What Are You Reading

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I regularly read The Era thread. Utterly love its newsprint and comics. Terry and The Pirates owns me heart n' soul no twice abouts; yet recent awaken author Milton Caniff's technique of romance tease without consumation, or seeming avoidance grim reaper man & boy amidst the Second War has me Sherlock Holmes self on hunt no less. I hold this author and Terrence a sure cut streets above most similar fare which puzzles meself as to why the rat. Answer surely lies contemporary comics critique and scholarship so I'll drink lamp smoke and chase the daemon until.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

On the hunt forthwith, I've Terry and The Pirates meet Burma, a strip compile dating back
to 1938 which found Amazon for a lordly three dollars and change and enroute.
I'll read this for background then go after any academic lit papers or comic critique that
can box Milton Caniff's mindset square.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I've TATP Meet Burma now and a fast peruse is enticing but with the Belmont Stakes approach
I snagged The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told, a true tale of three gamblers,
The Kentucky Derby, and the mexican cartel. Sounds a bit Christmas-cee with the Magi
camel drivers Gaspar, Balthazar, Merchior along its spectacular 20th Century Fox headliner.
A million dollar score won the 1988 Derby in Tijuana with a cartel obstruction. A fast dash to
the border one step ahead Death, a true wedoneit writ by Mark (Miami) Paul, one of the three
stooges-pros who really f....d upwards. After my busted flush 4 horses hit in a monster Super Five Derby ticket and a 3 out of 4 Preakness superfecta rain soaked tracks tickets, a chaser
classic screwup shit hit the fan track tale was needed. Always some guy deeper in the barn horseshit than you.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Just asking.
Has anyone of you read the original novel of M.A.S.H ?

 

[Tiki Tom]

Just asking.
Has anyone of you read the original novel of M.A.S.H ?

No. However I recall having spoken with someone who did. It was his view that the book was completely different from the TV series. He particularly emphasized that the political spin was different.

 

[Fading Fast]

Evelina by Frances Burney originally published in 1778


The eighteenth-century social customs of Britain's upper classes would be obscure to us today if not for Jane Austen. Her books, and the many movies they've engendered, have kept knowledge of those rigidly orchestrated societal rules part of popular culture ever since.

So it is of literary importance that Evelina, by Frances Burney, is considered to be a major influence on Austen's works. Fans of Austen will immediately recognize, in Burney's novel, the withering satire and nuanced insights into relationships that Austen brings to her stories.

Burney's tale centers on the young charming girl, Evelina, whose aristocratic father has disowned her because of his bitter marriage with Evelina's now-deceased mother. The result has Evelina being raised by a kind country vicar, leaving her lineage a bit muddled for "proper society."

We meet Evelina when she is being brought "out" into society by wealthy friends. But having not been raised in that world, Evelina makes mistake after mistake at dances and gatherings as she doesn't know all the highly nuanced and unspoken rules of society.

That is the setup for the novel that follows the travails of Evelina through this rigid world where her sincerity and kindness are often a liability amongst a class that uses elaborate and empty compliments as both currency and, often, veiled insults.

She only learns by painful experience that if you're alone at a dance and refuse a young man's offer to dance, you can't later dance with another man. The first man, in an Austen-like scene, "politely" proceeds to brutally debone Evelina like a small chicken.

Other contretemps and more serious issues arise as Evelina becomes a pawn in her maternal grandmother's game to get back at her daughter's husband, Evelina's father. This young girl, in today's parlance, would need years of analysis to overcome her "parent issues."

Foreshadowing Austen, Evelina is also pursued by a gentleman with ungentlemanly intent. Conversely, a handsome, wealthy and kind lord comes in and out of her life, often gaining an unfair negative view of Evelina owing to circumstances beyond Evelina's control.

Austen, in the novel Sense and Sensibility, pays homage to her predecessor by giving a scheming character who preys on young women the same name, Willoughby, as was given to Evelina's nemesis in Burney's book.

