KEV67

I am reading this. I saw the film with Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall. I think I enjoyed the film more than I am enjoying the book. It is a remarkable book, nevertheless. I am not sure how this book should be categorised, because it is based on real people and events, but it is somewhat fictionalised. I know Brian Clough's son Nigel hated it, and did not think it was a fair reflection of his father. David Peace could not really describe what was going through Brian Clough's mind.

Charles Dickens was lower middle class, bordering on working class. I suspect that was why he was better at lower middle class and working class characters. Anthony Trollope was upper middle class. I think that may be why he is better at upper middle class characters and gentry. Trollope is at home in town and country. The Last Chronicle of Barset is more cosmopolitan than the other Barset books. Much more of it occurs in London. This is my favourite book out of the series.

This is the sort of news I like to hear.

My problem with the cheque is resolved. Whoever signed it must have made it payable to cash. Then the cheque could be handed on like money. Still seems like a rum way of going about things to me. I have never paid a cheque to cash. In one part of the book, one of the protagonists travels to Italy in search of another character. I was very surprised he could get from England to Italy in little over a day. Railways must have been built all over large parts of Europe by then. I was also surprised the ease with which this protagonist found this other character. He arrives in a foreign city, asks around, and is told where she is. I suppose it was customary for people to leave their contact details. But say you are in a city like Turin. There must be lots of hotels in Turin. How do you know which one to go to? The book was first published in 1867.

Finished it. Quite a good ending. Nobody is very nice in Martin Amis's books. I don't know who was more unlikeable: the protagonist or his more successful rival.

I have been reading this. I almost gave up after the first chapter, but it got better after that. This is the fourth of Martin Amis' books I have read. It exemplifies his trademark black humour and his dyspeptic view of British society. I doubt Martin Amis would think much of that last sentence, but I don't care. The book is about an author who writes very literary books which nobody wants to read. He becomes upset because his old friend from university starts writing bestsellers, which he thinks are rubbish. It is not the best of his books imho. I thought London Fields was a better book, and I thought Lionel Asbo was hilarious, but that is a minority view.

I wonder if the Last Chronicle of Barset is the best of the series. I still have over 30 chapters to read. I still do not understand the issue of the cheque. Perhaps it was not so much a cheque as a postal order. However I will resist googling it in case the plot is spolit.

Wishing you the very best Luna.

Not sure I like the sound of that. Obviously I wish the best.

This is a Hard Case Crime publication with a lurid cover. The man holding a rifle on the cover looks like Lee van Cleef, and there is another chap mistreating a woman who looks like a young Lee Marvin. And there's another young woman on the cover with red hair not wearing very much. This is very much pulp fiction. There are two stories in the book, both about an anti-hero thief who robs from the mob. The first story is the last story in the series and the second is the first story Collins wrote about him, which was initially rejected and left in a drawer for about twenty-five years. No feminism is allowed in this book, although some females put up a fight.

I think I was particularly welcome on Sunday's evening service at St Mary's. Apart from the vicar, the organist and the vicar's daughter there was only me in the congregation. The organist did not really need to be there neither as we did not bother with the unsingable hymns. Usually the pub historian is there, but I learnt from his local that he is on a real ale pub crawl or festival in Manchester.

Almost finished. I did not like the last sections so much.

I have been reading (with a great deal of help from the dictionary at the back) Wulfstan's Sermon of the Wolf to the English Nation. It is rather more interesting than the sermons I usually hear. There is a lot more about rape, murder, pillage, regicide, paganism, witchcraft, prostitution, baby killing and the rest. The most exciting thing in the sermons I usually hear is when the vicar complains about something like the Church of England's tacit support for gay marriage.

It is difficult to recommend. Depends what you're into. My favourite crime book is G.B.H. by Ted Lewis.

I don't think it is the best book I ever read. I liked the portrayal of Alyosha, the younger brother, and Father Zosima, the monk.

This book is a bit more London based then some of the others. Johnny Eames has developed a sense of humour. There is a fair bit of witty to-and-fro, but it is of the old, posh English type. It would be like listening to David Niven chatting to Dirk Bogarde. Those sorts of accents have almost disappeared now.

I was reading a bit about Doris Lessing earlier on. She left her first husband and two small children. Seems astonishing to me. In the first book of hers I read the heroine did that. She left her husband in Rhodesia with her children. In the Golden Notebook, the heroine Anna Wulf, as well as the heroine in the book Anna writes, both have one child. In their cases they both have a child from a failed marriage, and both become mistresses of married men. I don't know whether Lessing became anyone's mistress, but she did marry again and have another child. I get the impression Doris Lessing used her real life as inspiration for her books. I suppose that is obvious, but I wonder how autobiographical they are. I suspect very.

One thing that bothers me with this book is that the heroine(s)/protagonist has a lot of sex with married men, who are all creeps to a greater or lesser extent. Alright, she is a divorcee with a child, and it is the 50s. But isn't she complicit if she keeps having sex with them. In the ten pages I read to day she slept with a man from Ceylon called Nelson. He might be handsome, but he was well weird, so why did she sleep with him?

The politics is quite interesting. It was written when a lot of people were leaving the British Communist Party after stories of Soviet atrocities were leaking out. There were still a few die-hards hanging in. The others were in emotional crisis not sure what to believe, because they were still lefties who believed in social justice. This book was written in the 50s. 1984 had come out in 1949. McCarthyism was rife in America. The Korean War was either being fought or had just come to an end. The left wing movement was splintering into different groups. It took quite a long time for the Communist Party to die off in Britain, if it is not still lingering on. I had a friend at school who was considering entering the CP but a teacher advised him it could be bad for his career. I have read a couple of Alexie Sayle's memoirs, which are pretty good. His parents were both confirmed communists who kept the faith. In the 60s and 70s there were various factions, which if you knew their code words you could identify. Apparently the Marxists were Communists, while the Leninist-Marxists were Maoists, or maybe the other way around.

Interestingly, a friend of mine says he has Covid after coming back from Malta on holiday. I think it is like a cold now. I am not sure how any times I have had it.

The thief did not return this time. Eight people present in total including the vicar, the vicar's wife and the organist. In the sermon the vicar referred to woman bruising the serpent's head and the serpent bruising the woman's heel. What does that mean? He has said it before. A bruise would not be so bad, but I would not want to be bitten by one if it was poisonous. He also had another bit of a rant against other religions. He said Muslims believed they would go to heaven and get allotted 98 virgins; Buddhists would achieve Nirvana; Native Americans their happy hunting ground, but he had particular scorn for the Church of England who appeared to believe everyone would get to heaven no matter how bad they were. I thought about my brother. He was not very God fearing. I have to hope God is more merciful than he is sometimes reported to be in scripture. Then the vicar said maybe people did not want to get good and fix their sinful habits. Again I felt slightly uneasy. I had watched an artistic Spanish film only a couple of nights before. Still religious perfection is difficult to achieve and I am not bothering trying to this time around.

I am over half way. If I were still on Good Reads I would give it five stars. Doris Lessing is very good at reproducing speech patterns and keeping her characters in character.

The Vampire Lovers was a surprisingly faithful adaption of Carmilla.

I'm getting quite into this book, although I still do not understand why anyone would leave signed cheques made out to cash lying about. I certainly hope Mrs Proudie, the bishop's wife, gets hers.