What Are You Reading

[Tiki Tom]

Thanks for your comments, gentlemen. Since I picked up W&P, several have told me that the Brothers Karamazov is what I should aim for next. Your insights are helpful. And I’m glad FF has given me a reasonable word of caution about it Because some of my acquaintances have spoken rapturously about it saying that BK is, in fact, the greatest book ever written. Packed with wisdom, apparently. We shall see. I hope it is! (But first I’ve got a couple of normal books that I need to read, one a gift from a friend, so I feel I really should read it.) One witticism that I have picked up: a friend said “oh, I see you are reading Tolstoyevsky”. I am going to use that one.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Tik, I can suggest Con/Artist, writ by world class art forger Tony Tetro. A slow wine sip, page by page. Stuck struck dumb by this self taught master thief. The memoir opens with the police tearing his apartment apart looking for his secret art room, hidden behind a movie-type secret door. After the cops finish, the squad sergeant smiles and they start tearing it apart again. A great intro. A must read.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

At a used bookstore, rummaging about led to the purchase of The Complete Works of O. Henry, a two-volume set, and a biography of Alexander Woollcott, by Samuel Hopkins Adams, entitled A. Woollcott, His Life and His World, from 1945. Adams' literary output led to the films It Happened One Night, The Harvey Girls, Flaming Youth, and The Gorgeous Hussy.
Jumping back and forth between each.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Getting back to basics. Found Keynes' The General Theory of employment, interest, and money;
Milton Friedman on Economics, selected papers; and Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom at a secondhand.
Russian potash used in fertilizer is with oil a desperately needed world commodity. Wheat will be ever more scarce.
Russia has limited oil storage facilities and shipping indemnification issues with war sanctions; could force permafrost
pipeline closure, which effectively freezes oil, leading to water condensation burst pipelines. Petroleum equivalence
of razor slit wrist suicide. And once those lines freeze solid and burst, a generation will mature until full repair replace.
Oil will spike.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Fly Girls by Bernard Glemser, originally published in 1960


Popular page-turners are often looked down upon, but many are enjoyable reads, with good stories, engaging characters and smart commentary on contemporary culture. For us today, the older page-turners, also, often provide some insight into how a society saw itself in real time.

The Fly Girls does all that by taking a look at a class of stewardess trainees for the fictional airline Magna International. During the Golden Age of travel, becoming a stewardess had a cache to it: the international travel, the elegance, the romance - real or imagined - plus the women, chosen, in part, for their attractiveness, all gave the job a mystique.

The Fly Girls focuses on five of the trainees in a class of forty, all who endure gruly weeks of study while being put up, dormitory style, at one of Miami's most fashionable hotels. The classes and workload will disabuse anyone of the notion that these young women were chosen or survived (only twenty eight of the forty make it to graduation) on their looks alone.

The five girls come from various backgrounds - the exotic Italian beauty, the trust-fund kid, the girl from poverty, the one escaping a new stepmother, etc. - as most are trying to become independent, see the world and, yes, meet men and potential husbands.

Whether that is a goal or not for young women today, the young women of the 1960s weren't shy about announcing it out loud. Yet some, like modern girls, were more interested in careers and experiencing life and saw "settling down" as something, often to the consternation of their boyfriends, they'd think about later.

The page-turning fun in The Fly Girls is seeing the girls transform into professional stewardesses during the weekday, while they go on dates, fight with each other, support each other, spend too much, drink too much or (for some) study too much the rest of the time.

For us today, it's a fascinating look into the early 1960s, where the "radicals" are called beatniks, Miami has an exotic feel to it, bigger and shinier cars convey status, women and men eat steak at expensive restaurants and middle-aged men like dating pretty and younger women (okay, not everything has changed).

Miami, then (think Jackie Gleason's successful TV variety show "from the sun and fun capital of the world, Miami Beach"), had a cool vibe: gamblers came for the racetrack and jai alai; conventioneers flew in for the sun, track, shows and girls, tourist came from everywhere and there was an arms race amongst the new luxury hotels.

Author Bernard Glesmer smartly shows the hard, challenging and, yes, seedy/ugly side of this outwardly glamorous world too. The training and work is grueling and, by today's standards, dictatorial, sexist and unfair. While women, even back then, are in more roles of responsibility and authority than modern writers often show, there clearly was a sexist bias in companies.