Evelina is told in the style of letters written by the characters, mainly between Evelina and her surrogate father the vicar. After several pages, you adjust and the story flows, but a straight narrative with strategically revealed letters would have been a more pleasant read.

The fun here, as in Austen's books, comes from the surface tension that builds because real human emotion is thwarted by all of the constraining norms and rules. Several scenes have you cringing as Evelina finds herself trapped by an etiquette she can't quite master.

The story drags occasionally, a few twists are forced and the plot is a bit too obviously constructed. Yet all of these are mainly quibbles in a novel that, almost two hundred and fifty years after its release, is still a fun, entertaining and enlightening read.

Burney's Evelina is not up to Austen's level - how many books are? - but it is an enjoyable story with complex characters struggling like heck to navigate life in a slice of society tightly governed by elaborate rules of etiquette.

It is the same literary soil that, a few decades later, Jane Austen would till into classics.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Jane suffered a sharp arrow only to banish Cupid from her life thereafter. I believe her quill
writ loneliness, its ink bleed out onto empty hearted anguish page after page, finding refuge
from herself more addictive than drink. Modern scholars attribute her celibacy and self imposed recluse as sufficient evidence for a correctly chosen life whereas Jane suffered depression over real but mostly imagined cruelty. Or so I have been informed.

 

[GHT]

Last Wednesday, (5th,) there was a repeat of The King's Speech on the BBC. The film was all the more absorbing to watch in that it kept true to Mark Logue & Peter Conrad's book of the same title.

The King's Speech is an intimate portrait of the British monarchy at a time of its greatest crisis, seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King. Lionel Logue saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century, he was an unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist whom one newspaper in the 1930's famously dubbed: 'The Quack who saved a King.'

Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman, he was an Australian. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied, Duke of York into the man who was capable of becoming King.

The King's Speech is the story of the extraordinary relationship between Logue and the haunted young man who became King George VI, drawn from Logue's personal diaries. Those diaries throw extraordinary light on the intimacy of the two men and the vital role the King's wife, the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played, in bringing them together, to save her husband's reputation and his career as King.

It's an absolute riveting read.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Aldershot mess, full dress red jackets after dinner coffee converse with a visiting American
historian spending Sandhurst and Whitehall. After the Gerries quit, HRM George has a meet
with Ike and Patton, whom wore a pistol brace. The King asked Patton if he'd ever used
either weapon in actual battle. Patton claimed seven scored kills. Eisenhower leapt into fray
questioning Patton. Patton nervously reduced his memory under Ike's unrelenting poker play
raise. Patton, the historian remarked had killed two Mexican pistoleros in Pershing's Punitive Expedition into Mexico in 1914, often recounting how he'd ordered the two gunslingers strapped like felled deer onto truck hoods to be driven back to bivouac for General Pershing's
personal witness. Ike stared Patton down to admitting these twins actual count.

I can only surmise HRM, while certainly not garrulous could drive a point.

 

[Denton]

View attachment 619125
Evelina by Frances Burney originally published in 1778


The eighteenth-century social customs of Britain's upper classes would be obscure to us today if not for Jane Austen. Her books, and the many movies they've engendered, have kept knowledge of those rigidly orchestrated societal rules part of popular culture ever since.

So it is of literary importance that Evelina, by Frances Burney, is considered to be a major influence on Austen's works. Fans of Austen will immediately recognize, in Burney's novel, the withering satire and nuanced insights into relationships that Austen brings to her stories.

Burney's tale centers on the young charming girl, Evelina, whose aristocratic father has disowned her because of his bitter marriage with Evelina's now-deceased mother. The result has Evelina being raised by a kind country vicar, leaving her lineage a bit muddled for "proper society."

We meet Evelina when she is being brought "out" into society by wealthy friends. But having not been raised in that world, Evelina makes mistake after mistake at dances and gatherings as she doesn't know all the highly nuanced and unspoken rules of society.

That is the setup for the novel that follows the travails of Evelina through this rigid world where her sincerity and kindness are often a liability amongst a class that uses elaborate and empty compliments as both currency and, often, veiled insults.

