Please use the receptacle provided: What are you reading as 2023 begins?

I'm slowly listening through the complete Sherlock Holmes stories, narrated to perfection by Stephen Fry. Just finished the Final Problem. Next up: The Hound of the Baskervilles.

i have seen about half a dozen adaptations of H of the Bs and it has yet to click for me. is it real, or imagined? dunno. maybe i should read the actual thing.

The real prob with H of the B is that Holmes disappears from the central section of the book, and his surprise return to the narrative is not in the least surprising.

The opening section of the Hammer adaptation is Terence Fisher and the crew at their best, a riot of colour and intensity that doesn't come at all from the Conan Doyle story.

I love Hound of The Baskervilles, easily my favourite Doyle, but of the hundreds of film & TV adaptations, I haven't seen a single one that rises above mediocrity.

I wrote this about it when I read it five years ago: https://centuriesofsound.com/2018/05/14/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/

There's a Folio edition of THOTB with very pleasing Edward Bawden linocut illustrations that can be picked up for a tenner or so, I recommend it.

More Women Than Men, Ivy Compton-Burnette - Life in a girl's school, featuring homosexuality amongst two genders. Feels very much a play in being almost entirely dialogue; a lot of Wilde in its DNA, with all these witty aphorisms, but sometimes the sentences are so strangely built that I might as well be reading Shakespeare. The kind of book where when asked if she had a good trip, a character will not reply "yes" but "I'm afraid the ayes have it in that regard". Have to finish it by Thursday (book club selection) and so reading it in big chunks, which does get wearying; think I'd enjoy it more in small doses, where the overwhelming eagerness to be clever didn't stick out so much.

THOTB is much more enjoyable to read when you're familiar with Conan Doyle's comforting, comic prose style. It's a terrible choice as a "my first Sherlock Holmes book" because the plot is stupid.

Unrelatedly - I saw the Jeremy Brett "Golden Pince-Nez" on ITV4 last week. It's just terrible. I've never seen a Brett episode before, and I know he's supposed to be an acquired taste, but I was surprised how... bad and stagey he was.

Oh, I'm reading Kate Atkinson's "When Will There Be Good News", which starts with the usual family massacre and promises to be good fun.

I have been slowly slowly getting back into the rhythm of reading again post-pandemic, mainly because I have been going into the office and reclaiming some reading time on the bus.

I started by tackling some easier-to-read things like the classic run of Alan Garner from the 60s and some less-good stuff in that line ("The Giant Under the Snow" by John Gordon which has a few fab scenes, like when the kids are flying over Norwich but is mostly a bit pish and flat) ("Seaward" by Susan Cooper which has virtually none of the power of the Dark Is Rising); some detective-y thrillery things, Len Deighton (shock news! "Horse Underwater" is nowhere near as good as "The Ipcress File" and frankly neither is much good) and Simenon and the like. These things are distracting enough but I'll never really love them, which I understand is a failing on my part. I read my first Le Carre which was clearly very well written but I've already forgotten its plot and its title, it had spies and that.

Had a good haul in Foyles sale, for a quid each. "Spiritual Choreographies" by Carlos Labbe is a nebulous and non-linear affair which (roughly speaking) tells the story of a pop group / rock band. It references Felt - one of the characters only listens to Bach and Felt. What is it about Felt that seems to inspire people? I like them well enough but have never been able to hear it. "The Endless Summer" by Madame Neilsen, the story of a non-trad family through the 70s to roughly the present - Neilsen has a really impressive way of elaborate digression, pulling focus to different times and places in a way that I found a bit thrilling; I found a real emotional tug in understanding the fate of the handsome one, and the one who was never really a boy but didn't know it at first, and so on.

