KEV67

I have just bought this book again. I have started it before, but I never managed to get to the end. I think my father read it to us, but I don't think he got to the end. Last time I tried it as an audio book on CD, but I was a bit suspicious it was a BBC adaption, not a straight reading. It certainly seemed pretty gay. Perhaps it is gay, but I do not trust the BBC with their adaptions any more. This time I plan to read it from the end to the beginning. I mean I am going to read chapter 12 first, then chapter 11, etc. I am not going to read page 192 first, then 191, etc. I have done this with other books I wanted to have read, but had trouble finishing. I did with with Don Quixote and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. The Wind in the Willows should be easy compared with those.

Corr! The characters are dying off quicker than in a Mrs Gaskell novel.

I started reading this about a fortnight ago. I am half way through. It's jolly good. It is set in Afghanistan. It starts off with this poor, illegitimate girl who is forced to marry a not very nice man. Then the next part is about a young girl growing up in Kabul during all the fighting round about the time of the Soviet occupation and afterwards. Lots of death and tragedy. I expect at some point the storylines of the two women will cross over, but they have not really met yet.

I have not been to church in months, but that is because I have been in Tbilisi, waiting for a passport for my son to arrive. Most the churches around here are Georgian Orthodox. Occasionally I hear singing. They don't have stain glass windows, they have religious paintings and metallic images. I am not sure whether the images are actually in silver and gold, but it looks so. There are no pews, everyone stands up. People appear more religious here than in the UK. Many people cross themselves when they pass a church, even young people. My son was born through surrogacy, which the Georgian Orthodox church is very much against. I saw a clip on YouTube of a priest being interviewed. He was worried the Antichrist would be born via surrogacy. I doubt my son is the Antichrist. If he is then he hides it very well. I am glad you posted Anna, because it reminds me the monthly Unitarian meeting in Reading is this afternoon (I think). I will try to zoom in.

So that's D.H. Lawrence. Another big beast's head mounted on the wall. I had not read him before, although I have seen Ken Russell films of several of his books. Not Women in Love, however. Some bits were good. Other bits I was not so sure of.

Didn't German newly-weds get a copy of the book?

I wonder if the title 'Women in Love' should have a question mark after it. I like some parts of the book. The description of Mr Crich's death was very good, for instance. Mr Crich was Gerald's father, who is one of the principle characters. Now it has been established that the story is set in the Edwardian era, I wonder whether Gerald and Birkin both survived the war. I think Women in Love was a sequel to The Rainbow. Perhaps there is another sequel. They would be mid to late 30s by the time war broke out, but they are both officer class.

I am about half way through. Beowulf has killed the Grendel by ripping off his arm. Beowulf must have been pretty strong, because I image the Grendel being as strong as a grizzly bear. I expect Jeff Capes would have had a problem ripping a grizzly bear's arm off.

They're driving around in a car now, so Edwardian.

Just read the notorious wrestling chapter. Seemed a bit gay to me. I used to do some Japanese wrestling myself, judo and aikido, but we always wore judo suits. Even if there were no judo suits handy I'd insist on keeping my underpants on at least, and I wouldn't fight him unless he kept his on, although I doubt I'd be up for any wrestling at all.

It's not late Victorian because Picasso and Lloyd-George have been mentioned. I suppose it could be Edwardian. Iirc Lloyd-George introduced the old age pension, so he was widely known before WW1. I am not sure when Picasso became famous.

I think the story may be set in the late Victorian era. There's a bunny rabbit called Bismark.

I am puzzled about when the story was set. I thought it would be after the First World War, but it has not been mentioned. One of the characters, Gudrun, thinks about moving to Russia to pursue her art. Another character, Gerald Crich, had been a soldier, but there is no mention of him fighting in WW1. Not yer anyway. In the chapter I just finished, it discussed how Gerald modernised the mines with new machinery, including electrical machinery. That sounds 20th Century. Perhaps the story was set in an alternative 1920s in which the war had not taken place. Perhaps it was set in the Edwardian era. That may be a possibility, because no motor cars have been mentioned. Often they are in Edwardian books, so maybe the story is set in late Victorian times.

I saw a funeral notice for my father's first cousin. She died in 2022, aged 92. She still had her maiden name and there were no tributes, so I suppose she had no children. I found another funeral notice for another first cousin. However, on his funeral notice there were tributes from four children, and he had grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He also had a tribute from his sister and three nephews and nieces. I am using the FindMyPast website. It is better for finding ancestors than living relatives.

Still reading. That period after WW1 was a lot different to the Victorian age, but it was a lot different to now. D.H. Lawrence had a strange writing style. His characters spend much time philosophising on the meaning of life. I am not saying it's bad, though. Also there are nude scenes. I tend to think of that interwar period as dominated by the likes of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. They were experimental writers. I think mainstream literature was moving in other ways.

My first D.H. Lawrence. I hear it is his best. I found the opening chapter a bit of a slog, but I will see how it goes.

Things worked out quite nicely for Francis Osbaldistone. Well I am glad. I don't like unhappy endings. If it's a choice between a great but unhappy ending, and a happy but not so great ending, I prefer the latter.

Sorry, I can't remember posting that. I might have had too much to drink. I finished Rob Roy. It was jolly good. I will have to read Ivanhoe some day, in part to see what the controversy is.

I am going to have to read Ivanhoe. I suspect your book group members were morons. I might be wrong. I honestly do not know any modern author who could write about people as well as Walter Scott.

A slightly interesting thing is that the picture on the front of my Penguin Classic copy of Rob Roy is a scene from the book. It was a painting called The Death of Morris the Spy (1827) by Camille Roqueplan, in the Musee des Beaux Arts, Lille. Rob Roy was first published in 1817. Presumably, it was translated into French and sold well there. I wonder how they translated all the Scots.

The chapter I read today was brilliant. It was a chapter in which a troop of Red Coats are ambushed by Rob Roy's men. Rob Roy and Waverley puts me in mind of Heart of Darkness. First Francis Osbaltistone relocates from France where it is reasonably urbane and civilised to Northumbria, close to the Scottish border. It's a bit rough and ready up then, but it's still England. Then he moves onto Glasgow, which is a little bit foreign. Then he goes out to the Highlands and he has gone back in time five centuries. Law does not really exist.

The story is set about 1715 and Sir Walter Scott wrote it about a century later. One of the characters was talking about how the Act of Union would allow Glasgow to develop, because it could participate in the trade of cotton and tobacco, so basically slave produce.

I will have to read Ivanhoe one day.

Still enjoying it. Scott does not let his main characters say a dull sentence. I don't know how he managed to get so much erudite wit into his books. Presumably he had to get so many words down a day. There is quite a bit of poetry. Characters quote it, and each chapter is prefaced by a verse. In Waverley there was a character who used to quote reams of Latin all the time. I think Walter Scott had a big brain.

He was good, so it is a bit of a surprise he is not as well regarded as he was. He used to be a literary superstar. I think Rob Roy is a little similar in theme to Waverley (so far), but he is different to just about everyone else (OK maybe not entirely different to Robert Louis Stevenson). His style is unique.