PAUL C INTO THE ROARING 20S - Part 16

This is rare a photo actually taken by me! This shows the project I have almost finished (the largest building in the picture), Sapura Tower, looking across the KLCC Park from the restaurant Belle and I were eating at on Sunday.

Poem

George Floyd

What is learnt when the color of skin
Is thought enough to do someone in?

On George Floyd's neck, a knee
"I cannot breathe", was the plea;
But they wouldn't relent
Until a man's life was spent.

For the passing of a small bill
Who thought it right to kill?

We should all stand with our black brothers
So that there may be no others
That die in fear and pain
Just as Abel slew Cain

We must hang our heads in shame -
When shall all men be treated the same?

BOOKS READ FIRST QUARTER OF 2020

January

1. Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift (2016) 149 pp - BAC Challenge
2. Paper Aeroplane by Simon Armitage (2014) 232 pp
3. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985) 171 pp - BAC Challenge
4. The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke (1970) 133 pp - Nobel winner
5. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (2006) 312 pp
6. Absurd Person Singular by Alan Ayckbourn (1972) 93 pp BAC Challenge
7. I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammaniti (2001) 225 pp
8. Death Walks in Eastrepps by Francis Beeding (1931) 252 pp
9. Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminski (2019) 78 pp
10. Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham (2012) 377 pp
11. James II : The Last Catholic King by David Womersley (2015) 99 pp
12. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911) 313 pp
13. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (1922) 41 pp
14. England and the Aeroplane by David Edgerton (1991) 172 pp

February

15. Loyalties by Delphine de Vigan (2018) 182 pp
16. The World's Two Smallest Humans by Julia Copus (2012) 52 pp
17. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (1991) 110 pp
18. The History Boys by Alan Bennett (2004) 200 pp BAC Challenge
19. Dregs by Jan Lier Horst (2010) 310 pp
20. On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis (2018) 313 pp
21. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (1993) 280 pp
22. The Roominghouse Madrigals by Charles Bukowski (1988) 256 pp
23. Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane (1996) 233 pp BAC Challenge
24. As it Was by Fred Trueman (2004) 397 pp
25. The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell (1973) 314 pp BOOKER WINNER
26. Varina by Charles Frazier (2018) 353 pp AAC
27. A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry (1998) 216 pp AAC

March

28. Past Tense by Lee Child (2018) 461 pp
29. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009) 266 pp NOBEL
30. Over the Moon by Imtiaz Dharkar (2014) 155 pp
31. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006) 287 pp PULITZER
32. Witness : Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom by Ariel Burger (2018) 255 pp
33. Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara (1957) 52 pp
34. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (2013) 183 pp
35. Ivanov by Anton Chekhov (1887) 58 pp
36. Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson (2010) 252 pp
37. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811) 374 pp
38. The English Civil War by David Clark (2008) 154 pp
39. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (1996) 280 pp
40. The Librarian by Salley Vickers (2018) 385 pp
41. The Holy Fox by Andrew Roberts (1991) 414 pp

BOOKS READ SECOND QUARTER OF 2020

April

42. The Females by Wolfgang Hilbig (2010) 129 pp
43. Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill (1956) 110 pp
44. Look We Have Coming to Dover! by Daljit Nagra (2007) 55 pp
45. Icarus by Deon Meyer (2015) 360 pp
46. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (2019) 452 pp
47. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (1972) 172 pp
48. Behind the Sofa : Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who by Steve Berry (2013) 216 pp
49. Please Sir! by Jack Sheffield (2011) 336 pp
50. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes (2018) 82 pp
51. The Sea Gull by Anton Checkhov (1896) 68 pp
52. The Memoir of an Anti-Hero by Kornel Filipowicz (1961) 70 pp
53. Divided : Why We're Living in an Age of Walls by Tim Marshall (2018) 288 pp
54. Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder (2009) 378 pp
55. North by Seamus Heaney (1975) 68 pp
56. Cambridge by Caryl Phillips (1991) 184 pp
57. Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott (2017) 456 pp
58. The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers (2017) 363 pp

May

59. The Drought by J.G. Ballard (1965) 233 pp
60. A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt (1960) 163 pp
61. The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories by Amos Tutuola (1990) 115 pp
62. Tales of Long Ago by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1922) 186 pp
63. Fidelity : Poems by Grace Paley (2008) 87 pp
64. Atlantic Fury by Hammond Innes (1962) 308 pp
65. The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West (1963) 375 pp
66. The War Hound and the World's Pain by Michael Moorcock (1981) 208 pp
67. Boomerang by Michael Lewis (2011) 212pp
68. Field Work by Seamus Heaney (1979) 56 pp
69. The Citadel by A.J. Cronin (1937) 401 pp
70. Unstoppable: My Life So Far by Maria Sharapova (2017) 289 pp
71. Selected Poems by Marianne Moore (1935) 109 pp
72. The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis (2005) 266 pp

June

73. Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot (1935) 88 pp
74. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (1978) 156 pp
75. Golden Hill by Francis Spufford (2016) 340 pp
76. The Great Impersonation by E Phillips Oppenheim (1920) 221 pp
77. Selected Poems of Odysseus Elytis by Odysseus Elytis (1981) 115 pp
78. Zonal by Don Paterson (2020) 68 pp
79. Staying On by Paul Scott (1977) 255 pp

Currently Reading

READING PLAN FOR 2020

I always start out ambitiously but not having made 100 books in the last two years I am going all out to read 20 books a month next year and go well past 200 for the first time since my University days.

20 Categories for 2020 which will also give a nod to my other challenges and longer term projects.

The twenty categories are :

1. British Author Challenge
2. British Poetry
3. Contemporary British Fiction
4. World Poetry
5. 1001 Books
6. Plays
7. American Author Challenge
8. Non-Fiction
9. History
10. Current Affairs
11. Booker Nominees
12. Nobel Winners
13. Scandi
14. Series Books
15. Thrillers/Mystery
16. Classic Fiction
17. 21st Century Fiction
18. World Literature
19. Science Fiction / Fantasy
20. Pot Luck

BRITISH ISLES AUTHOR CHALLENGE 2020



The general thread can be found here : https://www.librarything.com/topic/315141

January: Jeanette Winterson & Graham Swift

February: The 1990s - https://www.librarything.com/topic/313878#6991758

March: Jane Austen & Walter Scott

April: Bernardine Evaristo & Caryl Phillips

May: New Wave Sci-Fi : Michael Moorcock, J. G. Ballard, & Brian Aldiss

June: Penelope Fitzgerald & Patrick Gale

July: Elly Griffiths & Winston Graham

August: The Brontë Sisters : Charlotte Bronte, Anne Bronte & Emily Bronte

September: World War II - https://www.librarything.com/topic/313878#6999459

October: Joanne Harris & George Orwell

November: Fay Weldon & John le Carré

December: The 2010s : https://www.librarything.com/topic/313878#6999620

Wildcard: Playwrights - https://www.librarything.com/topic/313878#7000002

AMERICAN AUTHOR CHALLENGE



January Charles Frazier - Varina
February Grace Paley - Fidelity : Poems
March David McCullough
April Francine Prose
May E. Lynn Harris
June Jean Stafford
July Wendell Berry - A Timbered Choir
August Robert Penn Warren
September Dawn Powell
October Ward Just
November Ann Petry
December Tony Hillerman

My last decade of reading (probably my worst since I started reading).

Total Books Read : 1,145 books

1 book every 3.2 days

Best Reading Year : 2013 with 157 books

Worst Reading Year : 2019 with 76 books

My Books of the Year on LT:

2011 : Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2012 : The Road Home by Rose Tremain
2013 : Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
2014 : Plainsong by Kent Haruf
2015 : Winter King by Thomas Penn
2016 : The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
2017 : The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
2018 : Country Girls by Edna O'Brien
2019 : The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Personal Reading Challenge: Every winner of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1969

1969: P. H. Newby, Something to Answer For - READ
1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
1970: J. G. Farrell, Troubles (awarded in 2010 as the Lost Man Booker Prize) - READ
1971: V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State
1972: John Berger, G.
1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur - READ
1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist ... and Stanley Middleton, Holiday - READ
1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust - READ
1976: David Storey, Saville - READ
1977: Paul Scott, Staying On - READ
1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore - READ
1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage - READ
1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children - READ
1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark - READ
1983: J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac - READ
1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People
1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils - READ
1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger - READ
1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
1990: A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance - READ
1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient ... and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger - READ
1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994: James Kelman, How late it was, how late
1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders - READ
1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things READ
1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam - READ
1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace - READ
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang - READ
2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi
2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
2005: John Banville, The Sea - READ
2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering - READ
2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger - READ
2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall - READ
2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question
2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending - READ
2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies - READ
2013: Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North - READ
2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings - READ
2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout - READ
2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
2018: Anna Burns, Milkman
2019: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments, and Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

READ 31 of 55 WINNERS

Pulitzer Winners

As with the Bookers, I want to eventually read all the Pulitzer winners (for fiction at least) and have most of the recent ones on the shelves at least. Current status.

Fiction

1918 HIS FAMILY - Ernest Poole
1919 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - Booth Tarkington
1921 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - Edith Wharton
1922 ALICE ADAMS - Booth Tarkington
1923 ONE OF OURS - Willa Cather
1924 THE ABLE MCLAUGHLINS - Margaret Wilson
1925 SO BIG - Edna Ferber
1926 ARROWSMITH - Sinclair Lewis (Declined)
1927 EARLY AUTUMN - Louis Bromfield
1928 THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY - Thornton Wilder
1929 SCARLET SISTER MARY - Julia Peterkin
1930 LAUGHING BOY - Oliver Lafarge ON SHELVES
1931 YEARS OF GRACE - Margaret Ayer Barnes
1932 THE GOOD EARTH - Pearl Buck
1933 THE STORE - Thomas Sigismund Stribling
1934 LAMB IN HIS BOSOM - Caroline Miller
1935 NOW IN NOVEMBER - Josephine Winslow Johnson
1936 HONEY IN THE HORN - Harold L Davis
1937 GONE WITH THE WIND - Margaret Mitchell ON SHELVES
1938 THE LATE GEORGE APLEY - John Phillips Marquand
1939 THE YEARLING - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH - John Steinbeck
1942 IN THIS OUR LIFE - Ellen Glasgow
1943 DRAGON'S TEETH - Upton Sinclair
1944 JOURNEY IN THE DARK - Martin Flavin
1945 A BELL FOR ADANO - John Hersey ON SHELVES
1947 ALL THE KING'S MEN - Robert Penn Warren ON SHELVES
1948 TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC - James Michener
1949 GUARD OF HONOR - James Gould Cozzens
1950 THE WAY WEST - A.B. Guthrie
1951 THE TOWN - Conrad Richter
1952 THE CAINE MUTINY - Herman Wouk
1953 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Ernest Hemingway
1955 A FABLE - William Faulkner
1956 ANDERSONVILLE - McKinlay Kantor
1958 A DEATH IN THE FAMILY - James Agee ON SHELVES
1959 THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE McPHEETERS - Robert Lewis Taylor
1960 ADVISE AND CONSENT - Allen Drury
1961 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - Harper Lee
1962 THE EDGE OF SADNESS - Edwin O'Connor
1963 THE REIVERS - William Faulkner
1965 THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE - Shirley Ann Grau
1966 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF KATHERINE ANNE PORTER - Katherine Anne Porter
1967 THE FIXER - Bernard Malamud
1968 THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER - William Styron
1969 HOUSE MADE OF DAWN - N Scott Momaday ON SHELVES
1970 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF JEAN STAFFORD - Jean Stafford
1972 ANGLE OF REPOSE - Wallace Stegner ON SHELVES
1973 THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER - Eudora Welty ON SHELVES
1975 THE KILLER ANGELS - Jeff Shaara ON SHELVES
1976 HUMBOLDT'S GIFT - Saul Bellow
1978 ELBOW ROOM - James Alan McPherson
1979 THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER - John Cheever ON SHELVES
1980 THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG - Norman Mailer ON SHELVES
1981 A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES - John Kennedy Toole ON SHELVES
1982 RABBIT IS RICH - John Updike
1983 THE COLOR PURPLE - Alice Walker ON SHELVES
1984 IRONWEED - William Kennedy ON SHELVES
1985 FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Alison Lurie ON SHELVES
1986 LONESOME DOVE - Larry McMurtry ON SHELVES
1987 A SUMMONS TO MEMPHIS - Peter Taylor
1988 BELOVED - Toni Morrison - ON SHELVES
1989 BREATHING LESSONS - Anne Tyler
1990 THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE - Oscar Hijuelos
1991 RABBIT AT REST - John Updike
1992 A THOUSAND ACRES - Jane Smiley
1993 A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN - Robert Olen Butler
1994 THE SHIPPING NEWS - E Annie Proulx
1995 THE STONE DIARIES - Carol Shields ON SHELVES
1996 INDEPENDENCE DAY - Richard Ford ON SHELVES
1997 MARTIN DRESSLER - Steven Millhauser ON SHELVES
1998 AMERICAN PASTORAL - Philip Roth ON SHELVES
1999 THE HOURS - Michael Cunningham ON SHELVES
2000 INTERPRETER OF MALADIES - Jumpha Lahiri
2001 THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY - Michael Chabon ON SHELVES
2002 EMPIRE FALLS - Richard Russo ON SHELVES
2003 MIDDLESEX - Jeffrey Eugenides ON SHELVES
2004 THE KNOWN WORLD - Edward P. Jones ON SHELVES
2005 GILEAD - Marilynne Robinson ON SHELVES
2006 MARCH - Geraldine Brooks
2007 THE ROAD - Cormac McCarthy
2008 THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO - Junot Diaz ON SHELVES
2009 OLIVE KITTERIDGE - Elizabeth Strout ON SHELVES
2010 TINKERS - Paul Harding
2011 A VISIT FROM THE GOOD SQUAD - Jennifer Egan ON SHELVES
2013 ORPHAN MASTER'S SON - Adam Johnson ON SHELVES
2014 THE GOLDFINCH - Donna Tartt ON SHELVES
2015 ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE - Anthony Doerr ON SHELVES
2016 THE SYMPATHIZER - Viet Thanh Nguyen ON SHELVES
2017 THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - Colson Whitehead ON SHELVES
2018 LESS - Andrew Sean Greer ON SHELVES
2019 THE OVERSTORY - Richard Powers ON SHELVES
2020 THE NICKEL BOYS - Colson Whitehead


