SEPTEMBER 2021 READING WRAP UP | Ancient Classics! (and booker shortlist novels!)

come over here i got something to show you hello my name is ben and i want to tell you something i want to tell you about the books that i read in uh in september of 2021 uh yes how is everybody i hope everyone is all right um in the pre-apocalypse so this month we've got a bit of a theme again we've got uh we're going into the ancient world um right so basically uh kieran from kd books and myself are going to be reading the divine comedy so we're budding reading it and we're kind of doing a read along as well so we're sort of uh if you want to um if you want to if you want to join in then then please do we're reading from this one which is the steve ellis translation with the very funny uh yeah um but you can read whatever you like um so full details are in kieran's announcement video on his on his channel um so yeah so have a look at that and yeah we're gonna be reading this now because i've been wanting to read this for a while um i wanted to kind of prepare myself and um yes so this month i've been mainly reading books that are going to be preparing me for uh for dante however um i did kind of make a couple of detours along the way which has resulted in a kind of whistle-stop tour of ancient greece and ancient rome and literature so yes i mean it's kind of interesting reading these books because obviously people spend lifetimes their life kind of studying these these texts and i've just read them for the first time once in a month you know so um see i literally this is going to be me kind of going oh i thought this about it you know um when people have kind of been like oh well so yes we shall see what happens so the first i'm really uncomfortable for some reason today why is this why what's different what's different today that's not oh well the first books author that i read was homer right so i read uh homer so i read the iliad and the odyssey um and these are both translated by robert fagles robert fagles is going to crop up a couple of times in this uh in this wrap up um so yes obviously i got both of these second hand um got this first who knows what kind of life this book has had in the past and then i sort of um what's the word serendipitously maybe i found this in a charity shop and i was like oh the robert fails iliad all right let's let's do it so i did it okay so homer so from what i understand so they think there's a bit of kind of um disagreement about whether homer was um oh what's going on here um yeah there's a bit of discrepancy about whether or not homer was one person or a few people it's kind of a legend that he was a blind guy and sort of you know telling all these stories yeah essentially most people think that he was around around 800 bce i think it's the thing we say now these texts are uh kind of a sort of a bedrock foundation of most european literature to come afterwards um and yes so i read them so i read the iliad first um so the iliad is it details a an episode of the trojan war um in its ninth year it covers um a few weeks in the ninth year of the trojan war which is interesting because i i mean i would have thought as most people would think um that this covers the trojan war this is about the trojan war but it's not it's um it's only about a little bit of it so which is interesting specifically um it is about um the time when achilles refuses to to go to battle uh because agamemnon has taken one of his slave women bracius bryceus uh has taken her full reasons and um and yeah killies gets very very annoyed at that angry at that and so he refuses to fight and that causes the trojans to kind of advance more and more and more on the uh on the grecian camps uh and then you get sort of patroclus who is achilles great friend um who you know all that stuff happens so yeah so yeah it's a very small part of the trojan war but obviously it's a big big book it's about 600 pages i think this is um which is surprising to me the earlier so it is long i can't say that it wasn't a slog it was it was a slog in some places so the um the battle scenes there's a lot of battle scenes and sort of very extended um descriptions of battle and war and everything and what um what tends to happen is you have um every soldier that is killed is kind of given a brief sort of a few lines of um backstory so you have and then ajax speared thinginess and thingimus was born of doodle plunger and mrs doodle plunger and and he was famed for his goat herding but now he has been speared by ajax and it is no more you know but the bits of plot are very um kind of engaging so there's a couple of things that um i really liked so first of all there's there's the kind of the book ending the poem is bookended by these fathers trojan fathers coming to beg for their children um from the greeks um at the opening you have this minor character this father who wants to who's begging for his daughter back who's been captured which then results in all the events happening after that and then at the end you have of course king priyam king of the trojans coming to beg for the body of his son hector um who achilles has killed and is kind of like because of what hector did he's um kind of you know he's not allowing him to be buried he's drawing him around on his horse and everything so king prim comes to beg for the body of his son so he can give him a proper burial and that bit at the end um i thought was really um not moving but i thought it was very deep to go into dude bro territory it was um yeah there was something very sort of deep about it you sort of have to get scuba gear for that one just in the in the act itself of a father coming