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‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ Goes From Stage to Page on Saturday at the Witching Hour
I thought he died or something? Why are there more books? Isn't the story finished? Does she need to make more money?
Books: high-brow, low-brow, and in between
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‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ Goes From Stage to Page on Saturday at the Witching Hour
I thought he died or something? Why are there more books? Isn't the story finished? Does she need to make more money?
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The review of the play says it starts with Mr. Potter being a 37 year old bringing his son to the train station that will whisk him to Hogwarts. The son, who is struggling to live in his father's shadow, will meet the son of the very blond kid in the first book. Malfoy? Anyway, this sounds like Ms. Rowling is simply rehashing the same stuff with new characters.
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Frankly - although maybe this is just me - I would have been more interested in a book/play about the Harry Potter back-story, rather than a sequel of sorts. What was Dumbledore like growing up (yes, we heard a little bit about this in the Deathly Hallows, but it would be interesting to learn more)? More details on Voldemort's initial rise to power/influence and how people like Dumbledore and others opposed him. Why did Lily and James Potter (Harry's parents) incur the wrath of Voldemort such that he decided to target them personally?
doghouse
King Of The Elite Idiots
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I think Harry Potter is fucking nonsense.
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Eating his po boy w/oyster,petrosyan caviar,& gold
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Right now i wanna read Red Army by Ralph Peters. I heard its a lot better than Tom Clancys' red storm rising
Thruth
Big Winter Daddy
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Thruth
Big Winter Daddy
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Went to the bookstore to buy one of those a cheap penguin classic books. Looked at the shelf and realised I'd read them all.
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"...reading in youth can be rather unfruitful, owing to impatience, distraction, inexperience with the product’s “instructions for use,” and inexperience in life itself. Books read then can be (possibly at one and the same time) formative, in the sense that they give a form to future experiences, providing models, terms of comparison, schemes for classification, scales of value, exemplars of beauty—all things that continue to operate even if the book read in one’s youth is almost or totally forgotten. If we reread the book at a mature age we are likely to rediscover these constants, which by this time are part of our inner mechanisms, but whose origins we have long forgotten. A literary work can succeed in making us forget it as such, but it leaves its seed in us."
Let
us begin with a few suggested definitions.
1) The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say: “I am rereading…” and never “I am reading….”
This at least happens among those who consider themselves “very well read.” It does not hold good for young people at the age when they first encounter the world, and the classics as a part of that world.
The reiterative prefix before the verb “read” may be a small hypocrisy on the part of people ashamed to admit they have not read a famous book. To reassure them, we need only observe that, however vast any person’s basic reading may be, there still remain an enormous number of fundamental works that he has not read.
Hands up, anyone who has read the whole of Herodotus and the whole of Thucydides! And Saint-Simon? And Cardinal de Retz? But even the great nineteenth-century cycles of novels are more often talked about than read. In France they begin to read Balzac in school, and judging by the number of copies in circulation, one may suppose that they go on reading him even after that, but if a Gallup poll were taken in Italy, I’m afraid that Balzac would come in practically last. Dickens fans in Italy form a tiny elite; as soon as its members meet, they begin to chatter about characters and episodes as if they were discussing people and things of their own acquaintance. Years ago, while teaching in America, Michel Butor got fed up with being asked about Emile Zola, whom he had never read, so he made up his mind to read the entire Rougon-Macquart cycle. He found it was completely different from what he had thought: a fabulous mythological and cosmogonical family tree, which he went on to describe in a wonderful essay.
In other words, to read a great book for the first time in one’s maturity is an extraordinary pleasure, different from (though one cannot say greater or lesser than) the pleasure of having read it in one’s youth. Youth brings to reading, as to any other experience, a particular flavor and a particular sense of importance, whereas in maturity one appreciates (or ought to appreciate) many more details and levels and meanings. We may therefore attempt the next definition:
2) We use the word “classics” for those books that are treasured by those who have read and loved them; but they are treasured no less by those who have the luck to read them for the first time in the best conditions to enjoy them.
In fact, reading in youth can be rather unfruitful, owing to impatience, distraction, inexperience with the product’s “instructions for use,” and inexperience in life itself. Books read then can be (possibly at one and the same time) formative, in the sense that they give a form to future experiences, providing models, terms of comparison, schemes for classification, scales of value, exemplars of beauty—all things that continue to operate even if the book read in one’s youth is almost or totally forgotten. If we reread the book at a mature age we are likely to rediscover these constants, which by this time are part of our inner mechanisms, but whose origins we have long forgotten. A literary work can succeed in making us forget it as such, but it leaves its seed in us. The definition we can give is therefore this:
3) The classics are books that exert a peculiar influence, both when they refuse to be eradicated from the mind and when they conceal themselves in the folds of memory, camouflaging themselves as the collective or individual unconscious.
There should therefore be a time in adult life devoted to revisiting the most important books of our youth. Even if the books have remained the same (though they do change, in the light of an altered historical perspective), we have most certainly changed, and our encounter will be an entirely new thing.
