La Première Gorgée De Bière Et Autres Plaisirs Minuscules (1997) - Plot & Excerpts
An excellent read! Thanks to my dear friend Sonya for lending me her Advance Reader's Edition. This is one of those "yes, I know it's very late and I know I need to go to bed but I can't stop reading" type books. Even though all educated people know the outcome, the writer's style keeps one's interest engaged the entire time. The NYT review mentioned something about a slight dragging in the middle of the book but I didn't detect that. I HIGHLY recommend this book as an insight into how governments can manipulate events to serve their purpose. Yes, I think this event was allowed to happen by Churchill et al to get the USA into the war. Not the first time something like that has happened, not the last time and it is happening today, in my opinion! Enough soap-boxing, here from Amazon: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the LusitaniaOn May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.
Philippe Delerm – Pirmas gurkšnis alaus ir kiti maži malonumaiKą aš galiu pasakyti? Gerai, kad ji trumpa, todėl nieko nepraradau. Knyga absoliučiai manęs nesužavėjo. Jau nebepamenu, kodėl ja susidomėjau – beskaitydama pamiršau. Berods, kažkas paminėjo, kad čia knyga – literatūrinis eksperimentas, o juk pasidomėti eksperimentais visada į naudą. O gal man tiesiog buvo smalsu, kuo gi taip susižavėjo tie prancūzai, mat anotacijoje parašyta, kad "Maži malonumai" Prancūzijoje išleisti 23 kartus 110 000 tiražu. Kad ir kaip buvo, faktas lieka faktu: knygą perskaičiau ir likau jai abejinga.Kas čia per knyga ir kodėl ji eksperimentas? Čia nėra nei siužeto, nei veikėjų. Nėra veiksmo, nėra veiksmo vietos ir visų kitų tradiciniam romanui svarbių dalykų. Čia trumpose apybraižose aprašomi visokie mažučiai, niekuo neypatingi, paprastučiai, kasdieniai dalykėliai, iš kurių susideda gyvenimas. Daiktai arba potyriai. Pavyzdžiui:peilis kišenėje,pyragaičiai sekmadienio rytą,žirnių gliaudymas,taurelė portveino,obuolių kvapas,pirmas gurkšnis alaus,greitkelis naktį,skaitymas paplūdimyje,sekmadienio vakaras,laikraštis per pusryčiusir taip toliau. Kai kurie dalykėliai gerai pažįstami, skaitydamas apie juos šypsaisi, nes pats esi tai ne kartą patyręs ir gerai supranti apie ką rašo (man ypač surezonavo skaitymas gulint). Kiti dalykai visai svetimi. Pavyzdžiui, „Lukumas arabo krautuvėlėje“. Nežinojau, nei kas tas lukumas, nei kur man dabar staigiai rasti arabo krautuvėlę. Dar kiti dalykai apskritai jau prarasti. Pavyzdžiui, skambinimas telefono būdelėje.Gal visa tai ir skamba įdomiai, bet patikėkit manim, skaityti buvo nežmoniškai nuobodu. Koks skirtumas, ką kažkoks prancūzas mano apie Tour De France lenktynes arba apie judantį Monparnaso stotelės taką? Man tai jokio. O ir proza niekuo neypatinga. Man daug labiau patiktų skaityti LSD pavartojusio asmens atsiliepimus apie kasdienius objektus: Ooo, medžio žievė… Kokia ji… Ohoho… Ir gruoblėta, ir sykiu švelni… O raštas… Eik tu sau!Knygą siūlau tiems, ką domina literatūriniai eksperimentai. Dar siūlau visokiems užkietėjusiems ir ryšį su realybe praradusiems optimistams. Tiems, kurie nesveikai žavisi visokiais kasdieniais dalykais. Kitiems nerekomenduoju, nes nuoširdžiai nesuprantu, kuo ši knyga gali būti vertinga.Publikuota čia: http://www.suru.lt/philippe-delerm-pi...
What do You think about La Première Gorgée De Bière Et Autres Plaisirs Minuscules (1997)?
This author describes in a page or two some situations that may be universal, at least to the french. Some things that seemed more typically french, than American, were the contrasting opinions about bicycles and the "velo" and the experience of buying and carrying pastries home from the pastry shop by holding the box by the little ribbon they tie it up with at the store. On the other hand, I readily related to his discription of the first sip of beer, and I enjoyed his description of looking into a snow globe.
—Elaine
This is a charming little book written by a French author and translated into English. It is made up of a number of short pieces about the everyday delights life has to offer. In each chapter, the author contemplates the seemingly ordinary experiences that add joy to life, whether it be the first sip of beer, the snowstorm inside a paperweight or the smell of apples. Some of the entries relate specifically to French culture, but the content is easily translatable to other individual cultural specific experiences and does not detract from the enjoyment of this small volume. A nice light read that advocates getting back to the simple things in life.
—Paula Dembeck
La Première Gorgée de Biere, translated variously as The Small Pleasures of Life or We Could Almost Eat Outside, actually means ‘the first sip of beer’ and it was the choice of Emma from Book Around the Corner for my 2013 Humbook. It consists of récits, brief meditations on the simple pleasures of life. And although I could have bought it in English for my Kindle, I chose to buy the French edition so that I could resurrect my school French in preparation for my next trip, oh! hopefully in 2015. ( Fishpond didn’t have it in their catalogue, but thanks to excellent personalised service, now they do, and other books by Delerm besides.)The récits are one-or-two-page stories so they are not too demanding to translate if you have some rudimentary French and a dictionary. So far I’ve found that I can get the gist of Delerm’s thoughts on an initial reading, and then I need the dictionary. I have more trouble with the verbs irregular and otherwise (tenses are always my weakness) and of course some idiom escapes me entirely. For these I try Google Translate, but the results are usually hilarious. (À l’encre violette on griffe le papier de pleins, de delis* délies=In purple ink on paper full claw of hairlines!)To see my stumbling efforts at translating one of these récits, please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/02/09/la...
—Lisa
