Winstons books Sheffield and Chesterfield

Well I did review yesterday The boy who stole Attila’s horse which was one of three books I brought earlier this week from Sheffield as I have been off this week and we both had monday off we went for the day and as there waterstones has a slightly better selection of translated books I always love a look round.

First up is a trilogy of Novels by Samuel Beckett , which mix’s my wanting to read more Irish fiction and still reading translation add to this I see that World republic of letters have two translation of the same book out a Gaelic classic , I feel I be reading both Irish lit and Translated books. The second book is A school for Fools by Sasha Sokolov, which grabbed me for two reason first it is from NYRB classic a name I trust the other reason is a quote on the back if James Joyce had written in russian this would be the last two chapters of Ulysses.Another for my russian list this year.

Then I meet Amanda after work yesterday and we spent a few hours in town I found three books, the first two in Oxfam Two Adolescents by Alberto Moravia is made up of two novella Agostino and Disobedience , I remember someone  reviewing last year  the first novella Disobedience , which is a NYRB classic book now. The second book is a book by Roland Barthes on how myths are made and semiotics have come to me so much.

Strange how books I get connect in some way talking Myth and semiotics, the one writer we may think of is Umberto Eco and I happen to get this Baudlino is the one of two novels by him I don’t own I haven;t Numero Zero but I have read it over christmas but I want to have all his books on my shelves.

What books have you brought recently ?

 

 

The boy whole Stole Attila’s horse by Iván Repila

The boy who stole Attila’s horse by Iván Repila

Spanish fiction

Original title El niño que robó el caballo de Atila

Translator – Sophie Hughes

Source personnel copy

I was looking at some of the books that came out last year that may be on the man booker radar and this one I remember when it appeared last year seemed to get a number of good reviews in the papers and around the web so when I was in Sheffield earlier this week I decide to buy myself a copy to read. This is Ivan Repila second book in Spanish but his first to be translated to English. I can see why it may have been chosen as the first by him to be translated into english it has a certain universal nature to the story. A book that remind me so much of a Japanese film.

It looks impossible to get out, he says. And also: “But we’ll get out.”

To the north, the forest borders the mountain range and is surrounded by lakes so big they look like oceans. In the centre of the forest is a well. The well is roughly seven metres deep and its uneven walls are a bank of damp earth and roots, which tapers at the mouth and widens at the base like and empty pyramid with no tip.

The impossible to get out of well they are in, these are the opening lines of the book .

The book is the story of two brother Small and Big. They are stuck in the bottom of a well, we are given no idea how the pair arrived there. What follows in this short novel is the struggle to survive and the slow madness that comes to them both as they are stuck down this hole. Repila has a way of the horrific days and months of there being stuck there seem poetic in a brutal nature. As the bigger brother starts to try to keep small alive. This seen remind me of the Grave of the fireflies an early Studio Ghibli film that like this film follows siblings in that case a brother and sister , but we see the same brutal and sad demise as the two retreat to a small cave by a river and feed on the insects around them . (this is the one film I won’t watch again it is so sad be warned this one rather like this book can rip your heart out )

Small is so hungry that he can no longer control his body. He baulks, puts out his hand, into which Big places a colossal maggot, as juicy as a ripe apple.

“Abuser. Nasty pig. I hate you”

Finally he eats. He chews the gelatinous fibre of the maggot a dozen times and the bitter juice that oozes from it dances on his tongue. He drools like a hungry dog. It doesn’t taste of chicken: It’s better than chicken he bursts into tears like the little boy that he was.

“You’re the best. I love you. I love you.”

The feast goes on all night.

This scene and a few others reming me of the film The grave of the fireflies, I also like the chicken line here!

Replia has chosen two strange quotes at the start of the book one from Margaret Thatcher (why anyone would quote her is beside me ) About free trade and being rich and poor . The a Brecht quote from his poem To posterity about death and uprisings. I think we are meant to read Big and small as a wider story of survival in people and stripping the two lead characters of all identity barring their size has given this a fairy tale feel a timeless nature to the story. I was reminded of another Spanish novel I read last year Out in the Open   another story of human suffering like the two boys in this book, maybe this is a modern take on a Spanish tradition that can be traced back to the books of Cela that take a look at the brutal nature of human life-like his book The family of Pascual Duarte life is brutal for some like big and small only one is destined to come through this ordeal.

Have you read this book ?

