either that this World Cup was notable, I think so anyway, for the genuine arrival of the USA team as a relevant contender. For the first time ever her fans will (hopefully) have experienced what it is to be swept up in the excitement of your team's noble efforts, only to be cruelly crushed by a defeat of very narrow margins. Now you have truly become a part of the world game! (Oh, and please do add Italy to your list of shamed European group stage exits!)

As someone who also lives in an Olympic city, I'd say the 2010 winter games were positive for Vancouver. They were careful with the budget so didn't spend money on new facilities (except the speed skating oval that became a new community centre in a suburb), but they expanded our LRT between downtown and the airport, and also built a much improved and much needed road to Whistler. Overall I think it was good, but of course you can find others who disagree.

Polaris - I was impressed with what I saw of the developments in east London last summer, although I didn't go to the Olympic park (my husband and one daughter did while my other daughter and I were on a much dodgier quest to Thamesmede).

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
(First published 2011)

In the end this was a book that I found enjoyable in some respects, and somewhat overwhelming in others. As an audiobook it worked quite well for me personally in that I would listen in my car only a chapter or two at a time. On the other hand - I don't enjoy Bill Bryson's flat monotonous delivery in that odd mid-Atlantic accent of his. He almost makes very interesting topics sound remarkably dull. He should definitely pass future audiobook duties to a professional voice artist.

With those notable provisos I'd say that his exploration of domestic history is an interesting read, full of quirky nuggets of social history and the development of the 'home' from the middle ages through to the modern day. (I particularly enjoyed sections on Jefferson's Monticello, the Great Exhibition and the original Crystal Palace, and the development of the domestication of electricity to name but three.) But the sheer vastness of such a project results in the reader struggling to remember what they absorbed only a few chapters previously. The long list of names: inventors, designers, architects, landed gentry, engineers, politicians, fatal diseases, benefactors and philanthropists, do in the end begin to fog together... I prefer it when the author tackles a more finite subject such as A Walk in the Woods along the Appalachian trail, or travels within a specific country or territory. This one probably sits best alongside A Short History of Nearly Everything - that other massively ambitious and partially entertaining but ultimately overwhelming mega-history of his.

Another slight criticism would be that this in indeed, as others have said, a very Anglo-centric point of view. Fair enough, Bryson had been living over here for many years at the time he wrote this, but I would have been interested to learn a little of what was happening at the equivalent moments in time in Hapsburgian town houses, or perhaps Pyrenean mountain chalets. What of the domestic arrangements of South America, Africa, Asia? Almost no reference is made to the history of the home in those parts of the world. But then the book would have been longer than it already is, so maybe it was for the best!


Chalet in the French Pyrenees

I think I'll take a break now from Mr B...

>103 Nickelini: - I remember you mentioning that outing in your thread! Most impressed that you made it to the Thamesmead Estate. Did you have that doom-laden Clockwork Orange synthesiser music going through your head all day?

>104 Polaris-: The wrong reader can definitely take away from the enjoyment of the book. There have only been a few books read by the author that I've enjoyed. Most really should leave it to the professionals as you say.. Neil Gaiman on the other hand.... He's an exception. :)

>106 NanaCC: Hi Colleen! Yes, I think you're right. Another exception that springs to my mind is Crazy Heart read by Thomas Cobb which I really enjoyed last year. It did take a little while for me to let go of the wonderful Jeff Bridges' voice as the main character, but in the end it really worked.

Did you have that doom-laden Clockwork Orange synthesiser music going through your head all day?

Ha ha! Actually, it was the soundtrack to the TV show The Misfits (which is the reason my daughter wanted to go there). I've been meaning to rewatch Clockwork Orange since then though.

>108 Nickelini: Oh I see! That's a show that passed me by I'm afraid. Did they set it on Thamesmead then? (I'm thinking that actually they wouldn't 'set it' there exactly, but might have used it as the location, as it's kind of a not-quite-of-this-world sort of place.) I went there once over twenty years ago though, so it might not be quite how I remember it...

Just to tag onto the discussion of major sporting events being worth it. The 1987 Pan American Games were hosted here in Indianapolis. They helped turn around this city. Before the games the cities economy was flagging and Indy was quickly on its way to becoming just another rust belt town. The games with the help of some good city planning have reenergized the city and introduced a new economic component that has had lasting effects. Today, Indianapolis is a vibrant city that competes with the largest cities in the nation for all the big tournaments: Superbowels, NCAA tourney, racing, Friendly internationals. Under the circumstances and leadership big grand sporting events I think can be boon to a host. I'm not sure if putting them well established cities that aren't in need of a jumpstart is as economically significant as political folks want to make them out to be.

Oh I see! That's a show that passed me by I'm afraid. Did they set it on Thamesmead then? (I'm thinking that actually they wouldn't 'set it' there exactly, but might have used it as the location, as it's kind of a not-quite-of-this-world sort of place.) I went there once over twenty years ago though, so it might not be quite how I remember it...

I don't think they ever say exactly where they are in the Misfits, but the setting was perfect for that series. As you say, it's a "not quite of this world sort of place". And it didn't look like they had changed anything in the past 20 years (or 30 or 40 . . . ), so it might very well be exactly like you remember it. I'm so glad we went--talk about getting off the tourist track.

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
(First published 1969)

Written some thirty plus years after the event, English poet and memoirist Laurie Lee recalls the period in his life when aged 20 he walked from his childhood home in pastoral Gloucestershire to London - where he worked for a year on a building site - and then arrived by sea to Vigo in northwestern Spain in summer 1935; before walking down through the country's dusty interior with his fiddle in his pack, to the Andalusian south.

The Galician night came quickly, the hills turned purple and the valleys flooded with heavy shadow. The jagged coastline below, now dark and glittering, looked like sweepings of broken glass...I saw the small white ship, my last link with home, flare like a taper and die away in the darkness; then I was alone at last, sitting on a hilltop, my teeth chattering as the night wind rose.

