Good reads
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rowan
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Re: Good reads
Nearly finished Saramago's 'The Gospel According to Jesus Christ' - and wouldn't recommend it. I'm not even sure why he bothered to write it. Unless I've missed something, the story simply tries to recreate the Biblical account with more detail and practical explanation, though without offering anything particularly imaginative or thought-provoking. Not exactly a masterpiece, nor even an original idea.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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SerjeantWildgoose
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Re: Good reads
Tom Kettle's The Ways of War. I must begin this review with an admission; I have for some several years been fascinated by the tragedy of Tom Kettle. A committed Irish nationalist, he was in Belgium in the summer of 1914 as the Home Rule crisis in Ireland appeared to be edging ever closer to civil war. His purpose was to procure weapons for the nationalist Irish Volunteers, but while there he witnessed first-hand the brutality of the German invasion. He determined to join the allies in fighting the scourge of aggressive Prussianism and for an Irishman that meant joining the British Army, and in Kettle's case a battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
Despite being a member of parliament with a great deal to offer to the General Staff, Kettle chose to remain with his battalion until his death in the 16th (Irish) Division's successful attack on Ginchy in September 1916.
The Ways of War is not a memoire or diary of the trenches, though the opening chapter is a posthumous biographical sketch written by his widow. The remaining chapters are essays of varying length in which Kettle sets down the case for fighting a war against Prussian aggression and brutal expansionism. For any serious student of the Great War these essays offer a contemporaneous and therefore extremely valuable view that was shaped by the information available and the emotions prevailing at the time. It is refreshing to study arguments that have not been constantly turned over by the tired ploughs of revisionists and reactionaries.
My copy of the 1917 edition was originally owned and read by another soldier of the 16th Division in France in January 1918. His marginal notes are often as moving as Kettle's script. When Kettle's widow writes of the engagements at Guillemont and Ginchy, the reader has simply written, "I remember very well these two places." In early July this year, 2 months shy of the Centenary, I walked both of these battlefields. That note contains, for me, volumes of courage, horror and sacrifice.
As an officer in the last remaining Irish Line Infantry regiment of the British Army, I daily wonder at the service of proud and committed Irishmen who have served in the ranks of my Regiment and its antecedents over three and a quarter centuries. Some have been fortunate, but most of us have seen the ugly side of soldiering - and yet we serve. Kettle talks of this towards the end of The Ways of War when he says, 'Truly the scourge of war is more terrible, more Apocalyptic in its horror, than even the most active imagination could have pictured. When the time comes to write down in every country a plain record of it, with its wounds and weariness, the flesh-stabbing, and bone-pulverisisng, and lunacies, and rats and mice and maggots, and all the crawling festerment of battlefields, two landmarks in human progress will be reached. The world will for the first time understand the nobility, beyond all phrase, of soldiers, and it will understand also the foulness, beyond all phrase, of those who compel them into war.'
Spectemur Agendo
Despite being a member of parliament with a great deal to offer to the General Staff, Kettle chose to remain with his battalion until his death in the 16th (Irish) Division's successful attack on Ginchy in September 1916.
The Ways of War is not a memoire or diary of the trenches, though the opening chapter is a posthumous biographical sketch written by his widow. The remaining chapters are essays of varying length in which Kettle sets down the case for fighting a war against Prussian aggression and brutal expansionism. For any serious student of the Great War these essays offer a contemporaneous and therefore extremely valuable view that was shaped by the information available and the emotions prevailing at the time. It is refreshing to study arguments that have not been constantly turned over by the tired ploughs of revisionists and reactionaries.
My copy of the 1917 edition was originally owned and read by another soldier of the 16th Division in France in January 1918. His marginal notes are often as moving as Kettle's script. When Kettle's widow writes of the engagements at Guillemont and Ginchy, the reader has simply written, "I remember very well these two places." In early July this year, 2 months shy of the Centenary, I walked both of these battlefields. That note contains, for me, volumes of courage, horror and sacrifice.
As an officer in the last remaining Irish Line Infantry regiment of the British Army, I daily wonder at the service of proud and committed Irishmen who have served in the ranks of my Regiment and its antecedents over three and a quarter centuries. Some have been fortunate, but most of us have seen the ugly side of soldiering - and yet we serve. Kettle talks of this towards the end of The Ways of War when he says, 'Truly the scourge of war is more terrible, more Apocalyptic in its horror, than even the most active imagination could have pictured. When the time comes to write down in every country a plain record of it, with its wounds and weariness, the flesh-stabbing, and bone-pulverisisng, and lunacies, and rats and mice and maggots, and all the crawling festerment of battlefields, two landmarks in human progress will be reached. The world will for the first time understand the nobility, beyond all phrase, of soldiers, and it will understand also the foulness, beyond all phrase, of those who compel them into war.'
