Reading, Writing

Lost Quotations and Proverbs

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I’m looking over some lost quotations and proverbs tonight, lost because they are collected in W. Gurney Benham’s A Book of Quotations: Proverbs and Household Words, published in 1907, an ugly volume I plan to throw out because I’ve wasted twenty years of my life with it sitting on my shelf.

Great Scot! The Interwebs have revealed their Mastery of All The Things by producing a copy of Benham’s book in its archives, so I guess it isn’t lost after all — if buried under 305 billion pages of Interweb means it is not lost.

But what was I saying? I’ve kept this book because of its curious collection. After the typical Bartlett’s stuff, it has a section of “waifs and strays,” “naturalised phrases,” and toasts, followed by Greek and Latin quotations, French and Spanish quotations, and then a long list of English proverbs. It’s the non-English language quotations that seemed most valuable to me. Where else would I find a curated list of pearls and miscellany from the past?

Quid enim salvis infamia nummis?
What indeed is infamy as long as our money is safe?

Going to ruin is silent work.

Omnis homo mendax.
Every man is a liar.

C’est l’imagination qui gouverne le genre humain.
It is imagination which rules the human race.

Quid Romae faciam? mentiri nescio.
What can I do at Rome? I do not know how to lie.

Vulnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni.
She cherishes the wound in her veins and is consumed by an unseen fire.

But whether we have less or more,
Alway thank we God therefor.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Innocent Lies,’ by Chris Collett

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Innocent Lies

I’m working my way through Chris Collett’s Detective Tom Mariner series of police procedurals. Our commenter Paul revealed to me after my last review that Collett is not, as I had assumed, a man, but is in fact a woman. Kudos to her for doing an excellent job creating plausible male characters, something that – in my experience and prejudice at least – most female authors have a hard time doing.

When Innocent Lies begins, DI Mariner is working on the disappearance of a lower-class teenaged boy. He has history with the family, and so is upset when his temporary boss pulls him off that case to work on another disappearance. This one is the daughter of a well-to-do Muslim family. Mariner feels, with some justification, that there’s discrimination in the allocation of resources.

The story turns out to be baffling and complex – the missing girl had secrets from her parents, and racial tensions make themselves visible.

I didn’t enjoy Innocent Lies as much as the previous two I’ve read in the series, but it’s a compelling story. I think what I mainly missed was more of Mariner’s girlfriend Anna, who appears to be the most understanding girlfriend in history. I’m not sure I believe in her, but I like her.

One thing that troubled me was what looked like factual a reference to a hate crime in America. To the best of my knowledge, it never happened.

Oh yes, I figured out whodunnit.

Still, recommended. Cautions for the usual.

Non-fiction, Publishing

Proof of life

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Today I got my complimentary copies of Viking Legacy, the book I translated.
Translator pic

It’s always a strange and wondrous thing to finally handle a book you’ve only known in the abstract up till now. I’m not the author this time (in fact there are bits I don’t entirely agree with). But I worked long and hard on it, and did a lot of polishing. The translation still looks a little rough to me, especially at the very beginning, the worst place for it. The body of the text looks much better though. I like to think the “flaws” are the fault of the editors, but I’m not entirely sure of that.

Anyway, it’s grown up and left the nest now, and I look at it, not as a father but as a sort of uncle, I suppose. I hope it does well in the wide world.

In point of fact, this is an important, groundbreaking book. If it finds its audience it will be controversial.

Buy it now and see why!

Fiction, Publishing

62 Novels Judged Not Funny Enough for Wodehouse Prize

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The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the United Kingdom’s only literary award for comic writing. Last year, it went to Bridget Jones’s Baby by Helen Fielding.  Two works tied for the prize in 2016, The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray and The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild. I believe we mentioned these works and the Alexander McCall Smith’s 2015 win earlier in this space.

But the 62 novels submitted for consideration this year were only funny enough to produce “many a wry smile,” not the “unanimous, abundant laughter” the judges were hoping to have.

Judge and publisher David Campbell said, “We look forward to awarding a larger rollover prize next year to a hilariously funny book.”

“There were a lot of witty submissions, bloody good novels, but they weren’t comic novels. The alchemy was not there.” (via Prufrock News)

via GIPHY

Uncategorized

‘How to May 17th’

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Yeah, this is pretty much it. Norway’s Constitution Day, the premiere national holiday.

I did fly my flag today (it’s still out there, in fact), thanks to nice weather. And I wore a flag pin to work.

Too much celebrating for me. I need a rest now.

Fiction

Percy’s Love in the Ruins Like a Coal Mine Canary

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Ralph C. Wood writes that Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins is darn prescient, if that’s something one can say.