Lee shows us a young man's glimpse of a world largely unaffected by modern industrialisation, and still saturated with the old world order of things. Poverty abounds, though by and large 'Lorenzo' is able to make his way by playing for his supper. Does the older author writing much later in life (at the time of the hippies) romanticise his travels? Perhaps, I don't know (wouldn't we all?), but it cannot be said that he fails to show the squalor, or violence, or sheer destitution of the many Spaniards he becomes acquainted with on the road.

Somewhere near Valladolid, he suffers from sunstroke. Rarely has it been described quite so effectively:

The violence of the heat seemed to bruise the whole earth and turn its crust into one huge scar. One's blood dried up and all juices vanished; the sun struck upwards, sideways, and down, while the wheat went buckling across the fields like a solid sheet of copper. I kept on walking because there was no shade to hide in, and because it seemed to be the only way to agitate the air around me.

This was a wonderfully written daydream of a book, evoking a time and place with some lovingly crafted passages of prose. The place is that of a by-then peripheral European country, the time finds it on the eve of a terrible civil war that would prove to be the testing ground for the century's greatest conflict of ideologies and mechanised brutality. The poetry in Lee's phrasing is ever present, but never becomes trying, only a thing to savour. If ever a book could conjure up the notion of literary time travel - this is an excellent example of that particular pleasure.

As Lee moves ever south, he declares that ...it was in Seville, on the bridge, watching the river at midnight... that he ...got the first hint of coming trouble., as a passing sailor suggests there would be plenty of blood on the way if he stuck around. Then one morning after a night slept in a hill-top cemetery, taking breakfast in a village wineshop, he hears the first talk of war:

The faces of the fishermen were dull and grey as they rolled the harsh dry word between them. They spoke of war in Abyssinia; meaningless to me, who hadn't seen a newspaper for almost three months.

Progressively, as a carefree summer of '35 becomes a tense and gloom-filled winter of '36, we witness Lee's roaming life grind to a halt in a dead-end fishing village east of Malaga. The book's end comes suddenly and leaves me wanting to know what happened next. Lee continues the story in A Moment of War.

There are countless passages that I could have selected to quote from. His ability to describe landscape and people so vividly is truly lyrical, that I am encouraged to seek out all his other works in due course. When I started reading this book, I was unaware of 2014 being Laurie Lee's centenary. Now I am most glad to have at last read this small classic of travel writing.



(edited to correct misquoted excerpt)

Excellent review of As I Walked out one midsummer morning. It sounds like the sort of travel book that I would like and as it is a centennial read I don't know how I can resist.

Thanks Barry! It's only a short read as well.

>112 Polaris-: Nice review of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. Maybe a book to get lost in on a midsummer morning...

Nice review of Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life, which I acquired last year.

Thanks Edwin and Colleen!

Nana - the Laurie Lee is definitely the kind of book to get lost with on a quiet summer's morning...

>112 Polaris-: Excellent review and a reminder of how I loved Cider with Rosie and Laurie Lee's writing. This one goes on the list of books tbr soon.

>112 Polaris-: "a daydream of a book" .... what a great way to describe it. Now I want it.

Paul - I also loved As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and I went on to read the next 2 books though still have Cider with Rosie to read, which I hope to do this year. I love his way with words.

Thanks all.

From the Richard Burton Diaries which I am currently immersed in:

"...you are 43 years old, are fairly widely read, and have to drag yourself off to work day after day with a long lingering regretful look behind you at the book you're interested in..."

Well I'm almost 43, but ain't that the truth!

I appreciated your recent reviews of the books by Lee, Bryson and Harrison. So much so, I just downloaded the Infinite West to my Kindle. Having been a resident at different times of both coasts, and having spent little time previously in the middle of the country, your review and Harrison's book make me curious of what "lies between". Thank you. In your review, you mentioned the lack of maps in the book. From what I can tell, there seems to have been one small, fairly basic map included in the final printing.

>122 catarina1: That is such a kind comment. You're welcome any time of course, and thanks for stopping by here. I hope you enjoy Infinite West as much as I did.

I'm glad that the publisher included at least a basic map, as it would have been a gross oversight not to do so. Being a map nerd, I have a bit of a collection, and fortunately had a nice National Geographic one of the Dakotas to help me along as I read...

>103 Nickelini: My husband and I benefitted from that airport-to-town rail when we visited late in 2009. As a longtime resident of a city knocked out of Olympics contention early: I’m relieved. Yes Chicago pulled off the 1893 World's Fair, but a modern-day Olympics would be Devil in the White City on steroids.

>112 Polaris-: This was a wonderfully written daydream of a book Agree with avidmom about this, a beautiful line. Really enjoyed your review of As I Walked out One Midsummer Morning.

>124 detailmuse: Thank you!

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
(First published 1976)

In June 1907, Charles "Buddy" Bolden is 'escorted' by Civil Sheriffs McMurray and Jones en route from New Orleans to an insane asylum in Jackson, Louisiana. He has suffered a complete breakdown while playing with Henry Allen's Brass Band ('Red' Allen's father), marching in the Crescent City. He had broken blood vessels in his neck, and they had come through a small town called Slaughter on their way. These are some of the few hard facts known of the life of one of jazz's earliest pioneers, a life that has become the stuff of ethereal myth, legend for some. Bolden's sad story has captured the imagination of Michael Ondaatje. He tells a version of the story in a way that leaves a fuzzy glimpse of a time, a place, and a flawed musician's mental instability that leads to self-destruction. Not the last time that a force of creative talent might succumb like this.

I'm not so sure that this is "the best jazz novel ever written" (as one blurber has it), but it is certainly a moving suggestion of a New Orleans at the dawn of the 20th century. Bolden was jazz's first 'cornet king'. Apparently at the forefront of improvisation, sadly no recordings of his music exist (if any were ever made), and only the one known photograph survives - used as the book's cover (Bolden is back row with his band, 2nd from the left). The first 'celebrities' of that music cite him as the great unknown influence who shaped the earliest departures that melded gospel with ragtime and the blues.