Spectemur Agendo
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rowan
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Re: Good reads
Prussian? You'll have to explain this to me. What's the difference between Germany & Prussia and how can the German army of WWI be described as Prussian?
Also, I have to say that I don't regard the Germans as having been the bad guys in WWI. At least, not the only bad guys. From everything I've read about that barbaric and ultimately tragic event, it was simply the almost inevitable culmination of the Great Game and mad scramble for colonies, with the crumbling Ottoman territories beckoning, and all major parties were more or less equally at fault.
Also, I have to say that I don't regard the Germans as having been the bad guys in WWI. At least, not the only bad guys. From everything I've read about that barbaric and ultimately tragic event, it was simply the almost inevitable culmination of the Great Game and mad scramble for colonies, with the crumbling Ottoman territories beckoning, and all major parties were more or less equally at fault.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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SerjeantWildgoose
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Re: Good reads
Well, where to start?
In 1914 Germany was the youngest of the so-called great powers; 40 years earlier it was Prussia that defeated France to unify the German states into a single Bismarkian entity under a Prussian Kaiser (Conveniently swiping chunks of Denmark and Poland along with Alsace and Lorraine in the process). I lift the references to Prussia and Prussianism directly from Kettle and it would not be unusual for a man of the time to consider Prussia to be the dominant state in this recent amalgamation. As I say in my review, this is a contemporaneous account - an opinion born without the corrupting midwifery of hind-sight and revisionism.
As for the causes of the Great War, I don't buy into the inevitability case (Several similar crises had been averted through diplomatic maneuvering during the previous 20 years, so why not this one?), nor the case of the so-called Sleepwalkers (Although Chris Clark's book of that name is a cracking if not wholly convincing piece of literary history). Having studied the Great War, and particularly its causes, at degree level and through 30-odd years of pretty compulsive interest, I do see errors of judgement on the part of the French, British and slightly more so the Russians and Serbs. However, they were all responding to the circumstances of Austria- Hungarian and German aggression - and reckless, informed aggression at that. Vienna chose the assassinations in Sarajevo for its causus belli and wanted not only to hand out a lesson to the nuisance but nascent state of Serbia (Whose official links to the Bosnian separatists who assassinated Ferdinand were few and hardly at the highest levels) but to effectively strip the Serbs of their sovereignty and reduce Belgrade to a vassal. Vienna's position was regarded at the time as going so far beyond the accepted boundaries of statesmanship that the dissolution of Serbia had to be her obvious intent. To imagine that Russia would idly sit on her hands while her arch-rival played a card that would shatter the balance of power in the Balkans (Already made fragile by Austria's earlier annexation of Bosnia) was reckless in the extreme and a risk that Austria- Hungary seems to have weighed far too lightly.
I am convinced by the weight of historical evidence that Vienna would not have taken this position had it not been for the assurances from Berlin and Potsdam that Germany would stand by her no matter what. This, too, was at the very least a reckless gamble on the part of Germany. The Schlieffen Plan (Germany's only military strategy and one that involved the invasions of Luxembourg, Belgium, France and Russia) meant that war with Russia, the inevitable outcome of the mobilisations that must follow an Austrian assault on Serbia, must also involve war with France and the violation of Belgian neutrality. No military or diplomatic strategist worth his pay packet could possibly imagine that maritime and imperial Britain could allow France - and particularly the channel ports - to be over-run by her rival in the naval arms race. All of this is clear to those of us who have enjoyed the balance brought by the mountain of reasoned and academic argument from the likes of AJP Taylor, Klaus Fischer and more recently Koch, Strachan, Sheffield, Beckett, MacMillan et al (Not to mention the ill-informed and maliciously motivated crap devised by the likes of LLoyd-George and Fergusson's deliberately controversial nonsense), but the evidence is overwhelming to suggest that the Germans were aware of these risks at the time and took the gamble anyway.
