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Feb 2020
3:33pm, 16 Feb 2020
16,113 posts
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Serendippily
Finished Morvern Callar. Well done for what it was but I didn’t love it
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Feb 2020
6:09pm, 16 Feb 2020
19,257 posts
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Columba
Getting towards the end of The Animals Among Us. It's very patchy; some sections really interesting, some very pedestrian, some plain annoying.
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Feb 2020
8:00pm, 16 Feb 2020
45,051 posts
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Diogenes
Really enjoying Viv Albertine. It’s especially good on people like Sid Vicious and John Lydon. There are bits of it I’d l in e my 17 year old music-mad daughter to read, but not much.
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Feb 2020
6:23pm, 18 Feb 2020
19,272 posts
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Columba
Rather to my relief I have finished The Animals Among Us. It has a few interesting nuggets, but is very repetitious, contains some unsupported assertions as well as lots of "perhaps"es which then evolve into "this is how it happened", makes unjustified assumptions (e.g. that present-day hunter-gatherer societies are exactly like the hunter-gatherer societies of 50,000 or so years ago from which all present-day humans are descended) and ignores some human-animal relationships that might well have been included, e.g. reindeer-herding Sami, and camels in the middle east.
What now? I will see if the local library has The Hound of the Baskervilles. If not, I will re-read Brideshead Revisited.
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Feb 2020
9:04pm, 18 Feb 2020
43,405 posts
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McGoohan
There was one book recently where the author had 'lived as a variety of animals' for a bit so as to better understand them or summat, like taking off all his clothes in the forest and eating worms would make him somewhat badger-like. I thought that's what you'd been reading Columba.
Just looked it up and the one I'm thinking of is 'Being A Beast'
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Feb 2020
9:12pm, 18 Feb 2020
45,129 posts
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Diogenes
Sounds awful
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Feb 2020
9:14pm, 18 Feb 2020
43,407 posts
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McGoohan
Yes, I showed it to Liebling in a bookshop - as she likes natural history - and she did a big 'pfffft' and slung it aside.
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Feb 2020
9:17pm, 18 Feb 2020
19,274 posts
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Columba
I think I read a review of that, McG. A man and his son spent the school summer holiday as badgers.
Requested Baskervilles from the library (if it has to come from another library in the area it may have to be delivered by boat) and on investigating my "to be read" pile found a novel written in the late 18th century so will read that rather than re-reading Brideshead. A Simple Story by Elizabeth Inchbald.
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Feb 2020
9:06am, 22 Feb 2020
10,112 posts
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Little Nemo
Finished The Wych Elm a couple of days ago. It's a claustrophobic read and sometimes feels overblown in its style but overall I really enjoyed it. I was braced for the controversial end but when it came I thought it fitted the story and was a good end. It may not have been particularly realistic but it worked for me.
Now onto a very different read - The Mikman. It's got quite a detached style that I've not gotten to grips with yet.
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Feb 2020
9:13am, 22 Feb 2020
45,240 posts
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Diogenes
Milkman: stick with if, it’s worth it. The audiobook is great too, and reading them together really enhances the experience. Hear it first then enjoy the words on the page, the skill with which they are used.
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Acts of Minor Dissent
Sep 2024