Ondaatje writes poetically. This was his debut novel and the writing is memorable in passages. The structure here is a jazz performance. Sometimes rhythmic, but sometimes jarring, or perhaps even discordant. He shows us Bolden's view, but also those of his wife, and his friends: Webb - a detective who is trying to find what happened to him, and his tragic associate Bellocq who photographs Storyville prostitutes. We move in time back and forth, and sometimes can't be sure - until the refrain returns.

There is a narrator in the shadows, watching over proceedings. There are love triangles: Bolden, his wife Nora and her former pimp Pickett; then another while in a self-imposed exile of two years at out of town Shell Beach. It can be confusing. But an impression undoubtedly emerges. Buddy is unpredictable and volatile - tender and subdued, intense and impassioned - alcoholic and then sometimes violent.

The book pieces together episodic vignettes. From those who knew him, and those that link together the scant facts concerning his life.

'Then I hear Bolden's cornet, very quiet, and I move across the street, closer. There he is, relaxed back in a chair blowing that silver softly, just above a whisper and I see he's got the hat over the bell of the horn...Thought I knew his blues before, and the hymns at funerals, but what he is playing now is real strange and I listen careful for he's playing something that sounds like both. I cannot make out the tune and then I catch on. He's mixing them up. He's playing the blues and the hymn sadder than the blues and then the blues sadder than the hymn. That is the first time I ever heard hymns and blues cooked up together...

...The picture kept changing with the music. It sounded like a battle between the Good Lord and the Devil. Something tells me to listen and see who wins. If Bolden stops on the hymn, the Good Lord wins. If he stops on the blues, the Devil wins.'

Although the brief chapters can be beautifully rendered, it is the piecemeal approach of the narrative that let the book down a little for me, and will doubtless dishearten some. Near the end is an afterword of sorts, set in the modern day as the author searches for traces. It weaves itself in with the final points of view:

The street is fifteen yards wide. I walk around watched by three men farther up the street under a Coca Cola sign. They have not heard of him here. Though one has for a man came a year ago with a tape recorder and offered him money for information, saying Bolden was a 'famous musician'. The sun has bleached everything. The Coke signs almost pink. The paint that remains the colour of old grass. 2 pm daylight. There is the complete absence of him - even his skeleton has softened, disintegrated, and been lost in the water under the earth of Holtz Cemetery. When he went mad he was the same age as I am now.

Excellent review of Coming through Slaughter. I am a fan of Ondaatje and don't know why I have not got to this one yet. I am forewarned by your review, but I think I need to make the effort.

Nice review. I've never read any Ondaatje -- not sure I would start with this one. Have you read any other books by him, and which would you recommend (or Barry, since you're a fan)?

Thanks both!

The only other Ondaatje I read was The English Patient, which I really enjoyed. Mind you, it was a long time ago and I read it in lulls during a week of army manouevres.... so my judgement can't be vouched for!

Speaking up out of turn on Ondaatje here . . . I loved Anil's Ghost, really liked the Cat's Table, had a few problems with The English Patient (but it might have been my mood at the time--other things were going on in real life), and found Running in the Family interesting but more like reading a scrapbook than anything else.

>130 Nickelini: - Not out of turn at all! Your comments lead me to go back to the Ondaatje page here and take another look at some of the reviews of his books. I think my next choice of his would be In the Skin of a Lion.

>129 Polaris-:, >130 Nickelini: Oh, now I remember why I haven't read any Ondaatje; it's because I saw the movie of The English Patient and didn't like it! Will look into Anil's Ghost; thanks, Joyce.

>132 rebeccanyc: Interesting that you didn't like the movie of The English Patient. I loved it cinematographically, but other than that, I sort of agree. I did not care for Ralph Fiennes at all. But I am very fond of the book. (Herodotus plays a significant role.) Unfortunately, you cannot "unsee" the film characterizations.

I liked the film of the English Patient, but I have almost no memory of it. The part that stands out for me is the relationship between the Juliette Binoche character and the sapper, which I thought was lovely.

>133 Poquette: & >134 Nickelini: I agree that the film (and the Oscars acclaim, etc.) may have skewed people's willingness to read the book (The English Patient), and also with you Poquette that I thought the cinematography was beautiful, and also that the acting is good. I actually read it before the film had been released, but then subsequently did enjoy the film (I rather fancy Kristin Scott Thomas as well, so that helped!), although, as nearly always, it never had the richness that Ondaatje's novel has.

Just wanted to say also that it is indeed sad to hear that Robin Williams has died. I liked Mork and Mindy when I was a kid, and then enjoyed a lot of the films he starred in in the '80s and '90s. Some were duds of course, and he perhaps couldn't resist a schmaltz-laden part too many... but I really loved his work in 'The Fisher King' (along with my favourite Jeff Bridges), and 'Good Will Hunting'. Two very memorable performances.

I remember enjoying him alongside Dustin Hoffman in the silly (but still, underrated - it's a lot of fun) 'Hook'. I had a good laugh as well with my boy watching Williams' Genie steal the show in Disney's 'Aladdin'. I also liked his passion for the Tour de France, and his rare American knack for genuinely convincing British regional accents. He will be missed.

>126 Polaris-: & others: Great review of Coming Through Slaughter although I don't think I'll be adding that one to my wishlist. My favourite Michael Ondaatje was In the Skin of a Lion.

>136 Polaris-: Very sad news about Robin Williams. Even in a dud movie he was great.

Also sorry to lose Lauren Bacall. She was one of my favourites when as a child I was taken to the movies by my parents.

Thank you Vivienne. Guess what I picked up in my latest haul?

>Latest charity shop haul. This time Pontypridd (Tom Jones' home town):

FICTION -
In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
The Book of Dave by Will Self
Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
I, Dreyfus by Bernice Rubens
Postcards by Annie Proulx
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

NON-FICTION -
Hanns and Rudolf by Thomas Harding
One Man's Meat by E. B. White
Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee

£10.