Was it a gamble that failed or a deliberate policy to ignite a European war? I tend towards the latter view simply because power in Germany in 1914 was held by the militarists and the balance of European military capability was shifting dramatically to Germany's detriment. French and particularly Russian defensive military capabilities were increasing at a rapid pace (France's extension of compulsory military service from 2 to 3 years would soon give her army numerical superiority over the Germans, while the expansion of Russian railways on the back of huge French investment would considerably reduce the time needed to mobilise Russia's vast army) and by 1917 the military advantages upon which the Schlieffen Plan was entirely dependent would have disappeared. For the German chiefs of staff it had to be war in 1914 or not at all. In my view the Kaiser and his General Staff provoked, through Viennese proxy, the crisis of 1914 and having done so deliberately set about to thwart the diplomatic efforts of others to avert it.
This is a debate that has filled millions of pages and I can't pretend to have read but a fraction of them. But I pride myself on taking in a wide balance of view before coming to my own conclusions. Happy to recommend some pretty superb reading if you're interested but I warn you, it can consume every reading moment.
In 1914 Germany was the youngest of the so-called great powers; 40 years earlier it was Prussia that defeated France to unify the German states into a single Bismarkian entity under a Prussian Kaiser (Conveniently swiping chunks of Denmark and Poland along with Alsace and Lorraine in the process). I lift the references to Prussia and Prussianism directly from Kettle and it would not be unusual for a man of the time to consider Prussia to be the dominant state in this recent amalgamation. As I say in my review, this is a contemporaneous account - an opinion born without the corrupting midwifery of hind-sight and revisionism.
As for the causes of the Great War, I don't buy into the inevitability case (Several similar crises had been averted through diplomatic maneuvering during the previous 20 years, so why not this one?), nor the case of the so-called Sleepwalkers (Although Chris Clark's book of that name is a cracking if not wholly convincing piece of literary history). Having studied the Great War, and particularly its causes, at degree level and through 30-odd years of pretty compulsive interest, I do see errors of judgement on the part of the French, British and slightly more so the Russians and Serbs. However, they were all responding to the circumstances of Austria- Hungarian and German aggression - and reckless, informed aggression at that. Vienna chose the assassinations in Sarajevo for its causus belli and wanted not only to hand out a lesson to the nuisance but nascent state of Serbia (Whose official links to the Bosnian separatists who assassinated Ferdinand were few and hardly at the highest levels) but to effectively strip the Serbs of their sovereignty and reduce Belgrade to a vassal. Vienna's position was regarded at the time as going so far beyond the accepted boundaries of statesmanship that the dissolution of Serbia had to be her obvious intent. To imagine that Russia would idly sit on her hands while her arch-rival played a card that would shatter the balance of power in the Balkans (Already made fragile by Austria's earlier annexation of Bosnia) was reckless in the extreme and a risk that Austria- Hungary seems to have weighed far too lightly.
I am convinced by the weight of historical evidence that Vienna would not have taken this position had it not been for the assurances from Berlin and Potsdam that Germany would stand by her no matter what. This, too, was at the very least a reckless gamble on the part of Germany. The Schlieffen Plan (Germany's only military strategy and one that involved the invasions of Luxembourg, Belgium, France and Russia) meant that war with Russia, the inevitable outcome of the mobilisations that must follow an Austrian assault on Serbia, must also involve war with France and the violation of Belgian neutrality. No military or diplomatic strategist worth his pay packet could possibly imagine that maritime and imperial Britain could allow France - and particularly the channel ports - to be over-run by her rival in the naval arms race. All of this is clear to those of us who have enjoyed the balance brought by the mountain of reasoned and academic argument from the likes of AJP Taylor, Klaus Fischer and more recently Koch, Strachan, Sheffield, Beckett, MacMillan et al (Not to mention the ill-informed and maliciously motivated crap devised by the likes of LLoyd-George and Fergusson's deliberately controversial nonsense), but the evidence is overwhelming to suggest that the Germans were aware of these risks at the time and took the gamble anyway.
Was it a gamble that failed or a deliberate policy to ignite a European war? I tend towards the latter view simply because power in Germany in 1914 was held by the militarists and the balance of European military capability was shifting dramatically to Germany's detriment. French and particularly Russian defensive military capabilities were increasing at a rapid pace (France's extension of compulsory military service from 2 to 3 years would soon give her army numerical superiority over the Germans, while the expansion of Russian railways on the back of huge French investment would considerably reduce the time needed to mobilise Russia's vast army) and by 1917 the military advantages upon which the Schlieffen Plan was entirely dependent would have disappeared. For the German chiefs of staff it had to be war in 1914 or not at all. In my view the Kaiser and his General Staff provoked, through Viennese proxy, the crisis of 1914 and having done so deliberately set about to thwart the diplomatic efforts of others to avert it.