Hence, whether we use the verb “read” or the verb “reread” is of little importance. Indeed, we may say:
4) Every rereading of a classic is as much a voyage of discovery as the first reading.
5) Every reading of a classic is in fact a rereading.
Definition 4 may be considered a corollary of this next one:
6) A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
Whereas definition 5 depends on a more specific formula, such as this:
7) The classics are the books that come down to us bearing upon them the traces of readings previous to ours, and bringing in their wake the traces they themselves have left on the culture or cultures they have passed through (or, more simply, on language and customs).
All this is true both of the ancient and of the modern classics. If I read the Odyssey I read Homer’s text, but I cannot forget all that the adventures of Ulysses have come to mean in the course of the centuries, and I cannot help wondering if these meanings were implicit in the text, or whether they are incrustations or distortions or expansions. When reading Kafka, I cannot avoid approving or rejecting the legitimacy of the adjective “Kafkaesque,” which one is likely to hear every quarter of an hour, applied indiscriminately. If I read Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons or Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, I cannot help thinking how these characters have continued to be reincarnated right down to our own day.
The reading of a classic ought to give us a surprise or two vis-à-vis the notion that we had of it. For this reason I can never sufficiently highly recommend the direct reading of the text itself, leaving aside the critical biography, commentaries, and interpretations as much as possible. Schools and universities ought to help us to understand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in question, but instead they do their level best to make us think the opposite. There is a very widespread topsyturviness of values whereby the introduction, critical apparatus, and bibliography are used as a smoke screen to hide what the text has to say, and, indeed, can say only if left to speak for itself without intermediaries who claim to know more than the text does. We may conclude that:
8) A classic does not necessarily teach us anything we did not know before. In a classic we sometimes discover something we have always known (or thought we knew), but without knowing that this author said it first, or at least is associated with it in a special way. And this, too, is a surprise that gives a lot of pleasure, such as we always gain from the discovery of an origin, a relationship, an affinity. From all this we may derive a definition of this type:
9) The classics are books that we find all the more new, fresh, and unexpected upon reading, the more we thought we knew them from hearing them talked about.
Naturally, this only happens when a classic really works as such—that is, when it establishes a personal rapport with the reader. If the spark doesn’t come, that’s a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, but only out of love. Except at school. And school should enable you to know, either well or badly, a certain number of classics among which—or in reference to which—you can then choose yourclassics. School is obliged to give you the instruments needed to make a choice, but the choices that count are those that occur outside and after school.
It is only by reading without bias that you might possibly come across the book that becomes yourbook. I know an excellent art historian, an extraordinarily well-read man, who out of all the books there are has focused his special love on the Pickwick Papers; at every opportunity he comes up with some quip from Dickens’s book, and connects each and every event in life with some Pickwickian episode. Little by little he himself, and true philosophy, and the universe, have taken on the shape and form of the Pickwick Papers by a process of complete identification. In this way we arrive at a very lofty and demanding notion of what a classic is:
10) We use the word “classic” of a book that takes the form of an equivalent to the universe, on a level with the ancient talismans. With this definition we are approaching the idea of the “total book,” as Mallarmé conceived of it.
But a classic can establish an equally strong rapport in terms of opposition and antithesis. Everything that Jean-Jacques Rousseau thinks and does is very dear to my heart, yet everything fills me with an irrepressible desire to contradict him, to criticize him, to quarrel with him. It is a question of personal antipathy on a temperamental level, on account of which I ought to have no choice but not to read him; and yet I cannot help numbering him among my authors. I will therefore say:
11) Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you to define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him.
I think I have no need to justify myself for using the word “classic” without making distinctions about age, style, or authority. What distinguishes the classic, in the argument I am making, may be only an echo effect that holds good both for an ancient work and for a modern one that has already achieved its place in a cultural continuum. We might say:
12) A classic is a book that comes before other classics; but anyone who has read the others first, and then reads this one, instantly recognizes its place in the family tree.
At this point I can no longer put off the vital problem of how to relate the reading of the classics to the reading of all the other books that are anything but classics. It is a problem connected with such questions as, Why read the classics rather than concentrate on books that enable us to understand our own times more deeply? or, Where shall we find the time and peace of mind to read the classics, overwhelmed as we are by the avalanche of current events?
We can, of course, imagine some blessed soul who devotes his reading time exclusively to Lucretius, Lucian, Montaigne, Erasmus, Quevedo, Marlowe, the Discourse on Method, Wilhelm Meister, Coleridge, Ruskin, Proust, and Valéry, with a few forays in the direction of Murasaki or the Icelandic sagas. And all this without having to write reviews of the latest publications, or papers to compete for a university chair, or articles for magazines on tight deadlines. To keep up such a diet without any contamination, this blessed soul would have to abstain from reading the newspapers, and never be tempted by the latest novel or sociological investigation. But we have to see how far such rigor would be either justified or profitable. The latest news may well be banal or mortifying, but it nonetheless remains a point at which to stand and look both backward and forward. To be able to read the classics you have to know “from where” you are reading them; otherwise both the book and the reader will be lost in a timeless cloud. This, then, is the reason why the greatest “yield” from reading the classics will be obtained by someone who knows how to alternate them with the proper dose of current affairs. And this does not necessarily imply a state of imperturbable inner calm. It can also be the fruit of nervous impatience, of a huffing-and-puffing discontent of mind.
