May.

The Moving Target        Ross MacDonald

1949 noir detective thriller reprinted recently.  A good example of the genre and quite readable if not the best.

A Separate Peace           John Knowles

I tried twice to read this novel and though both times I got more than two thirds through I never finished it, so I’d have to say it’s two thirds good.

The Woman in the Window     A. J. Finn

A wonderful thriller.  Beautifully constructed and written, like a cinema noir.  Impossible to put down.

Maigret Defends Himself         Georges Simenon

Impeccable.   For once Maigret finds out what it is like to be investigated.   I love the way he occasionally plays with form and the expectations of his readers.

Maigret’s Patience         Georges Simenon

Almost a sequel in that it features two characters from the previous book, the gangster whom Maigret suspects of being involved in the ongoing jewellery heists, and his love the ex-hooker.

The Kindly Ones            Anthony Powell

Book Six in this very long sequence of novels A Dance to The Music of Time, and this time I really sat this one out…

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs   Steve Brusatte

I found there was a little more of the author and his pals and a little less of the dinosaurs than I needed so I abandoned ship.

Maigret’s Doubts           Georges Simenon

One of his best.  Again another one where he plays with form and expectation.  In this one Maigret begins to investigate before there is any crime.

The Battle of Arnhem     Anthony Beevor

One of Monty’s most inglorious moments and a lesson in the arrogance of power.   Strange how the English seem to treasure their defeats the most.    This amazingly detailed retelling of the disastrous plan to drop paratroopers to destroy the bridges (as portrayed in the movie A Bridge Too Far) is a lesson in the jealousy of commanders.   Monty wanted to be the first to attack Germany.  He manipulated Eisenhower and the Americans, keeping them in the dark.  The big losers were not just the poor old paratroops but the Dutch who were seen by the Germans to support this Allied liberation and were punished as they withdrew.

Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.   Rick Reilly

Everything you ever needed to know about the deranged liar in the White House: he’s a man who cheats all the time at golf.   All the time. Hilarious.   Revealing.  Nicely written by someone who cares deeply about the Sport and who has played with him.  The best description of how to understand the weird person who has taken over the country.   Hilarious and then when you think of it, very scary.  But a must read. Please somebody call a Doctor, he shouldn’t be in charge of anything.   The most fun I have is browsing book shops.  Sometimes I pick well and sometimes not. This particular weekend I came back from Vromans with four books:

Machines Like Me         Ian McEwan

..which I knew within two pages I wouldn’t complete.  I’m not mad on sci fi but the opening scene seemed to be one I’ve seen in at least two movies:  plugging the humanoid android in.  I like him very much as a writer and the only ones of his books I don’t like are always hugely popular so this should be huge for him.

White          Brett Easton Ellis

…which I knew nothing about.   I didn’t even know it wasn’t a novel, but I instantly adored it.  A wonderful book of memoirs and thoughts and essays and above all honesty.  Great writing.  Very readable and enjoyable.  Taking to task political correction, and despite his unfortunate love for the Trump monster which goes back to his character’s obsession with him in the novel American Psycho he has interesting observations on whether the violence in that book is real or imagined.   So of course I had to read..

American Psycho  Brett Easton Ellis

I found this novel very original and startling.  Every character is described as if in a photo shoot from GQ with minute magazine-style details on what they are wearing, which is highly original and gives the book great stylishness.  Of course the violence is sickening, but I much preferred this to Crime and Punishment.  And it makes sense they all adore Trump.  This is the Reagan eighties of Wall Street and champagne, cocaine and money-making.   In a sense you can read it as a satire, though I think he is deadly serious.  Some things are very funny, like no one quite knowing anyone’s name, the coke-fuelled conversations with everyone talking and nobody listening, the narcissistic world of Personal Vanity Fair, Les Mis posters and references everywhere and Shopping Guides, define a world where New Yorkers are defined by their wealth, their personal income and what they wear.  Published in 1991 it seems to be very relevant again.

Maigret’s Patience         Georges Simenon

One of the finest of his novellas.   Impeccable.

April

The Greengage Summer                   Rumer Godden

I had heard of her but never read her.  I found this 1958 original edition in my shelves, along with a contemporary Quantas menu (!) and found it to be utterly delightful.  It could be called Five go-a-feral in France but actually it is far more serious, though set in a child’s world, when a family go on holiday in Les Oillets on the Marne.  Losing their mother to a Hospital in illness they must cope with a grown up and quite different French world from their English middle class home, where far more is going on than they can understand.   Beautifully narrated by the second oldest girl (13) it is exquisitely written and pretty much covers everything.  Delicious as the greengages.   And still in print.

