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giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "painted cows to be seen at the carrefour La Vache Noire"

Either that cow isn't black or there is something wrong with my eyesight! ..."

Oh, you're so picky!
There's another one, too, which isn't black either.

Gpfr wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "painted cows to be seen at the carrefour La Vache Noire"

Either that cow isn't black or there is something wrong with my eyesight! ..."

Oh, you're so picky!
Ther..."

😂

Georg wrote: "It would, however, work in the Southern German dialects (Bavarian and Suebian), not only written, but also phonetically: Feind/Freind."

Herzog was born in Munich, so I like to think it was deliberate and works in 'his' German - thanks for the information!

MK wrote: ""I'm of the opinion that we're all grown-ups here. Let's have faith in our own sensibilities as opposed to having somebody decide what we may or may not be offended by," insists Hanks.

"Let me decide what I am offended by and what I'm not offended by. I would be against reading any book from any era that says 'abridged due to modern sensitivities'.""

But to what extent does Hanks' "we're all grown-ups here" statement apply when talking about the editing of books for children?

Bill wrote: "MK wrote: ""I'm of the opinion that we're all grown-ups here. Let's have faith in our own sensibilities as opposed to having somebody decide what we may or may not be offended by," insists Hanks.

..."

My 2¢ is that we cannot coddle children. Instead of these OMGs an adult can take a moment and use it as a teachable one. The world out there can be harsh and being prepared ought to be helpful.

How about some pigs?



This is only a small sample of about 100 'dressed up' pigs which were sited all over downtown.

Like the pigs, MK!

Depressing weather. We've had several chilly, rainy/showery days. Today started out sunny, but now it's overcast again and "light rain" on the way. The temperature will reach the dizzy heights of 14° this afternoon ...

Gpfr wrote: "Like the pigs, MK!

Depressing weather. We've had several chilly, rainy/showery days. Today started out sunny, but now it's overcast again and "light rain" on the way. The temperature will reach th..."

Weather in the shires has been showery and while only 16c, the sun has been fierce when it breaks through and makes it feel a lot warmer. The air is rich in the smell of pollen, swifts are now squealing in the skies, it hasnt been chilly here since April but then in a normal Mid May, 14-16c would be dissapointing but it feels nice after a chilly April

I've finished Colin Thubron's Journey into Cyprus which I enjoyed, in spite of finding from time to time the way he wrote about women a bit objectionable. He painted a vivid picture of the island in the early 1970's, as well as its history and myths. I encountered the crusaders again 😉, although at a rather later date than I've yet reached in my crusades book.
A great deal of poverty, still some (few) places where Greeks and Turks lived together, but describing it as the 'last year of peace' as many blurbs do, seems rather misleading. Admittedly it was the last year before the Turkish invasion and the subsequent division of the island, but EOKA, ENOSIS, Greek/Turkish hostility ...

I read this final instalment of the adventures of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, by Faye Kellerman, with mixed feelings. Decker is about to finally retire from the police and they're planning to move to Israel.
There are 2 threads to the story, one is following up an unsolved case from the previous book, and the other is tying up the story of characters we've encountered at various times before, Chris Donati, brothel owner, ex-mobster ... , and his ex-wife Terry. There are many unpleasant aspects to the latter story, among them brutal sex scenes.
I've enjoyed many of the books of this series, finding, for example, the way the characters dealt with their religious faith interesting, but if you haven't read them, please don't start with this one. I kept on with it because it's the last.

I'm now reading The Brutal Tide, the latest in Kate Rhodes' Scilly Island series.

@Andy
I enjoy looking at your photos with Roja who looks so happy �� living a good dog life!
Talking about the Auvergne made me think about a long-ago holiday there in our then camper van, 1979, I guess. I've put a picture in Photos. I thought I had more, but the others must be slides.

Gpfr wrote: "Like the pigs, MK!

Depressing weather. We've had several chilly, rainy/showery days. Today started out sunny, but now it's overcast again and "light rain" on the way. The temperature will reach th..."

Meanwhile, here in the PNW we have a 'hazardous weather alert' from the weather folks for the weekend! The thermometer will reach to the mid-80s. I have to chuckle about this because one of the big reasons I moved here so long ago is that I had lived too long in the Washington, DC, area where temps in the 80s along with our low humidity would be much welcomed.