(ETA location.)

Wow

Nice haul!

Great review of Coming Through Slaughter, Paul. I was also very disappointed in this book, and I only gave it 2-1/2 stars.

If I can put in my two cents my favorite Ondaatje books are, in order, The Cat's Table and Anil's Ghost. I found The English Patient disappointing and forgettable, although I liked it more than Coming Through Slaughter.

>138 Polaris-: What a great haul! Especially In the Skin of a Lion, Cider with Rosie, and Scoop one of my favourites from Evelyn Waugh. Nice going!

>138 Polaris-: You made out like a bandit!

Thank you everyone.

I've been finding Under Fire by Henri Barbusse quite slow going, initially at least, and am struggling to really get into it.

I couldn't resist picking up off the shelf A Fortunate Life the other day - it's the Australian classic memoir by A. B. Facey and am totally gripped, so I'll probably stick with it for now.

Reading from The Richard Burton Diaries:

OCTOBER 1966 - Tuesday 11th
...The Churchill family according to D. Frost ask me to play Winston C on film. And De Laurentiis and J. Huston wish me to play Napoleon. I've already played Alexander the Great, Mark Antony and St Thomas à Becket. I shall have delusions of relected grandeur...

and then this doozy on a Burton-Taylor summer holiday:

AUGUST 1967 - Friday 11th, Gstaad - Sardinia
A terrible day, frantically disorganized, thousands of bags all over the place, nine children, six adults all on one plane, Howard and Mara's incessant screaming, my and E's pre-film nerves, nine children, plane fear, Gaston {...} has fallen in love again, dwarfly serious, with Patricia's mother (Patricia is Christopher's girl friend) nine children, the Kalizma hasn't arrived, nobody at the airport to meet us, nine children, (Dick Hanley, Bob Wilson, John Lee cost us and Mike Todd roughly $1000 a week) and hot and a small room and a multi zillion dollar picture and I screamed 'fuck' out of drunkenness in the hotel lobby, and pasta (not very good) and screaming and heavy stoned sarcasm, and a sloshed memory of fields and farms and towns of France and Italy, and the purple sea, and shame and booze and fear and nine children, and I want to be left alone, and Gaston saying that he has explained to Cecile that he can't marry her because she can't have children, August is the cruellest month, and E making any excuse - not difficult to do since they (the excuses) were handed to her on a platter - not to start the film on Monday, and J.Losey is an arrogant ignorant fool so far and thinks he's a genius and you can't be at his pock-marked age without showing it before, and a frightful day and I hope never to live through another which I will tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

To scream 'fuck' in the lobby was the only possible way to meet the justice of the day.

Paul - thanks for that review of the Laurie Lee book back at post #112, something I will keep in mind. Enjoying the Richard Burton bits.

To scream 'fuck' in the lobby was the only possible way to meet the justice of the day.

I love that line!

>144 Polaris-: Wonderful excerpts from The Richard Burton Diaries. Seems raw and smart and very interesting to dip into, not sure I could read 700 pages!

>138 Polaris-: - that's a decent haul of books. I read the Chabon earlier this year and enjoyed it despite it definitely being in the category of 'baggy monster'. Always had a soft spot for Doctorow since reading Ragtime years old. Scoop is just great.

>112 Polaris-: - I tried to listen to this when R4 put it on as Book of the Week a few months ago. It just didn't work for me but I think most of that was due to the editing and the actor used.

>126 Polaris-: - I totally agree with this review. It seemed that Ondaatje was trying to duplicate a jazz structure, to replicate the feeling of improvisation. To me the work appeared stuck between prose and poetry.

Dan, Avid, MJ - thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying the excerpts from the Burton Diaries. I've put it aside a little bit over the last week or so - not because it isn't good, it is, but because I've been captivated by the memoir of Aussie pioneer A. B. Facey - A Fortunate Life.

>148 Jargoneer: Thanks for your comments as well. Yes, I'd agree that Coming Through Slaughter is the debut novel of a very promising author. I love Ondaatje's poetic sensibility, but this one doesn't quite hit the mark altogether. I'm still glad I read it though and would still recommend it - just for the vision of early 20th century New Orleans alone.

So pleased you are enjoying A fortunate life. I was also captivated by it when I first read it.
>138 Polaris-: Great book haul, I read a lot of Bernice Rubens a few years ago and I, Dreyfus was stellar, though almost every book she wrote is good to excellent.

Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlife by David Eagleman
(First published 2009)

A diverting collection of imaginative explorations into the possible Afterlife. Most are brief and fleeting, and leave the reader with a tantalising glimpse of what could be. Some are simplistic representations of complex organisms breaking down, or of atomic compounds reforming into different incarnations or entities; others are jarring visualisations of dystopic existences that make the humdrum surroundings the reader may find themselves in gain a sudden appeal not noticed before! Several are actually quite uplifting and genuinely surprising. This is a pleasant and thoughtful read overall.

With an impressive array of voices and styles, David Eagleman has managed to genuinely provide pause for thought with these thought-provoking essays. Encompassing themes of religion, love, family, possessions, ethics, organic chemistry, inter-galactic wars and others - there is some good value here. Even a little humour to boot.

Unfortunately I felt that the cumulative effect of the 'forty tales' was that too many were too similar or reminiscent of those already discovered. My personal preference might have been for ten or twenty essays which might have had the luxury in time and space to really explore some bright ideas that too often came across as not much more than a decent plot for an above-average sci-fi episode on TV.

An LT friend gave me that book, but I have yet to read it . . . Thanks for your review.

You're welcome Rebecca!

Wow... I kinda went AWOL here...!