to beg for the body of his son from the man who killed him but knowing that his son also caused great tragedy to yeah it's just a lot of a lot of layers and the two men i mean they they don't sort of forgive each other but there is a sort of shared empathy and a sort of shared humanity and it's sort of like oh wow so there's that which i really liked um and then uh what was the other thing oh yeah so that the fine i loved the end at the very very ending of this because uh i loved the kind of the juxtaposition of them because the opening is the famous opening of rage of goddess rage tell of the rage of achilles and on the carrions and the clouds it's very um it's very that gods and goddesses um but then the ending in sort of comparison is really kind of simple it's got this really kind of simple line the last line is really kind of like but it's kind of loaded with and charged with um with kind of like the with what's going to happen afterwards so i really i really like that i was like that's great and this translation is is really fabulous i would really recommend this um translation by robert fagles um because it's kind of it's it's in verse you can see um but uh but it's kind of really accessible and kind of not sort of yeah it's kind of simple enough to read but also kind of engaging and stuff so yeah so yeah it's a bit of a slog at some points but um but yes i enjoyed it and then straight after i read the odyssey so this uh obviously is about odysseus or ulysses and his 10-year journey um back home um after the trojan war um so one of the really big surprising things about this that i um i was like oh right okay is that um the journey home the big journey home with all the monsters and everything and cersei um is only the first half he makes it home halfway in the book um and then the second half is basically about him plotting with his son telemachus telemachus um yeah him his son um plotting on how to seek revenge on these um on his wife's suitors so his wife penelope um she's obviously still at home and she's waiting on her husband for 20 years and she has all these kind of nasty suitors who've come to um kind of try and convince her that she's a widow and so that so she can marry one of them and then they can kind of inherit all the wealth and stuff um and she's like no no this is alive i know it um but they're there and sort of you know drinking and stuff and shagging the servants and everything um and uh and yes and then odysseus comes and he sort of finds all this stuff and he kind of the second half of the book is basically him trying to sort of plot how he's going to seek revenge in quite a sort of bloody fashion bloody fashion yes so this is a lot more kind of um i'd say enjoyable than the iliad is it's just because more stuff happens more a more variety of stuff happens in it um so you have like lots of monsters and stuff and you have all the women that kind of fall in love with him on the way and all the rest are like cersei and everything so yes and then like the the final the second act i mean the second act the second half i mean it is it does sort of build tension i i was really surprised by how it was like that's what the second half is um and it does lead to a very satisfying if very kind of like uh violent um slaughter with odysseus kind of uh killing all these suitors and kind of then taking it a sort of a next step by then killing all the serving women who um who kind of helped help these suitors you know which is kind of like what but uh but yes no i kind of i liked it and one thing because i obviously i've read a few sort of modern retellings of these books and um it's interesting sort of going back to the little source and sort of seeing um say for instance i mean like in this i was really hoping that there would be like a and then did achilles and patroclus snug each other but no there isn't any of that um madeline miller lied to me but yeah no i would yeah i'd definitely read the i mean i'd recommend reading the odyssey first just because um it is more exciting you don't need to read the iliad before but um yeah a lot more stuff happens in it and um it's kind of got a weird not weird it's got an interesting narrative structure this this one because it kind of um it starts in the middle in media race um it starts in the middle of christopher nolan as it sort of starts in the middle then sort of goes works back before you kind of go forward it's sort of interesting to me yeah it's just interesting how kind of how narrative storytelling was kind of this complex even back 800 years bcu so i'm glad i've i've read them now i have read homer and i suppose the next thing to do to be reading is is to read other translations of it um but yeah i recommend robert fagles because as i say it's sort of easy accessible to read but um it's still sort of like still feels um okay so from war and sort of very sort of masculine men doing masculine things i went um straight on to uh sappho surfer club faso is saffinating sappho is fascinating um yeah so sappho is a um is a poet um and she i believe it's around 600 bce i think they say i think there's only like two complete poems that we have now and the rest are only kind of like fragments and like little bits of poems um but she was really influential in her day um i think plato called her the 10th muse yeah so this is translated by aaron puccigan pooch again i want to say this is the first time me uh encountering and reading and so the poems are um about a lot of things but um they are about love and about um different types of love and there are also there's ones about troy in there which is interesting and this edition i really like this