Bookwise I began Lessons in Chemistry on audio from the library yesterday. It's a huge hit here (the author has a Seattle-area connection although she lives somewhere around London now). Set in the early 60s with all the clueless misogyny rampant in the beginning at least, I'm finding it such hard going (because of been there, done that, and don't need to be reminded, thank you very much) that someone else can read/listen to it. I'm off to find something more pleasant!

Has anyone here noticed that the British Library and Martin Edwards have done it again with Crimes of Cymru (which Amazon doesn't seem to have as yet)?

PS - Each time I look out the kitchen window I enjoy seeing the vine maples and their colorful leaves -

A couple from me..
I Sailed with Magellan by Stuart Dybek

In the murky area between short stories and a novel, Dybek’s narrative is a homage to his old Chicago neighbourhood with detail found in a documentary detail and flourish raconteur flourish of an experienced spinner of yarns.

Specifically, this is the Little Village community of the 1960s, narrated by something like a reincarnation of himself as a youngster, a boy called Perry, a teenager in all but the first couple of stories.

It’s a tough life for many, families use bed sheets for curtains, veterans drink interminably in seedy bars mourning friends that never came back from the war, and certainly not without danger..

..the daily round of life where bag ladies combed alleys and the homeless, sleeping in junked cars, were found frozen to death in winter. Laid-off workmen became wife beaters in their newfound spare time; welfare mothers in the projects turned tricks to supplement the family budget; and it seemed that every day someone lost teeth at one or another of the corner bars.

It is all held together and made so entertaining by his characters, who express their individuality as they tell their own stories; Uncle Lefty by whom he is employed at the age of 10 to sing in various bars earning Lefty free drinks, his extrovert brother Mick, who, though two years younger, coaxes Perry into the beginnings of adolescent sexuality.

Two chapters are particularly memorable.
Breasts, a tightly plotted little nightmare depicting the fateful collisions of a mob hit man preoccupied with encountered and remembered images of old girlfriends, a stoical Little Village entrepreneur, and a cross-dressing retired pro-wrestler working as store security.
And the final chapter, which deals with the demise of Perry’s inspirational uncle.

Both would stand reading alone, and rank along with the greatest of all Dybek short stories, Cordoba, from the collection The Start of Something: The Selected Stories of Stuart Dybek, though available for free on () Electric Literature Website.

It may defy classification, but its originality and spirit are undeniable.

and Chump Change by Dan Fante

Bruno Dante discovers after getting out of jail in New York, that his father is in a coma and not expected to live. He makes the journey to LA where, addicted to drugs and alcohol and an aspiring writer, where his life continues to spiral out of control.

Fante’s writing style is not quite so poetic as his father’s (John Fante), more visceral and vulgar, in the vein of Charles Bukowski, with an assortment of highly colourful characters accompanied by brutal dialogue.

Fante’s skill in his depiction of his alter ego Dante is to avoid the cliched villain with a heart of gold, rather to paint Dante ad an uncertain and introverted individual caught up in a world that he has no control over.

Treading on egg shells to avoid any type of spoiler, the last pages are memorable, as Dante attempts to move on with life, with his father’s sick dog, Rocco, in tow.

It’s a tremendous and unforgettable book, and sprung a big surprise with its emotional ending.

Gpfr wrote: " I've finished Colin Thubron's Journey into Cyprus which I enjoyed, in spite of finding from time to time the way he wrote about women a bit objectionable. He ..."

In Z by Vassilis Vassilkos which i am currently reading, he involves a lot of the tensions between left and right and zenophobia in early 1960s mainland Greece. Cyprus is mentioned and it seems that a lot of the Greek world was still suffering from the legacy of the Ottoman times, an uneasy settlement from the Turkish wars of the 1920s and the upheaval of WW2.

A mention also for a book I’ve just started, The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World by James Crawford

I’m a chapter in only, but if that’s anything to go by, this is really good.

The first chapter concerns Sápmi, the Sámi homeland, a land with no borders, an ancient land, yet still living, still subsisting, but within the confines of four modern nation states.
Crawford considers whether a nation can survive without land or territory.
For a good part of the chapter he interviews Hans Ragnar Mathisen, who in 1975, took a year to create a map of Sápmi. I’ve put the image in the photo section here, and on my blog.


