Wilfrid Posted April 16 Author Share Posted April 16 Never seen the Yorkshire moors, indeed I think I've never been to Yorkshire. Dartmoor and Exmoor in the south-west, yes. The Hound of the Baskervilles has a great opening and ending, but Doyle was never able to sustain Holmes for a whole novel and so he vanishes for a large part of it, leaving us with Watson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
relbbaddoof Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 1 hour ago, Wilfrid said: never able to sustain Holmes for a whole novel Absolutely. Holmes, as invented, could solve puzzles in an instant, so the novels had little to sustain them. In The Valley of Fear half the book is backstory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted April 16 Author Share Posted April 16 Right. Doyle's predecessor Gaboriau does the same in his Lecoq novels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
relbbaddoof Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 1 hour ago, Wilfrid said: Yorkshire Speaking of which, until I went there a few months ago, my associations with Yorkshire were entirely cricket: Geoff Boycott, tank-like in his solid defense, and Leeds with Bradman's scores of 334 (1930), 304 (1934), 103 (1938) and 173* (1948). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted April 16 Author Share Posted April 16 I was thinking Bradman's triple century was at the Oval, but that must have been Hutton. A Yorkshireman. Yorkshire cricket books I do have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
relbbaddoof Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 (edited) 6 hours ago, Wilfrid said: Yorkshire cricket books I do have. You're just teasing me. Here are a couple of my Carduses. The one on the left is a 1948 reprint of a 1934 book, the one on the right from 1922. I have other, older, dustier looking cricket books on my NY shelves (only Shiva knows what lurks in the dust clouds in Cambridge) sandwiched, oddly, between two Vol-1/Vol-2 pairs of "Methods of Mathematical Physics", the left Morse/Feshbach, the right Courant/Hilbert. A decade ago I must have thought the sandwiching funny, but my humor escapes me now. In any case that shelf is too high for me after having paired a bowl of Snail Noodle Soup with two glasses of inexpensive Chianti from Chambers (the funk called for a semi-robust response). Suffice it to say that the 1922 book has a description in it of the "Greatest" international cricket match ever, an 1882 match between England and Australia. It was the ninth international cricket match. Edited April 17 by relbbaddoof Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 Beautiful. Yes, the 1882 match which Australia won by 7 runs. Not out at the end, the young Cambridge student CT Studd who went on to become a missionary. I somehow ended up with two copies of his bio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted April 20 Author Share Posted April 20 Wuthering Heights is very special, but after nearly three hundred pages of people being very, very sick and/or very, very angry I need some light relief. Paul Bowles stays on hold therefore while I dip into Cervantes. I don't plan to read 900+ pages of Don Quixote; the book's structure makes it very easy to pick out and re-read favorite episodes. And yes, it's still funny. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted April 22 Author Share Posted April 22 Fragility. The Naked Lunch was a bit beaten up, but my Don Quixote that I must have had since I was a kid is very frail. Turning the pages very carefully. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted April 23 Author Share Posted April 23 I have to share this. Of interest only to anyone who really knows Wuthering Heights, so this is not going to reach a huge audience. Michaela, in 90 minutes, recounts the entire novel, using an investigation board and post-its, and it's fiercely accurate, very funny, she's right about how monstrous the characters are, and she drops her Kate Bush at the right moment. Is this obsessive? If you care at all, grab ten minutes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted April 27 Author Share Posted April 27 Distracted. All the "gothic" comments about Wuthering Heights reminded me of The Castle of Otranto, allegedly the first gothic novel. I know I first read a library edition so thought of picking up a cheap, used copy. Fortunately, I remembered that I own an anthology, Three Gothic Novels, and it's in there. A really quick read, barely 100 pages, and it confirmed my recollection that it's one of the most hilarious books I've ever read. Walpole was no fool; he was both creating a genre and reducing it to absurdity. I am not the first to see Monty Python roots here. "Villain!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voyager Posted April 28 Share Posted April 28 Maybe Wuthering Heights is a young woman’s book. The angst of love deemed “unsuitable”. A fascination with the exotic. Every girl’s fantasy. I read it in 11th grade English. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
relbbaddoof Posted April 28 Share Posted April 28 (edited) 18 minutes ago, voyager said: Wuthering Heights is a young woman’s book. The angst of love deemed “unsuitable”. A fascination with the exotic. Every girl’s fantasy. 1) Although I found it "impenetrable" on attempted rereading (as said above) I was able to penetrate it as a young man (ghastly pun aside). 2) All love/lust was unsuitable in the India of the 1970s -- the crushes I had on teachers, on our cleaning lady, on the girl on the 123 Bus (we gazed at each other eagerly, morning and afternoon, for two years) -- no love was suitable. That angst might have been the appeal to me then. 3) The "exotic". To me that was England -- all cricket and moors and dogs. 4) Every boy's fantasy. Edited April 28 by relbbaddoof 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted May 3 Author Share Posted May 3 I read a short study of WH, and the plot(s) are unbelievably complex when looked at closely. I just finished squeezing the good bits out of Don Quixote. That took a couple of weeks because there are a lot. Just opened The Sheltering Sky. I recall the arc of the plot well enough, but don't remember it page by page. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilfrid Posted May 4 Author Share Posted May 4 I have more Paul Bowles than I remembered, including the bio. The Sheltering Sky is very good, but of course it's not Cervantes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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