March

 

Hamlet                William Shakespeare

Still the greatest play, and then I had to go back to reading…

Will in the World           Stephen Greenblatt

….the essential book on Shakespeare.   It’s nice to bounce between the plays and the book.

Caddyshack                   Chris Nashawaty

The making of a movie I have yet to see.. but an interesting early history of Doug Kenney and the National Lampoon and meeting Matty Simmons, several of whom I knew, for instance Michael O’ Donahue. I missed Lemmings  though Python had to ask them to stop doing our Custard Pie sketch which Tony Hendra had given them.  I remember going to see The National Lampoon show at the Palladium New York in the Spring of 1975, with Terry Gilliam, and there I saw and met for the first time John Belushi (a little awed by meeting two Pythons), Bill Murray and the adorable Gilda Radner.  It was a very funny show and we hung out for a while.  This is before SNL began.  Happy Days.

Before The Fall             Noah Hawley

Another very fine novel by the showrunner of Fargo.  A gripping modern novel, which reminded me a little of Tom Wolfe.  No, not his silly kerpang prose but his clear look at modern business types. The tragedy of City Man.  His view of society and money which I suppose has been a major subject of the novel since E. M. Forster.  Here in an intensely page-turning read, a plane crash triggers the complex reactions of the modern New York world from the corrupt Fox-like News to its appalling, tasteless, terrible heroes, the mercifully now defunct O’Reilly.  Both finely satirical and deeply moving and very enjoyable.

The Power of the Dog             Don Winslow

Totally gripping and compelling first part of an extraordinary trilogy about the US and the drugs and arms trafficking world.  Set in the Nineties, the characters interweave through complex story layers, both in New York, California and South America,  and there is a lot about the Reagan Contra World.  Page turning, thrillingly written, I have the other two standing by!  I loved his California Fire and Ice, and have since let him fall from my radar, but he’s back and glowing brightly.

Stoner                  John Williams

A simply brilliant novel from 1965.  Flawless prose.  Every single word is precise and eloquent.  Hardly a sentence too many and yet generations pass before our eyes.  The book really asks the question : what is it to be successful in life?   What constitutes a good life?  And the answer is simple and clear.  Living honestly, working hard and trying to love.  To enjoy the love of your metier:  in this case teaching. To enjoy the love of another human being:  in this case it’s not his wife, and to be loyal to the right things – not pro patria but pro humanitas, in this case loyalty to and love for a University. Wholly unexpected and totally enjoyable.  I think I picked the tip up from Michael Chabon.  Pass it on.

Maigret in Court            Georges Simenon.

Thoughts from Maigret, Simenon’s alter ego, which I think reveal what he tries to do as a novelist. “Even today, he knew that he was only giving a lifeless, simplified picture.  Everything he had just said was true, but he hadn’t conveyed the full weight of things, their density, their texture, their smell.”

Killing Commendatore   Haruki Murukami

I got some way into this then abandoned.   It happens to me with a lot of his books.

Bad Blood            John Carreyrou

Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-up.   Totally gripping tale of Theranos and its intriguing, utterly self-confident, strangely weird founder Elizabeth Holmes.   An excellent and revealing read and a reminder how newspapers can still save us from the Liars and the Lies they tell…

A Time of Gifts              Patrick Leigh Fermor

The finest English prose you’ll ever encounter.  This 19 year old misfit walked out of Britain in 1933 with the aim of reaching Constantinople.  This is his diary of his amazing adventures and his for all time description of Europe before it closed for Fascism.

No Bones             Anna Burns

The debut of this year’s Booker winner.  She manages to be both bleak and satirical at the same time, as well as the finest prose writer.

Dead is Beautiful           Jo Perry

The third and probably the best in this unique series about a dead man and his dog.  I love her writing and I love the extraordinarily original setting of a detective ghost story.  Amazingly clever and deeply satisfying.