This is a debate that has filled millions of pages and I can't pretend to have read but a fraction of them. But I pride myself on taking in a wide balance of view before coming to my own conclusions. Happy to recommend some pretty superb reading if you're interested but I warn you, it can consume every reading moment.
Last edited by SerjeantWildgoose on Sat Aug 20, 2016 9:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rowan
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Re: Good reads
Thanks for the explanation. Prussia has always been a slightly confusing issue for me. They seem to have been Germans during WWI a century ago, but Prussians when they defeated Napoleon a century earlier, by most accounts. Anyway, I'm undoubtedly nowhere as well read on the top of WWI as you are, and to be honest it's not a major interest of mine either, but having read plenty of history and literature on other aspects of the era it does seem to me that it was the culmination of the scramble for colonies, with Germany the rising power wanting in on the game, much like China in the modern era. Indeed, the main reason the Europeans themselves kept the Sick Man of Europe on life support for so long was they knew precisely what the consequences of an Ottoman collapse would mean. I think the Young Turk revolution and other events within the Sublime Porte toward the end of the 19th century had made this inevitable, while the Balkans Wars, which stripped the Ottomans of most of their remaining European territory, immediately preceded WWI.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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SerjeantWildgoose
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Re: Good reads
rowan wrote:... but Prussians when they defeated Napoleon a century earlier, by most accounts.
Not by mine! Prussia's record against Napoleon was one of almost persistent defeat.
Had it not been for Blucher's timely arrival on the sodden horizon Waterloo might well have been lost to the allies, but that hardly amounts to the Prussians defeating Napoleon - a record to which Wellington can more consistently and rightfully lay claim.
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rowan
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Re: Good reads
Well, I seem to recall (reading) it was a Blucher-Wellington team effort at the Battle of Waterloo, with the Dutch and others involved too. At least, that's according to Victor Hugo - who also noted the French folly of sending the cavalry charging into a muddy field, where their artillery got hopelessly bogged down...
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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SerjeantWildgoose
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Re: Good reads
The Waterloo campaign comprised, in the main, of 3 battles. On the 16th of June the French left wing under Ney managed to hold Wellington at Quatre Bras, while Napoleon with the bulk of the army turned on Blucher's Prussians and handed them a thorough beating at Ligny. Leaving Marshal Grouchy in pursuit of Blucher and under orders not to allow him to marry up with Wellington, Napoleon turned to the main allied army which had marched to Waterloo and to ground that Wellington had chosen many months before.
The actual battle of Waterloo was fought almost wholly between Napoleon's French and Wellington's army. Even discounting the King's German Legion, Wellington had more than a corps each of Dutch, Brunswickers and Hanoverians under his command; the bulk of his command was not British.
As history now teaches us, Waterloo was a close run thing with the result in the balance right up until early evening when Grouchy's failure to keep his wing in between Blucher and Wellington allowed the Prussians to make an appearance on the battlefield. Although only a corps of the Prussians was actually engaged at Waterloo, the appearance of Blucher on his exhausted flank nevertheless tipped the balance and Napoleon, facing the inevitability of defeat, skedaddled leaving command of the French army to Soult.
I would say that the Waterloo campaign was a joint effort, but the actual battle was Wellington's victory.
The actual battle of Waterloo was fought almost wholly between Napoleon's French and Wellington's army. Even discounting the King's German Legion, Wellington had more than a corps each of Dutch, Brunswickers and Hanoverians under his command; the bulk of his command was not British.
As history now teaches us, Waterloo was a close run thing with the result in the balance right up until early evening when Grouchy's failure to keep his wing in between Blucher and Wellington allowed the Prussians to make an appearance on the battlefield. Although only a corps of the Prussians was actually engaged at Waterloo, the appearance of Blucher on his exhausted flank nevertheless tipped the balance and Napoleon, facing the inevitability of defeat, skedaddled leaving command of the French army to Soult.
I would say that the Waterloo campaign was a joint effort, but the actual battle was Wellington's victory.
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switchskier
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Re: Good reads
Defeat of Napolean probably lies ultimately with Alexander 2nd. I've recently finished Peter Frankopans new book on the Silk Road which contains an interesting few chapters on how the rise of Russian power and threat to India pushed the British to align themselves with Russia as the concert of europe declined.SerjeantWildgoose wrote:rowan wrote:... but Prussians when they defeated Napoleon a century earlier, by most accounts.
