Grand unified books thread

[Savonarola]

I have the Penguin edition of Ulysses. I've not finished the book itself (duh), but I loved the extensive foreword about the work's history. Especially that Joyce modeled the book around a very intricate structure of themes and motifs. He released the framework a few years lter, frustrated that no one seemed to notice it

I think every chapter is supposed to stand for a part of the Odyssey, a body part and an academic discipline.  The first is obvious (the book is called "Ulysses" after all) the other two not so much.  In addition the book is loaded with riddles, enigmas and puns.  Those range from obvious (the "Says I" (eye) motif from the Cyclops chapter) to obscure (the milk woman is supposed to represent a Irish mythology which is intended as Joyce's criticism of the Irish Renaissance) to the incomprehensible, like this riddle in the Nestor chapter:

They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily:

—A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.

—O, ask me, sir.

—A hard one, sir.

—This is the riddle, Stephen said:

The cock crew,
The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.

What is that?

—What, sir?

—Again, sir. We didn't hear.

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane said:

—What is it, sir? We give it up.

Stephen, his throat itching, answered:

—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay.

I'm not surprised that the critics at the time didn't get it all.  I'm not sure our present day scholars have gotten it all.

[Sheilbh]

I just read They by Kay Dick. It was published in 1971 and didn't get much attention and was then out of print for the next forty years. There's been a re-print recently from Faber because a literary agent apparently picked up a second hand copy in a charity shop and loved it.

It's really good, I think. It's a really striking dystopia/English countryside horror. It's a small book - maybe a novella, maybe a collection of connected short stories - of about 100 pages.

Basically it's an unnamed narrator who is living somewhere on the coast in the South Downs. The narrator occasionally visits or is visited by neighbours or friends from further away who are creative or artistic or individualists or loners etc. This group are threatened by "them".

It's never really explained who they are, or where they come from. They are in some way running the country now and conducting surveys. They are building towers ("retreats") with no natural liight just an air vent where people are cured to go back to normal. And they're a permanent threat to the narrator and their circle.

For example the narrator will go for a walk and come back to find that they have taken the copy of Middlemarch (locking your door is pointless and anti-social - it just provokes them) or they've taken paintings from your wall. If people keep going "beyond the limit" they're punished and then returned - it's normally linked to their transgression so a painter who keeps painting is blinded, a musician is made deaf, if the narrator transgresses they would amputate their hands and cut out their tongue.

It's not a simple or straightforward dystpoia - there's no real plot. There's no world-building or anything like that - though they started with a dead dog on the steps of the National Gallery. It's more of an exploration through short stories of the unease and unquiet of something pervasive. Children in the village, for example, now mainly seem to get their kicks out of animal cruelty; neighbours ask for a rose from your rose bush only to crush it to a pulp while smiling at you; they will come to your house for tea unannonced and spend a day with you.

But I really liked it - and it is exploring themes of the destruction of art and what's the point of it if no-one's paying attention which seem particularly striking in a book that basically had one hard-copy run and was then not re-published for another 40 years.

[The Brain]

Finished Women in Ancient Rome, by Chrystal. Pretty good, but it doesn't cover every aspect, which the author admits. It is almost completely based on written sources, but there is some discussion of results from human remains etc. At just over 200 pages it's a nice introduction to the subject of Roman women, for a reader who already has basic knowledge of ancient Rome.

[mongers]

Reading 'A Line in the Sand' - why am I reading this, it starts with the Sykes-Picot agreement, I mean it isn't going to have a happy ending is it?

[The Brain]

Finished Women in Ancient Egypt, by Robins. A nice overview/introduction. Of course the source material is extremely limited, something the author stresses. I like that she avoids reading more into limited sources than they support. The book is almost 30 years old, but my guess is that there hasn't been a quantum leap in the field since then.

[crazy canuck]

Brain, you might enjoy this:

https://www.amazon.ca/When-Women-Ruled-World-Queens/dp/142622088X/ref=asc_df_142622088X/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=414405674363&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10151997985655912988&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001575&hvtargid=pla-880360771132&psc=1

It provides a good overview of the current state of archeological finds and places the women who held positions of power within the context of what we now know about Egyptian society.

I found it to be a page turner - a good narrative of their rule along with an very readable explanation of how Egyptian society changed over time along with stressing how these women were very much a part of that society rather than exceptions to it.

[The Brain]

Looks cool. Thanks!

[The Brain]

Finished Armies of Ancient Italy 753-218 BC, by Esposito. A brief simple straight narrative of Italian military history of the period, with some maps and many color photos of reenactors in period gear. It's not an academic work (there's no discussion of the reliability of sources or similar), but it's a fine simple overview, which certainly fills a niche since descriptions of Italian non-Romans of the period aren't as common as they should be. I've always found the struggles of early Rome fascinating, and the cast of peoples they fought is pretty interesting.

[Sheilbh]

Just finished Our Lady of the Nile - it's a novel set in all girls' school for the Rwandan elite in the early 70s. It's a good read which I'd recommend.

It's generally a relatively light high school novel about strict slightly ridiculous nuns, with the girls pushing against the rules and the tropes of board school books - midnight feasts, excursions off the grounds etc. There are stories about the fight between the Mother Superior and a new hippy-ish volunteer French teacher with long hair (Mr Hair) who refuses to get it cut - or the girls sneaking in tasty Rwandan food to avoid having to eat the "Western" food from the canteen of Kraft slices and tinned fish.

But there is a constant sinister undertow of the "majority people" Hutu girls (especially one character who's the daughter of a minister) against the "quota" of Tutsis. There is also a reference of the role white colonisers played in creating or exacerbating the conflict - both in the conversations between Rwandan characters and in the role of an older Frenchman who previously owned a plantation near the school who likes to draw Tutsi girls and has created a form of shrine to Tutsi-ness, which he has "solved" in identifying their more elevated origins than the Hutus.

Sometimes in can be a little on point/didactic on pre-figuring the genocide and the hatred - especially in some of the dialogue, but in general the book balances the two incredibly well - especially for a first novel.

Weirdly I'm on a bit of a post-colonial Francophone run for some reason. It's not been deliberate but interesting anyway.

[garbon]

Brandon Sanderson has created a Kickstarter (I think yesterday) and already raised 10.8 million pounds.

I guess he has some rabid fans.

[jimmy olsen]

He apparently wrote an extra four books with all the extra time he had from not doing conventions due to Covid19.

[Habbaku]

Can anyone recommend his books? I've read literally zero of them, but they are in a genre which I enjoy and need more decent authors.

[grumbler]

Can anyone recommend his books? I've read literally zero of them, but they are in a genre which I enjoy and need more decent authors.

I found him a tedious writer who over-described everything.

Read Abercrombie's Age of Madness trilogy instead.

[crazy canuck]

Can anyone recommend his books? I've read literally zero of them, but they are in a genre which I enjoy and need more decent authors.

I found him a tedious writer who over-described everything.

Read Abercrombie's Age of Madness trilogy instead.

I tend to agree.  I tried getting into his Stormlight series.  I enjoyed the first book, it had interesting characters and world development that was promising.  But then the second book went on for pages and pages of very detailed descriptions of something that was happening but I was not really sure what it was or why it was important or even who it was happening to.  And put the book down.

As I recall Max is a big fan so perhaps he will come along and give you some good recommendations of Sanderson's work.

[garbon]

I also dislike his writing style which I think I posted in this thread at some point. A shame as I used to enjoy his podcast about writing.

I've only read the first Mistborn book and found his characters to be weak and inconsistent. Plot was also not great.