Jill Rummages Among Her Books in 2023

Well, okay. I made it through The Fellowship of the Ring before the end of 2022. I started The Two Towers this morning with the morning coffee. I may not be able to refocus my attention elsewhere until I finish all three

Thus I'm starting my new thread on the morning of January 1, 2023. My wishes for a happy new year and good times ahead. Let's gather and share stories over the next 12 months.

Happy New Year and happy reading!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year; happy new thread!

What >2 Narilka: , >3 Karlstar: and >4 hfglen: said.

Wishing you a wonderful new year.

Happy New Year, my friend! May this thread be full to bursting with satisfying reads.

Looking forward to many visits in the pub around the fireplace, with grog on the table, and an assortment of cheese, to discuss our reading journeys.

>1 jillmwo:
It is a long time (pre-1982) since I read LoTR. You are influencing me to do a re-read. I am glad you achieved your 2022 objective of finishing The Fellowship of the Ring before the end of the year.

I am sure I can expect a barrage of BBs from your 2023 reading. You are working well at keeping yourself at the top of the BB hits on Peter league table.

I am hoping your retirement will mean we will see more frequent posts from you in the pub. I always enjoy your posts. I also enjoy your more "work" related post on The Social Media Platform That Should Not Be Named.

>9 pgmcc: Well, thus far my semi-retirement is still absorbing great blocks of time in arcane subject areas. I've got another post going up on the Scholarly Kitchen at some point and just before the holiday hit, I turned in a white paper on Clara Bewick Colby and the Woman's Tribune. (Thank you for your kindness in reading those extraneous contributions. One does feel as if one is sometimes shouting into the wind to no great purpose.)

Meanwhile, as a more fun thing in my head, I'm trying to work out the transformation of Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White. What is the nature of the change that has overtaken the LOTR wizard? He seems to suggest that he is now greater (or at least wiser) than Saruman by virtue of his transformation, but how exactly does that work? Is this more of a transmutation than a resurrection?

(And don't you love that Gimli yearns for Galadriel in one of the nobler kinds of courtly love? Sad in one way, but it endears Gimli to us.)

One thing that I noticed in my re-reading is the handling of time in LOTR. Tolkien expands the understanding of the various Middle-Earth peoples about who is still with them -- the Ents, for example. There are a lot of people scratching their heads and saying "hey, I didn't think those were real. I thought they were make-believe or old folk tales..." Elves, Ents, etc.

Another thing that has occurred to me is how much better the whole trilogy is if you read it as all one story -- back to back to back -- rather than as three separate volumes. So often in modern publication fashion, you read one book and then you have to wait another year for volume two. Or you watch one movie and then wait another five before you get through the entire epic. Tolkien really can and ought to be read one right after the other. They flow well together and you don't lose track of who is where and what they might be doing.

The re-read is touching something old and buried deep down in me. This trip to Middle-Earth is like softening up the ground by watering it again. A relief of a kind.

>10 jillmwo: "The re-read is touching something old and buried deep down in me."

It definitely has the effect of returning me to who I was when I first read it. (But I'm listening to it, so it's tickling different parts of my brain than when I read it.) When I get to TTT I will check back in with you on the Gandalf thing.

>10 jillmwo:
I believe LOTR was the first fantasy I read. I was in my early 20s when I read it and it opened up a whole new world for me. While I have not read it since, the number of discussions I have had, and movies I have watched have kept the story fresh in my mind. I am keen to reread it to see just how fresh it is in my mind. I recall enjoying Tom Bombadil and feeling fear when the Dark Riders were hunting for the hobbits, especially as they were entering their bedroom in the Inn.

On re-reading in general, I do not do a lot of it as I am so eager to get to books that I have not read for the first time and that are calling to me. When I have reread a book I have found so much more that I missed during my first read. This is probably due to my being more mature and being able to notice allusions that I have not spotted before. An example of this would be when I first read Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks's first published SF book. It was the first banks novel I read and I really enjoyed it as a dashing yarn. It was only when I reread it after his death that I realised it was a strong anti-war novel.

I agree that reading the trilogy as one book is the best approach. The copy I first read was a single volume. I leant it to my sister-in-law and never saw it again. I do not think she read it. I have two copies in the house, copies that my children read. Three of them are keen LOTR fans.

>12 pgmcc: *blinks* Once? *blinks quite a bit more* I stopped counting at 20 something. But I was 13 when I read it the first time, and rereading was something I did in those days. I always have always read all three together, though I will admit to skimming my least favorite bits. (The Dead Marshes!)

>10 jillmwo: I'm not sure what to say about Gandalf's ascension. Could it be just a simple reward or promotion? He's now done something Saruman hasn't, he has single-handedly done that thing that I won't mention for people who've only read the books once. (>12 pgmcc:!) I'm sure Tolkien had a deeper meaning in mind, but I'm just not sure what.

>10 jillmwo: Tolkien wanted to publish them as one book, but the publisher convinced him it would be too long and no one would read it.

The Gandalf thing, he is actually a spirit, so what I have read is that essentially he went home for a powwow with the higher ups, and new instructions; then came back with more juju and possibly another body, but possibly not, because Sarumon had fallen away.

The specific remark that Gandalf makes in the White Rider chapter of The Two Towers is this: ”Yes, I am White now,” said Gandalf. Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been.” So my question is whether this transmutation/transformation simply means that Gandalf has far surpassed Saruman in wisdom because he had the strength not to give into temptation when faced with a threat as did the treasonous Saruman or if there has been a different type of physical/spiritual evolution in who Gandalf is NOW. A kind of enlightenment or maturation of a special kind.

There’s even a point – I think in the same chapter – where Gandalf shares with the three companions that he’s fairly confident that Frodo and Sam have made it as far as Mordor. Because that means the Ring is no longer in the world of Men. The risk of temptation to use the ring has lessened.

So maybe the interpretation proposed by MrsLee is the closest one to being right. I'm still sorting it out.

Of course, now I’m in the world of Rohan and Gandalf has smacked Grima Wormtongue hard. Theoden’s backbone has straightened out and he is breathing the free air that he has needed.

Quote from Two Towers, Gimli talking to Legolas about what he's seen:

...the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come. And plink! a silver drops falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend an waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea. Then evening comes: they fade and twinkle out; the torches pass on into another chamber and another dream. There is chamber after chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; and still the winding paths lead on into the mountains' heart. Caves! The Caverns of Helm's Deep! Happy was the chance that drove me there! It makes me weep to leave them."

One kind of wonders what it was that Tolkien was himself imagining when he wrote those descriptions, what it was that inspired him to think of such architecture.

Re: Gandalf, another data point to include is what he says to Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas when he meets them again after his apotheosis. He tells them, "Indeed, none of you have any weapons that could harm me now," or something of that nature (I haven't read it for a couple of years). We know that the Istari were Maiar who were sent to Middle Earth to resist Sauron, in the guise of old men, but not allowed to use their full powers. I wonder if when Gandalf returns as Gandalf the White, he has received permission to use more of his powers.

When he says ”Yes, I am White now,” said Gandalf. Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been.”, I have always thought that this meant he was now suited to take over the leadership of the powers of the West. I don't know if the apparent head wizard wears white in reference to the pope, or perhaps to purity, but somehow there seems to be a linkage intended.

At the end G says something like, "I was the Enemy of Sauron." I have wondered if that was the case all along, or if he assumed that role because Saruman fell from grace. Was he so designated when all the wizards came to ME, or did he take on the role after his death?

>17 jillmwo: When I read that, I thought of some of the caverns I've been through here. The Oregon Caves National Park, the Shasta Caverns out of Redding, CA. Perhaps they are not quite as grand as that description, but "There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come." describes them very well.

>17 jillmwo: & >19 MrsLee:

When I was reading the description of the cavern with the stalactites and stalagmites I was reminded of The Aillwee Caves in the Burren in the West of Ireland. Tolkein visited the Burren many times and there is evidence that the area influenced some of his descriptions of Middle Earth. He was English Language external examiner for Galway University and he visited the West of Ireland often in that capacity, and took the opportunity to visit The Burren and sketch the landscape.



As I was reading the description of the caverns I was thinking he must have visited The Aillwee Caves, but my research indicates the caves were only discovered in 1944 and the farmer who found them did not reveal their existence until the 1970s, well after Tolkein had visited the Burren. Still, he must have visited, or at least seen photographs of, limestone caverns at some point to create the description quoted. Perhaps he was influenced by some of the descriptions in Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

>17 jillmwo: Such great writing!

>18 Jim53: That's sort of my feeling on what happened to Gandalf. Why the change? Was it because Saruman had forfeited his position or because Gandalf had earned it?

>21 Karlstar: Why the change? Perhaps both of your reasons.

A belated Happy New Year! I can tell that a spirited discussion is already underway so I'll just sit here and lurk for a while.

So a bit more fodder for thought with regard to Gandalf's transformation from The Grey to The White:

Pippin and Merry are talking to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in the chapter entitled "Flotsam and Jetsam". Pippin says this:

“Treebeard heard his voice and came out of the shadows at once and there was a strange meeting. I was surprised, because neither of them seemed surprised at all. Gandalf obviously expected to find Treebeard here; and Treebeard might almost have been loitering about near the gates on purpose to meet him. Yet we had told the old Ent all about Moria. But then I remembered a queer look he gave us at the time. I can only suppose he had seen Gandalf or had some news of him, but he would not say anything in a hurry…not even Ents will say much about Gandalf’s movements when he is not there.”

It seems as if those who have absorbed wisdom recognize each other across species. And actually, even before that, Aragorn makes the following observation with regard to Saruman:

"Once he was as great as his fame made him. His knowledge was deep, his thought was subtle, and his hands marvelously skilled; and he had a power over the minds of others. The wise he could persuade and the smaller folk he could daunt. That power he certainly still keeps. There are not many in Middle-Earth that I should say were safe if they were left alone to talk with him, even now when he has suffered a defeat. Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel, perhaps, now that his wickedness has been laid bare, but very few others."

So maybe Treebeard has the same status in terms of wisdom as Gandalf and the others named...

Then there is the chapter, The Voice of Saruman, (quite memorable even between any re-readings) and then there follows the chapter focused on the fool of a Took, Pippin, and the thing that gets flung at him from the Tower.

"The neighbourhood of Isengard is now no place to linger in." I hear the same rhythm of the speech as we found in Tolkien's poetry. Sadly, things are about to get much, much darker in the story.

As to frequency of re-reading LOTR, I think much depends on what else is going in the reader's life. I have read LOTR more than once (more frequently than pgmcc, apparently) but not nearly as frequently as has clamairy. I want to read as widely as pgmcc, but for now, at least, I want to read more deeply than life's busy-ness has allowed me thus far. I am really, really getting something from this particular re-visiting of Middle-Earth. (MrsLee included the The Tolkien Miscellany as one of her top five reads in 2022 and I enjoyed dipping into that volume.) But for me, right now, this is a full-fledged, full length, re-reading -- not skipping about or dipping in to verify something. And I'm finding my heart touched all over again.

Here is the real problem with marketing blurbs. When someone writes that something is an "epic, crazy, shocking, mind-blowing, brutal, tender, heartbreaking book", the hyperbole is off-putting, primarily because it is SOLELY hyperbole. What is the reader supposed to take away from that? Promise me a roller-coaster reading experience, but about what exactly? And yes, it is a direct quote from a newsletter put forth by a major publishing house marketing team, each of whom are undoubtedly pulling down respectable salaries.

It's really easy to resist this kind of selling technique...

Boo, hiss.

>25 jillmwo: Hearty agreement!

>24 jillmwo: It's interesting, and probably not a coincidence, that the three people Aragorn names as "safe" if left alone with Saruman were the wielders of the three rings of the Elves.

>25 jillmwo: something is an "epic, crazy, shocking, mind-blowing, brutal, tender, heartbreaking book" That says to me that the author couldn't make up their mind what kind of book they wanted to write so they put everything into it. I recently saw a book blurb advertising "a dark cosy murder mystery with a slice of humour and a touch of romance" which also made me think the author wasn't sure what genre they wanted to write. How can you have a "dark cosy" mystery???

Okay, I am not going to linger over the final chapters of The Two Towers. The chapter on the taming of Smeagol is one I always find painful to read -- primarily because of the way in which Gollum/Smeagol is characterized. He's clearly not free of the ring's long-term influence, but he's shown here as something akin to a half-crazed, junkyard dog (hence the chapter title I suppose). Whether any redemption is possible is entirely questionable. He's an incredibly uncomfortable character to endure for even a chapter. He makes me shudder. I’m not nearly as charitable as Frodo; I’m with Sam.

Then there are the Dead Marshes. I don't know when it was that clamairy hit me(*) with a recommendation for John Garth's biography Tolkien and the Great War, but it's been stored away in the house as one of those titles I thought I might read. I pulled it out this morning and dipped into it (initially seeing if the index reflected much thinking about Saruman). As I was flipping through pages, I saw something suggesting that this chapter about the Dead Marshes had been influenced to some extent by Tolkien's trench experiences during the Battle of the Somme. Quite honestly, if there's any haunting portion of the movies where Peter Jackson captured the full subtext of The Two Towers, it was during this segment.

Moving quickly by Faramir, there’s Shelob in her Lair and the discussion on MrsLee’s thread in recent days over sighting a spider in the shower should clue you all in on how we feel about THAT encounter. In the final chapter of TTT, there’s Sam and Gorbat and Shagrat and the closing words of the book “Frodo was alive, but taken by the Enemy.”

Say what you will about narrative strengths and weaknesses, Tolkien had a talent for a cliff-hanger. One wonders if there were mobs outside the publisher’s office, threatening havoc for ending a volume just there.

(*) See? Like pgmcc, I keep track over the long-haul.

>26 Jim53: Not a coincidence at all!