Maybe the ideal thing would be to hearken to current events as we do to the din outside the window that informs us about traffic jams and sudden changes in the weather, while we listen to the voice of the classics sounding clear and articulate inside the room. But it is already a lot for most people if the presence of the classics is perceived as a distant rumble far outside a room that is swamped by the trivia of the moment, as by a television at full blast. Let us therefore add:
13) A classic is something that tends to relegate the concerns of the moment to the status of background noise, but at the same time this background noise is something we cannot do without.
14) A classic is something that persists as a background noise even when the most incompatible momentary concerns are in control of the situation.
There remains the fact that reading the classics appears to clash with our rhythm of life, which no longer affords long periods of time or the spaciousness of humanistic leisure. It also contradicts the eclecticism of our culture, which would never be capable of compiling a catalog of things classical such as would suit our needs.
These latter conditions were fully realized in the case of Leopardi, given his solitary life in his father’s house (his “paterno ostello“), his cult of Greek and Latin antiquity, and the formidable library put at his disposal by his father, Monaldo. To which we may add the entire body of Italian literature and of French literature, with the exception of novels and the “latest thing out” in general, all of which were at least swept off into the sidelines, there to comfort the leisure of his sister Paolina (“your Stendhal,” he wrote her once). Even with his intense interest in science and history, he was often willing to rely on texts that were not entirely up-to-date, taking the habits of birds from Buffon, the mummies of Frederik Ruysch from Fontanelle, the voyage of Columbus from Robertson.
In these days a classical education like the young Leopardi’s is unthinkable; above all, Count Monaldo’s library has multiplied explosively. The ranks of the old titles have been decimated, while new ones have proliferated in all modern literatures and cultures. There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count—leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries.
I realize that Leopardi is the only name I have cited from Italian literature—a result of the explosion of the library. Now I ought to rewrite the whole article to make it perfectly clear that the classics help us to understand who we are and where we stand, a purpose for which it is indispensable to compare Italians with foreigners and foreigners with Italians.
Then I ought to rewrite it yet again lest anyone believe that the classics ought to be read because they “serve any purpose” whatever. The only reason one can possibly adduce is that to read the classics is better than not to read the classics.
And if anyone objects that it is not worth taking so much trouble, then I will quote Cioran (who is not yet a classic, but will become one):
While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning a tune on the flute. “What good will it do you,” they asked, “to know this tune before you die?”
us begin with a few suggested definitions.
1) The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say: “I am rereading…” and never “I am reading….”
This at least happens among those who consider themselves “very well read.” It does not hold good for young people at the age when they first encounter the world, and the classics as a part of that world.
The reiterative prefix before the verb “read” may be a small hypocrisy on the part of people ashamed to admit they have not read a famous book. To reassure them, we need only observe that, however vast any person’s basic reading may be, there still remain an enormous number of fundamental works that he has not read.
Hands up, anyone who has read the whole of Herodotus and the whole of Thucydides! And Saint-Simon? And Cardinal de Retz? But even the great nineteenth-century cycles of novels are more often talked about than read. In France they begin to read Balzac in school, and judging by the number of copies in circulation, one may suppose that they go on reading him even after that, but if a Gallup poll were taken in Italy, I’m afraid that Balzac would come in practically last. Dickens fans in Italy form a tiny elite; as soon as its members meet, they begin to chatter about characters and episodes as if they were discussing people and things of their own acquaintance. Years ago, while teaching in America, Michel Butor got fed up with being asked about Emile Zola, whom he had never read, so he made up his mind to read the entire Rougon-Macquart cycle. He found it was completely different from what he had thought: a fabulous mythological and cosmogonical family tree, which he went on to describe in a wonderful essay.
In other words, to read a great book for the first time in one’s maturity is an extraordinary pleasure, different from (though one cannot say greater or lesser than) the pleasure of having read it in one’s youth. Youth brings to reading, as to any other experience, a particular flavor and a particular sense of importance, whereas in maturity one appreciates (or ought to appreciate) many more details and levels and meanings. We may therefore attempt the next definition:
2) We use the word “classics” for those books that are treasured by those who have read and loved them; but they are treasured no less by those who have the luck to read them for the first time in the best conditions to enjoy them.
In fact, reading in youth can be rather unfruitful, owing to impatience, distraction, inexperience with the product’s “instructions for use,” and inexperience in life itself. Books read then can be (possibly at one and the same time) formative, in the sense that they give a form to future experiences, providing models, terms of comparison, schemes for classification, scales of value, exemplars of beauty—all things that continue to operate even if the book read in one’s youth is almost or totally forgotten. If we reread the book at a mature age we are likely to rediscover these constants, which by this time are part of our inner mechanisms, but whose origins we have long forgotten. A literary work can succeed in making us forget it as such, but it leaves its seed in us. The definition we can give is therefore this:
3) The classics are books that exert a peculiar influence, both when they refuse to be eradicated from the mind and when they conceal themselves in the folds of memory, camouflaging themselves as the collective or individual unconscious.