The Old Drift                Namwali Serpell

A young new Zambian writer spans the history between Livingstone’s falls and modern day Zambia and pretty much everything in between:  Independence, Kaunda, Communism, Revolution.   Very finely written and excellent story-telling, she teaches at Berkeley.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits  Ayelet Waldman

A brilliant, beautiful book that I devoured at one sitting. About the difficulties of being a step mother.  Each single character plays a part in the totally unexpected outcome.   Marvellously crafted and magnificently written.

Doing Justice       Preet Bharara

Unexpectedly well written and delightfully informative I would never have expected to so have enjoyed this book and learned so much from it.  It was a gift I loved.

Richard’s Feet      Carey Harrison

To come across a masterpiece is rare enough, but one written by an old friend is truly a delight.  He wrote this in 1990 and I have remained quite ignorant of it until now.  As I wrote to him: “I find your prose so readable.   Strong, virile, sensitive, descriptive, subjective, passive-historical and at times so fucking funny.”  It is a fabulous novel.  Marvellously it is a Quartet and I have the other three still to savour.

Metropolis            Philip Kerr

It made me so sad to receive this his last book in the mail.  But it’s a Bernie Gunther and set in the Weimar republic, just as the Nazis are becoming what they so unpleasantly became, and so of course I loved it, pausing occasionally to mourn the loss of this wonderful author and kind man whom I was lucky enough to meet briefly.

Provence 1970      Luke Barr

Another great read which I couldn’t put down.   In 1970 M. F. K. Fisher met Julia Child and James Beard in Provence, almost by chance.   This lovely book, so well written by her nephew, tells the tale of how these great American tastemakers, got on, or didn’t, how they cooked for one another, what they thought of it, and how their experiences in France revolutionised American taste.  Quite by chance, and unnoticed in the book, a young Englishman arrived in Provence only a year later…

A Time of Gifts     Patrick Leigh Fermor

Just before World War Two a young man sets out on foot from England bound for Constantinople. Writing the most exquisite prose in his diaries he tells the tale of all the weird and wonderful things he sees and feels en route, in a world just about to collapse and disappear for ever in World War Two.  Impossible not to want to re-read.  This was my second go.

Elvis in Vegas      Richard Zoglin

A thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating tale of the many stages of Vegas, and how its constant state of change has continued to the present day.   Also just how big an influence Elvis was.

The Tailor of Panama.            John Le Carré

Re-reading this novel several things became clear:  first how similar the idea of Harry Pendel recruiting phony sources in his mind to turn in to Osnard his unwanted handler, is to Scobie recruiting fake spies in Our Man in Havana  and then how similar JLC and Graham Greene’s fathers were.  Both men, semi-criminal dubious fantasists, who would pluck them out of school and even steal them from school  (Single and Single)  and then I remembered Dickens shameless cozener of a dad and wondered if this wasn’t the very making of a novelist.  In the former two, spying adds another level of deceit to the original sense of betrayal.

Pure delight from the long and wonderful Musical Career of Leslie Bricusse. President of Footlights, he paved the way to Broadway writing so many brilliant songs, often with Anthony Newley. “If I Ruled The World”, “What Kind of Fool Am I?”, “Gonna Build A Mountain”, “You Only Live Twice”…I could go on but Sammy Davis Jr. recorded 60 of his songs…An inspiration and delightful company.

A mighty book in all senses. About us, and who we are and how we came to be so.

He can take a character and create a whole novel out of it. This is about a sweet little old lady who comes to Paris to ask Maigret to come to the Le Havre coast to solve the murder of her servant.

The most magnificent short novel. Glorious. Beautiful written. Like the essence of a novel.

Brief memoirs. His publisher seeking a quote. I sent: “Eddie Izzard is my favourite stand up chameleon.”

Wonderful essays on everyone and everything.

While she may have been uncertain herself, one thing Carrie Fisher certainly was is a fine writer. From the evidence of her earliest writing on Star Wars here it’s clear she can express herself in words. Revealingly she says she likes to write because it slows down her thoughts so she can finish one. Not only is it heart rending that she has gone so young, it is sad because we miss out on the writing she might yet have done.