The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud

The Meursault investigation by kamel daoud

Algerian fiction

Original title – : Meursault, contre-enquête

Translator – John Cullen

Source – personnel copy (books for Syria from waterstones )

Every year there is a few books in translation that seem to break free of being just in the circle of fans of translated fiction well last year this was one of those books, it made a lot of the end of year lists.It is also the winner of three prize in France. All this from a book that is based in an older book by the French writer Albert Camus  for what kamel Daoud has done is taken part of the story from the novel the Outsider where Meursault the anti-hero of The outsider kills an Arab(that is all we are told even thou this killing is mention as the main character in the book say 26 times the person killed is never mentioned just refered to as the Arab) .Well this is the story of The Arab as told 70 years later by his brother .

I’ll tell you this up front: The other dead man, the murder victim, was my brother. there is nothing left of him only me, Left ti speak in his place, sitting in this bar, waiting for condolences no one’s ever going to offer. Laugh if you want, but this is more or less my mission: I peddle offstage silence , trying to sell my story while theater empties out. As a matter of fact, that’s the reason why I’ve learned to speak this language, and to write it too so I can speak in place or a dead man, ao I can finish his sentences for him.The murder got famous, and his story’s to well written for me to get any ideas about imitating him.

Harum in the bar talking about his brother the dead Arab from the Novel The outsider.

This is the story of Harum , who tries to describe what happened 70 years earlier in the events that lead to the death of his Brother Musa, that killing on a sunny beach in an act of random killing by a French man on a sunny day  in Algeria seventy years ago as the country tried to break free of France. But the story follows harun life after that event as he starts to tell the wider story of post colonialism and in some ways the rise of islam in his country all this is a strange mirror to events that happened in recent years with the Arab spring seen as a freeing of the Arab world, which maybe it is could Daoud have written this book twenty years ago ? But also the heart of this is what has happen in France in the last years with a number of the people involved in the attacks having connection to north africa . A timely story of what scars remain from France’s time in North africa , well any western nation it could easily be india or pakistan the story could have come from a kipling story say .

Oh what a joke! Do you understand now? Do you understand why I laughed the first time I read your hero’s book? there i was , expecting to find my brothers last words between those covers, the description of his breathing, his features, his face , his answers to his murderer: instead I read only two lines about an Arab. the word “Arab ” appears twenty-five times, but not a single name, not once

Camus book doesn’t mention Musa name just calls him an Arab in the novel The outisder .

What Daoud has brilliantly done is taken a small character in a well-known book and given him a real life and a name. I reviewed The secret history of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vasquez , which took a character from the great Latin american novel of Conrad Nostromo and told his story from a native point of view rather like this book flipping the story to tell it from the other angle almost like a reply to the first book . why was Musa just called the Arab was he just the same as those bit part actors in the original Star trek given a red tunic and expected to die with no real name or back story.Daoud highlights what Camus missed the real person. This is the first of a number of books from last year I will be reviewing in the coming weeks as I look forward to the first longlist in the new man booker international coming in March as I try to wrap up some books i missed from the last year.

Have you read any great books based on another novel to start with?

 

One book bookshop how about one book a week book blog?

I was listening to a recent edition of books on the nightstand podcast and they reminded me of a story I had seen a few weeks ago in the guardian again about this Japanese bookstore that has turned choice on its head by choosing one book a week to be  highlighted and sold in its shop and every week the art work events during the week all focus on the one book of that week .Well I was on nights last night and pondered would this work as a way to Blog. By choosing  one book a week.Using that  one book to quote, review, interview the writer / translator / publicist , other ways to connect other  books to the single book, recipes pictures of the places in the book. For example. I have often wondered if there is a way to expand beyond a simple review format without getting to pretensious .But I have want to show a book is  more than just a book. I want to  place it in context with other books and even other media. A way of discovering the writers feelings about the book , also  the readers feeling and also its place in the grand scheme of fiction. I think of how Holmes Mind palace is displayed in the television show  Sherlock. The way ones mind can jump from place to place and your own memories and experience in life and in books form a backbone of a reading. Whilst reading so each reader is on their own journey with a book. I still not sure if this would be overkill or a new and different way to focus on one book a week that gives a single book more of the spotlight but also allows for more focus on each book. I still thinking of this as an idea. Do you think it would work or be overkill for a book ? I do think it may be helpful for a lot of the smaller publishers I review books for to have their book in focus for a week on the blog.