The girls also encounter plenty of nice men who behave like gentlemen, but many others are smarmy and worse. The gifts they receive often come with expectations and, as today, force and outright rape is real. Books went places movies only alluded to back then.

The Fly Girls, overall, is a fun read with enough grit and realism to keep it from being complete fluff. You care about "the girls," are exhausted by their studies, get angry at the pushy (and worse) men and equally angry at the girls who are mercenary and manipulative. But as in real life, there are also good men and women to root for.

Free from our modern political taboos and obsessions, The Fly Girls is a more-honest look at a sleeve of early 1960s America than modern period novels present. It's nothing more than a page-turner, but there's nothing wrong with that. Plus today, and until they invent a time machine, books like The Fly Girls are about the closest you can get to time travel.


N.B. The Fly Girls (originally titled Girl On a Wing) was turned into the movie Come Fly With Me, but by the time Hollywood was done with it, very little of the book's story had made it to the screen.

 

[Tiki Tom]

^^^^ Good review! I might have to pick that up for my sis-in-law who is a flight attendant.

For Lent, I have decided to read The New Testament. It’s only about 300 pages. Coming off of War and Peace, I am not intimidated in the least. As I’m in my sixties, it seems like high time to read one of the founding documents of the western world. I’m sure it will upend a few things that I erroneously think I know about Christianity. …And I will try to approach it with an open mind and a receiving heart (as opposed to my normal stance of skepticism and cynicism.)

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^^^^ Good review! I might have to pick that up for my sis-in-law who is a flight attendant.

For Lent, I have decided to read The New Testament. It’s only about 300 pages. Coming off of War and Peace, I am not intimidated in the least. As I’m in my sixties, it seems like high time to read one of the founding documents of the western world. I’m sure it will upend a few things that I erroneously think I know about Christianity. …And I will try to approach it with an open mind and a receiving heart (as opposed to my normal stance of skepticism and cynicism.)

Dostoyevsky's Karamazov with its grand inquisitor's dialogue with Christ should pose interest.
And if Roman Catholic, Sr Faustina Kowalska's Divine Mercy Journal is highly recommended de rigueur reading.

 

[GHT]

I have had a bit of a clear out, among some of the books I found was Colin Dexter's: "Last Bus to Woodstock." It was first published in 1975 and introduced the character of Inspector Morse. It's so intelligent and pacy. The characters of Morse and Lewis play off against each other brilliantly. The TV series brought Morse to life but the written word colours the characters perfectly. Problem is though, it's difficult to read without conjuring up the image of John Thaw and Kevin Whately.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ I always found Thaw the real Holmes, and Whately a perfect Watson; though a notch above the good doctor.
Morse's earlier version I've yet to see much less judge but I expect classic content.

 

[AmateisGal]

Decided to read The Mortal Storm (1938) by Phyllis Bottome, the anti-fascist novel. The movie starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullaven (1940) is fantastic, but apparently quite different from the book. So I decide to read the book myself. It's out of print and used copies are pricey, so I found it on Internet Archive to read for free.

Also reading a lush historical novel set during the French Revolution called The Sparks Fly Upward by Diana Norman. She was a brilliant writer.

 

[Fading Fast]

Decided to read The Mortal Storm (1938) by Phyllis Bottome, the anti-fascist novel. The movie starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullaven (1940) is fantastic, but apparently quite different from the book. So I decide to read the book myself. It's out of print and used copies are pricey, so I found it on Internet Archive to read for free.

Also reading a lush historical novel set during the French Revolution called The Sparks Fly Upward by Diana Norman. She was a brilliant writer.

"Mortal Storm" is an excellent movie and an excellent book. I read and wrote about it several years ago here: #7,738

 

[Tiki Tom]

