KEV67

This is my seventh Russian classic, only Eugene Onegin to go and I've done Russia (if I ignore the likes of Solzhenitsyn). It is an odd sort of novel. It was written in the 1840s when Russian landowners still owned serfs. I think that situation changed not long after. It's about this man called Chichikov. He is buying the title deeds of dead serfs from landowners. Landowners had to pay tax on their serfs, even dead ones, until the next census confirmed they were dead. Therefore, the landowners are fairly willing to sell the souls, only they are not sure what Chichikov wants with them. Is it legal? How much is a dead serf worth. Chichikov has some scam in mind, but I am not clear how it is supposed to work. I suppose it is to appear richer than he is, so people will lend you money or invest in your schemes. The first volume is a satire on provincial rural life in Russia. The second volume is more a state of the nation story. I do not think the book comes to a proper end. I think it just breaks off. Just two chapters to go.

I watched an episode of The Avengers last night. There were about six people dressed up in costumes and one of them was bumping off the others. Suspicion fell on Steed. What a cast list! Apart from Patrick MacGee and Diana Rigg, there was a young Brian Blessed, a young Charlotte Rampling and a young Donald Sutherland. So one future Hollywood star and a future film actress. I am glad Charlotte Rampling and Brian Blessed are still around. Charlotte Rampling keeps going from strength to strength.

I have almost finished another Dick Francis book called Trial Run. It is set just before the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980. It has a horsey connection. An aristocrat is set to take part in the 3 day eventing. Previously a German 3 day eventer died of a heart attack. A retired steeplechase jockey is leaned on to find out more and flies out to Moscow. Needless to say it wasn't a heart attack. I am really quite impressed by the plotting. I am quite interested in the style too. In the penultimate chapter the steeplechaser reflects on the nature of revolutionary fanatics. It reminded me of those British Jihadi fanatics who went to Syria to fight for Daesh. For me it is slightly odd, because I remember the late 70s and 80s, but much has changed. No Internet and no mobile phones is an obvious difference, but the steeplechaser had to retire because he has severe astigmatisms in both eyes and could not see without glasses, which the racing authorities banned as a safety measure. These days he would have laser surgery.

I was sad to hear he had died, although he must have been getting old. I have read a number of his books, including Paradise News, Nice Work, Ginger You're Barmy, Changing Places, Small World, A Man of Parts, Author Author, and one or two others. He was a professor in English as well as an author himself. I read in this month's The Critic that he ran a year long teaching class just on Ulysses by James Joyce. It would take that long to understand it. It seems he taught all that French deconstructionist stuff that doesn't make much sense to me.

My favourite Johnny Rotten story was when he criticised Freddie Mercury for singing with an opera singer. I suppose they were at some sort of award ceremony or party. Freddie Mercury replied, "We do our best, Mr Horrible."

I went to the Unitarians in Bury St Edmunds again. The pastor said there would be a ten minute meeting after the service. He described it as an opportunity some would like to benefit from. I didn't like the sound of that, especially as one of the readings was from Acts of the Apostles. It was the bit where there was no want in the community, because anyone who had land or property sold it and gave the proceeds to the community. He did not read the next verses, which I remember as being one of the most chilling parts of the New Testament. Two followers sold their property, but did not hand over the entire proceeds. They were struck dead. Christianity rowed back on that position, thankfully. I escaped before tea and biscuits.

I got past the hump. Things are looking up for some characters. I was thinking the way things were going, nobody important need die. However, a significant character has started feeling poorly more often.

I played the first episode of Bagpuss to little Adrian on my smartphone in order to calm him down a bit. I think he enjoyed it, but not as much as I did. For a start, it is such a good premise. A little girl has a shop that displays things she has found so that their owners can reclaim them. I liked the verse Emily says to Bagpuss to wake him up and his friends. The episode had a good folk song about a ship with a crew of mice, captained by a duck. Good singing too. The thing brought back by Emily was a broken ship in a bottle. Bagpuss has to think of a magic story to put the ship back together again. He imagined a good story with good verse. It involved mermaids. I was a bit surprised the mermaids were drawn topless. Nothing unseemly, I was just slightly surprised the BBC authorised it, considering it was a children's programme. I looked Bagpuss up on Wikipedia. It said the song the mice chant to had the tune of Sumer is icumen in, which is one of the oldest songs in English. Bagpuss was one of Oliver Postgate's creations. When I was a child in the 70s I liked The Clangers. I thought Ivor the Engine was alright. I do not remember Noggin the Nog. I liked Bagpuss a lot, but I did not appreciate how good it was. I will have to rewatch the other twelve episodes to see if they all measure up.