Coincidentally, there was another interesting map I came across recently, in the end credits of the last episode of Reservation Dogs, called Indian County, which I’ve posted also.

MK wrote: "My 2¢ is that we cannot coddle children. Instead of these OMGs an adult can take a moment and use it as a teachable one. The world out there can be harsh and being prepared ought to be helpful."

So you would, in theory, have no objection to a children's book written from the perspective of what Adam Kirsch (The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us) has called “Anthropocene antihumanism�� (he cites The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene as an example), which advocates human extinction in the near future as the only option which would enable the Earth to maintain a life-sustaining ecology?

Question for our Pacific NWers its getting hot on the Pacific NW Coast, Portland and Seattle....

Is this normal for mid May? Or more worrying climate change

Bill wrote: "MK wrote: "My 2¢ is that we cannot coddle children. Instead of these OMGs an adult can take a moment and use it as a teachable one. The world out there can be harsh and being prepared ought to be h..."

i saw this in the NYRB Bill, sounded rather extreme. I have no doubts that us humans are the most dangerous animals on the earth but alongside our ability to destroy, is the one to create and i am hoping we can save the planet into the 22nd century.

I wont be around to see it though, unless my brain is tethered to an AI system and i "live" in a computer. Lol

AB76 wrote: "i saw this in the NYRB Bill, sounded rather extreme. ... I wont be around to see it though, unless my brain is tethered to an AI system and i "live" in a computer. Lol"

Yes, Mark O'Connell's review in the Apr 20, 2023 issue was very interesting. He took a somewhat deeper dive into Patricia MacCormack's book than Kirsch evidently provides:

We are, palpably, on the far margins of the plausible here, and arguably drifting, too, into the realm of intellectual unseriousness. The brisk treatment of MacCormack’s book in The Revolt Against Humanity piqued my perverse curiosity enough that I sought out a copy, and I learned that its author is surprisingly bullish on cannibalism as both radical queer praxis—as “queer in its collapse of subject and object and food and sex”—and as a sustainable alternative to livestock farming. (“Our world,�� she writes, “is groaning under the weight of the parasitic pestilence of human life and yet our excessive resource is the human dead.��) Kirsch doesn’t touch the cannibalism, which is fair enough, and neither does he try to sell the reader on the significance of the manifesto as a philosophical intervention. But he does make a credible case for it as an extreme manifestation of a broader cultural gesture toward human obsolescence and extinction.

The Ahuman Manifesto could certainly be shelved, for instance, alongside the work of the South African philosopher David Benatar, the leading intellectual figure of antinatalism, a movement that advocates for the end of reproduction as a means to putting humanity out of its misery. The central contention of his work, as laid out in Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006), is that human lives are, on balance, far more painful than pleasurable, and that we who’ve had the misfortune of being born have a moral duty to stop the same thing from happening to others.

Benatar writes less as an environmentalist than as a moral philosopher, but Kirsch counts him as an Anthropocene antihumanist in any case, because of his conviction that human extinction would not deprive the universe of anything unique or valuable. “The concern that humans will not exist at some future time is either a symptom of the human arrogance,�� writes Benatar,

or is some misplaced sentimentalism��. That humans value a world that contains beings such as themselves says more about their inappropriate sense of self-importance than it does about the world��. Things will someday be the way they should be—there will be no people.

He is, in other words, a kind of forlorn and alienated utilitarian. Bentham’s “greatest happiness of the greatest number�� principle gets inverted, by Benatar, into a simpleminded equation: No people, no pain. (One thing that has to be acknowledged about utilitarians is that, whether you agree with them or not, they’re typically better at making themselves understood than, say, poststructuralists. You can always count on a consequentialist for a modest prose style.)

For me, the "humans as disembodied brains" trope always calls to mind the HPL story The Whisperer in Darkness.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i saw this in the NYRB Bill, sounded rather extreme. ... I wont be around to see it though, unless my brain is tethered to an AI system and i "live" in a computer. Lol"

Yes, Mark O'Co..."

thanks for the Lovecraft tip Bill,i have been meaning to read more Lovecraft, following a run over the last few winters of Machen, Conan-Doyle and Blackwood

Reading going well, the Shires air full of the smell of pollen and plenty of rain...

