Monday, July 30, 2012
Concerning the cooking time of brown bread
Interesting senior event the other day involving brown bread. Did all the usual things then popped the twice risen dough into the oven shortly after lunch, a lunch which consisted of some rather splendid plain sausages from the Manor Green Road butcher, great fat things weighing in at maybe 4 to the pound, so fat that I snoozed off while waiting for the bread to cook and did not wake up for the pinger. With the result that the bread was cooked for more or less double the time - 40 minutes instead of 20 - that it should have been. I assumed that the bread would be a write off, but it turned out to be dark brown rather than black and when cooled down bread rather than rusk. Not as good as it should be but still better than shop bread. One can only suppose that crust is quite a good insulator.
The next item was finishing off an explosive international bestseller called 'Gomorrah' by Roberto Saviano, a book which was indeed both interesting and depressing, but also rather badly written. Full of all kinds of high flown burblings, burblings which may have been the product of translation but which may have been the result of the author being a philosopher. A story about the doings of the criminal clans & gangs that appear to run much of Naples and the surrounding region, being big into fashion, drugs, guns (and such like), construction, waste disposal and local government. Tentacles spreading all over the place, even to Aberdeen.
The clans & gangs appear to operate very much as regular businesses, providing goods and services which people want in a more or less regular way. With accountants and management consultants. With lots of illegals & immigrants in their work force. But giving themselves a competitive advantage by not being stuffy about resort to violence; violence to punish, impress, intimidate or damage. Violence which includes very nasty murders: often not enough just to kill someone; a more serious point has to be made by torturing the unfortunate first. Killings which might include people only very vaguely connected with the problem in hand, almost random. A culture in which dying like a man is more important than life. A particularly nasty kind of violence which reminded me of doings in Ireland in the past.
The chaps who rise to the top of this particular heap appear to have quite short reigns and to live holed up in very fancy fortified houses, out in the country. Some of them are into bourgeois trinkets such as fancy paintings and books. All a bit like robber barons in the high middle ages - so odd to think that Italians were getting out of the middle ages long before we got around to it. No longer a surprise that a country that puts up with all this for so long, puts up with a Berlusconi.
The book would have been much improved by being turned into a picture book with lots of maps, portraits of people and portraits of places. Perhaps like the bible book I mentioned on 16th July.
The last item was deciding not to read my latest find from the second hand bookstall at the entrance to the museum at Bourne Hall, 'The Meaning of Light' by one Michael Cox, a very fat, uncorrected bound manuscript from John Murray which was not for sale or quotation and for which I paid £1.50. I had been completely taken in by the spoof preface which explained that this was a reprint of a lost & lurid Victorian masterpiece (there appears to be lots of sex, drink, drugs and violence), whereas actually it is a pastiche of same, recently written by a retired publisher as part of his fight against cancer, 694 pages of it. This particular copy also included a couple of clipped newspaper reviews, one neutral and one against. The odd thing is that the author got paid an advance of £430,000 - odd that is until one takes a peek at Mr. Google who finds lots of very positive comment about the thing. Still not going to try to read it though. En route to the Oxfam skip at Kiln Lane.
But what is the purpose of an uncorrected bound manuscript? Perhaps if you are in the book business with access to the machinery, this is the cheapest and most convenient way of knocking out a few copies to be read by your readers. Perhaps publishers have focus groups and other panels made up of the more or less general public to test drive stuff before decisions about publication and marketing are made.
The next item was finishing off an explosive international bestseller called 'Gomorrah' by Roberto Saviano, a book which was indeed both interesting and depressing, but also rather badly written. Full of all kinds of high flown burblings, burblings which may have been the product of translation but which may have been the result of the author being a philosopher. A story about the doings of the criminal clans & gangs that appear to run much of Naples and the surrounding region, being big into fashion, drugs, guns (and such like), construction, waste disposal and local government. Tentacles spreading all over the place, even to Aberdeen.
The clans & gangs appear to operate very much as regular businesses, providing goods and services which people want in a more or less regular way. With accountants and management consultants. With lots of illegals & immigrants in their work force. But giving themselves a competitive advantage by not being stuffy about resort to violence; violence to punish, impress, intimidate or damage. Violence which includes very nasty murders: often not enough just to kill someone; a more serious point has to be made by torturing the unfortunate first. Killings which might include people only very vaguely connected with the problem in hand, almost random. A culture in which dying like a man is more important than life. A particularly nasty kind of violence which reminded me of doings in Ireland in the past.
The chaps who rise to the top of this particular heap appear to have quite short reigns and to live holed up in very fancy fortified houses, out in the country. Some of them are into bourgeois trinkets such as fancy paintings and books. All a bit like robber barons in the high middle ages - so odd to think that Italians were getting out of the middle ages long before we got around to it. No longer a surprise that a country that puts up with all this for so long, puts up with a Berlusconi.
The book would have been much improved by being turned into a picture book with lots of maps, portraits of people and portraits of places. Perhaps like the bible book I mentioned on 16th July.
The last item was deciding not to read my latest find from the second hand bookstall at the entrance to the museum at Bourne Hall, 'The Meaning of Light' by one Michael Cox, a very fat, uncorrected bound manuscript from John Murray which was not for sale or quotation and for which I paid £1.50. I had been completely taken in by the spoof preface which explained that this was a reprint of a lost & lurid Victorian masterpiece (there appears to be lots of sex, drink, drugs and violence), whereas actually it is a pastiche of same, recently written by a retired publisher as part of his fight against cancer, 694 pages of it. This particular copy also included a couple of clipped newspaper reviews, one neutral and one against. The odd thing is that the author got paid an advance of £430,000 - odd that is until one takes a peek at Mr. Google who finds lots of very positive comment about the thing. Still not going to try to read it though. En route to the Oxfam skip at Kiln Lane.
But what is the purpose of an uncorrected bound manuscript? Perhaps if you are in the book business with access to the machinery, this is the cheapest and most convenient way of knocking out a few copies to be read by your readers. Perhaps publishers have focus groups and other panels made up of the more or less general public to test drive stuff before decisions about publication and marketing are made.
# posted by Jim @ 10:49 PM 