I am usually a one book at a time kind of person but am currently enjoying Mephisto's Waltz by Sergio Pitol, The Hanky of Pippin's Daughter by Rosemary Walkdrop (these two represent the other half of my four for £4 Foyles find) and On Overgrown Paths by Knut Hamsun, billed on the back cover as KH's apologia for being publicly in favour of the nazi occupation of
Norway - a third of the way in he is mostly achieving a kind of befuddled indignation but he's under house arrest and not allowed to read the newspapers that are starting to contain news of what actually happened during the occupation. I look forward to the apologia. Interesting in the context of the current Telegraph / Today Programme manufactured freakout about cancel culture.

Waldrop, that says.

"giant under the snow" terriifed me as a kid (imagining being menaced by squeaky men made of leather as i waited for the bus!) but yes the plot is a but of a succession of more or less scary episodes which he doesn't tie together very well. his follow-up ("the house on the brink") scared me even more tbh and is i feel more effectively relentless

i never got on so well w/susan cooper but i didn't read her till much later

The Puffin cover for Giant Under the Snow is all-time tho

https://www.murrayewing.co.uk/mewsings/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Maitland-Gordon-Giant-Under-the-Snow.jpg

jonquil bill and arf

Yeah that was the edition I picked up for 50p and was v excited to do so. I was a bit hard on it, the descriptive passages concerning Norwich / Norfolk are good, especially in terms of crumbling bits of English cities in the 60s / 70s (v Elidor, of course).

vineland
much more accessible than I assumed it would be

It's probably his most accessible book. It's probably his biggest disappointment, coming after GR. On reread, it wasn't bad, but still very light in comparison.

i like vineland more on every reread, and GR less tbh

I have an inordinate fondness for Inherent Vice, which has both the SoCal hippie vibe I dig and some truly beautiful passages.

antony maitland art on the Giant btw

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=antony+maitland+illustrator&t=fpas&iax=images&ia=images

ooh nice, i like his work for leon garfield a lot and never made the connection

Soden, Jeoffry, The Poet's Cat
Podhoretz, Ex-Friends

I didn't know that Caleb Carr, the author of The Alienist, is the son of Lucien Carr, who was in the social circle of Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac in New York in the 1940s. Lucien Carr, who was not the best mind of his generation, killed a man who had been infatuated with him and who had been stalking him, and dumped the body in the river. Kerouac helped him conceal evidence. Lucien Carr did time but Kerouac didn't.

Sudjic, Norman Foster

He had a life-long antipathy to the use of capital letters, suggesting that if only Germans had been less partial to their pomposity, they might have resisted fascism more readily.

Graves dismissively suggested that he would rather practise law than be forced to build architecture like Foster's. In response, Foster remarked that post-modernism should be understood as a game to be played in private, by consenting adults.

I quite enjoyed The Alienist. I had no idea about Caleb's parental connection to the Beats and crime.

"Mephisto's Waltz by Sergio Pitol"

Can I borrow sometime?

Had always read about the Carr murder/homicide as response to repeated sexual harassment, but this skillfully delves into documented complexities: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/27/the-queer-crime-that-launched-the-beats/

Near the end, the author says, What actually prompted Carr’s stabbing in Riverside Park that August remains a mystery. But this account of adjustments made likely fits well into his book,Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall.

When Carr died, I read that he became a longtime AP editor, known for his advice to get a good draft and then delete the first graf---which has worked for me sometimes, seeing my original opener as a crutch.

(Delvings incl. how this murder and related matters figured in writing of Kerouac, solo and with Burroughs, also Ginsberg and Gore Vidal.)

app to xyzzz___: sure!

xp, not app.

xp, not app.

xp, not app.

xp, not app.

I am good at internet

I've seen that happen twice in the past few days, to posts by presumably different ilxors (both on ilm, I think).

Twice before this.

I found Mephisto's Waltz good but sometimes hard going; I strongly recommend going forward to the Trilogy of Memory if you find Pitól's manner even a little engaging. The whole trilogy is utterly marvelous.

I finished A Brief Histoy of Seven Killings by Marlon James, the Booker Prize winner from Jamaica in 2015. I listened to it. It was narrated by multiple actors, but many of them were really hard to understand. I liked it but I'm not sure I really understood the essence of it.

