- Azerbaijan to host European Games amid widespread and relentless repression
No comment necessary.
- Home Office says Nigerian asylum-seeker can’t be a lesbian as she’s got children
Boggle.
- David Cameron, Janan Ganesh and renegotiating EU membership
@CER_Grant responds to @JananGanesh, convincingly.
- The Technical Constraints That Made Abbey Road So Good
The only thing worse than imperfection is perfection.
- The Kitschies
Congrats to @marburyjack, @jabberworks, @hermioneeyre, Glenn O’Neill and @cardboardcompy!
Monthly Archives: March 2015
What is the best-known book set in Georgia?
Edited to add: See update
Gone With the Wind, of course.
Oh, hang on.
There is another, older Georgia.
It took an awful lot of pruning of the lists to get down to books set in the real Georgia, the country that was known by that name many centuries before James Oglethorpe settled the Savannah river. Even then I’m afraid the results are not terribly satisfactory. The top-ranked book is non-fiction, about the most famous modern Georgian, and specifically covers his youth in Gori and Batumi until he made the big time in Russia. But I suspect that less than half of it covers its subject’s Georgian years before he moved to Russia; I’d be grateful for enlightenment on this point. For what it’s worth, it is:
For similar geographical reasons, and witha heavy heart, I must exclude the Georgian national epic poem, a glorious work of chivalry by a 12th-century writer. Most of the action takes place in India and Arabia, and apart from the fact that it’s written in Georgian there’s not a lot to link the events directly to the country. (I believe that there is a theory that the author wrote it while on assignment in Jerusalem, and that would make a certain amount of sense.) I commend it to you anyway; it is:
Alas, the same goes for a 1975 novel by the best-known Georgian writer of the twentieth century, mainly set in Brazil relatively popular on Goodreads, unknown on LibraryThing):
The top book on Goodreads which is definitely set in Georgia is an uncomfortable account of a failed 1983 hijacking of an Aeroflot plane by seven young Georgians trying to defect to the West. The plane was stormed on the orders of Eduard Shevardnadze, then head of the Georgian Communist Party; three of the hijackers were killed in the attack and the other four were executed later. It is:
Over on LibraryThing, I want to give a shout-out to one of my favourite cookbooks, which has a huge amount of incidental colour from Georgia but can’t really be said to be set there:
The top book on LT by ownership, as far as I can tell, which is actually set in Georgia is the first one I ever read about the country, the account of an American journalist who was there at the dubious peak of the Shevardnadze era:
I am awarding today’s prize to Steavenson, as her book has a decent enough presence on both LT and GR (Turashvili is good on GR but almost invisible on LT)
Links I found interesting for 04-03-2015
- Women Rejecting Men in Fine Art
With captions.
- Weasel Rides A Woodpecker
The truth behind that photograph – surprising!
- Is Georgian cuisine the next big thing?
Some of us got there years ago!
What is the best-known book set in Norway?
I admit this one took me by surprise. I had read it, of course; published in 1991, a careful exploration of three millennia of philosophy for younger readers, it is very clearly set in Norway even if that doesn’t add much to the story. I had completely forgotten the setting, and you probably have as well. By a huge margin, the most widely owned book on both LT and GR that is set in Norway is:
this wins only because I have had to brutally disqualify a book by a well-known British writer of Norwegian ancestry, in which our hero and his grandmother battle supernatural beings in Norway. I checked with my fifteen-year-old resident expert in this particular author’s works, and he confirmed my suspicion that most of the action takes place in England, so despite its immense popularity, I can’t allow it. It is:
The book most frequently tagged “Norway” on LibraryThing is a 2003 novel, translated into English in 2005, about the Nazi occupation of Norway and its aftermath, winner of the 2007 Dublin IMPAC Award. It is:
Goodreads is a bit more highbrow on this occasion. The book most frequently tagged “Norway” there is an 1890 novel about a young man wandering the streets of the Norwegian capital in a state of heightened awareness; it helped to win its author the 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature. it is:
Bubbling under, very much to my surprise: Hendrik Ibsen, Jo Nesbø. Both
What is the best-known book set in Slovakia?