16 READ
37 ON SHELVES
40 NOT OWNED OR READ

93 TOTAL

NOBELS

Update on my Nobel Prize Winning Reading:
1901 Sully Prudhomme
1902 Theodor Mommsen
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1904 Frédéric Mistral and José Echegaray y Eizaquirre
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1907 Rudyard Kipling - READ
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken
1909 Selma Lagerlöf
1910 Paul Heyse --
1911 Count Maurice Maeterlinck
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann
1913 Rabindranath Tagore - READ
1915 Romain Rolland
1916 Verner von Heidenstam
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan
1919 Carl Spitteler
1920 Knut Hamsun - READ
1921 Anatole France - READ
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1923 William Butler Yeats - READ
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont
1925 George Bernard Shaw
1926 Grazia Deledda - READ
1927 Henri Bergson
1928 Sigrid Undset
1929 Thomas Mann - READ
1930 Sinclair Lewis - READ
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1932 John Galsworthy - READ
1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin - READ
1934 Luigi Pirandello - READ
1936 Eugene O'Neill - READ
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1938 Pearl S. Buck - READ
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1946 Hermann Hesse - READ
1947 André Gide - READ
1948 T.S. Elliot - READ
1949 William Faulkner - READ
1950 Bertrand Russell - READ
1951 Pär Lagerkvist - READ
1952 François Mauriac - READ
1953 Sir Winston Churchill - READ
1954 Ernest Hemingway - READ
1955 Halldór Laxness - READ
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1957 Albert Camus - READ
1958 Boris Pasternak (declined the prize) - READ
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1960 Saint-John Perse
1961 Ivo Andric - READ
1962 John Steinbeck - READ
1963 Giorgos Seferis
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize) - READ
1965 Michail Sholokhov
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Nelly Sachs
1967 Miguel Ángel Asturias
1968 Yasunari Kawabata - READ
1969 Samuel Beckett
1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - READ
1971 Pablo Neruda - READ
1972 Heinrich Böll - READ
1973 Patrick White
1974 Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson
1975 Eugenio Montale
1976 Saul Bellow - READ
1977 Vincente Aleixandre
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer - READ
1979 Odysseas Elytis - READ
1980 Czeslaw Milosz
1981 Elias Canetti
1982 Gabriel Garciá Márquez - READ
1983 William Golding - READ
1984 Jaroslav Seifert - READ
1985 Claude Simon - READ
1986 Akinwande Ouwoe Soyinka
1987 Joseph Brodsky - READ
1988 Naguib Mahfouz - READ
1989 Camilo José Cela - READ
1990 Octavio Paz
1991 Nadine Gordimer - READ
1992 Derek Walcott - READ
1993 Toni Morrison - READ
1994 Kenzaburo Oe - READ
1995 Seamus Heaney - READ
1996 Wislawa Szymborska - READ
1997 Dario Fo - READ
1998 José Saramago - READ
1999 Günter Grass
2000 Gao Xingjian
2001 Vidiadhar Surjprasad Naipaul - READ
2002 Imre Kertész - READ
2003 John Maxwell Coetzee - READ
2004 Elfriede Jelinek - READ
2005 Harold Pinter - READ
2006 Orhan Pamuk - READ
2007 Doris Lessing - READ
2008 J.M.G. Le Clézio
2009 Herta Müller - READ
2010 Mario Vargas Llosa - READ
2011 Tomas Tranströmer - READ
2012 Mo Yan
2013 Alice Munro - READ
2014 Patrick Modiano - READ
2015 Svetlana Alexievich - READ
2016 Bob Dylan - READ
2017 Kazuo Ishiguro - READ
2018 Olga Tokarczuk - READ
2019 Peter Handke - READ

READ 67 OF
116 LAUREATES

LIT HUB'S 50 CHUNKSTERS & MY 20 ALTERNATIVES

These are the 50 Literary Hub Must Read Chunksters:

1. The Overstory by Richard Powers OWNED
2. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
3. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco OWNED
4. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee OWNED
5. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell OWNED
6. The Witch Elm by Tana French OWNED
7. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood OWNED
8. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr OWNED
9. Little, Big by John Crowley
10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides OWNED
11. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
12. Possession by A.S. Byatt READ
13. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel READ
14. The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
15. The Secret History by Donna Tartt READ
16. The Parisian : A Novel
17. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie OWNED
18. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters READ
19. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami OWNED
20. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson OWNED
21. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie READ
22. American Gods by Neil Gaiman READ
23. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon OWNED
24. The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu OWNED
25. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen OWNED
26. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray OWNED
27. A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava
28. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
29. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James READ
30. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson OWNED
31. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe OWNED
32. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara OWNED
33. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin OWNED
34. JR by William Gaddis OWNED
35. Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
36. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon OWNED
37. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
38. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett OWNED
39. The Stand by Stephen King OWNED
40. Underworld by Don DeLillo READ
41. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton OWNED
42. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke READ
43. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry OWNED
44. 2666 by Roberto Bolano OWNED
45. Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra OWNED
46. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann OWNED
47. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace OWNED
48. Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas
49. Women and Men by Joseph McElroy
50. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth OWNED

& My Alternative 20

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (1995) 624 pp
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2001) 544 pp
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (2005) 720 pp
The Far Pavilions by MM Kaye (1978) 960 pp
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess (1980) 656 pp
White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000) 560 pp
The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman (1982) 896 pp
Saville by David Storey (1976) 560 pp
To Serve Them All My Days by RF Delderfield (1972) 672 pp
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres (1994) 533 pp
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (1992) 640 pp
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (1993) 528 pp
Sophie's Choice by William Styron (1979) 656 pp
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (2008) 544 pp
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998) 626 pp
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (1989) 656 pp
The Singapore Grip by JG Farrell (1978) 704 pp
Magician by Raymond E Feist (1982) 864 pp
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (1986) 672 pp
A Chain of Voices by Andre Brink (1982) 512 pp

2020 ADDITIONS

These are the books that I have added this year. My new rule is that any book I buy I should read before the end of the following year!

1. Submarine by Joe Dunthorne (2008) 290 pp
2. I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven (1967) 158 pp
3. The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W.E. Bowman (1956) 171 pp
4. The Spare Room by Helen Garner (2008) 195 pp
5. Look We have Coming to Dover! by Dajit Nagra (2007) 53 pp READ APR 20
6. Hame by Annalina McAfee (2017) 577 pp
7. The Holy Fox by Andrew Roberts (1991) 414 pp READ MAR 20
8. The History Boys by Alan Bennett (2004) 200 pp READ FEB 20
9. Himself by Jess Kidd (2016) 358 pp
10. Lazarus by Morris West (1990) 375 pp
11. Judith Paris by Hugh Walpole (1931) 757 pp
12. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope (1864) 665 pp
13. The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers (1942) 398 pp
14. The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers (2017) 363 pp READ APR 20
15. The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich (1985) 331 pp
16. The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard (1990) 578 pp
17. Eight Hours from England by Anthony Quayle (1945) 228 pp
18. Dregs by Jorn Lier Horst (2010) 310 pp READ FEB 20
19. Loyalties by Delphine de Vigan READ FEB 20
20. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli READ MAR 20
21. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (1993) 280 pp READ FEB 20
22. War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans (2013) 293 pp
23. Deviation by Luce D'Eramo (1979) 344 pp
24. Caging Skies by Christine Leunens (2019) 294 pp
25. The Hunters by James Salter (1956) 233 pp
26. The Watch by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya (2012) 310 pp
27. The Memoir of an Anti-Hero by Kornel Filipowicz (1961) 70 pp READ APR 20
28. Darius the Great is not Okay by Adib Khorram (2018) 312 pp
29. The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo (2019) 466 pp
30. Love Story, With Murders by Harry Bingham (2013) 441 pp
31. Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon
32. Selected Poems: 1950-2012 by Adrienne Rich
33. The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
34. Divided : Why We're Living in an Age of Walls by Tim Marshall READ APR 20
35. The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis READ MAY 20
36. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
37. Witness : Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom by Ariel Burger READ MAR 20
38. Lucy Church, Amiably by Gertrude Stein
39. Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich
40. The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories by Amos Tutuola READ May 20
41. After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell
42. The Librarian by Salley Vickers READ MAR 20
43. Temple of a Thousand Faces by John Shors
44. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (1993) 311 pp
45. The Drought by J.G. Ballard (1965) 233 pp READ MAY 20
46. The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (2012) 391 pp
47. Clade by James Bradley (2017) 297 pp
48. Far North by Marcel Theroux (2009) 288 pp
49. The River by Peter Heller (2019) 253 pp
50. Ivanov by Anton Chekhov (1887) 58 pp READ MAR 20
51. The Sea-Gull by Anton Chekhov (1896) 68 pp READ APR 20
52. Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (1900) 44 pp
53. The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (1901) 58 pp
54. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (1904) 50 pp
55. The Females by Wolfgang Hilbig (2010) 129 pp READ APR 20
56. The Other Americans by Laila Lalami (2019) 301 pp
57. Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (2019) 350 pp
58. Lanny by Max Porter (2019) 210 pp
59. Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley (2019) 280 pp
60. Murder in the Cathedral by TS Eliot (1935) 88 pp READ JUNE 20
61. The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West (1963) READ MAY 20
62. Fidelity : Poems by Grace Paley (2008) READ MAY 20
63. The Citadel by A.J. Cronin (1937) READ MAY 20
64. Golden Hill by Francis Spufford (2016) READ JUNE 20
65. American War by Omar El Akkad (2017)
66. Saltwater by Jessica Andrews (2019)
67. Unstoppable : My Life So Far by Maria Sharapova (2017) 289 pp READ MAY 20
68. The Great Impersonation by E Phillips Oppenheim (1920) 288 pp READ JUNE 20
69. The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1969) 488 pp
70. Odysseus Elytis :Selected Poems 1940-1979 by Odysseus Elytis (1981) 112 pp READ JUNE 20
71. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926) 203 pp
72. Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou (2015) 199 pp
73. Zonal by Don Paterson (2020) 68 pp READ JUNE 20
74. The Porpoise by Mark Haddon (2019) 304 pp
75. Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila 2014 210 pp
76. 1934 by Alberto Moravia (1982)
77. Blue Moon by Lee Child (2019)
78. A Burning by Megha Majumdar (2020)
79. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (2017)
80. Henry, Himself by Stewart O'Nan (2019)

80 books added
27 already finished

Resolutions

Next is yours

Happy new thread, Paul!

Happy New Thread, Paul.

Happy new thread!

>1 PaulCranswick: That is one impressive skyline! I assume your building is the mirrored one in the foreground.

Happy new one!

Happy new thread, Paul and nice to see you can add photographer to your range of talents - that is a lovely photo in >1 PaulCranswick:.

>17 bell7: Thank you, Mary.

>18 msf59: Thanks Mark.

>19 quondame: Thank you, Susan. Sapura Tower is indeed the large glass curtain walled building in the foreground. 53 stories with an extension to the Convention Centre, almost 2 million ft2 in total.

>20 figsfromthistle: Thanks Anita.

>21 lkernagh: Thanks Lori. I don't have any skills really as a photographer but occasionally I can get lucky!

Happy new thread, Paul. That is a terrific picture up top, and a lovely, moving poem.

>25 AMQS: Thank you Anne. The picture will definitely be saved. I am quite proud of this project which will be fully completed by the end of the year, Covid-19 allowing. You couldn't tell but the poem is intended to affect the style of WH Auden in certain of his poems but does so clumsily. I have slightly edited and improved it from the first attempt on the preceding thread.

Hi, Paul! That is a super picture up top, and a sad poem.
I can't catch up on your old thread, but at least I can wish you good reading and posting on this one, and I do. I was glad for Staying On because I do so love the Quartet, but it's such a slight thing.

>27 LizzieD: Thank you, Peggy. I know that Staying On is something of a coda to The Raj Quartet which has been on my shelves for the longest time and I haven't made time to read it, but I must say I am enjoying it enormously. Will finish it today for sure and it is one of my favourite reads of the year so far.

Happy new thread!!

Happy New Thread, Paul.

>29 banjo123: Thanks Rhonda

>30 vancouverdeb: Thank you, Deb.

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life

2005

A year of children growing and happy times. A year of business consolidation and friends. A year when my interest in music was possibly on the slide but this group from my home area of Leeds was in the charts with this prescient song "I Predict a Riot"

These lines in particular strike a chord with current events:

Watching the people get lairy
Is not very pretty I tell thee
Walking through town is quite scary
And not very sensible either
A friend of a friend he got beaten
He looked the wrong way at a policeman
Would never have happened to Smeaton
And old Leodiensian

I predict a riot, I predict a riot
I predict a riot, I predict a riot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84qWb8i_Q_A

Happy New Thread, Paul.
It is a wonderful poem - and the building is a beauty.

>33 SirThomas: Thank you Thomas. I always look forward to your visits.

>1 PaulCranswick: Nice photo Paul, and interesting building.

>2 PaulCranswick: Well said. Heartbreaking. But sadly anther death at the hands of a police officer followed.