edition and because you have the poems on one side and then like a big kind of like analysis explanation on the other side even if it's like tiny tiny fragments and yeah and some of them are just like even though they're sort of very small fragments of poems they do kind of like get to the heart so for instance this one is like a gale smiting an oak on mountainous terrain eros with a stroke shattered my brain savages my flesh yeah so there's just yeah i'm sort of reading i'm having to stop myself from reading them again so yes this one's about love and death and everything and and yeah that's just really really interesting now so i really enjoyed reading this and i was like oh this is amazing um and then i i watched uh hannah from hannah's books she has two videos on sappho which i thoroughly recommend you watch and the second one is about translating sappho and she kind of goes through various different um uh translations and the difficulties as translators have with with sappho and she talks about this translation yeah i when i was reading it i was like oh i really like this but then watching that video and um sort of hearing other other interpretations of these poems um she has a bit of a um she has some criticisms about this translation which i kind of which i sort of like oh yes i can sort of see why you do because um aaron pooch again um yeah he's kind of he's taken a little bit of liberty liberties with these he's kind of like joined up where there's been where words or things are missed out he's kind of like attempted to join things up and make it more and make it flow a little bit more which is kind of like do you do that is that something you should do um other other translators have kind of purposefully left those bits out and it kind of makes it more of a mysterious thing so i definitely want to read another um another kind of translation of sappho um but yes but no i but having said that i do really like this version i do like the um you know the the analysis and stuff so yes i thoroughly recommend satellite so we have yet more of them detours um so from a woman giving these very sort of short bursts of emotional um intensity with love sort of expressing it very kind of intensely uh to a bunch of blokes uh sitting around um analyzing it as we do um i've read uh plato's symposium yes this this is pretty much a um a what's it called spur of the moment i was like oh i want to read some plato yes so i read this now this is this is really wild i this really surprised me in a very very good way yeah it's wild it's very very funny which really surprised me um yeah so it's about um a group of of guys sitting around drinking wine and analyzing and trying to sort of um uh pinpoint what love is what the god of love is um who the god of love is and and what yeah what love is and uh so you get these sort of big speeches about about different types of of love i guess um and they kind of get more and more ridiculous as the as the uh as the book goes on um and then it culminates in in socrates kind of going oh yes but none of you have thought about it this way and they're more going um yeah so there's a few there's a few surprising things about this so um i mean one of them the one of them is what's his name um aristophanes speech in particular is kind of uh interesting and if you anyone who has watched hedwig and the angry inch the origin of love um song that's from that was from this i was reading it i was like oh that's origin of love song from hedwig and and the angry inch fair enough so yeah so there's these all so they get a few speeches about love and stuff which are interesting socrates who says yes but love is is actually like this um but then once he's finished uh socrates ex comes in very very drunk and he's like i'm gonna tell you the thing is and it's just very very funny so yes i was very very um surprised and uh i'm definitely gonna reread this again at some point because uh it's yeah i just thought it was funny interestingly so we're sort of going back in time before going forwards but next i read uh sophocles um the three thievin plays um so this includes um the most famous one which which is oedipus the king or oedipus rex which is the one yeah it's interesting this i mean this is translated by robert fagles again and it's interesting reading plays because i don't think this has been written to be performed i think this has been written to be read um because usually play i mean plays are aren't aren't written to be read they're written to be performed but i think in this case i think it has been written to be read um because i can't really imagine a production of of this text really unless it was very very stylized so yes so i enjoy i mean obviously oedipus the king or universe rex is the is the best one um it's like kind of it's been called like the perfect play um and yes it kind of hits me in a way it's got the massive twist or kind of the um the reversal yeah it's interesting i like i liked reading it and also because i hadn't really read the other two really either like antigone yeah i think in terms of enjoyment i liked edipus the king then antigone and then edith colonists um but yeah i was in i was in a production of oedipus and it was in a really strange production at battersea arts center way back in the day uh way back in the day and i played creon um so yeah it was interesting to reread it again and sort of go back to that but yeah i'd like to sort of get into more um greek drama and sort of just check it out you know like i might sort of have a go at medea and and things because it's a this is the thing about when you when you read these things that you do kind of everything