It's George Borrow Time

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

The story so far. 

In 2017 I read The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane which was without question the best non-fiction book I'd read that year. I chatted about it at the time on this blog.  Now he lauded about the 19th century writer and linguist George Borrow Now as it happened there were loads of his books available for free on my Kindle. So I thought "Great. I'll download them",  Which I did.

And so far I've hated every one I've read. 

I've just finished reading three of them which trust me as I will explain as we go along is not the great achievement that it appears to be.

The Songs Of Ranild is presumably the lyrics without a tune. I read it quickly. I wasn't impressed. Did not last long.

Letters To His Wife - The worst of the three. If only because there were just twelve yes twelve letters. And they were just mundane. Nothing important. Him asking for money I can recall. Really just not worth the paper this ebook wasn't printed on.

The Zincali:an account of the gypsies of Spain is the most substantial of the three but not great. Basically he was trying to flog the bible to this "tribe". And yes tribe is the right word because throughout the book the impression he gives is of a man looking down at a group of people he probably considers a few notches above savages.

The only bit that made me smile was when he was describing the Zincali women as basically lascivious. You know full well that the rich male readers were bellowing their disapproval whilst planning to visit the area in the summer.

In short then nothing has changed. George Borrow is a blog villain.

Until the next time.

On Books: Where We Chat About George Borrow,Hay-On-Wye And A Lady Shepherd....As You Do

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

You may remember Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways which was for me the best non-fiction book I'd read last year. in it, he praised the writer George Borrow, and as his books were free on Amazon I downloaded a load of them.

Well so far it's been a disappointment and this latest batch has not improved things. Letters To His Mother was well nothing to write home about. Neither was Signelid or The Talisman. Ballads (the second a translation from an original Pushkin work that did nothing for me.

But the worst was The Bible In Spain. A report of his travels in that country (and Portugal as well). Basically he was palming off Protestant bibles in a catholic country as if he was the bringer of truth. Also with the one exception of being a skilled linguist his attitude was that of the Englishman abroad.

It was noticeable too that when Spaniards made anti-Semitic remarks against Portuguese or Barbary Jews there was no attempt in the book to defend them. Which suggests to me that he had a low opinion of the Jewish people as well.

George Borrow being a skilled linguist could obviously bore people in many tongues.

Meanwhile the Welsh Borders is where we find Oliver Balch in his 2016 book Under The Trump where he chats about moving to there from Argentina.....as you do.

Hay-On-Wye being both Welsh and famous for it's book festival should be a place I'd want to visit, and I do. But so far circumstance has not been kind. This book however is the next best thing. As it chronicles not just the festival but pub drinkers, farmers,market holders all Hay On Wye  human life is here which is to it's credit.

What makes this book different and well worth a read is the sense of a community changing but unsure what will it evolve to. Whilst the old values have a powerful pull so have the new forces as well. It's caught a particular and possibly important moment in time.

And this was the library book I've just finished.

One Lady Shepherd

Now this cover doesn't help Ms Grey who in this 2012 book was a twenty three year old shepherd in Northumberland any favours. I look at the carefully placed wisps of hair and the clear complexion and think that it's been photoshopped. After all my knowledge of Northumberian Shepherding begins and ends with this book but I seriously don't believe she looks like that on an October morning.

(Mind you let me be clear that I personally would not be attracted to Ms Grey. As for this domestic wolf a phobic even in my teenaged testosteroned years the greatest passion killer was when a woman said she had a dog. In this book she has four of them!)

Also the lack of any pictures showing her at work is a pity. You see once you start this then you know what an amiable read it is. Rather like the new Doctor Who you soon don't think of her as a woman but as a shepherd who despite what nature throws is good at her job.

It would be interesting to see what she's doing now.

Me? I'm off to read the next book.

Until the next time.

On Books: Including Not Really Liking Jane Austen

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well what can I say? Regular readers will know that I've read Jane Austen books with an open mind. Until the last book Lady Susan my view was neutral.

And of course I'm a fifty four year old man, so not her natural audience. Also everything I'm going to say is on the understanding that I haven't read all of her novels including the biggie Pride and Prejudice.

But I've finished Northanger Abbey, and well, I was bored.

It actually started so well. I got the fish out of water theme it seemed interesting enough. But then my mind was rather dulled by it all and then it started to wander until at the very end I really couldn't care less if all of the characters jumped off a cliff in mass suicide (spoiler alert:they don't).

So why don't I like her now? Well not being her audience is clearly a factor but not the only one. I think possibly because her male and female characters seem like clichés to me. Perhaps this "comedy of manners" thing is not for me. We shall see when I read her next time.

The next book was Letters Of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society. I enjoyed reading this, having taken a bit of an interest since he was mentioned in Robert Macfarlane's Tracks. But if you don't know George Borrow from George and the Dragon this will have no interest for you whatsoever and best avoided.

The Death of Balder a short play was the next thing. I don't like reading plays as a rule. I didn't like this one.