>35 Caroline_McElwee: Where I live, Caroline, is sort of to the extreme left of the photo and a little bit further. On the days I am at that site I walk down the road towards the building (my office is in its basement) and I am looking at it side on as I approach it. Due to the lay of the land that it is built upon the building looks like it is constructed at a slight angle which, given my job, is rather disconcerting.

It must be difficult being a policeman or policewoman in the urban United States particularly but I'd rather like to think in similar situations my guns would stay holstered. American gun laws are tragic and should have been altered at the time of Wyatt Earp.

Happy new thread, Paul. Impressive building in your topper photo.

>37 BLBera: Thank you, Beth. My impression of it is rather affected by almost living in its basement for the last two years!

Awesome building you've got going there! And typical teen daughter, LOL. Happy new thread, Paul.

>39 Berly: Awesome teen daughter and typical building would make things all round easier to cope! xx

>40 PaulCranswick: LOL. Actually, I think they are both awesome. And you cope quite well because you are awesome, too!! : )

>41 Berly: *Goes off to sleep with cheeks a-blush!*

I am surprised that you took my suggestion about giving police officers different uniforms so lightly. Just look at our police. They look like Gestapo, NKVD agents, or the Ulster Constabulary. The uniforms are designed to make the police look like military people. They show up for a normal traffic stop padded up like they are playing football, wearing guns dressed in black. The only other thing they need to look help them look worse is a horsewhip.

Maybe if they showed up dressed like the UPS delivery man or the US Post Office delivery people wouldn't be so defensive. Everybody loves the UPS uniform. The soft colors of the USPS make them approachable. I think that putting the police in polo style shirts, Bermuda shorts in the summer and long pants in the winter and changing the color to some sort of light green, light blue, beige, white, or some other color, would help them to lighten up mentally.

The current way that they dress is just plain to militaristic. If they dressed like the Swiss Guard or the Beefeaters, they could still command respect but they wouldn't look like jackbooted hitlerite thugs marching down the street. Just look at that incident from Buffalo, New York and tell me that those police people didn't look like thugs!

Image is perception and it is clear from looking at our police forces that they want to look like Gestapo on parade. The only difference is that they don't goose step.

>43 benitastrnad: Do the police in every state dress the same, Benita? I didn't take it lightly, I just don't know enough about it to comment so meaningfully. Obviously it could be a sign of intent but a mere changing of uniform is like taking paracetamol to cure cancer. Your gun culture needs to be tackled somehow, but with however many million guns in circulation I just don't know how you achieve that.

Your police are definitely more violent than ours but your murder rate is also considerably higher.

Selected countries: Intentional homicides per 100,000

USA : 4.96

Malaysia : 2.11
Canada : 1.76
UK : 1.20
Australia : 0.89
NZ : 0.70
Netherlands : 0.59
Singapore : 0.16

That means that I am more than twice as safe as you and people in the UK are four times safer. People in NZ are seven times safer whilst Nina in Singapore is thirty times safer. It is sadly true that your police reflect your society as a whole and I don't have any answers.

>2 PaulCranswick: What an incredible poem!

>45 Whisper1: Have to be honest, Linda, it was dashed off in a matter of minutes straight onto my thread. I did go back from the last thread and edit/correct it a little and make it read slightly better. It does have the merit of being topical. xx

>1 PaulCranswick: Marvelous picture, Paul

>2 PaulCranswick: Sad but lovely poem

>36 PaulCranswick: Amen n gun laws

>44 PaulCranswick: I think selecting police officers who are far less aggressive would go a long way to help solve the problem.

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life:

2006

In 2006 I started doing a project for the company who was manufacturing trains and systems for the KL Monorail and eventually for similar systems in Mumbai and Brazil. This would be the spur to form a fully fledged Project Management Company in lieu of freelancing.

In music one of my heroes from my younger days in the 80's was continuing a renaissance as a solo artist - Morrissey, late of the Smiths. This is "In the Future When All's Well".......mmm.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nwT015bOc0

>47 Matke: Thank you, Gail.

I think that there are many incremental steps that could be taken to improve things viz policing and better recruitment is obviously one of those steps. I still think that gun control is the only way of dealing with the problem. In the UK and Malaysia we do not conceive that any minor confrontation could lead to gun-play and the threat of it sometimes conditions a response that is non-proportional. Racism is endemic in urban USA especially and characterised by the police surmising on the likelihood of threat to the prejudice often of people of colour.

>49 PaulCranswick: I couldn’t agree more, Paul. I felt totally depressed and pretty hopeless when a citizen in Florida—a seemingly sane and reasonable man—was asked if his “right” to own guns outweighs the life of a child. Without hesitation he said yes.

Faced with that sort of attitude there is little hope of change, plus of course our enormous and essentially corrupt gun lobby.

There are times when I despair for my country.

>50 Matke: That is extraordinary, somewhat unsurprising and ineffably sad.

Hi Paul, and happy Sixteenth thread. You definitely are into the Roaring 20s. Excellent photo, too.

>11 PaulCranswick: I’ve read 20, have 11 more on my shelves, and have 10 other books by winning authors

>52 karenmarie: I'm not too far behind you then on the Pulitzers! Lovely to see you here as always, Karen. xx

Woohoo! A thread small enough for me to dip into! Hello as we are approaching the halfway point of the year! And such a momentous semiyear. Truly a hinge of history as we race toward the flex point.

Being unemployed since the beginning of the year I would have thought more time for LT, not less. But I have been so overwhelmed and now overtaken by life.

I hope you and your family are well.

I've been part of 3 protests locally during 3 weeks of almost continuous organized activity. I am very thankful that our former police chief resigned and retired before all of this, because the acting chief is much calmer and much less petulant and defensive. The protest art on the boarded up windows/doors downtown has been both heartbreaking and breathtaking.

I'm a bit of a radical and fully support the abolition movement. Seeing all the graphs of municipal budgets of so many cities (incuding my own!) really brings home how dysfunctional our system is: >80 PaulCranswick:% of spending on police leaving

>50 Matke: That's the question I've always wanted to ask, Gail, and I haven't because I haven't wanted to face the answer.
>45 Whisper1: Benita has the right of it. It's hard to see the friendly face, even for me, when confronted with the uniform, the weaponry, handcuffs, etc., always supposing that there is a friendly face. I realize that I'm many times more likely to see a friendly face than a person of color would be.
>28 PaulCranswick: Hi, Paul! I'll look forward to your evaluation of Staying On and maybe be encouraged to reread and adjust my memory of it.

Hi Paul, happy new thread mate and a great thread topper photo, you do work on some great projects mate and what a wonderful poem. Hope you are having a good week mate, stay safe and we send love and hugs.

Happy "new" thread, Paul. Nice building! Is it offices? mixed use?

I finished reading Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold earlier this week and think it might be a book that you would be interested in reading. Malaysia is one of the countries on the fault line from which Griswold reports. The book was written in 2010 but it has some important things to say about the loss of economic opportunity due to global warming and politics.

Basically this book is a travelogue, albeit, a travelogue with a social consciousness and a religious and educational agenda. Educational in that she seeks to inform the public that there are reasons why there are reasons why religious based conflict is happening and that it is based in history, the nature of the religions, and in economics. The author uses the clash of the religions to inform - not to inflame.

Griswold is the product of a deeply religious upbringing and she brings this sensitivity to this work. The book sets out to explore the area of the world inside of the ten degrees north and south latitudes from the equator. This is the area of the world in which Christianity and Islam are in constant contact with the results of that contact oftentimes being violent. Griswold explores the reasons for these conflicts and comes to the conclusion that most of the conflict is historical use of religion to provide clear boundaries between the two religions. Added to this potent mix of historical resistance to proselytizing and expansion is mass migration caused by global warming in the case of Africa, and the population explosion and the resulting loss of resources in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Add to both of these the ready availability of arms and the willingness of both religions to see conversion to one or the other religion as an imperative and the result is violence and political domination of scare resources. Simply put, it is often a matter of survival to belong to one religion or the other. Faith has little to do with it.

This was a hard book to start but an easy book to finish. At first it seemed dull and academic - another one of those tomes that we all should read, but can't find the time to concentrate on it. Fortunately for the reader, the text has natural dividing lines that create shorter chunks of reading material, giving the reader time to ponder and process that material. As I read and accumulated some background knowledge I began to see how the problems faced in the various countries built on each other forming a division, oftentimes in the same country, that empathy and compassion can't seem to cross. Both of those emotions are, according to the tenants of both faiths, pillars of their Faiths. The book takes the time to reveal the part that economic development and oppertunity, or the lack thereof, plays in this constant conflict. This economic disparity is commonly caused by political maneuvering by the person, or persons in power, and in some cases, not caused by the lack of resources. It is simple corruption and the desire to remain in power.

>44 PaulCranswick: - Interesting statistics. Canadians do in fact, per capita, own a lot of guns so I wonder if part of the difference in the stats you listed is the different gun licensing regimes. In Canada, all people need a license to own or buy firearms or ammunition. Also, all restricted or prohibited firearms must be registered. Wikipedia - yes, I know, I am quoting from Wikipedia - states that just over 1 million firearms are registered in the US while 392 million are unregistered. My jaw dropped when I saw those numbers. There are more guns in the US than there are citizens.

>54 justchris: Lovely to see you Chris!

Sorry to see that this tough year is being especially tough on you. I do think that I would most likely also be on the streets and protesting if I was American.

>55 LizzieD: It is one of the saddest things I have read for a while, Peggy. That someone would put an outdated right before the life of another completely baffles and disheartens. My review of Staying On will be up tomorrow.

>56 johnsimpson: Thanks John. I hope to get back to the UK soon and we can chew the fat a little. Do you think that we will be able to watch any cricket this summer?

>57 RebaRelishesReading: The tower itself is 53 stories and is offices, Reba. We have a seven storey podium that has retail as well as an extension to the KLCC International Exhibition Centre.

>58 benitastrnad: As I get older, Benita, I tend towards the view that a large part of the problems in the world are caused by organised religion. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism in all their various forms and guises but when they are organised, forced and ordered with an imposed set of rules and blame to everyone that they feel does not conform to the organised "established" teachings and practices are "enemies" of that particular faith.

Comparative religious studies are interesting but should serve to point out the similarities over the differences between the various belief systems.

>59 lkernagh: In the UK and Malaysia gun ownership is only via special licence and placed upon a register. I think it makes a huge difference. Take away the weapons and it won't make everybody suddenly love each other but it would remove some of the culture of fear and mistrust that peoples have for each other.

Paul, I grew up with loaded guns in unlocked drawers. I was an obedient child, and my daddy told me I was never to touch them, so I didn't. The 2nd Amendment provides for a citizen militia, which gun owners, thankfully, seem to disregard. I guess I could accept their "rights" if they were restricted to owning only muzzle loading muskets (what was available in 1787) as long as they gave up a weekend a month to train as militia. Or - no - I guess I couldn't.
Taking away weapons would at least protect disobedient children from shooting themselves or somebody else. It is a great sadness.

Happy new thread, Paul. Impressive building up top there. You are wading into some very heavy subjects and the US love of guns is a very weighty problem; very close to inexplicable when all the mass shootings are taken into account.

>63 LizzieD: America is living proof that not all children are as obedient as you were, Peggy, or grow up to be as grounded. xx

>64 Familyhistorian: I can't remember how I stumbled onto the topic, Meg, but I think that the licensing system we have in most other countries could come into play without impinging on 2nd amendment rights.

Hi -

Not at all defending the present terrifying, unremmiting state of Gun Freedom in the U.S.,

but would like to ask if other countries mentioned, from Malaysia to Canada,
have the history
that precipitated future Americans into adopting the 2nd Amendment...?

Did armed British soldiers force their way into homes, steal any of their protective guns,
murder their families, and force the country into a Revolutionary War...?

>61 PaulCranswick: I live in a "podium" building which is concrete base with wood-frame above. I assume yours is concrete with steel above -- right? It is an elegant building for sure.

>62 PaulCranswick: There are many, many versions of Christianity (which I know you know, Paul) and some of us even try to follow the teachings of Christ (love one another, help the weak and afflicted, etc). The version I was raised in -- not so much.

Yes! Yes! Yes! America needs to get rid of it's wild west fetish and regulate guns!! But will that happen while money still rules? I doubt it.

>66 m.belljackson: That is a fairly unique twist on the origins of the American War for Independence or are you referring to Sand Creek or Wounded Knee or Mai Lai?

Your gun laws are stupid and abhorrent and to retain them as a reaction to a revolt by thirteen of your states for "no taxation without representation" is more than a little ridiculous.

>67 RebaRelishesReading: Strangely enough, Reba, it is mainly concrete frame above with curtain wall.

I know many Christians who live devotedly by Christ's teachings, I was talking about the propensity for organised religions to set different faith systems against each other.

Ha. I just read the last 31 posts, Paul, and ya'll seemed to hit on most of our faults/problems. "Our" meaning the USA. And no one mentioned who know who.

Happy new-ish thread!

>69 weird_O: I am hugely pro-American, Bill, but I just find the gun laws over there incomprehensible.

>70 amanda4242: Thanks Amanda.......I was getting worried because 70 posts in and you're usually in the first 25. xx

Paul - once again - as I wrote, this is NOT to defend the totally indefensible -

AND

I have written here before about men with loaded guns sitting next to kids at restaurants, etc. -

it was and is to give Historical Perspective to how Americans ended up with the odious AKA Gun Freedom

VS

the history of other countries who did NOT face the bloody horrors of The American Revolution...

which led directly to the establishment of The 2nd Amendment in its present distorted form...

whose convulsions continue as people of peace are now buying guns to protect themselves

from the increasing possibility of attack unleashed by lunatic supporters of trump's horrific reign...

which Americans wait for the possible chimera of November to end rather than acting now.