Real life has been busy, Aussie brother was in town, been hanging out with the West End stage's Bertie Wooster (but not Jeeves - he went home...), and there was my parents' Golden Wedding anniversary to attend to. Then there's the seasonal storms and Caerphilly's trees to look after, and visits with my 99 year old Great Uncle Harry. I've got 2 reviews to write (Joe by Larry Brown - in a word: "superb"; and A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey - one word teaser: "wonderful".

Have abandoned Under Fire by Henri Barbusse, am still enjoying Burton's delightful diaries, and am thoroughly absorbed in the visceral inter-war period Jewish Spitalfields of Emmanuel Litvinoff's Journey Through a Small Planet while I simultaneously listen captivated to Anthony Beevor's telling of Berlin - Downfall 1945.

November resolution: Get over my LT Autumn abstinence, and get back to those brilliant Club Read threads of yours!

Family is important, and those are the best one/few word reviews I've read in a long time. It is nice to see you back. :)

Aw thanks Colleen!

>154 Polaris-: All that family stuff sounds like fun. Glad to see you back!

Welcome back, Paul!

Welcome back, sounds like you've been enjoying life. Glad to hear you are still enjoying Richard Burton's diaries. I've had it on my wishlist for a while - a list that has grown so much I doubt if I'll ever get around to everything on it.

Thank you!



A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey
(First published in Australia, 1981)

I first noticed this wonderful memoir when I was book browsing while visiting family in Australia last year. I don't know why, but I put off buying a copy back then (probably because I was already threatening the baggage allowance limits with those already sat neatly in my tent...) - only to later gratefully chance upon an unread paperback in a local charity shop.

The cover blurb promised "A true classic of Australian literature..." - which is thankfully not undeserved hyperbole at all. The author lived a life with many hardships - especially his poverty stricken remote rural childhood - but writes toward the end of his fascinating life with the perspective of one who is not remotely bitter, but full of wisdom, and grace.

Born in the 1890s, Facey's orphan childhood coincided with a period of expansive white settlement in the southwest of Western Australia. The area that much of his story takes place in would become the famous wheat belt of that part of Australia. Living at first with his beloved Grandma and an Uncle who took him and his many siblings in, his life was tough and the work was unrelenting from about the time he was big enough to hold a horse.

After being sent away to work and then suffering at the hands of cruel and exploitative owner-employers, young Bertie eventually emerges from his Outback apprenticeship as a modest and hard working young man with a great love of, and skill with, animals and nature. What he lacked in formal education he more than made up for with his knowledge of the land and the rhythm of the seasons and the way to build up a homestead out of almost nothing (which he ends up having to achieve on several occasions for a variety of reasons).

It's hard to single out specific episodes or chapters that I liked best, but there is a longer than average section on his experiences working on a cattle drive for the first time - aged about 15 - that particularly stood out for me. The drive lasts for months and journeys deep, deep into the desert bush before circling around in a wide arc back to the west coast cattle market at Geraldton. The drama and the excitement and the pure graft involved, as well as the stunning and stark beauty of the Western Australian deserts really come across most vividly. During the drive, there is a heavy storm which causes a stampede. In the confusion Bert is separated from the others and after a day or two of sheltering from the terrible weather, eventually becomes completely lost. With almost no food and little else, he becomes increasingly weaker and confused. An elderly aboriginal Australian picks up his trail and ultimately saves Bertie's life. It is evident from the way his tale is told that Facey never had any truck with racial prejudices, or any kind of injustice for that matter.

As the 20th century progresses Facey's young adulthood and coming of age inevitably culminate in the tragedy of the First World War. Leaving Perth with tens of thousands of his adventure-seeking compratiots, he is sent into the bloodbath of Gallipoli. Bert survived 4 months in the hellhole of the doomed Turkish beachhead. Two of his brothers, as well of course as many thousands of other brave ANZAC troops, sadly would not. He even survives being blown up, although his war wounds will blight him for the rest of his life in one way or another.

Returning home after the war, Bert can finally get on with his life and starts a family with his beloved wife in peace. Not without the further troubles that life has to throw at an uneducated war veteran, he manages to make his way in an ever-changing modern Australia as his family grows and his children eventually leave the home to have families of their own. Despite the many hardships the author has to endure, A Fortunate Life was a wonderful book to read, and one that I really enjoyed. It is a great read for all ages and the ages. A. B. Facey's story really is a story of Australia and that great country's tough earlier pioneering generations. The humility that the author writes with is truly inspiring and this is indeed a genuine classic.

Joe by Larry Brown
(First published in 1991)

The promise, style, and searing power of Brown's earlier works: two short story collections ("Facing The Music" & "Big Bad Love"), and the stunning debut novel about wounded Vietnam veterans (Dirty Work) would have been hard to improve upon. But Brown has quite possibly done so with the superb Joe. This is my first '5-star' novel of the year (in November!) as it is in my opinion without fault and perfect in every way.

Set once again in the small towns of northern Mississippi that Brown knew so well, and amid the dense woods, fishing lakes, and dusty roads of the rural back country, the characters so expertly crafted by Brown are joined by the richly drawn characterisation of the landscape itself that they inhabit. I've not yet ever visited the United States, but thanks to Larry's writing I feel as though I know this part of the world really quite well!

Joe is a middle-aged divorcee who makes a living as a seasonal forestry contractor. He runs a gang of casual black labourers and they are usually either poisoning the trees in the summer before a clear-fell, or planting up whips in the winter. Joe spends his money on drinking and gambling and girlfriends, and not too much else. He does love his adult children, and wants to help them as well, though things are never straightforward. We are drawn deep into Joe's life, as one summer progresses. He has encountered Gary Jones, a boy aged "about 15" who wants to work. Gary's family are itinerant and poor - the father is about as despicable a character as you could ever have the misfortune to encounter. The old storekeeper knows him from something some time long ago...

One of Gary's sisters - Fay - will be the subject of a different and later novel by Brown, as she manages to leave her no good family behind her early in the book's pages. In the meantime, the depiction of "the old man" is about as chilling and real and unforgettable as Dickens' terrible Bill Sykes. Yes, as diabolical as that.