I finished Two Towers and now have moved on to The Return of the King. I jotted down some notes about TTT in terms of what I think Tolkien was doing and hope to post something this weekend as a summation of what I picked up on. (And really, I have so much respect for how the Professor structured the narrative to serve the point he was making about the use of power and the consequences of choice in applying power appropriately. And yes, the full narrative has a lot to do with what he saw during the first World War. I didn't really pay much attention to that aspect back when I was in high school. I see it quite clearly now as I'm reading all three books in close, consecutive order -- as I might have been able to do before if the version I'd read had been in a single volume.

Sigh. I have reached the part about Denethor and the pyre.

To karlstar, jim53 and MrsLee -- I really am grateful to you for the comments you've left here on the discussion of Gandalf. And pgmcc, thank you for posting that photo of the caverns.

>27 Sakerfalcon: I know there's a literary term for that kind of contradictory juxtaposition, but I am drawing a blank at the moment. And I'd agree with you that a "dark, cozy" would be a tad "off".

>30 jillmwo: I'm looking forward to your thoughts on TTT.

If The Fellowship of the Ring is about the individual – an innocent individual – absorbing initial lessons about our relationship to power and its use, then The Two Towers is about observing in others the consequences of choice in exercising power. As I think I may have said previously, in the Council of Elrond, Tolkien expands the innocent Hobbits’ sense of the larger world and the prospect of taking on a role in that world. When they left the Shire, it was all just a bit of adventure for them. But in The Two Towers, the four hobbits have an opportunity to witness in others the positive as well as the negative consequences of handling power. They saw Gandalf fall in Fellowship, exercising his power for their good and the associated sacrifice he makes in doing so, but they see his greater strength returning in Two Towers. They learn of Saruman’s misuse of power, his grasping after greater power and the manipulation he uses to coerce others to yield up their individual choices. Theoden has given into a certain paralysis absorbed from Wormtongue and failed to accept his responsibilities. But when Gandalf breaks that hold over him, we see Theoden strengthen back up and choose again to adopt a better, more appropriate set of values and virtues. We see the Ents make the choice to take action against Saruman. And at the same time, we see Gollum, corrupted by the effect of the Ring of Power on him. (And one wonders if he is corrupted by the guilt of murdering his brother and the consequence of that act following an impulse of greed in taking the Ring from his brother (a Ring with power he didn’t know at the time.). Throughout all this, we see the Hobbits’ impulse towards positive action (though never with as much depth of thought as ordinary prudence might recommend). Most hobbits operate out of a general sense of decency and goodness; certainly our four do.

Most of all what I am remembering now is the assumption back during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s that this was a set of books against injustice, wrong-doing, industrial abuse of natural resources, and war-mongering. I see it as a statement about recognizing the extent of the choices before us and accepting an individual duty to act with responsibility and according to best principles. (Like that’s simple or easy…) I do pick up a sense of Tolkien’s Catholicism, his spiritual framework, etc. The first World War did terrible things to his network of friends and mentors. I’m also thinking that I have forgotten an awful lot of what I read in the Carpenter biography and regretting that I didn't get more from the follow-up work of Christopher Tolkien.

I experience trepidation in reading The Return of the King. I know how it comes out -- happily, more or less, and with hope for better times ahead -- but so much reflects the experience of a sad and largely traumatized world.

>32 jillmwo: I hope you work up the courage for RotK, because reading your inducted into the other two books has made me think deeper and an enlightening experience for me.

>32 jillmwo: That's an interesting observation on how the lesson of the books has changed over time.

>33 MrsLee: There was no possibility of stopping at the close of The Two Towers and refusing to go onto the third volume. Of course, I read it through to the end, finishing mid-morning today. (With all my Christmas tree still to be taken down, at that!) Last night I was reeling from the impact of the chapter on Mount Doom. Such expressions of struggle and despair. (And thinking as well about the senseless destruction of war.) This whole thing has been about the abuse generated by an individual’s unwarranted/wrongful exercise of power over another, Whether done through coercion, manipulation or unwritten social norms (such as Eowyn’s cage of womanhood.)

Gandalf – one of the Istari – engages with Bilbo through the events of The Hobbit and through all of the events in LOTR, but he advises the four hobbits that he must ride away just as they return to the Shire. Because again, the point that Tolkien is making is about choosing to take personal action. The Shire belongs to the Hobbits and they must be responsible if they wish to take it back from grubby Sharkey, et al.) The abuse starts when one person decides s/he wants to own or hold more than is good for them (and there’s a place in the chapter on the scouring of the Shire when it’s put in those very terms. It starts with just one point of greed and over-reach.)

For the reader, The Scouring of the Shire is almost as painful a part of the Great War as the campaigns waged in Mordor. Because it was where we started from and it is “home” in terms of our childhood and that innocence. (It is however still less despairing in tone than the chapter on Mount Doom. Because the hobbits are sensible folk and once they see a chance of victory against the bad guys, they seize on it.)

NOTE BIT OF DIGRESSION FOLLOWS I even pulled the book Novel Houses off my shelf to see if the essay on Bag End referenced how Frodo’s home was taken over in LOTR. (I actually bought Novel Houses for the sole reason that it included a chapter ABOUT Bag End. The whole thing as one might imagine is about fictional houses like Manderly and Bag End and such-like.)

But returning to The Return of the King – the other thread throughout is seeing the fulfillment of prophecies that throughout have been included in the songs permeating the trilogy. Tolkien gives over two or three chapters to how Aragorn reclaims his throne and how the various bits fall together and make the story of that restoration complete. If there is something that I take away from this reading, it is how Tolkien’s narrative was absolutely planned down to the very last detail. Every single thing that happens has a rationale behind it. (That’s part of his work’s message as well, but as a structure in place, what he’s done is really rather amazing.)

So yes, LOTR is a classic work of English literature, although scholarly activity around it may have slowed down from previous years. There’s a lot there in the books to be chewed over and it was primarily due to the fact that it was classified as fantasy that has caused so many “serious” scholars to pass over it. When those folks back in the 60s, 70s and so forth embraced it as being an anti-war book or as a save-the-environment book, they were right. Those messages are there. We ought to carefully consider the ugliness of concrete brutalism and the grim utilitarianism of modern culture before we fully embrace the techno-age. (That includes the gray renditions seen in ebooks; we should be careful over any dismissal of the well-made physical book.)

Tolkien did a briliiant thing here and in the other two works, The Silmarillion and The Hobbit. They are consistent in the message and framing of lived experience, but best-suited to different age groups. (Turning The Hobbit into three movies was a bad idea and a travesty of the source material. The movie studios should be ashamed.) Despite the pandemic, I’m not quite ready to sail off into the Gray Havens. But neither do I want to suffer through any great Wars or watch the spiteful destruction of trees for the sake of real estate development. How we assume responsibility for correct action in our own personal circumstances -- whether it be cleaning the house or advocating for a larger cause -- is something that must be left up to each of us.

So, again, raise a glass and honor The Professor.

>35 jillmwo: very nicely put.

On a lighter note, I once wrote a paper in which I contended that "Bag End" was Tolkien's translation into English of the French expression "cul de sac," literally, the end of the bag. I said he had chosen the name of the Baggins family to make that work. Needless to say, it was received with a bit of skepticism.

>33 MrsLee: I believe the word I was going for was "insight" but my phone had another plan.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think this work is one of those special ones where each reader comes away with a slightly different meaning, depending on their age, the times they live in and their beliefs. A true classic IMO.

I was going to post a comment to the effect that LOTR satisfies at least two of Italo Calvino’s criteria for a classic (that reading it in later life is different from reading it in youth; that with every read you find new things in it) but I think >37 MrsLee: says it better.

Went rummaging about for indications of how well LOTR sold initially (As MrsLee notes above, it was published as three separate volumes per the publisher request, due to paper shortages).

The print run for the first UK edition of Fellowship was 3,000, the print run for the second volume was 3,250 and by the time the third volume was released in 1955, the print run was up to 7,000. Based on stats provided in late 2021, the trilogy (in all its various forms) had sold more than 150 million copies. Source: https://wordsrated.com/lord-of-the-rings-stats/ Those figures seem to be borne out by the figures shown in this source: https://tolkienbooks.net/php/lotr-print-runs.php which drew from the Allen & Unwin Archives.

Nowhere can I find anything authoritative about what revenue from the UK sales might have been or how it ranked in the general range of successful titles at the time.

>39 jillmwo:
The Net Book Agreement was in place from 1900, so the books had to be sold at the Recommended Retail Price (RRP). If that can be established then the revenue in the UK will be the number of books by the RRP. Prices did not vary much in those days, so it may be possible to spot the prices on book covers of the day, or some other source.

A little more rummaging about yields the information that the books were sold at 21 shillings apiece (based on letters between Unwin and Tolkien) or one guinea. But I THINK that equates today to a selling price of one British pound plus one shilling? (Please forgive any egregious errors in equivalencies as this isn't the kind of quick Google search where I know how to properly construct the query -- there are things like exchanges involved, shifts in currency use, and other financial pitfalls. And I have forgotten most of what little I might ever have understood about British currency.)

>41 jillmwo:
Your rummaging has been very productive.

21 shillings was indeed one guinea, which was indeed one pound and one shilling. In those days a pound consisted of 240 pennies, i.e. 20 shillings, each consisting of 12 pennies.

On 15th February, 1971, the pound was magically transformed into 100 pennies, and the shilling became 5 pence. Therefore, a Guinea in today's sterling is one pound and five pence. It does not have the same ring to it as "a pound and a shilling".

In terms of the revenue generated at the time of Tolkein, the figure in pounds, shillings and pence (LSD*) would be the number of books multiplied by one guinea. Comparing it to today's sterling there would be no currency conversion required. What might be required would be an adjustment for the time value of money. One guinea when LOTR was published would have been a lot more valuable than £1.05 today.You could buy an awful lot more Jelly Babies for £1 1s 0d than you can for £1.05.

One of the things that convinces me that my ability to do mental arithmetic has declined since the 1960s is that I was able to keep track of the cost in pounds, shillings and pence, of any shopping I would be doing for my mother. I would go to the grocers, the bakers, the butchers, etc..., and would be able to tot up the cost of the goods and work out the amount due, and know the change I would expect back. Now that I only have euros and cents I am lost. I obviously need something much more complicated to keep my mind active. Mental arithmetic was one of the things we use to be trained on in primary school. I can remember the book of sums. The teacher would sit in the middle of the class, pick a boy to answer a question, then read out a sum that involved someone buying items in different shops for different amounts of money, and the boy had to tell the teacher the total amount due, or the amount of change the person should have left if they started with £x ys zd in their purse.

There were also quick fire questions that were open to anyone to answer.

* Yes, Pound was represented by the letter "L" while Pence was denoted by the letter, "d". That was to avoid any possible confusion.

>41 jillmwo: A guinea was indeed 21 shillings or 1 pound 1 shilling, at the time. This was of course long pre-decimal. Prices of luxury goods tended to be given in guineas rather than pounds shillings and pence. Just in case, at the time 1 pound (£1) was 240 pence, and 12 pence equaled 1 shilling, so £1 = 20 shillings. A price in pounds shillings and pence was written, in that order, £12/6/11. Doing mathematics in pre-decimal pounds (Australia had them as well till 1966) rather does your head in.

ETA I see Peter got there before I did. Ireland had pounds pre-euro too.

EATA the pound sign (£) is a stylised italic capital L. When a price in pounds was expressed using a plain l, the letter was usually put after the figures, so 12l.

>43 haydninvienna:
Great minds and all that…

>43 haydninvienna: Indeed.

>43 haydninvienna: We had pre-decimal pounds until 1961, which is long enough ago to forget having tried to buy things with them.

>39 jillmwo: I wonder how much of each guinea Tolkien saw in royalties? I would guess about half-a-crown, which might explain why he kept his day job.

Incidentally, Pete and Richard probably know that the origin of "a guinea" was a source of exceptionally fine gold in West Africa. Sovereigns (nominally £1 coins) made of this gold were highly enough sought after that they traded at a 5% premium over "ordinary" gold coins. And I'll leave Pete and Richard to explain what half-a-crown was.

Stream of consciousness from here: in some communities here a florin was called a "skotshman". Guess why.

>39 jillmwo: Isn't it amazing how the market for novels in the fantasy genre has exploded since then?

>42 pgmcc: >43 haydninvienna: If I'm understanding some of that correctly, why was there a unit of currency that was 1.2x a pound? Kind of curious about the reasoning for that one. Ok, I'm a lot curious but that would make me a currency geek and who wants to admit that?

>46 hfglen: I’ll leave the half-crown for Peter—for some reason it was never used in Oz as far as I can remember. (I do know what it was, but no coins of that value were ever issued in Australia AFAIK.)

Guess now what a florin was. Two shillings. The Australian pre-decimal coins were: halfpenny, penny, threepence, sixpence, shilling, two shillings (that is, a single coin of that value). The two-shilling coin had “One Florin”on it.

>46 hfglen: A half-a-crown was two and six.

If you can keep this whole "great minds" thing on the current roll, you will indeed be helping the unwashed masses better comprehend the world in which we operate...

>42 pgmcc: With regard to this sidebar point in your posting Mental arithmetic was one of the things we use to be trained on in primary school. I can remember the book of sums. The teacher would sit in the middle of the class, pick a boy to answer a question, then read out a sum that involved someone buying items in different shops for different amounts of money, and the boy had to tell the teacher the total amount due, or the amount of change the person should have left if they started with £x ys zd in their purse. I'd never have gotten out of primary school if I'd had to do that kind of on-going addition in my head.

>43 haydninvienna: So that is what that "/" means!! Naturally one sees it in old photographs of shops in Britain, but no one ever explained that bit to me. And knowing the proper order of pounds, shillings, and pence helps as well.

You are both right in pointing out that the tricky bit is working out what the value of that amount might have looked like to the buying customer in 1954 and 1955. Unwin apologizes for the setting the price at such a high level, so buying LOTR might well have been a big deal. I got an illustrated edition of The Silmarillion for Christmas with the dust jacket showing a price of $65.00. That was not what the giver ACTUALLY paid in 2022, but it might be somewhat analogous. (The production values are fabulous.) Somewhat expensive as books go these days and one of the sources I mentioned above indicated that Raymond Unwin cautioned the firm that they might lose money on the initial LOTR publication.