^^^^ I had to go back and read FF’s review of Mortal Storm. Excellent review. He could write book reviews professionally. Books like Mortal Storm make me wonder how I would have acted/reacted had I found myself in a “normal” non-political middle class family in Germany in the mid-1930s. I fear that, in reality, the default instinct to “get along by going along” might have been the easy way —until it was too late.
Similarly, in between chapters of the New Testament, I am reading “Paris after the liberation, 1944-1949” by Antony Beevor & Artemis Cooper. Again, it is tempting to flatter myself and think “well, surely I would have immediately joined the resistance in 1940”. Unfortunately, France was deeply divided in those days and the political/social/economic atmosphere was very complicated. The resistance was often communist in nature, although often a kind of naive, willfully blind and overly optimistic communism. So… Join the resistance? Join DeGaullle in England? Go with Vichy? (Vichy started out fairly bland, and got worse from there.) Keep your head down and try to scratch out an existence for your family? Its easy to look at the world with rose colored glasses (and 20/20 hindsight) and imagine that we all would have been heroes. In fact, I am struck by the number of people who rose to the challenge and were, in fact, bigger than life. Of course, we don’t hear much about all the others who unluckily caught a bullet early on.
France after the Liberation was written by a husband and wife team and it shows. One chapter is straight history; the next is packed with Juicy gossip. Cooper‘s grandfather was Churchill’s ambassador to France and she has quite the impressive lineage. She is also not afraid to dish the dirt on the private lives of the high and mighty in those days. Very amusing… and it ALMOST diverts us from the horrors and serious issues of the day. But still the question persists: what would I have done if I had been unlucky enough to have been born in France or Germany around 1915-1920?

 

[Fading Fast]

Honorable Ancestor by Robert Standish originally published in 1956


Honorable Ancestor shows that our oh-so "modern" ideas about race and culture didn't spring spontaneously from the singular genius and tolerance of today's younger generation, but were being debated and discussed back when Robert Standish's thoughtful and engaging novel was written nearly seventy years ago.

Set back in the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, Honorable Ancestor's protagonist, Giles Savernake, is a young, handsome man of the ruling class of England who travels to the Far East to better understand how his family's wealth - accumulated by his great-great-grandfather, Jeromy Savernake - was obtained.

This sets him on a journey where he learns that Jeromy made his money in the opium trade. Initially disgusted by his great-great-grandfather and the British Empire, but wanting to understand the Far East and the impact of the Empire better, Giles spends time living in China and Japan, which causes him to soften his absolutist views.

The story of opium and China, like the rightfully denigrated horrible slave trade, both have a much longer history than the colonial powers' involvement, with part of that story being a not flattering amount of support and profiteering by indigenous people themselves.

Giles comes to learn that all of these stories are complex, just like every culture is complex and that heroes and villains, like moral judgements of right and wrong, are rarely black and white or as simple as they first appear.

Through his journey, he comes to see that different cultures/races have different frameworks and mindsets. It is a modern view in that it is willing to see the good in all cultures, but it is also a throwback view as it is also willing to see and judge the bad in all cultures.

It is also modern, by implication, as it sees these, often vast, differences as driven by the race and cultures' historical experiences and reality, not genetics.

Today it's "white privilege," but Standish saw a "white prestige" as an obnoxious and failing idea that helped the British and other colonial powers rule countries that could easily have thrown them out through force.

It's both humbling and enlightening to learn how little of what we, today, believe is fresh thinking really is.

Giles' years spent in China and Japan is an incredible odyssey that takes the reader on a time-travel-like trip through the Far East.

He or she, through Giles, meets former aristocratic Russian exiles from the new communist regime and Scottish expats in Japan who have been there so long they have a blended cultural identity.

Giles also encounters a Chinese philosopher who understands the nuances of his people in a ruthlessly honest way and a young Japanese leader laying the ideological and cultural foundation for Japan's aborning militarism.

One is a brilliant and honorable man and one a sociopathic “builder of nations." Thankfully, Standish hadn't been poisoned by our modern thinking that won't allow honest criticism of non-Western cultures.

Giles, who becomes a reporter/journalist, moves all throughout the Far East, even finding his way to a massive famine outbreak in a remote part of China where we see that corrupt international charity organizations, more interested in fundraising on a large scale than helping the needy, are also not a new development.

As a result of being a journalist, but not particularly loving his profession, Giles shows us that politically-driven, intentional news bias is also not something new. It makes you appreciate that for all its faults, and it has them, the internet doesn't allow a few large news organizations to control the narratives anymore.

Woven into this engaging historical tale are two love stories. In the first, Giles has a passionate, volatile and on-and-off affair for several years with a beautiful but unstable exiled Russian aristocrat who is unable to make peace with her reduced station in life.