Gary is determined to break free from his ne'er-do-well father's clutches and if he can just earn (and keep hidden) enough money to buy a truck, then he could be free.

What follows is about as heartbreaking and engrossing a tale I have read.

Despite his protagonist's many shortcomings, Brown shows us that there is a tenderness to a man like Joe that most won't ever see. This is a story about attempts at redemption and dignity as much as one of life's disappointments and tragedies. As the novel progresses the tension and the drama builds subtly like the flavours of a simmering stew. The end result is a story whose traces will remain visible in the mind for a long time, and characters that I will never forget. There is grit and poverty, and heartache, but there is so much beauty in this writing to behold. Highly recommended.

>160 Polaris-: Excellent review of A Fortunate Life! Would love to read it; (so much so I didn't even click on the spoilers!). Another great review of Joe too; but the Aussie novel has my attention.

I've not yet ever visited the United States, but thanks to Larry's writing I feel as though I know this part of the world really quite well!

Now, that's quite a compliment!

Two reviews I loved reading, about books i probably would not have looked twice at, but will now keep an eye out for.

Ditto what Kay said!

Avid, Kay, Rebecca , thank you all so much!

Patrick White thought that he had written the "great Australian novel" with Voss but it sounds like A B Facey's autobiographical novel might be a contender.

Excellent enthusiastic review of Larry Brown's Joe.

>160 Polaris-: and >161 Polaris-: Excellent, well-written reviews! A Fortunate Life is now on my wishlist.

>160 Polaris-: I found A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey at the local library (the small-town library that continues to amaze me) and I'm really enjoying it. I long to consult with a family member who lives in Perth about modern comparisons in the area but he is very ill at the moment and doesn't need my questioning. He has spoken of a number of the places mentioned by Facey. Thanks again for the book bullet, it is right on target for one of the categories in the 2014 Category Challenge group too.

>160 Polaris-: I love it when you get those second chances to buy a find. After reading Cooper's Creek last year, I think the Facey memoir sounds like a good next step. Australia seems really daunting from the little I've read.

Joe sounds like something I would really enjoy; another daunting environment in a completely different way

Thank you Barry, Vivienne and Sassy for your kind words as well.

>166 baswood: Barry, I have Voss on my wishlist and it does sound like another true classic, just a point of order though: A Fortunate Life is a memoir and not fictional.

>167 VivienneR: >168 VivienneR: I'm really glad you found a copy and are enjoying it too. I hope it lifts the spirits as much as it did for me as well.

>169 SassyLassy: It was probably your Club Read comments on Cooper's Creek that led to me adding that one as well! I have a feeling you would enjoy Joe as well. I'd very much like to read your thoughts on it if you ever did read it.

...Now excuse me LT'ers, as I'm skiving off work to sneak in here (connectivity issues at home) - and should get back to singing the praises of fastigiate Oaks to one of the local vicars replacing a conifer hedge in her churchyard with something a bit more appealing...

Great reviews of A Fortunate Life and Joe, Paul. Both have been added to my wish list.

>171 kidzdoc: Thank you very much Darryl. I really hope you'll enjoy them. You're timing is good, as I have just finished the book that I bought in the Brick Lane Bookshop we went to together during our day out in east London back in the early days of summer... (I can still taste that tasty mustard & hot salt beef beigel!*)



Journey Through a Small Planet by Emanuel Litvinoff
(First published 1972)

If you've ever wandered through the back streets, alleyways, and courtyards of old Spitalfields and Whitechapel in London's East End; sensing the dim and now somewhat distant presence of a bygone era and an old world Jewish culture now all but vanished* from its precincts, and wondered what life would really have been like for the working class immigrant families who lived and worked there - this book will draw you as vivid a picture as any other book or film I've yet encountered.

Emanuel Litvinoff was born and raised in the heart of that London - when the community there was at its inter-war period 'zenith' (if such a word were appropriate) of the 1920s and '30s. His stories convey wonderfully, with vigour and laconic humour the sights and sounds and smells of that lost world. Having grown up and served in the army during the Second World War, he moved out of the neighbourhood he'd grown up in. Across the decades following the war so too would most of the other Jewish neighbours - Londoners established enough by then to move away from the grotty tenements and filthy market streets, out to the suburbs and beyond.

In the opening pages' "Author's Note" Litvinoff explains how early in the 1970s he found himself revisiting the old streets again with a friend. The cover photo above was taken at that time:

...In Old Montague Street, the very heart of the original Jewish quarter, nothing was left of the synagogue but a broken wooden doorcarved with the Lion of Judah.



The tenement I grew up in had somehow survived shrunken by time but otherwise unchanged - the same broken tiles in the passage, the same rickety stairs, the pervasive smell of cats. I took my friend up to the first floor landing window to show him the small yard with its overflowing dustbin. That, too, had not changed. Quite suddenly, a vivid memory returned. I was twelve years old: the news had come that once again I had failed the scholarship. Outside it was raining. I sat on the window ledge and carved my initials in the wood. When I looked they were still there, jagged and irregular, 'E.L.'

The door of my old apartment opened and for one moment I expected to see that same unhappy, resentful boy emerge to wander disconsolately into the street. A shabby, elderly man came out carrying a bucket full of refuse. He stared at us mistrustfully.

'Are you gennelmen from the Sanit'ry Department of the Tahn 'All?' he asked.

I felt indescribably bereaved, a ghost haunting the irrecoverable past. That evening, when I returned to Hertfordshire I began a memoir, 'My East End Tenement'. This book has grown out of that beginning.

With chapters with headings such as "Uncle Solly's Sporting Life", "The God I Failed", and "A Charity Pair of Boots", Litvinoff charmingly weaves his coming-of-age tale amid the poverty and the 'sweating shops', and the ever-present fug of stale cigarette smoke and the smell of pickled herrings and frying onions.