There should therefore be a time in adult life devoted to revisiting the most important books of our youth. Even if the books have remained the same (though they do change, in the light of an altered historical perspective), we have most certainly changed, and our encounter will be an entirely new thing.
Hence, whether we use the verb “read” or the verb “reread” is of little importance. Indeed, we may say:
4) Every rereading of a classic is as much a voyage of discovery as the first reading.
5) Every reading of a classic is in fact a rereading.
Definition 4 may be considered a corollary of this next one:
6) A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
Whereas definition 5 depends on a more specific formula, such as this:
7) The classics are the books that come down to us bearing upon them the traces of readings previous to ours, and bringing in their wake the traces they themselves have left on the culture or cultures they have passed through (or, more simply, on language and customs).
All this is true both of the ancient and of the modern classics. If I read the Odyssey I read Homer’s text, but I cannot forget all that the adventures of Ulysses have come to mean in the course of the centuries, and I cannot help wondering if these meanings were implicit in the text, or whether they are incrustations or distortions or expansions. When reading Kafka, I cannot avoid approving or rejecting the legitimacy of the adjective “Kafkaesque,” which one is likely to hear every quarter of an hour, applied indiscriminately. If I read Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons or Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, I cannot help thinking how these characters have continued to be reincarnated right down to our own day.
The reading of a classic ought to give us a surprise or two vis-à-vis the notion that we had of it. For this reason I can never sufficiently highly recommend the direct reading of the text itself, leaving aside the critical biography, commentaries, and interpretations as much as possible. Schools and universities ought to help us to understand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in question, but instead they do their level best to make us think the opposite. There is a very widespread topsyturviness of values whereby the introduction, critical apparatus, and bibliography are used as a smoke screen to hide what the text has to say, and, indeed, can say only if left to speak for itself without intermediaries who claim to know more than the text does. We may conclude that:
8) A classic does not necessarily teach us anything we did not know before. In a classic we sometimes discover something we have always known (or thought we knew), but without knowing that this author said it first, or at least is associated with it in a special way. And this, too, is a surprise that gives a lot of pleasure, such as we always gain from the discovery of an origin, a relationship, an affinity. From all this we may derive a definition of this type:
9) The classics are books that we find all the more new, fresh, and unexpected upon reading, the more we thought we knew them from hearing them talked about.
Naturally, this only happens when a classic really works as such—that is, when it establishes a personal rapport with the reader. If the spark doesn’t come, that’s a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, but only out of love. Except at school. And school should enable you to know, either well or badly, a certain number of classics among which—or in reference to which—you can then choose yourclassics. School is obliged to give you the instruments needed to make a choice, but the choices that count are those that occur outside and after school.
It is only by reading without bias that you might possibly come across the book that becomes yourbook. I know an excellent art historian, an extraordinarily well-read man, who out of all the books there are has focused his special love on the Pickwick Papers; at every opportunity he comes up with some quip from Dickens’s book, and connects each and every event in life with some Pickwickian episode. Little by little he himself, and true philosophy, and the universe, have taken on the shape and form of the Pickwick Papers by a process of complete identification. In this way we arrive at a very lofty and demanding notion of what a classic is:
10) We use the word “classic” of a book that takes the form of an equivalent to the universe, on a level with the ancient talismans. With this definition we are approaching the idea of the “total book,” as Mallarmé conceived of it.
But a classic can establish an equally strong rapport in terms of opposition and antithesis. Everything that Jean-Jacques Rousseau thinks and does is very dear to my heart, yet everything fills me with an irrepressible desire to contradict him, to criticize him, to quarrel with him. It is a question of personal antipathy on a temperamental level, on account of which I ought to have no choice but not to read him; and yet I cannot help numbering him among my authors. I will therefore say:
11) Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you to define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him.
I think I have no need to justify myself for using the word “classic” without making distinctions about age, style, or authority. What distinguishes the classic, in the argument I am making, may be only an echo effect that holds good both for an ancient work and for a modern one that has already achieved its place in a cultural continuum. We might say:
12) A classic is a book that comes before other classics; but anyone who has read the others first, and then reads this one, instantly recognizes its place in the family tree.
At this point I can no longer put off the vital problem of how to relate the reading of the classics to the reading of all the other books that are anything but classics. It is a problem connected with such questions as, Why read the classics rather than concentrate on books that enable us to understand our own times more deeply? or, Where shall we find the time and peace of mind to read the classics, overwhelmed as we are by the avalanche of current events?