sort of references each other and so uh yeah i kind of i kind of want to see what else is going on so i might read more greek tragedy but then yes so then yes so then i read aristotle the poetics by aristotle and now i've this is a reread because this is on our reading list when i did my masters along with um plato's um the theory of art chapter um in the republic plato's republic is up there can't be bothered to get it but i read that as well reread that as well and yes it was yeah it's interesting kind of like rereading this and aristotle is very very analytical about what makes it's basically about what makes a good what makes good drama and what makes a good um epic poem and stuff and how and he basically uses oedipus rex readers thinking as a sort of framework framework of how you should do it um you know in kind of having a beginning middle and end and having a reversal and having characters who are um uh i can't remember like honorable character remember and he sort of gives oedipus sophocles as kind of like the basis of how you should be doing it so yeah a lot of the things that we're meant we um we have to sort of compare aristotle to plato and play it here plato in the in the republic he's like oh art is dangerous and um you know if art can you know make us um emotional and that's not good because we need to not be emotional whereas um aristotle is like no drama is good because it makes us uh question stuff and yes we uh we learn we learn things about from asking questions and stuff so yeah interesting so next up uh i read theoneered by virgil so um in terms of reading stuff for dante this is a fairly big one because obviously well not obviously but in the divine comedy dante is accompanied by a virgil into the underworld um i'm gonna get sun in my eyes a minute yes so this is kind of like so i was really really interested to read um something by virgil um and why kind of dante was sort of chose him as the guide and everything so this was kind of published after his death i think i think virgil didn't want this to be published because he was sort of he went back over and over and over again he was like i can't get it right i mean he didn't he wanted it to be burnt but um that he went against his wishes and published it um after his death which is sort of right towards the end of the first century bce so this is interesting in that it is kind of virgil's um take on a homeric epic poem um it's yeah it's basically like amalgamating the iliad and the odyssey together um but for roman audiences and for roman means um and uh and yeah so it was it's it's an interesting one so i did find the first half is much more interesting than the second half and the first half is kind of the is the odyssey um ripoff it's the odyssey kind of bit of the poem where aeneas who is a uh fighter in the trojan war for the trojans um so after troy after the fall of troy aeneas escapes with a load of people and he is given a prophecy that he's going to found rome so he kind of leads these people through kind of an odyssey-esque adventure with the same kind of monsters and and people um up to italy um and on the way he encounters dido of carthage who uh who is fabulous that is really really fabulous and she sort of through um [Music] uh goddess means she is made to fall in love hopelessly with uh with an es and things do not go well and then also um nes is taken to see his father in the underworld and it's this bit that dante um that dante has sort of used as inspiration for the divine comedy to when he goes into the underworld i i think um it's what i've it's what i've read um and in the underworld particularly in the kind of the the hell bits there's different punishments for different types of sins there's and he has a guide with him the sybil um so yes so it's sort of um people have said it's clear like where dante got his inspiration from with with this with that book which is book six i believe where he goes into the underworld um so yes i thought that was interesting the second half is the iliad bit um and i didn't really find it very interesting at all to be honest with you um yeah so he he gets there and initially um the the native people the natives of italians are like yes come in yes it's fine you can sort of settle here it's fine but then of course um [Music] juno is it juno or yeah juno yeah she's like no they can't they can't have a nice time so she along with some other gods they kind of um they spur on everyone to kind of cause this big war and everything and yeah i mean it's kind of like an iliad retread um but kind of less interesting in my opinion um yeah just all goes on and on a bit um i did like the end i did like the end but um apart from that i was like but the second first half the first half of this is is really really fabulous and i i did like it a lot also it has um if anyone sort of like misses um you know the trojan horse in the iliad it has the trojan horse and it sort of recounts in kind of gory detail the fall of troy um you know so that's sort of interesting about it so yes so and also i mean i think also because there's a kind of like a um propaganda type thing with this poem in kind of wanting to um trace the trace kind of mythological mythological figures down to augustus who was the emperor at the time um and sort of say like augustus are great so yes there's a bit of that um particularly in the second half which i was like but um that was interesting i'm glad i read it but i didn't like it as much as as homer okay and lastly there's these two um books which were recommended in a lot of these books um i've read because i watched uh jennifer brooks's video um what to read before