![]() ![]() Big respect to my colleague George, who told me he had used it in a Shared Reading group and said it was ‘ like Marmite’. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the out-stretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp." "It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. "Firmness of courage or effort of fear? What do you think? What I could never make up my mind about was whether his line of conduct amounted to shirking his ghost or to facing him out…as with the complexion of all our actions, the shade of difference was so delicate that it was impossible to say."Īnd one last one that I’ll leave you with: Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything”. ![]() Three: It’s a book full of thoughts and ideas that are just….massive! (if I was an intellectual I would call them metaphysical…?) I mean the kind of sentences that shock you and stop you and that you think about for days. It’s a book about two haunted men: Jim, the young man who committed a bad deed by abandoning a sinking ship (or did he? He isn’t even sure himself) is haunted by the one event in his young life that now defines him as a moral coward and Marlow, the old man and narrator who is drawn to Jim and tries to help him and who is haunted by Jim’s inner struggle and his plight. And again, there’s a link there to the work of Shared Reading. Two: there’s a lot in this book about self-knowledge and knowing others – both the strive for and the impossibility of both of those things. It was an interesting exercise in watching myself try at something, get bored or frustrated at times, interspersed with pay-off moments of total recognition and awe. So there was a kind of quid pro quo in me tackling this strange book full of sea-faring and historical terms and references. One: in this job, where you read for work all the time, it felt good to read something disconnected from modern life, complicated and occasionally incomprehensible – because it is, after all, sort of what we ask the people who come to our groups to do (or, that’s how some see it, at least). The narrated show consists entirely of aerial scenes using the Cineflex V14HD gyro-stabilized camera system mounted under the 'chin' of a helicopter. state or destination in the United States. Each episode is an aerial video tour of a U.S. I still think his sentences are like that…but I’m making it my recommended read in any case, for the following reasons: Aerial America is a television series airing on the Smithsonian Channel. I didn’t really want to read Lord Jim I was told to by someone, for work, and I was not that up for it to be honest, as I’ve always found Conradalmost deliberately difficult, with hugely long sentences that you read and then think, ‘ Sorry, what?’. This week our read comes on recommendation from Fiona, a Reader Leader in our Criminal Justice team. ![]()
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