The prone gunman by Jean-Patrick Machette

I was sent this a couple of years ago by the lovely jacqui after I mentioned I hadn’t read manchette and she had two copies of this book. I wonder why it took so long for me to get to Manchette, I have read so many french writers over the years it was only a matter of time before mine and Manchette’s paths crossed. I’m not sure if his last book was best place to start but it left me wanting to work back through his canon in English.

He was tall but not massive, with a calm face, blue eyes, and brown hair that just covered the top of his ears. He wore a reefer, a black sweater, and blue jeans; he had fake Clarks on his feet. He kept his upper body erect, leaning against the right door of the cab, his legs on the bench seat, the soles touching the left door. One would have taken him for thirty or a little more; he was not quite that old. His name was martin Terrier. an ortiges automatic pistol with a redfield silencer rested on his lap .

Martin described on the first page anyone till that last line and the gun with the silencer on it .

Well this what I love about french fiction when it takes a well-known genre here the hard-boiled crime novel ,  the anti-hero , the chase and oh a a rekindled childhood romance, all thrown in a french blended and given that french Je-ne-sa-quoi . I imagined the french films of the era Diva for example which was made in the same year as the book came out. So we have Martin Terrier are hero/anti-hero is a man at the top of his game as an assassin, but he has just done his latest job and returned home to Paris. He has decide to move back to the South of France and settle down with his childhood sweetheart. He tells his employers this is his plan and they want him to do one last job and Martin refuse and has to escape the clutches and shots of the people sent to bring him back in the fold so to speak.So we see him try to get back to the girl and to a past he once had.

“Well it was only dislocated” said the doctor on duty, whose address Terrier had found on a list in the window of a closed pharmacy. “You straightened it out yourself? seriously? ”

“Yes”

“Bravo. You’re a stoic fellow”

According to the doctor, there was no call to put in a cast.He showed terrier how to use an elastic bandage so that the swollen finger would stay completely immobilized.

“I know,”  said Terrier

Terrier is used to repairing himself like this example where he relocates his own finger.

This is a sparse book  all action no real filler , we see how Martin is trying to escape this world. But he is caught in a world he entered ten years earlier as a very young man and grew to the top of his chosen job Killer   and hasn’t fully grasped the game, he is good at the killing but hasn’t grasped that this means he can’t be let go. Terrier is a man who has seen horrors and now want to turn the clock back but you can’t turn that clock back! I was thought back to the books I read as a Teen  My dads thrillers books like  Solo Jack Higgins for example another cat and mouse crime novel involving a hitman and of course day of the jackal both characters have a detachment I felt from Terrier , why go back to a woman he left ten years earlier , she would be gone. This is good Noir a little far-fetched , fun and fast paced if you look over the fact he seems to have struggled with an ending (but that is more than made up for with the first two/thirds of the book. The book was made into a film by Sean Penn, although it seems to have changed the story some what as Martin Terrier is a lot younger than Penn in the book but I may watch it just see how it turned out.

French fiction

La Position du Tireur Couché original title 

Translator – James Brook

Source – personnel copy (gift)

Doing David Bowie’s reading list ?

When David Bowie died this list which I had seen before did the rounds a list of books David drew up a few years ago of a hundred books every one should try to read well. The list has books I have read books I wanted to read and a few I don’t know well I fancy trying to fill this list in I fancy doing a few books a time off this list could change my reading as it is a real mix of books on it. I have eye the 1001 books but that is so huge but this is a nice target and I’m not putting a date on completing the list I have three already under review at the blog which on the page I have made I have indicated I have read. I own about another 15 books of the list. There is three magazines  collection mentioned I shall replace them with other titles conected to Bowie in time. There is this Jake arnott article that has a few books mentioned on it. Have you read any books on this list would you add any Bowie connected books to the list ?