>71 PaulCranswick: I've been distracted by the shiny new series update.

>72 m.belljackson: Sorry Marianne but the scale doesn't justify the lunacy.

In the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) there were 25,000 American deaths

In the American Civil War (1861-1865) there were 655,000 deaths on both sides.

Interestingly most of the Native Americans sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War because they feared American expansionist ideals. They were tragically proven right and they were let down badly by the British who left them to it and withdrew without any consultation with them.

In the Second Indo-China War which you Americans call the Vietnam War

The US had 58,318 war deaths

The Vietnamese had 1,875,000 war deaths

In Vietnam the homicide rate per 100,000 is 1.52 and people don't carry guns
In the USA the homicide rate is more than 3 times higher at 4.96

>73 amanda4242: I should get distracted too, I love series updates. I must go and look for these!

>72 m.belljackson: I believe that the briefest study of the history of countries which were colonized by the British will reveal far more innocent blood shed than was shed in the US during the period running up to the US Revolution. That part of your position is ridiculous on its face.

I believe that even the most cursory study of the second amendment to the US Constitution will demonstrate that the bearing of arms was intended to provide a well-regulated militia. There is no Citizen Militia here, well-regulated or otherwise. This idea has been deliberately perverted, especially by the NRA and the gun lobby, into a mad free-for-all driven by the greediest and least reasonable parts of our citizenry and businesses.

The current gun rights movement has nothing to do with the original intent of the second amendment. It is not justified by history. In fact, a realistic historical perspective would reveal exactly the opposite.

>75 Matke:

Wow, so much for discussion and gentle sparring.

I'm not measuring drops of blood.

I was and am accounting for how the 2nd Amendment developed from the history of The American Revolution
and have repeatedly made the point that what exists now as Gun Freedom in the USA stands as a disastrous failure.

If you can show me I’m wrong, I’d be glad to discuss it. I’m vehement on the subject because it’s done so much harm in and to our country.

>76 m.belljackson: Fair enough. I’ll just leave it that I disagree with your premise, which if I understand it correctly, seems to posit that the Revolutionary War and its attendant horrors resulted in (not exclusively, of course) the second amendment. If that were so, why don’t other countries, who certainly suffered horrors from colonial rule, have their own forms/interpretations of the issue? I mean, the US is hardly alone in having problems/violence/deaths and destruction caused by their colonial rulers.
Why did the US react so differently?

>75 Matke: I must preface my comments, Gail, by stating that the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent development of the Constitution is not really my area in history. That said I understood in my limited way that Madison proposed the Amendment in order to provide the individual states with protection via local militias in the event of Federal Government tyranny.

Marianne is right in stating that this was obviously the result of their experience with the previous controlling power (i.e. Britain} but my point is that there was nothing especially severe about the war of Independence to justify what happened. It wasn't the level of violence which was fairly tame for the times but the unique fact of thirteen different colonies or states coming together as one that resulted in the Second Amendment.

>76 m.belljackson: Your position has been consistent Marianne and I know that you are pro Gun control. My point in juxtaposing the number of deaths in the American Civil War and Vietnam is that the scale of those conflicts and especially the latter did not lead to the same result.

>77 Matke: I don't think that it is possible to argue convincingly that the 2nd Amendment has been a success, Gail. As I have stated, I am speaking a little out of turn as a foreigner, but to the overwhelming majority of us foreigners I would hazard that we view the right to bear arms as lunacy.

>78 Matke: Yes, Gail, that is my point too. It was more the coming together of the colonies as one that prompted the amendment as a means to safeguard individual states.

>76 m.belljackson: - >80 PaulCranswick: I'd be just as happy if all the guns in the US vaporized. And comparing the US experience of colonization to anywhere else doesn't work at all, since the people who revolted and "kicked out" the invader, were the invading people themselves, not an exploited native population. I'm not saying they weren't exploited, but that their experience of separation is not the same as say, India.

I’ll cede the position.

But that still lives us with the unfathomable and disastrous results of the amendment being, at best, grossly misinterpreted.

Other original constitutional language has been changed over time, when it was clearly demonstrated that the founders were wrong.

Why hasn’t this language been changed?

>81 quondame: Yes, Susan, you are certainly right. India is a patchwork quilt at the best of times as is the Continent of Africa both left with artificial constructs for states given the meddling and greed of the colonial powers. The Partition of India was a disaster and the drawing up of the African map left the tribal societies in a state of bewilderment.

>82 Matke: There does appear to be a degree of unanimity on the problems caused by your Second Amendment. I think it is also clear that the original intention has been usurped for a somewhat perverse personal freedom argument.
I think if some way could be found to take guns out of circulation the next President - with a favourable house and senate could look at sensible controls. I think that the first step has to be the introduction of a proper licensing system for all weapons and that any weapons not licensed after a period be subject to seizure and prosecution.

Perhaps we could start with holding gun owners responsible for crimes committed with their guns, no matter who commits the crime.

Perhaps requiring licenses to buy any gun, said license to require a gun safety training course.

>84 Matke: Sound start as it would put the USA on a similar footing to most other nations. The real challenge of course is to reduce the number of guns in circulation and I don't think that is going to be easy in practical terms.

>72 m.belljackson: >75 Matke: >81 quondame:
You all were right and I was wrong.

I let my alligator keyboard overload my hummingbird brain. My apologies.

Continuing the Songs from the Years of My Life

2007

I have not included any American music for a while but this short album by Bon Iver really go to me. This song is For Emma, Forever Ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0yaQ20dpWI

>86 Matke: You made some good and impassioned points, Gail. Gun control is where humanity and common sense coincide.

Hi Paul! Interesting discussion about guns and the US 2nd amendment. I believe in gun control and permanently banning assault weapons, both semi-automatic and automatic, as well as bump-stock weaponry. Having said that, we have 2 licensed guns here at the house, one mine and one Jenna's. Both of us have taken NRA-sponsored gun safety courses although I abhor the NRA as a rule for what it's become. Its original purpose, in addition to the 2nd amendment's original purpose, has gotten perverted.

>89 karenmarie: My father shot clay pigeons at a good level when I was young and he always had a couple of shotguns in the house growing up but the keeping and licensing of them was extremely strict and my brother and I would not have dared go anywhere near them.
The NRA interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is exactly that, Karen - a perversion.

Just to add to the mix here. What do you suggest as a first step to ending the manufacture of guns and ammunition here in the USA?IF we're serious about gun control, I think it's logical to have many fewer new ones on the market.

>86 Matke: >83 PaulCranswick:

Not wanting to be right,

just to clarify the original history of the 2nd Amendment when hideous U.S. gun laws are so often forwarded here...

which was (yes, American point of view here)
to respond to King George's troops busting into homes before and during The (totally unnecessary) Revolutionary War.

(For anyone who thinks this was a fun and easy time, read about Valley Forge and visit John and Abigail's letters,
along with all the other major histories.)

Support for state's rights concerns may have been involved later.

I believe that things will change when a strong U>S> congress is elected to defeat the extremely deep pockets of the NRA...

...when viable background checks and a long wait for licensing is instituted...

...when hunting is no longer glorified (Wisconsin kids can now get hunting licenses at around age 12)...

...when a lot of instant money is offered for any working guns and rifles turned in (to be destroyed)...

...when gun manufacturing companies are closed down...

...and more...?!?

>92 m.belljackson: Instant money for handguns and long guns turned in for destruction:

An excellent idea!

Hello from sunny (and thunderstorms and alligator) Florida.
Back to your last thread to say I loved Henry Himself, but you may be too young for it.☺️ Henry reminded me so much of my husband. And I also loved The Overstory, which I haven’t seen you report on-are you still reading it? And I loved Staying On, one of the books that moved with me to Florida (but still in storage), which means I want to reread it someday.

Checking in on the new-ish thread, Paul.

You will be happy to know that I started Golden Hill today, I have not gotten very far, but what I have read I have enjoyed.

>91 LizzieD: Makes obvious sense, Peggy, to not make so many weapons but at present supply is obviously catering to demand. The demand is taken away if the ownership and usage is controlled and restricted.

>92 m.belljackson: I'm sorry Marianne but the "original history of the 2nd amendment" was a states versus federal issue. It was proposed by James Madison via the Bill of Rights in April 1789 and the whole exercise was made to secure the togetherness of the states into the Union and square the competing rival factions. Madison was an interesting fellow, rampantly anti-British, pro expansionist and pro French he supported war with Britain in 1794 pretty much in favour of revolutionary France but he did come to realise in his later years that he was wrong and the powers of the Federal had not been successfully balanced by the Bill of Rights.

Whilst there were atrocities during the Revolutionary War, it was actually, by the standards of the day, a fairly muted conflict and this is borne out by the statistics as I have pointed out. Succeeding politics and not the British resulted in your Bill of Rights.

>93 Matke: Reward for turning in guns is not a bad idea by Marianne, Gail. I'm not sure that the manufacturers could or should be closed down as you are putting people out of work and creating other issues. With demand lowered supply would automatically adjust.

That someone can hold a licence for a gun at 12 years old is sheer lunacy.

>94 arubabookwoman: Lovely to see that you have made it to the Sunshine State finally, Deborah! Since Stewart O'Nan is only 5 years my senior I would hope that I can appreciate Henry, Himself! I will be going back to The Overstory soon. xx

>95 alcottacre: That is good news, Stasia! Look forward to seeing your comments on it. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

>97 PaulCranswick: As to gun licenses for 12 yr. olds, if it is a hunting rifle then what should the age be? License is better than no license, and I don't see it making sense to tell youngster they can't hunt until they're 18+. And a lot of 12 yr. olds are more stable and focused than they will be a couple of years down the line. No one really needs automatics though, that's macho bravado to my mind, powerful guns = personal power. Very addictive though.

>99 quondame: A hunting rifle is a deadly weapon and I just don't think a child should be allowed to own one even under licence. That is not to say that they should not be allowed to use one under the supervision of an adult for sports purposes and in a controlled environment.
I think it is a no brainer that assault weapons should not be in private hands without controls in place.

>96 PaulCranswick:

Just today, an online Search for "The Revolutionary War and the 2nd Amendment" (scroll down) yielded an opposing view, "sorry," quite the same as mine.

>95 alcottacre: >98 PaulCranswick: Stasia and Paul, I started Golden Hill too again tonight. I have so much going on that I don't know that I'll read it now, but it does look good!

>101 m.belljackson: And it is all about opinions, Marianne. It wasn't the horrors of the war that bred the 2nd amendment it was the thinking that went behind the revolution in the first place. Having thrown off the yoke of the British monarchy, people like Madison and Jefferson who drafted large parts of the document didn't want to replace that with the tyranny of a centralised government of an American kind. Madison became opposed to Alexander Hamilton and his ambitions which he feared were akin to the creation of a quasi monarchy in the US. The Bill of Rights was self-serving in that it served the interests of those who framed it and their personal philosophies.
It is impossible to argue that it wasn't shaped by the American Revolution because it was a direct result thereof but to argue that the 2nd amendment exists because of something uniquely savage or barbarous about Britain's conduct of the Revolutionary War is, I think, preposterous. But there was clearly a fear of having a huge standing army (ironic in the sense of how the US developed) and the Quartering Acts imposed by the British were clearly an infringement of liberties. It was this fear of Standing Army being in the control of an organised central power that made the drafters favour militias and why the 2nd Amendment is written as it is.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-11-17/origins-second-amendment

https://www.searchnewworld.com/search/search2.html?p=THE%20REVOLUTIONARY%20WAR%2...

>102 LizzieD: Hope you can read it, Peggy, I think it worth the effort.

For anyone who has missed it, I am sad to see the passing of Carlos Ruiz Zafon after a struggle with colon cancer. His book The Shadow of the Wind was wonderful. I must read something of his very shortly.

I had my own similar problems health wise a couple of years ago and - guys - that part of our bodies is one we normally don't want to think too much about - but go and get regular check ups.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/carlos-ruiz-zafon-de...

>104 PaulCranswick: What Paul said. As I mentioned in the In Memoriam thread, a dear friend of mine and fellow pediatrician is still alive today because she had a colonoscopy seven years ago that ultimately led to her being diagnosed with stage 1 pancreatic cancer, which was asymptomatic at that time. Had she not been screened and waited until she developed symptoms she almost certainly would have died several years ago, and left behind a devoted husband, two amazingly talented and beautiful daughters (one is in medical school, the other is learning the ropes in Washington and will hopefully someday run for public office in Georgia (I would campaign for Margaret in a heartbeat)), and many hundreds of children and families in her primary care practice who love and trust her.

>105 kidzdoc: Nice to see you here, Darryl. I noticed (I couldn't help but) a problem because of extreme pain and severe testicular swelling. When I checked via ultrasound I was firstly relieved that there was no sign of abscess but a bad infection that had apparently come from the prostate. My "flow rate" was tested and was deemed unsatisfactory and I suffered then an endoscopy to reveal that I had a problem with said prostate with cancer signifiers. Thankfully I responded well to treatment but men's health is a sort of taboo area that embarrassment could lead to serious issues and I will always bang the drum for getting checked regularly now.

Happy new thread Paul!

>44 PaulCranswick: And that's why I'm not too vociferous in asking to move closer to family. At least it keeps the kids relatively safe growing up.

>58 benitastrnad: I suspect the fault line has moved away from Malaysia since 2010. A country that can ban non-Muslims from using the word 'Allah' (Arabic for 'God) is heading, I think, towards mis-informed radicalisation (if it keeps heading in that direction).

I've missed the discussion on American gun laws but I think we're all in agreement in being pro-control and preaching, really, to the converted. It's the NRA we need to bludgeon over the head.

And about starting points: how about getting Hollywood et al not to glamourise violence? I know that my kids come away from screens with a little less patience, compassion, peacefulness and more testosterone in their systems.

