Looks very interesting that one IainView attachment 48192
Seven days - seven books - day three -
'The Conquest of New Spain' - Bernal Diaz de Castillo.
Sorry a day late with my third recommendation - I'll do two today to catch up - this is the first.
Diaz was one of the 500 or so men that sailed under Hernan Cortes in 1520 from Cuba to the Yucatan peninsula - initially their intention was really just to steal anything of any value they could find - but ended up bringing about the destruction of one of the biggest empires in the world at the time - the Aztec. By anybodies standards this was a 'black swan event.' It becomes obvious fairly quickly that Cortes was a maniac - upon landing he destroyed his ships - the message was pretty clear - we go home in a coffin or rich men. It was in actuality a fairly stupid thing to do - it caused him severe problems later - apart from anything else he had to compensate the guy who owned the ships. The idea that 500 men could defeat an empire - is of course ridiculous - granted the Spanish had some singular advantages - to borrow a phrase from Jared Diamond - principally - 'guns, germs and steel.' They also had horses - the locals had never seen anything with four legs bigger than a llama - so a heavily armed mounted soldier charging at you must have been truly terrifying. Cortes sussed fairly quickly that a significant number of the locals hated being under Aztec rule and were more than happy to fight alongside the Spanish - this is why they succeeded. The book is written in the first person - Bernal has a beautiful eye for detail and description - it is vivid and engaging - even with the passage of time - the section when they first see Moctezuma's capital is particularly memorable - slack jawed at the scale and complexity of it - and of course - riches beyond the dreams of avarice. The narrative has a compelling immediacy about it - as we see the campaign unfold through Diaz's eyes. A unique testimony - highly recommended if the subject interests you. Cheers - I.
@Scotshave @Barry Giddens @Ferry-shave @patw @Missoni @Blademonkey @RussellR5555
View attachment 48192
Seven days - seven books - day three -
'The Conquest of New Spain' - Bernal Diaz de Castillo.
Sorry a day late with my third recommendation - I'll do two today to catch up - this is the first.
Diaz was one of the 500 or so men that sailed under Hernan Cortes in 1520 from Cuba to the Yucatan peninsula - initially their intention was really just to steal anything of any value they could find - but ended up bringing about the destruction of one of the biggest empires in the world at the time - the Aztec. By anybodies standards this was a 'black swan event.' It becomes obvious fairly quickly that Cortes was a maniac - upon landing he destroyed his ships - the message was pretty clear - we go home in a coffin or rich men. It was in actuality a fairly stupid thing to do - it caused him severe problems later - apart from anything else he had to compensate the guy who owned the ships. The idea that 500 men could defeat an empire - is of course ridiculous - granted the Spanish had some singular advantages - to borrow a phrase from Jared Diamond - principally - 'guns, germs and steel.' They also had horses - the locals had never seen anything with four legs bigger than a llama - so a heavily armed mounted soldier charging at you must have been truly terrifying. Cortes sussed fairly quickly that a significant number of the locals hated being under Aztec rule and were more than happy to fight alongside the Spanish - this is why they succeeded. The book is written in the first person - Bernal has a beautiful eye for detail and description - it is vivid and engaging - even with the passage of time - the section when they first see Moctezuma's capital is particularly memorable - slack jawed at the scale and complexity of it - and of course - riches beyond the dreams of avarice. The narrative has a compelling immediacy about it - as we see the campaign unfold through Diaz's eyes. A unique testimony - highly recommended if the subject interests you. Cheers - I.
@Scotshave @Barry Giddens @Ferry-shave @patw @Missoni @Blademonkey @RussellR5555
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Seven books - seven days - day four.
'Lost Horizon' by James Hilton.
There are books that become companions in life - this is one for me - I can't remember precisely - when I first became aware of it - I suspect strongly it was read to me as a bedtime story as a child - I have returned to it over the intervening years several times. In the same category is 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' by C.S Lewis - definitely a story my parents read to me - as a kid - an engrossing fairy tale - as an adult - I realise that it is a fairy tale wrapped around Christian allegory - Aslan was Jesus - that's obvious to me now - the scene where the mice gnaw through his bindings - still moves me. Anyway - sorry - I digress - 'Lost Horizon' - published in 1933 - three old school friends are taking dinner in Templehof airport in Berlin - talk turns to a lost colleague - the book's hero - Hugh Conway. Last seen as a British consul in Afghanistan - who mysteriously disappeared on an evacuation flight from Peshawar. One of the trio claims knowledge of his fate. Conway - and three fellow passengers are abducted and taken to a secret lamasery in the mountain fastness of the Tibetan Himalaya - Shangri-La. The locals - it becomes obvious - live unnaturally long lives - the head lama is several centuries old. Utopia - everything there is cool and groovy - the only catch - if you leave - you will age and die rapidly. I shan't give any more of the plot away. Much scholarly ink has been used in trying to work out Hilton's inspiration for Shangri-La - for me it is a conflation of sources taken with a corruption of 'Shambhala' - which turns up in Tibetan Buddhist scripture - seven hidden valleys that provided sanctuary in times of persecution - Hilton visited the remote Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan before he wrote it - also - bring in - early travelers' tales of Jesuit monks to the Himalaya - going back even to the medieval myth of Prestor John. Its a great book - what more can I say? - I heartily recommend it to you all - yours - I.