Struggling with this. I am over half way. As predicted, a happy circumstance is turning to brown stuff. Things could easily get worse. This is my sixth Gissing. He wrote about the London poor predominantly. However of the six I have read, The Whirlpool was about the upper middle class, The Odd Women and New Grub Street about the middle class. The Netherworld was mostly about the undeserving poor/working class/underclass. Demos was mostly about the working class. Demos was an exploration of all the different strands of Socialism that were developing in late 19th Century Britain. There was a bit of conflict, because a working class political activist inherits a lot of money and starts becoming an industrialist. His interests conflict with the rural Tory interests, as well as the local labour. Thyrza seems mostly about the respectable working class.

Went to Unitarians again today. There was another speaker. The service was little more like a traditional church service. The most interesting bit was when the minister asked for people to nominate joys and sorrows. He lit a candle for each. The minister said he was happy about spring having arrived. Then someone got up and said he'd been in a zoom meeting with old colleagues from Harvard, who were all very distressed about Trump's treatment of Zelensky. He was joyful about that. I thought 'Harvard' wtf! Then an old, very short old man in grey suit, got up and expressed his sorrow of a Cambridge University don, called Don Cupitt, who wrote many religious books and presented a television series on religion back in the 70s. Wtf, I thought again. I thought about nominating as a joy that Adrian has started walking, but I lost my bottle.

I am still reading this. I have got to the bit with the dragon. It reminds me a lot of Smaug from The Hobbit. Someone steals a gold cup from the dragon's hoard, and the dragon goes nuts.

Gissing is such a gloomster. He's invented some sympathetic characters who have a chance of being happy. I know he is going to pull the rug from under them. I often don't feel like reading my daily chapter.

I like the bottom one more than the top one.

I bought this book online, but I cannot remember the website. I was surprised when it arrived, because it was A4 sized. In a conventional format it would be quite a thick book. I did not post this under classics, because although it was written in the late 19th Century, it is not widely read. George Gissing's most famous books are The Odd Women and New Grub Street. I often find Gissing's books a bit clunky. I think he had to get his novels out so quickly he did not have sufficient time to smooth them out. They are usually socially interesting books. I have only got to chapter 8 in this book. It's partly about a socially engaged, young gentleman. He sets about delivering a course of lectures in a working class area of London, but his real aim is to create a working class movement. Thyrza is a young, working class woman. She is pretty and has a good singing voice. Otherwise, she has not figured much in the book yet.

I thought the Unitarian service was alright, but not as good as the services were in Reading. If the Radio 4 programme, Something Understood, is still on, Unitarian services are somewhat like that, with readings and music often following a theme. At Reading they used a projector and YouTube sometimes. Unitarians are not very strong on doctrine or procedure. The thing I liked least was the organist goes on for quite a bit.

This is a biography of Margaret Thatcher. I am not sure who Robin Harris was. I think he was one of her staff, some type of colleague. He wrote political speeches for her. The biography was published in 2013. This is one of my brother's books. He used to read books about weighty subjects, such as biographies of politicians. He never read fiction, so far as I can tell. At least not as an adult. I did not like Margaret Thatcher when I lived through her period of government. Partly, this was because my parents were both quite left wing. I am not certain, but I think they met at the Young Socialists club in Nottingham. They used to go on CND marches to Aldermaston and the like. The other reason I did not like her was that she reminded me of my bossy teachers and headmistresses. I have not read many political biographies. I do not think this biography is as good as Andrew Robert's biography of Winston Churchill. In part, I think that is because Andrew Roberts is a better writer, and in part, because Winston Churchill's life was interesting all the way through. I thought I would find Margaret Thatcher's early life, and her days as an MP more interesting than I did. I can remember what she did during the 80s, but I was not really aware of her before 1978. The chapter I found most interesting was Three Last Campaigns, after she left office. These were her campaigns against the Maastrict Treaty, her campaigning to defend Croatia, Bosnia Herzogovina, and Kosovo from Serbian aggression, and her defence of General Pinochet after Spanish lawyers issued an arrest warrant for him when he was on British territory. I was sympathetic with her on all those things.

