September
My reading has become very desultory and random. I pick up and put down books. I can’t settle in to anything. I can’t tell if this is just a phase, as I prepare to head out on the task of selling my own. The last serious book I read was Herzog and even that I discarded. Is this Reader’s Block? I became obsessed with that gag in the last novel I wrote; at least I hope it was the last novel I’ll write. You deserve at least that. It wasn’t even printed, a download. It wasn’t half bad. About three quarters. I took some consolation from the fact that it was printed in German, but a friendly fan from Munich wrote and assured me that the translation was so bad it was almost unreadable. I trust her because she reads amazingly well in English. I’ve fallen back on Kindle quite a bit too. Let’s see what precisely:
Calypso David Sedaris
I finally came to enjoy him, and quite by chance. I was watching the wonderful old two-part documentary on Mark Twain by Ken Burns when I realised the voice I should hear in my head when reading Sedaris should be Southern. I have no idea whether that is how he speaks, but since many of the tales in this collection are set in and around the beach and house he buys on Emerald Isle and I looked it up on a map, Raleigh, Smithfield, definitely the south, it fell into place for me and I would read with the warm treacly elegant voice used by many of the Burns readers. And enjoyed the tale of family, and loss, and good times.
Sue Grafton C is for corpse
I abandoned her alphabetical detective stories at this one. Not finishing. Not even sorry. Maybe a rainy day read. But she is no Maigret. Pity
Fear Bob Woodward
My final Kindle try was Woodward’s book, delivered shortly after midnight on publication day, but I can’t become interested in Trump. He is such a simple monster. Narcissistic and uninteresting. With all the sycophants surrounding him doing the dance around his desk only Bannon struck me as interesting, the rest avoiding the Jared’s and the soi-disant First Daughter came across as jumped up stool pigeons, and I began to lament the weakness at the heart of the American system: the elected Emperorship, with way too much power for one man and the fact that he could pull anyone unelected into his kitchen cabinet and have them do anything under promise of Presidential pardon, surely the most corrupting exception in any form of government.
I tried a few books too:
I’m a Joke and so are you Robin Ince
A Comedian’s Take on What Makes us Human. I very much enjoyed this book that Robin Ince kindly sent me.
A Strange Eventful History Michael Holroyd
Which I found to be an occasionally eventful history of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, and no more remarkable than the lives of many actors, the main interest being who and when they popped in to bed with others, since it is almost impossible to get a sense of the acting styles of Sarah Bernhardt et al pre U Tube. Frankly, I got fed up with the whole lot of them.
How to talk about books you haven’t read. Pierre Bayard
A fascinating series of essays and although apparently tongue in cheek, this Parisian professor tackles some interesting thoughts about what we think we know about reading. Amusing hors d’oeuvres, but not the full smorgasbord.
The List Mick Herron
A short novella length little beguiling read, is part of the Slough House series. He just gets better and better.
Fortune Smiles Adam Johnson
“Superbly written short stories I could easily re-read again.” That’s what I wrote when I first read this book on the road in February in Australia in 2016, but I was going through an Adam Johnson phase and picking this up again in Vromans I found it wasn’t true. I couldn’t easily re-read them.
So now what? Pick up a Dickens, mash into a Maigret, or attack the Bellow I have been storing up.
Plus I have to decide what to take with me on my book tour…. I decided to tackle a book on Berlin. See Napoleon’s guide to reading: “When in doubt invade Berlin.”
Berlin Rory Maclean
Well I loved this. A kind of personal cultural history of Berlin, with two of my favourite essays: one describing the extraordinary day that Kennedy visited Berlin, which by an exquisite coincidence found me also in Berlin on that very day, where I saw his cavalcade go by. The other is a lovely piece on David Bowie and “Heroes”, describing his time in the city and his work methods. The whole book was lovely and finely written and I really loved it.
And I kept on reading:
Collected Poems Philip Larkin
Which are simply wonderful.
August
Continuing my troll and stroll through Powell. (And that rhymes.)
It’s like a very posh soap, but exquisitely written. Is Proust French soap?
The Acceptance World (3) Anthony Powell
The first three books are described as Spring. Jenkins moves into the world and falls in love, this time reciprocated, in an affair with Jean. Uncle Giles is obscure as ever in a Bayswater Hotel. Some acquaintances have fallen away, some have been married, divorced and become drunks (Stringham.) Widmerpool has left his powerful job and joins the acceptance world, in the City. Something to do with guaranteeing options.
At Lady Molly’s. (4) Anthony Powell
We enter now Summer. Time has passed. The affair with Jean is over. Jenkins, as usual glides through society, bumping into people, Widmerpool of course, who is now getting married. I finally finished reading this in September, when I was low on good reads, because it is so exquisitely written and you just want to know what happens to Widmerpool. At the end Jenkins is engaged, but not particularly happily.