@Scotshave @Barry Giddens @Ferry-shave @Missoni @Blademonkey @patw @RussellR5555
Oh - the strap line - about it being the first paperback published - is rubbish - ignore that claim.
Ha ha - I take your point about the importance of the translation of the Diaz book - the edition I have is by J.M Cohen - it reads fine to me - the only slight issue I had was keeping up with - and remembering - place names - as I didn't - and don't - have the faintest idea of how to pronounce them. Cuitlahuac? - that's not a city that is a crap Scrabble hand. The paper copy has excellent maps - so that helps in following their progress - but this might be more of a problem reading on a Kindle - it hadn't occurred to me, as I don't own one. I'll try to pick something willfully obscure today - just to save you some money. Cheers - I.Oh shit! another purchase.
Missed yesterday, so here's two offerings.
The Outsider is viewed as an existentialist classic: Mersault's non-conformity and lack of any obvious guilt in his actions is almost a theatre of the absurd. Not short of Christian allusion either'...so that it might be finished...' at the very end has a feeling of ‘consummatum est' about it. This Penguin translation is based on a 1954 reading by Satre.
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Staying with the absurd, Will Elliott's The Pilo Family Circus just pipped Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. They both have a carnival theme, of course; Elliott's focusses on clowns. Not alien shapeshifters that assume the familiar guise of a clown à la King's Pennywise; these are clowns, circus clowns and their form of slapstick can be both hilarious and revolting. I think it was Robert Bloch who said that clowns are funny. Providing they're not out of context...
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@Digimonkey, @Missoni, @patw, @Blademonkey, @Barry Giddens, @Ferry-shave,
@RussellR5555
Fascinating quote - pretty bleak - reminded me of Chandler - from "The Long Goodbye' - I think -Review 3
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This is not a book to be read if you are feeling blue it is a deeply dark and full of bitterness - why read?' well Celine's use of language can be exquisite, razor sharp, brutally honest and the book has inspired many people to take up writing themselves . The novel is based upon Celine's own experiences during the First World War, in French Colonial Africa, in the USA and then as a doctor in Paris. I suspect the brutality and futility of World War 1 impacted profoundly Celine's view of other human beings. To me it is one man's utter contempt and disgust for humanity. With this book in particular, the best way for getting a feel is to detail a few quotes. You will know immediately if you want to read this book -:
“When you stop to examine the way in which our words are formed and uttered, our sentences are hard-put to it to survive the disaster of their slobbery origins. The mechanical effort of conversation is nastier and more complicated than defecation. That corolla of bloated flesh, the mouth, which screws itself up to whistle, which sucks in breath, contorts itself, discharges all manner of viscous sounds across a fetid barrier of decaying teeth—how revolting! Yet that is what we are adjured to sublimate into an ideal. It's not easy. Since we are nothing but packages of tepid, half-rotted viscera, we shall always have trouble with sentiment. Being in love is nothing, its sticking together that's difficult".
“Why kid ourselves, people have nothing to say to one another, they all talk about their own troubles and nothing else. Each man for himself, the earth for us all. They try to unload their unhappiness on someone else when making love, they do their damnedest, but it doesn't work, they keep it all, and then they start all over again, trying to find a place for it. "Your pretty, Mademoiselle," they say. And life takes hold of them again until the next time, and then they try the same little gimmick. "You're very pretty, Mademoiselle...And in between they boast that they've succeeded in getting rid of their unhappiness, but everyone knows it's not true and they've simply kept it all to themselves. Since at the little game you get uglier and more repulsive as you grow older, you can't hope to hide your unhappiness, your bankruptcy, any longer. In the end your features are marked with that hideous grimace that takes twenty, thrity years or more to climb form your belly to your face. That's all a man is good for, that and no more, a grimace that he takes a whole lifetime to compose. The grimace a man would need to express his true soul without losing any of it is so heavy and complicated that he doesn't always succeed in completing it.â€
@Scotshave @Barry Giddens @Ferry-shave @Missoni @Blademonkey @patw @RussellR5555
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