Not by mine! Prussia's record against Napoleon was one of almost persistent defeat.
Had it not been for Blucher's timely arrival on the sodden horizon Waterloo might well have been lost to the allies, but that hardly amounts to the Prussians defeating Napoleon - a record to which Wellington can more consistently and rightfully lay claim.
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rowan
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Re: Good reads
Excellent point. The beginning of the end for both Napoleon and Hitler came with a failed campaign in Eastern Europe. The Western Europeans basically just finished them off (with the help of America et al in the latter case).
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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SerjeantWildgoose
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Re: Good reads
I think that General Winter had more to do with the defeat of La Grande Armee than Alexander; the Russians may well have driven Napoleon all the way back to the gates of Paris, but it was a completely exhausted army that they drove.
General Winter played a major part in the defeat of Hitler's armies, too. Barbarossa was Hitler's greatest strategic error, compounded by the delay he imposed while wrapping up the Balkan and Greek campaigns. In this case, however, I would say that there was plenty of fight left in the German army and it was Zukov who did the hard fighting. No argument from me that it was the Russians who beat Hitler; not so sure they deserve the credit for Napoleon.
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General Winter played a major part in the defeat of Hitler's armies, too. Barbarossa was Hitler's greatest strategic error, compounded by the delay he imposed while wrapping up the Balkan and Greek campaigns. In this case, however, I would say that there was plenty of fight left in the German army and it was Zukov who did the hard fighting. No argument from me that it was the Russians who beat Hitler; not so sure they deserve the credit for Napoleon.
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switchskier
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Re: Good reads
Might be worth starting a seperate thread for it (as long as it stays historical). Winter undoubtedly played a part in destroying the Grande Armee but the Russians made certain to deny Napolean the opportunity for a decisive battle until the cold weather was just about to arrive. Anyways by the time Alexander reached Paris his army had been drilled and seasoned into the most powerful military force in the world, the war was a catalyst to modernize.SerjeantWildgoose wrote:I think that General Winter had more to do with the defeat of La Grande Armee than Alexander; the Russians may well have driven Napoleon all the way back to the gates of Paris, but it was a completely exhausted army that they drove.
General Winter played a major part in the defeat of Hitler's armies, too. Barbarossa was Hitler's greatest strategic error, compounded by the delay he imposed while wrapping up the Balkan and Greek campaigns. In this case, however, I would say that there was plenty of fight left in the German army and it was Zukov who did the hard fighting. No argument from me that it was the Russians who beat Hitler; not so sure they deserve the credit for Napoleon.
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SerjeantWildgoose
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Re: Good reads
Eric Newby's Love and War in the Apennines. This is a cracking memoir of an escaped POW's life on the run in Italy following the Italian capitulation and subsequent occupation by the Germans. Perhaps better known for his Walk in the Hindu Kush, this is still a beautiful piece of writing and so often makes you wonder at how extraordinary the ordinary lives of people were in those days.
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rowan
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Re: Good reads
Oops, just deleted my own post by accident. Don't worry. It wasn't important 
Last edited by rowan on Sat Sep 17, 2016 8:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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Lizard
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Re: Good reads
I just won a copy of Richie McCaw's coffee table book "148"
I haven't read it yet, but it's bloody heavy.
I haven't read it yet, but it's bloody heavy.
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SerjeantWildgoose
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Re: Good reads
... and no doubt lingering a foot or so offside?Lizard wrote:I just won a copy of Richie McCaw's coffee table book "148"
I haven't read it yet, but it's bloody heavy.