The tenement was a village in miniature, a place of ingathered exiles who supplemented their Jewish speech with phrases in Russian, Polish or Lithuanian. We sang songs of the ghettoes or folk-tunes of the old Russian Empire and ate the traditional dishes of its countryside. The news came to us in Yiddish newspapers and was usually bad...

The tales of Emanuel's childhood pass and he soon must join the working masses, and make a contribution to the household. He finds employment at Dorfmann's "rat-infested fur workshop":

'Don't you want to improve yourself anymore?' my mother said in her suffering voice.

She stood at the stove ladling soup into my plate, the latest baby squirming in the crook of her arm. A man's cardigan hung shapelessly on her body, but her belly was seen to be big again. We were ten already, the largest family in the buildings, and nothing helped - not whispered conferences with neighbours, nor the tubes and syringes concealed among the underwear at the botttom of the wardrobe, and certainly not Fat Yetta, who sometimes lifted the curse of fertility from other women but only left my mother haggard with pain and exhaustion.

'Manny,' she said, 'I'm talking to you!'

I loved this book, and the imagery that was brought to my mind by Litvinoff's atmospheric writing. This is the real world that existed behind such stories as Wolf Mankowitz's A Kid For Two Farthings, and the tales of characters who my grandparents probably knew. It was a pleasure to visit this particular small planet.





*Witness some increasingly rare old retail and trade 'ghost signs' in the Victorian brickwork mostly up above ground floor level, and the two last Yiddisher-style all-night beigel bakeries in the East End (at the northern end of Brick Lane) all of two doors apart. According to a cheery London taxi driver idling in traffic when Darryl and I ventured up there famished for lunch - both have long since passed from their original Jewish owners on to an Israeli entrepreneur and since passed again into the hands of an Iranian business... Whatever would Bibi say?!

A vivid and evocative collection of Alan Dein's 1988 Spitalfields shopfront photos can be found here.

The late Emanuel Litvinoff's 2011 obituary from The Guardian can be found here.

That sounds fascinating, Paul, and I enjoyed your review and the photos.

Love your review of the Litvinoff. And, as I'm catching up, two great reviews before that. I acquired Joe this summer. Hoping I get to it.

>173 rebeccanyc: Thank you Rebecca!
>174 dchaikin: Dan, I'm really glad to hear you have a copy of Joe - you're in for a treat! Thanks also for dropping by and catching up. I need to stop the world one of these days just enough so I can catch up with loads of threads!

Great review of Journey Through a Small Planet.

Thank you Edwin!

>160 Polaris-: A Fortunate Life is still on my wishlist, and I really want to read it now.

>161 Polaris-: I enjoyed your review of Joe. I think this is another one I would really like.

Your review of Journey Through a Small Planet sounds very intriguing.

My wishlist is going to fall over.

I must get a copy of Journey through a small Planet Thanks for the review Paul

Thank you Colleen and Barry for stopping by, and the encouraging comments!

Fascinating topic, Litvinoff. And the link to the pictures too - thank you! You can see some similar shop relics in places around NYC's lower east side, and elsewhere - collected they preserve a bygone era. They also remind me of a certain traditional and perennial strain in Jewish thinking: "Only a schlemiel works for someone else!"

>181 stellarexplorer: Yes Stellar, indeed! I'm sure that when I eventually do visit Manhattan I will find much in the Lower East Side to compare with London's East End. I'm glad you like the link to those photos - they're such an instant fix of virtual time-travel, I couldn't resist sharing the page. Thanks for stopping by!

Alas, there is very little of the Jewish Lower East Side left, as waves of other immigrants, especially the Chinese, have moved into areas that most Jews left many decades ago. There are some organizations devoted to preserving some of the old synagogues (some of which may still have some members), and the Tenement Museum has a great bookstore.

Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Antony Beevor
(First published 2002)

In two words: utterly compelling. Antony Beevor's widely praised account of the ultimate battle for the heart of the Nazi Reich, and the pure horror of it all, is a book worthy of high praise indeed. The scene is ably set in the opening chapters with the setting of the various battle orders, the intricacies of the political machinations in fearsome effect, and the descriptions of lives interrupted on the home fronts; Beevor expertly brings the reader with him into the new year of 1945 as the final battle for Europe's fate is about to play out. As the front moves ever nearer to the Reich's own frontiers the Soviet political officers and the commissars tell their charges that the Germans had

...sown the wind, and now they are harvesting the whirlwind.

The overwhelming sense is one of 'total war'. Nevertheless, his approach is one that manages to keep the facts clear and uncluttered, and the potentially complicated maneuverings of multiple military units are brought across to the reader without confusion. The book also succeeds in that it gives the reader a good impression of the human aspects of the conflict.

The research for this book must have been a labour of love of sorts, as the amount of detail imparted from such a wide variety of first-class primary sources is very impressive. From the archives of the former Soviet Union and the two Germanies, as well as those of British, US, French, Swedish and countless other origins, the author manages to convey with complete authenticity the experiences of those involved at every conceivable level of the 20th century's defining event.

The use of source material - a combination of diaries, letters to or from the front, memoirs written at a distance of years, interviews during PoW interrogations - is highly effective at getting across the sheer size and impact of the whole conflict in Europe. We hear the voices of individual 'normal' people (peasants, conscripts, the urban poor and the middle classes alike) as frequently as those of the generals, politicians, or the privileged few. Writers and journalists such as Vassily Grossman are often reporting from the front (or sometimes more interestingly from just behind the front). At once you are in the icy trenches or the firing positions with the Soviets' 1st Guards Tank Army, the next you are in the operations room of an opposing German Panzer division, or a retreating SS regiment.

The reader has the dubious privilege of being privy to the Machiavellian orchestrations of Stalin and Beria, as they play off the competing rivalries of Generals Zhukov and Koniyev against each other for both egotistical and self-serving strategic reasons; as well of course as the persistent mutual mistrusts of the Red Army's front line units with those of the party's NKVD political detachments. I had not previously been quite so aware either of quite how much contempt Stalin had for his leading generals, and how despicably he wouldn't hesitate to treat them when he considered it politically expedient to. Obviously he shares this odious trait (along with countless others) with his opposite number in Berlin.

