What are you reading at the moment?

[trysail]

...The person she thought she could depend on was of course James Harrison, the scribe she had employed in 1806. The mercenary wretch was probably Oliver, with whom she had quarrelled in 1809. Perry did not publish her denial, and the two volumes were duly published in May. Emma should properly have asked Earl Nelson, as heir to his brother's copyright, to apply to the court for a common-law order restraining publication on grounds of copyright breach. The letters which Nelson had enjoined Lady Hamilton to burn, which had been her comfort after Nelson's death, were now available for all to read. The book was a fine illustration of the old saying: "Do right to men, do not write to women." Emma's despair at seeing Nelson's letters to her made public seems to have manifested itself in an outbreak of rage of stupendous proportions. How else to account for a bill for "breakages," mostly china, for £13.4s.11d, which Alderman Smith paid her landlord in July?

​

-Flora Fraser
Emma; Lady Hamilton
New York, N.Y. 1987.




As one with a longstanding interest in naval history, I was well aware of Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson's scandalous relationship with Emma Hamilton but never knew much about her. As is so often the case, by pure chance, I spied this book on the shelf and couldn't resist its call to me. It was a very pleasant surprise to discover that the author is none other than a daughter of the highly accomplished Lady Antonia Fraser ( biographer and historian extraordinaire and one-time panelist on the sui generis BBC radio program[me] My Word! ).

The book is praiseworthy for its thorough research, fascinating subject and lively prose. I had absolutely no idea of just how humble Emma's origins were, having always assumed that she was a social equal of her diplomat husband, Sir William Hamilton; nothing could could have been further from the truth. Were a novelist to attempt to construct a tale that would contain all the elements of the ultimate Georgian scandal, the actual facts would suffice— in this case, truth was undeniably stranger than fiction. It had been such a long time since I read a biography of Nelson that I'd completely forgotten the sequence of events that caused Nelson and Lady Hamilton to meet. My memory of my first acquaintance with the tale was one of mild surprise that now stands in stark contrast with the astonishment that remains following Fraser's account.

 

[PennLady]

"Nothing but Trouble" by Rachel Gibson. Even though the male lead is a retired hockey player, she still managed to work in a hockey error... but it's not bad.

 

[SweetMaj]

Karen Blixen. OUT OF Africa. Whenever I got the time.

 

[bashfullyshameless]

"The First World War" by John Keegan.

It's great, but it could use more maps...and Keegan seems to really, really hate conjunctions.

 

[Mandy57]

The World I Made For Her ~ Thomas Moran

 

[Tio_Narratore]

The Infinity of Lists -- Umberto Eco

 

[oggbashan]

The Social History of the Machine Gun

 

[Jake Marlow]

Guns of the South, by Harry Turtledove. Not bad, but I didn't need a three page description of field-stripping an AK-47. He's one of those guys who feels the need to cram every ounce of research he did somewhere into the book.

 

[oggbashan]

Guns of the South, by Harry Turtledove. Not bad, but I didn't need a three page description of field-stripping an AK-47. He's one of those guys who feels the need to cram every ounce of research he did somewhere into the book.

Three pages to strip an AK-47?

Did he use a large typeface and too many words?

Og

 

[Verdad]

Guns of the South, by Harry Turtledove. Not bad, but I didn't need a three page description of field-stripping an AK-47. He's one of those guys who feels the need to cram every ounce of research he did somewhere into the book.

Heh. I’ve read his short stories and they were as succinct as befits short fiction. I guess it’s harder to resist in novels!

I’m finishing Auto-da-fé by Elias Canetti. Excellent modernist novel first published in the 1930’s.

 

[driphoney]

The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office

Not bad, actually.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

MY LIFE WITH CHARLIE BROWN by Charles M. Schulz

A collection of articles and stuff Schulz wrote during his career as the PEANUTS cartoonist. Lotsa interesting info about his life and the PEANUTS gang.

But Schulz was also into writing. Cartoons do require excellent writing, if you think about it. And Schulz had some things to say about writing I think are worth the read just to harvest them.

Like...dont push things and settle for half-baked wares. He then illustrated how he overcame a snag in a story cuz Snoopy cant talk, and the logical end of the story required Snoopy to talk. So he had to cut bait till the perfect ending popped into his noodle. And it was perfect.

Your main character can be odd but not as eccentric as the supporting characters. The main character is the center ring, the supporting characters are the sideshow.

 

[miss_emiii]

The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen.

Its hard for me to fall in love with a book, but when I do, I fall hard. I'm on my second read of it

 

[oggbashan]

Dorothy L Sayers: Even the Parrot

This is a WWII satire on Victorian children's educational books and is a rare title.

 

[Zobor]

Looking for a good book to read.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

The unsolicited copy of the pamphlet, "The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts and tools," that appeared in my work mailbox today.

Mostly because the concept of a miniature guide to critical thinking cracks me up. And because I'm a sucker for flow charts that don't tell you much of anything.

 

[BrianCaster]

"Between the Assassination"--- Arvind Adiga

 

[hottchic]

The only thing I have been reading recently is some poems on Lit, to help develop my own poetry.

 

[BrianCaster]

"Difficult Daughters" by Manju Kapur

Full of Indianness, which displeases me sometime

 

[BrianCaster]

"French Lover"- Taslima Nasrin

 

[trysail]

...The Shakespearian fool, that highly individual and arresting figure, is no quaint anachronism from the courts of medieval kings, but a highly sophisticated truth teller. He is a fool because he tells the truth...

...It is easy to forget what a genealogical tour de force the history plays are. Shakespeare's deep knowledge of the ruling families of late medieval England, many of whom were still in power in his own time, and their various interrelationships, to say nothing of the complex threads leading from them to the throne, is quite astonishing. Talbot, Neville, Mowbray, Blunt, Hastings, Mortimer, Percy, Plantagenet, Beaufort, Stanley, Vernon, Grey, Scroope, Clifford, Woodville, Willoughby, de la Pole: these great figures from English history are treated as household names by Shakespeare.

​

-Charles Beauclerk
Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom: The True History of Shakespeare and Elizabeth
New York, N.Y. 2010.




This is Beauclerk's extended effort to prove that the author of the best-known plays and sonnets in English was not the country bumpkin of Stratford but Beauclerk's distant ancestor, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Along the way, Beauclerk claims that not only was Oxford Elizabeth's bastard son but in a replay of Œdipus, he was also her lover. Sorry, I'm not buying it— and neither should you. While there's a fairly strong case to be made that "Shakespeare" isn't who we think, Beauclerk goes too far. Don't bother with this book.

 

[SydneyBlake]

Shannon McKenna, for beautifully written smut.
Jennifer Crusie, for wit.
Larry McMurtry, for the best character development in the entire literary world.

But nothing cover-to-cover, all at once, right now. The voices in my head won't let me.

 

[FrostyZen]

Right now I'm reading Brandon Sanderson's MISTBORN and FOOL by Christopher Moore

 

[driphoney]

The History of the Modern World

Palmer, Colton and Kramer

 

[SamScribble]

Smut - Alan Bennett (very funny)