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rowan
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Re: Good reads
Interesting list. I've read about half these and would certainly agree with most of those choices, although it is decidely Euro-America-centric:
Anna Akhmatova – Poem without a Hero
Vasily Aksyonov – The Burn
Leonid Andreyev – The Life of Man, The Black Masks
Pavel Antokolsky – François Villon
Augustine of Hippo – Confessions
Viktor Astafyev – The Last Respect
Isaac Babel – Red Cavalry
Honoré de Balzac – Le Père Goriot
Andrei Bely – Petersburg
Alexander Blok – Lyric Poems
Joseph Brodsky – A Part of Speech
Mikhail Bulgakov – Master and Margarita
Ivan Bunin – Dark Avenues
Vasil Bykov – The Dead Feel No Pain, To Live Till Sunrise
Truman Capote – The Grass Harp, Short Stories
Lewis Carroll – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Anton Chekhov – The Duel
G.K. Chesterton – The Man Who Was Thursday
Charles De Coster – The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel
Dante – The Divine Comedy
Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
Charles Dickens – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Fyodor Dostoevsky – Demons
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Alexandre Dumas – La Reine Margot
William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
Johann Wolfgang Goethe – Faust
Nikolai Gogol – Dead Souls
Maxim Gorky – Mother Kemsky, Notes from My Diary
Jaroslav Hašek – The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk
Ernest Hemingway – The Fifth Column and First Forty-Nine Stories, The Old Man and the Sea
E.T.A. Hoffmann – The Night Pieces
Homer – The Odyssey
Horace – Odes
Henrik Ibsen – Peer Gynt
Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov – The Twelve Chairs, The Little Golden Calf
Tove Jansson – Comet in Moominland. The Magician's Hat. Moominpappa at Sea
James Joyce – Ulysses
Franz Kafka – The Castle
Valentin Kataev – The Grass of Oblivion
Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book, Poems
Alexander Kuprin – The Star of Solomon
Yury Krymov – The Tanker "Derbent"
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
Leonid Leonov – The Thief
Mikhail Lermontov – A Hero of Our Time
Osip Mandelstam – Poems, Fourth Prose
Thomas Mann – Doctor Faustus
Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
W. Somerset Maugham – The Moon and Sixpence
Guy de Maupassant – Novellas
Daphne du Maurier – My Cousin Rachel
Vladimir Mayakovsky – About This
Herman Melville – Moby Dick
Dmitry Merezhkovsky – Peter and Alexis
Molière – Tartuffe
Yuri Nagibin – Daphne and Chloe - Eras of the Personality Cult, Libertarianism, Stagnation
Vladimir Nabokov – Pale Fire
Nikolay Nekrasov – Women in Russian Villages
The New Testament
Flannery O'Connor – Short Stories
Bulat Okudzhava – Travels of the Dilettantes
Yury Olesha - Diaries ("Книга прощания")
Ovid – Metamorphoses
Leonid Panteleyev, Grigori Belykh – The Republic of ShKID
Boris Pasternak – Spektorsky
Victor Pelevin – The Life of Insects, Numbers
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya – The Number One
Andrei Platonov – The Epifan Locks
Edgar Allan Poe – Short Stories and Novels
Alexander Pushkin – Eugene Onegin
Erich Maria Remarque – The Night in Lisbon
Juan Rulfo – Pedro Páramo
J. D. Salinger – Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin – The History of a Town
Evgeny Schwartz – Plays
William Shakespeare – Hamlet
Alexander Sharov – Fairy Tales
Mikhail Sholokhov – And Quiet Flows the Don
Vasily Shukshin - Characters
Alexander Solzhenitsyn – Cancer Ward
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Far Rainbow, Snail on the Slope, Roadside Picnic
William Styron – Set This House on Fire
Jonathan Swift – Gulliver's Travels
Teffi – Short Stories, Memories
Alexei Tolstoy – The Adventures of Nevzorov, or IBIKUS
Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
Yury Trifonov – Moscow Novellas
Marina Tsvetaeva – The Tale of Sonechka
Ivan Turgenev – Fathers and Sons
Aleksandr Tvardovsky – Vasili Tyorkin
Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Yuri Tynyanov – The Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar
Mikhail Uspensky - A place where we don't find ourselves ("Там где нас нет")
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray
Nikolay Zabolotsky – Columns, Poems
Émile Zola – The Fortune of the Rougons
Alexander Zhitinsky – Lost House
Mikhail Zoshchenko - Short Stories, Before Sunrise
http://rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/08 ... try_624171
Anna Akhmatova – Poem without a Hero
Vasily Aksyonov – The Burn
Leonid Andreyev – The Life of Man, The Black Masks
Pavel Antokolsky – François Villon
Augustine of Hippo – Confessions
Viktor Astafyev – The Last Respect
Isaac Babel – Red Cavalry
Honoré de Balzac – Le Père Goriot
Andrei Bely – Petersburg
Alexander Blok – Lyric Poems
Joseph Brodsky – A Part of Speech
Mikhail Bulgakov – Master and Margarita
Ivan Bunin – Dark Avenues
Vasil Bykov – The Dead Feel No Pain, To Live Till Sunrise
Truman Capote – The Grass Harp, Short Stories
Lewis Carroll – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Anton Chekhov – The Duel
G.K. Chesterton – The Man Who Was Thursday
