#engleby

[snowyhobbit]

Lonely's like any other organism: competitive and resourceful in the struggle to perpetuate itself.

- Sebastian Faulks, Engleby

#books #dark academia #sebastian faulks #literature #quotes #authors #engleby #reading #currently reading

[tamurakafkaposts]

Inhale and hold the evening in your lungs.

Sebastian Faulks, Engleby

#tamurakafkaposts #photographers on tumblr #black and white #august 2023 in porto #Travel

[oldshrewsburyian]

Please do you have any recs for books set in Oxford beyond the classics (e.g. Brideshead Revisited, Gaudy Night, Morse)?

Oh I do! The difficulty is that there are so many 'classics.' Among these I would count, for instance, Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson, but I am mentioning it here anyway because it is utterly delightful. Its subtitle, “An Oxford Love Story,” indicates that it is a story about a romance with Oxford, as well as a love story set within it.

Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain, describes the memoirist's time at Oxford in the early C20, including her encounters with Sayers and her experiences of reading Rupert Brooke's sonnets.

Landscape With Dead Dons, Robert Robinson, is an absurdist mystery with a geographically-specific chase scene so funny that I had to put down the book and make undignified noises about it.

The Gervase Fen series, Edmund Crispin, also delights in a comedic (and deeply affectionate) skewering of specifically Oxonian eccentricities. I think my favorite of his is Swan Song, which features pedantry about Wagner, though the one that most often makes it onto "best of" whodunit lists is The Moving Toyshop.

The Oxford Murders, Guillermo Martínez. I feel that I should have enjoyed this book more than I did, but it is skillfully crafted (and Martínez himself did a postdoc at Oxford.)

Engleby, Sebastian Faulks, is set at a deliberately unspecified university... either Oxford or the other place. The fact that the protagonist studies natural sciences might imply Cambridge. I confess I don’t remember enough details of the setting to state my own view.

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy. I recommend this with the caveat that it wrecked me, but it’s supposed to. It has searing and indelible prose, and it writes about the life of the mind with exquisite yearning. Like Gaudy Night, too, it asks the central question of what happens when the life of the mind encounters the life of the heart, and what can happen if those in "a castle manned by scholarship and religion” pretend they can ignore the messiness of human realities.

To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis. This book is an absolute delight, and it defies description. There is punting. There are Wimsey references. There are Victorian monstrosities. There is time travel.

#book recommendations #oxford #adultbooklr #my detection obsession #zuleika dobson #jude the obscure #to say nothing of the dog #edmund crispin #landscape with dead dons #testament of youth #sebastian faulks #guillermo martinez

[deadlinecom]

[nondualreality]

I'd never chosen to be alone, but that was the way things had turned out, and I'd grown used to it.

Sebastian Faulks, Engleby

#not so motivational quotes #motivational #positive thinking #laws of universe #law of attraction #intentions #manifestation #manifesting #abundance #quotes #loa #money #love #tips #inspiration #inspiring quotes #Sebastian Faulks #Engleby

[macrolit]

I’ve always wanted to read Sebastian Faulks. Which should I start with?

#sebastian faulks #engleby #charlotte gray #birdsong #a week in December #human traces #books

[kepage3]

Books Read in 2021 - 35. Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

Books Read in 2021 – 35. Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

Genre: thriller, masculinity, madness Narrative style: First person, largely chronological Rating: 2/5 Format: Kindle Published: 2007 Synopsis: Mike Engleby has never fitted in. Not at school and not at university. When he becomes obsessed with a pretty student named Jennifer, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong with him. Then Jennifer disappears and all eyes are on Mike but…

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#book reviews #engleby #Sebastian Faulks

[lookatthedawn]

A.k.a Paradise on Earth

People ask me if I'd want to come to Vietnam again.  In a heartbeat, I answer!  And I'm not even talking about Phu Quoc Island, I'm talking about Hanoi, my job here and the Vietnamese people.  I like it all.  I like the solitude, I find that I'm rather good at being alone.  But Phu Quoc Island is something else.  It's not a place to work, or at least I don't see it as a place to work.  It's a great place to take a respite from life.  