David Bowie’s top 100 must-read books

The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby (2008)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz (2007)
The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard (2007)
Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage (2007)
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters (2002)
The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens (2001)
Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler (1997)
A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes (1997)
The Insult, Rupert Thomson (1996)
Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon (1995)
The Bird Artist, Howard Norman (1994)
Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard (1993)
Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C Danto (1992)
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia (1990)
David Bomberg, Richard Cork (1988)
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick (1986)
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin (1986)
Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd (1985)
Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey (1984)
Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter (1984)
Money, Martin Amis (1984)
White Noise, Don DeLillo (1984)
Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes (1984)
The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White (1984)
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn (1980)
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester (1980)
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (1980)
Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess (1980)
Raw, a “graphix magazine” (1980-91)
Viz, magazine (1979 –)
The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels (1979)
Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz (1978)
In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan (1978)
Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed Malcolm Cowley (1977)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes (1976)
Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Saunders (1975)
Mystery Train, Greil Marcus (1975)
Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara (1974)
Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich (1972)
n Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner (1971) Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky (1971)
The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillett(1970)
The Quest for Christa T, Christa Wolf (1968)
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn (1968)
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg (1967)
Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr (1966)
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (1965)
City of Night, John Rechy (1965)
Herzog, Saul Bellow (1964)
Puckoon, Spike Milligan (1963)
The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford (1963)
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea, Yukio Mishima (1963)
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin (1963)
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (1962)
Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell (1962)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (1961)
Private Eye, magazine (1961 –)
On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding (1961)
Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage (1961)
Strange People, Frank Edwards (1961)
The Divided Self, RD Laing (1960)
All the Emperor’s Horses, David Kidd (1960)
Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse (1959)
The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958)
On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard (1957)
Room at the Top, John Braine (1957)
A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno (1956)
The Outsider, Colin Wilson (1956)
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (1949)
The Street, Ann Petry (1946)
Black Boy, Richard Wright (1945)

 

The prophet of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine

The prophet of Eternal Fjord was a book that arrived late last year and grabbed me straight away from the Jacket Copy. Plus my lack of knowledge of Greenland the main setting for the book, I have  wanted to read a book about Greenland after two things Hearing   the pogues song Greenland whalers that evoked the world of the whalers when a place like Greenland was central to the world for it supplies from the whaling industry  and also  learning a bit about it at school in a project about vikings . So this book seemed the perfect chance to learn a little history of Greenland at a pivotal moment in their history .From a prize-winning Danish novel.This is Kim Leine fourth book and this one won the prestigious Nordic council Literature prize.

The widow has come up here of her own accord, no one forced her. She has beaten the lice from her finest clothes and put them on. She has washed her hair in the urine tub of the communal house and tied it up. Silently observed by her heather cohabitants, she scrapped the sooty grease from her cheeks and consumed the good meal that had been put before her. Then she came up here, carried along by a lightness of step. Now she sits on the brink of happiness, expectant and with warmth in her cheeks, at the edge with her legs tucked decorously beneath her in the way all widows, the way she sits at home on the little side bench under the window opening.

The opening lines drag you in with this rich opening passage.

The prophets of Eternal Fjord is set in the late 1780’s. In 1787 Morten Falck a new priest from the hustle and bustle of Copenhagen is given a new job on Greenland, his job to get the Godless Inuit to convert to the Danish church he is consider the man for the job as he is very evangelical . So he sets of on a whaler ship top the far corner of the Danish empire. When he arrives he finds things are far worse than he had been lead to believe before he left, some of the villages have joined together and broken away from the Danish rule wanting their own freedom. Added to this Morten isn’t all he seems whilst studying he discover he had a liking for being close to women.So he arrives in Sukkertoppen with a priest in two minds surround by a harsh world.Ready to try to get the people of the Eternal Fjord on his side (this is the area that has formed their own colony away from Danish rule )

Jesus christ, our Heavenly father!

It gushes from him the moment he pulls up his cassock and sits down on the privy seat, a mud-like mass, almost without smell, an inexhaustible landslide of brown. His intestines writhe in agony, and yet there is a considerable element of joy at being able to release, to discharge this spray of filth and empty the bowels. He groans, bites his hand and chuckles. His sphincter blares and squelches, and then there is silence.

I know this is a rather bad passage but it capture the earthy dark feel of this world broken and with illness.

 

 

The book has a rich style almost like Dickens, I was also reminded of the world painted in Eleanor Cattons book The luminaries. This is also a  world of tough men and brave women similar to Catton’s world. among these brave women would be the widow she is involved with the breakaway from Denmark but has also caught the eye of Morten. I loved the feel of a world at breaking point almost as though the string from Denmark to its distant outpost has been stretched, worn down by the sea and is ready to break. All seen through the eyes of this confused priest a man with his own demons trying to rid the locals of their demons. A classic tale of colony’s and colonism  we could change this for any outpost of the british empire at the time they wanted to break away.Martin Aitken has done a wonderful job in the way he has kept what is a poetic dark world or Greenland.