We can, of course, imagine some blessed soul who devotes his reading time exclusively to Lucretius, Lucian, Montaigne, Erasmus, Quevedo, Marlowe, the Discourse on Method, Wilhelm Meister, Coleridge, Ruskin, Proust, and Valéry, with a few forays in the direction of Murasaki or the Icelandic sagas. And all this without having to write reviews of the latest publications, or papers to compete for a university chair, or articles for magazines on tight deadlines. To keep up such a diet without any contamination, this blessed soul would have to abstain from reading the newspapers, and never be tempted by the latest novel or sociological investigation. But we have to see how far such rigor would be either justified or profitable. The latest news may well be banal or mortifying, but it nonetheless remains a point at which to stand and look both backward and forward. To be able to read the classics you have to know “from where” you are reading them; otherwise both the book and the reader will be lost in a timeless cloud. This, then, is the reason why the greatest “yield” from reading the classics will be obtained by someone who knows how to alternate them with the proper dose of current affairs. And this does not necessarily imply a state of imperturbable inner calm. It can also be the fruit of nervous impatience, of a huffing-and-puffing discontent of mind.
Maybe the ideal thing would be to hearken to current events as we do to the din outside the window that informs us about traffic jams and sudden changes in the weather, while we listen to the voice of the classics sounding clear and articulate inside the room. But it is already a lot for most people if the presence of the classics is perceived as a distant rumble far outside a room that is swamped by the trivia of the moment, as by a television at full blast. Let us therefore add:
13) A classic is something that tends to relegate the concerns of the moment to the status of background noise, but at the same time this background noise is something we cannot do without.
14) A classic is something that persists as a background noise even when the most incompatible momentary concerns are in control of the situation.
There remains the fact that reading the classics appears to clash with our rhythm of life, which no longer affords long periods of time or the spaciousness of humanistic leisure. It also contradicts the eclecticism of our culture, which would never be capable of compiling a catalog of things classical such as would suit our needs.
These latter conditions were fully realized in the case of Leopardi, given his solitary life in his father’s house (his “paterno ostello“), his cult of Greek and Latin antiquity, and the formidable library put at his disposal by his father, Monaldo. To which we may add the entire body of Italian literature and of French literature, with the exception of novels and the “latest thing out” in general, all of which were at least swept off into the sidelines, there to comfort the leisure of his sister Paolina (“your Stendhal,” he wrote her once). Even with his intense interest in science and history, he was often willing to rely on texts that were not entirely up-to-date, taking the habits of birds from Buffon, the mummies of Frederik Ruysch from Fontanelle, the voyage of Columbus from Robertson.
In these days a classical education like the young Leopardi’s is unthinkable; above all, Count Monaldo’s library has multiplied explosively. The ranks of the old titles have been decimated, while new ones have proliferated in all modern literatures and cultures. There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count—leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries.
I realize that Leopardi is the only name I have cited from Italian literature—a result of the explosion of the library. Now I ought to rewrite the whole article to make it perfectly clear that the classics help us to understand who we are and where we stand, a purpose for which it is indispensable to compare Italians with foreigners and foreigners with Italians.
Then I ought to rewrite it yet again lest anyone believe that the classics ought to be read because they “serve any purpose” whatever. The only reason one can possibly adduce is that to read the classics is better than not to read the classics.
And if anyone objects that it is not worth taking so much trouble, then I will quote Cioran (who is not yet a classic, but will become one):
While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning a tune on the flute. “What good will it do you,” they asked, “to know this tune before you die?”
- Messages
- 18,417
I finally finished Far from the Madding Crowd. I was pleasantly surprised it had a happy ending given my other experiences with Thomas Hardy.
I had begun it two years ago when a new film rendition of the novel hit the cinema but I never finished. Not knowing where I was in the novel after so much time I started anew during my week off.
I had begun it two years ago when a new film rendition of the novel hit the cinema but I never finished. Not knowing where I was in the novel after so much time I started anew during my week off.
fxh
OG Party Suit Wearer
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- 8,573
One of the best books I've read a for a long time -wonderfully written and with an amazing sweep of world history, explanation of context, events, personalities and current day
Lord Buckley
and others. Highly recommended. And easy read.
Lord Buckley
and others. Highly recommended. And easy read.
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- 18,417
Brilliant. Non fiction about the most liberal city from the Labour Party paper.
Lord Buckley
Well-Known Member
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- 1,940
Indeed, one has to take any recommendation by The Guardian with a rather large dash of Caveat Emptor. However, if the reviews I've read are right, from a historical point of view it could be a good read, so thanks to fxh for the recommendation.
I did read this from Shorto in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
And he does fall into the trap that expats do when they first arrive to The Netherlands i.e. viewing the country as a socialist utopia. The only thing missing is that everyone is so liberal they keep some cannabis on the sideboard for when their friends visit. Which is another myth.
Just to set the record straight from Shorto's account:
The wonderful social housing in desirable areas like Amsterdam is only available for those who qualify through a long waiting list. For a family type dwelling, it will likely cost Euros 800 a month. Not bad, but not great if you're only picking up 1200-1600 a month. You don't come over as an expat, or non-local and get it immediately.