An officer from Scotland Yard is studying Maigret’s methods when a call sends them off to an island off the Cote D’Azur. I have been doing research and gave myself a quick course in Biology. Amongst the books I perused: LIFE ASCENDING by Nick Lane WHAT IS LIFE? by Addy Pross LIFE ON A YOUNG PLANET by Andrew H. Knoll EVER SINCE DARWIN by Stephen Jay Gould A NEW HISTORY OF LIFE by Peter Ward & Joe Kirschvink THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH by Richard Dawkins (which rather flatteringly contains the entire text of a parody lyric I wrote for Python called “All Things Dull and Ugly”)

And then of course there is Simenon, who is like eating fine patisserie between long gourmet dinners. This one sees Maigret is in the USA attending a Coroner’s investigation of what might be a murder. His puzzlement over American methods is great. He cannot help but become involved.

People recommend Alan Furst in the same category as Philip Kerr, but he doesn’t hold up to the amazingly researched and extraordinary daring of PK. The Bernie Gunther novels are in the first person which allows him to make hilarious derogatory remarks about the Nazis, and to my mind he is funnier and sharper than Chandler, to whom he is often compared.

Stuck in bed with a broken ankle I turned to Philip Kerr and re-read with great pleasure the first three great Bernie Gunther novels: March Violets, The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem. The first set in pre-war Berlin, the second towards the end of WW2 and the third in Vienna, during the filming of The Third Man. He is really good, and re-reading is a total joy.

A puzzling book which I really enjoyed. I’m still not sure what it has to do with Jesus, and it ended abruptly. A man finds a lost boy on a ship to South America and takes him to a new life. But he is really the lost boy, and cannot find his feelings or emotions, either with the boy or the boy’s mother. They place him in a weird Music and Dance Academy where he soars, only to be involved in a brutal murder of his adorable teacher by his adored friend the janitor Dmitri. The novel explores, but doesn’t finally resolve the need for forgiveness.

On Kindle. Married woman flees with her kids to Alaska. Perhaps a film that became a book? I see I’m only half way through, which is good, because I can go back to it.

I loved it. Read it in Cedars. We shared a little email exchange about the effects of meds on reading. Oddly afterwards I think he was right. Don’t trust your reactions on meds. When I returned to it I couldn’t get into it again so much and I’m, not sure whether the meds had changed my reaction or whether they had caused me to enjoy it more. Published November 2016. Found a signed edition.

Hadn’t read it in a long time and it made me chuckle. On my I Phone. Trying to decide whether to do a reading of it. Happy to find it funny.

Timely re-reading of this touching story of redemption. Find the child. Even Scrooge comes from some unhappy childhood. His emotional connection with his past as we see how he got to be him, prepares him for his great moment of reconnection with mankind. Has led me into Oliver Twist.

Watching a bad movie adaptation by Amazon led me to the original. Was it really about the effect of the Nazi’s on the Studios in Hollywood? Of course not. But after the elegant opening of the book I was struck by how unfinished it was. And how far from being a masterpiece it is. I used to like it a lot. This time I didn’t. Two previous readings. Previous: Sept 2010  •  THE LAST TYCOON by F. Scott Fitzgerald Read on the plane flying from London to LA. Interesting because of the notes and the insights into how much work he put into constructing his novels and characters. His writing seems to come effortlessly to him but here we see that there is indeed a great deal of effort in it and he is harshly self-critical. He writes “Only Fair” opposite one paragraph. These notes in many ways are more valuable than the unfinished novel because they show the artist in mid brush stroke. The only thing I don’t find convincing on re-reading is the narrator – the female character Cecilia. Does he ever try and inhabit another female narrator? She doesn’t really come alive for me. I still love the Pat Hobby stories for the shabby view of Hollywood, but here you see that Fitzgerald was seen and appreciated for what he is when he first went to Hollywood. Stahr really knows him and admires him.

This time on Kindle. I liked it. Then I thought the Fagin portrait was really anti-semitic, then I switched to

When I realized if I was going to re-read Dickens, I’d want Bleak House or Dorrit.

I had a good read of this. It’s covered in highlights and I need it again as I’m taking up Act Two of the Universe.

A surprisingly good read. Surprising, not because he isn’t good, he is, but I didn’t think he’d grip me with a yarn about a Papal election. But he did. I loved it.

A true story about an arsonist amongst the Napa vineyards, the emergence, growth, survival and rebirth of California wines. Interesting. He destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of vintage wines.

Sending out for emergency supplies on Amazon, this is a beauty book of short stories by a wonderful writer who I discovered this year. I love it.