Book Recommendations

[qcrisp]

I am reading and very much enjoying E.F. Schumacher's A Guide for the Perplexed. I can't think it would be everyone's cup of tea, but I am significantly more than half in sympathy with it.

He seems to have been an interesting person. When I hear that someone was Chief Economic Advisor to the British Coal Board for twenty years, I don't immediately imagine that they would write a book that leans heavily on Scholastic philosophy, quoting Aquinas, Plotinus, Dante, Viktor Frankl, and many others, and talking about the likes of Edgar Cayce and Emanuel Swedenborg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher

[Robin Davies]

I'm currently dipping into Scarred for Life, a fat and hugely enjoyable survey of the darker side of popular culture in the UK in the 1970s. For anyone who was a kid (or in their teens as I was) during that period this will ring a lot of bells. Obviously many of the items (especially the TV series and films) have been written about before but there is some obscure stuff (especially in the comics, games and, er, snacks sections) and it's a treat to have it all in one handy, enthusiastic and fact-packed volume.
Scarred For Life Volume One by Stephen Brotherstone Dave Lawrence (Paperback) - Lulu

[waffles]

This could be fun ...

Ccru Writings 1997–2003 - Urbanomic

[beetlebox]

Quote Originally Posted by xylokopos

Trevanian, Shibumi This might appear to be an idiosynchratic choice, but I honestly think that it is a work of genius. Managing to write a popular adventure story, a best-seller, which is at the same time a parody, a critique and an exemplar of an entire genre is an awe-inspiring accomplishment. I have never read anything else that is simultaneously so utterly ludicrous and so uniquely sublime.

I would like to second this recommendation!

[beetlebox]

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll.

A fine book.

"Discover a terrifying world in the woods in this collection of five hauntingly beautiful graphic stories."

I commend it to the House

[yellowish haze]

The three-volume hardcover edition of Trakl's works in English in a translation by James Reidel:

https://www.amazon.com/Poems-Book-Trakl-German-List/dp/0857422464

 

https://www.amazon.com/Poems-Book-Trakl-German-List/dp/0857422464

https://www.amazon.com/Skeleton-Plays-Violin-Three-German/dp/0857424297/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1498327174&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=a+skeleton+playsviolin

 

https://www.amazon.com/Skeleton-Plays-Violin-Three-German/dp/0857424297/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1498327174&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=a+skeleton+playsviolin

https://www.amazon.com/Sebastian-Dreaming-German-Georg-Trakl/dp/0857423312/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0857423312&pd_rd_r=EA4HE4H9TZF0YWNS8B0S&pd_rd_w=J52g2&pd_rd_wg=FCDJH&psc=1&refRID=EA4HE4H9TZF0YWNS8B0S

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sebastian-Dreaming-German-Georg-Trakl/dp/0857423312/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0857423312&pd_rd_r=EA4HE4H9TZF0YWNS8B0S&pd_rd_w=J52g2&pd_rd_wg=FCDJH&psc=1&refRID=EA4HE4H9TZF0YWNS8B0S

[Doctor Dugald Eldritch]

This may have slipped under some people's radars, but I can wholly recommend Martin MacInnes' excellent, unclassifiable debut novel, Infinite Ground, which I read in May, 2017. Brought to my attention by Timothy J. Jarvis, and frequently compared to Angela Carter, Ballard, Kafka, Nabokov, Clarice Lispector, Borges, et al, it begins as a missing person investigation in a nameless Latin American country before mutating into a disorientating exploration of the fluctuant nature of reality. Tartan noir and conventional realism still stifle Scottish letters, but Mr. MacInnes has proven himself to be a formidable talent, and I except great things from him.


A Borgesian Maybe-Murder Mystery

[Zaharoff]

Hartman, Mary S - Victorian Murderesses

Bestseller from 1976. Wordy prose, typical of the times, narrating thirteen stories of poison, pistols, razor blades. Mostly French or English females, and one American living in England.
Author did a thorough job the profound limitations women had during that period (as if laws and attitudes are so much fairer today).
Biggest issue, all property - including financial property - becomes the husband's property upon marriage. That, and women wanted a greater say in rights, freedom, and romance.
Some stories were more arresting or flamboyant than others, but the female who caught my imagination was Madeleine Smith, especially the sweep of time she lived through.



When she was born in 1835 in Scotland, William IV sat on the throne, Darwin sailed the Beagle, Dickens had just begun issuing the Pickwick Papers, Tchaikovsky was not yet born. When she died, in 1928 in Brooklyn, World War I was almost ten years past, the Roaring Twenties were about to smash into the Depression, the Nazi Party was consolidating.
From a pastoral, pre-Victorian world to a thoroughly Modern Era eddying toward World War II.

[Zaharoff]

Powell, Dawn – Turn, Magic Wheel

What a delicious short novel!
Set half in literary New York, half in the social register, this tracks a hungry writer as he tries to shepherd his latest book to publication.
The novel is a barely veiled biography of the great writer of the time, and the ex-wife he abandoned.
The young turk has been befriending and probing the fragile wife for – what? – a few years. Time as needed to unearth as much material to create a juicy read.
Powell’s word use is inspired, dazzling at times, and the pages brim with energy.
Characters are anxious, envious, insecure, arrogant, two-faced – most are all at once.
For today’s tribe who bemoan the age of conversation, here it is! And the players despise it.
Small chatter to mask ignorance, boasting of meaningless accomplishments, shading emotions with irony, and the façade of myth-making.
For a book published in 1936, this seems terribly modern and I feel fortunate to have stumbled onto this author.

[Zaharoff]

Note: My local library ordered a Powell collection, for me, from a library 800 miles distant. The collection contained five novels, and the loan was for six weeks.
So, I made the most of this and read a second novel, luckily guessing which one I might enjoy.


.


Powell, Dawn – A Time To Be Born

Not exactly a sequel to Turn, Magic Wheel, though a handful of characters reappear in this acid packed satire of the New York publishing scene.
Amanda Keeler is right piece of work, appropriating other writers’ efforts, inviting a meaningless school friend to act as beard while she dallies behind her husband, lying to each and everyone, including herself.
So much of this is cringe funny, and probably well captures the dizzy excitement of 1942, as the US was marching into World War II.
Powell’s wordplay, as expected, dances across the pages, her choice of words, impeccable.
This had more topical references, yet the edition I read had notes in the back identifying names, events, fads.
In fact, one that had escaped them was Peggy Hopkins (AKA - Peggy Hopkins Joyce), an infamous golddigger, who did quite well, finding, frolicking, and then fleecing rich husbands.