>99 quondame: I wouldn't trust a gun in my 11 year old's hands. He gets the old plate set when we set the table for meals.

And both my boys have had fits of temper when they throw things across the room. Usually it's been pillows but sometimes books or solid things that sustain/ cause damage. They've shown remorse afterwards but there's often not much you can do once the damage is caused.

In this day and age there can't be many 12 year old's who have to go hunting to put food on the table. I think pushing the gun licensing age up and just making it harder for anyone to get a gun would be beneficial all round.

>95 alcottacre: >98 PaulCranswick: >102 LizzieD: I started to read Golden Hill, hoping to be a shared TIOLI with Stasia, but got 40 pages in and decided it’s not the book for me right now. I’m sure I’ll go back to it; it’s just a “wrong book, wrong moment” sort of thing.

>103 PaulCranswick: Thank you for the links, Paul. And for articulating so clearly what I believe to be true. And it’s nearly a moot point, since we’ve all agreed that, whatever the origin of the second amendment, the United States needs, as a country, to look long and hard at the gun culture and the glorification of violence so prevalent today.

Of course it all starts at home. Instilling values has to be the work of families, and a long, sometimes tedious and unappreciated, but ultimately both rewarding and fulfilling, job it is.

>104 PaulCranswick: I was very sad to learn of Zafon’s death. The Shadow of the Wind is one of my favorite books—so much so that I’m hesitant to re-read it, for fear of spoiling the magic. I read Marina much more recently and found it weirdly charming.

>107 humouress: Lovely post, Nina.

There were a "mere" 9 homicides in Singapore in 2018 which was the year I was quoting stats from. Malaysia isn't anywhere near as safe but some of the issues are at least localised and it does feel safe on the streets here.

Malaysia is a far less tolerant place than when I first arrived in 1994 (I'm not implying any blame to myself here either!) and the Malay politicians consciously radicalised its electorate in a pro-Islamist xenophobic manner to keep out the more inclusive opposition. The nonsense over non-muslim using the word Allah being a sad case-in-point.

I must admit to being a conservative when it comes to gun ownership and by conservative I mean that I am strongly in favour of strict limits, controls and licensing on ownership. Britain has some of the strictest rules on this in the world - hand guns are banned for example and the police must have attestation to good character, a medical certificate, inspection of premises and limited issuance for up to 5 years. Minors of course are not allowed a licence but can learn safe usage at gun clubs (also strictly licensed). We also as a result have extremely low gun crime in the UK. USA take note because your need to own guns was a left over from our feudal usage and practices.

Good point about Hollywood.

>108 Matke: That is a shame, Gail, because it hit the mark for me.

Yes it is indeed a moot point - the much lauded politicians of the day Jefferson, Madison and Washington in particular (I think John Adams stands apart for his foresight and the clarity of his principles - he clearly believed that all men are created equal and argued long and hard for the ending of slavery 75 years before it happened in the USA), did leave for future generations problems to be overcome with their settlement made for the vagaries of their time.

As Peggy said she had guns at home growing up, Susan too, but unfortunately not everyone is as grounded and sensible. Education is a key starting point but licensed control is essential, I think.

I picked up Marina today and i have half a mind to read it.

>109 PaulCranswick: Thank you Paul.

And when I say ‘bludgeon’ I mean ... um ... in a non-violent way, of course :0)

>111 humouress: Hahaha I left you off with that comment, first time around!

>103 PaulCranswick:

Credit where it's due, no?

The real concern for now is the "updated" 2nd Amendment from 2008 and 2010
which gives Americans "independent" ways to arm themselves at home. No longer the Militia defense.

I'll leave tracing that information down to others since we have different and sometimes conflicting sources.

>113 m.belljackson: Indeed Marianne, my analysis hasn't changed a whit.
I don't see as there is any militia defence. The gun laws are nonsensical period.

I'm curious (and since it seems relevant to this discussion, I'll ask here) as to why it takes funding and sponsorship for candidates in America to run for elected office. I'm not deeply knowledgeable about this but in systems I'm more familiar with (UK, Singapore, Australia) there are no big funding drives for candidates.

Having to have money in the coffers surely skews successful candidates towards capitalism rather than idealism and exposes them to having to return favours to their sponsors? Such as the NRA.

I wonder how this system came about?

>115 humouress: Having to have money in the coffers surely skews successful candidates towards capitalism rather than idealism and exposes them to having to return favours to their sponsors? Such as the NRA.

I wonder how this system came about?

The answer to your question is above it.

Hey there Cranswickulus! Happy Sunday.

Dark Money by Jane Mayer, gives some good information about the way money and politics have worked in the US in the past few decades.

It seems that we have been, in the past few decades, in the midst of a global turning towards fundamentalism, fascism, and conservatism. I am not enough of a political scientist to explain where this all comes from, but tend to beleive that the movement to greater equality and democracy has started a backlash, and unfortunately not only in the US.

Regarding the current state of politics in the US, I am optimistic by nature, and so hope that the current historical moment, including the widespread racial justice protests, will be seen as a moment of change for the better. In the US, we are seeing changes to racist policing policies in the local, state and federal level. Here in Portland, we are in our 23 day of protests; they have defunded several police programs that unfairly targeted Black Portlanders. They are also holding a special session of our state legislature in part to address issues of Police training and oversight. Nationally the police unions and police oversight entities have allowed many bad cops to remain on the force. There is state and national impetus to change this. And of course, the US Congress has introduced a Police Reform bill, which has no chance under the current administration, but hopefully will in the future.

All of these problems, issues and solutions were known before George Floyd's murder, but there was not the political will to fight them. Now there seems to be pressure from all 50 states and internationally, so I am hopeful that this will be a moment for the US to confront our past, and move towards reparations for our part in slavery. { The police, of course, are only a small part of the systems of racism that continue.}

I don't know how US policing compares to other places, but I suspect that gun culture in the US is only a small part of the reason for racist police policies. I very much hope that we are able to soon pass some reasonable laws on gun control . I do think that the intent of the 2nd amendment was very different than the way it is interpreted now,

Happy new thread, Paul. I won't weigh in on the gun discussion except to say that though we have plenty of issues here in Canada, I don't think we are anywhere near the gun problems that exist in the US. I have never understood why ANY citizen should have to have a gun at all, quite honestly. The purpose of a gun is to kill. 'Nuff said.

A thread or so back, (they move so fast it's hard to keep up) you mentioned you were going to post the books read stats, Paul. Did you do that and I missed them?

>115 humouress: I think money influences politics everywhere, Nina, but most obviously in the US. Blair got plenty of stick for some of the donations during his time and some of the funders of the Conservative Party would make interesting reading.

>116 richardderus: Nice to see you RD. Yes, the intent clearly carries the day with the lobbies there.

>117 banjo123: I am also a glass half full kinda guy, Rhonda, and I hope that you are right and that this will prove to be a positive watershed in the States and elsewhere.

>118 jessibud2: Nice to see you Shelley. My father used to keep two guns that he used exclusively (I think!) for clay pigeon shooting. That said I am, as can be seen here, not in favour of unlicensed gun ownership and I think that it is something that the UK has got just about right.

>119 Familyhistorian: I did try to finish it last weekend, Meg, and got through about two thirds of the threads before time and other distractions got in the way. I will get the figures up for the half-yearly count, I promise. xx

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life

2008

Years of consolidation as my company lands a couple of big contracts providing Project Management Services to a large Korean company for the building of a luxury condominium and from a Bahraini partnership to complete their apartment building in Juffair.
I really like this Scottish singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini (Glaswegian would you believe?!). This is from his second album and was a big hit - "Candy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3xYXGMRRYk

or do you prefer the "live" version?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHauhYNSBog

>110 PaulCranswick: I can't say there weren't guns in the house when I was growing up, but to say there were without elaboration would create some level of misunderstanding - the hand gun was eliminated before my birth after and the incident. The rifle wasn't ever used in my memory and when it was decided wise to eliminate it in my early 30s, it proved to have been improperly put up. But there was the wee canon that sat on the hearth my entire childhood, always an early test of strength to lift, the antique dueling pistols which were great for show and tell and a couple of flintlocky items crossed on one wall - rapiers crossed with a Caucasian Kindjal Sword hanging from the juncture decorated the space above the hearth. I still have the Kindjal Sword. It's sharp.

>124 quondame: That is some collection, Susan! Calls for a house of steady nerves and even tempers. xx

Your posts resonate with humanity and good sense - it is weapons in certain other hands that scares. Sounds like the weapons in your home were decorative rather than practical and deadly. Education breeds respect for guns. My Dad had two shotguns in the house in all my formative years but they were locked up and we were so scared of him we wouldn't have dared go near them.

I am managing to get myself in a real book funk simply by distracting myself with choice!

I have too many books on the go and I am going to reset.

The Overstory - Powers
The Orphan Master's Son - Johnson
The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford
Evicted - Desmond
Ake - Soyinka
Staying On - Scott
Marina - Zafon
Zonal - Paterson
Blindness - Green
1934 - Moravia
Friendly Fire - Gale
Three Dog Night - Egholm

I am going to re-set and take them at the most two at a time.

>125 PaulCranswick: Thanks, I need all the good sense I can muster. Oh, and I didn't even mention the set of Philippine weapons that were captured by a Lt. in my grandfather's command. The story is that the Lt. went for a swim in kimono and geta, was attacked by swordsmen and managed not only to survive but come away with 3 weapons that were sufficient bribe to the CO to cover his error in wandering where he should not. My bet is the "swim" was of a female nature and the attack not entirely random.

>127 quondame: Hahaha what a colourful story, Susan. My Assistant on 118 got himself into trouble yesterday. A young Irishman from Mayo (well he is 37), he fairly recently married a shrewish Filipina. I often stop off after work with him at a bar/restaurant for a quick beer and a snack before setting off to home. There are a couple of attractive young ladies, one Malay and one of Indian descent who work there as manageress/waitress who are nice to talk to but no older than my eldest daughter so my talk is all of the sort of kindly uncle type. The young fellow thought it a good idea to go there without me yesterday and the extremely hard drinking Latvian Facade Manager in my stead. He cannot keep up drinking with the Latvian but tried anyway with the upshot that both of them got barred from the place last night for apparently "letching" the girls which I take to be some sort of harassing of the ladies. The owner of the place is a friend of mine from Hull so I will try to smooth things over tomorrow as he wouldn't harm a fly.

Rolling up home and very drunk he was horrified in the morning to realise that his wife had texted his parents in Mayo asking how she was supposed to deal with their son's drinking. He is feeling very sorry for himself today.

>128 PaulCranswick: I'd be of a harsher opinion over the incident. Anyone who drinks excessively is in danger of harming someone, usually themselves, but it's not otherwise harmless and if the wife is that troubled maybe she has reason not to seem sweetness and light.

>121 PaulCranswick: I think we could go further, Paul. It didn't stop Dunblane or Hungerford.

>124 quondame: Susan, you have an adventurous family!

>129 quondame: He is full of remorse to be fair to him, Susan. Difference is that I don't agree with drunkenness and will stop at three drinks so I can look after him. He would most likely hurt himself by falling asleep in the street and having his wallet taken off him. Apparently the bar owner, Danny, could not have been so angry with him because he did put him in an Uber and got him home.

>130 humouress: To be fair, Nina, some of the more rigorous restrictions were a response to those two horrific incidents, notably the ban on handguns.

Looks like it's just you and me awake at the moment Paul. However, I shall brave the air-conditioning in the other room and go and read my Overdrive library book. Sadly, Overdrive is no longer supported on Macs or I'd stay here and read on the bigger screen.

>132 humouress: Sometimes I don't understand the Apple Corporation. I have a MacBook Air and can't get Apple books which apparently are only for IPhones and Ipads. Silly. I am awake with it being Father's Day and hoping to enjoy an Italian dinner with my youngest daughter.

Happy Father's Day, Paul. I hope you are wrapping up a great weekend!

>134 msf59: Thanks Mark. It has been relaxing. Just went out for a nice Italian meal with Belle. Spoke to Kyran and Yasmyne by phone too.

>133 PaulCranswick: Actually, it's an issue with both Overdrive and Apple. With the iOS upgrade last year which uses 64kB instead of 32kB (or something(, Overdrive has had to stop supporting the app until it upgrades.

Oh gosh; happy Fathers' Day!

What with not being out and about, I've missed most of the hype. And as much as I get caught between Mother's Day in March or May, Australian Father's Day is celebrated in September - so I sort of missed it. Shhh!

My husband is used to my memory and though I've tried to encourage the kids to take responsibility now that they're old enough, they didn't do anything. However, my husband ordered in a meal from a restaurant so we did celebrate.

>136 humouress: I've noticed that the ladies tend to appropriate the occasion anyhow. "You wouldn't be a father if I was not a mother" is a refrain I have heard this year. Please it is only one day!

Happy Father’s Day, Paul!

>126 PaulCranswick: The story of my life recently, right there in your post. I try now to limit myself to two books at a time: a physical one for daytime reading and an ebook for reading at night. It’s working...so far.

>125 PaulCranswick: So which two are up first?

>138 Matke: Thanks Gail. I really do have to stop starting so many books at a go, Gail.

>139 richardderus: Staying On & Evicted, RD

Hi Paul!

I'm glad you had dinner with Belle and got to talk with both Yasmyne and Kyran. Our daughter is talking with her dad right now.

12 down to 2. Glad you've narrowed it down.

>141 karenmarie: Thank you, Karen. I caved and called Yasmyne and asked her if she forgot. "Dad, you woke me up" was the response. We had a good talk though.

Happy Father's Day!

Thanks Amanda. I cannot believe sometimes that I have been a Dad already for more than 23 years.