dante before the divine comedy basically and she lists a few different kind of interesting people and i and i love them i was like oh i'm going to read this so i read horus the complete odes and epos this is translated but i haven't been saying who any of these are translated by but in mind they'll be in the description description box so this is translated by w g shepherd um so i read the odes um so i can't say that this was a particularly satisfying reading experience obviously this is quite an old edition with the kind of of penguins but i think if you were to buy this new this is the translation that penguin still uses i think um so horus is one of the apparently he is one of the four poets that's virgil in the divine comedy sites as the greatest poets of all time sort of thing um so that includes homer ovid who i've read um metamorphosis is um horus and then this guy called lucan so yeah i was interested to see why um horus is seen as a thingabob and i read the odes and it's interesting reading this book because it's it's a situation where i i think i would like this poet i think i'd like horace's work however i did not get along with the translation at all i think it was just very am i blinding you i think it was just very um yeah just sort of almost impenetrable and some really sort of strange word obscure word choices and it's from the 80s this translation um and i'm not saying it's dated but i'm just saying it's it's it's just weird it's like very kind of yeah because i was doing some sort of comparisons any kind of translation i could find online about the the of horus poems i was looking at and uh yeah it doesn't need to be this this difficult essentially the poems the odes are about a number of things there's one's about love and about friendship a lot of them are to do with like um giving advice to his friends so his most famous one is the kind of the carpe diem poem which is most often translated as seize the day um which is 111 i think be wise decant the wine prune back your long-term hopes life ebbs as i speak so seize each day and grant the next no credit um yes so there's that one and then there are a few similar to virgil there are a few poems which are augustus is so great augustus is so great g-r-a-t i mean g-e-r-e-a-a augustus is so great so there's that one um there's a few ones like that particularly towards the end um but yes so particularly so it's the same with this translation um so i was going to read the epods which apparently are much more kind of much more tongue-in-cheek and more funny um but then my eye was drawn uh immediately to a racial slur in one of them and i was like what what and i was like i don't i don't think that word was was about in latin in latin and so i did some sort of googling and i looked and i was like yeah i mean no this is kind of just completely unnecessary choice of uh william g shepherd just a really sort of yeah i was like no so i don't think i'm gonna keep this copy um if i did keep it i'd keep it as a kind of like an analysis because i think because as i say i'd like to sort of have another go with horus with another translator um so if i did keep this it would only be that's better it would only be um for kind of analytical purposes and maybe i can't be bothered um so yeah but just sort of unnecessary i mean that was unnecessary but then also just unnecessary obscure words and kind of weird um clause sentence structures and stuff so yeah there we go then the last book i'm going to talk about in terms of all this stuff is a dnf so i read saint i'm a bit close to you i read saint augustine the confessions the list of confessions so i wanted to read this one uh similarly because jennifer brooks recommended it but also because this is kind of like a a link between because saint augustine was a roman poet who duff did know it he was born in what is now algeria then hippo saint augustine of hippo and he moved to yeah he sort of moved around a bit but essentially he was a roman roman poet who didn't know it um but yeah so this is like the link between roman kind of romance of mythology poetry and then moving on into kind of um christian the christian era uh yeah so this is his confessions um this is basically uh recounting his conversion into christianity um and yes so i got halfway i have to say i got halfway then i sort of realized why am i reading this because uh yeah i was i just wasn't really getting much from it because it is very very um it's a very important religious text and you know theology students and um ministerial students and people read it today and it yeah it's it's the bits that were interesting to me are the i was more interested in the bits where he's sort of more in a quandary and sort of um questioning stuff a little bit more there's moments where he sort of goes on these sort of big um question tirades about you know like what is and sort of logical trying to be sort of logical about it you know like um like the nature of evil and the origin of evil and why why is there evil in the world if there is a god and all loving god why is there evil in the world and he sort of goes on into these of um into these big sort of uh quandaries and i like that and at the beginning there's one about um him being a baby and was he sinful as a baby all sort of stuff before you know before he found god you know um and so i liked i liked that because that's kind of like some i mean that's what people debate today still you know about god and stuff so that i liked the bits where he was sort of he took a more certain the sort of more instructional bits i was like okay and as it was leading into the second half i was like it was all leading