Written in the aftermath of the 2016 referendum when the UK voted to leave the EU, Robinson is essential and entertaining reading. By the end of the 19th century there were over 700 spin-off versions of Robinson Crusoe: the novel is brilliantly and succinctly revisited by Charles Boyle a.k.a. Jack Robinson in a modern-day setting.
Random thoughts from an offshore island
“James Joyce considered Robinson’s grandfather to be ‘the true prototype of the English colonist . . . The whole Anglo Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity.’ Crusoe – the eponymous hero of the book by Daniel Defoe that is often considered to be the first English novel.”Continue reading Review | Robinson and An Overcoat, both by Jack Robinson a.k.a. Charles Boyle
Charles Boyle is the quintessential self-published author who also publishes books by other authors (similar to Virginia and Leonard Woolf who set up the Hogarth Press in 1917 and published works by key modernist writers as well important works in translation). CB Editions publishes books that are enticing, witty, essential reading. His blog is at Sonofabook.
Here is a selection of CB Editions’ top reads: Jennie Walker (one of Boyle’s pen names), 24 for 3 which was picked up by Bloomsbury; Jack Robinson (one of Boyle’s pen names), Days and Nights in W12, Robinson, By the same author, An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B.; Gabriel Josipovici, Only Joking; Andrzej Bursa, Killing Auntie & other work; Gert Hofmann, Lichtenbergand theLittle Flower Girl; David Markson, This is Not a Novel ; Lara Pawson, This is the Place To Be; Diane Williams, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine; Will Eaves, The Inevitable Gift Shop.
Our eclectic November top ten reads rejoice in strong women and have a radical, cosmopolitan flavour. We continue our celebration of 15 years of the Childrens’ Bookshow, highlighting two more books featured in this year’s tour. Happy reading! Georgia @bookblast
Strong Women
Rasputin and Other Ironies by Teffi (Pushkin Press) buy here Translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Rose France, Anne Marie Jackson
“A semi-literate peasant and a counsellor to the Tsar, a hardened sinner and a man of prayer, a shape-shifter with the name of God on his lips. They called him cunning. Was there really nothing to him but cunning? I shall tell you about my two brief encounters with him . . .” Teffi’s portrait of Rasputin, and her description of his unwanted advances, is a disturbing reminder of how sex-pests using positions of power to get their dirty way are not a new phenomenon. All of the women saying #MeToo on Twitter are standing on the shoulders of the women who came before them.
Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya – who wrote under the pseudonym Teffi – was born in 1872 into a family prominent in Saint Petersburg society. An essayist, poet and playwright, she became so popular that there were Teffi sweets and a Teffi perfume. She supported socialism and the 1905 revolution, and worked for the first Bolshevik paper, New Life, which was later shut down by the Leninist authorities. She left Russia in 1919 and settled in France, where she died in 1952. Her engaging, witty and empathic writing belies a bleak undertow of loss and nostalgia for lost worlds as she writes about life before the revolution, fellow writers, emigration, and life in Paris.
Oriana Fallaci by Cristina de Stefano (Other Press) buy here Translated from the Italian by Marina Harss
Elton Mayo’s pioneering research at a Western Electric Company manufacturing plant near Chicago between 1924 and 1933 represents one of the most important historical events in the development of Industrial Organization psychology. This body of research, collectively referred to as the Hawthorne Studies (named from the plant in which they took place), was influential in the development of the human relations movement and triggered research and debate into what it is that drives human behaviour at work.
We need, especially, to solve the problem of working together. There is no problem of greater importance at the present time. Every nation of the civilized world is facing one of the most serious economic and social crises in its history. And in every national group, though perhaps in varying degrees, there is difficulty in achieving effective co-operation, both within the group and internationally with other groups. One frequently hears the assertion that the present emergency is remarkable by reason of the lack of effective leadership. What is meant by this, more often than not, is that in this large-scale modern world we have failed to make special studies of the conditions that make for effective human co-operation.
The problem exists in industry and is no less important in the industrial than in the national situation. It exists in an especially intense form in the industries of the United States because here the personnel of a Iarge industry usually consists of “strangers drawn from the ends of the earth.” Even where this is not wholly true, the personnel generally have no common life outside the plant. Consequently the need for developing a common life within the plant, a capacity for working together effectively, is more urgent here than in other countries.Continue reading BookBlast® Archive | Elton Mayo, The Problem of Working Together | Lecture delivered April 30, 1932 nationwide over NBC radio
Are (were) your parents great readers? Tell us a bit about yourself. I’ve enjoyed reading since I was a child — yes, my parents encouraged me to study and explore books. After studying French in high school and living for a summer with a French family in Clermont Ferrand, I have loved reading in other languages.
Did you want to work in the publishing industry from the start? I’m relatively new to the business of publishing, although I’ve written a book (Capital Dilemma: Germany’s Search for a New Architecture of Democracy) I only co-founded New Vessel Press with Ross Ufberg in 2012. We’re both passionate about literature and foreign literature in particular — I read French and German and Ross reads Russian and Polish — but neither of us has prior experience in publishing. We’ve been learning as we go along which has made building a new house a challenge but great fun. Nowadays the publishing world is changing so rapidly that I’d venture that we have just as much of a clue as to where things are going as more traditional, established houses.Continue reading Interview | Michael Z. Wise, co-founder, New Vessel Press | Indie Publisher of the Week
Rasputin and Other Ironies by Teffi (Pushkin Press) 
