Monthly Archives: November 2015

Clown’s Shoes by Rebecca F. John

by
bookshelves: radio-4x, autumn-2015, published-2016, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, britain-wales

Recommended for: BBC Radio Listeners
Read from November 06 to 13, 2015

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06nxb16

1: Bullet Catch: 1920s Vienna: Showman Victor Dahl is developing a dangerous obsession. Read by Lloyd Hutchinson.

2: The Glove Maker’s numbers pt1: Convinced the Devil visited her after she was traumatised by the death of her brother, Christina has been recovering in a sanatorium, and must have her photograph taken before she leaves. Beautifully read by Ruth Gemmell.

3: The Glove Maker’s Numbers pt2: Christina is released and returns home, but tries finding refuge from her thoughts in the imagery of numbers. Concluded by Ruth Gemmell.

4: Warsaw, 1943: Ewa tries to protect her little sister Zofia from the cold, dangerous life on the street. Read by Ruth Gemmell. Matchstick Girls:

5: Clown’s Shoes: 1930s London. Every night in the theatre, a young woman performs a reluctant striptease. Read by Ruth Gemmell.

Description: An ambitious debut collection of short stories by Rebecca F John, dipping into the shadows and spotlights of life.

Rebecca F John is from Pwll, a village on the South Wales coast, and works as a Ski Instructor. Her short story The Dog Track was broadcast on Radio 4 as part of The Time Being series in 2013, and Crow Road was broadcast in the Nights Of The Hunter series in 2015.

The Glove Maker’s Numbers was shortlisted for The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award in 2015. Rebecca won the PEN International New Voices Award for her story Moon Dog in October 2015. This really is excellent fayre, fully recommended.

Not included in this BBC selection is Moon Dog, however I have found a copy online: http://www.pen-international.org/wp-c…

Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal by Jay Parini

by
bookshelves: nonfiction, nonfic-nov-2015, radio-4, published-2015, biography, autumn-2015, books-about-books-and-book-shops, lit-crit

Recommended for: BBC Radio Listeners
Read from November 06 to 13, 2015
BOTW

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06nn7cw

Description: The life of Gore Vidal was an amazingly full one; a life of colourful incident, famous people and lasting achievements that calls out for careful evocation and examination. Through Jay Parini’s eyes and words comes an accessible, entertaining story that puts the life and times of one of the great American figures of the post-war era into context, that introduces the author to a generation who didn’t know him before and looks behind-the-scenes at the man and his work in frank ways never possible before his death. Parini, provided with unique access to Vidal’s life and his papers, excavates buried skeletons, but never loses sight of his deep respect for Vidal and his astounding gifts.

Parini recalls his first encounter with Vidal, and relates a priviliged but lonely childhood

Gore goes to war and emerges with a first novel.

Lacklustre reviews of The City and The Pillar send Vidal into retreat in Europe.

Vidal starts writing for the small screen and becomes a star at churning out TV drama

Vidal finds fame at last with Myra Breckinridge

The Tears Of War by May Wedderburn Cannan

by
bookshelves: autumn-2015, published-2000, under-10-ratings, wwi, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, radio-4x, play-dramatisation, love, poetry, epistolatory-diary-blog, autobiography-memoir, plague-disease, tragedy

Recommended to Bettie☯ by: Laura
Recommended for: BBC Radio Listeners
Read on November 12, 2015

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076bcw

Description: The Tears of War is the true love story of a First World War poet, May Cannan and an artilery officer, Bevil Quiller-Couch. The book tells their story through May’s poems, extracts from her autobiography and through Bevil’s letters. Part biography, part poetry, a unique telling of their story.

May Wedderburn Cannan

The true First World War love story of May Wedderburn Cannan and Bevil Quiller-Couch. Stars Jasmine Hyde and James Purefoy.

“The Armistice” by May Wedderburn Cannan

This warmed the cockles but the ending is so sad.
:O)

Thomas Aquinas: The Angelic Doctor by Jeremy Adams

by

Description: his course is an introduction to Thomas Aquinas (1225—1274), his life, his work, the system of his thought—generally called Thomism—and some of his distinctive teachings. It deals also with some of the legacy of Thomism, particularly the neo-Thomism of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the post-modern critique of neo-Thomism and Thomas’s original thought.

The course begins with a narrative of Thomas’s life and inevitably discusses his social, cultural, and institutional context—the latter of which defined him, as has been the case with few philosophers. He was very much the product of the scholastic university, as characterized by the ideals of the Dominican order and the needs of the medieval Church.