The hotel has a main building with a beautiful foyer and a gazebo-style dining room where there's a constant ocean breeze.  Stretching toward the back are all the bungalows between patches of green grass and vibrant flowers.  I have reserved a room, not a bungalow.  As I go upstairs to the second floor, I realize that I'm their only guest at the moment.  I wonder why since the place is clean and gorgeous if only a little bit isolated.  There's a gym, though, located on the right side of the hotel, which plays non-stop electronic music.  I'm prejudiced against the genre.  In fact, I've always thought that if hell has a soundtrack, this is it.  

My room is spacious, with all the usual appliances.  I'm happy to be properly installed, but I want to explore.  After refreshing myself and resting for a bit, I take a walk along the main road, looking for the beach.  I have often compared Vietnam to Brazil, and I'll do it again here.  Vietnam is probably like a hundred other countries, but you can only compare with what you know, and I do know the rural roads of Brazil.  They are my crib, actually.  I remember when my parents took my four siblings and me to Euxenita village, how the dusty road stretched ahead of us and seemed long compared to my short legs.  Those early memories are so deeply engraved in my mind that any similar place or people throw me right back there.  At this roadside, there are little rustic shops selling mainly food but other things as well.  I stop at a store and buy a small pack of Oreos.  At home I don't like Oreos, find them too sweet, but since I arrived in Vietnam I can't have enough of them, possibly because I'm not having my regular sugar-fix in processed foods.  Vietnamese people don't eat as much sugar as Americans or Brazilians. Their breakfast is often rice, noodles, eggs, and vegetables.  For dessert, they eat fruits with the same gusto my fellow Westerns eat chocolate.   I walk while listening to The Creative Penn podcast, coincidentally, one episode in which the host mentions my name.  After walking for perhaps ten minutes, I find a little passage that might be the one the hotel owner said would take me to the beach.  It doesn't.  Instead, it takes me to a muddy strip of land with a few shanties.  People dressed in worn-out Bermuda shorts and t-shirts come out and stare at me, some of them say hello, the children smile and hide behind adults.  Thin dogs watch me while lying by the hut's door.  Some wag their tails, others are either too bored or too weak to wag or bark.  Children and adults alike are stepping on the mud, busy with cooking, washing, and fixing things.  The place is quiet, so quiet, in fact, that you can hear a fly buzzing around.  The people go about their business peacefully.  In their eyes, you can see ten years gone without changes.  Far away a radio plays pop music.  

I turn around and walk back to the main road.  I feel a thousand eyes watching me, but in fact, I'm alone.  Just another Western lost in these parts.  They'll forget me by the time the sun sets over the Gulf of Thailand.   The rain comes without warning.  It comes fast and strong, so I enter the first covered place, which happens to be a house/business, selling blocks of ice.  A lady greets me with a smile.  She doesn't speak English, and neither do the men in their late twenties, early thirties, busy cutting and packing ice.   They see that I need a place to wait for the rain to pass, they greet me warmly and the lady of the house brings me a chair.  Other people arrive in motorcycles, covered in plastic from head to toe, and they too greet me with a nod and a brief smile.  They know I don't speak Vietnamese.  They are familiar with Westerns like me, who can hardly say 'thank you' in their tongue.  So they do their best to communicate with me and act as though not knowing my language is their personal failure.   As sudden as the rain came it goes. I thank them and continue on my way, looking for the beach.  I know I'm close to the sea.  It's just a question of finding the passage.  I stop at a snack bar and ask for directions.  I have a hard time making myself understood, but then they nod and repeat bai a lot.  A gentleman, probably in his seventies, tells me to get on his motorcycle, he'll take me there.  That's the Vietnamese approach, that's how they help you.  In the U.S. this would sound strange, but not in Phu Quoc Island.  Sure, I get on his motorbike and we go to the beach, but when we get there I'm disappointed, as this is not a leisure beach but a place for fishermen and boat owners to fix their gear.  I don't need to say anything, he can see that this is not what I was looking for.  We head back to the main road, where he stops and discuss with another local, trying to decide where I want to go and the best way to get there.  I watch them, getting hints of their meaning by the way they point their fingers towards the beach and gesture about directions.  Finally, they agree on the best course of action.  But this is almost 6 p.m. and I decide to go back to the hotel and get some rest and dinner.   Of course, I find the Bai Sao the next day.  Following the hotel's owner's suggestion, I borrow a book from his library and take a cab to the beach. Maybe I should have rented one of the motorcycles they have available at the hotel but the cab was inexpensive and quick.  