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life:

2009

I have placed this one here recently but I couldn't resist playing it again, especially as it was performed on the Graham Norton Show (a UK chat show with a, ahem, very irreverent host) and we get to watch a bit of the show after their performance. I always enjoy watching the Graham Norton Show.

David Gray and Annie Lennox and "Full Steam"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljQ0H1EoAo0

Paul - Hope you are still enjoying a not yet over Father's Day!

>146 m.belljackson: Nearly an hour past, Marianne, but I am still basking in having my kids talk to me and eat with me today. I miss the older two every day and the youngest is the least communicative but sometimes the funniest. XX

Listening to some songs that inspire and move me tonight.

This is Vince Gill (with Sheryl Crow) and "What You Give Away" A sentiment that I wish would catch on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsWAI6mxCyQ

and this is the incredibly moving "Summer's End" by the late, great John Prine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXbEFTv9zr0

and finally back to my roots in Yorkshire with the haunting Mr. Richard Hawley "Roll River Roll"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9QSCd-UNlQ

>148 PaulCranswick: I will be adding Richard Hawley as one of my favorite singers to listen to often. The voice is wonderful. Thanks for making me aware of him.

Hi Paul - I'm also guilty of starting too many books, but I usually have two main reads that I try and stick with. I try to keep from reading too many depressing books in a row, so I was going to go from a Nazi labour camp read to a French Revolution read but the premise is too similar - idealistic young person joins up and becomes disillusioned very quickly'...so do I pick up the award winning Armenian genocide novel or look for something more cheerful, The Safety Net by Andrea Camilleri wins the day.

My other problem is library books, they take over my reading and I don't get to my actual tbr pile as much as I intend to.

Paul--

May you have a peaceful start of summer!

>149 quondame: I will be forever intrigued as to what your message was, Susan!

>150 Jan7Smith: You are more than welcome, Jan. I really cannot comprehend why Richard Hawley has never really made it to being better known. From Sheffield in my home county of Yorkshire, England he was with Pulp for a while before starting a solo career.

Your first visit here, Jan?

>151 avatiakh: At least with library books there is the impetus to finish them because they have to go back, Kerry! I WILL refocus!

>152 aspirit: Thank you so much, I appreciate the sentiment. Unfortunately Malaysia doesn't have four seasons. It has only hot and wet or wet and hot.

>153 PaulCranswick: I hit post this AM on an already posted message - the coffee hadn't quite circulated sufficiently.

>154 PaulCranswick: You left out swelteringly humid, Paul.

Good morning. I'm only up this early because my phone battery ran out on my intercontinental tai chi session.

>153 PaulCranswick: I thanked you for posting The Proclaimers-Sunshine On Leith last week, so my second visit although I have been reading your post for several years. You have a very interesting site, always entertaining & educational.
I have been mostly a George Macy Devotees fan as I love the Limited Edition Club and Heritage Press books.

>155 quondame: No problem Susan, your posts are always lively and entertaining so I was worried I was missing something!

>156 humouress: Yes and the humidity is pretty constant too, isn't it?

I used to love the Intercontinental Hotel at Bugis Junction. I was a member of the health club there and SWMBO and I would check in once a month or so to spoil ourselves before the kids arrived and did all the spoiling for us!

>157 Jan7Smith: I went back and checked, Jan, and you are of course right. My memory is starting to flag, I'm afraid!

Thank you so much for the kind words. You are always welcome here and I'm so pleased you posted. x

>159 PaulCranswick: Thanks and my memory isn't too sharp either I said the Proclaimers link you posted was last week, but it was almost a month ago.
Edited to add that I have been listening to Richard Hawley most of the day. I don't think I will ever get tired of his music.

>160 Jan7Smith: I was very much spoilt for choice for some of the years, Jan, but as you can see I prefer songs that have meaning as well as melody. I still have over 4,000 music CDs at home at very much regret that fact that by the download generation, whilst we have much more choice and opportunity, there is no actual ownership in what is now a throw-away culture.

I love reading the gatefolds and who wrote each song, who played the instruments, who produced and engineered it, where it was recorded, the lyric sheet, etc. Spotify is great but it gives you none of that.

Richard Hawley is a real character but also a tremendous songwriter with a distinctive baritone.

>161 PaulCranswick: The Proclaimers and Richard Hawley are new to me and such a treat to my ears. Please keep posting this type music that has meaning as well as melody. The popular music played today rarely appeals to me.

I have really enjoyed the debates on the gun rights on your site. You have so much to enjoy and I keep a close watch daily. Thanks to you and your followers for providing something to look forward to each day that is so enjoyable.

While we're on the subject of music with meaning, I was listening to the charts the other day. Can I say that the current trend for 'stuck record' music which plays about three words of an old, well loved song over and over and over and over and ... (ad nauseam) affects me like fingernails down a blackboard.

>162 Jan7Smith: You are already a part of that, Jan.

This song is therefore just for you. One of my favourite songs from a couple of years ago. Paul Weller's "Gravity"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuGSA31Cfyw

>163 humouress: I'm becoming a reactionary, Nina, because I completely agree! I don't like rap and R&B that are so overtly sexual and full of expletives either. I like rock but not thrash heavy metal. I can wiggle my hips to disco and dance but I won't listen to techno.

Hej Paul, wishing you a good start into this week

>166 paulstalder: Thanks Paul. So far so good.

>164 PaulCranswick: Paul, you must be able to look into my heart and soul! This is so beautiful and at this time in my life evokes emotions that brings tears to my eyes.

Belated Happy Father's Day, Paul! You're back to it today, I guess.
Oh my goodness!!!! I never had heard of Richard Hawley. What a lovely voice! Thank you!!!!!
My listening is almost completely classical, largely Romantic chamber music at the moment. I'm crazy for solo violin right now, having bout after bout Cherubini's string quartets, especially #3, especially the first 4 bars. And Brahms!
(I know I say from time to time that one of my childhood friends married Isaac Stern after she broke up his marriage. Anyway, I'll listen to anything he played.)

>168 Jan7Smith: We obviously like the same things, Jan. No brainer though as a mellow Paul Weller is to be treasured.

>169 LizzieD: Why Richard Hawley isn't better known is a mystery to me too, Peggy.
Beautiful instrument played well is the violin. It is amazing the emotion that can be coaxed from those four strings by that rosin coated bow.

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life

2010

This is Elton John and Leon Russell : "When Love is Dying" a song I played over and over especially when I had troubles a few years ago in my annus horribilis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJxS3s_2-M

The threads are slowing down! 20 hours since my last post.

I hope to be able to report progress with a book read shortly.

Doing the rounds elsewhere

1 Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen √
2 The Lord of the Rings -JRR Tolkien √
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte √
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee √
6 The Bible √
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte √
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell √
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens √
11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott √
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy √
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller √
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (about half way through)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier √
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien √
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulkes √
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger √
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald √
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky √
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck √
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll √
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame √
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy √
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens √
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis √
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis √
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini √
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres √
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden √
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell √
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown √
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez √
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney √
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins √
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy √
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood √
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding √
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons √
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen √
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon √ (RIP)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens √
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley √
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon √
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck √
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt √
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy √
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - HelenFielding √
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie √
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens √
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker √
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett√
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson √
75 Ulysses - James Joyce √
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola √
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt √
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens √
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert √
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry √
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle √
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid BLYTON
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad √
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery √
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks √
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams √
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute √
97 The Three Musketeers - Aleandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare √
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl √
100 Gaudy Night - Dorothy Sayers

64 / 100

Dropping in to say hi, still alive, hope all is well :)

Oh and re >173 PaulCranswick: 72/100

>174 BekkaJo: Lovely to see you Bekka.

Well done you.

Continuing the songs from the years of my life:

2011

The year I joined the 75ers.

This is Florence and the Machine. Not one of her hit songs but "All This and Heaven Too" has the power to set the hairs on my arms and neck on end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DME1aN-sxCM

>176 PaulCranswick: - Wow, Paul, that was wonderful. I have never heard of her before but that goes for quite a few of the ones you've posted here so this is a great musical adventure and learning experience for me too. I wish I could find all the lyrics for this song as it's not easy to make them out with the orchestration in the background. A few stanzas are included in some of the comments but I will see if I can find them anywhere.

>177 jessibud2: I suppose my music tastes are pretty Brit centric, Shelley, but I do have a huge collection of music from all over the world as will be seen in 2012's song which moves into Scandinavia.

The is All This and Heaven - studio version, with lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNE2meQCI-Q

Florence Welch is a wonderful singer.

>178 PaulCranswick: - Thanks for that, Paul.

I got the word today that I can go back to work on Thursday. OF course, it helped that I can't get free high speed internet anymore with my plane. I ran through 15 Gigs of data in less than 10 days and I am just not going to purchase any more. Not when I have an employer who furnishes high speed internet in my office and I work in a building with 3 other people in it. Three. Just three. We won't be opening for patrons until the middle of July.

>173 PaulCranswick: I've read 75 of the 100. You should try Swallows and Amazons, I read it for the first time a few years ago, and was pleasantly surprised. I remember the 1960s tv series. though never warmed to it. I grew up surrounded by dinghys and small yachts but was never that attracted to Ransome's books.

>173 PaulCranswick: 49/100. I'm a little confused by the list: entire series are counted as one, but Hamlet *and* The Complete Works of Shakespeare are listed?

ETA: And I want to recommend The Count of Monte Cristo. Its size is daunting, but it moves fast and is full of thrills.

>179 jessibud2: You are most welcome, Shelley. Lyrics are pretty good too, right?

>180 benitastrnad: I suppose it is good news, Benita! I am already a veteran as we seem to have returned to work an age ago, but it is still annoying to be wearing a face mask for most of the time.

>181 avatiakh: I have noticed that many of my peers in the group, Kerry, you included have pretty stellar numbers against that BBC list. I have 92 or 93 of the books on the shelves so I should make some headway!

I ought to read Swallows and Amazons especially as Arthur Ransome was from my home area of Leeds. Interesting fellow because he was also reputed to be a Russian spy at one stage or a British spy in Russia depending upon which sources you read.

>182 amanda4242: The Count is on my bucket list, Amanda. Many of the French classics of that era are great reads, I think. Les Miserables is a wonderful novel.

I also spotted the two major screw ups in the list too, the other being having the Narnia Chronicles included but then separately also The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe which is, of course, part of those Chronicles.

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life

2012

My first year of mega posting. Didn't spend too much time listening to new music but I did like this country-ish band from Sweden - First Aid Kit. This is "Wolf"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czj7SyPNRto

Some additions to report today:

81. Woods etc by Alice Oswald (2005)
82. The Death of Murat Idrissi by Tommy Wieringa (2017)
83. The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezon Camara (2017)
84. The Last Man by Mary Shelley (1826)
85. Remembered by Yvonne Battle-Felton (2019)

>184 PaulCranswick: Yes, I read Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick, a YA fiction of Ransome's time in Russia.
I'll second The Count of Monte Cristo too, a marvellous feat of storytelling.

>172 PaulCranswick: Do you think the threads are slowing down? Maybe I can make some headway. I've been absent a bit lately and most threads are dauntingly long.

>188 avatiakh: I have always seen copies of Swallows and Amazons in the shops bar yesterday when I actually intended to buy it!

>189 Familyhistorian: I don't think so, Meg, it is a fact. We are though still chugging along faster than last year.

We are about a month ahead of last year in terms of posting. The top 140 threads hit 70,000 posts at the end of July last year whereas we might just make that figure by end of this month.

Hi Paul! I guess I'm a little late to be wishing you a happy new thread, lol. I hope you can settle in to some pleasurable reading soon, especially as you have some new books on hand.

>191 Dejah_Thoris: Yep. Too much chopping and changing. I can feel a reading funk coming on so I hope I can get out of it quickly, Princess.

Florence Thingummy has a lovely voice, and that's a terrific song. Added her to my playlist, and thanks.

I missed your 75 Paul (because I skipped your last thread). Belated congratulations!

>193 richardderus: You are welcome RD. I am pleased that my "strange" musical tastes strike a chord (pun slightly intended) occasionally.

>194 humouress: Thank you Nina.

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life

2013

Not quite as introspective as normal. This again speaks to my pride in the bands from my home area. Arctic Monkeys from Sheffield and "Do You Wanna Know?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpOSxM0rNPM&list=RDbpOSxM0rNPM&start_rad...

One of the criticisms of the Labour Party in the UK recently was how it was tolerating anti-semitism within its ranks. One left-wing actor and film-maker, Maxine Peake had made comments in an interview that the neck-kneeling techniques of the US police had been taught to them by the Israelis. This was supported in a tweet by the leading left-winger in the shadow cabinet Rebecca Long-Bailey. It transpired that there was no basis for these comments.

Keir Starmer had been elected as leader and one of his key messages had been that he would give zero tolerance to any whiff of anti-semitism and so he promptly sacked Long-Bailey as Shadow Education Minister. Jewish groups and those critical of Corbyn's weak stance in combating anti-semitism heralded his decisiveness whilst the left wing of the party are in uproar.

There is an interesting issue as to how much or in what circumstances is criticism of Israel the same as being anti-semitic. I think that the point here was that the allegation of the Israelis training the police in this technique was simply not true and Long-Bailey should have been very quick to withdraw her support for the interview as a result but she did not. I feel that it is possible to be sympathetic to the Palestinian people without being anti-semitic but it is a careful line to tread. I grew up in Northern England at a time after the war when we were pro-Semitic (if there is such a thing). Our family Doctor was jewish and a close friend and help to my mother and I have many, many friends who happen to be jewish. I do not understand anti-semitism and I am a huge admirer of the achievements of the state of Israel but that does not mean that one cannot criticise any actions of the Israeli government. There is however in my view a clear agenda in some of the criticisms raised.

