What book are you reading right now?

[Raceway]

I'm wading through a 500-page history book written in 1934 by two Oxford professors. Packed full of information and supported by 800+ footnotes. This line caught my eye:

". . . it is the historian’s business not to stress the unavoidable that is also trivial."

It makes sense but it also strikes me as generic. I wonder if the authors had anyone in mind. It's amusing to see academics taking pot-shots at one another, but not when you have no idea of the targets.

[Writers Bloque]

I'm wading through a 500-page history book written in 1934 by two Oxford professors. Packed full of information and supported by 800+ footnotes. This line caught my eye:

". . . it is the historian’s business not to stress the unavoidable that is also trivial."

It makes sense but it also strikes me as generic. I wonder if the authors had anyone in mind. It's amusing to see academics taking pot-shots at one another, but not when you have no idea of the targets.

Cool!

I am rereading The Divine Comedy, as I am starting to slip on some of the details when talking with friends who are enjoying it too.

[Raceway]

• Stephanie Conybeare. Deep Diving. London: Collins, 1988.
• Stephanie Conybeare. A Death in the Family. London: Collins, 1989.
• Stephanie Conybeare. The White Macaw. Beckington: Luniver, 2006.

I stumbled on the first by accident, soon after it was published. I was browsing in a bookshop and my eye was drawn to the author's name. Could it be? I wondered. Sure enough, it was the same Stephanie Conybeare I knew a long time ago.

I also splurged on a signed, limited edition copy of Edward Thompson's poetry. I'm feeling reckless today!

Recently I decided to catch up on her work. I found Death in the Family and The White Macaw through the AbeBooks website.

I'm reading the former and will follow with the latter. As far as I can tell, her poetry collections are out of print, but I'll keep looking. They're bound to pop up from time to time.

Found one! AbeBooks notified me that a volume of Stephanie's poetry was available from a vendor trading under the name of AussieBookSeller. The listing included a description of the contents:

Risk, the subject matter of these poems, is an unavoidable fact of life. Safety's never certain. Even the most mundane of situations can be shot through with danger sourced by a word, a glance, an unforeseen event. Subsequent damage can be slight or transformational, shaping a shadowy modus vivendi or proclaiming deficiency. Displacement commonly follows, a life lived in exile, or in the very same place when it ought not to be.

I also picked up a signed limited-edition copy of Edward Thompson's poetry. Now I have to sit back and twiddle my thumbs in anticipation. 

[Raceway]

I'm reading Edward Thompson's Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist (Oxford, 1948).



I fell in love with Tagore's work when I was in my teens, and one of the books in my collection was Sadhana.

Today I learned, decades later, that my internally voiced pronunciation of the title was wrong. Thompson's macrons inform me that it should be pronounced Sādhanā. As an English speaker, I had automatically favoured the second vowel and read it as Sadhāna.

Better late than never.

[Raceway]

AbeBooks notified me that a volume of Stephanie's poetry was available from a vendor trading under the name of AussieBookSeller. 

. . . .

I also picked up a signed limited-edition copy of Edward Thompson's poetry. Now I have to sit back and twiddle my thumbs in anticipation. 

I can stop twiddling my thumbs.

I received a very polite message from AussieBookSeller apologizing for charging my credit card before confirming that they had a copy of Stephanie's book.

They assured me that they endeavour to keep all listed books in stock, which may or may not mean that more copies are on the way.

[Pornhubby]

G. I. Gurdjieff‘s “Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.”

Gurdjieff once said, “I bury the bone so deep that the dogs have to scratch for it."

[Raceway]

G. I. Gurdjieff‘s “Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.”

I'm impressed. I recall reading Meetings with Remarkable Men (made into a film in 1979), but getting nowhere with Beelzebub. It was too dense for me.

I once met a bunch of people who had been members of Ouspensky's group. One of those tiny generational links. Gurdjieff → Ouspensky → Friends → Me → ?

[Writers Bloque]

I am double fisting two books, John Cleland's Fanny Hill, and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Two books that were on my most wanted list, that my wife found for me for my birthday. I wanted to read Fanny Hill to see why it was banned, and Lady Chatterley to see why it is referenced in modern media (I.E. Skyrim, etc.)

Anyone from England/U.K. can offer a non google reason on why that book was banned?

[Rajah Dodger]

An old collection of mystery stories - The Adventures of Ellery Queen