UNNECESSARY DIGRESSION: The mammoth Dutch STM publisher where I worked back in the nineties had offices in five or six specific locations (Amsterdam, Lausanne, Paris, Oxford, New York, etc.). At one point the pricing of the journal publications was presented to the marketplace in the currency of each of the individual offices; libraries worked with subscription agents in determining the best payment date as conversion was required and library budgets were watched closely. Then at some point, when the exchange rates got to be less favorable for the European offices, the decision was taken to establish fixed pricing in the currency of the customer's country instead. This was controversial at the time, as I recall, as it meant the libraries had less control over what they were expected to pay. The publisher however claimed it was a benefit to the customer because they wouldn't have to do all those conversion exercises. Pricing is a bear and I sat through some pricing meetings where everyone around the table had a calculator in hand.

>47 Karlstar: Not 1.2 pound—the guinea was 1.05 pound (£1 plus a shilling, which was one-twentieth of a pound).

>42 pgmcc: Aren't the prices for racehorses still listed in guineas? Or did that too go by the wayside?

The plot of one of Georgette Heyer's books, The Toll-Gate, partially revolves around the introduction of the sovereign in 1817.

>47 Karlstar: Something I was reading recently talked about how, in light of the LOTR success, publishers went combing through their catalogs and authors to see how they could ride along on that wave of genre profitability and popularity. I was rooting about in my shelves last night and found a lengthy essay written by Stephen O. Miller and published in 1975 by TK Graphics that essentially provides a relatively detailed summation of each of the three volume plot lines, fleshed out with passages the author deemed as essential quotes, perhaps encouraging sales by those who would buy anything Tolkien-related while awaiting the initial publication of The Silmarillion. (There was no indication that I saw as I flipped through as to whether permissions had been obtained for the use of those passages.)

There are many bean counters in today's entertainment industry who may have turned their noses up at fantasy way back when, but who now rub their hands in glee, looking at the financial impact of hobbits and super-heroes.

>50 jillmwo: I have to admit that Peter is probably your best-informed source on this. I grew up in Australia, which also had (pre-decimal) a currency called a pound, but its coinage was much more rational and less baroque than the British pre-decimal coinage. In particular, there never was an actual coin called a guinea minted in Australia, although there were sovereigns minted in Australia before federation.

Just to make sure, the coin called a sovereign is a gold coin valued at £1.

>52 Marissa_Doyle: Mrs. H has bought at least three horses here but she paid for them in ordinary pounds. None of them were thoroughbreds though.

I vaguely remember reading that when a solicitor sent a brief to a barrister’s chambers, the fee marked on it would be expressed in guineas, abbreviated “guas”.

>48 haydninvienna:
The denominations I grew up with were:
Halfpenny (pronounce ha'penny with the "a" like the "a" in hay)
Penny; A Copper
Thrupenny bit; Thrupence; Three pence
Sixpence; Tanner
Shilling; A bob
Two shillings; Florin
Half-crown; Two shillings and sixpence
Crown: Five shillings. Tended to be special issues and not in use in general circulation when I was a lad.
Ten shilling note
Pound: A quid
Five pound note: Fiver
Ten pound note: Tenner
Twenty pound note: I did not see too many of those

My parents remembered farthings being in general circulation. A farthing was a quarter of a penny. The relative sizes of the Penny and the Farthing gave rise to the name of the famous Penny-farthing bicycle.

Growing up in Ireland we had both Irish and British coins and notes. The irish and British currencies were used interchangeably in Northern Ireland and the Republic until 1979 when the currencies broke the link. That meant that as I was growing up we had British and Irish versions of the coins and notes we used. Irish money was not accepted in England or Wales, but Northern Ireland accepted both, and I think you would get away with the Irish money in Scotland before the break.

Banks in Northern Ireland, like banks in Scotland, issued their own sterling notes, so we had Bank of England, Bank of Ireland, Northern Bank and Ulster Bank notes. The notes issued by the Northern Ireland banks were not accepted in England or Wales, but Scotland, whose banks also issued their own sterling notes, were quite happy to accept Northern Ireland bank notes, and there was a reciprocity in Northern Ireland for Bank of Scotland notes.

I remember the night when the break between Sterling and Irish money came into effect. I was still living in Belfast and I was out at a pub in which most of the clientele would have considered themselves as Irish rather than British. It had been well advertised that the Irish money was not to be accepted in Northern Ireland on that day or after. A fairly young lad served the drinks at our table and we gave him money that included Irish coins. (In those days you could buy drinks with coins; now you need a mortgage to buy a pint) He looked petrified and said in a tremulous voice, "I can't accept Irish money." He had the look of a young fella who reckoned there was a good chance he would not live through the next few minutes.

We all laughed, gave him British money and gave him a reassuring tip to let him know we didn't blame him for this attack on our national identity. :-)

I should be able to pull out some old coins from that time and show the differences between the Irish and British coins. That may have to wait a few days.

>52 Marissa_Doyle:
You are correct. I was going to mention that horse trading was traditionally conducted in guineas. I cannot be sure, but it could still be happening in Britain.

>52 Marissa_Doyle:
Interesting you should mention a Toll-gate. There is a famous pedestrian bridge in Dublin near O'Connell Bridge. It crosses the Liffey and is called The Ha'penny Bridge. It is so name because when it was first constructed it was a toll-bridge and the toll was a ha'penny.

>52 Marissa_Doyle: and >55 haydninvienna: and >58 pgmcc: Again, you share expertise. I knew nothing about the practice of pricing of race horses in guineas, nor had I ever heard of that abbreviation,"guas" or Dublin's Ha'Penny tollbridge. I need to hang out here more...

Not that any of us NEED this one, because this group already cares deeply about books, but The Secret Life of Books is a delightful long-form essay on the role of the printed book in our thinking and in our lives. Author Timothy Moles is a professor at the University of Edinburgh and heads up an institute on the History of the Book. He shares some delightful historical anecdotes and tidbits in his discussion (St Cuthbert being buried with his book) and periodically offers “interludes” where he discusses the significance of books appearing in famous artworks (one on Caravaggio’s St. Jerome, another on Van Gogh’s Still Life with Bible, etc). Given my obsessions with the print product over the past two or three months, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

For the record, Moles is not against ebooks as a format; as a faculty member, he knows quite well that the rising population of readers are equally as comfortable with reading on phones as they are with print. But this essay articulates the ways in which the form and use of the printed codex has shaped modern engagement with text and learning. If I’m honest, I might guess that this essay was written to assuage any fears held by the public that our society is on the verge of killing off print. He doesn’t think that’s the case.

Match this one with one that pgmcc picked up a while back in one of his hauls – On Reading, Writing, and Living With Books from the London Library. That sets you up with a quick and lively reading project over a weekend, celebrating the very thing that you already love. Moles’ book is only about 200 pages (perhaps 60,000 words) while the London Library title is even shorter than that.

>50 jillmwo:
For my sins the last five years has seen me deeply involved in implementing a pricing strategy. We were assisted by a consultancy firm that is regarded as world leaders on the topic. I ended up reading several pricing books published by their gurus. It is a fascinating subject, but it does involve a lot of number crunching, analysis, research, evaluation, and some fairly complex computing to come up with prices that the market is going to accept and still give you a margin. It is a fascinating topic, and I consider it a good discipline to be in as I come to the end of the current stage of my career.

The complexity of currency exchange rates has been greatly simplified in Europe with the introduction of the Euro. It means we use the same money in all the Euro countries. When I go to France I do not have to get any money other the the money I have in my pocket and bank account. We do have to get foreign money if going to the UK, Sweden, or any of the other non-Euro countries, but that is much simpler than having to deal with twenty-seven different currencies for the twenty-seven Euro states.

I remember attending a talk by a company that was expert at treasury management. This talk took place before the introduction of the Euro. The experts described how they had borrowed millions of pounds for their company's capital projects, and by carrying out various currency transactions, taking loans out in different currencies in different countries, buying and selling currencies, and they ended up after all that with making money on the loan. Rather than paying interest they were receiving interest and making gains on shrewd currency transactions, hedge deals, and currency exchanges. They were making money on the difference between interest rates on the loans they were taking out and the exchange rates of the currencies they were buying and selling. Richard will probably know the company I am referring to, but they became so good at servicing the treasury management requirements of their own capital intensive business that their treasury management department ended up getting consultancy work across the World helping other organisations reduce their cost of borrowing money. The treasury management team worked as a new business in the group and the consulting fees they received also contributed to their parent company. It reminds me of the chapter in Catch 22* in which Major Major Major Major is buying eggs at 5c, selling them at 3c, and making a profit.

*Catch 22 is a book that I loved when I read it. Having revisited it a couple of times I am almost embarrassed to acknowledge that I have read it. I suspect it would not be well received today. I am positive I will not be letting people know when I am reading it again.

>60 jillmwo:
The Secret Life of Books is a work I believe I have heard mentioned before.

Have you come across Umberto Eco's This is Not the End of the Book: A conversation curated by Jean-Philippe De Tonnac? It makes the same argument that digital books are not the end of the article we love.

>51 haydninvienna: Thanks for the correction, but why?? :)

>63 Karlstar: Basically what Hugh said. The coin called a guinea was first minted in 1663. It was intended to be worth £1 (quite a lot of money at the time). At the time the weight of a guinea coin was apparently standardised as a fraction of a troy pound: one troy pound of 22-carat gold made 44½ guinea coins. The coin continued to be minted at that weight but, as Hugh said, the price of gold rose against the price of silver (which was what shillings were made from) and consequently the value of a guinea coin became more than 20 shillings. Apparently guinea coins were at one time treated as being worth 30 shillings. In 1717 the value of the guinea was officially standardised at 21 shillings, and remained so as long as guineas continued to be minted (the production of guinea coins ended after the union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 and the guinea was replaced by the sovereign as the £1 coin).

In Oz, the first decimal coinage included a 50-cent piece that contained a significant amount of silver. The price of silver rose and the value of the original 50-cent piece quickly became more than 50 cents, and the coin was replaced by the 12-sided base metal one that we now know and love.

ETA: In relation to horse-trading: Mrs H is not aware of horses being priced in guineas at present. I remember race purses being set in guineas too, and there were (and still are) races called the So-and-so guineas. Do a Google search for "horse racing guineas" and you get quite a few hits.

EATA Apparently the more pricey and desirable horseflesh is still being priced in guineas.

>56 pgmcc: We had farthings until decimalisation, and no £20 note. There was, however, a very rare £100 note apparently almost exclusively used in interbank transfers. I have only ever seen one, and that is in a museum.

ETA: Our florin and halfcrown both had the same design, permitting the scam against the illiterate mentioned in #46. The Rhodesians designed their pre-decimal coins better, with different designs on these denominations.

>65 hfglen: No farthings or half-crowns in Oz. When decimal currency came in in 1966, A£1 became A$2 (unlike the British system where £1stg was 240 old pence and became 100 new pence). The new coins for 5c, 10c and 20c (equivalent respectively to sixpence, a shilling and two shillings in literally the old money) were the same size (but different designs and made in cupro-nickel rather than silver alloy) as the coins they replaced and either could be used for the appropriate sum of money.

Apparently the highest-value Australian pound banknote was also £10. I was just now browsing Wikipedia for the notes that I could actually remember seeing, and I don't remember the £10 note.

One hears of very high value banknotes used in interbank transfers. In his autobiography Slide Rule, Neville Shute tells the story of a person who was buying an aeroplane from his employers at the time, and paying for it with six one-thousand-pound Bank of England notes. Shute and his colleagues had never seen one and neither had the cashier at the firm's bank, but the notes proved to be perfectly good.

See what you unwittingly started back in #41, Jill?

In relatively recent years there have been calls for the €500 note to be retired as they tend to be favoured by crooks moving large sums of cash across international borders. Without prejudice I confess to having had a €500 note in my possession. You will, I hope, forgive me for not going into the circumstances of my having such a large denomination banknote.

Gentlemen (>67 pgmcc: >66 haydninvienna: >65 hfglen: and >63 Karlstar:) haydninvienna suggests I might wish I'd never asked my initial question in #41. To which I reply, it depends on whether you see me as Madame Recamier or as Jezebel (Bette Davis in the William Wyler film). If I am a talented hostess at a salon in the Napoleonic Age, like Madame Racamier, then I would simply be pleased that the intelligentsia were embarking on such an elevated discussion and thereby enjoying themselves. The lot of you would then embark on re-ordering society and I could simply sit here in some decorative form and gently guide the discussion in ways that I prefer.

On the other hand, if you saw me as being more the scheming, heartless female of Jezebel, you would know that I would say something more on the order of "Why, Aunt Belle, I wouldn't dream of forbidding a topic to my guests..." with the intent of manipulating two or more of you into drawing pistols at 20 paces, come sunrise. Will a discussion of the British pound accomplish that?

But yes, I do wonder why pgmcc is walking about with such large denominations in his wallet. Perhaps it is because he is looking ahead to my birthday and will be shipping me some large crate of books that he has uncovered in his excellent Irish second-hand bookshops...(It's possible that the books' spines might also contain microfiche with particularly *interesting* confidential data. One never knows with him...)

>64 haydninvienna: Thanks! With that comment, I will withdraw from the topic as the lady wishes. :)

>69 Karlstar: Please! No need to withdraw. @claimairy drew my attention to a new vocabulary word she'd encountered. "Snye" is the word and it means a side channel, one which will eventually re-join the main stream. I think we're just dealing with an instance of snye and sooner or later the conversation will circle back round to whatever "mainstream" we can claim here in the Pub. :>)

>70 jillmwo: Yes, our conversations branch off and (sometimes) rejoin the flow. I will dive in on the Gandalf issue soon. My kids are coming for the weekend and really can't concentrate for long on anything. I'm in "Beaker" mode.

