France
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Posts posted by France
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A long time ago I was in advertising, PR and magazines. When I reached retirement age I fell into starting a new career and I'm now a tour guide. I absolutely love it, the best job I've ever had.
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On 10/31/2021 at 7:23 PM, Hayley said:
I was going to recommend that after reading the first post! Such a weird story, but a good one.
For seriously weird 18th century novels there's also Vathek by William Beckford.
4 hours ago, KEV67 said:Maybe I meant Moll Flanders instead of Fanny Hill. Fanny Burney was a forerunner of Jane Austen, wasn't she? 18th century literature can be a bit weird.
Fanny Burney was a great favourite of Jane Austen's.
What about Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (the longest novel in the English language)? It's actually a terrific read, he also wrote Pamela about the virtuous servant girl whose employer is determined to seduce her which is a lot shorter and rather more saccharine.
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I read The Long Call last year and found it distinctly underwhelming, it was a great relief to get my hands on The Darkest Evening, the ninth Vera book and find that she's absolutely back to form.
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I rather agree about Crawdads, I felt it was a bit juvenile in places though I did enjoy it. It just wasn't superb.
On the other hand I loved Miss Austen, I thought it was far better and more convincing than The Other Bennet Sister which is the one that has been garnering all the rave comments.
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The Samaritan by Mason Cross was a good basic thriller about a serial killer in Los Angeles targeting women who have broken down. There was one place where I raised my eyebrows wondering if Carter Blake, the name the hero chooses to use, would really have allowed himself to be trapped so easily but still worthwhile.
However Missing Pieces by Tim Weaver is severely lacking. It has a woman in peril who who so basically lacking in common sense that you are amazed she survived the first evening let alone several months stranded on an island. It's a standalone and I've heard good things of his other books and gather from reviews that they are in a different class so I might give them a go.
1971, Never A Dull Moment, Rock's Golden Year by music journalist David Hepworth is a paean to what he considers is the greatest year of rock. He is hugely knowledgeable about the music of his youth (he was 21) but even if nostalgia influenced his belief that 1971 produced more records that have really stood the test of time than any other year it's hard to dispute that there was some great music.
It's a very enjoyable read, full of interesting little facts and written with a refreshingly dry cynicism but he's never spiteful. It's probably of most interest to those who are familiar with at least some of the tracks either through being there at the time or discovering Pink Floyd, the Who, Carole King, Sly and the Family Stone, Roxy Music etc much later on. -
I loved this even if for my taste there was too much CGI though the battle scenes were spectacular. It's a long film, over 2 1/2 hours and I was really surprised when the credits came up, it felt like I'd been there an hour and a half. The pace doesn't lag and the actor playing Paul is excellent.
I'm not sure why it isn't advertised that this is Part 1, Part 2 will be the second half of the book and there should be a third film based on Dune Messiah. However I think Denis Villeneuve was quite right, it's a very long book with a lot of content and needs the extra time
I read Dune when it first came out and absolutely loved it, re-reading it several times shortly afterwards but haven't picked it up for many years so I can't comment on how close the film is to the book but somehow it just felt as if it had got all the important bits.
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I've just read 1971, Never A Dull Moment, Rock's Golden Year by David Hepworth, excellent read and will send you racing to Spotify to remind yourself of the albums and tracks he mentions.
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I have a vast TBR, justified in my opinion by living in a foreign country and not having easy access to an English language library so I have to stock up when I can both with paper books and on my Kobo. I also have several titles on both, I'll buy something on special offer on Kobo then if I come across the real life version I'll get that too as I prefer reading in print and like being able to lend favoured books to the family. Then there's my Audible library too...
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On 9/22/2021 at 8:41 PM, muggle not said:
Has anyone read The Green Rider (Fantasy) Series by Kristen Britain? I read a review in the newspaper on her latest book in the series and it looks interesting.
I just checked our library and all 6 of the books are available for download. Library doesn't have book 7 yet.