Similarly, the chaos and mayhem afoot in the various German organisations: of the Reich, the Nazi Party, the SS, and the different branches of the armed forces becomes clear. The disorder and sense of an empire collapsing all around, while Hitler fiddles in his 'Fuhrerbunker' is at once both a fascinating and grimly captivating thing to behold. I found myself wondering quite what Uncle Dolfi (as the Goebbels children called their leader) thought to himself as he sat in his quarters, resting between blood vessel bursting fits of temper at the daily strategic conferences, staring at his favourite portrait of Frederick the Great...

Less frequently we are kept reminded that this is indeed a world at war, and the picture will momentarily broaden to include aspects of the various alliances and the varying degrees of cooperation or sometimes non-cooperation. The ever-present paranoia on the part of Stalin towards Roosevelt and particularly Churchill becomes an increasingly noticeable element in the story of the race to Berlin's conquest. Nevertheless, the story of the western allies' advance across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany is referenced when relevant to the narrative. The roots of the looming Cold War face-off between the western allies and the Soviets are clearly visible here. The grisly downfall unfolds in more or less chronological order as the chapters rotate from one aspect of the conflict to the next.

The now well documented horrors of the Nazi Holocaust are not a central theme in this book, as it is more a case of the different camps' liberations being acknowledged in the narrative as they occur during the course of the Germans' hasty and destructive withdrawal from the advancing armies. The book is certainly not for the fainthearted though as there are necessarily countless and almost relentless accounts of the many horrors conducted by all sides in this war - in particular the many atrocities towards the civilian populations by the Red Army. (The German forces had of course "sown their wind" as they Blitzkrieged their way across the continent between 1939 and 1942, to say nothing of their monstrous racial atrocities.) Beevor tackles the subject of rape by Soviet soldiers head on. He notes that the victims were not restricted to German women, but that many Soviet or Polish citizens, including former concentration and prison camp inmates (some Jewish survivors among them too), were also brutally attacked. He actually defines four distinct stages of this most awful of crimes: The first when the initial wave of advancing soldiers occupies a civilian area; the second when the vanguard moves on and the following wave of combat units arrives (often the most indiscriminate and horrific of the phases); the third and fourth stages as with the war's end, the horrors of survival for some women in post-Nazi Germany include committing themselves to the 'protection' of one particular Red Army soldier or other. Certainly not easy subject matter at all, and not without academic controversy either, but I think that Beevor covers the subject as sensitively as could be reasonably expected.

I listened to the audiobook edition, read superbly by British actor Sean Barrett. His voice is somewhere between Olivier (think BBC's 1970s "The World at War") and Burton's noble authority. Never a distraction, and often enhancing somehow the authenticity of the whole production. I loved the way he says the Russian and German generals' names, especially "Rokossovsky"! Also the subtle accenting he put on occasionally when quoting the slogans of advancing/retreating troops for example. I realised early on that I would need to get out a decent map of Germany to help me picture the movement of the various events as the Germans capitulated, though a quick check online tells me that the print edition has reasonably good maps of the key stages covered.

Maybe my 'review' should have ended after the first sentence, I'm not sure. But for anyone with an interest in the history of modern Europe, or in the dehumanisation that accompanies warfare - and the everyman's and everywoman's experience of that process, this book is a must.

>183 rebeccanyc: Thank you Rebecca - that does look like a great book store at the Tenement Museum.

Excellent review of the Beevor book. I'll add it to my list of books about Germany I should read while I'm here.

I've heard nothing but good things about Beevor's WWII histories, and have had his Stalingrad on the TBR for several years. Now this one sounds like a not-to-miss too.

Beevor's book sounds fascinating. I will look for it.

Loved your review Paul.

Please accept my apologies, Paul! Somehow I misplaced your thread and several others, and I missed your excellent review of Journey Through a Small Planet, which I'll look for on my next visit to London.

This past September I returned to the East End twice, as Bianca (drachenbraut23) and I went on a free Jack the Ripper walking tour, and Joe (jnwelch), his wife Debbi (walklover) and I went on the splendid and educational Old Jewish Quarter Walking Tour that is sponsored by London Walks. I took several photos of old shop signs, including one of the CH N. KATZ store that you posted in your review. I understand that it sold twine and string during the late 19th and early 20th century:



Thanks also for your excellent review of Berlin: The Downfall 1945.

I'm now craving a salt beef with mustard beigel from Beigel Bake.

>184 Polaris-: Stellar review! Definitely going on the wishlist. Wonderful that one of your last books of the year earned a whopping 5 stars.

Thank you Avid, and thank you all who have joined in with my rather stop-start Club Read thread this past year. I can't really explain why but I seem to have lost a little bit of my LT habit since the summer. I know it will come back, it's a certainty, but real life events have distracted me lately and work has kept me tired out more and more... A family bereavement has ended the year on a downer, but I AM still reading - just - and DO intend to start a 2015 thread sooner or later for anyone who might be interested in my sporadic ramblings.

Happy reading in 2015, and I'll see you over in the new group soon enough...
So long!

Thanks for checking in. Sorry for your loss; they're never easy.

Will keep my eye out for your new thread .... whenever.

Was wondering where you were. Sorry for you loss, but it's nice to hear from you. And, yeah, whenever, look forward to your thread.

I'm sorry for your loss, Paul. Whenever you get to the 2015 thread we will be there.

What they all said!

I'm sorry to hear that your year ended so badly, Paul. I hope that 2015 is a better year for you, and I look forward to seeing you online, and again in person, soon!

Sincere condolences, Paul. Wishes for a good 2015!

Thank you so much for these messages.

My 2015 thread is now under way: http://www.librarything.com/topic/187308 .

Better late than never I hope...!