>68 jillmwo: Never seen the film, but you would undoubtedly be the talented, gracious hostess in a salon. Whether the rest of us are about to restructure society is a separate question. By “unwittingly started” I meant only that a discussion in the Pub often goes to unexpected places—which is indeed “snye”, a word I’ve never encountered before (and apparently neither has Safari’s spell checker).

>72 haydninvienna:
Apparently it requires a Canadian spell checker.

>72 haydninvienna: Just as a quick clarification, the movie Jezebel has Bette Davis playing a selfish Southern Belle who plays off men one against another for her own purposes and vanity. The story takes place in New Orleans during a yellow fever epidemic just prior to the Civil War. Working under a restrictive studio contract at the time, Davis had been denied the opportunity to play Scarlett O'Hara in the movie Gone With the Wind and this role in Jezebel was supposed to make up for that blow to her career. The movie is problematic in any number of ways, but I've always enjoyed it. Her co-star was Henry Fonda (playing Preston) who contracts yellow fever during the course of the movie and who must be sent to Lazaret Island (a former leper colony) as part of the quarantine process intended to protect local citizens. In an attempt to redeem herself in society's eyes, Bette Davis' character rides in the wagon with him in a final shot of the movie but we never know if either of them survive. (Theoretically, she's more qualified to operate in that environment because she knows the way of engaging with local workers, knowing the Creole word for "fever powder" etc. Preston's wife, newly arrived from Boston, wouldn't have the same depth of knowledge.) It's all very dramatic in that Hollywood Golden Age kind of way.

>74 jillmwo: Thank you for the clarification! My ignorance of movies is pretty well total.

>70 jillmwo: excellent use of the word-of-the-day!

I am sure you are having a GD-free day as you will be having a wonderful birthday celebration. Though you may not see it on the day, I am wishing you a HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and raising glass in honour of your special day.

By the way, I fulfilled my plan of picking up In Praise of Good Bookstores in my favourite independent bookshop, "Books Upstairs". The owner was pleased. He loved the book.

And just in time (by my clock at least): happy birthday! (I have to admit I forget birthdays, especially my own.)

Just like Richard, my forgettery is working overtime. Belated Happy Birthday!

Just looked at the GD birthdays wiki. Rather saddening how many familiar names there are that we never hear from now.

>77 pgmcc: >78 haydninvienna: >79 hfglen: Thank you for the birthday wishes. FWIW, Birthday brownies are being made and eaten today (accompanied by vanilla ice cream) so no worries with regard to when such wishes arrive. I think these celebrations should be fluid. Heck, last night's Zoom session featured friends who had each made their wallpaper something that read "Happy Birthday, Jill"; I joked that if anyone had told seven-year-old-me about how I'd be enjoying my birthday party in 2023, I truly would have believed we'd achieved living in the world of the television series, The Jetsons! where people call you on the television and they can see you, whether or not you're dressed for the day.

Age does sometimes smack one upside the head unexpectedly. I think I learned of the book Nerd: Adventures in Fandom From the Universe to the Multiverse from tardis on her thread last year. I got the book as a Christmas gift and was browsing it this weekend. The most striking thing I have taken away thus far from this memoir is how much the concept of fandom has shifted from where it was back in the 80's. (As a side note, my husband was one of the early attendees and workers at the Star Trek conventions held in NYC back in the 70's. He and I met at a science fiction convention where I had gone thinking that it would be people standing around and talking about Tolkien in academic terms.) At any rate, by the time he and I were married, I was a tad more familiar with the spectrum of fandoms encompassing Doctor Who, Star Wars and other pop culture offerings.

At any rate with regard to Nerd, I had expected something different. I hadn't realized this was written by a woman who is employed by the New York Times as a critic-at-large, covering comic books, fandom, television, movies, etc. Based on what she reveals of her childhood and the things that formed her fannish interests, it is clear that I'm old enough to be her mother. The fandom I knew back in the days of Betamax video players and xeroxed fanzines is very different from the world of fandom that she's currently covering. So what's proving most interesting about this book is getting a handle on the gap. She knows fandom as fostered by the Marvel Comic Universe. I kind of suspect her idea of Star Trek isn't the sort of Star Trek nerdiness in which my husband and I indulged.

As an example, I saw the other day that one can still get hold of Barbara Hambly's Star Trek novel Ishmael, which is a cross-over universe novel combining characters from both the original Star Trek and the much-loved '70's cheesy television series, Here Come the Brides. Mark Lenard, the actor who played Sarek the Vulcan in ST:TOS also played the villain, Aaron Stempel, in Here Come the Brides. While I haven't read the book in at least 30 years, I remember being impressed that Hambly had done such a good job with it. At the same time, I question how much of the humor to be found in that cross-universe premise is actually intelligible to the younger reader who springs for a Kindle edition of $2.99 but who has never heard of the bet made by the Bolt Brothers ( or listened to the theme song sung by Bobby Sherman the way I did as a high school sophomore).

Nerd is very intelligently written and I'm getting a kick out of it. It's just that Maya Phillips and I have engaged with different versions of fandom's various social tribes.

I am glad you had such a good birthday. Here are more wishes for happiness in the year ahead.

>80 haydninvienna: It is distressing. We had a few people come back during Covid, only to disappear again. :o(

>82 clamairy: Birthday brownies and ice cream are a nice way to celebrate! I hope your celebration was equally as enjoyable.

>83 jillmwo: Happy birthday! We had birthday brownies in this household as well!

>84 MrsLee: Those are really the best, aren't they?

Happy belated birthday to you!

Happy belated birthday! I'm glad you had a good time celebrating.

Quick Rundown on Fast Reads (Lightweight stuff from across the past 12 weeks or so)

Murder After Christmas - Fun mystery, decidedly written as farce, lots of British humor
The Case of the Canterfell Codicil- Not quite as funny as it believes itself to be, but YMMV. I’d be willing to try a second one in the series.
Frederica - Again, a certain amount of humor was what I was seeking as bedtime reading. This one was just right and author Georgette Heyer never irritated me with her approach on it. Reflecting back on it, some of the events might have been a tad on the implausible side. But only a tad!
Detective Stories (Everyman’s Library) - Books that are collections of short stories should be required to come with an introduction or foreword that explains the rationale behind the selection of materials included by the editor or publisher. Why did the volume only include 3 female authors in a group of 16 stories? Why would you feel it imperative to include the old and pervasively available tale of The Purloined Letter? For that matter, why the old, tired Agatha Christie story, The Blue Geranium?

>86 Karlstar: and >87 Sakerfalcon: Thank you!

>88 jillmwo: I think Frederica is one of Heyer's best books.

>89 Sakerfalcon: I thoroughly enjoyed it -- more than some of her earlier titles. I was just checking the copyright date. Apparently Frederica is one of her later ones (1965). The pace of events was nicely handled and the characters were all likable. (Well, Charis is a bit of a nitwit.)

Okay, somebody has lost their freakin' marbles. I went to go see who'd been nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America (https://crimereads.com/edgar-awards-2023/). Under Best Critical/Biographical I see we have the Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie as well as Lucy Worsley's biography of Christie and Martin Edwards' The Life of Crime along with two other titles. Now I have Worsley's biography on the TBR pile and just last week, I had been reflecting on whether I would gain any new information from Edwards' book, but I was unfamiliar with the Bloombury Handbook. So I went to look it up (assuming that I would be able to grab it from Amazon). But at THESE PRICES? Geez Louise! Bloomsbury Academic wants $168 for the Hardcover and $157 for the Kindle edition. The Worsley biography and the Edwards book are both easily obtainable for prices in the twenties. How can a book priced so far out of the average buyer's budget hope to compete for the popular vote from MWA? Now I am ticked off that Bloomsbury Academic is pricing it at that level because that's just obscene. I'm also ticked off that these titles are all lumped into the same damn category because these things are not alike -- not in terms of subject matter, potential audience OR pricing. A biography does one thing. Bloomsbury Handbooks do another. *murfle* I am a reader who requires different resources for different things. I can buy the Handbook that assumes I'm a serious student of Christie's work or I can buy the so-called "trade" publications that assume I'm a more casual reader. But not having won the winning ticket from recent MegaMillions lottery for 1 billion dollars, it's unlikely that my purchasing power will accommodate both. *greater murfling ensues*

I am consigning professional associations, academic publishers and Amazon to a particular circle of Dante's imagined underworld. Stoke those fires and get those flames higher. Light a couple of torches and grab the nearest pitchfork. I am going to drop kick someone if we don't come to something more reasonable in terms of business models.

>91 jillmwo: wow, that's crazy, especially the ebook price. I've noticed some very high ebook prices lately, though.

There were a couple of ebooks by authors I like out this summer, originally priced around $17. I got one from kobo on points, and went back a few days later to perhaps get another, and the price had risen to over $30. And I had thought that $17 was too much for an ebook!

I'm not sure what their reasoning is. Hardcovers, I can see going for a higher price, with printing, shipping, and other costs. I have a hard time seeing why I should be paying more for an ebook than I would for a paperback. Maybe I'm just cheap.

>01 I am murfling alongside you.

>91 jillmwo: Justifiable murfings.

>91 jillmwo: In the tradition of Dante, are flames the proper punishment? Perhaps being forced to read bad drafts of novels in perpetuity? Maybe too obvious. Drowned in ink repeatedly? Might be too unimaginative.

>95 Karlstar: perhaps requiring the guilty parties to listen for endless HOURS to bad machine-generated narration of audio books?

>96 jillmwo: Heheh... Monotone mispronunciations.

With regard to my murflings earlier (see #91 above), I saw this article on the BookRiot site today: https://bookriot.com/when-did-ya-paperback-books-become-15-99/

It almost seems as if *no one* is happy with pricing practices...

>96 jillmwo: >97 clamairy: Fitting!

>98 jillmwo: Good, glad to see someone else is complaining about this.

>98 jillmwo: Ugh. I've noticed Kindle prices have crept up as well. I understand it, but I'm borrowing OverDrive titles more than ever now.

On one of those personal notes, I am now allowed to announce that my second son has gotten engaged. So like MrsLee, I need to gear up for a wedding at some point. (We have no details -- just the announcement that they're going to be getting married, that it will be a small ceremony with a BIG party to follow and that they don't have a date in mind just yet.)

>101 jillmwo: Let me be the first Pub denizen to congratulate the happy couple.

>101 jillmwo:
Wonderful news. I hope they are very happy in their adventures together.

>101 jillmwo: Oh! Congratulations to all of you!

>101 jillmwo: Congratulations!

>101 jillmwo: Lovely! Something joyful to look forward to, congratulations!

>101 jillmwo: congratulations! Happy news!

>101 jillmwo: Congratulations to you and the happy couple.

>101 jillmwo: Much happiness to all concerned!

Thank you all for the kind congratulations. We're really quite pleased. (Quick Question: if I've got both sons married off or nearly so; does this mean I can go off duty?)

On a different note, here are the nominations for this year's Agatha Awards at Malice Domestic.
https://mailchi.mp/d5da912c209e/announcing-the-agatha-award-nominees-8852269

(Not sure if that link will work for everyone, but give it a whirl.)

>110 jillmwo: You are so funny!! Of course you can't!

I spent my free time yesterday (and part of today) thinking about an old Agatha Christie novel, The Mystery of the Blue Train. Now, from a critical standpoint, this one gets ignored for the most part. It was written during a difficult emotional period in Christie’s life and she always expressed a strong distaste for it. She wrote it because she had to. She was under contract to a publisher to deliver a manuscript of 50,000 words and she scrupulously tracked how many words per day she’d managed in her diary for that period. (I think it was her diary. I can’t recall for sure.) At any rate, I was going through the first 10-11 chapters yesterday, trying to work out what she had done, the characterization provided, what clues/red herrings were provided to the reader and how, etc.

For the record, I think Christie bled all over the pages in this book and that’s why she didn’t like it at all. I also think many of the contemporary male critics are absolutely blind to the story as presented by the words on the page. How could they not pick up on the unsatisfactory marriages and mismatched pairs? You’ve got the woman who marries for a title and an English estate, the woman who is on her fourth husband (seriously, a cute but dim boy-toy), the woman who throughout accumulates wealth by being some man’s mistress, and the woman who is an accessory to the murder but whose professional acting talent is never really part of pulling the murder off. The two male love interests in the book are each singularly lacking in emotional maturity and the male parent that we see is an industrialist who expresses love solely through pouring valuable jewelry on his daughter. I’m by no means an expert on Agatha Christie, but I don’t see how serious readers miss all of this.

Studying the book solely with regard to any literary value as a mystery, I’d agree with the critics that it has its flaws. There aren’t enough potential suspects put forward, and there is the annoyance of a key point with regard to victim identification being mentioned in passing and then ignored. But this is one that is really less about the mystery and more about Christie drawing attention to unsatisfactory relationships between men and women, the manipulation of human emotion and the disadvantage that the innocent suffer from as a result.

(NOTE: The reason for me revisiting this particular Christie title was because I recently came into possession of a Folio Society set of two titles (one Poirot, one Marple) and, in order to justify the cost of the set, I need to make the reading experience last at least two weeks. This meant reading The Mystery of the Blue Train slowly and thoroughly and being attentive to details. I don't know what will happen when I begin to read The 4:50 from Paddington.)

(SECOND NOTE: Just to clarify, the emotional turmoil that Christie was working her way through as she wrote The Mystery of the Blue Train was the death of her mother and her husband seeking a divorce from her -- after cheating on her with their daughter's nurse/governess.)

It may be time to seriously re-organize the shelves. I lost a good fifteen minutes today trying to remember where a certain book on the woman suffrage movement might be sitting. Was it on a shelf in the living room? Was it in the box of books neatly labelled "History Research"? Had it (horrors) been mistakenly swept off in one of the smaller purges in recent weeks?