Danish fiction

Original title Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden

Translator Martin Aitken

Langrishe, Go down by Aidan Higgins

I don’t read enough Irish lit over the years of this blog I have want to read a little as it is where I was born and my family have a history tied back to the 1600’s in Ireland. So when I saw the sad news of Aidan Higgins passing a few weeks ago, I decide it was time to read his debut novel which was considered his best book (I often feel this is a hard cross to carry as a writer when that first book is so praised and lauded it is always hard to hit a second home run. Higgins had written many books and after this I will be trying him again. Sorry it took his death for me to finally try him .

Cattle-Jobber; the man in the gap. A life given to bullocks ad heifers, stringers. Bone and gristle. Stewing fat, Helen Langrishe looked away. The heavy wheel ran on. She cleared the glass once more with the heel of her glove and stared out through the port-hole at the countryside now coming into sight on the left hand.

The conductor, worn leather satchel hanging down, was talking to another passenger, his hand outstretched for a fare. she regretted not answering him. The way it was at Springfield, they had got out of the way of exchanging common civilities.

Helen the sister on the bus back from Town at the start of the book with how bleak their lives are .

Langrische, Go down is the story that is very common in Irish history in the 20th century and that is the fall of a landed family. This is captured the family in what may be its last generation The three  langrische sister live in the decay ruin of the once proud home.We see after the opening chapter and the plight of the family when Helen returns and passes on the dire straits of the sisters lives. The main part of the story focus on the youngest sister Imogen and the one chance she gets to maybe carry on the family but also escape the world. This comes when the sister open their lives  to a German Student who is staying in one of the estates cottages.  The young sister falls for this Man with his views on the purity of Irish women. This is the story of two worlds meeting the dying British empire of old Anglo-Irish families like this one , the rise of Facism in Europe through Otto. Otto is a man who uses Imogen really for me I was reminded of some of Maugham’s characters in Otto the way he treated Imogen. He is a darker character than he first seems.

-Irishwomen, said Otto with fervour, they are so pure and clean.

-So cold?

-So pure, Otto said, and that’s not to be found any more in Germany– that great purity. But here you have it. And also that look in the face, the eyes, and one knows that such women are not corrupted. One knows it(thumping himself on the breast) Here

-Ireland is still rearing them still, Imogen said widening her eyes at him.

-A man might sometimes have filthy thoughts about girls. That’s natural enough. But when I meet Irish girls and can recognise at once their essential purity, then I am touched, incapable of a base thought.

Otto with Imogen she is still a virgin at 39 when she meets Otto is he the one?

This is one of those books where a lot doesn’t happen the beauty is in the way the prose draw you into the world of the sisters the decaying house what Higgins captures is the world that world of de Valera Ireland, which in some ways is the final nail in the sisters coffin so to speak the change of the world around them and them not able to catch up to the world. This isn’t a book for those who want a story. This is the story of broken grandeur the whole world of  Langrische sisters is dusty, ill or just about to fall apart. These are like characters in Paul Scott’s novel staying on or the spinster sisters in Agatha Christie’s  Nemesis The Bradbury-scott’s both of whom like the Langrishe have fallen out of step with the world around them.A richly written book by a writer that maybe should be better known. Have you read him ?

Irish Literature

Source – Library book

The decision by Britta Böhler

Well this was the first book I was sent this year and I always like the way books seem to interlink  with books I have read or tried to read and this one is no different. I tried to rush through Magic mountain for German lit month but decide halfway through it needed a slower reading from me, so I put to one side for this years German lit month. But I had also tried to order from my library a book that collected together letters sent between Thomas Mann the main character in this book and his fellow writer Herman Hesse, I wish the library copy had turned up as I could looked up his letters around this time.I love the way books overlap this one even overlaps with one of the earliest books on the blog. Another thread of the book is how important Mann considered his book Joseph which was being published at this time this is his longest book and also one maybe least spoke about now in his cannon.

Hesse would probably lecture him because if the Korrodi letter. He can see it now, Hesse’s thin face would be even thinner than usual, there would be reproaches and exhortations, and perhaps even more than that. Lose another friend is that worth it ?

It’s all very well for Hesse to talk. When you’re not in the middle it’s difficult to stay out of things. Hesse hasn’t lived in Germany for decades; he became a swiss citizen long before the trouble in German started.His books are also published by Bermann ; he has german readers, but doesn’t live in the fatherland and doesn’t want to return.

The relationship between Mann and Hesse is shown here when in those three days he visits Hermann.