I went to the Bury St Edmunds Unitarian service today. There are so few Unitarians that some of them knew members from the Reading group. The usual leader (pastor/whatever) had suffered a bereavement, so another member led the service. He was an American from Kansas. He said he was born in 50s to a Southern Baptist father and a Pentecostal mother. I am not very clear on who the Pentecostals are; I think they may be the ones that speak in tongues. He is quite well educated in church matters. He said later he became an Anabaptist. He said Anabaptists were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants. The term was familiar, but I cannot remember what was different about them. Then he said he became a Mennonite. I think they are similar to the Amish. When he came to England he said he was looking for a church to join that corresponded somewhat with his beliefs. A Unitarian woman told him that they loved Mennonites, so he joined the Unitarians.

I still have about 100 pages to read. It is not particularly easy to read. One thing that surprised me was that Germany had considered itself a socialist country for decades before WW2. Nationalism was a later modification to their socialist outlook. That surprised me. Maybe by socialism Hayek meant a tendency for central planning by the government and its agencies. I thought Germany was a monarchy until the end of WW1, when the kaiser abdicated. I thought under hard socialism all companies were nationalised, but I am pretty sure there were private companies in Germany before WW2 and before the Nazis took over. In the chapter I read today, Hayek wrote that the Germans reviled English liberalism. Liberalism seems to have changed its meaning. Liberalism in the old sense is everyone being free to run their businesses as they see fit without state intervention. Another thing that surprised me is that I thought Hayek and John Maynard Keynes were economic opponents. Keynes believed state intervention was crucial, particularly during economic recessions. However the Road to Serfdom seems to be more about politics than economics. I do not see what Hayek wrote has to contradict what Keynes wrote. I am not an expert on Keynes.

Sounds like WH Smiths might be going the same way as Woolworths and Wilco. In Reading, WH Smiths are the main alternative to Waterstones if you want to buy a physical book. They don't have the same range as Waterstones. They tend to focus more on bestsellers, crime, romance, etc. I only know of two other shops that sell books in Reading. The RISC centre, which is a sort of hippy drop in centre, sells books largely written by authors from developing countries, books on feminism, sustainability, etc. There is a relatively small, independent bookshop in Caversham, which almost feels like another town, because you have to cross the river.

I had a friend who has bought quite a few Folio books. I have looked at them and I have viewed them online, but there is something about them I do not like. However, other people do like them. I used to subscribe to a YouTube content creator who used to collect these books. She used to rave about the binding and the quality of the paper. She lived in Argentina. I wondered how she afforded it, because those books are not cheap.

This is a book about economics and politics written in 1944 by Friedrich Hayek. I think he was an Austrian Jew. At the time he wrote the book he lived and worked in Britain, and I think later he moved to the USA. It is quite a hard read. In the book he argues that Socialism leads to autocracy, because economic decisions are taken out of individuals' hands and put into the purview of experts appointed by the government.

I am in the process of relocating from Reading to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. I attended a service at the Unitarian church in Bury St Edmunds last Sunday. It was not as good as the services usually are in Reading, but it was the same sort of thing, mainly readings with the odd hymn. Think 'Something Understood' on Radio 4. I have not returned to the other church I used to go to in Reading. I may do this Sunday, but I am concerned the vicar will take a dim view of my having become a single parent via surrogacy. There is another Church of England (Continuing) about 55 miles away from Bury St Edmunds in a place called Frimton-on-Sea. It is accessible by rail, but it is difficult to get there by 11 o'clock on Sunday.

I have read Ivanhoe now. Not as good as Waverley, or Rob Roy. Scott was treading on dangerous ground, and poured it on a bit thick with the antisemitism, but it was clear with whom his sympathies were. Did the members of your reading group object to the portrayal of the Africans at end or the Saracens near the beginning? The antisemitic feeling of many of the characters was pretty strong, but I suspect it was accurate for the time. The Prioress's Tale in The Canterbury Tales was very antisemitic. I did not think Sir Walter Scott was anywhere near as antisemitic as Charles Dickens was in Oliver Twist (although I thought Fagin was the best character, especially when he was in prison).

I thought the final chapters were a bit on the daft side. Altogether, not a bad book, but nowhere near as good as Waverley. Sir Walter Scott has a common theme. In Waverley, in particular, he celebrated the culture and national pride of the Highlanders, but appeared to think it was time for the English and Scots to forge forward together. In Ivanhoe the opposing peoples are the Saxons and Normans. Ivanhoe is a Saxon, Richard the Lionheart is a Norman. Ivanhoe's father, Cedric, wishes for the old days to come back, but finally accepts it is not possible. Antisemitism is the other big theme in this book. Isaac of York is portrayed as a stereotypical money lender, but his daughter, Rebecca is very generous.

Reading about King Richard II's singing reminded me of something I heard on the radio once. Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention sang a song Richard II supposedly wrote. He was very impressed with his song writing.