Of course, I did ultimately locate it (sitting on the "wrong" shelf because there'd been a gap there going to waste) but sadly, it didn't have the information I WANTED. That's just wrong. When you spend 15 minutes looking for a *specific* book, it ought always to -- by some law of the universe -- contain the precise information you need.

>112 jillmwo: Completely tangential to your discussion--I assume Christie literally counted her words at the end of each writing day. How unspeakably tedious!

>114 Marissa_Doyle: Actually, her reported view was that this was when she knew she had become a professional writer, not writing because she was inspired at all, but because she was obligated to deliver. But yes, undoubtedly she'd have found it tedious. (Back in the '20's, there would have been no word count tool handily available in one's word processing app...)

Things I Learned by Reading and/or From Hanging Out This Week on LT

This Week’s New Word

Sautoir - a necklace or chain sufficiently long to be wound twice or more times around the neck (like the pearl beads worn by flappers back in the Jazz Age). It might also have a tassel or pendant of some sort dangling from it. See The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire.

Discussion-worthy Quote Encountered

“More recently, positive psychologists in their empirical research have identified the “High Six” virtues (courage, justice, humanity, temperance, transcendence, and wisdom) that exist in all cultures throughout the world and over time…virtues like honesty and compassion are the elements without which no society can function”. See The Virtues: A Very Short Introduction

Books Read or Revisited (Leisure Reading)

Spent time re-reading and thinking about The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie. Interesting because reading focused on what clues were revealed at which points in the story, the thematic sub-text, and characterization (or lack thereof). It’s only a vaguely-formed opinion, but I suspect Christie’s early writing suffers most in the area of dialogue.

New information Learned from Freelance-Work-Related Reading

Pearls were at one time perceived as being symbolic of power. See Jewels: A Secret History Also of interest was the discussion of pearl-harvesters in Scotland. Sadly, that activity began to decline in the second half of the 20th century and has not survived into this century.

What I learned from others here in the Pub over the past few days.

From haydninvienna: Walpole’s analysis of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale tied it to Henry VIII and his children.

From clamairy: The meaning of the the phrase “bog-roll” For bonus points, she also gifted us with access to the NYTimes opinion piece regarding a revival of bookstores

From bookmarque: Video of hummingbirds

From hfglen: The history behind the name of the Royal Natal Yacht Club. The word “natal” referred to Vasco da Gama anchoring in Durban Bay on Christmas day in 1498.

>116 jillmwo: I scored twice... so I only feel partly embarrassed about the crassness of half of my contribution. :D

>116 jillmwo:
And the most important of these is "bog-roll".

>116 jillmwo: I might possibly have taken a hit re The Virtues … A fair return, I think, for the bit of information about Walpole. Also, thank you for not mentioning the crassness of my contribution to the debate that >117 clamairy: mentions.

>116 jillmwo: On a somewhat "cleaner" note, I understand that there was a time before jewellers learned how to cut diamonds, that pearls were the most valuable and sought-after of all gems.

>116 jillmwo: A nice summary of things here on LT, thank you.

>121 Karlstar: Yes, we have here a real-life mixture of the crass and the sublime, don't we? ;>)

>117 clamairy: and >118 pgmcc: I didn't really want to further explore the associated discussion involving the three seashells. It's odd those times that the ladylike training my mother sought to instill in me will actually kick in.

>119 haydninvienna: That is an interesting quote to chew on from The Virtues, isn’t it? I haven’t tracked down the discussion it springs from. I was (very simplistically) thinking about it in the context of characterization in reading murder mysteries as well as literary classics. Those half-dozen named Virtues (courage, justice, humanity, temperance, transcendence, and wisdom) have the benefit of serving as umbrella-terms in many ways, but I wonder just how the classification works on a practical level. Speaking off the cuff to some extent, I’m not sure where an old-fashioned virtue – that of prudence – would fit. Neither do I know where to put the concept of duty. Prudence might fit under temperance or wisdom, I suppose. But where might one classify the virtue of doing one’s duty, behaving responsibly? Under humanity?

>120 hfglen: I haven’t got deeply enough into either of the two titles having to do with jewelry and gemstones. They were both kind of digressions in reading material – Kindle offered me some credits and the prices for these were then reasonable. But they’re quite fun in thinking about assessing value and beauty. The Cartier book is an absolute eye-opener. Ordinary people may walk in and out of Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue but Cartier's is in a whole different category. (Really, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it...)

>122 jillmwo: The 6 virtues they mention kind of map to the 4 cardinal virtues, but doing one’s duty is kind of both fortitude and temperance. I found this in the Wikipedia article on the cardinal virtues:

Jesuit scholars Daniel J. Harrington and James F. Keenan, in their Paul and Virtue Ethics (2010), argue for seven "new virtues" to replace the classical cardinal virtues in complementing the three theological virtues, mirroring the seven earlier proposed in Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology (1972): "be humble, be hospitable, be merciful, be faithful, reconcile, be vigilant, and be reliable".

Faithful and reliable looks to me like doing one’s duty.

A while since I’ve read A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, but I recall that one of the competing virtues that takes Maskull over is Duty. “The lands through which the characters travel represent philosophical systems or states of mind as the main character, Maskull, searches for the meaning of life.”

>122 jillmwo: "I’m not sure where an old-fashioned virtue – that of prudence – would fit. Neither do I know where to put the concept of duty. Prudence might fit under temperance or wisdom, I suppose. But where might one classify the virtue of doing one’s duty, behaving responsibly? Under humanity?"

I would lean toward putting prudence under wisdom. Humanity seems like an appropriate place for duty.

>120 hfglen: As it happens, with a little more reading and Googling, I can confirm your understanding that pearls were indeed the most highly prized. The introduction of cultured pearly by Mikimoto in the early decades of the 20th century ended that perception.

>123 haydninvienna: and >124 Karlstar: I am still sorting through a lot of this and I'm lousy at discussing philosophy in any formal sense. Any discussion of virtue (or, for that matter, vice) means that you're dealing with imprecise vocabulary and definitions -- with both connotative as well as denotative meaning. But I mentioned in passing last year that I had read a commentary on Sense and Sensibility where the academic focused on what Austen was saying about vice. I'd been caught off-guard because I never really thought about the word, vice, it's meaning, and how it applied to the various characters in that particular book. I don't suppose I'd thought very thoroughly about the concept of virtue either.

>125 jillmwo: Same here, I just don't have enough training to discuss philosophy at anything but a superficial level.

Not really being a glitz-style fashionista, it seems highly unlikely to me that I would ever have picked up The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire in a bookstore. But The Mystery of the Blue Train opens with what appears to be a shady deal to purchase gems from the Romanov family crown jewels and one of my internal questions as I was reading was whether or not that was simply an overly-dramatic opening. Surely that wasn’t how it would normally have been handled? But then I read this quote from The Cartiers.:

Quote: When Yusupov had met with Pierre in 1922 to discuss the sale of some of his jewels in New York, one of the most significant had been the Polar Star. Over the following months and years, Cartier had quietly shown it to a few select clients in New York, Paris, and London but when no offers had materialized, it was deposited with a pawnbroker. The use of pawn brokers was standard practice for clients waiting for their jewels to be sold. (Cartier might advance some of the money but would rarely take the risk of buying very expensive pieces outright in case no buyer could be found in the short-term and they were left exposed to the fluctuating markets and exchange rates.)

The Cartiers may have been written through the lens of a rose-colored glass of a family member – as well as published in celebration of their 200th anniversary as a business – but the book reveals some fascinating slices of social history. We’d been chatting about pearl necklaces above and there’s another story about how the Cartiers managed to snag their high-end location in New York City.

At a upper-class dinner one evening at the turn of the century, society lady Maisie Plant was seated next to Pierre Cartier. The two were chatting about this fabulous two strand, perfectly matched pearl necklace, appraised at a worth of approximately one million dollars. Despite being married to a wealthy industrialist, Maisie pouted that she couldn’t afford the price of that necklace. Aware that the Plants were looking at moving further up town away from the commercial area growing there on Fifth Avenue and given that Cartier was seeking a new store location, Pierre said he’d take the Plant mansion house at 52nd and 5th in exchange for the necklace. Part of the contract that the owner would not change the building exterior in any way. Soon after the deal went through, Mikimoto created the means by which pearls could be produced more rapidly and the value of that pearl necklace coveted by Maisie Plant lost much of its value. The Cartier family was more fortunate, due to the increasing long-term value of the mansion, location, and the land itself.

I had always thought that story was questionable, but apparently it is not. The author documented it through family letters at the time. She also shares interesting tales of how the Cartiers sourced their precious stones through relationships in India, Ceylon and Burma.

Sometimes people ask the question here in the pub “Who would you recommend read this book?”. My answer in this instance is those with an interest in the social history of life roughly a century ago. Who knew that pawn-brokers were once considered sufficiently reliable to be trusted with the actual family jewels of a wealthy elite? Heck, I always thought the baubles got entrusted to the vault of the family bankers. Again, the books is a touch adulatory in its presentation of the family but it's a lot of fun to read. Chatty rather than densely academic!

Clarification: i knew that people dealt with pawnbrokers when pressed for cash, but I'd always associated the activity with the Victorians rather than with later wealthy industrialist elites.

>123 haydninvienna: and >124 Karlstar: The article documenting the study that came up with those six qualities is here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1037/1089-2680.9.3.203?journalCode=rgpa (Sits behind a paywall, but at least you can see the actual abstract of the 2005 paper.)

Did you realize that Agatha Christie and J.R.R. Tolkien were contemporaries? He was two years younger than she, but they were both born in the early 1890's. A random passing thought for me was that they may well have shared a similar mindset about gemstones and their symbolic value. Remember what he wrote in The Silmarillion about the Silmarils?

Yet that crystal was to the Silmarils but as is the body to the children of Iluvatar; the house of its inner fire that is within it and yet in all parts of it and is its life and the inner fire of the Silmarils Feanor made of the Blended light of the Trees of Valinor which lives in them, yet though the Trees have long withered and shine no more. Therefore even in the Darkness of the deepest treasury the Silmarils of their own radiance shown like to stars of Varda and yet as were they indeed living things they rejoiced in light and received it and gave it back in hues more marvelous than before.

There was a line in one of the closing chapters of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis that mentions the awe felt by women in the presence of gemstones in things like tiaras and crowns. This only occurs to me because Cartier at one point -- to deflect attention to a competitor opening up across the way from the Bond Street store -- went to all of his aristocratic ladies to beg permission to borrow their tiaras for inclusion in an exhibit in his store. The strategy was apparently successful.

As Aaron Sorkin put it in one of the West Wing episodes when CJ Cregg was spouting trivia about "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", "It's all part of the service here at Claudia Jean's House of Useless Knowledge"... There you go!

Note: Edited to fix lots of punctuation concerns

>128 jillmwo: Thanks!

>129 jillmwo: I hadn't thought about them as contemporaries, that's an interesting thing to consider.

Are you really saying you just want a Silmaril?

Yup. Preferably, in a tiara.

>131 jillmwo: I want a sapphire like the one in that crown Elizabeth wore occasionally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Sapphire

It's not the little one at the top. It's the doorknob on the front.

I don't really want it set in a tiara. I think it would cause headaches. Perhaps around my neck?

Also, if we're making requests, I think I want a Palantir.

>132 clamairy: It is true that tiaras have the reputation of being uncomfortable. My biggest issue is that I have always had very fine hair -- even bobbie pins slide out. As a result, I have tended over the course of a lifetime to rely on brooches. But I've always craved the opportunity to wear a tiara. But certainly in your case, s nice necklace would do. Perhaps in a setting like this: https://www.luismiguelhoward.com/blog/2019/9/30/ker8ar3b7li34rs9rjlc2pvchzc41a ???

As an additional side note, in cleaning things out this past week, I came across a delightful pair of neon-orange rhinestone dangle earrings that I know I purchased back in the 80's. I had thought them long-gone so I was kind of chuffed to find them again. Isn't it time for neon-orange to come back as a fashion color?

>129 jillmwo: There was a line in one of the closing chapters of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis: It is in the last chapter, on the night when the vehicle from Perelandra is due to convey Ransom back there. The ladies of St Anne’s are dressing for the event:

But Mother Dimble was already setting it on her* head. That reverence (it need have nothing to do with money value) which nearly all women feel for jewellery hushed three of them for a moment. There were, perhaps, no such diamonds in England. The splendour was fabulous, preposterous.

“What are you all staring at?” asked Camilla, who had seen but one flash as the crown was raised in Mrs. Dimble’s hands and did not know that she stood “like starlight, in the spoils of provinces.”

“Are they real?” said Ivy.

“Where did they come from, Mother Dimble?” asked Jane.

“Treasure of Logres, dears, treasure of Logres,” said Mrs. Dimble. “Perhaps from beyond the Moon or before the flood. Now, Jane.”

* Camilla’s head.
The near-quotation is from Volpone, by Ben Jonson:

From Ben Jonson’s play Volpone, or The Foxe (1606), III.7, “Why droops my Celia?”, where Volpone invites his beloved to enjoy all the riches he has to offer her:

...See, behold,
What thou art Queene of; not in expectation,
As I feede others: but possess’d, and crown’d.
See, here, a rope of pearle; and each, more orient
Then that the brave Aegiptian Queene carrous’d:
Dissolve, and drinke them. See, a Carbuncle,
May put out both the eyes of our St Marke;
A Diamant, would have bought Lollia Paulina,
When she came in, like star-light, hid with jewells,
That were the spoyles of Provinces.

From that little exercise I learned that there is a website that annotates That Hideous Strength (http://lewisiana.nl/thsquotes/); that I can nest one blockquote inside another; and that it’s probably time I read That Hideous Strength again. Also, that Google sometimes produces something useful.

ETA I like to think that I try to do my bit for the GD House of Useless Knowledge.

>134 haydninvienna: That is exactly the quote I was thinking of!! I was just too lazy to go upstairs to unearth my print copy and track it down. (Honestly, I wouldn't have thought it would be anywhere Google could find it!!)