She only learns by painful experience that if you're alone at a dance and refuse a young man's offer to dance, you can't later dance with another man. The first man, in an Austen-like scene, "politely" proceeds to brutally debone Evelina like a small chicken.

Other contretemps and more serious issues arise as Evelina becomes a pawn in her maternal grandmother's game to get back at her daughter's husband, Evelina's father. This young girl, in today's parlance, would need years of analysis to overcome her "parent issues."

Foreshadowing Austen, Evelina is also pursued by a gentleman with ungentlemanly intent. Conversely, a handsome, wealthy and kind lord comes in and out of her life, often gaining an unfair negative view of Evelina owing to circumstances beyond Evelina's control.

Austen, in the novel Sense and Sensibility, pays homage to her predecessor by giving a scheming character who preys on young women the same name, Willoughby, as was given to Evelina's nemesis in Burney's book.

Evelina is told in the style of letters written by the characters, mainly between Evelina and her surrogate father the vicar. After several pages, you adjust and the story flows, but a straight narrative with strategically revealed letters would have been a more pleasant read.

The fun here, as in Austen's books, comes from the surface tension that builds because real human emotion is thwarted by all of the constraining norms and rules. Several scenes have you cringing as Evelina finds herself trapped by an etiquette she can't quite master.

The story drags occasionally, a few twists are forced and the plot is a bit too obviously constructed. Yet all of these are mainly quibbles in a novel that, almost two hundred and fifty years after its release, is still a fun, entertaining and enlightening read.

Burney's Evelina is not up to Austen's level - how many books are? - but it is an enjoyable story with complex characters struggling like heck to navigate life in a slice of society tightly governed by elaborate rules of etiquette.

It is the same literary soil that, a few decades later, Jane Austen would till into classics.

Again I have to piggyback on one of Fading Fast's excellent posts, because Evelina is a favorite of mine. It has a quality that I associate with great art -- it feels like a new book every time I read it.

There is a kind of cruelty in Burney's comedy: Evelina is humiliated again and again for making elementary social mistakes. Her shyness and awkwardness are material for comic business, and also the source of her attraction. Burney's insight is that Evelina is attractive because she has not been fully formed. "Awkwardness is perhaps more interesting than grace" (according to Burney in the later novel Camilla.)

I also recommend Burney's other novels (Cecilia is the best one), her plays, and her remarkable diary, mostly written in the form of "journal-letters" addressed to her sister. Although she was essentially a timid, shy person, her life was long, adventurous, full of interesting characters and incidents. Due to the popularity of Evelina, she was recruited to be one of the queen's attendants at the court of George III during the time of his madness. She witnessed the Hastings trial, and she was so much a royalist that she viewed Burke, a former friend, as a diabolical figure for his prosecution of Hastings. Another extraordinary passage in her diary is an account of an operation (without anesthetic) in which a tumor was removed from her breast. It's an account of the experience of pain -- like almost nothing else in literature. The operation was successful; she was still alive 30 years later.

I agree that Austen is in a different category, along with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and a few other writers.

 

[Fading Fast]

Again I have to piggyback on one of Fading Fast's excellent posts, because Evelina is a favorite of mine. It has a quality that I associate with great art -- it feels like a new book every time I read it.

There is a kind of cruelty in Burney's comedy: Evelina is humiliated again and again for making elementary social mistakes. Her shyness and awkwardness are material for comic business, and also the source of her attraction. Burney's insight is that Evelina is attractive because she has not been fully formed. "Awkwardness is perhaps more interesting than grace" (according to Burney in the later novel Camilla.)

I also recommend Burney's other novels (Cecilia is the best one), her plays, and her remarkable diary, mostly written in the form of "journal-letters" addressed to her sister. Although she was essentially a timid, shy person, her life was long, adventurous, full of interesting characters and incidents. Due to the popularity of Evelina, she was recruited to be one of the queen's attendants at the court of George III during the time of his madness. She witnessed the Hastings trial, and she was so much a royalist that she viewed Burke, a former friend, as a diabolical figure for his prosecution of Hastings. Another extraordinary passage in her diary is an account of an operation (without anesthetic) in which a tumor was removed from her breast. It's an account of the experience of pain -- like almost nothing else in literature. The operation was successful; she was still alive 30 years later.