I'm fully aware that this moment, swimming in the crystalline water and reading Engleby under the hot Vietnamese sun is one of the best moments I have in Southeast Asia.  I bask in the sun, enjoying each minute.  I don't have suntan lotion, didn't even think of that, to be perfectly honest, but I'm enjoying myself too much to care. There are a few Westerns at the restaurant, but most are Vietnamese from other parts of the country.  Two young women, one from Belgium and the other from England are swimming next to me and we chat briefly.  Then I explore.  Another part of the beach is completely desert.  I've got my books, my music, the ocean and a gorgeous day ahead of me.  Color me happy! The problem with being the sole guest at the hotel is that I have a small staff working for me alone.  I'm the one who interrupts their leisure and requires that they work.  I don't like that.  On my last night in Phu Quoc Island, I come down to chat with the hotel owner.  We talk about books, about the island, and about Vietnam.  He's very interested in Brazil, which he plans to visit one day.  The conversation turns to politics and corruption in both Brazil and Vietnam.  I tell him that I've always thought that criminality in Brazil is the result of governmental corruption, but knowing that in Vietnam also there is corruption in the government and yet criminality is very low has cracked my logic.  I ask him why he thinks that's the case and his answer surprises me.  He credits the police for being tough and effective.  He is not the first or the only one to tell me that the Vietnamese police is fast, tough and efficient.  But I know Rio de Janeiro.  I know that if the carioca police gets tough, the slum kings get tougher, madder and more effective.  I wonder if things would have been different had the Brazilian police taken serious and proactive action thirty or forty years ago when criminality was more manageable and gangs didn't possess military warfare.  My host's theory is plausible but does not satisfy me.  I believe crime in Brazil is deeply rooted in the population's mindset.  Crime is allowed.  It's a culture where small infractions are expected and often encouraged by people who consider themselves above reproach.  "But everyone does it," they say.  Or even, "there's no way to live honestly in Brazil".  My Brazilian family and friends tell me they can no longer leave the house after dark.  The freedom I enjoyed in my youth is denied to this generation.  The situation is sad and frustrating.  And I think the necessary measures go beyond police efficacy.  

As I get up to go back to my room my host asks me when and what I want for dinner.  I tell him that I'll be happy with the same I had the night before, rice and steamed vegetables, and would like to eat in about an hour. He nods.  "Will you have a glass of wine with me?" "Sure," I say. I'm not much of a drinker and I haven't eaten much all day, so, an hour later, when he pours the red drink into a glass, I know that I should take it easy.   "Cheers!" He says as we bump glasses.  He downs his wine and gestures for me to do the same.  I do.  He refills my glass.  "This is a very special wine," he tells me.  "You won't find it anywhere else but here on the island.  Sim wine.  Will you remember the name?" "Sim wine," I repeat.  "Yes, I will." "It's from the myrtle fruit.  It's only produced in Phu Quoc Island." He raises his glass.  "Your dinner is coming soon. Drink up!" I see that the bottle is almost empty and that's a good thing.  I really shouldn't be drinking on an empty stomach.  I'm alone on this island and the hotel is deserted, so I figure I should have my wits about me the whole time.   "Do you like the wine?" "Yes, it's very good." "Well, that's it for this bottle," he says.  "But I have another." He brings the second bottle, fills our glasses and we drink.  Then he refills our glasses again.  "This is for drinking with the food," he says and leaves with his glass to bring me the food.  Is it my impression or is he a little tipsy? I open my laptop as I wait for dinner.  I'm in the circular gazebo-style dining room. There's only one wall in the back, where the bar is located, behind which is the kitchen.  Plants hang all around the room, swaying gently in the night breeze.  I can smell the food being cooked in the kitchen and subtler than that, the salty scent of the ocean, not far away.  My host places a steaming plate before me, then brings me napkins, salt, pepper, and sauces.  He goes to the other table and clicks the TV on, leaving to my dinner.   After a while, I walk upstairs to my room where I call my best friend in Brazil and we talk for a long time.  For some silly reason, we start laughing and can not stop.  She blames it on the wine, I blame it on being in this amazing place, having just a grand ol' time.  Phu Quoc Island is a crowning moment of my stay in Southeast Asia, one that will stay with me for years to come. As I talk to Nara and brush away laughing tears, I'm aware of that.  