The next book is All Hell Let Loose by Max Hastings about the second World War. I've read his book about the D-day landings and liked it and so am looking forward to reading this.

Jane Austen it is not.

Until the next time.

It Might Have Been International Women's Day But Fathers And Sons Is Better Than Wives And Daughters...And Other Books

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today,

Well have been reading a few books since we last chatted. So let's start with a biography of Robert Burns by John Sharp. If this book was a meal I'd describe it as edible but nothing more. I'm sure there are better bios to use your time on instead.

You may remember a few posts back that I chatted about Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and that I didn't like it. Well in the random way I pick books to read the next book turned out to be Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (and it was random....honest!).

Whilst not perfect I enjoyed it. On the one hand you get the sons, with their youthful hopes,ideals cynicism, and disdain for their elders. Also properly discovering for the first time the mystery that are women. On the other there are the fathers. Men you feel are dissatisfied. The feeling that as their best years have passed them by they haven't yet found a certain peace within themselves.

There is more of the sons than the fathers, and as now I belong to the former I would have rather seen it the other way. Still of the books I'm chatting about today this was the best in my view.

The Angel of Terror by Edgar Wallace is one of those books that's perfectly acceptable as long as your brain is cruising in first gear. That said, Erle Stanley Gardner is better.

To be clear with regard to my criticisms of other Wallace thrillers it didn't strike me as racist and regard to sexist whilst the heroine has moments of dimness where she needs the help of men the cleverest villain is a woman. So I suppose that is some sort of equality.

Beowulf then. No one knows who wrote this epic poem but I think we can hazard a guess that it was a man, Indeed I'll go further by saying that it was not the sort of man who would wander lonely as a cloud and chat about daffodils either.

At the risk of being beheaded by the ghost of some Viking warlord what it didn't do is become one of those exceptions to my disregard of poetry. Ditto The Dalby Bear and Other Ballads by George Borrow.This time though I think this was my fault as I downloaded writers mentioned by Robert Macfarlane in his book Tracks ( W H Hudson was another) but in my eagerness to download everything I disregarded the fact that this is a ballad so probably better appreciated with music. I'll give George a pass.

Regular readers will know that there are certain writers that I describe as literary Switzerland in that whilst I don't dislike them I don't understand why they're considered great either. Anton Chekhov falls into this category and taken as a whole The Schoolmistress and Other Stories does not change anything.

There are exceptions. The title story (which is the best of the collection) and a few others make you sit up and take notice. But for the most part I just shrugged and moved on to the next tale.

In another tick off the literary bucket list the book I'm reading now is The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Can't say I'm happy with the portrayal of the villain but I'll chat about that when I've finished.

Until the next time.

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning Alone And Rambling

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

It's Saturday night. I'm alone as wife/daughter have gone out to see a friend for the evening. I'm not going as my knee that I had the accident on Wednesday is still not feeling 100% and is uncomfortable on car journeys. I can do it if need be. But this was the first day I could properly rest it since the incident when I tripped and fell on the hard floor at work and so just wanted it to recover. Which it is. But slowly.

Nothing to watch on TV. Have a batch of Columbo episodes on the DVR. But they're waiting for Christmas Day when I return from work. But I'll chat about that another time.

The quietness is extraordinary. Either I'm the only person in the entire block staying in on a Saturday night (possible) or else this place is soundproofed to a high standard.

I find myself looking at mail. Enterprise Rentacar. Which I used as part of the motor insurance for the recent accident. Not my fault. Out of date now anyway as everything was done. Binned.

Try to activate my new Nectar card....Yes I'm THAT bored. Screen says, and remember that it's my newly arrived card UNABLE TO VERIFY YOUR DETAILS. PLEASE CONTACT THE CALL CENTRE. And it was THEY WHO SENT IT TO ME!!! Won't bother with that until the new year.

A lot of mail has been got through. Wife will be happy (though will also mention I should have done it a lot sooner.

Have also downloaded a load of books (all free) from recommendations by Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways. Particularly noticeable is George Borrow. I think I've done about eighty!!!

Ten pm. Daughter rings. They're coming back. Find myself starting to watch Columbo but am really too sleepy to pay much attention.

It's now Sunday morning just after seven. Have woken up before everyone else. As I make breakfast I still feel my knee. It's still not quite right.

The news leads on the fact that war with North Korea is likely. So I assume saying Merry Christmas/Nadolig Llawen to them won't help. Presumably twinning with a possible nuclear war is the sky which though dark is beginning to show a red dawn.

Oh and by the way shepherds....you have been warned.

Of course it's quiet out there. Apart from seagulls. They don't care for Christmas either.

Find myself on Twitter mocking people whose views are to the right of Ghengis Khan. Really,really don't care.

I hear voices. It's from the apartment opposite. If looks are anything to go by they're recovering from the party the night before. Genuinely not jealous. After all I didn't hear the party the night before....and I doubt would've gone anyway.