I agree that Austen is in a different category, along with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and a few other writers.

What a great post. I learned so much from it. I can't even imagine a surgery like that without anesthetic. And as you note, what a fantastic life she had. I might just have to seek out "Cecilia."

I continue to be amazed at the amount of knowledge - smart, insightful and arcane knowledge - that members have at Fedora Lounge.

 

[Denton]

I recently read Mary Lasswell's popular novel from 1942, Suds in Your Eye. Three old ladies, Mrs. Feeley, Mrs. Rasmussen, and Miss Tinkham, live together in a junkyard in San Diego. The book is mostly scenes of drinking beer and eating delicious food cooked by Mrs. Rasmussen, but they also learn Spanish and visit Mexico, and there is a plot in which they almost lose their house due to their dealings with a crooked lawyer, and there is a romance plot in which Mrs. Feeley manages to set up her nephew with their Spanish teacher.

Not great literature, but truly delightful.

George Price's illustration (from Lasswell's cookbook Mrs. Rasmussen's Book of One-Armed Cookery):

.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

With Europe so much in play, I started Douglas Murray's Europe.
A fine read of tea leaves and grafitti scrawled across walls reasoned to a fine point yet still
reminiscient Burke's letters of France and its Revolution and Reign of Terror.

 

[Denton]

What a great post. I learned so much from it. I can't even imagine a surgery like that without anesthetic. And as you note, what a fantastic life she had. I might just have to seek out "Cecilia."

I continue to be amazed at the amount of knowledge - smart, insightful and arcane knowledge - that members have at Fedora Lounge.

Thank you, Fading Fast! I have learned a lot from your posts, and from many others on this website -- and I am resolved to post more frequently.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, originally published in 1923


More a collection of short stories, with a somewhat connected narrative running through them, than a full novel, The Inimitable Jeeves is best enjoyed for its playfully satirical look at the foibles of early twentieth-century upper-class English society.

You can read a lot of deep social commentary into author P.G. Woodhouse's stories, whether he put it there or not, but that's working too hard on tales that are best enjoyed in the lighthearted and unserious way they are intended.

Bertie Wooster is a young, upper-class Englishman of independent means (he has a trust fund, so he doesn't have to work) whose goal seems to be to amble through a comfortable life with as little disturbance as possible.

He bulwark against disturbances is his "gentleman's gentleman," his very proper-on-the-surface, but spirited to the point of being mischievous butler Jeeves. Jeeves, in that great English tradition, is even more of a snob than Bertie.

The stories are almost formulaic. Something - an imperious aunt, a husband-huntress, a best friend from college with a weakness for gambling, etc. - interferes with Bertie's equanimity, requiring Jeeves, often behind the scenes, to "remove" the irritant.

Jeeves, through his network of servants, knows what is happening in most houses, so he can and, often, does manipulate a situation to his employer's benefit. Since the upper-class is focused on outward appearances, it's only the servants who know their true vulnerabilities.

When Bertie's Aunt tries to arrange a marriage between Bertie and the perfectly named Honoria Glossop, a woman who will give no man peace, it's Jeeves who quietly shows to Glossop's persnickety father that Bertie might not be the best husband material.

With that problem solved in a way that leaves Bertie in the clear with his Aunt, it's on to other problems for Jeeves to unobtrusively manipulate to his employer's advantage. The fun in all this is how very little is ever said directly.

Even Bertie and Jeeves speak in a kind of code to each other where the truth comes out only in the penumbras of the conversation. It's the opposite of our modern say, tell and, even, post online all your emotions, insecurities and desires to everyone.

The wrinkle in their relationship, though, is that snobbish and hidebound Jeeves is sometimes "displeased" when Bertie tries to express himself too loudly with a tie or hosiery selection. It's never stated, but the chill between the two can be real and stubborn to fix.