The course moves then to a consideration of his massive work and of the various genres in which he wrote. Reactions, positive and negative, to the immense impact made by Aquinas and his huge body of writings in different genres (an enormous output, for a man who was an active teacher and who died at age forty-nine) engage our attention next.

After that, we move to a survey of some of his most distinctive and influential teachings: on God and His Creation (i.e., the entire universe as known to Aquinas’s time); the human creature; ethics, virtues, and vices (including the ever-vexing question of Original Sin); human sexuality and its consequences; and law and the rightful relation of the natural state to the Christian Church. Finally, we discuss Thomas’s ideas about beauty and other aesthetic issues, as revealed in “didactic” religious poetry written by (or at least attributed to) him, including “Adoro te devote” and “Pange, lingua.”

The antidote to this, should you need one, is BERTRAND RUSSELL ON ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

Lecture 1: Thomas’s Early Life
Lecture 2: Thomas’s Life 1248-1274
Lecture 3: The Four Summa
Lecture 4: Quaestiones disputatae de veritate
Lecture 5: Condemnation and Canonisation
Lecture 6: God
Lecture 7: Sin
Lecture 8: Sex Love Marriage and the Family (no rock and roll here)
Lecture 9:
Lecture 10:Church and State
Lecture 11: Law an Politics
Lecture 12: Theology and Poetry

Interesting in parts, however, in no way enjoyable, must have been green tea bereft when I picked this one up.

Three Days in May by Ben Brown

by
bookshelves: autumn-2015, published-2011, war, wwii, play-dramatisation, under-10-ratings, radio-4x, shortstory-shortstories-novellas

Recommended to Bettie☯ by: Laura
Recommended for: BBC Radio Listeners
Read on November 12, 2015

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007k4c7

Description: May 1940.Downing Street.Three days that will change the course of history.Forever.Ben Brown’s political thriller ventures behind the doors of Number Ten during three of the most pivotal days in British History, when, extraordinarily, giving in to Hitler was considered by some to be a ‘viable option’.Having urgently assembled the British war cabinet, the new Prime Minister is suddenly confronted with an intense game of political chess as he tries to persuade peace treaty supporters, including Neville Chamberlain, that Britain must not give in. Divided on whether to negotiate terms through Mussolini or escalate the battle against fascism alone, one man has to make a monumental decision, which will shape the future of the free world.

The BEF are in retreat or, semantically, executing a strategic withdrawal.

The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece — and Western Civilization by Barry S. Strauss

by

Description: On a late September day in 480 B.C., Greek warships faced an invading Persian armada in the narrow Salamis Straits in the most important naval battle of the ancient world. Overwhelmingly outnumbered by the enemy, the Greeks triumphed through a combination of strategy and deception. More than two millennia after it occurred, the clash between the Greeks and Persians at Salamis remains one of the most tactically brilliant battles ever fought. The Greek victory changed the course of western history — halting the advance of the Persian Empire and setting the stage for the Golden Age of Athens.
In this dramatic new narrative account, historian and classicist Barry Strauss brings this landmark battle to life. He introduces us to the unforgettable characters whose decisions altered history: Themistocles, Athens’ great leader (and admiral of its fleet), who devised the ingenious strategy that effectively destroyed the Persian navy in one day; Xerxes, the Persian king who fought bravely but who ultimately did not understand the sea; Aeschylus, the playwright who served in the battle and later wrote about it; and Artemisia, the only woman commander known from antiquity, who turned defeat into personal triumph. Filled with the sights, sounds, and scent of battle, The Battle of Salamis is a stirring work of history.

Opening: He was the last Athenian. That is, if a box of bones may be considered an Athenian. Alive, he had been Themistocles, architect of the greatest sea battle ever fought. Now his remains were secretly reburied here in Athenian soil, perhaps, as rumored, along the shore outside the wall of Piraeus harbor. Themistocles’ family, they said, had dug up the bones from their first grave abroad under the noses of the authorities

If you have read the first few books in the scrumptious series by Gary Corby, then you will know that my reading of this produces a smile.

