• Fine Books for Discerning Readers •
Hello All,
This letter has been a long time in coming out, so we thought we would start things out with a bit of literary fun.
Something that we thought was quite fun which we would like to share with you is a recent topic which was generated by @RandomHouse via the social networking site of Twitter, which asked people to come up with the food equivalent of some classic literature titles, but with a food theme instead, so for example : Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun also Rises" became "The Bun also Rises". Please note that we have not given accreditation to various people for their originality, so if anyone feels maligned, we do apologise in advance. We thought we would share some of the more funny #FoodieLit translations with you :
Leek House - Bleak House by Charles Dickens, which was our contribution to the game.
The Thyme Traveller's Wife - The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenigger, which was also our contribution as well as The Time Traveller's Knife.
Peter Panini - Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.
The Lord of the Onion Rings - Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.
For Whom the Bellpepper Tolls - For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, along the same thought was : Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar* which became The Bellpepper Jar
Little House on the Praline - Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Grapes of Broth - The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Watercress Down - Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Merry Chives of Windsor - The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
Midnight in the Garden of Food & Weevill - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
Yeast of Eden - East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Bury My Heart at Wounded Ghee - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
If you send in your #FoodieLit contributions, which have to be original & are not copied from the list,: #foodielit the most original title will win a gift voucher to the value of R100.00 from us. The winner will be notified on the 2nd of September, 2011.
* As an interesting afterthought for those of you who are interested in collecting Modern First Editions, The Bell Jar was not originally published under the name of Sylvia Plath but rather under the name of Victoria Lucas.
If you are at all interested and you use Twitter, you can visit us @TallStoriesBook , we give almost daily updates relating to the book world.
When I have been able to focus my eyes through the biting cold, I have been reading The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littel. A hugely interesting book, and one that gives the lie to any piece of advice you have ever seen about succesful creative writing. It is a tome of more than 950 pages about a bisexual German officer in the Einsatzgruppe of the SS during the Second World War, and has been met with howls of pleasure and outrage wherever it has been published.
Written in French by an American (son of one of my favourite spy authors, Robert Littel) and originally published in France, it won the Prix de Goncourt and sold more than 700 000 copies there. The books' American publisher paid $1 000 000 for the rights, and it has sold well all over the world. Not the stuff best sellers are made of, at all, it concentrates on the evil of the nazi extermination policy in Europe. Where Hannah Arendt described the same as the banality of evil, Littel's approach examines its bureaucratic nature. Max Weber introduced the concept of bureaucracy as an attempt to standardise administrative procedure. In the nazi system this degenerated into a rational, efficient system of murder that shifted, warped and changed the world's definition of what it meant to be human, and inhuman.
The main character is deeply unpleasant, and no-one, aside from those you or I would not want to know, can identify or sympathise with him. Yet the book is magnificent, and even crammed with historical detail to the point of redundancy and beyond, keeps you enthralled. It's description of the battle of Stalingrad is grippingly, horrifyingly real and leaves you shaken and thoughtful.
The next time you see a press of generic, mass market novels, do not despair – on occasion publishers will still print the exceptional. We live in hope.
P.S. We did ask Agatha-Panther, our book cat, to contribute to this newsletter. She only wanted to talk about food and how to take a marathon nap, and we deemed it not appropriate.
Our Unused Book
Specials for this Month.
Spa Wars
byChris Manby
Tall Stories Price :
More Unused Book Specials for this Month.
Special Air Service Rhodesia : The Men Speak
byJonathan Pittaway
Soft cover 590 pages, profusely illustrated in both colour and black & white.
This comprehensive volume starts with the birth of the SAS during the Second World War. Men from the British Commonwealth of the then Southern-Rhodesian joined the new parachute regiment, the Long Range Desert Group and the SAS.
Later chapters cover Malaya, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Southern Rhodesia and finally Rhodesia up to the birth of Zimbabwe and disbanding of the Rhodesian SAS.
As it is written by those involved it is very evocative.
This is how Trooper Geoff Turner-Dauncey describes service in the jungles of Malaya:
“From the moment we stepped into the jungle until we returned to base we got soaked, and stayed wet... . With our operational dress torn and rotting... it was common practice to burn our clothes on returning to base. For a while troops returning to base from operations looked rather like clowns: wearing just PT shorts, sandals and berets, their bodies lavishly painted with mercurochrome, gentian violet and Whitfield's Lotion until their skin problems healed.”
Orders will be taken for this book, with a 2 week waiting period.
Our Featured Book for this Month.
Colenso Frances E.
&
Durnford, Lieut.-Colonel
Imprint: London, Chapman and Hall, Limited, 1880
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardback
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