As with Romania, I must extend apologies on behalf of Ireland to all my friends (and in this case my relatives) from a particular country. By far the most widely owned book set in Slovakia on both Goodreads and LibraryThing is a novel by an Irish writer exploring the life story of a Roma poet through the second world war and Communist Czechoslovakia.It’s got lots of good reviews, and I guess I will look it up myself one of these days. It is:
The book most often tagged “Slovakia” on LibraryThing is another Holocaust memoir, written for the YA audience, and published in 1999. It is:
Tho most-tagged as “Slovakia” on GoodReads is yet another Holocaust memoir, though with quite a strong concentration on pre-war Bratislava. Published as recently as 2013, it is:
The best-known novel by an actual Slovak which is actually set in Slovakia is a crime novel whose story unfolds around the fall of Communism and the break-up of the former Czechoslovakia. It is::
I’m also going to give a shout out to my friend Rick’s account of his father’s flight from the 1968 Russian invasion, and his own rediscovery of Slovakia as an adult. (Hi, Rick!)
I am intrigued also by the fantasy novel Vládce vlků / Master of Wolves, by Juraj Červenák, but I suspect it fails the “set in Slovakia” test.
Links I found interesting for 02-03-2015
- Want to get ahead? Do these five things before you go to bed
Yup.
- My friend charted the looting of a nation; his death is a warning to all Russians
@edwardlucas on Boris Nemtsov.
- Giant Clitoris Statue Unveiled at Sewanee
Will men be able to find it?
What is the best-known book set in Finland?
No prizes for guessing which author dominates the Finnish lists on both LibraryThing and Goodreads. Famous for her children’s fantasy novels about anthropomorphic creatures living almost human lives (apart from hibernation), I’ve been very glad to discover some of her work for adults which has been getting into English translation in recent years.
The Goodreads winner is a bit surprising, though; it was the first of the children’s books to be published in Finnish, in 1945, but the last to be translated into English, in 2005, and reviews suggest that the author had not yet hit her stride. I devoured all the other books in the series as a kid, but haven’t read this one. It is:
The LibraryThing winner is the one I would have expected, first published in 1948 and the first of the series to be translated to English, in 1950, in which our heroes have a series of loosely-connected adventures, several of which centre around a magic hat. It’s fourth on Goodreads (whereas the previously-mentioned Goodreads winner is way behind on LibraryThing), so I am declaring it today’s winner. It is:
The second-placed book on GoodReads, third on LibraryThing, is a lovely short novel for adults, by this same author, about the relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter spending a summer on one of the Finnish islands. Originally published in 1972, translated into English only in 2003, it is:
That is just behind the second-placed book on LibraryThing but well ahead of the third-place on Goodreads, Finland’s national epic, compiled (composed?) during the nineteenth century and published in 1835, an expanded version appearing in 1849. In 50 chapters of trochaic tetrameter, it is:
That’s the highest-placed book on the list originally written in Finnish (the others were originally written in Swedish).
As of today, I am a Visiting Professor at Ulster University
I’m very very happy to say that today marks the beginning of my four-year appointment as Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, INCORE with links to the Institute of Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS) at the Magee and Jordanstown campuses of Ulster University.
It is a very part-time assignment, though I will give at least one guest lecture/seminar a year to staff/students or the general public. The first of these will be on Monday 9 March at the Belfast campus of Ulster University. I understand that it is already pretty heavily subscribed, which is encouraging.
This has no effect on my day job in Brussels, other than helping to strengthen links between academe and the private sector in public affairs. Colleagues at work have been gratifyingly positive about it. I may start putting “Professor” on my business cards, though!
Links I found interesting for 01-03-2015
- 9 Things You Never Knew The Ninth Doctor Did
I actually did know 8 of these.
- Making Do With More by J. Bradford DeLong
“we are producing and consuming much more than our economic indicators suggest”
- How to Use a Cellphone Without Being Spied On
Not easy.
- Operation Socialist: How GCHQ Hacked Belgacom
UK’s cyberattack on Belgium.