Artemisia

NONFIC NOVEMBER 2015:

R White Mughals
5* A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts
3* Rome and the Barbarians
4* Field Notes From A Hidden City
3* The King’s Jews: Money, Massacre and Exodus in Medieval England
5* A History of Palestine 634-1099
3* Charlotte Brontë: A Life
3* The Alhambra
5* A Long Walk in the Himalaya: A Trek from the Ganges to Kashmir
3* Buddhist Warfare
4* A Gathering of Spoons
AB A Brief History of Roman Britain – Conquest and Civilization
4* Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination, 1830-1880
3* Food Safari
4* She-Wolves by Castor
3* India: A Portrait
2* The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily
5* Classics of Russian Literature
3* The Battle of Salamis
4* The Age of Wonder
5* Lost Worlds of South Americas
3* Wind and Sand
2* Skeptics Guide to the Great Books
3* The Invention of France
3* Balthus
CR Every Time a Friend Succeeds
CR Unfaithful Music and Disapearing Ink
AB She Wolves by Norton
CR Aquinas
CR Invisible Women

She Wolves: The Notorious Queens of Medieval England by Elizabeth Norton

by
Description: This history deals with the bad girls of England’s medieval royal dynasties, the queens who earned themselves a notorious reputation. Some of them are well known and have been the subject of biography—Eleanor of Aquitaine, Emma of Normandy, Isabella of France, and Anne Boleyn, for example—while others have not been written about outside academic journals. The appeal of these notorious queens, apart from their shared taste for witchcraft, murder, adultery, and incest, is that because they were notorious they attracted a great deal of attention during their lifetimes. This study reveals much about the role of the medieval queen and the evolution of the role that led, ultimately, to the reign of Elizabeth I and a new concept of queenship.

Opening: Medieval England saw many queens. Some are remembered as saintly, or at least very nearly saintly, some are barely remembered at all and others are remembered as being truly notorious. Every century from the eighth to the sixteenth boasted at least one notorious queen who would provide scandal for chroniclers’ works for centuries to come. Their reputation and the salacious details of their lives that survive make these women some of the most vivid and interesting personalities of the medieval period. However, their lives were not always recorded truthfully.

Having just read She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth last week, this encounter will be with those queens that were not in that.

DUCK! – I am slinging this one at the wall right now. I can’t think of a single reader of history who would relish this supermarket newstand magazine style of puerile writing. Go for that Castor one instead.

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Great Books

by

Description: Hamlet. Moby-Dick. War and Peace. Ulysses. These are just four of what are considered the “Great Books”—works of literature that have been singled out as essential parts of a well-read individual’s reading list. The only problem: The “Great Books” can be daunting, intimidating, and oftentimes nearly impossible to get through.

The truth of the matter is that there is so much more to literature than these giants of the Western canon. In fact, you can get the same pleasures, satisfactions, and insights from books that have yet to be considered “great.” Books that are shorter, more accessible, and less dependent on classical references and difficult language. Books that, in the opinion of popular Great Courses Professor Grant L. Voth of Monterey Peninsula College, “allow you to connect with them without quite so many layers of resistance to work through.”

When you take this skeptical approach to the “Great Books,” you open yourself up to works that are just as engaging, just as enjoyable, and—most important—just as insightful about great human themes and ideas as anything you’d encounter on a college-level reading list. Professor Voth’s course, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Great Books, is your opportunity to discover new literary adventures that make worthy substitutes to works from the Western literary canon. In these 12 highly rewarding lectures, you’ll get an introduction to 12 works that redefine what great literature is and how it can reveal startling truths about life—all without being such a chore to read.

Lecture 1: Dead Souls
Lecture 2: Down and Out in Paris and London
Lecture 3: The House on Mango Street
Lecture 4: All The King’s Men
Lecture 5: Angels in American
Lecture 6: Slouching Towards Bethleham
Lecture 7: The Master and Margerita
Lecture 8: The Book Thief
Lecture 9: Death of an Expert Witness
Lecture 10: The Spy Who Came in From The Cold
Lecture 11: Watchmen
Lecture 12: Life of Pi

NONFIC NOVEMBER 2015:

CR White Mughals
5* A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts
3* Rome and the Barbarians
4* Field Notes From A Hidden City
3* The King’s Jews: Money, Massacre and Exodus in Medieval England
5* A History of Palestine 634-1099
3* Charlotte Brontë: A Life
3* The Alhambra
5* A Long Walk in the Himalaya: A Trek from the Ganges to Kashmir
3* Buddhist Warfare
4* A Gathering of Spoons
AB A Brief History of Roman Britain – Conquest and Civilization
4* Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination, 1830-1880
3* Food Safari
4* She-Wolves
3* India: A Portrait
2* The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily
5* Classics of Russian Literature
CR The Battle of Salamis
4* The Age of Wonder
5* Lost Worlds of South Americas
3* Wind and Sand
2* Skeptics Guide to the Great Books
3* The Invention of France
3* Balthus
CR Every Time a Friend Succeeds
CR Unfaithful Music and Disapearing Ink