The Sea By John Banville, is my third of his novels and is drawing me in nicely , nostalgia, regret and loss all feature in the narrative. I love the depictions, smells and sensations of the sea he describes, combining all my seaside memories

More reading about West Germany, currently at the 1946-47 stage as the Allied Zones try to feed the German population, swollen by refugees and hampered by a lack of working processing factories and other industry. Gen Clay, the US Governor, is adamantly opposed to nationalisation of the German industries, proposed by the British in their zone.

In Z by Vassilos Vassilikos(1966), political violence darkens the warm, sun kissed springtime streets of Salonika. A charismatic MP is in the city, to talk of peace and socialism, within the local police and military, forces opposed to both plot his death. Its a remarkable novel,slowly unfolding over the evening in question, where a politician will be assassinated. (a true story, a fictionalised retelling of the May 1963 killing of Gregory Lambrakis)

Regarding my German reading, i wonder if any historian or sociologist has studied the politicians in West and East Germany between 1933-55 (for example) and seeing if there is a pattern in their alleigances during the Nazi years and then after

Was the East German political class made up of refugees from Nazism, victims of Nazi jails and camps and Moscow educated bureaucrats or more nuanced? Was the West german political class made up of a smaller group of refugees and camp victims, ex-Nazi's and oppurtunists? Or both sides were more similar than you would expect?

Victor Klemperer, though not a politician, offered me a dissapointing but sensible reasoning for his adoption of the East German state, as he saw it as a definate remove from the Nazi past and a brave new world. Though by the 1950s, he no longer was believing in that ideal

Temperature up to maximum 20° today, before going down again next week. Storms & rain forecast for this afternoon, so I've just been for a walk.
Checking out some of the book exchange boxes, I found a 1932 series of books of photographs of different regions of France.

Here's the front cover of one (sorry, bad photo):



and the back cover:

I got through another exceptional chapter from James Crawford’s The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World this morning.

It concerned a place close to home, Hadrian’s Wall, and the earthwork and furrows that remain of the Antonine Wall, that ran between the Firths of Forth and Clyde.

Why had an empire as mighty as Rome built an endpoint at all? First came one wall and then twenty years later and a hundred miles north, came another. When is a wall not a wall? When it’s a sign of a profound, existential crisis.

The Antonine wall, constructed by Antonius after Hadrian’s death, was abandoned after only 70 years, so hassled he was by the northern tribes.

Crawford examines the significance of the walls since.

And some people have arrived
from the borderlands,
and said there are no more
barabarians anymore.

And now what’s to become of us
without barbarians.
Those people were a solution of a sort.

Waiting for the Barbarians - C. P. Cavafy

Andy wrote: "High Sierra by W.R. Burnett

This novel is, in effect, a biography of Roy Earle, a fictional character, but one that reflects the lives..."

Good advice. High Sierra is worth reading-- and seeing.

Andy wrote: "I got through another exceptional chapter from James Crawford’s The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World this morning.

It concerned a place close to home, Hadri..."

This sounds interesting. There was quite a bit about the Roman Empire in Pathogenesis. They had a real problem with infectious diseases, lack of immunity to the diseases where they invaded and so on. Invthe middle of the third century there was an epidemic in Rome of anEbola like infection which killed more than half the population.
It seems that although the Romans were so good at water supply they were rubbish at public health and the communal baths were also infected by sewage.
I went to order this book on borders but was sidetracked by the one on the Fallen Glory buildings.
I am reading Once upon a Prime by Hart - the hidden links between literature, poetry and mathematics. It’s pretty good, think you would like it.

Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes..."

The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been John Fowles' The Magus and Daniel Martin 🤔

Gpfr wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes..."

The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been John Fowles' The Magus a..."

How the mighty are fallen! I can remember when 'The Magus' was considered quite the cult book to have hand, to presumably have looked just a bit 'cool', back in the day. It was sort of the same for Colin Wilson's 'The Outsider' at least for a bit. Has anyone else got any of their own cult books from their own particular 'formative' time-frame of reference?

Neither of them have I read again. I think It would cause me to have a good laugh at the gullibility of my much younger self, or maybe take pity of an overly impressionable teen-age girl?...

Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes...The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been John Fowles' The Magus..."...How are the mighty fallen!...

Still have my HB copy of The Magus. I always thought the last 50 pages were rubbish, but the love story of a directionless young man setting out for the Mediterranean was perfect for this young man about to do the same. Gave away Daniel Martin years ago. I’m afraid I found it appallingly dull. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, on the other hand, continues to give pleasure.

Colin Wilson also wrote grisly encyclopedias of violent crime. As a teenager with a taste for macabre murders, I knew about these well before being amazed by The Outsider, which I still have too. He identified a theme to make you think, even if his grip of the facts is now thought a bit wobbly.

Apart from pretty much anything by Hermann Hesse, my favorite cult book from that time is actually another piece of non-fiction, The Making of a Counter-Culture by Theodore Roszak, which seemed to press every button. It had added coolness factor for being West Coast and not widely known in the UK.

What about cult bookshops? None to compare with Compendium, in Camden High Street, my regular destination on a Saturday morning, eight stops along on the dilapidated North London Line from grotty Kensal Rise, which I have been astonished to learn is now gentrified.

Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes..."

The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been John Fowles..."

my kult books were :L'Etranger and Notes from Underground, both of which i still love and are as important today as when i was 18-24.

Very rarely for me, as i'm not a regular re-reader , i re-read L'Etranger in 2015 during a heatwave(first time since i was 23ish) and i found it even better, the sun stunned streets and beaches of Algiers felt familiar, as i was reading it on a hot day

Sunshine as i strolled in the water meadows, full rivers and still some trees behind the usual spring leafing, according to BBC this is the first Jan-May period since 1986 where 20c hasnt been exceeded. Its 19c right now and very pleasent in the sun, with a cool breeze.

Reading remains at a high standard. John Banville in The Sea conjures up images, smells and thoughts with a rare skill. In Conversations with Allende, Regis Debray sets the scene of Chilean history, forecasting is lasting security as a modern progressive state, (oh dear Regis, within 3 years it was another military torture camp!).

Vassilos Vassilkis, now in his 90s wrote the political thriller Z in 1966, it was banned by the military dictatorship within 18 months. Dealing with a real political assasination in Salonika in 1963, its a novel of tension and pace, sweaty, breathless but cerebral so far. Lastly John Steinbeck in Journal of a Novel describes the 11months it took to write East of Eden, in diary format,in letters to his publisher

Russell wrote: "Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been John Fowles' The Magus and Daniel Martin..."

Still have my HB copy of The Magus ...

In my latest clear-out of things I'm pretty sure I won't want to read again, I decided The Magus could go, although I remember well the enthusiasm with which we read it as teenagers just before our hitch-hiking to Greece years... I remember almost nothing about Daniel Martin, but had no desire to open it again which tells me something. But I've kept The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

Russell wrote: "Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes...The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been John Fowles' Th..."

I remember Roszak from my couple of years working on an 'alternative' magasine in those particular times. 'Undercurrents'. I see he later went on to publish 'The Making of an Elder Culture', perhaps a chance to catch up with our much elder selves? Seems from the blurb he has kept to his 'dreaming roots... and for a mere £5.80!...

I remember coming off my horse, at full gallop, on midsummer's eve, strangely, on a Welsh hillside, after attempting to read Eros and Thanatos, by Herbert Marcuse, which was also a bit of another type of cult book of its time. (I later learned that a woman out walking her dog around the same time, on the same hillside, had fallen, and died. I felt some kind of strange switch had happened, and that, if anything, it should have been me, doing something way more dangerous, that died...) Eros verses Thanatos?...

I was laid up in bed for about five days afterwards as I couldn't walk. I put it down to me actually learning a rather hard 'factual' lesson of my own struggle to understand a concept that was beyond me at the time. I never did finish the book.

Compendium Books was also a nearby regular stop off point for me, living in Islington, as well as Sisterwrite, on Upper St. Bits of London were cheap enough, in those days, for all kinds of interesting pop-up enterprises to thrive in those old semi-abandoned places.

Of course Camus was another cultish author of the times. I never did get 'Existentialism' somehow, though my only foray was 'Being and Nothingness' which I did not take to at all. I tried to persuade the sprog to read either of them when he did his PPE degree, in the hope he might explain it/them to me... wisely, he wasn't prepared to play along with me... I wonder if Gpfr has some thoughts on the French existentialists?