On balance I think Keir Starmer was right to send the message he has and I am happy with the job he has done so far. I think that he is putting my party back on the path towards government.

I'm checking whether my feet smell or there is some other reason why posts to my thread have suddenly stopped!

There is one site I like very much called listchallenges.com as it has so many book lists to play with.

This is 100 Epic Reads. I scored 59/100 which placed me 181st out of 1.161 users. The average score is apparently 43. How many did you score?

https://www.listchallenges.com/novelogue-100-epic-reads-bucket-list-scratch/list...

>198 PaulCranswick: I wasn't going to say anything, but yes, it's absolutely the feet. I can smell them all the way across the Pacific. ;)

Enjoy your weekend.

>199 amanda4242: *snort*

Who knows? Perhaps everyone has really big plans for the weekend and all their time has been spent getting ready. Or there's social media burnout. Or it's just a fluke and everyone will be posting again tomorrow.

Or maybe it is your feet.....

>198 PaulCranswick: You have feet, Paul?
I tried your list and scored 64/29, making me #129 (or not; I've forgotten already). Not stellar for my years, I expect. All those lists are a bit peculiar though.
Hope you're having a happy weekend!

I also did the list, I scored 71/100 and am #74.

I read a lot of threads but don't always leave a comment.
This morning I read a review of a film, Mr Jones (2020). The reviewer called it 'a very noble failure' but it was interesting to learn about Gareth Jones, which then led me to seek out Robert Conquest's books and look at Martin Amis' Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million.
https://pjmedia.com/culture/ed-driscoll/2020/06/26/mr-jones-walter-duranty-n5808...

>189 Familyhistorian: I got 70%, #83 of 1,193 which was somewhat better than I got the last time I clicked through such a list, thanks to LT.

I scored 52 out of 100 with the Epic Reads. Have a great weekend!

I am a happy camper as I got back from work and 6 posts on my threads - I am feeling loved again and put it down to a quick change of footwear!

This is the first week in four months where posts are down on the preceding year.

I plan a weekend of reading and posting so hopefully I can do my little bit to increase posts again.

>199 amanda4242: Really sorry about that Amanda. I think I should discontinue wearing canvas shoes in this climate. xx

>200 Dejah_Thoris: Well there is always the enticing prospect of a new thread from Princess! I am now barefoot in the park by the way.

>201 LizzieD: I do have, Peggy, but I don't use them anywhere near enough. 64 is a decent number, I think.

>202 avatiakh: I would have expected you to do comfortably better than me, Kerry and I am right!

That is an interesting link. As you, I'm sure you know, I am not a conservative but the article on Biden's potential VEEP picks caught my eye. One of the efforts in the UK with policing has been to try to make the composition of its officers more representative and inclusive as it is in the coming together that future harmony and better & fairer policing will ensue. I was quite upset when I learned that some officers of colour in the UK were being specifically targeted in the UK by "demonstrators" on the ridiculous basis that they were "traitors". Now I find that one of the Biden VEEP shortlist Ms Demings from Florida is thought beyond the pale because she rose to a senior position in the police force there. I'm sorry but that is simply ridiculous. I don't know anything about the lady but to state:

“Joe Biden would be an idiot to put her on his ticket. People are already on the fence about him,” Newsome told The Post. “When black people become police officers, they are no longer black. They are blue. And I have been told this by numerous officers.”

As apparently the New York chair of Black Lives Matter was quoted is hugely unhelpful and says so much about what is badly broken in the USA. Come together for heaven's sake!

I have serious doubts over the waning cognitive skills of Biden as seen in the last couple of days when he proclaimed that 120 million Americans had died of Covid-19 and, if he gets elected, he is going to need a steady and capable VP. One who will help to bring America together not tear it apart.

>203 quondame: You and Kerry with almost the same number does not surprise me at all, Susan.

>204 vancouverdeb: Lovely to see you Deb. Also comfortably above the average score for the list, I note. x

>207 PaulCranswick: Not sure how you got to Biden from my link but anyway, I agree that Biden looks terribly frail, feeble and prone to gaffs. The campaign has painted itself in the corner by first saying the VP slot will be female and now African American. I'd want to see the most suited to the job as the pick rather than one who ticks all the identity politics labels.

And I just don't understand how suddenly all police are judged on the actions of so few. Here our police force tries hard to recruit from minority ethnic groups, I'm sure that's a fairly universal thing.

edit: ok, I see now that PJmedia are quite conservative. I follow a bunch of people from all the spectrum on twitter - journalists, writers, publishers etc and click and read when an interesting link catches my eye.
The NYT part of the headline interested me as they have been in the news of late over their editorials.

>198 PaulCranswick: I came in with a peg, but am glad the hygiene issue has been resolved Paul :-)

>197 PaulCranswick: I'm with you on this Paul. Firstly there should be proof of your allegation, Twitter seems to encourage people to skip this requirement. Secondly, I loath this idea that no-one has the right to criticise Israel, even Jewish people, or that having any empathy with Palestine makes you anti-Semitic. I'm descended on my mothers side from Prussian Jews who came here in the 1880s.

>209 avatiakh: It does seem to be a primarily American view amongst the ethnic minorities that they should be discouraged from the police force. Surely the rest of the world is right and inclusiveness wins out. I am sure that there are thousands of wonderful, courageous but non-prejudiced police officers throughout the length and breadth of the United States and they shouldn't be denigrated and disrespected because of the shameful actions of others. The object is to rid the force of those elements and to replace those with a diverse body of people has to be the way forward. To me it is plain common-sense and to say any black man or woman becomes "blue" if they become a police officer is also prejudiced and smacks of a desire for anarchy rather than of an end to racism.

>210 Caroline_McElwee: I have had a lovely long bath and smell of my coconut bath cream which even Belle says is nice!

I don't think that I have either arab or jewish genes but I just abhor the idea of racism in whatever form and against whoever it is aimed at. It isn't right that the government of Israel or any country be above criticism but the motivation for the criticism sometimes is questionable.

>198 PaulCranswick: I had 63 out of a 100 putting me at #155 out of 1,350. Interesting mix of titles, and what I'd read for school or for fun (some fairly recently, such as Frankenstein).

Hope you're continuing to enjoy you weekend, Paul, and making your way out of your book slump.

>212 bell7: As usual our numbers are similar, Mary!

I am out of my book funk because of poetry as always. I read Zonal by Don Paterson which has me thinking a lot. Sort of midlife crisis meets the Twilight Zone. A little bit of blurring of lines between form as some of the work is almost short-story-ish. It isn't presently my favourite work of his but I'm sure I will re-read and enjoy it more presently.

>198 PaulCranswick: 87/100. I think this iteration of the list is superior to others because it's linked to specific editions of a title, not just an amorphous name...like The Chronicles of Narnia appearing on this list makes it clear: did you read the whole thing?

Anyway, happy Sunday in a few hours.

>214 richardderus: Yes, RD, I read all the series to the kids (well Kyran and Yasmyne) for bedtime - make no wonder they always slept like tops.

I like the fact that there were no complete works of Shakespeare and then Hamlet to grumble about. 87 is the best so far.

Was concerned to see your hands on FB - take care dear fellow.

As a kid and only child, I was stuck tagging along with my parents when they visited their friends. Naturally I was bored. One of my parents friends had a collectors box set of the Chronicles of Narnia and I was allowed to read during the visit. I liked the series so much that she gifted me the set. A great set of stories for the young and their wild imagination :)

Have a splendid weekend.

>215 PaulCranswick: Thank you, Paul, there's nothing to be done about them now. I've had this condition in active form for 39 years and this is the end game. The trick for me is knowing the subtle signals of "stop now" from the poor old things.

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life:

2014

I no longer buy CDs or vinyl actually as my turntable needs to be updated but I still follow the acts I like. Blur's lead singer Damon Albarn released a solo album in 2014 with this as the album closer "Heavy Seas of Love"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXjyTUiYees

>216 figsfromthistle: Yes it was indeed, Anita. He and Tolkien were great buddies and I have swilled ale at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford where they used to chew the cud.

>217 richardderus: Maybe like putting a plaster on an amputation but doesn't omega fish oil help at all? It was fantastically helpful for my mum although her condition was never quite as bad as yours.

>197 PaulCranswick: Oh dear, yet another point on which I feel strongly. I think it is absolutely possible to have problems with the actions of Israel's government and not be anti-semitic. The Jewish faith is beautiful and I know and love many Jewish people -- however, many of the policies and actions of the Israeli government are wrong. Two completely separate issues.

>220 RebaRelishesReading: Couldn't agree more with you, Reba. In the present instance though I do believe that Keir Starmer made the right call to dismiss Rebecca Long-Bailey.

>211 PaulCranswick: Having lived the first decade of my awareness in ignorance of my Jewish descent, I'm afraid I could easily have become quite prejudiced, but maybe my memories of an early skepticism are accurate and my questioning nature would have asserted itself without the shock of othering I got at 13. I'm remembering a report of a psychiatrist saying he didn't think blacks had the same depths of feeling as whites from his experiences in the army, and wondering why a white shrink thought black G.I.s would trust themselves to him. My fathers rants about the Irish and Poles also seemed disconnected from any reality.

>218 PaulCranswick: My husband just delivered a spare Blue-Ray player to some friends of ours and was 'forced' to take some LPs in return as they no longer have a turntable, but he, of course, does. Heck, we can still play laser discs. The new TV&sound system is on order, but the old tech is still kept available.

>198 PaulCranswick: Delurking to let you know I had 48/100 and spend half of my evening on list challenges ;-)

I didn't smell your feet but have been busy "returning to work!" Finally. Just in time to get shut down again. Probably.

Alabama has seen a fearsome rise in the number of Covid 19 cases. In Tuscaloosa the number doubled in one day last week and then doubled again the next day. Out local hospital now has a full Intensive Care Unit. I am afraid that we are headed for a lockdown again. This time I hope that they do the lockdown correctly and along with the nighttime curfew include closing the gas stations and issuing gasoline ration cards or its equivalent. The last time we had a quarantine nobody paid any attention to it and went and did what they pleased when they pleased.

>222 quondame: Similar experiences in a way I suppose. I was not really aware of my Irish ancestry until my teens I guess but I always seemed to have some sort of innate sympathy towards the Irish.

Isn't it amazing that an educated man with medical qualifications would actually think that the colour of one's skin would impact one's emotional sensitivity.

>223 quondame: I really do need to upgrade my sound system so as to get the best from my collection of music. I like spotify but there is no sense of ownership - I love to look at the covers and read the lyrics and you simply cannot do that. Our express, throw away and dumbed down modern culture :(

>224 FAMeulstee: It would be tempting to me too to spend ages on all those challenges as they are great fun, Anita, aren't they?

>225 benitastrnad: The feet now smell amazing, Benita and in a good way!

Are we going to be ready for this so-called second wave?

>224 FAMeulstee: I had 49 %, and I am going to look at some more lists, so Thanks Paul.

>227 PaulCranswick: This second wave thing is scary. The second time around could be harder, everyone is sick and tired of it. Health care personnel the most.

Wishing you a nice Sunday Paul!

>228 EllaTim: Also above the average, Ella!

I hope that this second wave will wash up gently on our shorelines or stay sombrely in the middle of the deepest ocean.

I am making a bit of headway, Paul, and I see that you were missing your usual visitors, something about your feet? So the slow down is happening. Probably the usual summertime (Northern Hemisphere) change to other more outdoor things. Not that we'd notice here. I think May was our summer from the rain we've been having.

More things are opening up here, although not our border as our neighbours to the south are not doing that well pandemic-wise. I'm not looking forward to a second wave although it is predicted to coincide with fall flu season.

>230 Familyhistorian: I am happy at least to have had a good many visitors this weekend, Meg, as I was feeling lonely.

I am just as happy to have finished a couple of books and ended my reading drought.

Book #78



Zonal by Don Paterson

Date of Publication : 2020
Origin of Author : UK
Pages : 68

Many regular visitors here will doubtless know that Don Paterson is my favourite living poet. That said his latest collection lacks some of the immediacy of his earlier work for me and will need more readings.

I think the format lends to my distraction as it is sort of an extended perspective on mid-life crises viewed from a lens that is somehow filtered through the first season of the Twilight Zone. The average two and a half page length of the prose poems on subjects such as jazz guitarists, pool sharks and hopeless family members catches me often but not lastingly. Many of the concerns are too directed and they are not mine own.

This is still of course Don Paterson and his writing can still zing but it is lost in more dense cladding than usual.

I'm not going to try to quote from the poems as I would have to peel several fragments from several poems. This is a very good example of the work in the collection. There are some great poetry in this poem but as a whole it is closer to essay rather than verse.

This is Don Paterson reading "Chet's Habit" from the collection:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iOkjS63S74

>198 PaulCranswick:

My feet are too small to see, anyway. So it can't be me.

Book #79



Staying On by Paul Scott

Date of Publication : 1977
Origin of Author : UK
Pages : 255 pp
Booker Prize Winner in 1977

This deceptively simple novel must rank in the higher echelons of Booker winners. Written as a sort of coda to his Raj Quartet and finished barely a year before he passed away, this is Paul Scott writing a beautifully observed black comedy. Tusker and Luce Smalley don't return to England at the closing of the Raj but decide to stay on in the crumbling hill station in an annexe of a crumbling hotel.

Scott carefully charts the thinking and manners of various characters from the muslim servant-man to the fearsome Hotel Owner and her bullied husband but it is in the remaining couple that he creates two individuals of sad and somehow ludicrous empathy.

With the book beginning at its denouement and working back to the events it makes us wince and frown as much as we smile and titter.

Recommended.

>233 humouress: Hahaha Nina - our feet can't smell if we cannot see them!

>234 PaulCranswick: That sounds like a good read, I just have to read The Raj Quartet first.

Just stopping by to say hi, Paul, and congrats on doing so well on your reading.

