#Play Separate Tables

JANUARY


17. by Terence Rattigan


Finish date: 28 January 2022
Genre: Play
Rating: A
Review:

Good news: Setting: The guests gather for a life-changing night at the Beauregard Hotel in
…Bournemouth, an English seaside resort town. We look at the lives of several residents. Guests who have their meals at Separate Tables. We see this all the time…people do not connect.

Good news: This is an absolutely classic English play! Written 1950’s Rattigan’s play develops familiar themes of loneliness, humiliation and the self appointed moral jurors in the private hotel. Rattigan draws on his own world. He dissects the known realities of the upper-middle-class. Separate Tables is touching, subtle and proof how …small minds (Lady Railton-Bell) can problematise the unproblematic

Personal: Reading tip: try to put faces on the characters before reading. I used the actors/actresses in the 1958 movie version of the play: Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, David Niven and Burt Lancaster. Niven won Best Actor Oscar 1959 for his staring role in the movie.
#MustRead…it takes about an hour of your reading time!

#Merry Christmas 2021…big chill!!

1. Big chill in The Netherlands this morning….ice storm is predicted for afternoon.
2. We are in total lockdown and with this weather nobody
3. is going anywhere #MerryChristmas2021.
4. I’m in the -12,8 C zone!!

Merry Christmas….Santa is coming!

1. Glad to report  that despite a
2. …FULL LOCKDOWN for the second year
3. …in The Netherlands
4. …Santa will able to visit us!
5. But he will have to VAX-up. MASK-up
6. and show his PCR test in last 24 hours!
7. Reindeers have a special exemption…
8. They have herd immunity.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Dutchman Max Verstappen Formula 1 World Champion

Enjoying a bottle of champagne today!

What a Dutch champion racer…just 24 years old.

He really gave 7x World Champion Lewis Hamilton

…a run for his money!!

Not getting much sleep tonight.

#Bravo Max

#Bravo Red Bull Racing

UNFORGETTABLE   YEAR OF RACING – CLASS PHOTO 2021

#Non-fiction The Figure of the Detective

• Author: Charles Brownson
  
• Title: The Figure of the Detective
  
• Published: 2014  (216 pg)
• Purchased: 30 April, 2015
• Genre: non-fiction
• Monthly plan
• #MountTBR Challenge  (01/100)

1. Why is the figure of a detective a cultural icon?
2. It emerged from a culture of mass literacy, popular media and class difference.

1. How is the existence and changes in the this genre driven by social change?
2. The genre is driven by PUBLIC TASTE and the reader’s changed values.

1. How has the genre changed?
2. The classic English detective (cozy, rural settings)
   
3. Noir —> morally dark, streaked with emotion and violence
4. Noir had a short life and the genre broke down into several forms:
5. Hard-boiled (urban setting)  anti-Hero in a world of Black-and-Gray Morality.
6. Spys,  Thrillers and
7. Neoclassic (mixture Hammett’s/Chandler’s hard-boiled and the spy story)

1. Why does the detective story at particular times such a popular broad appeal?
2. The task of investigation and resolution is comforting!’

1. Why are we entertained by the reading about detective that is beyond simple entertainment?
2. The essence of success is CF’s  recipe for production
3. …able to supply readers with more of the same.

1. How does this long-lived, very popular and important sort of fiction work?
2. A feel good plot intended to assure people that truth is knowable.

Personal notes:

1. One of the first books I can remember was the series of Nancy Drew Mysteries.
2. I was  probably enticed to read them b/c my name is also Nancy!
3. But I read all the books and played the ND mystery board game constantly.
4. I want to discover what the attraction was…
5. …why I was so enthralled with this series, the detective genre.
6. Result: it seems even at that young age I was thrilled as
7. …the pages flew by, justice got done and
8. …the bad people got what was coming to them!

Least interesting chapters:  nr 2, 6, 7 (…the book fizzled out)

1. Sherlock Holmes…not my kind of detective.
2. Mr. Brownson…was too long-winded, philosophical in
3. …the last two chapters.
4. There were just a few examples mentioned of neo-classic detectives.

What can a detective story be about?

1. False accusations
2. False identity
3. Murder
4. Dangers of love
5. Strong feeling of class
6. Locked-room mystery – the thrill of setting up a fiendish crime,
7. and challenging the reader to solve it. (puzzle)
8. 21st C the reader is tired of puzzles.
9. Readers demand rounded characters and plots with some
10. Psychological complexity, a dash of fate and
11. a whiff of uncertain self-knowledge on the part of the detective.
12. In fact  many of these features are found in literary novels!

How has CF  changed?

1. Greatest change is the advancements in science and technology!
2. Plot changes are required from the “classic detective”.
3. Now we are confronted with computers,
4. …DNA forensics and digital communications (cell-phones).
5. Police/detectives have a private life and it is an integral part of the CF novel.