Charles De Coster – The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel
Dante – The Divine Comedy
Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
Charles Dickens – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Fyodor Dostoevsky – Demons
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Alexandre Dumas – La Reine Margot
William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
Johann Wolfgang Goethe – Faust
Nikolai Gogol – Dead Souls
Maxim Gorky – Mother Kemsky, Notes from My Diary
Jaroslav Hašek – The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk
Ernest Hemingway – The Fifth Column and First Forty-Nine Stories, The Old Man and the Sea
E.T.A. Hoffmann – The Night Pieces
Homer – The Odyssey
Horace – Odes
Henrik Ibsen – Peer Gynt
Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov – The Twelve Chairs, The Little Golden Calf
Tove Jansson – Comet in Moominland. The Magician's Hat. Moominpappa at Sea
James Joyce – Ulysses
Franz Kafka – The Castle
Valentin Kataev – The Grass of Oblivion
Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book, Poems
Alexander Kuprin – The Star of Solomon
Yury Krymov – The Tanker "Derbent"
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
Leonid Leonov – The Thief
Mikhail Lermontov – A Hero of Our Time
Osip Mandelstam – Poems, Fourth Prose
Thomas Mann – Doctor Faustus
Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
W. Somerset Maugham – The Moon and Sixpence
Guy de Maupassant – Novellas
Daphne du Maurier – My Cousin Rachel
Vladimir Mayakovsky – About This
Herman Melville – Moby Dick
Dmitry Merezhkovsky – Peter and Alexis
Molière – Tartuffe
Yuri Nagibin – Daphne and Chloe - Eras of the Personality Cult, Libertarianism, Stagnation
Vladimir Nabokov – Pale Fire
Nikolay Nekrasov – Women in Russian Villages
The New Testament
Flannery O'Connor – Short Stories
Bulat Okudzhava – Travels of the Dilettantes
Yury Olesha - Diaries ("Книга прощания")
Ovid – Metamorphoses
Leonid Panteleyev, Grigori Belykh – The Republic of ShKID
Boris Pasternak – Spektorsky
Victor Pelevin – The Life of Insects, Numbers
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya – The Number One
Andrei Platonov – The Epifan Locks
Edgar Allan Poe – Short Stories and Novels
Alexander Pushkin – Eugene Onegin
Erich Maria Remarque – The Night in Lisbon
Juan Rulfo – Pedro Páramo
J. D. Salinger – Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin – The History of a Town
Evgeny Schwartz – Plays
William Shakespeare – Hamlet
Alexander Sharov – Fairy Tales
Mikhail Sholokhov – And Quiet Flows the Don
Vasily Shukshin - Characters
Alexander Solzhenitsyn – Cancer Ward
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Far Rainbow, Snail on the Slope, Roadside Picnic
William Styron – Set This House on Fire
Jonathan Swift – Gulliver's Travels
Teffi – Short Stories, Memories
Alexei Tolstoy – The Adventures of Nevzorov, or IBIKUS
Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
Yury Trifonov – Moscow Novellas
Marina Tsvetaeva – The Tale of Sonechka
Ivan Turgenev – Fathers and Sons
Aleksandr Tvardovsky – Vasili Tyorkin
Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Yuri Tynyanov – The Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar
Mikhail Uspensky - A place where we don't find ourselves ("Там где нас нет")
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray
Nikolay Zabolotsky – Columns, Poems
Émile Zola – The Fortune of the Rougons
Alexander Zhitinsky – Lost House
Mikhail Zoshchenko - Short Stories, Before Sunrise
http://rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/08 ... try_624171
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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switchskier
- Posts: 2290
- Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2016 3:10 pm
Re: Good reads
Bit of a strange list for me. Seems to delight in choosing the less famous novel by many authors in a bit of an attempt to be obscure and intellectual. Surprised at Confessions of Augustine rather than a Tale of Two Cities, Edwin Drood as the best Dickens (though I'm not a fan so who knows), the Hemmingway, Dumas, Du Maurier and Kafka choices (and to a lesser extent Kipling and Solhenitzyen) and choosing the New Testemant is just strange. Not picking Dr Zhivago however in favour of Spektorsky is baffling however.rowan wrote:Interesting list. I've read about half these and would certainly agree with most of those choices, although it is decidely Euro-America-centric:
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rowan
- Posts: 7750
- Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:21 pm
- Location: Istanbul
Re: Good reads
Good point. Edwin Drood might be the only Dickens novel I haven't read - probably because he kicked the bucket in the middle and never finished it.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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francoisfou
- Posts: 2471
- Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2016 7:01 pm
- Location: Haute-Garonne
Re: Good reads
I have nearly finished "The Malay Archipelago", by Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist/tropical biologist of the same era as Charles Darwin.