#Vietnam #kinhbachotel #phuquocisland #Summer internship #mountholyokecollege #traveling #writer's life #sim wine #thecreativepenn #engleby #southeastasia #baisaobeach #francesperkins

[thefudge]

You mentioned domestic thriller in "too full - overfed" - do you have any recommendations?

honestly, i often struggle with this genre because it's never as trashy or thought-provoking or just plain interesting as it pretends to be. so much of what's out there (the title always being an adjective followed by the word wife) is so boring, designed to be read just once if you're on a plane. so here are some recs that are both conventional & unconventional, but delightfully unsettling (with splashes of the domestic):

kiss me first, by lottie moggach (the heroine is a fucking mess and i love her)

things we have in common, tasha kavanagh (a young girl/older man dynamic that will surprise you with its depth and weirdness)

final girls, by riley sager (trashy serial killers & cops)

most of amelie nothomb's novels (esp. antichrista and the hygiene of the assassin)

mrs. caliban, by rachel ingalls (the original lady falling for a sea creature in 50s suburbia)

the fifth child, by doris lessing (a classic and delicious nightmare fuel)

engleby, by sebastian faulks (hooo man, unreliable narrator up the wazoo + academic setting, but a lot of it happens in dorms so i still count it as domestic lol)

the collector, by john fowles (love me some kidnapped trope that goes south fast)

#book rec #replies #these are not exactly what you asked for but here u go #books #thrillers

[jawnkeets]

for the other anon: maurice, of lions and shadows, black chalk, engleby are all ones that i’ve enjoyed 💛💛

thank u sm for this!

#asks #can’t believe i forgot maurice lol

[thesenovelthoughts]

Engleby - Sebastian Faulks

Engleby – Sebastian Faulks

“Lonely’s like any other organism; competitive and resourceful in the struggle to perpetuate itself.” Everyone knows Sebastian Faulks; Birdsong is an immensely popular novel (with good reason, it was impeccably researched and written with precision). I’m not sure if Engleby is as well known. I have no idea if people like it. I’ve never heard anyone talking about it. But, to me, Engleby is one of…

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#book #book review #book reviews #books #Currently reading #engleby #Fiction #Mystery #Reading #sebastian faulks #writer #writers #writing

[oldshrewsburyian]

Apologies if I already asked this, but recs for campus detective novels? I will be buried with my copies of Gaudy Night, but I want to try some other authors over the summer in between researching for my prospectus.

I do! Also set in Oxford is Robert Robertson's Landscape with Dead Dons, and it is uproariously funny.

Obviously the premise of the campus novel relies on an American setting, but if we do take Oxford (bless it) as providing an insulated setting suitable to the requirements of the genre, Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen novels would count. And Swan Song contains so many Wagner jokes... which I realize will only be a recommendation if you like that sort of thing (I do.)

Guillermo Martínez, The Oxford Murders, is (obviously) still in Oxford. It might be a shade over-clever for my taste, which I astonish myself by saying. Perhaps the problem is that it's written by a mathematician and I will take any amount of excessive cleverness dished out by my fellow humanists.

Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, is a dark and extremely intelligent mystery that starts at a university, and arguably would not have developed in the way that it did without the university setting.

Nayana Currimbhoy, Miss Timmins' School for Girls, is a satisfying classic mystery plot with a richly atmospheric evocation of the place and time (and monsoon season!) in which it is set.

Geoff Cebula, Adjunct, is brilliant, inventive, and will make you laugh-cry about the realism of its academic setting, I suspect, if you've ever been precariously employed at a university.

Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages, would count, I think, but I remember its prose (favorably!) better than its plot.

Elaine Hsieh Chou, Disorientation, is an academic mystery rather than the murderous kind, but no less satisfying as a classic detective puzzle for that, in my view.

I'll also add this list of campus mysteries for good measure, though I've read few of them myself.

#campus novel #my detection obsession #book recommendations #asks and answers #nayana currimbho #elaine hsieh chou #carol goodman #geoff cebula #sebastian faulks #guillermo martinez #edmund crispin #robert robertson

[csnews]

Mounting dolphin deaths in Florida’s red tide zone trigger federal investigation

Jenny Staletovich - August 31, 2018

Federal wildlife officials have opened an investigation into dolphin deaths off Southwest Florida, where a red tide is suspected of killing 41 dolphins in August alone amid widespread fish kills across five counties.

In a briefing Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was declaring the deaths an “unusual mortality event,” allowing the agency to corral resources to research the ongoing deaths linked to the algae bloom. Since the 1990s, the agency has declared four similar red tide dolphin die-offs in the Gulf. Three occurred in the Panhandle and one, during a 17-month long tide that ended in 2006, covered the entire west coast.

“As we go through this event, if it’s truly red tide, you may see a shift in the type and what the strandings look like,” said veterinarian Teri Rowles, coordinator for NOAA’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Program.

Researchers at Mote Marine Lab in Sarasota said they confirmed evidence of a bloom nearly a year ago in October. Massive fish kills and sea turtle deaths followed, leaving beaches littered and canals clogged with carcasses by June. It’s not unusual for dolphin deaths to lag behind turtles, manatees and other marine life because dolphins tend to be poisoned by the food they eat rather than the water, Rowles said.

“In red tide events, we know the animals often die acutely with high levels of brevetoxins in their bodies and in there stomachs,” she said. “But....even when the bloom is gone we may see an increase in mortality.”

Dolphin deaths stayed in the normal range through much of the bloom: one was reported in November and about two dozen more through July, said Erin Fougeres, NOAA’s strandings coordinator for the southeast region. Then in July the number hit eight, double the historic average, followed by the 41 deaths in August.

Only ten carcasses have been examined so far, but all had high levels of red tide toxin, suggesting their deaths were linked to the algae bloom, Rowles said.

It’s not clear what effect the tide will have over the long term on the Gulf’s dolphin population, said Laura Engleby, the Southeast Region Marine Mammal Program Branch Chief. The Gulf has eight known sub populations, she said, but only one is coastal and well-documented. Dolphins live long, with some females as old as 60. But they are slow to reproduce: pregnancy lasts about 12 months and mothers nurse their babies for up to 20 months. They only give birth every three to six years.

“So it can have an impact,” Engleby said.

In 2005 and 2006, the last time such an intense red tide blanketed the coast, 283 dolphins died in two red tides in the Panhandle and on the west coast. The Gulf also had a spike in the number of baby dolphin deaths after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010. In 2016, Rowles and other researchers linked the deaths to the oil spill.

It may also take dolphins longer to recover if the fish they consume are wiped out by the tide.

“The food web needs to recover and then it takes the dolphins time to recover,” Rowles said.

To help with the investigation, researchers are asking anyone who finds a dead or sick dolphin, or one behaving strangely, to call NOAA’s emergency strandings number at 1-877-WHALE HELP (1-877-942-5343).

#news #wild #florida #death #cetacean #whale #dolphin #wildlife

[hydrewcoin]

Time makes us pointless

Sebastian Faulks Engleby

#presalecoin #@HydrewCoin #$BTC #Binance #Crosschain

[macrolit]

I'd never chosen to be alone, but that was the way things had turned out, and I'd grown used to it.

Engleby, Sebastian Faulks

#sebastian faulks #engleby #alone #loneliness #solitude #quotes #quote

[charmedchaos12]

#Haiku: Meadowlark “The end-of-summer winds make people restless.” ― Sebastian Faulks, Engleby meadowlark singing farewell, dog days of summer autumn's glory comes

#Haiku #Poem #Poetry