How do detectives work?

1. The detective does not  discover anything.
2. It is revealed to him when he presses in the right place.
3. Confessons (..sometimes forced!)  (Mr. Gryce, Anna Green’s books)
4. Evidence to validate claims
5. Deduction (aka cool knowledge)  (Holmes)
6. Smoke out the true villain…by pointing to an innocent person as  the killer.
7. NOT looking at the subject of interest (Gryce, Bucket, Cuff, Lecoq)
8. Disguises (Lecoq)
9. “The soft walk”  to lull criminals into a false sense of security by playing dumb  (Colombo)
10. Colombo: “…Just one last thing.”
11. “Using the little gray cells” (clues and speculation) (Poirot)
12. Poirot: ” Ah, mon ami! How could I have been so stupid”
13. Psychological investigations  (aka warm knowledge)
14. …observes from a distance (Maigret)
15. Maigret: “Comprendre et ne pas juger”

Conclusion:

1. The book did spark my interest in reading CF.
2. I enjoyed reading how the detective genre evolved
3. …driven by social change.
4. Good book to browse through if you
5. …see it in the library.
6. I’m sure there are better reference books out there!

#Paris in July Fini!

Heading into the weekend….A French woman with her baguette and six bottles of wine, Paris, France, 1945. (Photo by Branson Decou)

• Many thanks to Thyme for Tea for hosting
• #ParisInJuly
• To all the participants
• ….I enjoyed
• reading your posts!
• See you all next year!

July 2021:

1. La maison du chat qui pelote – H. Balzac (1830)  REVIEW
2. La cagnotte – E. Labiche (1864)  REVIEW
3. Pour une nuit d’amour – E. Zola (1880)  REVIEW
4. Le Bourgeois gentilhomme – Molière (1670)  REVIEW
5. J’Accuse – Émile Zola   REVIEW
6. Âme brisée – A. Mizubayashi  REVIEW
7. Charlotte – D. Foenkinos  REVIEW
8. 4 French Films – REVIEW
9. Le Dossier 113 – E. Gaboriau  REVIEW
10. Une amie de la famille – J. Laclavetine  REVIEW
11. La promesse de l’aube – Romain Gary  REVIEW
12. Sign-up “Summer reading in other languages”
13. Salammbô – G. Flaubert  REVIEW
14. Henri Matisse: Rooms with a view – S. Blum  REVIEW

#Paris In July Henri Matisse

• Author: S. Blum
• Title: Henri Matisse: Rooms with a view
• Published: 2010
• #ParisInJuly

Quick Scan:

1. Matisse studied and rearranged his rooms constantly.
2. When he lived in hotels and small apartments his living quarters
3. usually doubled as his studio.
4. In a continuous engagement with these spaces he produced
5. not only singular masterpieces but also developed a
6. theme as rich as the traditional landscape or portrait.
7. In each new phase of his art and with every change of residence.
8. Matisse reinvented the theme of the window.

Conclusion:

1. This books weighs 3,5 pounds…a real ‘coffee table book’.
2. But it is so worth your effort to carry it home from the library!
3. 5 chapters with so many beautiful images and illuminating
4. information about Matisse’s paintings
5. Shirley Neilsen Blum (1932) is an
6. American art historian, professor and author.
7. She taught me that Matisse loved goldfish in bowls,
8. that there is so much beauty in a window with curtains and awnings….
9. and showed me Matisse’s magnificent design (pg 172-179)
10. of a Catholic chapel in Vence France.
11. I’ve been to the Vatican in Rome, to St. Patrick’s in NYC,
12. ….visited the Notre Dame in Paris….but I would love to
13. visit the South of France and bask in the artistic wonder
14. that is “The Chapel of the Rosary”  (see Google) by Henri Matisse!

#Paris In July Flaubert

• Author: Gustave Flaubert
• Genre:  novel
• Title:  Salammbô
• Published:  1862
• #ParisInJuly

• Just awful!!
• Avoid this book like the plague.
• Greatest flaw…fraud.
• Title Salammbo …you would think this
• temptress was the main character.
• One expects delicate moonlit gardens
• ….one finds instead manure and blood and bone mixture.
• War is the central character…and it was so boring.
• Salammbo appears around 3 times in the book
• …then she just fades away.
• Flaubert is a great writer and I loved Mme Bovary.
• In this book the author just wanted to show off his
• vocabulary grounded in historical military dictionaries.
• Honestly, I made it through 50% of the book.
• The first couple of chapters give us dead burnt monkeys
• falling onto banquet tables
• …crucified lions, and a corrupt leper who
• …drinks tisanes of powdered weasel.
• Red flag:
• …time to skim to last chapter and then throw the Livre de Poche
• in the box titled “worst ever”!