TTC:

4* History of Science 1700 – 1900
5* A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts
TR Secrets of Sleep
TR Turning Points in Modern History
TR Apocalypse
4* Myth in Human History
3* A History of Russia
TR The Classics
5* London
4* Re-thinking Our Past
4* The Vikings
5* Lost Worlds of South America
3* Rome and the Barbarians
TR Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon
OH History of Science: Antiquity to 1700
TR Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian
TR Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
5* From Monet To Van Gogh: A History Of Impressionism
5* History of the English language
TR The Late Middle Ages
3* Great American Music: Boadway Musicals
5* Classics of Russian Literature
5* Lost Worlds of South America
2* The Skeptic’s Guide to the Great Books

Wind and Sand: The Story of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk by Lynne Westcott, Paula Degen

by
The camp near Kitty Hawk

Opening: Few great inventors have left behind them so complete and enthralling a record of their work and their thoughts, or seen their triumph ignored for so long as did the Wright brothers, the unassuming, persistent bicycle mechanics of Dayton, Ohio. The sharp clear photographs alone would be a great achievement, especially since they made them with their own hands, employing the bulky equipment of the period, on glass plates. The collection in this absorbing book, together with its extracts from the Wright diaries and letters, deals mainly with the four crucial years, from 1900 through 1903, in which they developed the world’s first successful airplane. They called it a “flying machine” without comic intent, since in the usage of the day an “aeroplane” was merely a wing, a fragile, cambered, cloth-covered wooden frame. The setting is the remote, thinly-settled, windswept Outer Banks of North Carolina.

This is a short yet fascinating history of those flight experiments and final breakthrough in the years 1900-1903 in Kill Devil Hills. Mainly letters and diary entries from the brothers. Hattip to Wandaful for the memorial park link.

NONFIC NOVEMBER 2015:

CR White Mughals
5* A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts
3* Rome and the Barbarians
4* Field Notes From A Hidden City
3* The King’s Jews: Money, Massacre and Exodus in Medieval England
5* A History of Palestine 634-1099
3* Charlotte Brontë: A Life
3* The Alhambra
5* A Long Walk in the Himalaya: A Trek from the Ganges to Kashmir
3* Buddhist Warfare
4* A Gathering of Spoons
AB A Brief History of Roman Britain – Conquest and Civilization
4* Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination, 1830-1880
3* Food Safari
4* She-Wolves
3* India: A Portrait
2* The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily
5* Classics of Russian Literature
CR The Battle of Salamis
5* Lost Worlds of South America
4* The Age of Wonder
3* Wind and Sand
CR Skeptics Guide to the Great Books
3* The Invention of France
3* Balthus
CR Every Time a Friend Succeeds
CR Unfaithful Music and Disapearing Ink

Age of Wonder

by

Description: ‘The Age of Wonder’ is Richard Holmes’ first major work of biography for a decade. It has been inspired by the scientific ferment that swept through Britain at the end of the 18th century, and which Holmes now radically redefines as ‘the revolution of Romantic Science’.

Never has a book left me feeling so completely inadequate, however it is highly probable that I am not alone in this sentiment. So whilst none of the information could be deemed as original, this book is put together to engender a true scientific lust in those younguns on whose shoulders the future lies. Truly engrossing and highly recommended.

I must own up to be the owner of an un pc mind because I was tickled to tickledum with ‘Fawaday’. Mea culpa.

NONFIC NOVEMBER 2015:

CR White Mughals
5* A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts
3* Rome and the Barbarians
4* Field Notes From A Hidden City
3* The King’s Jews: Money, Massacre and Exodus in Medieval England
CR A History of Palestine 634-1099
3* Charlotte Brontë: A Life
3* The Alhambra
5* A Long Walk in the Himalaya: A Trek from the Ganges to Kashmir
3* Buddhist Warfare
4* A Gathering of Spoons
AB A Brief History of Roman Britain – Conquest and Civilization
4* Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination, 1830-1880
3* Food Safari
4* She-Wolves
3* India: A Portrait
2* The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily
5* Classics of Russian Literature
CR The Battle of Salamis
5* Lost Worlds of South America
4* The Age of Wonder