more into that kind of not preachy but just kind of like oh yes this is kind of this is what's what is what and stuff and i was like so eventually i mean i was i found myself i was like sort of skim reading a lot of it and then i was thinking why if i'm skim reading to this degree then there's no point in me really carrying on so um so yeah so i did dnf it however i'm going to keep it alongside thingy so when i read divine comedy and i need it then i will go back to it but yeah so certain bits are interesting in certain bits we're not so yes so that is my oh right let's have a look so this is basically my preparation for the divine comedy now um there's about a week left of september so i'm going to just take a big break and just read a lot of um a lot of newer books and yes i shall report back once that has happened hello um here we are um we have a different we have a change in in situations um i'm currently house sitting in london um trying not to murder my friends plants which is uh which is all good so yes different uh different surroundings also i've lot i keep losing flipping hair bands so i'm looking a bit sort of wild and um i don't know sort of bronte ish today right so i've got three more books to talk about um and they're all booker prize shortlist ones so yes the book prize shortlist so i'm quite excited this year because i think i'm going to be able to read most of the short list before the winner is announced um which is quite cool which i've never done that before um last year i think i read four of the short list but like way way way after sugar bay was announced um but this year um things will be a bit different so i know for a fact that i'm not going to be able to get to great circle before november the 3rd just because uh in october i've got a whole bunch of i'm gonna be reading dante's inferno um i really want to try and finish wives and flipping daughters then i want to read don quixote and then there's a whole bunch of books i wanted so yeah i'm not going to be able to get round to another 600 plus page book sorry great circle sorry maggie ship's dead um but obviously if it wins then i'll obviously read it um but the others um yes i mean i've already read three so that's half um i'm definitely getting too bewilderment and then the only other one is the promise which i think i can get around to so yeah i'll be able to read five out of the six before the winner has announced so that'll be interesting so yes but um before that i've read three of them so let's have a look uh two of them were supplied to me by bob the booker um so i'm very grateful to him for these books so the first one was a passage north and this is by anuk arup ragasam um and this is not somalia that's the other one this is set in sri lanka um and yes and it's about death meditations on death and life and love and earth right so this is interesting so it's a very very meditative novel it's basically involves characters looking out of windows and thinking back you know so the basic numbers is that you have christian who's this young man living in colombo i think in sri lanka yeah so he lives with his mother and his grandmother and he gets the news that his grandmother's former carer has uh has died in a sort of like a freak accident um and so he has to make his way up to the northeast of sri lanka and where there has been you know 30 years of war um he has to make his way up there to attend um her funeral um and yes so it's not it's this is not a plot driven novel very much it's very much that's i mean that's the basic premise and it's about his journey up there and and then the funeral um but what makes the book up is these long long meditations and reflections about um his life and about his and about death and stuff it's made up i mean it's big big blocks of texts and very very long sentences um and yeah as i say it's christian looking out of windows and thinking back so there's not really much immediate kind of plot going on i mean i don't particularly mind these sorts of novels which are very kind of not so much about plot but about about thinking about stuff and particularly with sri lanka i mean there's a lot of talk about the the war that happened and um and reflecting about death and violence and and things and christian has a he has this guilt about um him living in the south of the country and sort of kind of avoiding a lot of the violence that um a lot of people in his in the same country faced the bits of the book which i wasn't so interested in were the kind of the bits to do with a formal relationship that kind of i wasn't too like bothered about that but yes no i i found it interesting it's not completely arresting i wasn't kind of completely blown away by it but i did like a lot of it um and yeah it is there is a sort of a stylized nature of it with these long long sentences and kind of it's not sort of secure i mean it's not like milkman or anything like that it's not kind of circuitous but it does kind of yeah it's more about it's about the themes rather than the plot and i get the feeling i mean it's in the third person and i haven't really watched any interviews with the author i get the feeling that this that it's the author's it's the author's kind of um quandaries um you know his own sort of thoughts in a novel sort of thing i don't know if that's i'm talking rubbish but that's the impression that i got yeah do i think it's gonna win um i don't know i'd be surprised if it won i'd be like oh okay it's a fairly kind of um yeah it didn't really make a big impact with me but um yes it would be a kind of like oh fair enough if this one but we'll see philosophical novel yeah i mean yeah i mean