What I've been reading

The Way of All Flesh
by Samuel Butler

narrated by Frederick Davidson

"The story of a young man who survives the baleful influence of a hateful, hypocritical father, a doting mother, and a debauched wife, to emerge as a decent, happy human being. It is also a stinging satire of Victorian gentry, their pomposity, sentimentality, pseudo-respectability, and refined cruelty, a satire still capable of delivering death-blows to the same traits that exist in our present world."

I'm not sure I'd describe this as satire. It's a family saga with a bit of philosophising on the side, and the main character really only finds happiness when he inherits a fortune from his aunt, although he gets a bit happier when he discovers that his alcoholic wife is a bigamist and can separate from her with a clear conscience.  I thought the narration was OK to begin with, but decided by the end that the narrator was getting in the way of the story somehow. Strangely, I got the impression that the narrator actually didn't much like doing the reading, and was influencing how I felt about the characters - I've never thought this for a moment about any of the readers before, even when I thought they weren't much good. But hey, my classical literary education continues to grow.

Collected Short Stories
by Patrick O'Brian

"Collected here is a definitive selection of all the stories O’Brian wishes to preserve. They exhibit an effortless variety of mood and tone: some stories are enchantingly funny, others exciting, terrifying or passionate."

I think the key phrase in the description is that these are the stories that the author 'wishes to preserve.' They aren't very good, at least, I didn't like them at all. I'm sure they are very 'literary' or 'clever' but some of them were more vignettes than stories, and even the ones that had a beginning, middle and end weren't very pleasant subjects.

Margaret the First
by Danielle Dutton

"Exiled to Paris at the start of the English Civil War, Margaret meets and marries William Cavendish and, with his encouragement, begins publishing volumes of poetry and philosophy, which soon become the talk of London. After the Restoration, upon their return to England, Margaret’s infamy grows. She causes controversy wherever she goes, once attending the theatre with breasts bared, and earns herself the nickname ‘Mad Madge’."

This is a fictionalised biography of a real person, and for me it didn't work at all. The blurb suggests that Margaret Cavendish was a revolutionary character: the first woman to publish a book of poetry, the first woman to be invited to a meeting of the Royal Society, and clearly shocking in her public persona. The account in the book makes her sound much less interesting and doesn't connect these episodes with any coherence. Despite having read a whole book about her, I don't really understand her at all.

A Mother's Courage
by Dilly Court

"When Eloise Cribb receives the news that her husband's ship has been lost at sea she wonders how she is ever going to manage. With two young children, the rent overdue and almost nothing to live on, Eloise is faced with her worst nightmare: she must either go to the workhouse, or abandon her children at the Foundling Hospital."

An easy read for the journey home on the train overnight from France, not all that great but good enough. Interesting from a stylistic viewpoint that the writing doesn't ring true, but hard to put my finger on exactly what is wrong with it. Anyway, I finished it, so it can't have been that bad.

Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman

"A groundbreaking tour of the mind explaining the two systems that drive the way we think. Practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble."

This is a surprisingly accessible account of academic research on the boundary of psychology and economics. It describes the equivalent of optical illusions in our perceptions and behaviours around intuition, illustrating beautifully the contradictory positions that we take based on the information presented. There doesn't seem to be much we can do about it except be aware, in the same way as being aware that two lines that appear to be different lengths are not - we can't see them as the same length, we can only know them to be so. So framing a percentage risk in two ways that intuitively appear different (0.01% mortality, 1 in 10,000 will not survive) does not allow us to perceive the risk to be the same, but cognitively we must be aware that it is the same risk. It's a big fat book with absolutely loads of fascinating examples of how our minds work, and I would keep it on my shelves and refer to it now and again except that it was loaned to me and I've got to give it back, and I don't want it enough to buy a copy for myself!

Ivanhoe
by Sir Walter Scott

narrated by Simon Prebble

"Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard the Lion Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Ivanhoe is captured along with his Saxon compatriots, Isaac the Jew and his daughter Rebecca, but Richard and the well-loved, famous outlaw Robin Hood team up to defeat the Normans."

When I told Cousin H I was reading this he thought it would be hard going, but it isn't that bad. I was intrigued by the author's interest in the underlying conflict between conquered Saxon and conquering Norman of the time, the position of Jews in society as the hated wealthy infidel usurers, and the contrast of chivalric honour with murder and kidnapping for ransom. By the end the good guys had triumphed, the bad guys mostly succumbed. There are only three women in the book: one dies, one is married for love and the other emigrates to Spain. All very satisfactory.