People have babies at home, as the hospitals don't have natal wards for mothers and new born babies. So you will be sharing your ward with both men and women with other conditions. Hence women like to give birth at home (I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, as I ended up delivering our first baby by myself before the mid-wife arrived late!). The support at home for the first week or so is superb, but it's not like Shorto's account, they are there specifically to look after and teach you to look after the baby. They might do some cleaning for you, but not as a rule.
Other than natal care, the system is better than the UK's NHS and I've had spinal neck surgery, back surgery and an appendix and came to no harm here. It's also a much better system for getting to the right pain killers rapidly. But it is not comparable with the USA, especially for cancer treatment. Also there are long waiting lists for certain treatments, similar to the UK, but not as bad.
Whilst the health system is collectivized, it is paid for through private health insurance which is mandatory and you have different grades. So not every treatment is covered. Also some insurance providers are limited to which hospitals and clinics you can go to. With employers contributions, the cost of the Dutch system is the most costly in the western world behind the USA's.
Since the article was written back in 2009, most of the supermarkets have improved greatly in quality and also opening hours to 20-21.00hrs daily, including opening on a Sunday. It was a closed shop with clique of supermarkets than ran it like a cartel. As such, they lagged and still lag behind supermarkets in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and the UK. They are pretty poor in comparison. The upside to this, is that you still get great high street butchers and fishmongers.
Several expats have told me of the lack of educational ambition here and the desire to just be average and ordinary. I don't see this. At 12 kids take exams for secondary school which is a 3 tier system from highflyers, average to the dunces. There is great competition and pressure for kids to not go to the dunce school, as in every other civilised nation. So I don't buy into this myth.
Where it gets interesting as a place to live, is outside of the main cities and into the suburbs, where you get tree lined avenues, use of space and water, bicyle pathways into the countryside creating very decent and spacious places to live. You get into an old conservation area in Amsterdam and you will be living in an apartment or terrace house with unbelievably poor sound proofing and insulation.
One last thing, the Dutch gins are a much more muddy and rustic experience compared to London variety.
I did read this from Shorto in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
And he does fall into the trap that expats do when they first arrive to The Netherlands i.e. viewing the country as a socialist utopia. The only thing missing is that everyone is so liberal they keep some cannabis on the sideboard for when their friends visit. Which is another myth.
Just to set the record straight from Shorto's account:
The wonderful social housing in desirable areas like Amsterdam is only available for those who qualify through a long waiting list. For a family type dwelling, it will likely cost Euros 800 a month. Not bad, but not great if you're only picking up 1200-1600 a month. You don't come over as an expat, or non-local and get it immediately.
People have babies at home, as the hospitals don't have natal wards for mothers and new born babies. So you will be sharing your ward with both men and women with other conditions. Hence women like to give birth at home (I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, as I ended up delivering our first baby by myself before the mid-wife arrived late!). The support at home for the first week or so is superb, but it's not like Shorto's account, they are there specifically to look after and teach you to look after the baby. They might do some cleaning for you, but not as a rule.
Other than natal care, the system is better than the UK's NHS and I've had spinal neck surgery, back surgery and an appendix and came to no harm here. It's also a much better system for getting to the right pain killers rapidly. But it is not comparable with the USA, especially for cancer treatment. Also there are long waiting lists for certain treatments, similar to the UK, but not as bad.
Whilst the health system is collectivized, it is paid for through private health insurance which is mandatory and you have different grades. So not every treatment is covered. Also some insurance providers are limited to which hospitals and clinics you can go to. With employers contributions, the cost of the Dutch system is the most costly in the western world behind the USA's.
Since the article was written back in 2009, most of the supermarkets have improved greatly in quality and also opening hours to 20-21.00hrs daily, including opening on a Sunday. It was a closed shop with clique of supermarkets than ran it like a cartel. As such, they lagged and still lag behind supermarkets in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and the UK. They are pretty poor in comparison. The upside to this, is that you still get great high street butchers and fishmongers.
Several expats have told me of the lack of educational ambition here and the desire to just be average and ordinary. I don't see this. At 12 kids take exams for secondary school which is a 3 tier system from highflyers, average to the dunces. There is great competition and pressure for kids to not go to the dunce school, as in every other civilised nation. So I don't buy into this myth.
Where it gets interesting as a place to live, is outside of the main cities and into the suburbs, where you get tree lined avenues, use of space and water, bicyle pathways into the countryside creating very decent and spacious places to live. You get into an old conservation area in Amsterdam and you will be living in an apartment or terrace house with unbelievably poor sound proofing and insulation.
One last thing, the Dutch gins are a much more muddy and rustic experience compared to London variety.
fxh
OG Party Suit Wearer
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I also just finished reading this book by Shorto too. May not be to everyone's taste but I enjoyed it.
fxh
OG Party Suit Wearer
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And my dear Lord B. Netherlands is nowhere near health expenditure either as ‰ of GDP or Per Person as USA. In fact it's about the same expenditure as Australia which is about half USA expenditure for better outcomes on almost all levels.
Lord Buckley
Well-Known Member
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I didn't say it was near, my understanding that it was second place?
The better outcomes is likely due to healthier lifestyles all that biking into fierce North Sea winds that keeps you fit and agile into old age.