I've read the first three or four then the series slipped off my radar slightly. The first one is really good, so are the next two then from what I remember the fourth was a bit too long. Well worth trying, two of my daughters enjoyed the books too (the third doesn't like fantasy).
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12 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said:
Was it shocking?
I remember thinking it was a bit silly actually, but that was probably due to being 15.
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On 9/11/2021 at 8:26 PM, vodkafan said:
I second Lady Audley's Secret! That is supposed to be the most shocking sensation novel of it's time. And I doubt any of us have read it yet.
I have! I read it when I was 15.
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I'm sure Superman has been copyrighted so you wouldn't just be plagiarising, you'd get sued for copyright infringement too! And no, that level of similarity is not acceptable.
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Getting a bit behind with commenting on my books so here's a quick run down on some of them:
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin was a terrific read, wonderfully written and absorbing fantasy. Sadly I ended up abandoning her latest book The City We Became which is so didactic it became really tiresome, boring too.
I've always adored Mary Lawson's writing and I think A Town Called Solace is probably her best to date. Absolutely simple, perfect prose, not a word wrong. it's been longlisted for the Booker which does surprise me as usually Booker nominees aren't this accessible. Highly recommended.
Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner. can't even remember what it was about now. Nuff said.
The Perfect Lie by Jo Spain is an excellent page turner, OK you can guess one of the key plot points about half way through and a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief is required but it didn't spoil the book for me.
Mother May I? by Joshilyn Jackson about a woman whose baby is abducted is utterly brilliant until the last two chapters where having almost wound everything up she seems uncertain how to do the last bits and put in a jarring denouement along with a certain amount of preachiness. The point was fair but the reader, certainly this one, didn't need it pointing out so heavily. Very worthwhile reading up to there though.
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Are you thinking of plagiarism in story lines or actual words?
There is no copyright for titles or plot lines, however your words are copyright as soon as you write them even if they aren't published (I'm talking about UK law here, I believe that US law is much the same). Well known authors often complain about other writers borrowing their plot lines and tweaking them just slightly to make them appear different, there was a notable case in the States where a writer of romances found her plots and words had been lifted wholesale with the female character turned male so it was gay romance. That was a fairly open and shut case, others are not quite so clear.
Another case a few years ago where a new writer who had a big publishing contract was found to have paragraphs very close to another author in the same field. Her contract was cancelled, the book pulped.
So you can write a book inspired by Jack Reacher with a loner hero who goes around sorting criminals and generally being superman and providing you don't follow the exact same plot arc and don't copy the words it won't be plagiarism, legally, but if it's too close the reader will feel that it's utterly unoriginal so the book will bomb.
However there are only seven basic plots so all novels have similarities with something that has already been written (with the exception of a few very strange ones!) Jack Reacher for instance follows a long line of loner superman heros, it was the way that Lee Child wrote him that made him so different.
All writers absorb the odd phrases and words from other writers, we're encouraged to write good phrases down in our note books and it's inevitable that they'll pop up from our unconscious sometimes and we'll assume that they are ours. That isn't plagiarism, plagiarism is using whole paragraphs and it is never acceptable.
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On 8/27/2021 at 1:03 PM, Hayley said:
I didn't actually cry at the ending of Tess, but I've never been so angry with an author about the ending of a book!
I felt like that about the last chapter in War and Peace. Nearly 50 years later and I'm still furious about how Tolstoy thought Natasha would turn out.
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About 10 days ago
15 hours ago, Brian. said:I've just re-started my Audible membership thanks to an offer and discovered that Audible Plus is now included. There seems to be loads available in the Plus catalogue that I would listen to. Anyone know when they added the Plus part for UK customers as I didn't notice it when my cancelled my previous subscription about 6 months ago?
About 10 days ago. I've been having a lovely time binge listening!