Intentionally drawn as the exact opposite, Giles also has a very slow-to-light affair with a young, pretty Scottish girl who was born and raised in Japan by her expat parents. The dichotomy is a bit too overt, but Standish isn't afraid to use obvious symbolism or overly engineered scenarios to make a point.

Thoroughly researched, often by the author's own experiences living for years in the Far East, Honorable Ancestor is thoughtfully and critically argued. And while Standish's book isn't great literature, it is great storytelling with a purpose; the purpose being to critically assess the Far East with a cynical attitude toward the British Empire and other colonial powers. Plus, it's just a heck of an enjoyable read.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ The Honourable Ancestor certainly serves food for thought in these troubled times.

You must have touched the American Theodore White, author of the Making of The President 1960-68 series.
White covered Second World War China and later published Thunder Out of China 1945 with a follow memoir,
which I read but its title lost inside memory; circa the Nixon visit. White had character, indelibly stamped inside his work. A real journalist like I.F.Stone, Howard K Smith. White earned his keep, paid his street dues. A guy well worth my acquaintance. His China writs are very enjoyable reading.

 

[Robert Miller]

Just received Softwar - a thesis on power projection and the national security implications of Bitcoin. We live in interesting times.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Just received Softwar - a thesis on power projection and the national security implications of Bitcoin. We live in interesting times.

Interesting indeed. I live and work in London finance and largely avoided bitcoinage altogether, until the storm
broke thunder and lightning. Bought Oliver El-Gorr's tract, Crypto-Currency Investing. Learned that fundamentals had changed due to the storm and now see the digitalized Yuan and Dollar as risen phoenix out of the Bankman-Fried conflagration.

 

[AmateisGal]

^^^^ I had to go back and read FF’s review of Mortal Storm. Excellent review. He could write book reviews professionally. Books like Mortal Storm make me wonder how I would have acted/reacted had I found myself in a “normal” non-political middle class family in Germany in the mid-1930s. I fear that, in reality, the default instinct to “get along by going along” might have been the easy way —until it was too late.
Similarly, in between chapters of the New Testament, I am reading “Paris after the liberation, 1944-1949” by Antony Beevor & Artemis Cooper. Again, it is tempting to flatter myself and think “well, surely I would have immediately joined the resistance in 1940”. Unfortunately, France was deeply divided in those days and the political/social/economic atmosphere was very complicated. The resistance was often communist in nature, although often a kind of naive, willfully blind and overly optimistic communism. So… Join the resistance? Join DeGaullle in England? Go with Vichy? (Vichy started out fairly bland, and got worse from there.) Keep your head down and try to scratch out an existence for your family? Its easy to look at the world with rose colored glasses (and 20/20 hindsight) and imagine that we all would have been heroes. In fact, I am struck by the number of people who rose to the challenge and were, in fact, bigger than life. Of course, we don’t hear much about all the others who unluckily caught a bullet early on.
France after the Liberation was written by a husband and wife team and it shows. One chapter is straight history; the next is packed with Juicy gossip. Cooper‘s grandfather was Churchill’s ambassador to France and she has quite the impressive lineage. She is also not afraid to dish the dirt on the private lives of the high and mighty in those days. Very amusing… and it ALMOST diverts us from the horrors and serious issues of the day. But still the question persists: what would I have done if I had been unlucky enough to have been born in France or Germany around 1915-1920?

I've told @Fading Fast that he could write book reviews for a living! He's amazing at it!

 

[AmateisGal]

What the Wind Knows, a time-travel novel about a 21st century woman who time travels back to 1916 Ireland during the Easter Rising.

 

[MikeKardec]

I was advising a friend who works in the comic book industry and I found myself recommending F.I. Brown as an example of a writer who specialized in ultra short short stories. Rereading a bunch of them right now and I'd forgotten what a tough format this was. Very impressive! Late Pulp Era, mostly SF, a few of them are around a page in length.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

What the Wind Knows, a time-travel novel about a 21st century woman who time travels back to 1916 Ireland during the Easter Rising.

As an Englishman I reluctantly state the British Army forgot Machiavelli's admonish to do cruelty with quickness.
A lack of dispatch and the drawn out firing squad execution of splendid poet Padraig Pearce and his gallant crew incited the troubles. Liam Neeson's portrayal of Michael Collins is thought provoking film. Do visit this dove if you've mind now after your read.