It’s 1936 and in switzerland the writer Thomas Mann has taken the decision to write and open letter in a swiss paper denouncing the Nazi regime and the actions. What follows in the book is the three days from him writing the letter and  it’s being published. The writer Britta Bohler a well-known Dutch lawyer has filled in the gaps in the story, as Mann’s diaries of the time mention very little of the time between the letter writing and being published.Mann confronts the ghosts of his past and fear of the future.One man well Mann struggling to choose exile other bowing down.

The memory of Germany is a nostalgic remembrance, a memory of times long gone. Times that don’t return. How did Proust say it ? “The really that I knew no longer existed.” No, he doesn’t want to be able to return to present-day Germany. He wants his fatherland to become again the country it once was. His homesickness is pain in time, not in space, and staying in Germany would not have changed that. He switches on the reading light and looks at the clock. He still has enough time to stretch his legs for half and hour before the evening meal; the radio broadcast can’t wait until after dinner.

I loved this passage as it sums up Mann’s thoughts in the book a struggle with Germany’s so to speak.

 

Mann wonders the knock on effect of the letter his publisher is Jewish and may be in trouble more because of the letter. He ponders what it is to be German, The thought of being German and not in Germany in fact against the German regime. He see how other people have dealt with the Nazis. The way Wagner has been embraced by the Nazis. we see Mann as not the bold writer we know but as a man on the edge, having to make The decision. I was reminded of one of the earlier books I read on the blog. Brecht at night  by Mati Unt which followed a fellow German writer Bertolt Brecht as he escaped the German regime. in his case via Finland to The US .In the book Britta has brought a time the Mann his self wrote very little about and filled three days in his life into a novel that shows the greater struggle between good and evil.As The open Letter from Thomas Mann to Korrodi about Germany and Exile writers is due to be published in feb 3 edition of the NZZ newspaper in Switzerland. A move that sees Mann become and exile himself.

Dutch literature

Original title – De besilissing

Translator – Jeannette K Ringold

 

 

Bowies 20 most played 21st cebtury tracks and my favourite track of recent times

“Hi Stu

In honour of David Bowie’s life, PPL, the music licencing company, have pulled together data on his most played tracks of the 21st Century.”

I got this email earlier from the people at PPL and decide to share the list I wouldn’t usually but I am a huge bowie fan and was gutted by todays news.

Most Played David Bowie Tracks of the 21st Century

Aggregated using exclusive UK airplay data from music licensing company PPL

 

To commemorate the life and works of David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), music licensing company PPL has released an official chart of the Most Played David Bowie Tracks of the 21st Century.

 

Aggregated using PPL’s exclusive UK airplay data, the chart collates those Bowie tracks which have been played in public and broadcast on TV and radio since the year 2000.

 

Let’s Dance, David Bowie’s 1983 release, produced by Nile Rogers, tops the chart. Timeless classics also features in the top twenty  PPL Most Played David Bowie Tracks of the 21st Century chart include, Under Pressure (Bowie’s hit duet with British rock band Queen) at number two, and Starman (the inaugural story of persona Ziggy Stardust), at number three.

 

David Bowie’s top 20 most played tracks span three decades of recordings with the earliest, Space Oddity, released in 1969, appearing in the chart at number seven, and Absolute Beginners, released in 1986, at number 19.

Over the course of the 21st Century, David Bowie received over 360 million seconds of radio and TV airplay in the UK.

 

PPL Most Played David Bowie Tracks of the 21st Century:

 

1. Let’s Dance, David Bowie

2. Under Pressure, David Bowie and Queen

3. Starman, David Bowie

4. Ashes to Ashes, David Bowie

5. Rebel Rebel, David Bowie

6. Space Oddity, David Bowie

7. Life on Mars?, David Bowie

8. Changes, David Bowie

9. The Jean Genie, David Bowie

10. China Girl, David Bowie

11. Heroes, David Bowie

12. Modern Love, David Bowie

13. Young Americans, David Bowie

14. Golden Years, David Bowie

15. Sound and Vision, David Bowie

16. Fashion, David Bowie

17. Sorrow, David Bowie

18. Dancing in the Street, David Bowie and Mick Jagger

19. Absolute Beginners, David Bowie

20. Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie

 

To find out more about PPL visit: www.ppluk.com

The list is much as you would expect I for one can sing every song by heart virtually from the list. But as promised, my favourite track of recent years was title track to the “The next day album ” .Have you a favourite on the list or not