The catalogue is quite difficult to wade through as typical Audible, the categorising of books seems to be quite erratic, finding a classic in Sci Fi and Mystery for instance. The classic section is very good (I already had quite a few in my library) and they have most of Bryson's books too.
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On 8/11/2021 at 8:24 PM, JonCloke said:
I also have a first edition (unsigned) of the Silmarillion..
I also have a first edition of The Silmarillion and it's worth only slightly more than any other second hand hardback because the print run was huge.
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Or listen to Victorian literature on Audible or any of the other talking book sites. As someone said elsewhere Victorian literature was made for reading aloud, I didn't like Trollope at all before I discovered him on Audible now I'm addicted. I'll be moving on to Dickens soon (I still have a hang up about reading him from having being made to plough through David Copperfield when I was 8).
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The Perfect Lie by Jo Spain is 99p/cents on Amazon Uk and France and Kobo UK. It's a real page turner, one of her best.
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There's an art to translation, one which I don't have at all. The translator can either translate literally or try to give a flavour of the original. A few years ago my book group read Phillipe Claudel's Les Ames Grises (Grey Souls) which has two different translators, one English, one American. One stuck very closely to the original which is written in a rather jerky, colloquial style, the other was far more poetic in its phrasing and depending on which version we'd read we had very different reactions.
The same book group also read Anna Karenina and I think that among 10 of us there were 7 different translations (mine was awful!) and goodness some were leaden, usually the ones that tried to stick too closely to the original Russian phrasing.
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Jodie is a wonderful actor but she hasn't nailed the doctor imo. I have no idea if it's her interpretation or the script but she's come over as ditsy and infuriatingly girly - just what you don't want for the doctor. Add that to generally dull story lines and I lost interest. ( Writing as someone who is old enough to have been watching when the Daleks first invaded London - from behind the safety of the sofa - and has been an avid watcher ever since.)
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The Widows of Malabar Hill - Sujata Massey
It's 1921, Perveen Mistry is Bombay's only female lawyer. Although she isn't officially allowed to practice she assists her father, and works on cases where a woman is needed, such as this one involving the inheritance of three Muslim widows who keep purdah.
This book really works on several levels, it's a good mystery, it has an engaging heroine, it paints an evocative picture of Bombay at the time and it gently but persistently shines a light on how difficult life could be for women in those days. And as Perveen comes from a Zoroastrian family there's lots of fascinating information about that too.
It's a light breezy read, great fun and I thoroughly recommend it
V2 - Robert Harris
Like Munich, Robert Harris has taken real life events, added a dollop of fictional characters, put them into a tight time frame and crafted them all into a thriller. This time it's about the efforts to destroy the launching pads for the V2 rockets which were deadly, disastrous for morale and impossible to shoot down in the air, unlike the V1s. Funnily enough though there are books and programmes made about the V1s or doodlebugs and the raids on Pennemunde to bomb the launch pads there isn't much about V2s.
I found it absolutely fascinating and read it straight through, it doesn't have a strictly linear plot line which might annoy some people and follows the fictional Dr Rudi Graf near the Hague, chief engineer at the launch site and friend of von Braun who actually developed the V2, from the early 1930s and the beginning of the rocket's developement and Kay Caton-Walsh, a WAAF officer, one of a team of female mathematicians who are trying to plot where the rockets are being launched from so the RAF can launch a raid. The two don't meet though their stories intertwine.
Robert Harris wrote this in 14 weeks during lockdown and I feel that the speed of his writing shows in places, this book lacks the richness of detail and character that made Conclave, Munich and especially An Officer and A Spy such exceptional reads but even so it's still very good indeed.
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I'll be reading Mary Lawson, she was already on my wish list.
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I may break a long standing habit and actually watch some of the tour this afternoon as it's going through our town. As it's the first properly sunny day for ages and everyone is pulling out all the stops with places to eat and drink, entertainments and fireworks later the place will be packed so I'll get the bird's eye view on the telly.
Framley Parsonage
in The Classics
Posted
I find him distinctly irritating!