it's it is a philosophical novel um i think he studied philosophy the author and stuff um so i don't think it's for everyone um because it is very kind of like drawn out um but i did find it interesting um to be warned i mean there is some pretty horrific um discussions and descriptions about war and about torture and stuff which i obviously which aren't which are pretty horrifying to read obviously an interesting one next up i don't have it with me because um i got it from the library i've now i've joined my local library um but i read no one is talking about this right so this is a pretty divisive novel isn't it um i liked it so basically no one is talking about this is um all about um kind of social media it's a mean twitter culture basically it's about a woman who um has become twitter famous um through a viral tweet a sort of a jokey tweet that she did she spends most of the time going around the globe um going to events and talking about the internet and yeah so sort of similar to i believe this is kind of like auto fiction i believe like patricia lockwood it's very um yeah almost autobiographical uh yeah so she kind of lives um she doesn't live online but she her a lot of her focus and attention is online on twitter um kind of with this jokey sardonic um mimi sense of humor meany sense of humor until um an event in her family um causes her to um need causes the need to shift her focus to very much the present and to family members and to kind of reevaluate her her attention basically right so it's a very very this is a very very diversive book and why is that well it's a divisive book because of its style um so the the first half well all of it um but the first half particularly um is made up so it's not like a kind of continuous thread you know usual paragraphs and speech marks and stuff um you get these little kind of bits these little kind of paragraphs of kind of thoughts of like little events um and basically it took me a while i took a couple pages of realized what was going on um but basically you have it's told how do you just go the structure of it is like you're scrolling through social media sort of the second half is where plot happens and where you have this family event uh tragedy um which yeah which causes her to kind of focus her attention um away from the social media um more more away from her social media presence however the style doesn't the style doesn't change so you still have these little these little bits um but now the focus isn't about mimi kind of it's about focusing on her family but with the same structure and kind of also with this same sense of humor kind of thing um which is kind of a little bit of gallows humor kind of a little bit of rye eyebrow-raised humor and very sort of in jokey humor kind of referency stuff also i mean i did a i did a masters in playwriting a couple of years ago and we had a lecturer our main lecturer actually and her main well not a main thing but oh a big bit of hers of um of her teaching i guess um was that the structure of your play should um marry up with your with what you want to say with the politics of your play um so for example it's no use kind of if you want to say something really radical it's no use kind of using a traditional three-act structure kind of drawing room early 20th century structure because then it's like it doesn't sort of marry up that was her argument and so she was she sort of tried to kind of get us to think about structure and form in a way that kind of reflected the politics of all the message of the play of itself and of course that kind of can be reflected in in other things as well and i thought that um patricia lockwood she's sort of done a similar thing she's kind of used the the essence i guess of social media the essence of what scrolling through a feed does of kind of having different bits of information sporadic bits of information as well as having a kind of weird sense of humor within jokes and kind of that kind of and yeah and then talked about being present um and being um and where our attention lies when it comes to kind of personal tragedy um yeah i think patricia lockwood sort of has done that um in her novel very well i thought but yeah it is divisive and a lot of people won't like this book because it's kind of i don't know it is some people might think it's gimmicky um but i i didn't think it was gimmicky basically a way for this year's um prize to be controversial would be if this book won um because it is so divisive um but yes but i'd be i'd be i don't know i'd be happy if it won i think i mean i mean yeah i've only read one other book um but yeah it'd be it'd be interesting of this one because i think it'd be a risk it would be kind of like a a risk because a lot of people don't like it but a lot of people do like it but um yes and also because um it's kind of it it's very much dated now it's a very sort of now novel um and whether it will age well will be remains to be seen and saying it's a now novel really it's a kind of a two years ago novel really if we're thinking about it just because of what's referenced and because it's pre-pandemic um and kind of that kind of meanie culture although i think that will sort of last for for a little bit the kind of the references obviously are going to date this novel considerably as it sort of ages so i don't know i don't know how that will filter in the judges um the judge's deliberations but um yes we shall see but it did make me laugh out loud a good few times and um and yeah i did kind of i did appreciate the second half's um sort of a turn into more serious subject matter but still sort of keeping the same structure in the same kind