Thread 17 - TalkLair: "Okay, first of all, what's with the outfit? Live in the now, okay? You look like DeBarge."

[RasaSayangEh]

(Previous thread 16).

Spring is springing, daffodils blooming all over our LairGarden, which have not all been picked by a neighbour's kid...

In the TalkLair, the hearth is glowing, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, cosy rugs are down on the floors looking a bit stained by cat hairball regurgitation. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch though, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

When Trump was in first, it occurred to me that I was looking back the relative sanity and sensibleness of the Bush administration...

@SinnerBoywe’re staying in Alnwick, where DH has a couple of cousins, and we’ll undoubtedly be visiting some good friends of his in Gateshead.
@RasaSayangEhwe’re staying with an old school friend of mine, who I’ve known since we were 9, just outside Hull in Welton, getting together with some other old school friends in Hull, visiting my cousin in Hull and my niece and my first ex-sister-in-law who live between Beverley and Hornsea. It’s a lot to cram into five days but lovely to have the chance to do it.

I did Ancestry DNA last year to try to find out who my great grandfather was (my grandfather never knew, his mother wouldn't tell him and he struggled with it all his life). It allows you download your raw DNA so I used SNPedia to cross reference it with anything I was interested in - namely CCR5, FUT2, C282Y, BRCA, and COMT (warrior ) plus a load of pointless but nonetheless fascinating stuff.

Oh, and I also found my great grandfather's family and we had a nice chat

Kasper is doing really well. I'm not sure if MN will let me upload a photo as it's given me an error - hopefully this will work...

Edit: arghh. Can anyone else not upload photos?

Thanks for that @VictorianBigot I didn't realise you could download your DNA from Ancestry. I'll check it out. I did mine years ago hoping for interesting revelations like unknown offspring, but there weren't any and it just confirmed that all my ancestors were peasants. Nowt wrong with that, mind, coming from sturdy peasant stock is a good thing, imho.

Re the photo, are you getting any error messages?

<blinks>

Oh - Peasants! Not pheasants.

Images have a file size limit, but I think it should give you a.message saying that, if that's the problem. And they all get pre-vetted now.

Bad photo of a fruit bat, to test the upload process.

You can post photos but they take time to be approved after someone posted hideous photos a little while ago. Easier not to post immediately and then go "Oh it's just Kasper" than to let things through that could be horrid. He will turn up for us. @VictorianBigot

Wonderful documentary about Austen this evening on BBC 2. Genius: The rise of Jane Austen - definitely Genius I might have got the rest wrong. Three parter with some excellent talking heads, including Colm Tobin. I was very glad of it tonight and looking forward to two more episodes. Hoping it will be available for you before too long @Britinme

I've often regretted that I haven't read a word of JA, and now I never will. And yes, it certainly is too late! I would never have the concentration required these days.

I'm not sure I've read any either @moto748e. To be honest I've never really had any interest in classic literature. I think what put me off is that the text always seemed very small and close together in those sorts of books which made it very difficult for me to follow because I'm stereoblind. It wasn't until I got a Kindle that I properly started reading for pleasure.

Photos can be too big to load, so crop on your phone, if you have that facility. Or else, use snipping tool on your computer, the resolution still seems fine.

It won’t let me upload anything from my laptop… when I select a photo it won’t let me click ‘ok’ for some reason. It looks like I can do it from my phone still, even though MN makes my phone blow up. Here he is, I hope the wait was worth it.

Kasper pics are always worth it.

Oh lovely Kasper; glad to hear he’s on the mend!

I have also failed to get round to reading any Jane Austen. I think this goes back to hating English Literature at school and wilfully avoiding all classic literature once I had the choice. I used to read a lot of contemporary literature (that started while I was a student probably because it was what I wasn’t really meant to be doing as a science student) but hardly read anything now. I really should start reading properly again.

Welcome back, Kasper! 😀

Thanks @FagsMagsandBags - I’ll look out for it. I do love Jane Austen. She’s so wickedly funny. The Gill Hornby “Miss Austen” book about Cassandra was good too. I’m currently reading Jodi Taylor’s latest - not “literary” fiction by any means (and I’m not a huge fan of most modern literary fiction) but she tells a gripping story and makes me laugh.

I'd read pride and prejudice at school and then for A level, Mansfield Park. I really enjoyed MP despite fanny the heroine being deeply insipid. It's a book that doesn't shy away from slavery but in such a way that you're not fully aware that it's there.

Anyway, I kept meaning to read all of her books it wasn't until I went to NYC to stay my friend, R. That I got round to it. R loaned me a phone, we downloaded a small app, the complete works and as I wandered around town, I'd read bits. On the train to Coney island, and best of all at night in bed. R had the most comfortable bed with a fabulous duvet, all white. We'd be side by side Siamese Cicco between us, reading, probably much like Lizzy and Jane or Cassandra and Jane. It was heaven!

So, that's when I got through them. I wasn't a big fan of northanger abbey but sense and sensibility, Emma and Persuasion were all delightful, persuasion is bittersweet because that's it. No more.

I've been looking forward to this year and all the 250 celebrations and luckily I'm getting to experience a lot of them.

Anyway, I fell in love with her at 16 and then again about 30 years later although I never fell out of love.

As an aside R and I watched Julie and Julia while I was there which I also fell in love with. Nora Ephron is another near genius when it comes to writing and getting it just so and because she's been so prolific on all length of pieces she's one of the writers who I'm able to read her knowing I won't be left hanging half way through a long story.

Tl;Dr books what I have loved.

Lovely Kasper! @VictorianBigot it could be you're trying to upload iPhone pictures? I have the same problem. If I upload from my ancient MacBook, MN (web version on Safari) doesn't recognise the iPhone HEIC format and I have to do a workaround where I export the photo to JPG first. If I upload from my iPhone into MN (web version on Safari) it is perfectly happy to accept the original HEIC photo

I read some Austen in my teens and didn't really get it. I think her books are sometimes seen as historical romances (blame the movie adaptations) and they aren't really. Then I came back to them in my 40s, having in the mean time discovered a bit of interest in history, the sort about ordinary people and society, not the sort with dates/kings/wars (thanks, school history curriculum). And suddenly, Austen became wonderful and fascinating!

I started on Austen at 11 or 12, and enjoyed the comedy of manners. But I didn't really get all of it - especially the sex jokes - until quite a bit later.

Great eyes on that cat, by the way!

I think I was put off worthy literature by a horrible teacher and not being very interested. I tried to read Far From the Madding Crowd twice in adulthood and gave up twice!

Funnily enough, I really enjoyed Vanity Fair and Emma. And Cider With Rosie.

Did you get as far at the dying sheep in FFTMC? One of the epic failures of classic literature.

School put me off Cider With Rosie. We read it on shuffle, rather than the usual 'start at the beginning, go on to the end and then stop' method, and it made.nosense whatsoever.

I didn't like anything I read by Thomas Hardy and found his books rather depressing, but maybe I should have another look. Austen is a good read, I love the older style of English and get caught up in the sentence structures which are quite different to a lot of modern writing.

In Eng Lit, I was very lucky to have good teachers who clearly enjoyed the subject and brought it alive, so I read all the books with pleasure. Cold Comfort Farm was a favourite and Flora Poste's bossiness was fascinating. Can't remember how many times I've read that one but it's enough that I had to buy it in hard back.

Hardy is depressing. Except the dying sheep.

I prefer Hardy as a poet to Hardy as a novelist. There's an energy and focus in the poems which I find wholly absent from the novels.