The audiobook of Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead is great, and I'm enjoying listening to Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet, longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize

can’t really imagine listening to that james book, part of the appeal is letting those words tumble in your head

he’s sometimes hard to read, but then there are these torrid passages where it feels like your head is on fire

Tim: thanks, will remind you whenever we meet next. And you are good at the internet!!

---

I found Mephisto's Waltz good but sometimes hard going; I strongly recommend going forward to the Trilogy of Memory if you find Pitól's manner even a little engaging. The whole trilogy is utterly marvelous.

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 21 February 2023 bookmarkflaglink

If I were to compile a list of the best things to come out in translation over the last few years The Trilogy would be right up there.

I've got The Love Parade (the first vol in The Carnival trilogy). Might begin this weekend.

(shock news! "Horse Underwater" is nowhere near as good as "The Ipcress File" and frankly neither is much good)

I believe this is the one where Deighton suggests Germans are astoundingly good at speaking Portuguese without an accent, a notion that my native speaker Portuguese friends can not corroborate.

What is it about Felt that seems to inspire people? I like them well enough but have never been able to hear it.

I think they are very overrated despite featuring some good lead guitar parts.

So we agree, which makes me glad.

A novel about Norwich in the 1960s & 1970s? I really ought to read that.

The copy that is on my "get rid" pile is yours if you want it.

Thanks Tim!

re chuck_tatum's recoil from jeremy brett as sherlock

my sister and i *loved* brett in the 80s when these shows were first going out, absolutely chattering fandom stuff, so i was interested in this abreaction and last night tried to log in to re-watch "the golden pince-nez" (a plot i can't call to mind). i notice the ep is from the fourth season -- when i think the overall style of the show had become somewhat mannered and gimmicky -- but to recap what it was that we loved at the time (in earlier eps), was just a kind of expressive animality full of surprise grunts and wolfman tics, just very unlike the acting template of the time. he was fun to watch, and silly not bland! we were very sad when he died (younger than i am now i see).

i even wrote a piece about the show but it never ran bcz i quit the magazine for unrelated reasons… but the long-and-short of my thesis was i believe that brett was good bcz he took it as read that holmes was literally the monster in the narrative

anyway we have probably passed through three or four fashions in TV thesp templates since then? i often find myself watching 90s tv and thinking "why did i not notice how bad everyone's acting is?" when the reason is mostly that the degree zero mode has changed a lot. i do recall reading that he specifically aimed for a "theatrical" (presumably meaning somewhat over-amped?) approach to the role.

despite it being on ITV streaming my TV wasn't having it for some reason so i had to give up :(

I liked Jeremy Brett.

https://i.imgur.com/59BkUbu.gif

^He looks a bit like current Aston Villa manager Unai 'Dracula' Emery in that gif. Definitely a touch of the vampire there, which seems a not overly wayward interpretation of the character, really.

I don't really know the Brett TV series, but the Sherlockians I see on the interweb seem to think he was v v good in the early series and v v bad in the later ones.

Ppl here are underestimating the Rathbone/Bruce Hound of the Baskervilles, imho. Again, visually it's very close to a classic American horror film of the 1930s/40s, made possible by an A picture budget and the full technical resources of a major Hollywood studio.

I’ll give Brett another try then, maybe one of the earlier ones. They can’t fuck up Bruce-Partington Plans or Blue Carbuncle, surely. Perhaps it’s a case of readjusting my “this is what acting is supposed to be” preconceptions a bit. I will say, I enjoyed the general vibe of the show - excellent production values and direction - maybe a late example of the classic “expressionism in grey and brown” house style of 70s/80s BBC dramas like Tinker, EoD, etc

the brett version is also much more respectful of dr watson as a character -- via two successive actors (david burke then edward hardwicke) he's an intelligent foil, a long way from nigel bruce (of rathbone/bruce)'s bumbling nincompoop

Also true of Martin Freeman in Sherlock, Lucy Liu in Elementary.

xp

deem to think he was v v good in the early series and v v bad in the later ones.

seem not deem, sorry.