The Raj Quartet are four of my most loved books. I highly recommend them to everybody.

>236 avatiakh: I have a lovely two volume Everyman's set of The Raj Quartet on the shelves.

>237 karenmarie: Thank you Karen.

>238 benitastrnad: Nice to see you Benita. Paul Scott really understood and, I think, loved his subject.

Am pleased to note that the top 140 threads passed 70,000 posts for the year just before. This is 33 days ahead of last year.

Continuing Songs from the Years of My Life

2015

My first real dip in posts in the year and one of personal turmoil as I was the subject of one of my staff embezzling the proceeds of one of my projects and putting the company in jeopardy. Our marriage coming into its 20th year was also a tough one for both of us, but we got through it together.

It was also a time that I had given up looking for CDs and was relying on spotify. The service recommends songs to me on a weekly basis based on my usage previously and it recommended this one by Joe Ely called "When the Nights are Cold" which really should have been a hit for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSYj59S42pQ&list=RDVSYj59S42pQ&start_rad...

Hi there, Paul. Thanks for the reminder that Staying On is one of the unread books I need to locate. I loved the Raj Quartet and would love to revisit the good times spent reading those books. Unfortunately, it will have to stay unread by me for awhile because my library doesn't have it and hasn't resumed doing interlibrary loans yet. One of these days... I'm grateful to have a plethora of other books I can read while I'm waiting.

Congratulations on zooming past the 75-book milestone.

>243 Donna828: Lovely to see you, Donna. I am slightly surprised that the novel is a little bit unfashionable these days.

Hey Paul, Just popping up to pad your numbers and to share my experience as a low volume thread home. ;)

Just trust that people are still visiting and reading the content you're putting out. I like sharing my photography and various links that I find interesting. My book reviewing as slacked off the past couple years, but its all good. I sometimes think, hey where is everybody, when my unread count never seems to change. but then I remember that I'm not all that verbal all the time either, and I still jump around and read what my friends are up to, so I'm sure others are doing the same. I should be better at, at least, saying Hi when I visit.

Hope you had a great weekend, and that a good week is in the offing.

>239 PaulCranswick: I have a huge omnibus hardback of The RAj Quartet, possibly one of the reasons I don't crack it open.

>245 mahsdad: We’re still reading, just not as vocal, I think. Summer doldrums, at least for those of us north of the equator.

>245 mahsdad: I visit all my friends threads as often as I can, Jeff and worst case will leave messages one or two times a month. I think you know full well that your thread is always on my rounds.

>246 avatiakh: Yes, sometimes if the book is too forbidding physically it doesn't get read!

>247 drneutron: Yes, Jeff, there is always a summer wane but I am usually comparing stats year on year so I account for that too!

>249 PaulCranswick: >248 PaulCranswick: I know my "home" will never been the buzzing beehive that you, RD, Mark and others will be, and that's just fine. I know you guys are always around and I appreciate it when you do chime in about the drivel I post over there. Just know that I too am always around, but I should be better (like you said) and post every once and a while to say Hey! So Hey! :) Have a Great Week!

Hiya, Paul.

I have a lot of sympathy with what Jeff is saying; like you, I try to stop by with friends as often as I can. I appreciate your stopping by mine.

I also appreciate the sentiment of your George Floyd poem up there. His family believes that what happened to him is having a critical impact on our facing and addressing the problem around the world, and urges us all to keep the momentum going. Amen to that.

The Mississippi state legislature just voted to get a new state flag that doesn't include the Confederate flag. I never would've expected that in that red, historically blighted state. Not the most important practical change by any means, but symbolically quite striking.

>250 mahsdad: We all go at our own pace, Jeff. I always appreciate and look forward to your posts and get so much enjoyment from reading the threads of my friends and their pictures and reading and photos (especially the latter in your case). Would be a pretty dull place if there was no interaction on the threads at all.

>251 jnwelch: I think that your thread is one of the beehives that Jeff was referring to, Joe! You are a constant and much admired presence across the threads and I have never seen anything other than positivity and good sense emanating from your keyboard.

It was a throwaway bit of rhyme, Joe, but the sentiment was genuine enough. I tried to ape Auden's apparently simple style to documenting such events and got one or two lines down well and the rest is a bit clunky.

I understand that for many in the South the Confederate flag is about much more than just slavery but it is associated with that too and its disappearance will obviously be welcomed by many. I agree the symbolic importance is beneficial.

Currently Reading

Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon as a tribute following his sad passing this month and it is magical.

Continuing the Songs from the Years of My Life

2016

LT posting rebounded nicely in 2016 and I enjoyed this band from Denver, The Lumineers. This is "Ophelia"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTOC_q0NLTk

77/100, I love listchallenges.com :)

Fleeting hola!

Hi, Paul. I hope the week is off to a good start. I know poetry interests are a bit different, (you are more old school, I am more new school) but I wouldn't mind trying Don Paterson. Where is a good starting point?

>255 BekkaJo: It is brilliant isn't it, Bekka. I did one challenge today on psychological thrillers and got 1/80!! Mostly I am way above the average though.

>256 msf59: You would love his current collection, Mark, but I would always recommend to start at the beginning. Nil, Nil is his debut collection and it is very accessible.

I am old school, poetry wise? Eliot, Hughes and Heaney in particular of my six heroes are very much modernists (Yeats, Dylan Thomas and Auden being the other three) but their work is recognisable as poetry or at least poetic. I may not be entirely popular for saying so but some modern poetry particularly from your side of the pond is hardly poetic - if that makes me old school then I am probably guilty as charged. For example Terrance Hayes produced a recent collection American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin and I have to say that it was for the most part quite slovenly work just to make poems of 14 lines and call them sonnets without following a single established rule of the form. Just lazy in my view and this is by someone with oodles of talent.

>257 PaulCranswick:

Hmm - no Poe or Frost or Whitman or Edward Lear or Tennyson...?

>258 m.belljackson: Hahaha Marianne then I would really be Old School perhaps of the Ancien Regime!

I do like all five of them in fairly small doses actually.

>285 PaulCranswick: >259 PaulCranswick: LOL, that's exactly along the lines I was thinking. I have a fondness for the Romantic poets, so if your taste is Old School, I'm way beyond retro - Ancien Regime is perfect!

>260 Dejah_Thoris: Then this is for you, Princess.

Poet anyone?

Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe
Voluptuous visions into the warm air,
Though swimming through the dance’s dangerous wreath,
Be like an April day,
Smiling and cold and gay,
A temperate lily, temperate as fair;
Then, heaven! there will be
A warmer June for me.

>238 benitastrnad: Also my favorite series, Benita! I've read and enjoyed other P. Scott, but the Quartet is the best!

>251 jnwelch: I have no idea, Paul, but I like it a lot although I'm not attracted by all the alliteration. (O.K. just 3 examples but in 8 lines, that's a lot.)

ETA: I just googled it - not surprised, just ignorant.

>262 LizzieD: Yes, it is Keats. Remembered it because I am was the dying hours of June here.

I know many of the group follow the 1001 Books. One of the problems is of course that with the several editions issued it is now sort of the 1316 Books you should read. Using List Challenges I checked my score at 330/1316 or 25%. Places me 114th out of 6,733 who have taken the challenge.

Other scores? I am sure that some of you will blitz my score.

https://www.listchallenges.com/1001-books-you-must-read-2018/list/33

>261 PaulCranswick: Thank you, Paul. I have mixed feelings about Keats - sometimes the entirety of his poems is a bit much for me (like "To Fanny"), but select verses and lines can be magical.

I'll never forget a high school English Literature class when, while studying the Romantic poets, our instructor, (dear Dr. Tate), asked why we read Keats' "Endymion." I smartly answered "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" - he replied "Yes," and we moved on to the next poem. Keats was not his favorite, lol.

>265 Dejah_Thoris: Nice anecdote, Princess. He isn't my favourite as I prefer Byron and Shelley, but you are right in that he could occasionally really nail a line. Considering though that he died of consumption at just 25, his output was extraordinary.

I just finished reading Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Prisoner of Heaven and enjoyed it very much. I have access to Marina via the library's collection but really want to finish reading the Barcelona Quartet first. I only have Labyrinth of the Spirits to tackle. I hope to get to that one ASAP.

>242 PaulCranswick: Joe Ely is a specialist taste. He's far from easy for most pop-trained sensibilities to connect with.

>252 PaulCranswick: Another resident of my Kindle, the Graveyard of Good Reading Intentions that it is.

Happy Humpday.

>264 PaulCranswick: I'm at 75/1,316. Not even close to you.

So many on that list that I want to read, so many that I've never even heard of. :/

Dodging the expanded 1001 list while I stop by to say Hello. ;-)

>264 PaulCranswick: 196 of 1,316 15% #437 of 6,738, respectable if not stellar. There are some books by included authors that I've read, and I may have read 5 or 6 more, but if I don't remember reading them at all, they can hardly count.

>267 benitastrnad: OK that makes sense, Benita. I read Shadow of the Wind donkey's years ago and will drop onto the other three books progressively.

>268 richardderus: I don't like everything of his RD, but that track in particular stands out for me.

>269 mahsdad: There are a good number on that list that I am not familiar with either, Jeff.

>270 lkernagh: Hullo right back, Lori, and welcome list checking or not!

>271 quondame: I thought you would have bested me easily, Susan. I guess my figure must be ok then.

>274 PaulCranswick: There is a lot of literary fiction, and my 19th centruy coverage is very spotty. The coverage of F&SF is on the lite side. I'd be curious to know how the most popular 1400 books on LT compare with this list.

>275 quondame: Well you can see that from the zeitgeist page, Susan. Of course the first ones are dominated by Harry Potter which I am 0/7!

>264 PaulCranswick: I have read 123 of that list, Paul.
With the combined English, Swedish and Dutch 1001 lists I am now at 161 of ??.

>274 PaulCranswick: Actually checked and it logs the 1000 most popular. I have read 253.

>277 FAMeulstee: That is impressive Anita, because of course the list is preferred from an English language reading perspective.

>276 PaulCranswick: >277 FAMeulstee: >278 PaulCranswick: OK, Well, 304 is blank (is there a "") book entry, and there are some series duplication, but not counting duplicates and nulls I have 407. Not reading Stephen King, except for Gunslinger books really did me in, but Terry Pratchett saved me almost every time it looked like I had to delete an entire swath of books.

>280 quondame: Yeah, Harry Potter, the Twilight Series, Hunger Games and Stephen King all screwed me over! I have only read The Colour of Magic but do have some more Pratchett on the shelves.

Yes I noticed the duplications and benefitted from them with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.

>281 PaulCranswick: The first few, and especially the first two of Pratchett's Disc World just aren't up to what he achieves in the later books of the series. Many people think Wyrd Sisters is one of the first great ones, I'm for Reaper Man and the wild shopping carts. Equal Rites was great fun too, but still more snide side than the best. None of those include my favorite sub-series which are centered on Vimes, but the first of those isn't the best by me.

I plan to read something by him in July, Susan. I enjoyed The Colour of Magic.

>281 PaulCranswick:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal,

thank you very much.

There, Paul , you've gone and done it, might as well finish the book!

>284 m.belljackson: I can't see me reading those series in too much of a hurry, Marianne. xx

>285 PaulCranswick:

Yo! - time to check back in with those of us in BAC who struggled through Penelope -
if I can next get through POLDARK, you can handle Hagrid!

>286 m.belljackson: Yes well Poldark is up again for me this month as Winston Graham features in the BAC

Paul, you (too) often express concern that Biden is in mental decline. I give you an alternative opinion from WaPo cartoonist Tom Toles:

>288 weird_O: :D

It isn't that the other fellow is senile.....he was always plumb crazy.

<288> "can't read my note without my glasses" -- how about just plain can't and doesn't read?
"Daily briefing? No time, got a golf date" is more like it.

>290 RebaRelishesReading: It isn't a note he's trying to read it is a small mirror he is using to admire his beautiful hair.

I visited your thread and suddenly realized I meant to check out one of the two Winston Graham books we had in the library. If I make it up there in the next couple of weeks to return some of the ones I checked out, I'll try to remember to grab either The Woman in the Mirror or The Spanish Armadas. Those are the two we own.

>292 thornton37814: I am looking forward to this month's reading, Lori.

I am doing a Z-A challenge. 26 books, 26 authors from Z to A. I am as usual cheating a little bit in that for British Author Challenge I have 2 G's - Winston Graham and Elly Griffiths. I am going to circumvent that on the basis that Elly Griffiths' real name is Domenica de Rosa so I'll count her under "R"!

Making strides with this mini challenge which I will update when I make my new thread shortly.

>292 thornton37814: Interesting challenge. I did that alphabet challenge one year and decided "never again." I can't imagine doing it in a single month.

>294 thornton37814: Zafon is done Marina and Serve the People by Yan Lianke almost settled (Yan is his family name in China) and Xenophon started The Expedition of Cyrus. I have Richard Wilbur, Marco Vichi, Robert M. Utley Anthony Trollope, Wole Soyinka Elly Griffiths (Domenica de Rosa), Anthony Quayle, Terry Pratchett Michael Ondaatje, Sara Novic, Paul Muldoon, Valeria Luiselli, Adib Khorram, Adam Johnson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Dashiell Hammett, Winston Graham, Karin Fossum, Jeffrey Eugenides, Matthew Desmond, Margaret Craven, Samuel Beckett, Nana Adjei-Brenyah all waiting my attention.

>293 PaulCranswick: - Lovely to see you are doing an alphabet challenge, Paul. I love to see how far along the challenge I can get before I have to start selecting specific reads to fill some of the blocks. ;-) Very smart to make use of an author's real name when their pen name won't help! I will keep that solution in mind.

Now off to visit your new thread.

>296 lkernagh: Thanks Lori. I felt I needed another challenge just to spur the others along!