Tam wrote: "Russell wrote: "Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes...The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been..."

i love the french existentialists, along with the less memorable new novelists like Robbe-Grillet.(though i prefer the films of Robbe-Grillet)

For me Camus, Sartre and other existentialists followed the earlier fiction of writers like Dostoyevsky, Hamsun and Kierkegaard into a deeper void. Camus wrote better novels than Sartre but Sartre was probably the better thinker of the two. Not sure whether or not to include Italian writers like Moravia and Buzzatti in the same genre but i always felt these novels asked important questions, though maybe without answers. I prefer no wrong or right answers personally, so the debate goes on and on...lol

Bill wrote: "MK wrote: "My 2¢ is that we cannot coddle children. Instead of these OMGs an adult can take a moment and use it as a teachable one. The world out there can be harsh and being prepared ought to be h..."

Do you think a child would pick the book up? Even if he/she were a teen?

It's Mother's Day here, so when I saw this post on the dreaded facebook (FB) from Jacqueline Winspear (see below), I thought to share - as it spans the Atlantic. (Note - I once saw her in person (earlier Maisie Dobbs book tour) and she came across as a thoroughly nice person.)

My mother died almost eight years ago, and not a day goes by when I do not think of her. Despite our ups and downs �� and we had a few of the latter - I adored her and I know my brother and I were loved deeply in return. But I always have to smile on this American Mother’s Day, because my mum loved the fact that she could “double dip�� on the whole celebration of mothers thing, due to both my brother and I living here in the USA. You see, for those of you who do not know this, in Britain “Mothering Sunday�� is a much more ancient ritual associated with motherhood, and it takes place on the fourth Sunday of Lent, which usually falls on the last Sunday in March, but not always. And though it is now often referred to as “Mother’s Day�� its roots are not the same as the American celebration of motherhood �� perhaps card companies such as Hallmark started the British referring to it as “Mother’s Day�� so they could sell the same cards on both sides of the Atlantic!
Mothering Sunday, which originated in the 16th century, was connected to the church, to the “mother�� of sanctuaries. There was a tradition that servants would be given a day off to visit their homes and families, to return to their mothers �� a nice thought, when you consider that most people of humble origin were out to work at an age we would today consider to be middle childhood, and they didn't get days off.
Mothering Sunday is celebrated in churches throughout the UK, and in the Catholic religion, it is known as Laetare Sunday to honor the Virgin Mary. There is also the tradition of “going back to the mother church�� �� the place where you were baptized or learned to pray. I wonder about that, because even at the turn of the last century, churchgoing in England never drew more than 3% of the population. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were different in that regard �� there was more of a pull to worship. Today many of those old English churches have been converted into desirable residences, or they have been repurposed for other community uses.
Whatever the history, my mum loved the fact that she would receive cards and flowers in March, and would get another go-round in May. I’d always call my brother a week before the March date to remind him not to forget. And about a week before American Mother’s Day rolled around, we’d both get a call with the not so subtle message, “Oh, isn’t it Mother’s Day over there soon?�� I loved it �� she was so transparent, it made us laugh every time.
When we were kids, we’d run down to the woods first thing on Mothering Sunday morning, and we’d gather small bunches of primroses, violets and delicate wood anemones. I remember one year, when I could at last afford to send a whole bouquet of red roses, she told me how much she missed going up to the attic on Mothering Sunday, to watch my brother and I running home across the field and along the footpath to the house, clutching our little wildflower offerings to be set on the table in an old jar, not a vase. Mind you, she loved those roses too!
I miss my mum more than words could ever express. If truth be told, she was one of the great loves of my life. So, for all you mothers, I wish you a really lovely day with your families, and if you’re apart, enjoy those calls, Skype and Zoom chats or whatever method of communication you choose to say “I love you.�� And especially for all of you who miss your mother, take heart in the memories, the love, support, and the tenderness, especially remember the tenderness.

AB76 wrote: "Question for our Pacific NWers its getting hot on the Pacific NW Coast, Portland and Seattle....