Catalina Eddy Daniel Pyne
A Novel in Three Decades. Very fine trilogy of LA crime novels set as advertised in different decades. Very well written and constructed. I like his books very much. I had this on Kindle for travel. This was particularly readable and a fascinating slice of different times in LA.
Deep Water Patricia Highsmith
Highsmith’s great originality is making us root for the villains. She understands that evil is only a slight shift of emphasis from the norm. Thus she can have it both ways, we observe the criminal and then watch the net closing in on the unsuspecting criminal. I love all the Ripleys. This is very good too and has some interesting stuff from Gillian Flynn.
A is for Alibi Sue Grafton
My wife was ploughing through these and they are very finely written Californian crime novels, with a very cute female Private Eye. I enjoyed it so much on Kindle I started the second
B is for Burglar Sue Grafton
Same author, same detective. I was a bit disappointed it repeated the shape of the first book at the end, but I imagine she will have changed this by the next, which I have already downloaded.
The Vegetarian Han Kang
Two thirds of a great book for me. Extraordinary fine writing and construction, but I felt it disintegrated into sentimentality just at the end. Since when I have read a little about the controversy of the translator – they both won the Booker. Perhaps that explains the tailing off. Who knows?
The Actual Saul Bellow
A novella, from 1997. About a Chicago businessman and his intense and long love for a married woman.
Maigret and the Lazy Burglar Georges Simenon
Like a fine cocktail, the short exquisite world of Maigret refreshes and cleanses the palate. Here he investigates the suspicious and inconvenient (to his superiors) death of a small-time burglar.
Intimacy Hanif Kureishi
An unhappy man makes plans to run away from his partner and their child. Honest and revealing.
Herzog Saul Bellow.
Magnificent. But I stopped again at the same point. Is it the construction? It’s like Ulysses events and memories. I find the apparent directionless of it a little wearying. I’ll pick up and read on later. Honest.
July
Swing Time Zadie Smith
Having totally fallen in love with her reading her recent book of essays I’m now catching up on some of her work I haven’t yet read. I seriously enjoyed this, her fifth novel, which is a highly readable book. It gave me some sense of the Willesden world my son grew up in. It has such an authentic air to it I wonder if she really did work for an Australian singer. But this is to underestimate the great imaginative skills of good writers. They convince you that what they are writing is actually the truth. Let us not forget the sage advice of John Le Carré “Never trust a novelist when he tells you the truth.” This is the story of two friends, with different family backgrounds, but from the same estate in Willesden. The unforgettable Tracey sets off to become a dancer, while the unnamed narrator, revealed as sadly too flat footed for ballet, drifts, into college and then into a job with Aimee a successful world famous international pop singer, who befriends her, lifts her up into a smart whirlpool world of New York, Australia, London and finally West Africa where her darker skin tones make her useful to do the grunt work in a hugely publicised charity work, opening a girls school. This satire is deadly. The lack of interest in the details of what it entails to run a girl’s school in a Muslim dictatorship, exposes Aimee as a self-obsessed shallow narcissist, and the inevitable break up with her leads to ?? finding herself. Tracey, whose father she steadfastly believes is away dancing with Michael Jackson, but is actually frequently in prison, recurs and is glimpsed in the final scene in a heart-breaking but revealing moment.
Ravelstein Saul Bellow
A dying man is given the task of writing about a dying man, his remarkable mentor and friend. I guess this 2000 is late Bellow. I liked it very much. I loved the Parisian scenes particularly.
Maigret and the Dead Girl Georges Simenon
Wonderful. The mystery of a poor young girl coming to Paris and what happened to her.
Slow Horses 1 Mick Herron
Dead Lions 2 Mick Herron
Mick Herron has been oddly compared to Graham Greene by some reviewer, which is inappropriate, he is more like a modern Le Carré. Or Len Deighton. Slough House and its unforgettable head Jackson Lamb are destined to become the new image of The Circus. A cluster of fuck-ups, screw ups and people who may no longer be fired for politically correct reasons, are relegated to Slough House where they are destined never to return, to push paper around until they finally give up and quit. However, the underdogs have their day. Highly readable and given to me as a pot boiler read by a friend, they are more than that; they are an articulate, and hilarious study of modern British society and its place in the world.
A Question of Upbringing (1) Anthony Powell
Spring. The first of the twelve volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time. I bought the second in Hatchards and then the whole dozen. However, I found that it was too much cream for tea at one sitting. His prose is magnificent, but as my friend Jeremy says the writing is great but nothing much happens. Obviously, the wonderful creation of Widmerpool is a delight but that whole world is gone now. This book is largely the schooldays with the unforgettable first appearance of Widmerpool.
A Buyer’s Market (2) Anthony Powell
Time has passed. Nicholas Jenkins is older. Girls are coming out. Boys are getting in. Not Jenkins, whom seems to glide through this privileged world, bumping into odd characters like Gypsy Jones, falling in love with French women, imagining himself in love with English women, people’s sisters, without actually doing anything.