>135 jillmwo: Useful to know that most of C S Lewis’s books are available on line at Faded Page Canada (https://www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Lewis,%20C.%20S.%20(Clive%20Staples) . I spotted that the bit about stars was a quotation but didn’t recognise it. A quick google found it even though Lewis quoted it slightly inaccurately. Ironically, if he had got it exactly right, it would have been even more apt.

ETA unfortunately that link doesn’t quite work, but it will get you to the Faded Page website—I hope that’s close enough.

>133 jillmwo: Oh, I'm glad you found them. Just wear them! You will become an "influencer!" (I really don't like that term.)

Yeah, that setting is not my style. I wouldn't want all those little diamonds to detract from the giant golf ball sized sapphire. LOL

Something more like this, I think:

Gifted article from the Washington Post, What Readers Hate Most in Books -- From Dreams to Italics.
https://wapo.st/3IducUD

>134 haydninvienna:
I attended a university drama society opening night of Volpone when I was at college. The play itself was funny enough. However, everyone in the cast, except for one actor, made a mistake, mostly in their lines, but some with stumbles or other errors.

The one person who was perfect was a student called Rosemary-Jane. In real life she was like Penelope Keith's character in To The Manor Born. Her performance was perfect. Yes, of course she was playing the part of Lady Politic Would-be.

There were numerous problems with the performance; some of the scene changes were too difficult and caused delay; a platform collapsed causing the judge to fall down as he was pompously mount his judicial bench; etc... These all contributed to the audience's enjoyment of the play, so when the jester came out at the end of the play to offer everyone a refund the audience gave a standing ovation and refused to take the refund. It was a brilliant night.

Why, you might ask, was a Geology student attending a play? He was dating an English Literature student at the time.

>138 jillmwo: Typos, grammar errors and really poorly formed sentences (like the kind I write here far too often) are things that really bother me in books.

While weeding shelves:

Spouse: Are you aware that you have two different Folio editions of the complete Miss Marple short stories?

Jill: Um, yes. I haven’t decided yet which to keep. I need to look at who wrote the Foreword. (mumbles under her breath, because one is prettier than the other?!)

Spouse: Why do you have both a complete matched set of Folio editions of Trollope’s Barsetshire novels but also two volumes from the series in an Everyman’s Library edition?

Jill: Because different experts wrote the intros and because I am trying to assess which format takes less space on the shelf.
(mumbles under her breath, because it’s easier to hold the Everyman’s Library edition in my hand when reading but the Folio edition looks quite handsome when displayed.)

Spouse: You have two copies of The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett. Can one of them go?

Jill: No, because one of them is the original text that I got back in the '90's in the used book store in Vancouver and the other is the edited version from Persephone Press where they take out the scene comparing the British with the Americans.

Spouse: The mass market paperbacks will fit quite nicely in this small shelf that I assembled for you. Did you remember we had it?

Jill: I’m trying to weed out the mass market paperbacks. Will the trade paperbacks fit? (mumbles under her breath You swore so much at it as you were putting it together that there’s NO WAY I could forget we had it.)

Spouse: Are there any more duplicate copies of stuff that I can put out into the car to take to Goodwill yet?
Jill: No.

Please note that the man has been inordinately tolerant of the number of books that have come into this house over the course of 40-some-odd years. I am grateful for his tolerance, but I also don't think he quite realizes all the various hiding places used as I've been squirreling things away. I am hopeful he's not entirely cognizant of how many sets of Jane Austen there are (matched sets as well as disparate editions picked up at different times for different reasons...) He has suggested (in a mild sort of way) that we lack sufficient shelf space.

>141 jillmwo: I am chortling...

>141 jillmwo:
He is thinking the right way. More bookshelves rather than fewer books.

>141 jillmwo: That very much reminds me of my conversations with myself when I attempt to weed books. My husband has better sense than to get involved, other than that he gets to pick which Little Free Library they go to. :D

>141 jillmwo: Oh, but the passages like that in The Shuttle are part of its charm...

>141 jillmwo: Part of the instructions for assembling furniture, in very small print says: "After you've put part C in backwards have to dissemble and go back to step 2. ". Dissemble is a clever misprint for both disassemble and swear, which can be blamed on the not-quite-English those instructions are usually printed in.

There had been a dreary, cold rain falling all morning. A brief domestic squabble had further soured the couple's shared meal at noon. Left to herself, she reached for her newest book acquisition, a scholarly discussion of poisons.

Okay, fact or fiction? Is that an account of my day thus far? Or is it the opening paragraph of a tantalizing murder mystery? (If the latter, do you want to know more?) So many directions available for expansion of the story...

>147 jillmwo: Um, going to go with the opening paragraph of a murder mystery... I hope.

>148 Karlstar: Only if it isn't a true crime retelling...

>149 Marissa_Doyle: Anyone else a fan of the TV show Only Murders in the Building?

>150 Karlstar: Me!!! And I haven't started the second season yet. I have been saving it.

>147 jillmwo: Fiction, I hope!!! LOL

>150 Karlstar: We binged both seasons last month and really enjoyed it. Can't wait for season 3!

>147 jillmwo: Why not both? ;)

Okay, I can't remember whose thread the idea sprang from at the moment, but I am up for a re-read of The Dispossessed. In fact, I pulled my copy off the shelf (and man, those bookshelves REALLY need dusting) and, opening it, found a sheet from a memo pad tucked inside with the following quote:

Privacy was not functional...for those who accepted the privilege and obligation of human solidarity, privacy was a value only where it served a function.

Now I neglected to note any date associated with that sheet of paper (and the hotel name isn't really helping me at all) so I can't say now what might have been on my mind back then or why I felt that quote was important in my understanding of or reaction to this particular book. This suggests to me that revisiting the text could be revealing. A reread might also fit into some of the Pub discussions regarding the reading the classics in 2023.

It's not a long book -- just 13 chapters. How long do we think it'll take people to read? I'll start the thread if need be. (Assuming any of the rest of you are engaging to come along...)

>153 jillmwo: It was Karlstar's thread. https://www.librarything.com/topic/347137# I was originally planning to join him in a reread of The Left Hand of Darkness. But I realized I have never read The Dispossessed, and I think I'd rather read something I've never read rather than doing a reread.

I have 1½ books to finish before I can start.

And I am intrigued by that quotation.

>147 jillmwo: For what it's worth? That sounds like a perfectly factual account of a day such as is described. As I told my husband once, when he asked why I read so many murder mysteries, "Ideas." ;)

>147 jillmwo: It's a bit of a fast start for a novel, but that seems to be the style for mysteries these days. Unless it's a short story...

>155 MrsLee: and >156 Jim53: It was actually my day. It's all in how the writer presents the situation, isn't it?

I don't know where others are, but I'm halfway through The Dispossessed. Oddly enough, I am both enjoying it and understanding completely why people drop it midway as a DNF. Le Guin was trying to do a lot in this one. Political theory and commentary are the meat with a light sauce of science fiction. (In that regard, it's not unlike my experience in reading Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet.There are two schools of thought under examination and the main protagonist must exist an outsider in both in order to evaluate and pass judgement on the two.) As always, I prefer writers who manage to make a point in amidst telling us of events.

>157 jillmwo: I'm only on page 81 (20%) but I think I see what she's trying to do. I do like Shevek now that I've gotten into it a bit. But this book isn't begging me to pick it up much during the day.

>158 clamairy: I have been doing one chapter per night, not because i didn't want to pick it up and read straight through, but because I feel like each chapter represents a specific segment of her argument that requires parsing. I do remember someone telling me years back that this was one they thought of as being "preachy". Its not about the characters or about the technology. It's not about world-building in the usual sf/f sense; it's more to do with her thinking aloud about modern culture. Which in some ways is what made it so very different from other sf/f of the seventies.

>159 jillmwo: I can see why TD might be called preachy, in that it's clearly idea-driven, although I would say she didn't come into it with her ideas already settled. I remember thinking that I thought she was actually figuring out the implications of things as she wrote. Not sure where I got that idea; maybe from one of her essays. Even in an idea-driven book, though, I found Shevek a well drawn, interesting character.

Now if you want preachy, there's always The Word for World Is Forest.

Warning: Chapters 7 and 8 of The Dispossessed are essentially gut-punches to the unwary reader. Things kind of shift, but for those who react emotionally to what they're reading, the second half of the book has some real rough patches. I have THOUGHTS. The whole book is kind of like that moment when you begin to get a handle on what real life adulthood is going to entail and you know you have to pull up your big-person pants and deal with it.

The thing is that Le Guin was clear-sighted about so many aspects of 20th century power structures.

Nearly to the end of the book at this point, but not quite finished.

>161 jillmwo: Thank you so much for the warning. I'm only a few pages into Chapter 7. I will gird my loins.

I’ve finished re-reading The Dispossessed, originally published back in 1974. I see now why I thought it was great speculative fiction, but also why I didn't fall in love with it.

Shevek, a genius physicist leaves his own society on Anarres – an egalitarian collective operating by consensus, avoiding any form of individual ownership – to live in and interact with a society that operates on a purely capitalistic basis. On his own homeworld, a faculty mentor is asserting control over Shevek’s work, balking at a broader dissemination of the content. The mentor is deceitful in claiming the work as his own but at the same time can make a case for the restriction. To share the knowledge with those on Urras would be to allow those capitalists to exploit and dominate intergalactic exchange to an even greater extent than they already do. Asserting his own freedom, Shevek wants to learn from others wrestling with theories of time and space; he wants to publish as broadly as possible his own thinking with a universal audience. Overall, the novel concludes that it is the individual who holds the power for making those small changes that enable and redirect social growth.

Le Guin’s novel examines the ways in which human beings inadvertently build, come to acquiesce in and perpetuate systems of social inequity. The challenges of the flawed societies on Anarres and Urras are not unfamiliar to us in 2023, when we argue over problems of unequal power, appropriate exploitation of labor, or any public/ private patterns of behavior that impose constraints.

The author looks at the visible and invisible infrastructure created by a community, how that infrastructure may hinder, even block individual members’ contributions, and the challenge of creating balance. Her literary metaphor is a wall – the constructed barrier resulting in as many problems as solutions. Back in the mid-seventies, many Americans were beginning to identify with the rage felt by the book’s protagonist when faced with the safety mechanism of a tightly-fastened door, “To lock in. To lock out. The same act.”

More coming, but must take a bathroom break.

Follow up to #163 above.

(1) Is this a fun book? Not really. It's a commentary on fundamental approaches towards building the best possible society. It's a product of its time and I read it as such.

(2) Do I think college undergrads should be reading it as part of their education? I do, although I wonder if they'll understand how close some of the attitudes and events encountered in the text were to the lived experience of folks back in the seventies. In my view, young people need to chew on these ideas and get inspired by them, even if (like Le Guin) they come to the realization that no social environment will ever be as comfortable or as equitable as we might wish.

(3) Does it fall into the category of being a classic? Of SF, absolutely. It was a ground-breaker and should be preserved as such. Is it of such a particular quality as to lift it beyond the level of genre classic? I am less confident of that. The prose style (IMHO) in this isn't as good as LeGuin will ultimately achieve. But if the text were to be judged on the ideas and perspectives expressed, it certainly meets the criteria that I think haydninvienna mentioned. You might read this book at multiple stages in life and take something new from it each time.

(4) Am I apt to re-read this again? Probably not. After being a member of the workforce for umpty-ump years, I'm still uncomfortable trying to straddle the line between the common good and personal profit. I doubt that I'll ever get past my current point of muddled libertarian and conservative thinking into something more coherently thought out. As an example, I applaud Steve Jobs and Apple for developing the iPad because the hardware is useful and heaven knows they deserve to profit from that work of design and engineering. That said, I wish they'd find a way to deliver the product at a lower price point so that more might benefit. I also wonder whether any of us need as many devices as we currently carry.

(5) Will I keep this on the shelf? It's entirely possible that I'll pass this volume on to one of my sons to clear space on my own shelf. Hopefully, one of the two will read it and go on to pursue the ideas in their own way and in their own lives. Should they pass it on to the used bookshop or little Free Library in their neighborhood, my hope would be that some youthful anarchist will find it, read it, and work out a way to shove the revolution forward.

One last and final commentary re this book: The women as described on Urras are clothed very mcuh the way women were in J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 television series. (Think of the costumes for Molari's wives on Centauri Prime. Granted, they had to modify it a bit for television back in the '90's but whoever it was who did the costuming for that show had DEFINITELY read Chapter 7 of The Dispossessed.)

Your comments on The Dispossessed have forced my mind to draw parallels with Hopeland, Ian McDonald's new book which I am currently about 25% through. Hopeland is set in contemporary time (starts in 2011 and proceeds from there) and is raising societal issues and setting them in the current climate-change environment. It is also addressing the issue of equality in general and gender equality in particular.

In an earlier part of the book, McDonald inserted a extract from a speech given by a social thinker of a century ago*. This raised ideas about equality which made me think of the book The Society of Equals by the French philosopher/economist Pierre Rosanvallon. Rosanvallon's work contained some interesting points about equality and commerce. He looked at the concept of equality from the time of the American and French revolutions, to the present day (well, upto 2013 when his book was published). The points he made included:
- During the American and French revolutions, the revolutionaries were seeking equality, but it was not equality for everyone. The American revolution was not fought for equality for every race; the French revolution was not fought for equality for the poor. Rosanvallon states that when we hear someone talking about equality we must ask, "Equality for whom?"
- Rosanvallon reports that the original meaning of the word "commerce" described the relationship between two individuals of more or less equal wealth. It did not consider or foresee one party to be multiple millions of times wealthier than the other party, nor did it consider the idea of a non-human legal entity being one of the parties.
- He presents the view that the present imbalance in wealth between parties to commercial transactions is an inherent failing of society and that it can only lead to
deeper inequality and societal unrest. In essence, he states this level of imbalance forces individuals to be totally dependent on and subservient to the larger, wealthier and more powerful party to any transactions, be they retail purchases or contracts of employment. In essence, the individuals are in a state of slavery in societies were this level of imbalance of power exists.
- His thesis concluded that the equality we should be seeking is the equal right for everybody to be different.