The better outcomes is likely due to healthier lifestyles all that biking into fierce North Sea winds that keeps you fit and agile into old age.
Leitmotif
Eating his po boy w/oyster,petrosyan caviar,& gold
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Reading about operation Bagratiom, it was done by the US military, should be interesting the insights of us personal on what was perhaps the largest allied operation during world war 2.
formby
Well-Known Member
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- 1,411
It was the Red Army.
Leitmotif
Eating his po boy w/oyster,petrosyan caviar,& gold
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What i meant to say was that the document was written by the Us Army. I know operatsiya Bagration was done by the USSR. It is fascinating so far. Deep battle and maskirovka operations created by the stavka and, Zhukov, and Konstantin Rokossovsky was phenomenal.
claphamomnibus
Well-Known Member
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- 225
Fvck me this is all a bit highbrow.
Anyone read the Dark Tower series?
Anyone read the Dark Tower series?
Grand Potentate
Supporter of Possible Sexual Deviants
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- 39,182
claphamomnibus
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 225
Niiiice. Just at the beginning of Song for Susannah.
Cracking read. I'm speeding through them and I'd say they perfectly bridge the gap between literary merit and bloody good fun.
I'd always thought King would be trashy but he's certainly not that.
Cracking read. I'm speeding through them and I'd say they perfectly bridge the gap between literary merit and bloody good fun.
I'd always thought King would be trashy but he's certainly not that.
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The series gets awful after Song. If you feel like you have to finish the series, go for it, but you be better off reading something else.
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- 1,290
Other trashy fun reads:
John Sandford (coincidentally, Stephen King is a huge fan of his)
Peter Clines
Drew Magary
Grand Potentate
Supporter of Possible Sexual Deviants
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Magary?
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- 1,290
The Hike is my favorite book this year. Just really enjoyed it.
Grand Potentate
Supporter of Possible Sexual Deviants
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interesting. i never would have thought he'd be a good author.
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- 3,060
Getting back into reading books now that I have a bit more free time. Revisited GG Marquez over the weekend with Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It's a good tale and an easy, short read for anyone looking to get into his books or magical realism in general.
For one thing, there aren't 5,000 characters with the same name like in his longer novels (there's only about 500 in this one).
For one thing, there aren't 5,000 characters with the same name like in his longer novels (there's only about 500 in this one).
Kingstonian
Well-Known Member
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'The way we live now' Trollope.
Idle aristos, who drink and gamble all night, try to find rich brides to solve their financial woes.
Some long-winded Victorian sentences and asides to the 'dear reader' but still relevant.
I see mysterious, nouveau riche Melmotte as similar to 'Sir Shifty' Philip Green.
Idle aristos, who drink and gamble all night, try to find rich brides to solve their financial woes.
Some long-winded Victorian sentences and asides to the 'dear reader' but still relevant.
I see mysterious, nouveau riche Melmotte as similar to 'Sir Shifty' Philip Green.
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- 18,417
I haven't read Trollope since a revisit to Barchester Towers after I left university.
A lot of the Victorian novels came out as serials. It wouldn't have been very profitable if they ran out of content after a few publications.
A lot of the Victorian novels came out as serials. It wouldn't have been very profitable if they ran out of content after a few publications.
doghouse
King Of The Elite Idiots
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I've had a good run of fiction and non-fiction espionage stuff lately.
Currently reading the Roger Moore autobiography. I gotta say, he is a fucking abysmal writer.
Currently reading the Roger Moore autobiography. I gotta say, he is a fucking abysmal writer.
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Well, he wasn't that good as an actor, either!
I'm convinced that he essentially just played himself on screen and perfected the art of arching one eyebrow.
Pimpernel Smith
Tone Deaf Daddy
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He didn't need to be able to act, the camera adored him. A bit like Robert Redford in that respect.
I saw Moore's autobiography in one of the reduced bookstores awhile back, he was sporting a MKII Speedmaster if I remember rightly, or might be the television case version.
Reading the official autobiography of Oliver Reed, not the delightful tale of inebriated madness I thought it would be, but I haven't got to his friendship with Keith Moon yet. It seems he couldn't handle his drink too good and was one of those clowns who after one over the eight, would feel a need to challenge one and all to fist fights or swims through the local pond to show how manly he was. Still, always stood his round and more.
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- 1,290
Anyone read the This Is How You Die anthologies? Fun, breezy reads.
formby
Well-Known Member
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- 1,411
Just started re-reading Tinker, Tailor, Solidier, Spy. Going to read all the Smiley books as the latest, and last has just come out.
doghouse
King Of The Elite Idiots
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I just read the last. Going to fall back now and read the others from teh beginning again.
Thruth
Big Winter Daddy
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Have been doing the same recently. Was unaware of the latest/last.
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I bought a copy of Jean Paul Sartre's Age of Reason on a whim the other night.
It's pretty good.
It's pretty good.
formby
Well-Known Member
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- 1,411
Reading: From Benito Mussolini To Hugo Chavez - Intellectuals And A Century Of Political Hero Worship by Paul Hollander
I never tire of reading these types of books for some reason.
