It's the occasional reading thread!

[Lily Fairbairn]

Between one thing and another and yet another---all of the above affected by a bout with Covid-19 [] ---I haven't read as much this time around as I normally would have done.

In the current crop of magazines, the cover story in the Smithsonian is about the history of the stories of King Arthur, always a topic I find interesting. The cover story in Archaeology is about details of King Tut's life, ditto. (It's the centenary of the discovery of his tomb.)

I listened to The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, by Phaedra Patrick. This book belongs in a subgenre I've dubbed Geezer Quest. There's always an elderly (in other words, about my age [shocked]) man slipping slowly into obsolescence and depression until he's stirred by someone or something (in Arthur's case, his late wife's charm bracelet) into leaving home, braving the outside world, having (mostly) heart-warming adventures, and finding happiness again.

Other titles in my imaginary sub-genre include Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. All three of these books are British

There are two similar ones from Sweden. The one with the male protagonist, A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Bachman, fits the Pepper, Pettigrew, and Fry pattern quite well. However, the one where the protagonist is female, An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good, by Helen Tursten, is nowhere near as benign as the others. In fact, the protagonist is not at all depressed and obsolescent, she's a nasty piece of work trading on her age and femininity to get away with, literally, murder.

I'm now listening to the fifteenth book in Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti mystery series, Through a Glass, Darkly. This one gets off to an exceptionally slow start, but the descriptions of springtime in Venice in general and of the work at a glass factory on Murano in particular have held my interest. Plus there are always the internal politics of the Questura for comic relief.

I'm still listening to Andy Serkis's brilliant reading of LotR, and have almost finished The Two Towers. What a delight to get re-acquainted with Tolkien's Faramir, and what a delight to hear his superb description of the Morgul Vale.

So what have you been reading?

 

[Annael]

we have a friend whom we all thought was a born "Norwegian bachelor farmer" - except he's a Merchant Mariner not a farmer - content to live alone, heart untouched. Mutual friends have paraded every single woman they know, including me, past him, to no avail. (In my case it was doomed when he told me he never read anything written by women.)

But then he either read or saw the movie version of "Ove" and it hit home, apparently. He started dating the most recently-paraded-past woman and they've now been married five years. She says he's very thoughtful.

Moving has left me little time or energy for reading, but I've been slowly working through the annotated "Persuasion." Apparently all the other versions I've read have been edited; this one is not and there's a lot of stuff I don't ever remember reading before. In general I'd say the edited versions are an improvement; the person who compiled this version often comments that had she not been so ill by this time, she probably would have rewritten several sections. The introduction of Mrs. Smith as a device to enlighten Anne about Mr. Elliott is a case in point.

 

[entmaiden]

I haven't read the book. The movie was lovely.

I'm re-reading LOTR. In advance of the Rings of Power, I re-read just the Appendices because I wanted that content to be fresh on my mind as I watched the new show. That led me back to the Prologue and I'm about to star a Long-Expected Party.

Amazon Book Club is covering the Lord of the Rings and it's fun to follow along and read the comments.

 

[N.E. Brigand]

My mom had surgery today (it went well), and while sitting in the waiting room this morning, I was reading The Ministry of Fear, a 1943 thriller by Graham Greene, which I have in a volume of three early Greene novels. I'd read the first, This Gun for HIre (1936) a couple years back (and noted on TORN a connection to J.R.R. Tolkien's college hooliganism) and just a few months ago, I'd read the second novel, The Confidential Agent. When my sister mentioned the news the Queen was ailing, I was reminded of the following passage from that 1939 tale. The protagonist, who is only ever called "D.", is a representative of a European country in the throes of civil war (unnamed, and though inspired by events in Spain, with a language that the English characters describe as difficult to pronounce), betrayed by his embassy and on the run from the police in London, when stepping out of an Underground station, he briefly finds himself in the midst of a spectacle:

These were cheers in the air; everyone was cheering; it might have been a great victory. The Knightsbridge pavement was crowded; over the road the tops of the Hyde Park gates appeared above the low fog; in another direction a chariot spurred behind four tossing horses above the dingy clouds. All round St. George's Hospital the buses were held up, vanishing gradually like alligators into the marshy air. Somebody was blowing a whistle; a bath chair slowly emerged trundled by its invalid, while with the other hand he played a pipe, a painful progress along the gutter. The tune never got properly going; it whistled out, like the air from a rubber pig, and then started again with an effort. On a blackboard the man head written, "Gassed in 1917. One lung gone." The yellow air fumed round him and people were cheering.

A Daimler drew out of the traffic block, women squealed, several men took off their hats. D. was at a loss; he had seen religious processions in the old days, but nobody here seemed to be kneeling. The car moved slowly in front of him; two very small girls, stiffly dressed in tailored coats and wearing gloves, peered thorugh the pane with pasty indifference. A woman screamed, "Oh, the darlings. They're going to shop at Harrod's." It was an extraordinary sight: the passage of a totem in a Daimler. A voice D. knew said sharply: "Take off your hat, sir." it was Currie."

And the plot moves on.

In 1939, Elizabeth and Margaret would have been 13 and 9, respectively, so I think the story should be understood to take a place a few years earlier.

Another slight connection to Tolkien: D. is an expert in medieval literature.

 

[N.E. Brigand]

Would Elizabeth and Margaret have been the subject of such adulation as Greene describes prior to 1936, when their father unexpectedly became king?