“A serious novel about the destruction of the United States and the end of the world,” Percy declared, “should perform the function of prophecy in reverse. The novelist writes about the coming end in order to warn against present ills and so avert the end.” He isn’t writing as a biblical prophet, but neither can he deny that his allegiances are fundamentally Christian. His own vision of reality is confessedly “incarnational, historical, predicamental.” In an increasingly pagan and hostile age, Percy doubted the efficacy of a serene Christian humanism. Better to serve as the canary in the coal mine, so as to detect the asphyxiating gas that sickens unto death.

Wood offers no quick blog post on Percy’s novel. He gets into some of its heavy criticism, which, if you not read the book yet, may run it into the ground. (via Prufrock News)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Deadly Lies,’ by Chris Collett

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Deadly Lies

I read and reviewed one novel in the DI Mariner police procedural series, and was so impressed that I decided to go back to the beginning and read them all. Deadly Lies is the book that introduces Inspector Thomas Mariner of Birmingham, England.

When a young journalist named Eddie Barham is found dead in his home of a drug overdose, the initial assumption is suicide. But Tom Mariner is not convinced, especially since he happened to see Eddie, alive and well, in a pub talking to a woman shortly before the time of death. He wants to locate that woman and find out what she knows.

Meanwhile Eddie’s sister Anna, a career woman, is left responsible for their brother Jamie, who is severely autistic. At first she’s overwhelmed – Jamie needs constant supervision, and the demands are killing both her career and her social life. One man she is seeing a lot of, though, is Inspector Mariner, whom she finds very attractive. He reciprocates her interest.

Meanwhile, crime scene evidence shows that this was definitely a murder, and somebody is trying to find and destroy Eddie’s records. What was he investigating, that would be worth killing to keep secret?

The answer, I’m afraid, was a bit of a cliché. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey through the story for its own sake. I like author Chris Collett’s writing; I like his characters. I suspect his politics and mine wouldn’t coexist well, but some very good values shine through the books I’ve read so far – especially the value of all human lives, and the importance of people having children.

Recommended, with cautions for language and sexual situations.

Non-fiction

‘Viking Legacy’ is here!

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Viking Legacy

I’ve been telling you about this book for — it seems — about half my life. (Actually it’s two or three years. Maybe four). But it’s here at last — Viking Legacy, by Torgrim Titlestad. Translated by your humble servant.

The book has two main themes — one, that Viking democratic traditions of governance were influential in European history. And two, that the Icelandic sagas, while not inerrant, do provide useful information which, coordinated with other historical research, can shed light on the political history of Scandinavia.

Authors

The Man in Full Rests

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Author Tom Wolfe,  “probably the most skillful writer in America” according to William F. Buckley, died yesterday at age 88.

“Whether profiling One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest author Ken Kesey and his hippie pals the Merry Pranksters or America’s first astronauts, Wolfe had a dramatist’s gift for the telling detail and for crafting page-turning suspense,” writes Rolling Stone’s Tim Grierson.

“Never try to fit in; it’s sheer folly,” he once advised. “Be an odd, eccentric character. People will volunteer information to you.”

Wolfe had a style bound to inspire countless bad imitations. You may see some on the socials this week and next.

Terry Teachout writes, “I confess to being shaken by the news of Wolfe’s death. I last saw him in the flesh a year or so ago, and he looked at once frail and somehow ageless. I couldn’t imagine a world without him then. I still can’t.“

Bookselling

Life and Death of Brick and Mortars

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Columnist David Leonhardt writes in the NY Times, “It’s depressing to imagine that more than 600 Barnes & Noble stores might simply disappear. But the death of Barnes & Noble is now plausible.” It seems people don’t buy enough books in person, but they do buy coffee and borrow books to read while they drink. (via Prufrock News)

Perhaps running a large network of books retail is no longer sustainable. Some recent report tout the health of independent bookstores around the country. At least six stores are successfully attracting customers in the broad Pittsburgh area.

“I think people want conversation, they want a human connection,” Susan Hans O’Connor, a bookstore owner, states. “They want to talk about ideas; they want to talk about books they’ve already read or that they haven’t read that they should read.”

This agrees with a report from Detroit, which notes the growth of indy bookstores in that city.

Erin Gold writes:

And there are a lot of reasons Detroit and other urban communities should want to keep their independent bookstores around. At a time when face-to-face interactions are becoming less common, independent bookstores act as a kind of community center. They hear first-hand from their customers what is important to the community and respond through book curation, author visits, and community partnerships.

In his recent study on independent bookstore business, Harvard Business Professor Ryan Raffaelli found that independent bookstores have become even more valuable in today’s world where so much of an individual’s free time can be spent online. “People are still eager to connect, and indie bookstores make that happen,” Raffaelli says. “They create a safe space for individuals to debate new and important ideas with friends and neighbors.”

Book Reviews, Creative Culture