* I will be researching to see if he used a real speech of if the extract was totally made up for the novel.

>164 jillmwo: "Is this a fun book?" This made me chortle. I am going to put my comments in the discussion thread, however...

>163 jillmwo:, >164 jillmwo: Great review/thoughts on The dispossessed. I've just started rereading it and find it more interesting each time I do so. The first time I read it was at my then-husband's urging (side note: it was the only book by a woman on his shelves until I moved in!) and I found it dry. I reread it a few years ago and liked it a lot more. I'm now more politically aware than I was then, so I expect this reading to be different again.

>165 pgmcc: Have you spent any time reading Kim Stanley Robinson's work. He has done a lot with regard to fiction dealing w/ climate change. (He got an NSF grant 20 years ago that allowed him to go down to Antarctica and he did a very informative (if not exciting) novel about the importance of the work done there.

I must say with regard to Rosenvallon that I haven't encountered his work, but he sounds as if he'd be great matched with Le Guin as one of those reading projects for students (and others). Although perhaps he's a tough read? Again, I'm totally unfamiliar with him.

>167 Sakerfalcon: I found The Dispossessed to be very interesting in terms of thinking about where one places the line between "sharing" and "exploitation".

>168 jillmwo: I tried a couple of Robinson's novels many years ago and found them so dense and lacking interest that I never went back. I wonder how I would have done with The Dispossessed had I encountered it without being so familiar with LeGuin's work.

Personally, I have too many books going at the same time. My husband and I were watching the Amazon Prime television series of Three Pines with Alfred Molina playing Gamache. I have A Fatal Grace on my Kindle as a result as that's one of 3 or 4 novels they dramatized over the course of the season.

I also have The Warden because I needed something short and soothing in the sense of familiarity. Of course, that particular novel in the Barset Chronicles touches on the same question of appropriate compensation as The Dispossessed in some respects. Poor Septimus Harding! He's a remarkably sympathetic and lovable character (if a trifle too meek in some respects). His son-in-law, Archdeacon Theophilus Grantley, is *clearly* a difficult personality. (Reading Trollope immediately after reading Le Guin does not put Trollope in the best light either. His women are always a little bit "off".)

I may return to reading my book about poisons and early forensic handling of same.

>170 Jim53: I agree that Robinson's work lacks lively characterization, but I give him full marks for working to popularize science.

Problem in The Dispossessed and in The Warden may be dealing with those who tend to build on ideals alone...Story might also have to do with how we think about human beings developing a social conscience, how they live up to what their conscience tells them.

Just a thought I needed to write down in some form before I forgot it...

The Warden’s greatest charm lies in the lead character of Septimus Harding. He’s a musician and precentor at the Barchester Cathedral, but the bulk of his income is due to his role as Warden of Hiram’s Hospital. He is widowed but has two daughters, one already married to the archdeacon, Theophilus Grantly, and the other nearly engaged to and (certainly in love with) John Bold. Harding has close and most sincere ties of friendship with the sitting Bishop of Barchester. He’s both a respectable member of the clergy (in the Victorian sense of the word) as well as being a good man. He cares very much for those about him.

John Bold has been trained as a medical practitioner, but he’s kept insufficiently busy by that role. He spends at least an equal amount of his time advocating for those less fortunate in 19th century Britain. He questions the current charitable operation of Hiram’s Hospital with its twelve bedesmen, and suggests that someone should look into the situation. Is the Church honorably fulfilling the original terms of Hiram’s will that provides income to the Warden and to his twelve bedesmen. Is the income fairly distributed as intended by the donor?

Trollope’s brief novel references an actual 1849-1850 court case – The Hospital of St. Cross and the Earl of Guildford. There was a striking imbalance in the funding of the hospital and the income of the Earl (the Warden of St. Cross) and the public outcry had to be resolved by Parliament. Trollope’s novel is a commentary on how such scandals are handled (publicly and privately) with most of the blame laid at the door of the institutional players – the newspapers, the courts, the Church, etc. By the novel’s close, nothing has been improved or accomplished through Bold’s stance of moral outrage. Only those innocent of any wrong-doing have lost anything.

From the perspective of the reader, the best contribution of the book is the introduction of Septimus Harding and his son-in-law, Archdeacon Theophilus Grantly. Both of those characters reappear in Barchester Towers and the subsequent Chronicles of Barsetshire. They're each delightful in their own way. Septimus as a meek man trying to act according to principle as an individual and Theophilus acting according to principle as part of a larger organization. All the men in this book are flawed. Trollope presents them with a gentle humor, allowing the reader to recognize the dilemma and accept the human beings who get caught in their own flawed systems.

This title is one I will keep on the shelf; it stands up to a second reading. My only gripe is the way Trollope renders his female characters. Of the three shown in this novel, two are relatively robust but the sweet young heroine (Eleanor) is somewhat insipid. (Although she improves in later novels.)

Yes, I recommend this to anyone who wants to sample Trollope without it being a major commitment. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys an ironic tone in a novel. Trollope is wonderful and, to my mind, it is sad that he’s fallen out of favor.

>173 jillmwo: Happy to hear you enjoyed this one. I have a copy of this in the same volume as Barchester Tower, I believe. I just looked at the titles in the series. Didn't they make Dr. Thorne into a series on PBS a few years ago? It was decent.

>174 clamairy: Yes, they did make a Amazon Prime Video original of Doctor Thorne and I thought it was enjoyable. (Good cast!) I have read and enjoyed all of the Barset novels. The Palliser novels are more about British politics and are perhaps a little harder to follow. (There was an actress, Susan Hampshire, who played Glencora Palliser in a BBC series back in the seventies. She said part of her prep for the role was breathlessly reading each of the novels to find out what happened in each, but skipping all of the chapters having to do with politics!)

There was also a television version called The Barsetshire Chronicles with Alan Rickman playing Obadiah Slope. It was delightful. (see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086667/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_69_act)

>173 jillmwo: I had this on my library list for a while, for a reason I cannot recall, and seeing your description has caused me to go ahead and request it. It will be a bit of a break from spaceships and mysteries.

>176 Jim53: I have a very real fondness for this particular Trolllope novel. I didn't begin to read him until I was in my forties, I think, but I almost always find him to be worthwhile. But I think the opening chapter of Barchester Towers is so much more meaningful if you have read The Warden beforehand.

Nebula nominees have been announced:
https://nebulas.sfwa.org/58th-nebula-awards-finalists/

Legends and Lattes made the list as did Babel but those were the only two I'd read in those nominated in the Novel category. I think some of the others have been mentioned by folks here in the Pub.

>178 jillmwo: Nettle and Bone is on the Nebula novel list, and, were I eligible to vote, it would be my first choice, but I did love Legends and Lattes. I haven't read the others. I've read three of the novellas: A Prayer for the Crown Shy, Even Though I Knew the End, and High Times in the Low Parliament. I think my top vote would go to either the second or third of those.

Grumbling Very Loudly. Appliance purchased in 2021 (so during global pandemic) has stopped working. (With the exception of the little sensors near the stove top dials and the light bulb inside the oven, none of the burners work. Neither does the broiler or the oven.) Repair person can't make it over here until next Tuesday. I foresee much eating out over the course of the next five days. Really ticked off. We purposely purchased a Made-in-America appliance. (And even then, we added in a 5-year protection plan when we bought it because of concerns over the quality of manufacturing during a damn pandemic.)

I am really out of patience with this capitalist society. It's a *bleeping* STOVE that's only been in place in my kitchen for two years. (And not one that's been abused by over-use in any way....) Corporations should be in the business of making things that WORK.

>180 jillmwo: Definitely, we need more incentive, somehow, to make quality and lifespan of appliances better. Longer lasting appliances may not be better for the economy but they are better for the planet.

>180 jillmwo:
That is frustrating and annoying. I am glad to hear you have the 5-year protection plan. I hope it all works out well for you and quickly.

As >181 Karlstar: states, the economy is not focused on the planet.

>180 jillmwo: Oh yikes. I'm so sorry. My sister redid her kitchen about 5 years ago and the stove is one of the only things that hasn't had issues... (Not GE, but Frigidaire.) Her microwave had to be replaced TWICE so far, and she had to have the refrigerator repaired and then replaced as well. It's ridiculous, really. It seems so wasteful to me.

Whining about the broken stove will subside as Jill found a book she'd forgotten she owned but which appears to be threading serendipitously with her reading of Trollope in recent weeks.

Happened to put my hand on a second level of a stuffed bookcase and discovered I had apparently purchased back in 2016 one of the titles in Harold Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations series. Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers and The Warden. The reason I know the date is because I'd had the foresight to tuck the shipping notice inside the cover for the purpose of capturing any notes. I must have done something with this before because I have bookmarked one or two pages, but I don't remember doing so. It's also surprising that I have this because normally, I think Bloom is a bit of a stuffed-shirt-type intellectual. However, this has some interesting academic essays about these two works by Trollope.

Jill goes "ooooh, shiny", sighs happily, and plops herself down to read and meditate on the relevance of the Victorians

Oh, one other note -- I did finish A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny. Not quite as cozy as the initial book in the series (Still Life) but it's hard to quibble with what was done in adapting it to Amazon's television series.

Also last night, as my bedtime selection, I began reading in Kindle format Brandon Sanderson's book Tress of the Emerald Sea which seems pleasant thus far.

>184 jillmwo: I hope you enjoy Tress. Don't expect too much. It's just fun.

>184 jillmwo:
Barchester Towers is where I started with Trollope. I loved it and The Warden will be my next Trollope. When I read Barchester Towers I had no idea it was part of a series, and hence did not know The Warden preceded it. By the way, I thought the book was hilarious and I really enjoyed the first chapter. I am filled with anticipation to see what extra I can get from it once I have read The Warden.

By the way, you have piqued my interest with the book you bought in 2016. I await your judgement on it.

Yet another "by the way", have you acquired Chakraborty's new book, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi yet? It was you who put me on to City of Brass, so I suspect you might be interested in the new book. I like the cover.

>186 pgmcc: It's on order but it will probably take a while to arrive from the UK. I wanted to get the British edition because it has the "better" cover.

The Harold Bloom book is what one might expect. Some of the discussions are interesting and well-expressed while others work up to the most bizarre conclusions about what Trollope was doing. (This is why I never went for a Ph.D. in literature. Too many eye-roll moments...) There was one article that spoke with sense about Septimus Harding having an authentic sense of vocation in his music and about Archdeacon Grantly having a vocation in a more modern sense of the word -- he was in the Church as a professional man, an effective administrator.

However, last night, I happened to put my hand on a third copy of The Warden. (Yes, that might be an excessive number to have in the house...) The introduction in this copy was absolutely wonderful; it gave so much more detail about the historical context in which Trollope had written the book. He apparently was in the close of Salisbury Cathedral when the idea came to him. However, the book took him fifteen months to write because he was working on a big project for the Post Office. That was the longest it took Trollope to write any of his novels.

At any rate, this is why I find it so difficult to get rid of even dupolicate copies of books. Those various introductions to the books can really be worth the shelf space!!

ETA: correction of grammar.

>187 jillmwo:
I have two copies of The Warden. The first one I bought is a cheap copy I picked up after reading Barchester Towers and realising there was an earlier book. The second is a Folio edition I picked up in a secondhand bookshop. Purchase reported HERE.

Having multiple copies of books is not something I would criticise. I live in a glass-house and am averse to throwing the first stone. (Hey, mixed metaphors are cool.)

I am loath to read Introductions to fiction before reading the fiction. My reason is a desire to read the story the way the author wanted me to read it. An Introduction would influence my reading of the book and I prefer to have no knowledge of the book before I read it. It is always my intention to read the Introduction after I finish a book. As you will have no doubt realised, that does not always happen.

I am currently reading Richard Harris's biography by Joe Jackson. It is not my normal type of book but a good friend gave it to me and I want to read it before I meet them again. When I have finished the biography I will get straight on to The Warden. I am thinking of suggesting it as our next read in the book club. I plan to be decadent and read the Folio edition.

My recollection of Barchester Towers is amusement at the humour, often taking the form of showing up the pomposity of some of the social norms of the time, and the politics. The concept of someone entering the Church as a professional man is not unusual.

As something different, I had been reading Tress of the Emerald Sea for my bedtime reading and I love some of Sanderson's lines thus far:

Worry, it might be said, is the carrion feeder for emotions. Drawn to other better emotions, like crows to a battlefield.

A chapter or two later:

But she was free. She’d escaped without a hitch. She wondered if maybe her other tasks could be accomplished with similar ease. She could wonder this because – lacking formal training in the arts – Tress had no concept of dramatic irony.

I howled! (Inwardly, at least, so that I wouldn't disturb the dozing spouse.)

>188 pgmcc: As a rule, I try to avoid the introductions that get included with novels, particularly anything deemed as being a classic. As you note, you want to read it "cold" without your reactions being shaped by anything else. And the only reason I don't want to have too many duplicate editions is that I'm still short on shelf space. (My current emphasis in the weeding process is to focus on the primary source material. So keep all of the Christie, Trollope, and Austen, but winnow down some of the literary analysis.)

>189 jillmwo: I saved several passages from Tress in my Kindle notes. Wonderful stuff.

>191 clamairy: I truly am charmed by it thus far. The way her father went to work on his friends was a hoot!!!

>190 jillmwo:
In terms of winnowing to make space on the shelves for more deserving books my current focus is work related books. Books that tell me how to be a better project manager, how to be a leader, how to manipulate the masses to get things done.