The book is his fascinating narrative of his exploration of SE Asia from Singapore to New Guinea over an eight year period from 1854 to 1862.
It is rather a long book but interest is maintained throughout as he describes the landscapes, wildlife and the different peoples of SE Asia.
Wallace may not have had the same degree of fame as Charles Darwin but his contribution to the world's understanding of evolution is of an equal standing.
The book is his fascinating narrative of his exploration of SE Asia from Singapore to New Guinea over an eight year period from 1854 to 1862.
It is rather a long book but interest is maintained throughout as he describes the landscapes, wildlife and the different peoples of SE Asia.
Wallace may not have had the same degree of fame as Charles Darwin but his contribution to the world's understanding of evolution is of an equal standing.
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rowan
- Posts: 7750
- Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:21 pm
- Location: Istanbul
Re: Good reads
Sounds fascinating. Does he delve back into ancient history and anthropology at all, and discuss the great migration down from the north, which created a hybrid race who set out into the Pacific several thousand years ago and even managed to reach Madagascar - which is named after the archipelago (Malagasy)?
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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francoisfou
- Posts: 2471
- Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2016 7:01 pm
- Location: Haute-Garonne
Re: Good reads
No,for example, he concentrates on the orgins of the wildlife and explains the reasons why certain species are exclusive to a particular island or group of islands, whether their origins are from Australia or Asia, as there is natural boundary that prevents species from migrating from one zone to another. In 1859 (the same year that Darwin's "On the Origin of Species was published) he named this boundary "the Wallace line" that runs between Borneo and Bali (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line). In its southernmost extemity the line separates Bali and Lombock (22 miles of sea - like the English Channel), but the sea was so deep that when the Australian land mass extended towards Asia when sea levels were 110 metres lower than today, very few species were able to migrate across the line - with the exception of a few birds and bats.
It's a region I visited in early 2014 so I find it particularly fascinating.
It's a region I visited in early 2014 so I find it particularly fascinating.
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rowan
- Posts: 7750
- Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:21 pm
- Location: Istanbul
Re: Good reads
Interesting. Yes, at the height of the last Ice Age sea levels were up to 300m lower than today, exposing a land-bridge between Siberia and Alaska, making a giant peninsula of the Caribbean Islands, and turning Indonesia into a sub-continent - though only man (with his dog, later the dingo) was able to find his way across to New Guinea & Australia . . .
Anyway, sounds like you'd enjoy Jared Diamond's books, if you're not familiar with them already.
Anyway, sounds like you'd enjoy Jared Diamond's books, if you're not familiar with them already.
If they're good enough to play at World Cups, why not in between?
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francoisfou
- Posts: 2471
- Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2016 7:01 pm
- Location: Haute-Garonne
Re: Good reads
Strangely enough, I bought "Guns, Germs and Steel" on the same day as "The Malay Archipelago", and it will be among my Autumn list of books to read!
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SerjeantWildgoose
- Posts: 2162
- Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:31 pm
Re: Good reads
Eric Ambler's Epitaph for a Spy. Meh! Touted as a spy thriller, there is little of real interest in this book other than the reflection of the fears of the time it was written (1938). As thrillers go, it was remarkably lacking in thrills and while I ploughed on to the end it was through no real sense of wanting to know how it would turn out, but rather a need not to give up on such a short book.
As it turns out, there is more Agatha Christie than Le Carré about Epitaph for a Spy. A dozen suspects gathered together in a smart 30s hotel, each with a story that is revealed by inches to cast them in the shadow of doubt and then at the end of 200 pages the pirate turns out to be the bloke stood in the corner all along with the wooden leg, the eye patch and parrot shyte on his shoulder.
As it turns out, there is more Agatha Christie than Le Carré about Epitaph for a Spy. A dozen suspects gathered together in a smart 30s hotel, each with a story that is revealed by inches to cast them in the shadow of doubt and then at the end of 200 pages the pirate turns out to be the bloke stood in the corner all along with the wooden leg, the eye patch and parrot shyte on his shoulder.
Idle Feck