Summer reading (1862)

D

Don Rice

Don Rice
Here's an article I found on Google Books about summer "Light Wines" - originally published in 1862. It originally appeared in Charles Dickens' weekly

All The Year Round. A Weekly Journal Conducted by Charles Dickens. With Which is Incorporated Household Words."

The writer was familiar with wines from Touraine - there are plenty of fun comments - here's just one:

"The Touraine region... draws from the earth hogsheads upon hogsheads of excellent wines, which no one has ever seen or tasted out of the Touraine; which appear on nobody's table, which figure in no French innkeeper's bill of fare. Nevertheless, the writer knows by experience that they are very drinkable: nay, exhilarating. There are ruby-coloured, clarety growths, more or less light; there are the white wines of Blois and Beaugency; and at Vouvray, near Tours, is concocted an effervescent draught which, with your eyes shut or open, might pass for champagne. What becomes of the Touraine wines? Total ignorance; Egyptian darkness. Inquire for them of your wine-merchant. He keeps nothing of the kind, and never has kept anything of the kind. What do you mean by asking him such a question? All his clarets, without exception, come to him direct from Bordeaux. Plenty of Touraine wine, however, reaches Paris, perhaps even Bordeaux, where it is lost, like the Rhne, in holes in the ground. Instead of buying questionable Chateaux Margaux and St. Juliens, the lover of light wines might venture to patronise some of those of the Touraine, boldly calling them by their real names, and giving them out, at table, for what they are..."

A pdf of the full text is here. Or read the original publication on Google Books.
Enjoy
 
Nice clip.

So what does this say about human evolution.

I guess it takes more than 150 years for real progress to occur!
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
Nice clip.

So what does this say about human evolution.

I guess it takes more than 150 years for real progress to occur!
Click to expand...

Funny I was thinking the same thing.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Huzzah! I didn't know that Household Words had wine coverage. A whole new area of research opened up. Great link.
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Indeed! I hope it proves fertile hunting-ground.

The lively storytelling style makes me wonder if Dickens lent a hand in its authorship, or perhaps contributed via his editor's red pencil. Any idea how active Dickens was in this regard at Household Words?
 
originally posted by Don Rice:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Huzzah! I didn't know that Household Words had wine coverage. A whole new area of research opened up. Great link.
Click to expand...

Indeed! I hope it proves fertile hunting-ground.

The lively storytelling style makes me wonder if Dickens lent a hand in its authorship, or perhaps contributed via his editor's red pencil. Any idea how active Dickens was in this regard at Household Words?
Click to expand...

This was his own journal and he was quite active editorially, even with famous authors whose work he purchased, though the more famous they were, the more they left their fingerprints so to speak and for financial reasons, he would have wanted it that way. This kind of thing, he might have rewritten in an offhand moment, and it certainly shows the Boz style. But in his other writing, Dickens shows more taste for wine in quantity than in quality. Of the famous Victorian novelists, Trollope was the wine fancier, but he liked to show off his knowledge of big names (a Parker follower avant la lettre).
 
Well, it's not 1862 but it's almost summer!?!

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is special.

I've been a constant reader my whole life. Thus, I have read an unimaginable number of books.

Suffice it to say The Girl in the Spider’s Web is one of the more absorbing books I have ever read.

While one review surely can't do this book justice, here's a review that is fairly suggestive of the author's success with this book.

Highly recommended!

. . . . Pete
 
Pete, this one is not by Stieg Larsson. It is a continuation of his novels by another author.
It's a good summer read though.
 
Managed to finish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo recently. Decent storytelling, but hard to read the clunky translation, of the kind that suggests that the original is equally clunky.
 
Marc, I thought Larsson's text was just translated by another man posthumously.

This book has all of the earmarks of a Larsson book so it's hard to imagine someone else managing to produce it, especially given all of the technical details.

. . . . Pete
 
originally posted by Peter Creasey:

Marc, I thought Larsson's text was just translated by another man posthumously.

This book has all of the earmarks of a Larsson book so it's hard to imagine someone else managing to produce it, especially given all of the technical details.

. . . . Pete
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No, there was prominent coverage when the book came out. Larsson had nothing to do with it and his partner has spoken out against it. I think his father and brother may have supported it, but there's been famous bad blood between those two parties.

I found the Larsson trilogy page turners, but nothing about them made me want to go back for more. So, while I read the news stories about the book when it came out, I had no interest in the book.
 
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