About two years ago I was put on an eight month leadership programme (two days every three weeks) run be a prestigious training organisation. There were about 20 people in my cohort. On the first day, when the educators were talking about leadership, I got into trouble. I used my natural tendency to extrapolate what the instructors were saying about leadership and asked, "Is this not all about manipulating people to get them to do the things we want them to do?" It was interesting on an on-line training programme to see all the instructors looking at their feet and kicking the dust about until they thought up a way to respond. :-) Given my imminent retirement at the time I had two considerations in my mind: 1. Why are they sending me on this leadership programme when I am about to exit the company; 2. Let's have some fun. :-) I really enjoyed myself on that programme. I was one of the older members of the cohort (the oldest, actually), was already familiar with a lot of the material covered, and was not afraid to ask about the elephants in the room. There is always an elephant.

>189 jillmwo: Tress has so many memorable lines that I highlighted on my Kindle. Those are both great :)

Okay, can I just say that back in the days when stoves were hard-wired into the house, one never called in a repairman only to be told (as we were this afternoon at lunch) that our *real* issue was that the damn plug -- installed just for this stove -- had somehow gotten pulled out of position in the outlet.

Yes, I feel very, very -- exceedingly, even -- foolish (also mystified because we can't figure out how the plug might have come loose).

>195 jillmwo: Oh my... Forgive me for chortling. But aren't you glad it wasn't the stove?

>196 clamairy: Yes, I was entirely relieved that the stove didn't need something done to it. I will keep reminding myself to be grateful. (I am also glad that Past Me sprang for the protection program as it meant that the nice man didn't charge us for adjusting the plug back into the outlet. Present Me is very glad.)

>195 jillmwo: Glad the problem was so minor.

"stoves were hard-wired into the house". Just to confuse the issue, here in at least some inland provinces (the old Transvaal Republic) the stove is legally part of the structure, but in the former British colonies (Cape and Natal) the stove is legally furniture. This made an interesting hiccup when moving from Pretoria to the coast.

>195 jillmwo:
I am delighted it was not a serious issue with the stove. Who are you going to call about the poltergeist?

>195 jillmwo: Congrats! Glad it wasn't something that required a new stove. I'm guessing it wasn't a locking plug?

>199 pgmcc: Nice.

So this will be a bit long and will seem randomly constructed, but my feeling is that a good percentage of my reading over the past ten days HAS led me from one book to another across a range of topics. Let me show you how my brain works. I'll start with a book I thoroughly enjoyed - Stories of Books and Libraries from the Everyman’s Library Pocket Classics series.

This anthology opens with a delightful short story by Ray Bradbury – a late-night conversation between a soldier on leave and his hometown librarian. The anthology closes with another Bradbury short story, one with a slightly darker note to the narrative, but displaying Bradbury’s very evocative writing. In between there are selections from Seneca to Helene Hanff, from Reading Lolita in Tehran to The Well of Lost Plots. There were extracts from books I had never known existed, including the touching account from Everyman Remembers of how the Everyman’s Library book series got started. This in particular delighted me as I have a very real fondness for the series with multiple editions sitting on my shelves and had in fact wondered in passing about the history. For the record, I don’t think I will be passing this one on to a little Free Library anytime soon. I want to hold on to it (despite the fact that they went artistic on the book design, using a book cloth in a distressing seafoam shade rather than in the burgundy, navy or evergreen that is more traditional). I heartily recommend this. For me, the choices included in the anthology touched all the right emotional buttons. Some new (to me) content, some comfortably familiar content, a number of worthwhile extracts that I might never have thought about when reading the original texts. So I want in particular to acknowledge the editorial work of Jane Holloway in this volume. Artfully considered and well done!

In particular, the extract from The Well of Lost Plots had Thursday Next wrestling with the characters from Wuthering Heights. When I opened Fforde’s book at a random page, Well of Lost Plots took me to Thursday’s encounters with Captain Nemo. Jasper Fforde did a splendid job of capturing the character of Captain Nemo and I know this because I had (again within the past 10 days) had reason to speed through the early chapters of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This last is for a book group coming up in a few days.

Verne is one of those authors where the translation makes a HUGE difference in the readability of his work. Certainly, I blame the translations of earlier editions as the reason I could never get through this book in my teen years. However, Penguin released at some point a new edition with an attractive cover of phosphorescent jellyfish and a new translation by David Coward – the same guy who did the translation of Phantom of the Opera that I read at some point within the past two years. He has done a fabulous job with this one as well. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is part travelogue and part scientific treatise, so that’s quite a feat; Coward makes it very readable.

That readability is key. Within the past 10 days, there was an opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times entitled “I’m the Problem with the Humanities”. (See my tweet here because the link used in the tweet will take you to the openly accessible gifted article: https://twitter.com/jillmwo/status/1633481221169717248.) The author was talking about a New Yorker article bemoaning the demise of the English major and he wrote “The Harvard undergraduates who can’t parse a complex sentence from the American Renaissance are part of the problem. But so is the Harvard-educated newspaper columnist and self-styled cultural conservative who regularly unburdens himself of deep thoughts on pop TV but hasn’t read a complete 19th‌-century novel for his own private enjoyment in — well, let’s just say it’s been a while.” Now, I was feeling somewhat smug and superior to this columnist as I could honestly say that I had just spun through a complete 19th century novel by choice the week before and hadn’t experienced any particular challenge. Take that, you snotty Harvard grad! But then I had to stop and admit that while I could read the novel fairly easily, essays written in the same time period were more of a slog (Think Thoreau, think Emerson). Come to think of it, dipping into Milton (with @haydeninvienna) did demand far more of me; I had to actually process placement of the punctuation and structure in order to get the sense. So I came back down off my high horse.

Milton ties into an on-going conversation with pgmcc with regard to Barchester Towers. One of the essays I was reading earlier in the week saw a tie between Paradise Lost and Trollope’s novel. Even after some time spent in reviewing Paradise Lost and Chapter 7 of BT, I’m not sure I’m buying the academic’s argument. I mean, there is a little bit of a parallel, but I hardly think Trollope set out to parody Milton. It’s not impossible but it seems a stretch.

Other observations from desultory reading over the past few days:

I’m not charmed by the new mystery that’s out, Murder Before Evensong, written by the English vicar who appeared on Strictly Come Dancing. Just not charmed.

Virginia Woolf can be tedious in her essays; I know I’m supposed to like them and I agree she makes good points, but I just find her tedious.

And I probably owe Lucy Worsley an apology. I was dismissive of her most recent book on Agatha Christie, but I must grudgingly admit that she put one or two things into context for me. So maybe she’s not totally impossible.

So this has been roughly a thousand words for you on all the things dancing through my head thus far. Pretty soon, I have to start up my new thread, but I am trying to tie it as much as possible to the end of the month and the close of the first quarter.

Has anyone stayed with me through this long haul?

>201 jillmwo: I don't think you should criticize yourself because you had to focus a bit to read Milton. That's poetry and not even 19th century! The language and structure there does make it a challenge.

I think the tendency recently for people in schools and otherwise to prefer 'new' over 'classic' is a problem. There is value in good works from all eras, even if some of those classic books are dated. The thoughts behind a good book, such as The Dispossessed, for example, are still worth reading and thinking about.

>201 jillmwo: Yes I did!

Between you and Philip Pullman and the man himself, I got thinking about how Milton is something of an outlier: his syntax isn’t that of seventeenth-century English prose, or any other English prose. I find Milton to be hard work in Paradise Lost, but he also wrote this:

Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew
To live with her, and live with thee …

(Had to stop there: the next full stop is 29 lines away.) My point is that Milton could do both the high Latinate epic manner of Paradise Lost and the cheerful almost-silliness of “L’Allegro”.

Milton being Milton, how about this for another example of the high style and what he could do with it:

Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

If I read it correctly, the first 7 lines, down to “I fondly ask”, is all one sentence, and of course it’s complex. But even given my devotion to plain English, I would dearly love to be able to write a sentence as good as that.

>201 jillmwo:

I kept with you.

Speaking of tie-ins, my wife and I are staying in Nantes for a couple of nights. It was only yesterday, as I explored Nantes with Google Street View, that I realised Nantes was the birthplace of Jules Verne. I will be visiting the statue erected in the Botanical Gardens in his honour, and we hope to visit the Jules Verne Museum and/or Les Machines de l'ile.

By the way, I am really enjoying The Warden. I think I will suggest it as the next read for our book club.

>193 pgmcc: ...and there's always a guy who wants to poke the elephant ;-)

>201 jillmwo: Of course I stayed with you throughout. Thanks for reminding me of the "encounter group" with Heathcliff and the gang. I remember thinking that it was great fun, but the execution didn't quite live up to the inspiration of the idea. I think I read that first Bradbury story that you mentioned, and the collection sounds like great fun.

>205 Jim53:
Our primary reason in wanting to visit Les Machines de l'il is the presence of a giant mechanical elephant. As I say, there is always an elephant.

>203 haydninvienna: So that's where "They also serve who only stand and wait." comes from!

>203 haydninvienna: Makes better sense in context, doesn’t it? And part of the context is that Milton was blind. The sonnet is sometimes titled (not by him) “On His Blindness”. He dictated Paradise Lost. Think about that.

Okay, file this one in the “Things Forgotten and Hidden on the Bookshelf” folder. I was investigating the shelves again and pulled out a title that I did not recognize. The Long Party: High Society in the Twenties and Thirties was published back in the early 70’s; it’s a glimpse into the glamorous lifestyle of British aristocracy, movie stars, industrialists, etc. during the period between the wars. It’s relatively lightweight social history (which is what Marissa_Doyle had said about it back in 2012 when she talked about it here in the Pub), but skimming it briefly proved useful for me in positioning something Agatha Christie had written. I keep returning to The Mystery of the Blue Train and realizing some of the contemporary aspects of the period that she wove into the novel. The French Riviera (she happens to mention the Negresco Hotel in passing); the legislation and changing attitudes associated with divorce in the UK in the twenties, etc. I'm sure I got this because of Marissa! Those BBs everyone bounces around over the course of a decade or two are reflected in my shelves apparently.

Oh and the problem with double stacking one’s bookshelves is that one does tend to lose track of what material has been tucked away. Nothing like buying something in 2023 that duplicates what you bought back in 2016, but never added to LT as being part of the collection. Note that here I'm talking about something other than The Long Party title. A matched three-volume set magically appeared on that shelf, one that I would have sworn I did not own...24 hours of wondering quietly to yourself – when did I actually GET this? I had to check four different places before I could find the original order. (It appears that some things were cheaper back in 2016…)

Oh, I am finding Tress of the Emerald Sea to be quite fun.

>203 haydninvienna: Both of those examples are worthwhile reading. But yes, if one is to read Milton out loud, identifying where the punctuation falls can be a bit challenging.

>204 pgmcc: And I am enjoying re-reading Barchester Towers. I read it initially some years back but I am taking it more slowly this time around (and there's a pay-off in doing so.)

>205 Jim53: I really do recommend the Stories of Books and Libraries. Again, I'm never sure who Knopf thinks is buying these odd little anthologies, but the quality tends to be good and there are a number of different topics included in their catalogue.

>206 pgmcc: Should there be more elephants? Would it be a prop towards world peace?

>210 jillmwo: Should there be more elephants? Would it be a prop towards world peace?

One never knows. Hannibal certainly did not succeed in making war with his elephants in Italy.

Whether more elephants would be a prop towards world peace or not, there is always an elephant.

My reading group of women gathered together to discuss 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was one of those classics that each of us actually already owned (unread, different editions and, thus, different translations). We’d all seen the Disney version with James Mason and Kirk Douglas at some point in our lives and we figured we’d give it a whirl as a designated science fiction selection. FWIW, I had tried to read it back in my early teens but without success. I just couldn’t get into it and frankly I’d always blamed the translation that would have been available to me at the time.

As previously noted, the version I own was a Penguin hardback – a new edition purchased in 2022 with a more modern introduction with Coward’s translation of the story. I galloped through the initial chapters (before the three main characters make it on to the Nautilus) but slowed dramatically as we explored the globe underwater.. It was published in serial form over about 15 months or so (1869-1870) and there really wasn’t much narrative structure beyond Verne’s attention to the idea of this being a worldwide tour. There also wasn’t much in the way of characterization. The reader as well as the three “passengers” (hostages, really) were there to (a) see the world and (b) work out a way to escape.

One of the objections from the group (aside from the utter lack of female characters) was the ever-consistent class structure. As a gentleman, Arronax gets to dine with Nemo but Consuil and Ned (both being working-class) are not allowed to do so. We see Arronax as the educated scientist, his manservant as a helpful sort of “lab assistant”, and Canadian-born Ned being the restless harpooner who really has no worthwhile role onboard a submarine. As I noted earlier, the book is part travelogue and part scientific treatise. Somewhat educational reading with a flavor of adventure, rather than any kind of sensation novel.

I doubt I'm apt to re-read this one. I understand that the book has a place in the historical development of speculative fiction and may be counted as a classic for that reason, but the flow of the story-telling was a problem. Nemo might have been an increasingly interesting character, but at least in this novel, he seemed to me that he was there to serve a function rather than to be a fully-fleshed out individual. (I think he is supposed to become more interesting in the sequel of The Mysterious Island but I have no familiarity with that one. Ned operated in much the same way in that he was always urging Arronax to agree to an escape attempt. Conseil was neutral but also clearly functional for purposes of Arronax's explanations.

Essentially, the group consensus was that we were glad we'd read this one, but might not be interested in any follow-up.

>212 jillmwo: Agreed, to me that one is only worth reading if you are curious about scifi from that time period, there aren't many other reasons to read it, unless you like long paragraphs about fish.

>212 jillmwo: I tried to read this once and failed. I suspect my reaction would be even worse if I tried again. That's a very interesting point about the class distinction at meals, though.

Well, because the system has locked me out of my freelance work environment, someone in another state will have to update my credentials which expired overnight at midnight with minimal warning. This means my afternoon will not be going as anticipated in terms of doing freelance research stuff.

I'm using that as my rationale for launching a new thread rather than waiting another 10 days. Clam coming in at msg #214 was also a good argument for relaunching and I saw others doing it as well. I can't work, so I will instead launch my new thread and then sit down and read a book unearthed from a relatively inaccessible and rather dusty shelf.