I never tire of reading these types of books for some reason.
fxh
OG Party Suit Wearer
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Heres a few from the last couple of months. Ask and I can do a brief rating of any you are interested in.
Born to run / Bruce Springsteen.
The demon of Dakar / Kjell Eriksson
Fake silk : the lethal history of viscose rayon / Paul David Blanc.
Testosterone rex : unmaking the myths of our gendered minds / Cordelia Fine.
The fraud : behind the mystery of John Friedrich, Australia's greatest conman Thomas, Martin, 1943-
The prince and the assassin : Australia's first Royal tour and portent of world terror Harris, Steve, 1950-
Adults in the room : my battle with Europe's deep establishment Varoufakis Yanis
The show : another side of Santamaria's movement Aarons, Mark
Hinterland Lang, Steven, 1951-
Chasing the dragon : the life and death of Marc Hunter Apter, Jeff, 1961-
Depends what you mean by extremist : going rogue with Australian deplorables Safran, John
Rest : why you get more done when you work less Pang, Alex Soojung-Kim
In defence of classical music Ford, Andrew, 1957-
The sound of pictures : listening to the movies, from Hitchcock to High Fidelity Ford, Andrew, 1957-
Earth dances : music and the primitive Ford, Andrew, 1957-
Illegal harmonies : music in the 20th century Ford, Andrew, 1957-
Brian Eno : visual music Scoates, Christopher
Tormented hope : nine hypochondriac lives Dillon, Brian, 1969-
In the dark room : a journey in memory Dillon, Brian, 1969-
Bowling alone [text] : the collapse and revival of American community Putnam, Robert D.
Blitzed : drugs in Nazi Germany Ohler, Norman
Hillbilly elegy : a memoir of a family and culture in crisis Vance, J. D.
Still lucky : why you should feel optimistic about Australia and its people Huntley, Rebecca
The insufferable Gaucho Bolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003
A little lumpen novelita Bolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003
Wardrobe crisis : how we went from Sunday best to fast fashion Press, Clare
The locomotive of war : money, empire, power and guilt Clarke, P. F.
Down the Hume Polites, Peter
Messy : how to be creative and resilient in a tidy-minded world Harford, Tim, 1973-
The stranger in the woods : The extraordinary story of the last true hermit Finkel, Michael
Chasing the scream : the first and last days of the war on drugs Hari, Johann
The hero with a thousand faces Campbell, Joseph, 1904-1987
The poison principle [text] Bell, Gail, 1950-
A random walk down Wall Street : the time-tested strategy for successful investing Malkiel, Burton Gordon
Born to run / Bruce Springsteen.
The demon of Dakar / Kjell Eriksson
Fake silk : the lethal history of viscose rayon / Paul David Blanc.
Testosterone rex : unmaking the myths of our gendered minds / Cordelia Fine.
The fraud : behind the mystery of John Friedrich, Australia's greatest conman Thomas, Martin, 1943-
The prince and the assassin : Australia's first Royal tour and portent of world terror Harris, Steve, 1950-
Adults in the room : my battle with Europe's deep establishment Varoufakis Yanis
The show : another side of Santamaria's movement Aarons, Mark
Hinterland Lang, Steven, 1951-
Chasing the dragon : the life and death of Marc Hunter Apter, Jeff, 1961-
Depends what you mean by extremist : going rogue with Australian deplorables Safran, John
Rest : why you get more done when you work less Pang, Alex Soojung-Kim
In defence of classical music Ford, Andrew, 1957-
The sound of pictures : listening to the movies, from Hitchcock to High Fidelity Ford, Andrew, 1957-
Earth dances : music and the primitive Ford, Andrew, 1957-
Illegal harmonies : music in the 20th century Ford, Andrew, 1957-
Brian Eno : visual music Scoates, Christopher
Tormented hope : nine hypochondriac lives Dillon, Brian, 1969-
In the dark room : a journey in memory Dillon, Brian, 1969-
Bowling alone [text] : the collapse and revival of American community Putnam, Robert D.
Blitzed : drugs in Nazi Germany Ohler, Norman
Hillbilly elegy : a memoir of a family and culture in crisis Vance, J. D.
Still lucky : why you should feel optimistic about Australia and its people Huntley, Rebecca
The insufferable Gaucho Bolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003
A little lumpen novelita Bolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003
Wardrobe crisis : how we went from Sunday best to fast fashion Press, Clare
The locomotive of war : money, empire, power and guilt Clarke, P. F.
Down the Hume Polites, Peter
Messy : how to be creative and resilient in a tidy-minded world Harford, Tim, 1973-
The stranger in the woods : The extraordinary story of the last true hermit Finkel, Michael
Chasing the scream : the first and last days of the war on drugs Hari, Johann
The hero with a thousand faces Campbell, Joseph, 1904-1987
The poison principle [text] Bell, Gail, 1950-
A random walk down Wall Street : the time-tested strategy for successful investing Malkiel, Burton Gordon