of sardonic wash even though it's um even though it's quite sort of tough subject matter so yes i'm clutching my pills so yeah i liked it and then lastly the last book this is another one from bob the booker which i will be giving back to him soon but i read the fortune men this is my this is by nadifa mohamed um so i've literally just finished this about half an hour ago um and right so this is this is based on the true story um it's set in the 50s in tiger bay in cardiff and it's um [Music] because it's based on the true story i don't want to give away much but um basically it's about a miscarriage of justice and this uh somali man who's living in cardiff um he gets charged for the murder of this woman um which he didn't do and basically it's about the lead up to that and also the lead up to his trial the actual trial itself and the um and the consequences of that trial so i have to say reading this i can't i can't say i was completely sort of um i didn't really allow myself to get completely immersed in this book um for a couple of reasons i mean firstly i mean i'm not gonna go too much into this but in the uk at the moment we've got quite a high profile uh murder case um in the media at the moment um and whilst justice has been served with that um this thing about injustice and about thing was just ringing in my ears it's completely different context to this but this thing about police and um and all that sort of stuff yeah it was just in my head as i was reading this and so i kind of i didn't really allow myself to kind of get fully immersed into this book because i was sort of like yeah um there's something about it i'm not sure whether it's i'm not sure whether it was its length or or certain things because it's she does go into great detail i think one thing she does is that she one thing she does really well is that she gives this kind of um she gives a lot of detail about the protagonists i think his name is mahmoud the mood matan yes [Music] she gives like a whole kind of a backstory and very sort of detailed things about his character um and also lots of things that are um you know a lot of lots of layers um to his character which sort of allows us to kind of be fully invested in him and yeah which makes kind of the injustice of it all um yeah much more powerful i guess yeah i think maybe maybe it's too soon for me to be talking about those books i have literally just finished it finished it um but yes if it won then um i wouldn't be surprised if it won but i would need i would need to read it again kind of but with kind of more of like a i need to sort of invest in it more um because there was a bit i wasn't i wasn't skim reading it but i was kind of i was kind of i was i just wasn't letting myself be involved too much because it is a true story um and because yeah i just wasn't really in the frame of mind because of recent events to kind of be in a kind of true story about injustice to this level like does that make sense i don't know if that makes sense yeah i don't think i'm ready to talk about this book yet but um yeah i think having just read it i think the things that she's done um with the detail in the in the world um with all the different characters with not just with mumbo matan but with um but with the victim's family um talking about grief um in that sort of way um and i think there's some really kind of powerful towards the end some really really powerful things um with the protagonist trying to sort of um yeah i don't want to give too much away but yeah it's just very very powerful um passages in it but yeah no essentially i liked it i thought it was very powerful particularly towards the end but i will need to reread it to to properly talk about it again yeah hopefully that makes sense so yeah so now i have bewilderment to wait to read to read um which i'm getting for my birthday and uh and then i think i'm gonna i think i should be able to get around to the promise and as i say i'm not gonna be able to get to the great circle i don't think um but if that wins then i will read it afterwards subsequently so yes we shall see but of the three i think my uh my favorite thus far is uh is the lockwood is no one is talking about this but i wouldn't be surprised if um if these two either of these two made it um oh well i would i'd be a little bit surprised if this made just because it would be kind of like a safe-ish choice i think um even though it's it's i liked it and i appreciated it um yeah yeah it's completely opposite to the way it talks about grief and it's structured stuff is the complete opposite of no one is talking about this which is i find it interesting um this is kind of like a a normal novel in that you know you have actual mid-length paragraphs and speech marks and stuff um it's a very very important subject matter and a very very um yeah it's very important subject matter and um and yeah i wouldn't be surprised if this one um and i would need to read it again if it did um and i do need to reread it again actually anyway but um yes so there we go this is going to be a long one a lot of books i am going to be starting the divine comedy um and yeah i'll leave links down below about ways you can be involved with that so um do join us if you want to and uh yes i'm going to try and find my hairbands and have a nice time so yes thank you for watching if you've been watching i hope everyone is alright and yes [Music]

Channel: doomantidote

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Rating: 4.9428573 out of 5

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Id: jNvoWKENN88

Length: 52min 50sec (3170 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021