Seven fifty seven. Weather is daylight enough for me to switch the lights off. Only now do I register it's Christmas Eve.

Wife is awake. It's eight eighteen. Some people are coming over so some vacuuming needs to be done. Otherwise I think today is for a spot of reading.

Until the next time.

Everything You Vaguely Knew About Owls And Some Things You didn't Know Because You Were Too Afraid To Be Bored

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Let's be fair here. The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel is not the sort of book I'd normally read. I've made my view on this blog before that basically I'm ambivalent towards animals other than dogs of which I've a childhood phobia.

That said having finished this mercifully slim book I'm surprised by how much I've actively disliked it.

Basically the book is split into three sections. The first is basically a compendium of facts about owls. Did you know Owls have a particular way they process food? (Vaguely I actually did). Did you know Pablo Picasso kept an owl? (No I did not....and I don't care). Do you want some poetry featuring owls? (NO!.....But it's there anyway).

So we get fact on fact on owl fact ploughed into us.

Then comes section two. Short pieces on owls that live in Britain and those that visit. I wonder if this is how The Observer Book on Owls would have worked. It also seems, given the writer is a nature writer, remarkably impersonal.

Finally we get to the first section. Which seemed just a longer version of the first bit for owl based info.

Only in the short couple of pages of the epilogue do we get an idea of how this book should have been written. In it he describes a personal encounter with an owl. It made me realise that he should have followed the manner of Robert Macfarlane or Jean Sprackland of having a personal based challenge, say seeking all the owls in Britain, discussing them whilst interspersing them with owl facts.

Now that would have been a wiser move.

Until the next time.

On Books: Particularly The Best Non Fiction Book I've Read This Year Despite One Disappointment

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well Absolute Friends by John Le Carre is finished. I did enjoy it, but on reflection it's not Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Mind you reading it for the most part whilst you're fighting dozing off in a hospital reception whilst your mother is having a cataract operation is probably not the best circumstance to give a book proper attention. But there you are.

The next ebook on the Kindle was (and I'm doing the Literary eqvilant of taking a deep breath here) The Lock And Key Library. Classic Mystery And Detective Stories. Old Time English. This Public Domain ebook (and so free) was basically a collection of horror stories by well known writers. These stories ranged from the surprisingly uninteresting (Lawrence Sterne, William Thackeray) to the downright bonkers (Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas De Quincey).

But it also had The Signalman by Charles Dickens. I'd been meaning to read this for a while. It was for the most part the calmest story in the whole collection but also the most chilling. For that alone I was happy to have read this book.

Which is more than I could say for The Great Cycle Adventure by James Plumley. A free ebook about a cycle ride he and his friends had in France,Spain and Morocco.

This is a slight book (took about fourteen minutes) and is basically his diary of the trips in print form. Really that's it. A few paragraphs here and there with no detail,explanation nothing. Really a waste of time.

The next ebook to read turns out to be You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe. I'm looking forward to reading this I must admit. We'll see how it turns out.

Went to the library yesterday. The book I took out was:

Voices From D-Day - Jon E Lewis

Seems like the right book to read at the right time.

When I borrow a book from the Library I share it on Twitter. The literary version of instagramming the meal you're about to have. Normally there's no reaction. Occasionally a few people comment and that's it.

When I tweeted out that the next book from the library I was reading was The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane I was inundated with likes and people saying how much they enjoyed it. I realised then that this was a book that men and women have taken to their hearts and loved.

Having read it now I can see why. Colour me converted.

It's a book about particular rambles the author takes on foot. Sometimes alone, other times with friends and or acquaintances. He can picture the scene and make you think you were there and definitely makes you wish you were there. The poet's language is evocative and moving.

But it's not all lyricism. He can go off in a tangent and discuss books and writers and paintings for example which have a connection to his journey and effortlessly go back to his trek. That takes talent. Once you read it for the first time you'll want to dip into it for the rest of your life. It can be described, in more ways than one but only as a term of praise, as a rambling book.

He can make the distant sounds of the M11 part of the countryside. Whereas the Essex part of the M11 I know (turn off from the M25 depart at Epping turn-off) is anything but.

This book for me is unique in that there are certain writers Mr Macfarlane mentions who I've already downloaded to read in due course. I've never done that before. Also it makes me seriously consider undertaking such routes through South Wales (as regular readers of this blog will know I've said previously I don't mind long walks as long as there was a purpose at the end of it).

And there's the disappointment.

For there is no walk undertaken in Wales in this book. There are walks undertaken in England (including Wiltshire in the west), Scotland and the all encompassing "abroad". But not in Wales. Which is a pity.

Now I'm sure you will say that I'm obsessed with Wales and/or you'll say that with regard to Robert Macfarlane it's his book and so his rules. You would be quite right. Which is why it's a disappointment and not a criticism. It does not hide the fact that it's a truly wonderful work which I heartily recommend and is unquestionably the best non fiction book I've read this year.

Until the next time.