Wodehouse knows his era's upper-class world well and mines it for all the humanity and humor that he can. While his stories are repetitive and the plot all but nonexistent, the novel works because a lot of the fun in the book is the personalities and sharp one liners.

You come to like Bertie Wooster and somehow want his non-productive and comfortable life to remain non-productive and comfortable, which you quickly learn requires Jeeves to do the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting that makes that possible.

Clearly these tales of the foibles and contretemps of one innocuous upper-class man and his resourceful butler have resonated with the public as Wodehouse published thirty-five short stories and eleven novels in the long-running series.

While there are a few short stories that predate The Inimitable Jeeves, one can start with this novel without missing much, as the origin story of Bertie and Jeeves is modest and only briefly touched upon.

(Hack: Bertie and Jeeves met when Jeeves interviewed for the position of butler and he mixed for Bertie, who was feeling "a bit under the weather" that morning, "a hangover remedy" that helped.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

I dearly love Wodehouse, and the Jeeves stories in particular, just for the utter joy the author shows in playing with the English language. Reading these books -- and listening to a BBC radio adaptation of some of them -- was a formative experience of my youth. A lot of my own love of wordplay can be blamed on the old Plum. And Bertie himself is the prototypical lovable idiot.

And yes, there is social commentary -- wait'll you get to the mid-1930s, and Sir Roderick Spode, leader of the "Black Shorts," appears. "Black *Shorts*?" "By the time he got started, all the good *shirt* colors were taken."

 

[Tiki Tom]

I love Bertie and Jeeves!
I read several books in the series while commuting on the metro in DC. On not one, but two occasions i was chuckling so noticeably that women approached me and asked what I was reading that made me laugh so. There you have it: if you are in the market for a girlfriend, reading Wodehouse in public is almost as good as carrying a puppy.
I agree with Lizzie, for me it’s the hilarious use of the English language that is the big attraction. The “plots” can even be tedious sometimes. But the dialogue and the turns of phrase are priceless.
For the longest time, I was unaware that Roderick Spode was based on a real person. Now I cannot hear The name Sir Oswald Mosley without thinking of Bertie and Jeeves. “I say, Jeeves, it just goes to show: You can either be a dictator or you can design women’s undergarments, but you can’t do both.“ (That is a quote from the 1990s TV series, not necessarily the book. But my wife and I quote it whenever a politician gets caught in a compromising situation.)
Have gone on too long. A big thumbs up for Wodehouse!

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Taylor Swift is in town. I'll confess I am a Swiftie. A blonde thing with me. Anyway, because I didn't stake out Royal Ascot some firm vindictives struck big mouth meself. Just because I
was found dancing Shake It Off in my office with three females,
late for a staff meeting blah blah. So, I now must write a report in-house and Bank of England
as to Miss Swift's Eras Tour economic impact on the United Kingdom.
This will include her second stop here in August. So, there's time and firm resource account.
I'll take Glynnis to an August concert date and dinner. All on the firm tab.

Douglas Murray's The War On The West; how to prevail in the age of unreason, arrived.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Is listening to audiobooks and then posting in the "Reading" thread okay? On a recent road trip the Missus and I listened to two Agatha Christie books, The Man in the Brown Suit, and The Mystery of the Blue Train. The former was excellently read by Amelia Fox, the latter also excellently read by Hugh Fraser.
The narrators move with ease between different voices, and do not stray into melodramatics. Both stories feature some exotic locales, young ladies, family-less, who yearn for adventure, folks who are not what they seem to be, and plot-advancing dialogue. There are several excursions into characters' backgrounds, and in Brown Suit Christie cites from different diaries, letters, and whatnot, to fill in parts of the plot. The first story was easier for us to follow, more than the second, which is not the fault of Christie. They made the hours wing by pleasantly.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, originally published in 1936


The Wheel Spins is most famous today for having been turned into the highly regarded 1938 Alfred Hitchcock movie The Lady Vanishes (comments on the movie here: #30,965 ). While the movie deserves all the praise it receives, the book, despite some differences, is an equally engaging, nuanced and suspenseful story.