Is this normal for mid May? Or more worrying climate change"

For you AB - please scroll down to check out the May 11 post from our local weather guru (tenured Professor in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington) The Weather of the Pacific Northwest

MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Question for our Pacific NWers its getting hot on the Pacific NW Coast, Portland and Seattle....

Is this normal for mid May? Or more worrying climate change"

For you AB - please scro..."

thanks MK

Imagine my dismay when I logged on to my email this a.m. and found a 'Used Book Alert' from Powells. It was for a copy of The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880 to 1914. The next thing I did was to check what I had sitting in my cart there (lots) and what I would not be able to easily pick up from the main store when I went to Portland next month.

Being originally a thrifty New Englander, I wanted to order enough books ($50 threshold for free shipping) to delete having to pay shipping costs. But don't ask me where I am going to put the 11 books I ended up ordering!

MK wrote: "Imagine my dismay when I logged on to my email this a.m. and found a 'Used Book Alert' from Powells. It was for a copy of The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880 to 1914 ..."

Thanks for the mention. I hadn't actually heard of it. It's a period I find fascinating (and was our "Special subject" in A level History). I've ordered a copy.

Russell wrote: "MK wrote: "Imagine my dismay when I logged on to my email this a.m. and found a 'Used Book Alert' from Powells. It was for a copy of The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880 to 1914 ..."
..."

that book is on my radar, Roy Hattersley, Labour party politician, wrote an excellent book on the same period The Edwardians: Biography of the Edwardian Age, which i recommend

Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes..."

The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been John Fowles..."

My "cult books" when I was 16 or 17 were Hermann Hesse's "Siddharta" and "The Steppenwolf".

When I was 19 it was Simone de Beauvoir's "The Mandarins of Paris"

I have no wish to revisit them. Though I regret that I've somehow lostmy copy of the latter somewhere and somehow. As battered as it was, it was, as an object, a piece of my history.

Georg wrote: "Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes..."

The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been..."

Demian by Hesse was another cult read of mine, wonderful German literature

Georg wrote: "Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes..."

The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been..."

I had, both 'Siddhartha' and 'The Glass Bead Game,' probably still have them. I didn't finish The Glass Bead Game... amongst my many other 'unfinished' books. I read 'The Second Sex', which is allright... Have much stronger memories of reading 'The Female Eunuch' at the time. Not sure what that says about me, other than I'm still a second wave feminist, I guess...

Georg wrote: "Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Checking out some of the book exchange boxes..."

The English books I put in these boxes usually disappear within a day or so, but a notable exception has been..."


I just remembered: when I was about 18 THE cult book in my school class was "Lord of the Rings". My peers started to speak in tongues: "Gandalf, the Grey", hobbits...
In the end I read it. Made me give fantasy fiction a wide berth to this day. Ok, I've read the first Harry Potter at the insistence of a friend. Fantasy is just not for me.

MK wrote: "Do you think a child would pick the book up? Even if he/she were a teen?"

Not the specific books I mentioned, but I could see the “Anthropocene antihumanism�� message being couched in terms of a story that would interest young readers, a tale of animal suffering and extinction and environmental degradation and destruction as a result of human activity.

The Pacific Northwest has had a long, cold, wet spring, followed by an early heat wave. It's odd weather, but we should have enough water in the mountains to avoid a wave of wildfires.

Georg wrote: "I just remembered: when I was about 18 THE cult book in my school class was "Lord of the Rings". My peers started to speak in tongues: "Gandalf, the Grey", hobbits...
In the end I read it. Made me give fantasy fiction a wide berth to this day. Ok, I've read the first Harry Potter at the insistence of a friend. Fantasy is just not for me"

I think I was the first one in my 7th grade to read LOTR, as a result of Roy Thomas dropping allusions to it in the Marvel comics I was reading at the time. I enjoyed it quite a bit and it led me to buy Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings at a local drug store, which in turn led me to E.R. Eddison and Mervyn Peake; the vision of the latter really spoke to me and had a profound influence on my taste in literature. I continued to read fantasy for several years, though most of high school, fueled at first mainly by the Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy series, and then stretching into Faust and The Ring of the Nibelung.

Tam wrote: "Neither of them have I read again."

Same here - though I will say for Wilson's book that it introduced me to some authors I hadn't read at that point, so it was useful in that way.