What are you reading ?

[Templogin]

the Frenchman in me

We all need a hobby SJ :-) I understand the pharmacy staff are discreet when selling pile ointment to shy customers!

Which brings us neatly to that other Scottish sound that English folk can't make, the 'ch' as in loch

Truth is we don't even bother trying!

Please don't listen to how we pronounce French up here.....gigot chops are jiggit, sighbees are ciboles, etc.,

My French is even better and spoken in a Yorkshire accent, "Gee Maple Andy".

Give it bit longer and you'll be pronouncing Portsmouth " Pompey ".

Or smartarses like me pronouncing it Pompeii !

 

[Templogin]

I am often asking around offices, "does anyone know the French for rendez-vous?" It must be why people used to groan as I walked into an office!

 

[Saint-Just]

“The problem with the French is they don’t have a word for entrepreneur”. (Apocryphal quote from “Dubya”)

 

[noddy]

Chewing quickly through the Blasket novels led to a pause while Amazon gets titles to me. So, I went back and re-read Flora Thompsons novels, and then C. Henry Warren's 'The Good Life' - 1946, so of a particular origin. I guess this might have been the source of the title of the Richard Briers/Felicity Kendall BBC series. It's an anthology of how great working life in the countryside is. Obviously and implausibly romantic, it is, in all, a load of bloody bollocks, even though each quoted passage has its own value ranging from the massively impressive to the more or less sublime. An odd aggregate effect.

 

[ElThomsono]

Is Flora Thompson any good? She's got a blue plaque just down the road from me, and there's a pub called The Lark Rise, I seriously doubt that any of the clientele would know why.

 

[Oldtimer]

I always thought Lark Rise to Candleford was totally autobiographical, but since discovered that it is fictional, but based on her childhood. Whatever, it's a fascinating study of the huge changes in English society brought about by the Industrial Revolution and a fascinating social history of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. I guess she would have been around the age of my grandmother, who was born before there were aeroplanes, radio or television and cars were very uncommon. The story is set a few miles north of where we live. I keep meaning to visit.

 

[Saint-Just]

I was always fascinated by the fact that on my mother’s side my Grandmother’s parents knew Clément Ader; born in 1893, she was 10 when the Wright brothers flew off Kitty Hawk, and it was at her place that we all watched Armstrong and Buzz walk on the moon.

I forgot: She was at Le Bourget for Lindbergh!

 

[Jaggededge]

But did they?

 

[noddy]

Is Flora Thompson any good? She's got a blue plaque just down the road from me, and there's a pub called The Lark Rise, I seriously doubt that any of the clientele would know why.

A comparison w/Steinbeck would make for an interesting first year English assignment. Chuck in an image search of 'Stanley Spencer cottage' too.

 

[ElThomsono]

But did they?

The Wright Brothers? Yeah, they filmed it!

I actually have a copy of this one, I've not yet found myself in the mood to start it.

The Grapes of Wrath is pretty much if The Broons had been caught up in the highland clearances.

 

[Jaggededge]

I obviously meant the other 2 .

 

[5teep]

Found a Youtube channel which is all classic audio books

https://www.youtube.com/@ClassicAudiobooks29

 

[noddy]

Compton MacKenzie 'My Record of Music' ... not sure why, though. It is kind of fascinating, but also an odd thing to read and I may well not finish it.

 

[ElThomsono]

Is Flora Thompson any good? She's got a blue plaque just down the road from me, and there's a pub called The Lark Rise, I seriously doubt that any of the clientele would know why.

That light's been out for months.

 

[Templogin]

Just finished the Rat Stone serenade by Denzil Meyrick.

It's been good to read a book based in Scotalnd with mainly Scottish characters, however the denoument had more twists than was credible. Other than that I do like the author's style. I was going to join Kobo's equivalent to Audible, but for books (£8.99 per month), on the strength of this book whilst I was mid-way through it, but I have decided to go off in a different direction and have picked up free from the Kobo library The Omega Strain - A Mitch Herron Thriller by Steve P Vincent. It's an American book so I might not get far into it. I will probably return to Scottish authors after this. Any recommendations folks?

 

[noddy]

Joy in the Morning

 

[Juttle]

Crypt

 

[noddy]

Just finished the Rat Stone serenade by Denzil Meyrick.

It's been good to read a book based in Scotalnd with mainly Scottish characters, however the denoument had more twists than was credible. Other than that I do like the author's style. I was going to join Kobo's equivalent to Audible, but for books (£8.99 per month), on the strength of this book whilst I was mid-way through it, but I have decided to go off in a different direction and have picked up free from the Kobo library The Omega Strain - A Mitch Herron Thriller by Steve P Vincent. It's an American book so I might not get far into it. I will probably return to Scottish authors after this. Any recommendations folks?

Walter Scott wrote decent page turners; Rankin, Kelman, Mc Dermid might suit too

 

[Oldtimer]

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan.

Interesting alternative view of history which takes an Asian view instead of European. Very relevant to understanding the present day changing balance of world power.

 

[BorderReiver]

42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams.​

 

[Templogin]

Omega Strain finished. It was only 112 pages. Very gung ho. One man saves the world from viral extinction.

I am now onto Dead Mountain - The True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident by Donnie Eichar

 

[ElThomsono]

Back onto the good stuff, this time Kolyma Tales, one man's account of his time in the gulag. I'd read snippets before and it's pretty interesting.

 

[Saint-Just]

Solzhenitsyn's "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" and "The Gulag Archipelago" made a lasting impression on the 16yo I was then...

 

[ElThomsono]

Scared you straight, did it?

 

[Saint-Just]

Scared you straight, did it?

Especially when I was also discovering a taste for cinema, and was seeing Costa-Gavras' "Z" of course, but more to the point "The Confession" and then a few years later "Missing"; You can add Alan Parker's "Midnight Express" to the mix and by the time I was 21 I had little faith left in the capacity of mankind to be trusted with anything. Then at 25 there was Joffé's "The Killing Fields"...

I am usually not asked why I have a slight Misanthropy...