In White's tale, Iris Carr is a young, pretty, wealthy, orphaned socialite who stays on for a bit when her clique of beautiful friends leaves their remote European resort. A few days later, Iris is about to board a train that, with a few connections, will take her home to England.

Iris, all alone, appears to suffer some sort of heatstroke waiting for the train. She only boards with the help of a frumpy but kindly middle-aged English governess, Winifred Froy, who is returning to England to visit her parents.

As the only two English citizens in their train compartment, Miss Froy chats up Iris despite Iris, still feeling the effects of heatstroke and being a bit of a snob, wishing Miss Froy would leave her alone.

After tea with Miss Froy and now back in their compartment, Iris dozes off. When she wakes, Miss Froy is gone, but Iris assumes she just went to the bathroom or to stretch her legs. Happy for the quiet, Iris only begins to worry after much time goes by and Miss Froy doesn't return.

Iris asks about her, but the others in her compartment either don't speak English or claim to have never seen Miss Froy. Feeling some responsibility for her fellow countryman, Iris makes further inquiries on the train, but everyone denies having ever seen Miss Froy.

Iris can only find two Englishmen who are even willing to help her search. One is a young man attracted to Iris. Adding to the intrigue is the compartment next to Iris' that contains a badly scarred accident victim attended to by a lugubrious doctor and a nun.

The book from here is Iris, still feeling under the weather, pushing, often quite forcefully, for others to help her find Miss Froy, while the whole of the train seems against her. She meets either indifference or repeated outright denials that Miss Froy ever existed.

As the train mechanically rolls on, Iris starts to realize that something sinister is happening, but it's her behavior - claiming a woman no one has seen existed and arguing that the train needs to be searched - that is viewed as suspicious, irrational and even hysterical.

The tension builds as Iris' health flags, others turn more against her - a few threateningly - and even her two early hesitant supporters question her sanity. Author White builds to a powerful climax that has you turning pages with a combination of excitement and trepidation.

White created an atypical heroine in spoiled Iris. She starts off unawarely selfish and haughty as her wealth and lack of parents provide her a comfortable and undisciplined existence. Plus, being English, she absorbed the Empire's superior attitude at that time.

Yet Iris has something better inside her. She wants to dismiss Miss Froy as "just a middle-class governess," but she knows Miss Froy is a human being who needs help and only she can help her. Iris has a good moral northstar underneath her frivolous socialite exterior.

Much of the story engagingly unfolds within Iris' mind, intelligent yet ill-prepared for this novel and dangerous situation. It's enjoyable reading to see this pretty socialite have the mettle to stand up to imperious older women and condescending professional men.

White creates a lot of characters - a supercilious baroness, two cheating spouses, a pair of older arrogant English sisters, a kind English reverend and his wife, a menacing European doctor and others - who make the train a microcosm of class divisions, hypocrisy and envy.

The plot itself is pretty easy, a young woman searches for a middle-aged woman on a train whom everyone claims never existed. Yet, the reason for Miss Froy's disappearance will take you on a tangled trip through international intrigue.

When Alfred Hitchcock turned White's novel into a movie, owing to the needs of that visual medium, he externalized much of Iris' mental angst, made it more of an ensemble story, with an enhanced romantic subplot, and dramatically increased the espionage aspect of the plot.

All those things work very well on screen, which helped to make the movie a classic, but Hitch was working from a wonderful core story with intriguing characters. The joy in the book is reading a story focused almost solely on one unlikely heroine, the iron-willed socialite Iris Carr.

Carr is the character modern writers of period novels should create. Instead though, they make their feminist heroes perfectly align to today's unforgiving and yet tellingly always changing ideal, which makes their book's anachronistic, preachy and often silly and unreadable.

With its taut suspense story, The Wheel Spins sits firmly in the center of the very popular English mystery genre. Yet White's smart insights into human nature, her complex characters and her appealing and unlikely heroine expands the book past the genre's usual boundaries.

The timelessness of her story, writing and characters makes her novel as enjoyable a read today as when it was first published.