 

February

No Chip on my Shoulder                  Eric Maschwitz

(1957.)  I have been looking for this book for some time, ever since I learned about Eric Maschwitz in Robert Hewison’s book about The Footlights.  A former member, he wrote the lyrics for two great songs: “These foolish things” and “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.   He married the hilarious Hermione Gingold, joined the BBC, wrote musicals, then went out to Hollywood, playing tennis with Cary Grant, before returning to England for WW2, and ending up as Head of the BBC.  We eventually found the book in the LA Public Library but disappointingly it contained hardly any details about the story that intrigued me, that he used the Footlights as cover for an operation against the Nazis.  He draws a veil over this alas.  Pity.

Wild and Crazy Guys              Nick de Semlyen

An interesting forthcoming book about the SNL alumni who went out to Hollywood and changed if not the face then the nose of Hollywood.  Since I knew most of these guys and was often around some of their movies (e.g. Blues Brothers in Chicago) it was fascinating for me.   Belushi, Aykroyd, Chevy, Murray, Eddie Murphy, and the SCTV alums, John Candy, Marty Short, Rick Moranis – they made a lot of movies and a lot of money.

Bookends             Michael Chabon

At the beginning of the book he identifies a set of “people who do not read introductions” amongst whom I would have included myself, but I happily basked in him writing about the books contained here, and I immediately subscribed to almost all of them, most of which were entirely unknown to me.  Of course he seems incapable of writing a dull sentence, and his prose glitters with gems, amongst which I loved “the past is another planet” and “It reveals the fundamental truth of the universe: that the fundamental truth of the universe will remain forever concealed.”

Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse. Georges Simenon

I discovered towards the end I had read it before.  Oops.  That’s why I keep this diary, but I can’t for the life of me find any reference to it, so I guess I forgot to record it.

Wrecked              Joe Ide

An IQ novel.    The third by this fascinating local writer and he’s really getting into his stride. I found the opening few chapters to be utterly fabulous and unexpectedly hilarious.  Impossible to keep up such expectations, but still a very good yarn indeed.

Somebody’s Darling       Larry McMurtry

I am constantly impressed by his writing.  By the time he came to write this in 1978 he had already written Terms of Endearment, the Last Picture Show and Horseman Pass by..  I thought this an absolutely brilliant Hollywood novel, but then he went and switched horses in the last third, changing the narrator unexpectedly from the man to the women and without any warning which I felt absolutely took the wind out of the book and confused and annoyed me.  Nevertheless he can really write.

 

January 2019

The Spy and The Traitor         Ben Macintyre

I felt this was an article at book length.  I wanted the skinny and abandoned the fatty.

Maigret and the Tramp           Georges Simenon

A very nice one.  Maigret is sentimental about a tramp under a bridge, assaulted, but by whom?   Who assaults tramps? he asks, in less violent times.   Reminding us that the streets were not always filled with the homeless sleeping rough.

A History of France                John Julius Norwich

A splendid and informative and not too long canter through French history.  Very enjoyable.  I’m very sad he himself just entered history, and since his father was Duff Cooper he joins his Dad in the pages about the Twentieth Century and France.  Very readable.

Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant.  Anthony Powell

Being the fifth episode of the rather magnificent epic series of twelve novels A Dance to the Music of Time first published in the fifties and sixties. I’m slowly working my way through for the second time. Hope I finish before I’m finished.

Maigret’s Secret            Georges Simenon

I’m so grateful to Penguin for their monthly publishing of new translations of this extraordinary writer. They are novella length and are just perfect for palate cleansing between longer works, and any plane journey, or just popping in your pocket while you wait for something.  As usual, weather sets the scene.  Here Paris in the rain.  I like the way he often changes the setting.   Maigret recalls an old case in discussion with his friend Dr. Pardon, so you get two levels, the actual story of a murder, and Maigret reflecting on it.

The Burglar                           Thomas Perry

My all-time favorite with a new novel is cause for rejoicing in our household.  How does he do it?   An annual treat.  He has written so many great books and here comes another one…

Little Constructions       Anna Burns

An earlier work by the Booker Prize winner, she is so goddamn funny and so dark.   Plus she writes like a goddess.

The Fifth Risk               Michael Lewis

Pretty compulsive reading, and should be compulsory really to understand the mess that one ignorant, vain, narcissistic, criminal can impose on America within days of starting taking office.  Wonderfully clear and brilliant journalism of the problems of our times.  The big take away is just how much the Government do for us which is purloined and used for profit by Reptards.

 

 

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